Chapter 42
The Royal Bangkok Sports Club had offered Koebler two advantages. One, it had been built in such a way that members and guests never had to see staff moving from structure to structure. And two, no one on the property had known that a bomb was about to go off.
Carrying his backpack, he had walked away from his vehicle, keeping his pace measured.
At the rear of the clubhouse, he veered onto a paved service path that groundskeepers used to move between storage sheds, maintenance bays, and the far side of the property.
Screened by mature trees and clipped hedges, it was the kind of route no one really saw, even when they were staring right at it.
Near the club’s golf cart storage barn, he stepped behind an equipment pen and set down his backpack.
Stripping off his tactical uniform, he changed into khakis, a button-down shirt, white tennis shoes, and a lightweight blazer.
He placed his old clothes into the pack, then topped off his outfit with a new ball cap and a disposable surgical mask.
The transformation had taken less than ninety seconds.
By the time he stepped back out, the man in the ISOC uniform had ceased to exist.
A golf cart whined past at the far end of the path. He waited for it to disappear and then continued east.
The barbed wire?topped boundary wall that marked the perimeter of the RBSC was interspersed with sections of dense vegetation and chain-link fence. Along one stretch, a row of shrubbery had grown thick enough to screen it from the path. That was where Koebler would make his escape.
Ducking behind it, he set down his pack again, pulled out a pair of compact cutters, and got quickly to work. Once he had clipped enough of the links, he bent the mesh back until there was just enough room to slip through.
He emerged onto a service road that ran behind the King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital campus. The sounds of the city once again enveloped him—engines, horns, voices, the distant whine of an ambulance siren. He checked his watch. It was time.
Removing the small black Nokia phone from his pocket, he powered it up. There were only two numbers saved to it—both of which were attached to the bomb parked in front of the clubhouse. He highlighted the top number and activated the call.
Far behind him, muffled by buildings and trees, the enormous blast erupted. The concussion rolled across the golf course and ripped through the neighborhood a split second before the blast itself.
Car alarms began to wail. Birds lifted from the treetops in a frenzied burst. Across the medical campus, people began shouting.
Calmly, Koebler walked to the corner, merged with a stream of pedestrians, and kept moving.
Disassembling the phone, he dropped a piece in a public trash can outside a convenience store. Two blocks later, he fed a couple more pieces into a storm drain. The rest were tossed into the back of a garbage truck near an open-air market and quickly covered with damp cardboard and rotting produce.
At the subway, he bought a ticket with cash, kept his head down, and boarded with everyone else. He was just another commuter starting his week.
Everyone around him was getting text alerts that something had happened. They all had their phones out, trying to figure out where the bombing had taken place. The news was spreading in fragments, and fear gripped the train car.
Koebler stood by the door, watching his own reflection slide across the darkened window.
Beneath his mask, he smiled. The assignment had been executed perfectly.
If the money landed as planned, he was finished.
No more clients. No more handlers. No more jobs with too many moving parts.
All he had to do now was get out of Bangkok alive.
He got off two stops later, changed direction twice, and spent the next forty minutes putting distance between himself and the blast. He used reflective glass, mirrored elevator doors, parked cars, and the simple rhythm of foot traffic to make sure he wasn’t being followed. There was no one tailing him.
Even so, when he approached the broader maze of streets feeding into Khlong Toei, he slowed and didn’t go straight in. He never went straight in.
Instead, he made a loose box around several blocks, using storefront windows to see who might be behind him, and studying the pulse of traffic for anything that seemed off. The bomb at the club would have every cop in Bangkok scrambling.
When he came around the far end of his block, he saw the van.
It was parked three doors down from his building, its nose pointed toward the main thoroughfare for a fast exit.
White paint, no tinted glass. It was plain.
Anonymous. There was nothing outwardly remarkable about it, except that it didn’t belong.
Not here. Not on this street. Not at this hour.
He had lived in the neighborhood long enough, and paid close enough attention, to notice when something was wrong.
Continuing to walk, he kept his eyes forward and gave it no more than a casual glance, like any passing pedestrian. Inside, though, all of his alarm bells were ringing.
The windshield had been cleaned recently, but not the rest of the vehicle.
The tires were too good. Company vehicles in Thailand were rolling billboards, yet this one had no markings.
There was nothing in the cab—no pens, no clipboards, no empty coffee cups or food wrappers.
And while the cargo area was totally enclosed, the rear suspension sat just low enough to suggest there was weight in the back.
As he drew closer, he caught the faint shudder of the engine through the chassis and noticed the slightest tremble in the side mirror.
The van was idling. In Bangkok heat, that wasn’t unusual.
What was unusual was a work van parked half a block from his building, running its air-conditioning, with no driver present and no apparent delivery or job in progress. He kept walking.
Thirty yards on, he crossed the street, using the opportunity to check the block behind him.
Other than the van, everything looked fine. No one was loitering near the entrance to his building. There were no unmarked units tucked around the corner. No rooftop silhouette where there shouldn’t be one. That only bothered him more, not less.
The men who had shown up at the storage unit hadn’t looked like police. Neither had the men who had ambushed his meeting at Teens. Whoever was trying to disrupt this operation knew how to stay out of sight until the last possible second.
He was certain that whoever owned that van was in the cargo area, watching through hidden optics or cameras.
His building was under surveillance, which meant that the bolt-hole was burned.
Everything left inside was gone to him now.
Clothes, burner phones, IDs, cash, the remaining supplies—none of that mattered enough to risk walking into a trap.
All that mattered now was who was in that van, and how much they knew. Unzipping his pack, his hand went for his pistol.
If he walked away now, most likely he’d live. If he killed the surveillance team, he might buy himself a few answers via their phones, laptops, and cameras. He might even learn who had sent them.
He took a breath and tried to let his mind settle. He knew what the right choice was. The safe choice.
Walking away was cleaner, but it would leave too many questions unanswered—chief among them, how he had been discovered. That would haunt him. Questions like that got men killed. He couldn’t let it go.
He tucked the pistol into his waistband, zipped his pack back up, and slipped down a covered side passage.
Laundry hung overhead on sagging lines. Plastic buckets and broken pallets were stacked against stained walls. The entire place stank. Koebler moved through it without a sound.
At the far end, he stepped out and, coming around the corner, carefully doubled back. He used a parked car for cover. From here, he had a partial view of the rear of the van and its double doors. The hunted had just become the hunter.
He studied his target for several minutes.
He still had two grenades with him. The easiest course of action would have been to pull the pins and roll them underneath as he walked by.
That, however, would draw entirely too much attention and likely destroy any useful items he hoped to gain from inside.
His only course of action was to assault the van head-on and hope that the element of surprise would provide enough of an edge.
Taking a deep breath, he counted to three and then stepped out from behind the parked car and began walking down the sidewalk.
If this was an actual surveillance vehicle, he would have to assume that they would see him coming. What he hoped was that they wouldn’t be able to anticipate what he would do when he drew even with them.
He was still wearing his ball cap and surgical mask and kept his head down as he approached. The less they saw of his face, the better.
Drawing even with the back of the vehicle, he stepped behind it and, with his right hand wrapped around the butt of his pistol, reached out with his left and tested the latch. Unlocked.
Pulling out his gun, he went to yank the door open, but before he could, there was the metallic click of it being locked from the inside.
They had not only seen him—as expected—but had reacted. From inside the van, he could hear two men speaking. In English.
Raising his pistol, he began firing through the van’s thin metal skin. The first three rounds punched through just above the door handles. One of the men inside cried out.
Shifting his aim beneath the handles, Koebler fired again, right where he believed center mass would be if anyone was crouching behind the doors.
This time, something heavy thudded against the interior. It was followed by a ragged choking sound. He could hear the frantic movement, like someone scrambling, maybe trying to get a weapon or maybe trying to get away from the back of the van entirely.
He shifted off the line of fire, tried the latch again, and this time it gave. Ripping the left-hand door open, he fired into the cold air spilling out.
Inside, the cargo area had been converted into a compact surveillance bay. A table sat cluttered with batteries, cables, and other electronic equipment, along with a laptop showing a live feed of his building’s entrance.
One man was collapsed against the left wall. Blood was pumping through his fingers where he was clutching his neck. Another was down on one knee near the opposite wheel well, one hand reaching for a pistol hidden behind a Pelican case.
Koebler shot him in the face and the man dropped where he was.
They were both Caucasian. Mid-twenties. Thin builds. Civilian clothes. They were definitely not Thai military or police. And they didn’t look anything like the men who had attacked him at Teens and at the storage unit. The first one was still alive.
His headset had been knocked to the right and blood flecked the microphone boom. He stared up with wide, wet eyes as he tried to drag air through his ruptured throat.
Koebler stepped into the van and kicked the pistol away from the other man’s dead hand. He then looked down at the survivor.
“Who sent you?” he asked.
The man tried to speak, but all that came out was a bubbling hiss.
Koebler crouched beside him and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. “Is it just you? How many others are there?”
Once again came the hiss.
Koebler patted him down quickly. Phone. Wallet. Keys. He moved to the dead one next. Another phone. Another wallet. An encrypted radio handset.
Looking at a second laptop that must have slid off the table, he could see that somehow the men had been able to tap into his wireless camera feeds.
That took significant technical know-how.
The fact that they’d been able to do it without tripping any of the alarms built into the encrypted software was an incredible feat.
Whoever these people were, they were very high-level.
Opening the first wallet, he had his answer. Inside was a United States Embassy Bangkok access badge. There was one in the second wallet as well. Americans.
For a moment, Koebler didn’t move. So that was who had found him. Not the Cambodians. Not Thai police. Not ISOC.
How the hell had the Americans picked up his trail? And who specifically was hunting him?
Based on their technical prowess and the embassy affiliation, he had to assume it was the CIA. Then, all of a sudden, “how” they had found him became glaringly apparent. His Glock.
It all made perfect sense. Thailand had his pistol and were probably able to lift a fingerprint or two from it.
When nothing turned up in any of their databases, they would have reached out to their international partners for help.
Someone at the U.S. Embassy was able to locate the only official set of his fingerprints in the world—his U.S. Navy service file.
How they’d made the jump from ex-SEAL to rooms above a shuttered storefront in Khlong Toei was a discussion for another time. Right now, he needed to focus on disappearing.
Outrunning Thai authorities was one thing. Escaping the CIA was another thing entirely.
He had only worked with them a handful of times, but he learned very quickly that they were particularly relentless, especially their paramilitary units. In their world, there were no rules, and they were backed to the hilt with the full force of the United States government.
Behind him, the wounded man made another wet, choking attempt to breathe. Turning around, Koebler placed the muzzle of his weapon against the man’s forehead and pressed the trigger, painting the back of the van with blood, bone, and pieces of brain.
Grabbing his backpack, he prepared to move. He had already lingered too long. Time was now his most precious commodity.