Rising Tiger: A Thriller (95)

Whoever owned the car was going to receive more than a few red-light tickets in their mailbox, but that would be Raj’s problem to solve.

As they entered Jafrabad, Harvath had hoped sitting in the backseat would provide him with a little lower profile. He still got lots of stares and what he and his teammates used to refer to as the “stink eye.” It was obvious he was not welcome in this part of town.

They threaded the vehicle through the squalid, pothole-punctured streets.

“That’s his mosque,” Amit said as they passed a rather weather-beaten structure. “His class is timed so that the students can be done before the midmorning prayer service.”

“Dhuhr,” said Harvath, using the correct name for the prayer. Pulling out his phone, he did a quick internet search for prayer times in New Delhi. “We’ve got twenty minutes.”

“Does he walk to mosque with his students?” Asha asked.

“No. He normally gets cleaned up, prays on his own inside the dojo, and then heads to the office.”

Asha met Harvath’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “So, we take him inside?”

“Or we could wait until he leaves and hit him with the car.”

She looked around. “While there’s a certain beauty to the simplicity of that plan, we don’t have enough real estate. Too many cars and other obstacles. It’d be a one-in-a-million shot. And that’s me being generous with the odds. I say we take him inside.”

“It’s his turf. He knows it. We don’t.”

“Amit knows it,” she replied.

“Good point,” said Harvath, reaching his hand over the seat and placing it heavily on the man’s shoulder. “If it were you, how would you do it?”





CHAPTER 61


“We should have sent him right up to the front door and had him knock,” said Asha as they crept up on the dojo.

“And if it were you inside, instead of Durrani?” he asked. “How would you react?”

“I’d have my weapon out, a few millimeters from the door so it could cycle, and I’d begin shooting the moment I saw anybody else but Amit.”

“Which is why we’re not using Amit and he’s facedown, zip-tied, in the trunk. Speaking of which, why didn’t you tell me you had a whole other bag of tricks in there?”

“Raj is our quartermaster. When we went up to the lingerie store, I handed you all the cases that were coded for surveillance. I knew you had a weapon and I had a weapon. That was all that mattered. The bonus bag was just Raj being Raj. He’s famous for saying, ‘Whatever you do, don’t underdo it.’ It’s a joke, but there’s some practical wisdom to it.”

“Vijay had a duffle like yours. It was filled with a bunch of stuff that magically ‘walked’ out of IPS the same day he did. I’m beginning to think that Indians are obsessed with only three things—marriage, music, and mass quantities of tactical gear.”

“Are you absolutely sure my mother didn’t send you?”

Harvath shot her a quick grin. “Something tells me your mom and Vijay’s mother-in-law would probably get along well.”

Asha smiled back, but it disappeared the moment she made ready to reach for the front door. The time for jokes was over. It was now time to get to work.

Harvath had been in his share of dojos. From how Amit described the layout, it was pretty standard—which, in this case, was a tactical nightmare.

The front door opened onto one big room where everything happened. In the back were a men’s locker room and a women’s locker room, both with toilets and showers.

There was no rear exit, because there was no true urban planning in this part of Delhi. Houses and buildings were built right up against and on top of each other. While there was an occasional gangway, there were no organized alleys providing access for garages and trash pickups as there were in the United States.

This was a slapdash, unregulated district, erected with little to no oversight or forethought. A testament to well-organized urban planning it was not. That was good and bad for Harvath.

It was good, in that by their controlling the front door, Durrani had no means of escape. It was bad, however, in that to go in and take him, they had to move through open space with no cover and no concealment.

The ISI operative would ostensibly have every advantage—save for one. Surprise.

Harvath would have killed for submachine guns, rather than pistols, but you went to war with the gear you had, not the gear you wish you had.

While he would have also killed to have had a few flashbangs, Raj had seen fit to at least provide them with two smoke grenades—both green, for some unfathomable reason. Among multiple other pieces of kit, Harvath had one smoke grenade on his vest and Asha had the other on hers.

That was the extent of their distraction devices. Two green smoke grenades. The only other thing that they might have going for them, and Harvath prayed that they did, was that the water in the dojo shower was exceptionally warm and that Durrani would take his time enjoying it.

He had, without question, done hundreds more hostile entries than Asha ever had, or would. That made him the most experienced operator on scene and she had agreed to defer to him. She wasn’t stupid. She didn’t want to run in and get shot in the face.

Harvath was of two minds. If they were lucky enough to enter when Durrani was in the shower, he might not have any clue that they had slipped inside.