Page 3 of Rising Tiger

So that they would not be seen leaving together, his contact stayed behind and ordered a digestif.

Stepping outside, Ritter smiled. Jaipur’s citizens were still out in force celebrating. He also felt like doing a little celebrating.

Removing one of the Cohibas he had purchased earlier in the day, he snipped the end and fired it up.

The communists may have fucked up everything else in Cuba,he mused,but they’ve been wise enough to keep their hands off Cuba’s exceptional cigar industry.

Filling his mouth with a heady draw of peppery smoke, he struck off toward his hotel.

Two blocks later, a string of firecrackers exploded close by, taking him by surprise.

Out of instinct, he turned toward the noise. That was when the assassin stepped up from the opposite direction, placed the suppressed pistol behind Ritter’s left ear, and pressed the trigger.

CHAPTER 3

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

Ducking back behind cover, Scot Harvath slammed a fresh magazine into his weapon. Out on the street, Taliban gunmen—about twelve in total and most of them armed with American M4s—continued to fire on his position.

The amount of U.S. military equipment that had been abandoned to the bad guys after Afghanistan’s collapse made him sick to his stomach. The fact that it was now being used against his team made it even worse. Two of his people were already dead.

They lay in pools of their own blood no more than twenty feet away. There had been nothing he could do for them. Things had escalated that quickly.

The pair had been fierce, anti-Taliban resistance fighters, recruited specifically for this operation. Dressed in plain clothes and supplied with envelopes full of cash, their job had been to negotiate roadblocks and to smuggle their American colleagues into the city.

While the key phase of the mission took place, they were to stand guard. Then, once the objective was complete, they were to smuggle everyone back out again. Ideally, no one would ever know the team had been there. But when a roving Taliban security patrol had passed through, everything had gone south.

What had started as a shakedown, with the Taliban angling for bribes, had rapidly turned into a bloodbath.

The men were initially accused of being out too late. Next,questions were raised about their vehicle, then their driving permits and other documents.

It didn’t matter that everything was in full compliance. That wasn’t how things worked in a failed state. The law didn’t matter. The rights of the individual didn’t matter. The only things that mattered were brute force and one group’s ability to successfully impose its will upon the rest of a society.

It was the antithesis of everything the United States had hoped to help the Afghans achieve. Sadly, and at tremendous cost, America had learned the painful lesson that democracy couldn’t simply be handed to a people on a silver platter. The people themselves had to want it so badly that they would do anything for it. They had to be willing to fight and die. And not just some of them.Allof them. Anything less than a complete commitment to their own freedom was a recipe for defeat and subjugation.

That only added to the sickness Harvath felt. He knew and had worked with courageous Afghans. Men and women willing to go the distance and do whatever needed to be done. Unfortunately, the nation’s tribalism and rampant corruption had doomed even the most noble of freedom fighters to a near-impossible battle against the Taliban and other terrorist organizations that had taken root once again like weeds throughout the country.

It wasn’t his problem, however. Especially not now. He and his team had been sent on a specific mission—the extraction of a high-value Afghan intelligence asset.

Unlike many Afghans who had dragged their feet and had postponed getting out, this Afghan, code-named “Topaz,” had selected to stay behind.

At great personal risk to himself and his family, he had continued to willingly serve as a well-placed, loyal set of eyes and ears for the American government. The man had gone above and beyond what anyone could have asked of him. Now, with murder, rape, starvation, and so many other evils falling like a poisoned, unstoppable deluge, all he wanted was out.

While the United States was sorry to have to pull him, the man had more than earned it. And so, Harvath was called in.

The former SEAL Team Six member turned covert intelligence operative was no stranger to extracting individuals from hostile, war-torn places, including Afghanistan. If there was one thing he had learned, it was that if something could go wrong, it would. That fact had just gruesomely played out right before his eyes.

In an effort to deescalate the situation with the Taliban, one of the resistance fighters had pulled out an envelope filled with currency and had offered a contribution to the cause. Normally, after a little haggling, such an overture—referred to asbaksheesh, a Persian word for bribe—would be enough to settle everything and see the thugs move on in search of their next victim. This time, unfortunately, things had taken a deadly turn.

The security patrol’s commander was seasoned and possessed of above-average intelligence.Where there was one envelope of cash,he had reasoned,there were likely more. He initiated a search of the men and their vehicles.

Not only did the Taliban uncover the rest of the money, but they also found weapons and equipment hidden in the resistance fighters’ truck that clearly suggested they were up to something. Discovering what that something was had been the patrol commander’s next goal.

He gave the first fighter an opportunity to explain. When the man didn’t answer to his satisfaction, the commander removed his pistol and shot him point-blank in the head.

Harvath’s sniper, Jack Gage, had been poised on a rooftop halfway down the block. Gage had been ready to let loose, but Harvath had held him back, wanting to give the resistance fighters a chance to do what they had been hired to do—smooth things over and convince the Taliban to move on. As it turned out, Harvath had held out hope a fraction of a moment too long.

The moment the commander fired, Harvath cleared Gage to shoot and joined the fight himself. It was too little, too late.

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