The Silent Places (7 page)

“Go ahead,” Reese said.

A. Lloyd Gelmers went around the corner and into the bathroom.

Reese remembered the girl looking at him in surprise. Wearing a bathrobe, tied loosely at the waist, nothing on underneath. It was a distraction, briefly, and then he turned her around and walked her to the bathroom. She didn’t seem that scared, strangely. More curious than anything. Reese told her he was sorry as he sat her on the toilet seat and wrapped the towel around her mouth and then tied her hands behind her back and secured them to the base of the toilet.

Reese heard Gelmers rumble around in there.

In the bathroom, Gelmers ignored Lana and opened the second drawer in the sink cabinet. In the drawer, there was an old black leather bag, his old shaving kit. He pulled the zipper and opened the bag. Looked inside.

Then he heard Reese’s voice from the other room.

“It’s not in there,” Reese said.

Reese had taken the .357 revolver out of the shaving kit.

“Shit,” Gelmers said.

Gelmers left the girl tied up, walked back out to the living room.

Reese said, “Now you want to tell me?”

Gelmers said nothing.

Reese said, “Or do you want permission to go into your bedroom, too? And pull that shotgun out from under your bed.”

“Found that, too, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Gelmers smiled. “Maybe you can tell me where you put it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It was worth a try,” Gelmers said, and stepped forward, grabbed the corner of the armoire, and tipped it forward. Gravity caught it and Reese saw the heavy, massive thing coming down on top of him. He fell out of the chair and onto the floor just before the armoire crashed down on top of the chair. The chair prevented the armoire from landing on Reese and breaking his back, but he was on his stomach, still with the gun in his hand, and when he crawled out from the space, Gelmers kicked him in the chest, then kicked again, aiming for Reese’s head. Reese lifted his hands to shield himself, and Gelmers jumped on him and grabbed the gun, and then they both had their hands on it and one of them pulled the trigger, and a bullet went in to a Manet print hanging on the wall, smashing the glass. Gelmers was stronger than Reese had thought. A Tasmanian devil of a man, snarling and twisting, not looking quite human, and they rolled and turned and Reese got on top of him, and now the gun was in Gelmers’s hand and Reese punched him in the throat, and finally Gelmers’s grip on the gun loosened and Reese pried it away from him, but Gelmers grabbed at it again and Reese shot him in the chest before he knew it.

Gelmers fell back, his head thudding on the carpet. The bullet had pierced his heart.

“Oh shit,” Reese said. “A. Lloyd. Why did you have to do that?”

Capt. Dan Anthony was a tall, strapping man. Handsome and well built. He was vain, aware of his good looks. He had been a motorcycle cop for many years and he still wore boots with his uniform. Hastings had met him a couple of times and had found no reason to dislike him. He had never worked with him, though.

Captain Anthony shook Hastings hand when Hastings came to his office. He asked Hastings to take a seat and then asked if he’d like some coffee. Hastings said no thank you.

Captain Anthony said, “What have you been told so far?”

Hastings said, “Not much. Chief Wulf said that a fugitive named John Reese broke out of prison and that they’re afraid he’ll come after Senator Preston.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t know much beyond that. Captain—”

“Call me Dan.”

“Dan. I’d like to know, is this threat real? Is there a real possibility that this Reese is going to come after the senator?”

“You want to know if it’s a rinky-dink assignment.”

“No, not necessarily.” Hastings had already decided it was. He said, “I just want to know if there’s been something concrete. A note or a phone call saying ‘I’m coming after you.’”

“To my knowledge, no. But I’ve been instructed by Chief Grassino to take this assignment seriously.”

“All right,” Hastings said. “But if it is serious, why bring metropolitan police officers into it? Isn’t protecting United States senators the province of the FBI? Or the Secret Service?”

“Perhaps. But this is … a delicate issue. Politically, I mean.”

For a moment, neither man said anything. Hastings began thinking that Dan Anthony was no fool. And that he would probably be the new deputy chief of administration.

There were rumors that the department was on the verge of changing its command structure. The position of chief of police would remain intact, but there would be an increase in deputy chiefs and assistant chiefs, each having command of a subdivision. Where there had previously been one deputy chief position, there would now be two. Specifically, deputy chief of operations and deputy chief of administration. Beneath that, there would be five assistant chief positions. Feelings about the proposed restructure were mixed. Some police officers thought a change would be good and would create amore efficient police department. Hastings was skeptical. He believed that having more chiefs would lead to more interdepartmental friction and the creation of too many fiefdoms. As things were now, they had a chief and a deputy chief, and Hastings thought two of them were plenty.

Hastings said, “Can you explain?”

“Yes,” Anthony said. “But before I do, I want you to understand that you and your men are expected to handle this with a certain amount of tact and discretion.”

“My men are professionals. All of them.”

“I’m aware of that. What I mean is, I don’t want this assignment discussed outside of your team. I know how cops love to talk shop.”

“I understand.”

“The thing is,” Anthony said, “Senator Preston wants to avoid alerting the FBI to this. He wants to keep this … local, so to speak.”

“But if there’s been a threat on his life—”

“There’s not been a recent direct threat. Not one that’s been confirmed anyway. It’s just that he’s frightened. For himself and his family. If he alerts the FBI, the whole thing can become public. And the senator has made it very clear that he doesn’t want that.”

“But why?”

“Why has he asked to keep this discreet?”

“Not so much that. I mean, why use metropolitan police officers when you’ve got federal agents at your disposal. Probably better trained for this sort of thing than we are.”

Captain Anthony sighed. “Again, this is not for publication. But the chief implied that Preston may run for president. He doesn’t want national media attention focused on this.”

“Or attention from Washington?”

“Yeah, maybe that, too.” Anthony frowned at Hastings. A suggestion, perhaps, not to push it too far.

Hastings thought about asking what sort of federal appointment Chief Grassino hoped to land in an Alan Preston administration, but he didn’t.

Instead, Hastings said, “So he’s asked the chief for a favor?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Hastings shook his head.

“You disapprove?” Anthony said.

“No, sir, I don’t disapprove. I just find it unusual, that’s all.”

“Perhaps it is unorthodox. I agree. But the senator has asked this of the chief and the chief’s given it to me to handle.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, was it your idea to assign me?”

“No. You were recommended by Wulf.”

Wulf, Hastings thought. Was he trying to help or hurt? Probably help. … Well, what difference does it make now?

Hastings said, “Do you have a file on John Reese?”

“Yes. But it’s not much. They didn’t give us the criminal file, only a summary of it. Interesting reading, though, for what it is. He was an army Ranger and then he became one of their top sharpshooters. A sniper. Sometime in the eighties, the CIA recruited him. The record gets murky after that. He may or may not have been in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Central Europe, the Balkans, China, and Russia. Sometime in the nineties, he retired from the CIA and started his own arms business. He got rich. They say he sold weapons all over Africa and Europe and the Middle East.”

“Ronnie said he sold arms to the Syrians. That’s what they arrested him for.”

“Yes, that’s right. Thank God he was caught. They set up a sting operation, I think, and caught him in Belgium. Flew him back here in chains to stand trial. Here.”

Captain Anthony slid a photograph across the desk to Hastings.

Hastings looked at it and said, “This is dated.”

“Yeah. He’d be about fifty now.”

Hastings said, “A Cold Warrior.”

“Yeah,” Anthony said, “but the Cold War is over. And this guy lost his bearings. Those weapons he sold the Syrians could have been used on our allies or our soldiers. For all we know, they were.”

Hastings said, “Preston prosecuted him?”

“Yeah. He was an assistant U.S. attorney.”

“When did Reese threaten to kill him?”

“Supposedly, in Washington, while he was on trial, he told someone in jail that he knew mercenaries all over the world and that if he wanted, he could have Preston killed.”

“He said this while the trial was ongoing?”

“That’s what I’m told.”

“Was it discussed at trial? I mean, anytime a threat like that is made against one of our witnesses or prosecutors, we always bring it to the court’s attention.”

“I don’t know if it was.”

“It would seem like a dumb thing to do. For a spy anyway.”

“Well, it was a long time ago,” Anthony said. “The guy’s a traitor, George. And like most of his kind, he did it for money.”

“Okay,” Hastings said. “We have no idea where he is now?”

“None.”

The speck on the horizon grew as it approached and then there was the sound of a helicopter buzzing. The helicopter came into view. A Bell, new and pretty, painted in the blue and white of the company’s trademark, contrasting with the green-and-brown forests of the surrounding Tennessee hills. Painted on the helicopter’s side was a silvery hawk, the logo of Ghosthawk, Incorporated.

The helicopter landed on a pad near a large western-style ranch house. The blades began winding down and a fit-looking man in his forties came out of the helicopter. His name was Kyle Anders and he was met on the landing pad by Dexter Troy, his chief of security.

With the noise of the helicopter, their conversation was difficult to hear beyond a few feet. But one standing at a distance would have been able to see the anger on Kyle Anders’s face. He stopped and said something in response to Troy. Troy made a sort of shrugging gesture but then motioned to the house, where he could explain it better.

In 1996, Clay Anders, owner and CEO of Anders Drilling, died and left his entire estate to his son, Kyle, who was then thirty-five years old. At the time, Kyle Anders was working for a real estate developer in Florida. After his father died, Kyle resigned from that job and returned to his father’s home in Houston, Texas. A year later, Kyle Anders sold Anders Drilling to an oil company for $1.4 billion. A year after that, he founded Ghosthawk, Incorporated.

It began as a straightforward security service. Kyle, a graduate of West Point and a former Delta Force soldier, wanted to provide bodyguards to dignitaries and celebrities. He also wanted to give some of his friends from the army and Delta Force in particular a place to work. Kyle Anders had the good luck to be a billionaire’s son. But other soldiers less fortunate often found the transition to civilian life more difficult. Kyle helped them find work suited to their training and skills. He also made sure they were well paid.

Kyle opened offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington. But his real base of operations was a seven-thousand-acre spread in the hills of East Tennessee. Sergeant York country. Here, he built a sort of private military university. There were shooting ranges, plenty of woods in which to practice war games and combat, barracks, and classrooms.

In the early stages of Ghosthawk, there were those who did not take Kyle Anders very seriously. Some thought he seemed like a rich kid trying to play soldier. But these skeptics overlooked the fact that he had been a soldier himself. And not just a soldier but a member of the elite Delta Force. He had left the army four years after he graduated West Point and, to the understanding of most, had never seen actual combat. Was he someone to keep an eye on? A madman building his own private army? Or was he just spending his inheritance fulfilling an adolescent fantasy?

In either event, his skeptics started to take him more seriously after 9/11. That was when Ghosthawk began its exponential growth. Long before American troops left for Iraq, Kyle Anders began working Washington for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He had competitors in this process—Dyncorp, Blackwater, and, to some degree, even Halliburton. But he got the lion’s share of the contracts for security work in Iraq. Within a year of the invasion, he had several hundred security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. A year after that, Ghosthawk became a billion-dollar operation.

Unlike his contemporaries in Britain, Kyle Anders did not like the term
mercenary
. To him, the word had negative connotations. Mercenaries were soldiers for hire, working strictly for money, indifferent to the mission or patriotism. Anders told all his employees they were not to even
use
the term
mercenary
. They were “security contractors.” And though they were being paid by Ghosthawk, Anders reminded them they were fighting for their country.

The men employed by Anders included retired cops, ex–federal agents, former marines, army Rangers, Delta Force commandos, Special Forces soldiers, and Navy SEALs. There were also a few ex-members of the British Special Air Service (SAS), the French Foreign Legion, and Chilean soldiers who had enforced martial law under Augusto Pinochet. Anders’s goal was to build a five-thousand-man army.

The media often sought out Anders for interviews. He rarely granted them. He did not like or trust reporters, even the so-called conservative ones. He believed most of them were defeatists or anti-American. His refusals to be interviewed sometimes led reporters to say things about him that he didn’t think were true. One journalist surmised that he was “trying to build the world’s most powerful mercenary army.” Another charged him with wanting to make Ghosthawk the “fifth column” of the United States armed forces—that is, army, navy, air force, Marine Corps, and Ghosthawk.