Rising Tiger: A Thriller (77)

Speed, surprise, and overwhelming violence of action, however, were Harvath’s specialties.

Unless the barman had a sawed-off shotgun hidden nearby, or the manager popped out of the office wielding a weapon, he figured his plan had a fifty-fifty chance of working.

Not the best odds, but handling these kinds of situations was also his specialty. As long as they could continue to keep Murphy at bay, they might just might pull this off.

No sooner had the thought popped into his mind than Aga Sayed did something that changed everything.





CHAPTER 48


“Thullas don’t get to drink in my bar,” Sayed spat, pointing his gun at the back of Vijay’s head. “Not even former thullas.”

The ex-cop turned around slowly on his stool until he was facing him. “Aga Sayed,” he replied. “It has been a long time.”

“Not long enough. Give me one reason I shouldn’t shoot you right here.”

“I’ll give you about a hundred of them,” Vijay replied, gesturing to all the customers who had their eyes glued on them. “That’s a lot of people to bribe, intimidate, or murder.”

“What do you want, Chabra? Why the fuck are you here?”

“I just came in for a drink.”

“Bullshit,” the gangster hissed, showing a flash of his gold tooth. “Once a thulla, always a thulla. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“We’re expecting a storm tonight. I thought I would come by and check on you. How are your bones feeling? Probably not so good, eh?”

Enraged, Sayed charged at him, growling, “Mardachod.” Motherfucker. He pressed the barrel of his pistol right against Vijay’s forehead and continued ranting, “Phaad-doong-aa!” I will fuck your ass. “Do you hear me, mardachod?!”

From where Harvath was sitting, things couldn’t have been going worse. Not only did Sayed have the upper hand, but Vijay was actively trying to piss him off. What the hell is he thinking?

Even if Harvath wanted to act, he couldn’t, not with the gangster’s gun at the ex-cop’s head. This continued to be the worst plan ever.

“Rand ke jamai!” the man yelled. Whore’s son-in-law!

Vijay had officially had enough. Snapping his left hand up toward his face, he pivoted his body, grabbed the gun by the barrel, and pushed it down and away.

At the same time, he let loose with his right hand and landed a solid uppercut right beneath Sayed’s chin.

Then, as he put his right hand on the weapon, he did a quick flip of his wrists, joint-locked Sayed, and stripped the pistol from him.

“Nobody talks about my mother-in-law that way,” he replied, backhanding the gangster with his signet ring.

It was one of the slickest takeaways Harvath had ever seen. The ex-cop most definitely still had it.

The moment Vijay pointed the pistol at the gangster, the bodyguards had theirs unholstered and were aiming at him. It was a Mexican standoff on the backstreets of New Delhi. It was also untenable.

Looking to intimidate Vijay into dropping his weapon, the two men moved in closer. Bad idea.

As soon as they passed him, it gave Harvath the opening he needed.

While he would have liked to have shot them both in the head, John Wick–style, if a single round went astray, it could have killed one of the innocent patrons. That brought up another problem.

There were already a bunch of phones out recording and, very likely, livestreaming the standoff.

In America, that would have meant police were inbound. In the Paharganj neighborhood of New Delhi? That was anyone’s guess. Harvath was willing to bet that if the cops even came, it was going to take a while to get there.

That meant they had time. What they didn’t have was invisibility. Vijay, the victim, had taken the gun off of an attacker. Clear as day on video. It was also clean—from both a legal and physical injury standpoint—minus the two raps to the face Sayed had received. Whatever Harvath did, he was going to have to be just as clean.

It was two against one. But even though the bodyguards were armed, he couldn’t use his own gun, not now that everything was being filmed.

Vijay’s plan was like a candy store that had been custom built for Murphy’s law to step in. No matter how bad things got, this scenario kept finding ways to get worse. Harvath needed to put a stop to it. And that was exactly what he did.

Polishing off his Bira 91, he slid off his stool, eased from behind his spot at the end of the bar, and came up behind the nearest bodyguard.

Having gotten a little education from Vijay on the ride from Jaipur about G-Company’s fondness for glass bottles, he thought it might be poetic to put one of their members on the receiving end of one.

To his credit, Vijay had not looked in Harvath’s direction. Not even once. Undoubtedly, he was wondering when, or worse, if his American colleague was going to make his move. That question was answered with just as much speed as when the ex-cop had bitch-slapped Sayed and taken away his gun.

Harvath smashed his beer bottle against the bodyguard’s right temple and drove his foot into the back of the man’s right knee.

As the bodyguard began to fold, Harvath reached down and grabbed his right hand, which was holding his pistol, and spun the man toward his stunned partner.

When the partner raised his weapon and prepared to fire, Harvath used his own finger to help apply pressure to his guy’s trigger.