Chapter 32
They hadn’t gone back to the safe house. Instead, Morrell had directed them to a different location—an abandoned, half-finished condominium development on the outskirts of the city.
It was little more than a shell. Raw concrete floors. Rebar bristling from the ceiling like broken bones.
The best part was what it didn’t have: cameras, neighbors, or any reason for anyone to be there.
The embassy security guard sat on a plastic chair several feet in front of one of the team’s vehicles, its high beams drowning him in harsh white light.
His hood had been removed and his hands were zip-tied behind his back.
He was in his early forties, fit but not particularly menacing.
He looked like what he was—someone who followed orders and didn’t ask many questions.
It was his answers, however, that Harvath cared about, and he had made the stakes crystal clear. If the man cooperated, he would be allowed to live.
Thankfully, there wasn’t a language barrier. The man spoke good-enough English and, having seen at least one of his colleagues killed, had made it clear he didn’t want to suffer the same fate.
He had attempted a lame version of name, rank, and serial number at first, but Morrell had put an end to that. A threat to tie an anchor around the man’s neck and drop him in one of the city canals had done the trick.
Standing just outside the wash of the headlights, Harvath took the security officer back earlier in his story. Before being sent to the periodontist’s building, he and his team had been given another unusual task.
“You said there was a medical emergency and you were told to drive the embassy physician somewhere.”
“Yes,” the man replied. “We were told there was a medical emergency. Ban Phan Thom neighborhood. A Chinese businessman had been shot.”
Harvath studied him for any flicker of deception. So far, he hadn’t seen any. “Who told you that?”
“Our chief of security. He didn’t have many details. Just said to be on guard.”
“Why not send the businessman to a hospital?”
The security officer swallowed. “The order came directly from the ambassador. We were to drive the physician to an address, bring him back, and forget everything. Including the address.”
“Did you go inside?”
“No. The doctor told us to wait in the car.”
“How long?”
“About forty minutes.”
“What about once he came out?” Harvath asked. “Did he say anything?”
“He said that the bullet had gone through and through,” the officer answered. “That the man would live.”
“Was there anyone else inside?”
“I saw a couple of men when the door opened. Both armed.”
“Embassy people?”
“No.”
“How were they armed?” Harvath asked.
“Submachine guns,” the security agent responded. “Like the men in the lobby. PP-2000s.”
Harvath glanced at Morrell, who gave him a knowing nod.
Turning back to their captive, Harvath said, “Give me the address.”
Within thirty-five minutes of the man rattling it off, Harvath, Morrell, Haney, and Staelin were in Ban Phan Thom. Ashby and Palmer had remained behind with their captive.
The neighborhood was quiet—the narrow, early-morning streets still awash in sodium-vapor light.
They didn’t risk a drive-by. Whoever was in that safe house would be on high alert. There would be cameras and men would be standing guard in shifts. They would be expecting trouble and fully prepared to respond.
Parking several streets over, Harvath and his team went in slowly on foot, carrying only what they could each fit in a backpack. Staelin had re-glued Harvath’s wound, but he could feel the strap of his pack rubbing uncomfortably against it. Ignoring the irritation, he pushed on.
They moved in staggered formation, keeping to the shadows, checking rooftops and balconies as they advanced. At the corner, Haney paused and studied the building through a handheld thermal device. Nothing. There were no heat signatures in the windows. No movement on the roof.
“Either these guys are very good,” Morrell murmured over the radio, “or they’re not here.”
Harvath didn’t answer. He was too busy scanning the target. It was exactly the kind of structure he had expected—discreet, gated, and surrounded by a high wall. The kind of place that was easily defensible and afforded plenty of privacy.
What he hadn’t expected was for the place to be so quiet. Dangerously so. That bothered him more than anything else.
Backing up around the corner, they launched the smaller of their two drones and sent it up and over the rooftops for a detailed view of the building and the property.
Neither its night vision nor its thermal vision registered anything.
There were no detectable humans outside or inside.
There were also, thankfully, no dogs anywhere near the target building.
Strangely enough, there were no vehicles—no cars, no motorbikes, nothing.
For all intents and purposes, the building appeared to be completely empty.
Harvath had Haney put the drone in “follow” mode, and they proceeded cautiously down the street toward the target. None of this felt right.
At the gate, Haney picked the lock in under twenty seconds and they all crept inside. The hum of air conditioners could be heard. Harvath’s instincts were on edge.
Avoiding the front door, they moved to the back of the two-story house, alert for motion sensors and ducking under each window they passed.
When they reached the rear, they tasked the drone with one more sweep, searching for interior movement, a heat signature, anything that would suggest someone was home, but it didn’t find anything.
Finally, they approached the back door. Morrell reached out and tried the handle. Unlocked.
They all exchanged a look. These were not the kind of people that left their door unlocked.
Every instinct Harvath had was telling him that something was wrong.
He was beginning to think that maybe the shoe was on the other foot and that they were now walking into a cleverly laid trap.
Holding the door open, he had Haney fly the drone into the house.
The device moved from room to room, downstairs and up. It gave them a sizable advantage. About the only thing the drone couldn’t do was open doors. They would have to clear the bathrooms and closets themselves.
Where a trained canine would have been able to go in and hunt people via scent, the drone was able to do something similar with heat.
It could read hotspots that humans had left behind—palm prints, the warm outline of where a person had been lying in bed, even urine that a sleepy or careless person had failed to get into the bowl of a toilet. Its sensors were incredibly accurate.
When it had completed its search, Haney sent the drone to hover over the property, the team lined up in a stack, and with their night vision goggles illuminating their way, they swept into the darkened house and cleared it from top to bottom.
There wasn’t a single soul to be found—not in the closets, not in the bathrooms, nowhere. It was completely empty. But it hadn’t been that way for long. Whoever had been there had made a rather hasty exit.
Dresser drawers stood open, wet towels had been left on floors, and in one of the sinks upstairs, there was ash from papers that had recently been burned.
In a trash can in the master bedroom, beneath a layer of used gauze and torn antiseptic packets, Harvath found a linen jacket.
Dark blood had stiffened the fabric. A clean hole in front marked the likely entry.
A ragged tear in back marked the exit. Dropping it back in the wastebasket, he continued his search before returning downstairs.
At the kitchen table, Morrell was sorting through a bag of trash he had found. “Take a look at this,” he said.
Among take-out containers and crushed water bottles were two empty blister packs.
Harvath pulled out his phone and scanned the writing. The script was Khmer. A reverse image search of the branding brought up a Cambodian telecom provider. Each pack had contained a SIM card.
He turned the screen toward Morrell, who said, “Cambodian.”
Harvath nodded and neither of them spoke for a moment. Upstairs, the air conditioners continued to hum. The house felt recently vacated—cool, but abruptly abandoned.
Morrell spoke again, breaking the silence. “They moved fast.”
Harvath didn’t answer. He was tumbling all of the pieces in his head, trying to figure out how they fit together—the embassy physician, the ambassador’s direct order, the armed men with PP-2000s, papers sensitive enough that they needed to be burned, the bloodstained jacket, and now Cambodian SIM cards in a Chinese safe house.
What the hell were the Chinese up to? he wondered.
And what did it have to do with Cambodia? He didn’t like it.
He joined the team, and they swept the house one final time before stepping back into the humid, predawn air.
Outside, they were in the middle of stashing their gear in their backpacks and about to exit through the gate, when Morrell’s phone vibrated. Sliding it from his pocket, he looked at the message and stopped.
Harvath noticed immediately. “What?”
Morrell didn’t speak, he simply handed him the phone. The partial fingerprint—the one Davi had given him from the Glock found at Teens—had been identified. The match came from a Department of Defense database.
Kevin Koebler. Former member: SEAL Team Two.
Harvath didn’t look up from the screen.
“You were at Team Two about the same time,” said Morrell, watching him. “You recognize him, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I do.”
He handed the phone back and pulled out his own. “I think we may have just found our bomber.”