Chapter 34
BANGKOK
By the time Harvath stepped through the safe house door, the sky was beginning to pale, the night draining away in thin bands of gray.
Ashby and Palmer arrived minutes later, having handed custody of their captive to a CIA team Morrell dispatched.
The Chinese security agent was already en route to a remote location where he’d be held until it was safe to cut him loose.
Maps of Bangkok lay spread across the table beside open laptops, spare magazines, and a half-empty first aid kit. Gear was set down. Weapons were cleaned. The air smelled of gun oil and strong coffee.
When Harvath’s phone chimed with a text, he had the team gather around for a briefing. Firing up his computer, he waited for Nicholas’s face to appear on the screen.
Once it did, Harvath asked, “What have you been able to find out?”
“I’ve built a working picture,” Nicholas replied. “It’s not complete, but it’s enough to move.”
“Give us the thirty-thousand-foot view,” Harvath said.
Popping up the man’s service photo, Nicholas did just that. “Kevin Koebler. Age forty-four. United States Navy explosive ordnance disposal technician. Selected for the EOD-to-SEAL pilot program. Assigned to SEAL Team Two. Strong operator. Technically advanced. Aggressive.”
Everyone knew that Harvath had been a Team Two guy, but no one spoke. For a moment, all eyes drifted toward him, but Harvath’s expression didn’t change.
“Sixteen years ago,” Nicholas continued, “there was an ambush in Anbar Province. Three of Koebler’s teammates were killed. Shortly after, there was what appeared to be an unofficial retaliatory action. Six structures were destroyed. Multiple casualties.
“There was nothing direct tying him to it, but there was enough circumstantial evidence that the Navy decided to stack a bunch of lesser violations, strip him of his Trident, and hand him an Other Than Honorable discharge.
“Within sixty days of his discharge, he boarded a commercial flight for Mexico and was never heard from again. No tax filings. No credit card usage. Even a small bank account he has never touched. Three months after his departure, an eviction judgment was filed against him. He had just up and walked away from his life.”
Morrell looked across the table at Harvath. “How well did you know him?”
“Not well,” Harvath replied. “Different platoon. But everybody knew Koebler.”
“Meaning he had a reputation.”
“He was scary smart,” said Harvath. “If something tricky needed to go boom—or not to go boom—he was the guy.”
“And?” Morrell pressed.
“He liked pushing the envelope. More than once, the instructors had to pull him back from experimenting. He wasn’t reckless, but rules didn’t mean much to him if he thought the mission justified it.”
Harvath paused, before adding, “For Koebler, results mattered more than the method.”
Nicholas switched slides. On the screen, Koebler was still staring back at them, but this time it was from a passport photo. He had grown a beard, his hair was longer, and his face was fuller than in his service photo.
“Here’s the identity he used to enter Thailand three weeks before the bombings,” Nicholas said. “Meet Dutch national Frederik Rijneveld. He came in on an extended-stay visa to study Muay Thai. Had a sponsor and everything.”
“Any record of him leaving the country?” Harvath asked.
Nicholas shook his head. “No recorded departure. No outbound booking that I can find. No land crossing either. Unless he swam to Malaysia, he’s still in Thailand and may still even be using that identity.”
“Then why go to Teens?”
No one answered.
“If I’m Koebler, the only place I’m going after those bombings is to ground,” Harvath continued. “I lay low, wait for the heat to die down, then I leave the country.”
Morrell pulled out a small notebook and flipped it open. “Who was the sponsor for his visa?”
“A Bangkok kickboxing gym called Khlong Kiat Muay Thai in the Khlong Toei neighborhood.”
Morrell wrote the name down.
“And we’re certain this is our guy?” Palmer asked.
“It’s an eighty-eight percent facial similarity against Koebler’s DoD file. The ears and orbital structure align. A beard can only change contour, not bone structure.”
“That’s him,” Harvath said confidently.
Nicholas didn’t disagree. “Now for the bombs,” he continued, as he brought up a new slide showing images from the Friday blast sites. “As we previously discussed, white phosphorus was used in the devices, not to enhance the lethality, but rather to eradicate any signature.”
Sitting next to Harvath, Haney—who had seen his share of roadside bombs and Marines getting blown up—leaned forward, studying the blast photos.
“I did a global search across every unsolved, high-grade IED event over the last fifteen years,” Nicholas said.
“I was looking for similar yields, similar burn profile, and similar absence of claimed responsibility. Then, for each country, I ran their surrounding immigration data, any available imagery, and whatever border CCTV footage could be pulled from online archives, through facial recognition. Within weeks of Koebler showing up under one of his aliases, a bomb matching his style goes off.”
“And the same goes for Mexico?” Staelin asked.
Nicholas nodded. “That’s where the ‘Kevin Koebler’ identity falls off the grid.
It also appears to be where he perfected his craft.
Before he showed up, bombings there were quite crude—pipe bombs, fertilizer charges, that sort of thing.
But as soon as Koebler arrives, the sophistication ramps straight up—anti-tamper circuits, shape-charges, and of course the aforementioned white phosphorus. ”
Ashby took a sip of her coffee. “So he was working for the cartels?”
“Based on the victims—prosecutors, judges, and rival cartel figures—that’s the most likely explanation.”
“And then what?” Palmer asked.
Nicholas switched slides again. “Then the pattern stops.”
“Why?” Morrell said.
“Years ago, when I was still doing work in the darkest corners of the internet, there were occasional whispers about a freelance bombmaker. Not ideological. Just expensive. He supposedly worked through an intermediary—a handler of sorts.”
Looking back at them through the camera, he added, “I think those whispers were about Koebler.”
For a moment, no one spoke.
It was Harvath who finally broke the silence. “So Koebler leaves the cartels and starts selling his services.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Nicholas replied.
“To who?” Staelin asked.
“Whoever can afford him. Someone with lots of money and a reason to want sophisticated explosive devices that leave no forensic trail.”
Harvath looked back at the images from the Bangkok blasts. “Who would want him to hit Bangkok?”
“Anyone who benefits from destabilizing Thailand,” said Nicholas.
“Which brings us back to Teens.”
Around the table, everyone knew what he meant.
“The Cambodians,” Ashby said.
“Possibly,” Harvath replied. “But they weren’t the only ones present.”
“And the Chinese,” Haney added.
Morrell tapped the table with his pen. “And Koebler’s Glock was found in the waistband of one of the dead Chinese operatives.”
“Which tells us what?” Harvath asked. “Koebler was there to meet someone. Someone he didn’t trust. That’s why he planted the cameras outside and went in armed.”
“And the people he was meeting with didn’t trust him either,” Morrell replied. “That’s why they searched him and took his gun.”
“So if there’s a dead Chinese guy with Koebler’s Glock, it’s a good bet that’s who he was meeting.”
“Okay,” Palmer agreed, playing along. “Let’s say it starts with Koebler meeting with the Chinese. Then the Cambodians show up. Why? Were they there for him? Or the Chinese team?”
Morrell ran his hand across his stubbled chin. “Whatever the reason, it’s obvious they didn’t come to play mahjong. Crashing through skylights. Slinging all that lead. They came to wipe the room.”
“Agreed,” said Harvath. “If these guys are Chinese intelligence, working with an American bombmaker, to attack Thailand—that’s nightmare fuel.
But to have it also draw in Cambodia—a Chinese client state—and to have Phnom Penh risk going kinetic against Beijing?
That’s a nightmare wrapped in a horror movie. ”
“What could the Chinese have done to piss off the Cambodians so bad?” Ashby asked, circling back to Palmer’s question.
“Maybe they haven’t done anything yet,” said Harvath. “Maybe the Cambodians showed up to short-circuit something.”
He let that hang in the air for a moment before turning his attention back to the screen and the most pressing matter at hand. “So when the bullets start flying and Koebler bolts, where does he go?”
“If he’s still using the Rijneveld identity,” Nicholas replied, “there’s only one place tied to it.”
“The visa sponsor,” Morrell said, glancing down at his notebook.
Nicholas brought up another image. “Khlong Kiat Muay Thai. The kickboxing gym in the Khlong Toei district.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s staying there,” Morrell clarified. “But it’s connected to his alias.”
“And aliases,” said Harvath, “sometimes leave a trail.”
“If he’s maintaining that cover,” Nicholas offered, “someone there may have seen him.”
“Then we start with the gym.”
“We’re going to have to loop Davi in,” Morrell stated. “The question is when.”
“After,” Harvath replied. “The minute we give her his name, every cop in the city starts looking for him.”
“And the minute that happens,” Morrell continued, “Koebler dis-appears.”
Harvath nodded. “And nobody gets a shot at him.”