Page 37 of Rising Tiger

Asha nodded and, after turning out the lights, Badal pushed a button on the computer, which projected a video on the whiteboard at the front of the room. “We believe this footage is the last sighting of General Mehra’s helicopter before it went down.”

The video appeared to have been taken from a rooftop, in a crowded neighborhood, somewhere on the outskirts of town. She could see a mix of commercial and residential buildings. There were laundry lines, old satellite dishes, and a smattering of billboards. There was also fog, but not as thick as she had expected.

Badal narrated: “The footage was captured by a young man who thought it might be cool for his social media accounts. In a moment, you’ll see the helicopter enter screen left.”

As was true in most cases, you could hear it before you saw it. When the helicopter finally materialized, everything appeared normal. But after a few seconds, it began to dramatically lose altitude. It also began swinging violently from side to side.

She could only imagine how terrifying it must have been for everyone on board, especially the pilots as they fought to bring it under control.

The video stayed with the aircraft until it disappeared from view. Shortly thereafter, an explosion could be heard and a plume of black smoke could be seen on the horizon.

“Wait a second,” said Asha, walking over to the whiteboard. “Rewind it, please.”

Badal did as she asked.

“Right there. Stop.” Pointing at one of the rooftops, she then asked, “Can you tighten in on this?”

The major was impressed. He had watched the video several times, but hadn’t noticed what she had. He’d been focused on the helicopterand what he was certain was a mechanical failure of some sort. “What is that? A sniper?”

“Not in the traditional sense.”

“Meaning?”

Asha used her finger to outline the backpack the figure was wearing, the odd features of his rifle, and what appeared to be some sort of a hose tying it all together.

The tighter Badal zoomed in, the fuzzier and more difficult the image was to view.

“I don’t understand,” he said, zooming out. “What are we looking at?”

“The cause of our crash,” she replied. “And quite possibly an act of war.”

CHAPTER 21

BEIJING

Yang Xin was exhausted. It had been a long, hard day with a lot on the line. His jaw ached from being clenched and his stomach hadn’t been right since before even stepping into the office. The stress of the job was getting to him. By all accounts, however, today’s operations had been a total success.

The helicopter carrying the head of India’s armed forces had gone down in a fiery crash and the Yaomo operative in the United States charged with raining down “Havana Syndrome,” as the Americans had come to call it, on the first member of the Carlton Group had been wildly successful.

The Science and Technology Commission had no research from which to gauge how severely the weapon would impact the little bastard known as the Troll. They had advised against going too strong with the initial attack. Yang, however, had instructed his operative to go with a full dose. He wanted the attack to be extremely painful and for it to leave a deep psychological scar. He wanted the little man to live in fear of it happening again. Which it most definitely would.

Yang had a plan for all of the members of the Carlton Group, but he had a very special plan reserved for one employee in particular—Scot Harvath.

Harvath had not only single-handedly disrupted several of China’s most important, highly sensitive strategic missions, but he was also suspected of recently assassinating a ranking member of China’s Ministry ofState Security and one of its top operatives, who had been a former military colleague of Yang’s.

There would be quite the reward and untold accolades for whoever managed to capture or kill Harvath.

Yang’s hope was that in staging attacks on members of the Carlton Group, he could weaken the organization and flush Harvath out into the open. The man had been impossible to find.

But as much as Beijing considered Harvath a special target, the priority right now was to put a stop to any potential Asian version of NATO. Yang was free to go after Harvath on the side, but not at the expense of his primary mission. Beijing would absolutely not stand for a military alliance in their backyard anchored by the United States and India. It was a nonstarter—one they would risk anything to stop, even going to war.

That meant that the next operation was critically important. And even though he knew his man in Mumbai knew that, he wanted to drive the point home once more. He didn’t want any mistakes.Zero.

Looking at his watch, he computed the time difference. They were coming up on another communications window.

Opening his encrypted laptop, he activated the app that would encode his communications and send a signal to his contact that he was online. Minutes later, Basheer Durrani entered the chat.

He was a deep-cover operative from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI for short. Pakistan had been one of the first nations to recognize and formally establish diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China. It had also played a pivotal role in making Richard Nixon’s historic state visit to China possible.

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