Chapter 7
Seated at a nicked-up wooden table, with a glass of brown liquor and a lit cigarette, was the person who appeared to be their boss. He was also Asian, dressed in a cream jacket, a dark linen shirt, blue jeans, and brown loafers with no socks.
Not saying a word, the man took a drag on his cigarette and watched as one of his security detail approached Koebler and motioned for him to raise his arms. The American did as he was instructed.
Patting him down, the security man found the Glock, withdrew it from Koebler’s waistband, and handed it off to one of his colleagues. He then produced a handheld metal detector and wanded Koebler from top to bottom. Finding nothing, he turned to his boss and nodded.
The man at the table motioned for Koebler to join him. “Bourbon?” he asked as the American sat down.
“Sure,” Koebler replied, as he tried to place the man’s country of origin. Maybe Singapore? Maybe China? Perhaps even Macanese? It was hard to tell, as he was so nondescript. What’s more, the size of the security men also cut against the typical Chinese stereotype.
In the end, none of it mattered to Koebler. They’d paid him a fortune for the Bangkok bombing and an additional fortune for this meeting. As long as their crypto kept flowing in his direction, they could be from Mars for all he cared.
“Ice?” the man seated across from him asked as he produced a bottle of Blanton’s. “Water?”
“Neat. Thank you.”
The man poured two fingers of liquor and handed the glass to his guest. “To a job well done,” he said in perfect English, as he raised his own glass in salute.
Koebler raised his in response, and without clinking, they both drank.
Eyes half-closed, the man savored his bourbon as the security team scanned the room.
Several moments passed. The murky room, which was predominantly lit by two dirty skylights overhead, smelled like old beer and damp cardboard.
Koebler said nothing. It was his host’s dime. The man would get to the point eventually. Or he wouldn’t. Koebler didn’t care. He had already been paid.
Finally, the man opened his eyes fully and said, “We’d like to hire you for another job.”
Koebler noted that the man had said “we” and not “I.” Evidently there was someone further up the food chain who he reported to. “What kind of job?”
“Something similar to what you just did for us, but on a smaller scale. We’ll double your fee.”
“Smaller job, double the fee,” Koebler remarked. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” the man replied.
Koebler took another sip of his bourbon and smiled. “You just said you would double my fee. No one offers something like that unless the job is considerably more difficult.”
The man in the linen jacket smiled back. “I said the job was smaller. I didn’t say it was easier. We’d need you to do it in the next twenty-four hours.”
Koebler was taken aback. “You want another attack? By tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not possible.”
The man looked at him. “It’s not possible? Or you can’t do it?”
“I absolutely can,” Koebler said. “But not the way you want it done.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning clean. No signature. Without anything the authorities can trace.”
“On the contrary,” the man replied, a smile forming. “We very much want the authorities to trace it. Just not back to us. Nor to you.”
So they want to frame someone, Koebler thought to himself. In theory, that wasn’t difficult. In practice, however, it took time and a lot of precise planning. At least if you wanted to make it believable.
“That’s still a complicated assignment,” the American stated.
“For starters, I’d need to know who you wanted it to trace back to.
Then I would have to study up on them and select what our ‘giveaway’ would be.
It couldn’t be anything too obvious. The harder it is for the authorities to discover, the more likely they’ll believe it.
Then there’s the matter of choosing the target.
And we haven’t even begun to discuss securing the materials, much less pre-attack surveillance on the site, which—”
The man held up his hand, cutting Koebler off. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew an envelope and pushed it across the table. “Everything you need is in here.”
Koebler doubted that, but he took the envelope anyway, folded it in half, and slipped it into the front pocket of his jeans. But as he did, a change in the room’s lighting caught his attention.
No sooner had he noticed it, than he realized it had come from movement at the skylights above. Immediately, his instincts kicked in.
He dove to his left and scrambled for cover as broken glass showered down from the ceiling and the storeroom door burst open.
Four armed men charged in, guns blazing, as two more rappelled down through the shattered skylights.
The man in the linen jacket pulled his own PDW as he and his team returned fire. Lead, along with hot shell casings, flew in every direction as eleven different weapons were being fired—some in three-round bursts, others on full auto.
The bullets tore through flesh and bone, as well as everything else in the storeroom—beer bottles, liquor bottles, kegs, and jugs of cleaning solution.
Three of the attackers were already down, as was one of the security detail for the man in the linen jacket. Despite being taken by surprise, the men Koebler had been meeting with seemed to be the superior fighters. They were much more disciplined and accurate.
Nevertheless, Koebler watched another member of the security detail go down, and a fraction of a second later the man in the linen jacket was struck. It appeared the tide might be turning against them.
Either way, Koebler had no desire to stick around. If he didn’t catch a fatal bullet himself, the cacophony of gunfire was sure to draw a rapid police presence. It was time to move.
From his earlier surveillance, he knew that there was a back door that led into the maze of pedestrian alleyways behind Teens.
And while he couldn’t see it from where he was crouched, he figured the door was somewhere at the rear of the storeroom.
He just had to get there. But, like framing someone for a bombing, it was a lot easier said than done.
He needed a path that provided cover, but with all the crates and boxes stacked against the walls, there was only a zigzag around the storeroom’s tall shelving units. If he tried to make a mad dash of it, he’d be a goner for sure. The only answer was to create his own cover.
There was just enough room for him to edge toward the front right-hand corner of the storeroom. It wasn’t much of an advantage, but it was the only advantage he was going to get, and he’d have to make the most of it.
As the bullets continued to fly, he stayed low and attempted to remain concealed as he moved closer to the nearest attacker.
Pulling the polymer knife that the security team had missed, he waited until he was less than a meter away and sprang, driving the blade through the man’s left eye and twisting it upward into his brain.
At the same time, he spun the man toward the next attacker, using him as a shield.
Pulling the attacker’s sidearm, he fired at the man’s other teammates, forcing them to retreat.
Without missing a beat, he dragged the dying attacker backward, through the storeroom shelves, continuing to use the man as a bullet sponge.
The moment he could see the rear exit, he pulled his knife out of the man’s eye, let him drop to the ground, and charged behind a stack of boxes. From there, it was only a few meters to the door.
Ejecting the magazine from the attacker’s pistol, he confirmed how many rounds remained, reloaded, and then, giving himself a three-count, began firing backward into the storeroom—not caring who or what he hit—and charged for the exit.
The door crashed open, banging into the wall behind it, and Koebler exploded into the passageway behind Teens. He needed to get as far away as fast as possible. But first, he needed to reclaim his backpack from the construction site where he had hidden it.
The attacker’s pistol was red-hot from all the rounds that had been fired through it, which meant tucking it into his waistband, where his Glock would have been, was out of the question.
As he moved quickly, but calmly, down the alleyway, he saw some laundry on a line and snatched a small towel, wrapping the weapon in that.
This way, witnesses wouldn’t be describing to police a man fitting his description, leaving the scene with a gun.
Along the way, he retrieved as many of his tiny surveillance cameras as he could. The rest would have to be abandoned. They weren’t worth risking being apprehended over.
At the construction site, he fished out his backpack, tucked the pistol inside and, making sure that he wasn’t being followed, began a very circuitous route out of the Samphanthawong district.
He had no idea who the attackers had been at Teens, nor did he know who their ultimate target was. The only safe bet was to believe that he had been blown.
It was time to go to his Plan B, which meant plunging even deeper into Bangkok’s deadly underground.