Chapter 38
The waitress had texted Mr. Baht while they were settling the check. Ten minutes later, Harvath and Morrell were headed deeper into Khlong Toei.
The bars and neon of the nightlife strip faded quickly behind them, replaced by the sights and sounds of the port.
Men in rubber boots hauled coils of rope across the pavement while others stacked wooden pallets near a warehouse.
A mechanic sat on a low stool rebuilding an outboard motor, its parts arranged in careful rows on a sheet of cardboard.
Nearby, chains clattered, and a forklift’s warning alarm chirped as it backed out of a loading bay.
Out on the river, a vessel’s horn sounded long and low, followed by the sharper blast of another.
Morrell checked the address on his phone and gestured toward a lane between a freight broker’s office and a welder’s shop. The lane felt quieter, closed off from the noise of the port.
They turned off the main road and the foot traffic thinned almost immediately. Halfway down the block sat a small office, its open doorway shaded by a faded awning.
“That’s it,” said Morrell, slowing.
Inside, a heavyset Thai man in his sixties sat behind a metal desk with two cell phones and several rings of keys spread across the blotter.
His thinning hair was poorly combed over a widening bald spot, and his short-sleeved shirt stretched tight across his paunch.
A thick gold chain hung beneath his double chin.
Behind him, a small spirit shrine sat on a shelf, its base crowded with incense sticks and half-melted candles.
He looked up as Harvath and Morrell entered, his eyes moving over them with the steady calculation of someone used to sizing up strangers.
“Mr. Baht?” the CIA man asked.
The man studied them for another moment before nodding. “You from Lucky Monkey?”
“That’s us.”
“How long you need room? Short stay? Long stay? Cash only.”
Harvath pulled out his phone and brought up Koebler’s Dutch passport photo. “Actually, we’re looking for someone.”
Baht’s eyes dropped to the screen, but only for a second. When he looked back up, his face had gone flat. “Never see him.”
Harvath could tell the man was lying. “Take another look.”
Baht didn’t. Instead, he reached back and adjusted one of the incense sticks in the spirit shrine, brushing a little ash from the base, before settling again in his chair.
“Never see him,” he repeated.
“You rent to a lot of foreigners.”
The man shrugged. “I rent to everybody.” Then, after pausing a beat and fingering one of his key rings, Baht asked, “What he do?”
“Private matter.”
Baht watched him for a moment. “He owe you money?”
“Something like that.”
“Farang always owe somebody money.”
Harvath met his eyes. “Let’s not waste time. You recognized him.”
Baht didn’t answer.
“I saw it when you looked at the picture.”
“Maybe,” the older man said. “I see many people.”
Harvath slipped the phone back into his pocket. “The man in that photo is bad for business. He brings problems with him. Bad ones. We can make sure none of them touch you.”
“And we’ll pay you,” Morrell added. “For your trouble.”
Baht looked at him. “How much?”
Morrell reached for his wallet.
The space that Baht had rented to Koebler was above a shuttered storefront near the docks.
Harvath took his time, carefully surveilling the building. He knew that the Glock wasn’t the only dangerous item that Koebler had left behind at Teens.
All of a sudden, he stopped. “Camera,” he said quietly.
Morrell shifted a step to the side, his eyes following where Harvath was pointing, until he saw it too—no bigger than a golf ball, tucked behind a downspout.
Harvath didn’t say anything, he was already scanning the rest of the building. A moment later, he nodded toward a different spot. “And there’s another.”
“Only two cameras?” said Morrell.
“That we can see. He’s probably got more inside.”
“So, what’s our play?”
“Right now? Nothing. I guarantee you that if we so much as breathe on one of those, Koebler’s going to know.”
Morrell studied the cameras. “Maybe not.”
Harvath glanced at him.
“I’ve got an idea,” the CIA man said, taking out his phone.
Thirty minutes later, a battered white panel van rolled down the block and pulled in along the curb.
Harvath and Morrell crossed the street, slipped around to the rear doors, and Morrell knocked twice. When the left door popped open, they climbed inside.
The cramped cargo area had been converted into a mobile workspace. Two laptops glowed on a makeshift table surrounded by cables, signal scanners, and battery packs.
KitKat barely looked up. “Please tell me you didn’t start poking those cameras.”
“We didn’t touch anything,” Morrell replied.
Mo turned one of the screens toward them. A live view of the building appeared with each camera angle boxed in digital overlays.
“Five cameras total,” he said. “Three outside, two inside.”
“And if we get near any of them?” Harvath asked, looking at the screen.
“The person who placed them gets an alert,” KitKat replied.
Morrell nodded at the gear spread out across the table. “So what’s our workaround?”
The young operative reached into his backpack and pulled out a small, matte-black device with a rubberized antenna that folded out from the side. “Gentlemen, meet the Gremlin.”
Even tech people weren’t immune to trends, Harvath noticed. At least not when it came to naming their devices. Over the summer, Nicholas had helped him take down a security network with a small electromagnetic pulse device called a Goblin.
“What’s it do?” he asked.
“It allows us to hijack the Wi-Fi system the cameras are using,” said Mo. “The feeds will remain live, but the Gremlin’s AI software erases you in real time from the footage.”
“What about the motion alerts?”
“The Gremlin overrides those as well. Once we set it loose on the network, every scrap of data belongs to us.”
Harvath looked at him. “How long to get it up and running?”
KitKat extended the Gremlin’s antenna. “Thirty seconds from the moment you tell us to go live.”
After inserting earpieces, testing their radios, and double-checking their pistols, Morrell looked at Mo and said, “Do it.”
Once they had confirmed that the Gremlin was up, running, and had control over Koebler’s Wi-Fi, KitKat and Mo flashed the thumbs-up and Harvath and Morrell exited out the back of the van.
At the front of the building, they stepped into view of the camera behind the downspout and paused.
“You’re ghosts,” Mo radioed, confirming the device was doing its job. “Good luck in there.”
Harvath stood guard, his hand wrapped around the butt of his weapon beneath his shirt, as Morrell took out the key from Baht and slipped it into the lock. But when he went to turn it, nothing happened.
“Koebler changed the locks.”
“Smart,” Harvath replied, scanning the street as Morrell removed a set of lockpicks KitKat had provided and went back to work on the door.
Seconds later, the CIA man had it open, but he waited for Harvath to help him scan for booby traps, before they both agreed it was safe and slipped inside.
Halfway up the stairs, weapons drawn, they noticed the first interior camera.
Harvath had no idea how much the CIA had paid for the Gremlin, but as far as he was concerned, it was worth its weight in gold.
Without it, there was no way that they’d have been able to get this close.
The only thing it couldn’t do was tell them if Koebler was actually inside the building.
KitKat and Mo had run a passive scan, and as far as they could tell, there were no devices, other than the cameras, actively on the Wi-Fi network. That didn’t mean Koebler wasn’t using a cellular or satellite network for things like his phone or laptop.
Hitting the second-story landing, they discovered the final camera.
It was positioned to provide a perfect view of anyone standing outside the door.
If Koebler was on the other side with a shotgun, he’d have known exactly where to aim.
For all intents and purposes, however, Harvath and Morrell were invisible.
They stood and listened for any sign of life—a TV playing, a floorboard creaking, a drawer opening, or a toilet flushing. There was nothing.
Morrell produced the key Baht had given him and tried it one more time, just in case. He quietly slipped it into the lock and attempted to turn it, but it wouldn’t budge. Returning the key to his pocket, he pulled his picks back out.
When he had the door unlocked, he signaled to Harvath, who once again helped him scan for booby traps. They wouldn’t have put it past Koebler to have rigged some sort of improvised explosive device meant to take out anyone unfortunate enough to stumble upon his lair.
Morrell was just about to give the all clear, when Harvath whispered, “Stop! Don’t move.”
The CIA man froze. “What is it?” he whispered back, afraid to even breathe. “What do you see?”
Through the crack where the door was hinged to the frame, Harvath could see inside. Just below waist-height, attached to the wall, was a Coke can with its top sawed off. Inside the empty can was a very nasty surprise.
“Hand grenade,” Harvath replied, pulling out his flashlight. “I think it’s attached to the door. Give me a second to figure it out.”
It was a simple, yet deadly booby trap Harvath himself had used. Playing the light along the frame, he looked for the wire.
With the pin removed, the grenade had been set inside the Coke can, the spoon held in place by the rim. A piece of wire had been wrapped around the neck and attached to the door. When the door opened, the grenade would lift free, releasing the spoon and igniting the fuse.
Within seconds, the grenade would detonate. Though not as inspired as hiding two grenades on a Chinese corpse and sending it down in an elevator, it was still a highly effective means of taking an opponent completely by surprise.
What Harvath was looking for now was its “off” switch.
It was a set-it-and-forget-it trap—one that Koebler could make hot when he left the building and then render safe when he returned home. That meant it had to all be controlled manually at the threshold.
Running his fingers along the inside of the jamb, he finally found what he was looking for. Unspooling the wire, he carefully put slack in the line, allowing the grenade, which had already begun to rise from the can, to come back to rest.
“Okay,” he told Morrell. “Very slowly, you can begin to open the door.”
Once it was open wide enough, Harvath slid in sideways, found the pin atop the doorframe, and put it back in the grenade.
“One hell of a doorbell,” said Morrell, as he entered and took a look at the trap. “I’m glad you knew what you were looking for.”
“We got lucky,” said Harvath, sweeping his flashlight around the space. The windows had all been reinforced and papered over.
Morrell reached for the light switch, and as he did Harvath snapped the bright white beam of his light directly into his colleague’s eyes. “Don’t!”
“What the fuck, Harvath?” he demanded, dropping his hand, temporarily blinded.
When his vision returned, Harvath gestured to the overhead light fixture.
“And?” Morrell asked, still seeing spots.
Illuminating the bulb with his flashlight, it looked like it had been filled with sand and short screws. “Booby trap number two.”
“Jesus,” the CIA man exclaimed. “You think that’s gunpowder?”
Harvath nodded. “Plus shrapnel.”
“Death from above. This guy is one sick bastard.”
Harvath didn’t disagree. “I’m going to look around. You coming?”
“No thanks. I’m going to watch the door. I’ve seen enough.”
“Don’t move and don’t touch anything.”
“Don’t worry,” Morrell responded. “I don’t plan to.”
Harvath left him where he was and walked farther into the space. It appeared to have been offices at some point, and unlike the Muay Thai gym, this wasn’t a prop. This was definitely where Kevin Koebler had been laying his head.
The sink, toilet, and shower had all been used. The bed, though covered in wrinkled linens, had been made perfectly, just like they had been taught in the Navy. You started the day by making your bunk—one successfully completed task built upon the next.
A cell phone charger was plugged into the wall outlet. There were stacks of recent newspapers, all with big, front-page stories about the bombings. One of the closets was full of neatly hung clothes and had two pieces of luggage.
The biggest discovery, however, came when Harvath entered the kitchen area.
It had been stocked with cases of water and weeks’ worth of food.
Canned fruits, canned vegetables, eggs, cookies, crackers, and all sorts of soups, stews, and broths.
There were medical supplies, soaps, shampoo, razors, and even hair-coloring kits.
Either Kevin Koebler was expecting the Zombie Apocalypse to kick off within days, or he was planning to go to ground and stay hidden for weeks.
As far as Harvath knew, there’d been no reports of the dead walking the earth, which could mean only one thing. Koebler was out, moving around, and taking meetings because he wasn’t done yet. He had another attack planned.