Chapter 49
By the time the trio left Lumphini Park, the day—with its overwhelming humidity and intense sunlight—had turned even more oppressive.
Davi went back to her office with the SIM card blister packs, Morrell returned to his condo, and Harvath walked south, alone, toward the safe house in Suan Phlu.
The city traffic, with its tuk-tuks coughing blue smoke into the air, rolled past without him taking much notice. His mind was focused on Koebler.
Every minute the man remained on the loose, it increased the odds that he was putting distance between himself and Bangkok.
Maybe he was holed up somewhere, waiting for night to fall so he could use the darkness to slip away.
Or maybe he was already in the back of a refrigeration truck headed east. He could have been on his way to the coast. Maybe he’d already found a riverboat to aid in his escape.
There were too many ways to disappear in a city like this and too many people willing to mind their own business for the right amount of cash.
And they would take that cash not knowing that it meant more people somewhere in the world would die.
He crossed a small lane jammed with scooters, thinking of all the people Koebler had killed and the countless others who had been injured. Then he thought about KitKat and Mo. That one landed harder than he expected.
They hadn’t been shooters or hardened men looking for a gunfight.
They were the kind of CIA officers who fought with laptops, cameras, and whatever miracle gadget the nerds at Langley had recently dreamed up.
They had been support personnel—smart, useful.
The kind of people who made successful missions possible and rarely got their names included in the stories that were told afterward. Koebler had killed them anyway.
It hadn’t mattered who they were. Only that KitKat and Mo were in the way.
That told Harvath something important. Koebler wasn’t just skilled.
And he wasn’t just disciplined. He was the kind of person who erased whoever stood between him and the next step in his operation.
He made no distinctions. He did not hesitate.
Which meant there would be more dead bodies if they didn’t stop him soon.
Refocusing his attention, Harvath took a lengthy SDR (surveillance detection route) to make sure he wasn’t being followed, before finally turning down the quiet street where the safe house sat.
Its worn exterior and banged-up gate were doing exactly what made the home so attractive to the CIA—not standing out and definitely not being memorable.
He knocked the rhythmic knock only his teammates knew, unlocked the door, and then stepped into the relative cool of the interior.
Haney looked up first. Staelin was at the kitchen counter stripping down his M250, making sure it was clean and properly oiled.
“How’d the handoff go with Davi?” Haney asked.
“Good,” Harvath replied. “Ashby and Palmer make it back?”
“They’re on a lunch run,” said Staelin. “I hope you like Thai food.”
Harvath nodded.
“So now that Davi’s got the blister packs,” Haney continued, “what’s our next move?”
“For right now, there is no next move,” said Harvath. “We sit tight and wait.”
Neither of his teammates looked happy about it, but they knew waiting was a part of the job.
Stripping off his sweat-soaked shirt, he headed for the shower. The water pressure was lousy and the temperature left a lot to be desired, but it was enough to wash the dirt and grime off of him.
When he stepped out, he shaved and then pulled on clean clothes, which resulted in him feeling marginally more human. While he wasn’t rested, he was at least cleaner.
By the time he walked into the kitchen, Ashby and Palmer were back and they’d laid a feast on the counter.
There were take-out containers of Tom Yum Goong, Moogata, Gai Yang, Khao Moo Daeng, and tons of fried rice.
He grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, loaded up a plate, and sat down at the dining table.
Ashby saw him reaching for the spicy Thai chili sauce called Nam phrik and gave him a friendly warning. “Careful with that. It’ll burn the hair off your chest.”
“Less to snag on my wet suit.”
The team smiled and everyone tucked into their food.
For several moments, all that could be heard was the sound of lunch and the muted hum of the air conditioner laboring against the heat outside.
Finally, Haney said, “How long do you think Davi’s going to need?”
Harvath swallowed a bite of food and, put off by how legitimately hot the Nam phrik was, chased it with two long slugs of water.
When the fire in his mouth had cooled, he replied, “Her people want Koebler just as bad as we do. It’s going to take what it’s going to take. When she has something, we’ll hear from her.”
Palmer looked up from his phone. “Why would she tip us off? If her people get a lead, wouldn’t they jump on it themselves?”
“Because that was our deal,” Harvath replied, getting up to get some yogurt sauce to de-escalate the Scoville scale of his lunch.
“Morrell and I made the case that as former SEALs, we understand Koebler’s training and how he thinks.
Also, our smaller team has a better chance than a big Thai unit of getting close without him seeing us. ”
“And she bought that?”
“She bought that if we screw it up, it won’t blow back on her. And if we get him, she takes the credit.”
Palmer glanced back down at his phone. “Thai media’s all over the place. Islamists. Organized crime. Domestic radicals. Everybody’s got a theory.”
“Any mention of Cambodia?” Harvath asked.
“Not yet. But it feels like they’re circling it.”
Harvath nodded, added some yogurt sauce, and went back to eating. Davi had been right. He could feel where this was headed. Chinese safe house. Cambodian SIM card packaging. Cambodian signatures at RBSC. None of it was accidental. Someone wanted Thailand blaming Cambodia, not China.
When he was done eating, he carried his plate to the sink and rinsed it off. Behind him, Haney said, “You want us rotating an exterior watch?”
Harvath turned around. “No. Stay inside and keep an eye on the cameras. Let’s stage our gear. If Davi comes back with something, we move fast.”
Carrying his water bottle, he returned to the room he had been using, pulled the blackout curtains a little tighter, and lay down on the bed.
If Koebler got out of Thailand, everything got exponentially harder.
Catching him had always mattered, but now it mattered even more.
Davi had been right—if they caught him, they might get the people behind him.
But if they lost him, they didn’t just lose the bomber.
They lost the clearest path to who had hired him and what the ultimate endgame was.
Closing his eyes, he tried to quiet his mind, but it kept returning to all the ways Koebler could, at this moment, be executing his getaway.
Eventually, despite himself, his mind let go of all those thoughts and he was able to drift off. It wasn’t deep and it wasn’t near long enough, but it was sleep.
When his phone vibrated against the wooden nightstand, Harvath came awake rough, dragging himself up through the last heavy layers of sleep.
It took him a second to remember where he was.
Then the room snapped back into focus—the blackout curtains, the ceiling fan, the air conditioner rattling on the wall.
He reached for his phone before it buzzed again. It was Morrell.
Harvath sat up and answered immediately. “What’s up?”
“Davi’s got something,” Morrell replied. “Not enough to nail him down, but enough to move.”
The last of the sleep vanished. “How solid?”
“Solid enough that I’m on my way to you.”
Harvath swung his legs off the bed. “Where’s Davi?”
“We’re meeting her there.”
“What are we headed into?”
“She didn’t want to discuss it over the phone,” said Morrell. “All I know is that her tech people got a match from cameras around the Royal Bangkok Sports Club and Khlong Toei. Get your team ready. I’ll be there in five.”
The line went dead.
“Morrell’s inbound,” said Harvath as he stepped into the kitchen. “Davi’s got something.”
Chairs scraped back. Staelin killed the camera feeds he’d been watching and reached for his rifle. Haney was already moving the gear they had staged. Palmer and Ashby, who had been monitoring news feeds and social media, stood up.
“Something good?” Ashby asked.
“Good enough. We’re wheels-up in five.”
The team loaded their vehicle in record time. By the time Morrell rolled up to their front gate, they were ready to go.
Harvath hopped in the passenger seat and the rest of the team followed behind in the second Land Cruiser.
As they pulled away from the drive, Harvath asked, “What’d she tell you?”
“Not much,” Morrell replied. “Based on the description you gave her from the shooting in Khlong Toei, her people were able to pick Koebler up exiting a hospital campus bordering RBSC moments after the bombing. From there, they tracked him back to his bolt-hole in Khlong Toei, then on to a clothes change and a bag swap before heading to a luggage storage place near Kasem Rat Road. Apparently he retrieved another bag, and after that, dropped into a dead zone.”
“That’s it?”
“They’ve only been working the cameras they control—traffic cams, public security feeds, city-owned systems. Davi didn’t want uniforms out knocking on doors for private footage and spooking him if he’s still in the area. Besides, it would take too long anyway.”
Harvath nodded. “Smart. So what do they actually have?”
“A last known location and a figurative box around it.”
“How good is the box?”
Morrell shook his head. “Not good enough to say X marks the spot. He dropped off a camera a couple of hours ago in a stretch near Kasem Rat where the coverage gets thin.”
“Also smart. What’s around there?”