Chapter 51
From his hiding place, Koebler’s shot cracked across the boatyard, punching through the triangular opening and jerking the hidden shooter backward.
At the back of the bay, the second gunman opened fire on the Chinese, hitting the operative at the front of the SUV. He spun violently as bullets tore through his chest and shoulder, slamming him into the fender.
Under the tarp, the wounded shooter thrashed and tried to roll clear. He never made it. Koebler’s next volley finished him.
Then the entire boatyard erupted in gunfire.
Snapping their weapons up and returning fire, the Chinese raced for cover. Glass burst from one of the shed windows, as the side mirror on their SUV exploded and round after round tore through their vehicle.
“Contact left!” Haney yelled.
Harvath was already moving. “We’ve got Chinese plus a second team, probably the Cambodians,” he shouted into his radio. “Stay clear of that fight. Don’t let Koebler escape.”
Morrell moved with him. Across the property, Ashby and Palmer shifted their fire, not trying to win the fight, but to keep the Chinese and the second team locked onto each other.
Staelin leaned into his rifle, picking his shots carefully and making sure neither side could cleanly break contact.
Haney pushed left, working for a better look at where Koebler had last appeared.
Harvath had already disengaged from the firefight.
There was no question in his mind that Koebler would use the chaos as a distraction and was already on the run.
He was also certain that the bomber had already chosen his escape route out of the boatyard and had identified the gaps, blind corners, and pieces of cover he intended to use.
To his left, Harvath caught movement. Carrying a carbine, Koebler was staying low and using the canted hull of a half-disassembled ferry to mask his escape and cut deeper across the yard. At some point, he had shaved his beard and dyed his hair, but Harvath still recognized him.
“There!” he exclaimed. “Nine o’clock. Moving.”
Rounds cracked overhead and punched into fiberglass somewhere off to his right.
Together, he and Morrell sprinted toward the rusting ferryboat Koebler had just used for cover, and dropped behind a crate of engine parts.
Behind them, they could hear the gunfight intensifying—short, hard bursts, the splintering of wood, and ricochets screaming off metal.
Harvath risked a look around the side of the crate and caught sight of Koebler again. He was less than twenty feet ahead, rounding the far side of the ferry. He was staying low and moving fast, using every piece of cover available. It made it impossible to get a clean shot at him.
He had just pivoted toward the service road, when Harvath saw him pull something out of the left pocket of his cargo pants.
“Grenade!” he yelled.
Morrell saw it at the same instant. “Move!”
Koebler pulled the pin and blindly threw it in a high, tumbling arc over his shoulder.
Harvath grabbed Morrell and drove both of them down as the blast tore through the yard with a concussive crack, showering them with debris.
By the time Harvath got his head back up, Koebler had bought himself even more distance. Leaping to his feet, Harvath chased after him, with Morrell close behind.
Harvath ran with his rifle up, searching for the one clean shot Koebler refused to give him. For a split second, he caught him crossing open ground and started to press his trigger, only to have him disappear behind another hull, forcing Harvath to abandon the shot.
“Damn it,” he cursed, pushing himself harder.
Ahead, Koebler continued to use the obstacles and stacks of junk, exactly the way Harvath had feared he would. The man moved rapidly from cover to cover, never staying exposed long enough to engage. All Harvath saw was flashes of shoulder, elbow, or the dark blur of his rifle.
Over the radio, he gave instructions to the team, “Ashby and Palmer—collapse on the service road. Haney, cut left and get ahead of him. Staelin, move your location and watch for a breakout toward the street.”
Near a pile of timber cribbing, Harvath caught sight of him again and prepared to shoot. Koebler, however, charged into a corrugated shed behind the pile and disappeared from view.
Harvath reached the opening seconds later and buttonhooked inside, ready to fire, but it was empty. Koebler had slipped through a gap in the side.
Back at the service bay, the rhythm of gunfire had changed. The Cambodians were still hammering the Chinese, but the fire was no longer fixed in place. It was spreading, pushing up the service road, as if the Chinese were trying to break contact and get out.
Harvath lunged out the side opening of the shed and kept going.
Forty yards ahead, the SUV sat in the middle of the service road, its nose pointed toward the boatyard’s entrance and the street beyond.
The windshield was starred in multiple places, and its passenger-side windows were crazed white, but still holding.
Armored, Harvath realized.
One Chinese operative was crouched behind the SUV’s engine block, firing in short, disciplined bursts into the bay. Another stood half-exposed behind the open rear door, shouting for Koebler.
Seconds later, the bombmaker answered, tossing out two smoke grenades. The canisters skittered across the service road and began vomiting thick, white smoke.
Harvath and Morrell brought their weapons to bear, but the Chinese operative behind the engine block opened up on them first, driving both men back behind cover.
By the time Harvath risked another look, Koebler, who had his head down and was running hard, had hit the edge of the fast-thickening sheet of smoke.
The Cambodians doubled down on their blistering attack.
Rounds hammered the SUV. Sparks jumped from the hood and the front door panel. A spiderweb of fresh white bloomed across the windshield, but it still didn’t collapse.
Knowing that he was running out of time, Harvath leaned out, ready to take the shot, but all he got was a final glimpse of Koebler’s silhouette as he was shoved inside. Then the other operatives jumped in, the doors slammed shut, and the driver hammered the accelerator.
As the SUV went speeding up the service road, Harvath and Morrell sprinted after it, firing as many rounds as they could. They stitched the rear hatch and succeeded in blowing what was left of the back window into the cargo area.
The gunfight, however, was over. The Chinese were breaking contact.
Harvath still had one ace up his sleeve.
He slowed only long enough to radio and quickly fill Davi in.
“Koebler’s with the Chinese. Five men in total.
All heavily armed. They’re in a dark Nissan Patrol SUV.
It’s armor-plated with ballistic glass. Lots of damage.
They’ll ditch the vehicle fast. I can’t see the street, so we don’t know which way they’re headed. ”
She confirmed his transmission and immediately switched to an ISOC channel. Then off to his right, movement caught Harvath’s eye.
Under cover of the smoke, one of the shooters from the second team had advanced farther up the service road than Harvath had realized.
The Cambodian-looking man was trying to close the distance with the fleeing SUV, when his legs gave out.
The man dropped to one knee and then collapsed hard near the fence line.
Harvath got to him first and kicked the man’s rifle away. Morrell stopped a few feet away and covered the yard behind them.
The man had been shot, maybe more than once, and a dark, widening pool of blood was spreading beneath him.
His weapon—a compact carbine—lay where Harvath had kicked it. He had spare magazines, good boots, an earpiece, and a comms wire that disappeared beneath his shirt. Civilian clothes, professional gear.
Harvath’s eyes flicked once in the direction of where the SUV had disappeared and then back to the wounded man. The man and his team hadn’t fired a single round toward Harvath and his people. That mattered.
“Radio Davi,” Harvath told Morrell as he set his rifle aside. “Tell her we need medics on the service road. One patient. Assume multiple gunshot wounds.”
Morrell nodded as Harvath removed his blowout kit and kneeled down next to the man. “You’re going to be okay,” he said. “Stay with me.”
Pulling on a pair of nitrile gloves, he grabbed his trauma shears.
“Medics are on the way,” Morrell reported.
Harvath cut away the man’s shirt to access the worst of the bleeding. As he did, a braided prayer cord slipped free.
Morrell saw it too. “Cambodian?”
“It looks like it.”
The wound was ugly. Side shot. Maybe more than one.
It was hard to tell with all the blood. Harvath packed the hole he could find with gauze, driving it in with two fingers until the man’s body tightened and his jaw flexed against the pain.
Then he stacked more on top and pressed down hard with the heel of his hand, putting his weight into it.
With his other hand, he did a quick frisk. No wallet. No phone. Just a folding knife and, attached to his belt beneath his shirt, an old, beaten-up multiband inter/intra team radio, or MBITR for short. Removing it, Harvath slipped it into one of his own pouches.
The wounded man’s breathing was shallow and wet. He shifted as though trying to speak. Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth. But whatever he was trying to say never came. His eyelids fluttered.
Harvath pushed down harder on the dressing. Sirens could be heard entering the boatyard.
Soon thereafter, the first ISOC agents appeared, weapons up, followed by a tactical medical team carrying trauma bags and a folding stretcher.
One of the medics dropped to a knee opposite Harvath and took over. Harvath gathered his gear and stood back next to Morrell.
Since Friday’s bombings, Thai personnel had grown used to foreign law enforcement and support teams showing up all over Bangkok.
But a shattered boatyard, a man on the ground with gunshot wounds, and a team of armed Americans already on scene were something else entirely.
Still, this was Davika Rattanprasert’s operation, and the orders coming over the radio had been clear—comply and cooperate.
Behind them, more ISOC men and Thai police were flooding into the yard, fanning out between the hulls and stacks of marine equipment.
At the water, a figure flickered briefly between the sheds as if weighing coming back for the fallen man. Then, with the property filling with armed Thai security forces, he disappeared.
Harvath and Morrell had both seen him.
“Those guys are gone,” said Morrell.
Harvath nodded. Whoever was left of the second team had made the only call they could.
The Chinese had won. They had lost. And Koebler was gone.