Chapter 65
PATTANI CITY
THAILAND
By the time the Carlton Group jet touched down at Pattani’s small regional airport, the sky to the east had begun to lighten.
Harvath had slept for about twenty minutes on the flight south. As badly as he needed the sleep, it hadn’t helped.
The minute they were wheels-down, he was already gaming out scenarios.
How many places in and around Pattani City could serve as safe houses?
How many routes in and out? How many local networks still existed after the bombing cell was rolled up by Thai authorities?
How many of those could the Chinese possibly leverage?
It was simply impossible to know. The short answer was: too many. Even attempting to get his arms around it was giving him a headache.
The lead that had brought them here had come from one of the smugglers who had survived the canal warehouse gunfight.
Under pressure the man had given up only one useful piece of information—that Koebler was being smuggled south to Pattani City.
No names. No routes. Just a destination.
It was pretty thin, but it was all they had.
He and Morrell had decided not to share it with Davi. There were less than forty-five thousand people in the city and she would have parachuted in the entire Thai army.
Tevy and his team had remained behind, working their source inside the Chinese intelligence unit, trying to develop something more useful than a city on a map. If they didn’t, Harvath was going to have to work the rest out on his own.
As soon as the forward door opened, the morning air came in hot, heavy, and humid. The one saving grace was that Pattani was a coastal city and its breezes blew in off the ocean. It smelled a lot better than Bangkok.
Waiting for them at the edge of the tarmac was a convoy that had been put together by one of Morrell’s CIA colleagues. It was comprised of two dusty Toyota pickups and a black SUV that looked like it had seen enough rough mileage to qualify for combat pay.
They offloaded their gear quickly, keeping their heads down. Pattani was a place where outsiders drew outsized attention, even when they were trying to blend in.
At the SUV, a middle-aged Thai man named Jira greeted them. Opening the rear hatch, he filled the cargo area with the team’s larger bags and equipment.
He wore a faded polo shirt, cheap loafers, and had a sidearm tucked in the back of his jeans. Morrell hadn’t offered an explanation for who the locals were and Harvath didn’t ask. The CIA had lots of interesting bedfellows.
Harvath and Morrell rode in the SUV with Jira, Ashby and Palmer took the pickup behind them, and Staelin and Haney rode in the one behind that. All of them were carrying their own sidearms and plenty of spare ammo just in case.
The convoy rolled out of the airport, and the Muslim influence was evident immediately.
Arabesque architecture, mosques, and women in hijabs were everywhere.
But for the difference in facial features, they could have been driving through a town somewhere on the water in North Africa.
It was both exotic and alien, and no surprise that Pattani was referred to as the center of Thailand’s Muslim south.
Unlike the sprawl of Bangkok, nothing here felt expansive.
The place pressed inward. The streets were narrower, the buildings were lower, and the walls were closer together.
Military and police presence was everywhere, as was the sense that violence could explode at any moment.
You could feel it in the checkpoints. In the sandbags. And in all the hard glances.
Whoever had chosen Pattani for this operation had chosen well. If a bomb went off here, and it even remotely looked like the work of separatists, the powers that be in Bangkok would waste no time assigning blame.
“Jira, where are we headed?” Harvath asked their driver.
“Temporary base,” the man replied, his accent heavy.
“That sounds pretty official.”
“Nothing about your visit here,” Jira replied, “is official.”
Morrell smiled. “I think I like this guy.”
Five minutes later, they turned off the main road and entered a walled compound. Inside was a one-story concrete building with barred windows, an old VW on blocks, and a brown canvas awning beneath which three men sat smoking and cleaning rifles.
Jira introduced the men, and then Harvath, Morrell, and the rest of the team gathered up their gear from the convoy vehicles and carried everything inside.
It was cooler than outside, but not by much.
Two ceiling fans did nothing more than push the humid air around the main room.
In addition to some old furniture, there were several paper maps of the city of Pattani and Pattani Province taped to one of the walls, along with a corkboard pinned with photographs.
Adjacent was a whiteboard covered in Thai script.
In the kitchen, next to a medical box, was bottled water, canned food, and a case of instant noodles.
“You should have enough for now,” Jira said. “If your team needs anything else, tell me and I will get it for you.”
Haney was going through the cabinets in the open kitchen. “I see tea. What about coffee?”
“I can get coffee.”
“And maybe some prime rib?” Staelin added, looking into the empty fridge.
“Make the man a list,” Harvath said. “In the meantime, I want somebody from our team awake at all times and with eyes on the gate. Palmer and Ashby will take first watch. Haney and Staelin, get the comms up and running. Morrell, you’re with me.”
As the rest of the team broke away, Jira crossed to the corkboard and removed three photographs. He brought them to the table, but didn’t put them down right away.
“You wanted to know what the original Pattani plot looked like,” he said.
Harvath stepped closer. “What have authorities been able to figure out?”
“Unfortunately, only bits and pieces of the operation,” Jira replied. “They haven’t gotten things like timing or final placement of the devices. They don’t even have all the names involved yet. But they do have enough to understand the targets and part of the delivery method.”
He set the photos on the table.
Each image showed the same essential elements in different combinations—white concrete buildings, Thai flags, Ministry of Education signage, drop-off areas, faculty parking.
Morrell looked from one photo to the next. “Schools?”
“State schools,” said Jira. “Boys and girls. Ages six through twelve.”
Harvath examined the pictures in silence for a moment. “Why?”
“Because it will outrage Thai citizens and humiliate the Thai government.”
From a folder on the table, he extracted another set of photos and laid them out. They were close shots this time—backpacks, school bags. Some had cartoon characters. Others were bright colors.
“The devices,” Jira continued, “were to be concealed in what looked like students’ bags. They would then be left around the school grounds where they wouldn’t immediately attract attention—near entrances, drop-off points, playground areas. That sort of thing.”
“Jesus,” said Morrell. “And then what?”
“Then once the first blasts hit and police, military, and medics all arrive, a follow-on attack takes place targeting them.”
There was a pit in Harvath’s stomach. Shaking his head, he asked, “And what steps have been taken since the cell was rolled up?”
Jira spread a map across the table and marked the schools one by one. “Security has been increased at all of them,” he said. “Heightened police and military presence. More patrols at arrival and dismissal. Bags checked. Random vehicle inspections. Even some plainclothes officers as well.”
He tapped the largest school on the map. “This was the easiest to harden once they knew what to look for. It has a big perimeter with clear approaches.”
He moved to the second. “This one sits in a busier civilian area. It has more vehicles, more parents, and more vendors. That makes it harder to control without controlling half the neighborhood.”
Then the third. “This one caused the most concern. While it’s a smaller campus, it’s crammed with a bunch of shops and houses. The foot traffic alone is a nightmare. Not to mention how many places there are to hide before an attack and simply blend in and disappear after.”
Harvath studied the school on the map. Jira was right. It was a tangled mess of side streets, alleyways, passageways, and courtyards. Next to impossible to control, and even harder to protect.
Looking back at the school photos, he said, “I want to see them with my own eyes.”
“The schools?” Jira asked. “Why?”
“To understand why they made sense,” Harvath replied. “And now that they’re harder to hit, I want to see what else in Pattani might make an attractive target.”
Morrell nodded. “They’re not going to reinvent the wheel. They’ll keep what works and change what doesn’t.”
Harvath looked at Jira. “Let’s take a ride.”