Chapter 71
They had come up the last flight, slow and silent, hugging the unfinished wall until the stairwell opened onto the top floor. Then, Harvath had come out firing.
Koebler launched himself right through the green mesh at the edge of the unfinished floor and the bamboo outside cracked as his weight hit the scaffolding.
The binoculars lay where he had abandoned them, along with a phone. But as Koebler hit the construction netting, Harvath caught a glimpse of a second phone in his hand and fired again.
The round hit a crosspiece near Koebler’s face and the phone slipped from his grasp, vanishing over the side.
As it did, he snatched at the empty air and almost went with it. Whatever had just fallen mattered. A lot.
Gunfire suddenly erupted from the other end of the unfinished floor, showering him with concrete chips. Harvath spun to engage the threat and instantly recognized one of the Chinese operatives from the boatyard. Pressing his trigger, he sent multiple rounds flying in the man’s direction.
Then all of a sudden there was another muzzle flash near a stack of cinder blocks halfway across the floor. An additional Chinese gunman was in the fight and trying to help cover Koebler’s escape.
Without breaking stride, Morrell scooped up the abandoned phone and fired back.
“Take the stairs!” Harvath shouted. “Cut him off below.”
Without waiting for a response, he blasted through the torn mesh and hit the bamboo at full speed as he chased after Koebler.
The scaffolding shuddered beneath him, but Harvath ignored it and kept going. Koebler was already thirty feet ahead and moving fast through a maze of poles, hanging mesh, and uneven planks.
Harvath pushed after him, searching for any chance to get off a clean shot. Then, as he was about to make a ninety-degree turn around the edge of the building, Koebler glanced back. That gave Harvath the window he needed and he didn’t hesitate.
Pressing his trigger, he fired.
Koebler grunted and slammed sideways into the mesh, twisting as the scaffolding lurched under both of them. But before Harvath could follow up with a second shot, the man disappeared over the side.
Harvath raced to the spot and looked out through the mesh, trying to figure out what happened. From inside the building, he could hear Morrell exchanging gunfire with the Chinese.
There was blood on the netting, but no body on the sidewalk.
Then, leaning farther over, he figured it out. Koebler had flipped over the edge and dropped down to the next level of scaffolding. The trail of blood was the only evidence Harvath needed. Swinging one leg over the side, he found purchase on a lower crosspiece and dropped down after him.
From up above, Morrell yelled an update, “One dead. One down. Go!”
At the first window opening, Koebler had ducked back inside the building. Following the blood, Harvath went right after him.
The space was littered with buckets, tile, wire, and stacks of cement board panels. Catching sight of Koebler, Harvath brought his pistol up and fired, just as the man ducked into the far stairwell and vanished again.
Dodging the debris, Harvath charged down the stairs after him.
By the time he hit the ground floor, the hospital perimeter was a cacophony of sirens, horns, and people screaming for doctors.
Koebler burst through a wide opening where glass storefront windows would eventually go and spilled out into the chaos beyond.
The gunfire from the unfinished building had already rippled through the crowd.
People were ducking behind vehicles, pointing, and shouting.
A Thai soldier had turned toward the structure with his rifle up, trying to see where the shots had come from, while two policemen started pushing that way through the crush outside the ER.
Shoving through a knot of people near a double-parked pickup, Koebler headed for the hospital.
Harvath checked himself before bursting out after him. He couldn’t go charging into the open waving a pistol around—not with half the Thai security presence outside the ER trying to figure out where the shots had come from.
Returning his pistol to the holster inside his waistband, he covered it with his shirt and ran after Koebler before the crowd could swallow him up.
Harvath had hit him somewhere near where his left shoulder met the base of his neck. Not good enough to drop him, but good enough that Koebler was losing a lot of blood. What it hadn’t done, however, was slow him down.
Up ahead, a woman screamed as Koebler slammed into her and kept going. Suddenly, Harvath felt his blood go cold. Koebler wasn’t headed away from the hospital, he was headed right for it.
Now everything clicked. The phone Koebler had lost over the side of the scaffolding had likely been his remote detonator.
But if there was a manual trigger, or some sort of timer on the bomb he could activate, the phone didn’t matter anymore.
He just needed to get back to the ambulance.
And if he did, scores of people were going to die.
Harvath pushed harder through the crowd, shoving terrified civilians out of the way as best he could without knocking them down or injuring them.
It made the crowd angry. People started shouting at him and some even began pushing back.
As they did, it clogged his path even more and Koebler got farther ahead.
Then, to his right, Harvath saw Morrell. The CIA man came out from between a military truck and a police cruiser, moving in fast at an angle to help cut Koebler off.
Koebler saw him too. And for the first time since the scaffolding, he hesitated. But only for an instant.
Two feet away, a woman was trying to help an elderly victim out of her car. Koebler grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her backward against him.
From underneath his blood-soaked shirt, he produced some sort of all-black knife and held it to the woman’s throat.
She screamed and the sound cut through everything. Harvath stopped short and so did half the people around them.
Koebler’s face had gone chalky from blood loss. He dragged the woman with him as he backed into the ER lot, the blade pressed so hard against her skin that a bright red line appeared beneath it.
“Don’t,” he warned.
Harvath kept coming anyway. Not fast. Not slow. Just one step at a time. “Let her go, Kevin.”
Koebler gave a grim smile. “Not yet.”
Closer, Harvath could now see the ambulance.
Koebler kept backing up. “Another step,” he rasped, “and she dies.”
Harvath stopped. Even if he could draw his pistol quick enough to fire, he didn’t have the shot.
The woman was sobbing, her eyes pleading for someone to help her. Harvath looked for Morrell, but all of a sudden, he was gone.
The crowd was peeling away in every direction. People were dragging each other backward, ducking behind cars, getting as far away from this fresh horror as they could.
Harvath returned his eyes to Koebler, who still had his knife pressed against the woman’s throat.
Raising his gaze to the ambulance, Harvath edged a step to his left.
“Stop,” Koebler warned, pivoting with the hostage to keep her between them.
Harvath did as the man commanded. He stopped and held completely still, meeting Koebler’s gaze.
That was the moment Morrell came back into view, just off Koebler’s flank.
With his pistol already drawn, he took aim and pressed his trigger once. The round tore through the side of the bomber’s head, dropping him straight to the pavement. His knife skipped across the asphalt as the woman ripped free, screaming.
Looking down at Kevin Koebler’s dead body, Morrell said, “That was for KitKat and Mo, asshole.”
For half a second, the lot seemed to seize. Then it exploded in panic. Civilians scattered.
Morrell dropped to his knees and tossed his weapon on the ground in front of him. Raising his hands in the air as Thai police and soldiers rushed in, he looked straight ahead at Koebler’s delivery vehicle and yelled, “Bomb! There’s a bomb in the ambulance!”
And in the chaos Morrell had just unleashed, Harvath found his opening to escape.