Page 71 of Rising Tiger

It wasn’t that Raj didn’t want to meet with them; initial reports from his surveillance specialists had been extremely positive, but with everything on his plate, he had been just too busy. Now he was willing to clear his schedule, and the tech people were willing to clear theirs.

He wanted proof of concept. They were ready to give it. The test would be to identify the full scope of surveillance taking place on Asha’s apartment. Then everything would be up to her.

The tech people offered to pick up Raj and allow him to watcheverything unfold in their mobile command center, but he opted for an encrypted feed that he could anonymously access from the basement of the Blind Relief Association.

Gupta wanted to be on-site to observe and to help out if needed, but didn’t want anyone to know he was there. He chose a small tea shop down the street from Asha’s and brought his briefcase with the latest novel from Saikat Majumdar. As long as he ordered something from time to time, they would let him sit there all day and read.

He had a perfect view of the front entrance of her building and, to the tech team’s credit, he never saw any sign of them.Zero.

A surveillance op, as well as a countersurveillance op, was only as good as the people involved. You could have the best gadgets in the world, but if you didn’t have experienced operatives behind them, at some point you were going to screw up and expose yourself.

By the time he got a text from Raj saying the tech company had wrapped up, he had already spotted two goons, who he assumed were part of G-Company. They were simply too low-rent and too out of their element to be anything else. Other than that, he hadn’t noticed anyone else.

So one could imagine Gupta’s surprise when the tech team identified seven people who were watching Asha’s apartment.

“Seriously?” Gupta texted back to Raj. “Seven?”

It seemed like far too many. Three teams of two, plus a spotter in an upper apartment across the street. G-Company had to have known, like Asha, that she was a pro and that any pro who had been attacked so close to their home would not be back. They would go to ground. You wouldn’t see them unless they wanted to be seen.

Why not simply leave a lookout and call for reinforcements, if and when she ever returned? He was worried. It felt like overkill.

But on the flip side, if they were subcontracting to Beijing, why wouldn’t a criminal syndicate like G-Company inflate everything and try to get as much money out of the Chinese as possible?

That seemed like a perfectly rational explanation, but in situations like these, he always went with his gut. And his gut was telling him to be on guard.

Unlike with G-Company, manpower was where Raj’s operation fell down. Keeping the circle tight was good for operational security, but not for carrying out any actualoperations. Asha might have had exceptional talents, but one against seven was not a fight you wanted to have if you could avoid it.

She had been determined, however, and now that the surveillance report was in, the odds of success may have just tilted in her favor. It all came down to how she used the information.

The best course of action would have been to wait until night, when she could operate under the cover of darkness. But she didn’t want to wait. She wanted to use the current intel and hit them now, ASAP. Gupta could only hope that she was making a sound tactical decision and not being motivated for revenge over what had happened earlier that morning.

Two blocks away, Asha had sat in the back of the tech company’s mobile command center, appreciating its air-conditioning and watching all of the countersurveillance unfold.

The sophistication of the equipment was impressive. Miniature hive-to-target drones, acoustic and thermal sensors, X-ray cameras, refraction arrays, and passive particle beam units were only a part of what the team had brought with them and had put into the field.

The 360-degree picture of the battlespace they created was like something out of a science fiction movie. The heights of the buildings, the thickness of the walls, the layouts of the apartments inside, as well as the positions of all the people, right down to the cars on the street—it all came together in a fully explorable, precisely accurate, three-dimensional digital rendering.

“Let me see here and here,” said Asha, pointing to two areas of the screen she was looking at.

One of the techs increased the magnification and zoomed in.

These people could literally see through walls. Now, thanks to them,so could she. Assessing all of the potential targets, she made her decision and contacted Raj.

She had a short but very particular list of gear she needed. “Give me an hour,” the man had responded.

One hour later, on the dot, her phone rang. It was Raj. “Three cars behind you is a red, four-door Honda. Everything you asked for is in the trunk.”

She thanked him and disconnected the call. As she did, one of the tech team showed her a small tablet. It was enclosed in a ruggedized polymer case by an American company called Juggernaut.

“This will allow you to continue monitoring everything. All I need to know is if you want it mounted to your forearm, or if you prefer flipping it down from your chest rig.”

The primary weapon she had asked Raj for was an H&K MP5. Per her training, she would need to maintain two hands on the weapon at all times. Letting go with one hand, in order to roll her forearm over, as if she were checking a watch, was not tactically sound and was instantly out of the question.

“Flipped down from my chest rig,” she replied.

The man set aside the straps he was holding and attached two mounts to the back of the Juggernaut case. “Just click these into your MOLLE webbing,” he said, “and you’ll be good to go.”

Asha thanked him, exited the vehicle, and walked back to the red Honda. She recovered the fob from where it had been hidden and popped the trunk.

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