“This is all about Brendan Page?”
Hutch had never accepted the findings that Declan Page had acted independently when he’d used a satellite laser cannon, developed by one of his father’s companies, to terrorize Fiddler Falls and kill more than a dozen people. Hutch believed the elder Page had instigated the assault or, at minimum, had known about it and done nothing to stop it.
Hutch had begun his own investigation. Nothing he’d found implicated Page or his companies—just as the Canadian and U.S. authorities had determined. But to Hutch, that only meant Page was a master at covering his tracks. The deeper Hutch dug, the more he became convinced the man was guilty of all sorts of crimes. Hutch stopped caring whether Page went to jail for playing a role in the tragedy in Canada, as long as he was busted for something.
Hutch stepped beside her and scanned the wall. “Him, Page Industries, Outis Enterprises.”
“Outis? The . . . what, military organization?”
“Paramilitary. Some people call it a privatized army. A division of Page Industries. Its tentacles reach into every aspect of defense and security. It trains forty thousand personnel a year.”
“Trains who to do what?”
“You name it: U.S. military Special Ops soldiers. Law enforcement officers in tactical operations—handling bank robberies, high school shootings, high-speed car chases. Outis has trained special teams from dozens of countries in aviation security and taking down hijackers. Whatever situation cops, soldiers, the CIA may encounter anywhere in the world, Outis has a program, experts, and the facilities to train them for it.”
Hutch lifted his tea, but his racing mind wouldn’t let him drink. He absently held the cup near his chin as he went on. “Over the last ten years the company has expanded from simply training other agencies’ personnel to contracting out its own teams to do whatever job requires skilled soldiers and massive firepower. It provides everything from three-man bodyguards and a bulletproof car for a corporate executive to thousand-man armies, complete with air support and tank-like vehicles, for diplomat protection in war zones. It has teams breaking up drug cartels in South America, guarding embassies, hunting fugitives. Ten thousand gun-toting, helicopter-flying, combat vehicle–driving soldiers in U.S. military hot spots are actually Outis employees or contractors.”
He shook his head. “It’s an amazing operation. Other Page Industry companies have always designed and manufactured weapons—from small arms to missiles to the satellite laser weapon we encountered. Now it seems their most cutting-edge developments go right to Outis.”
“Exclusively?” Laura said.
“The most skilled personnel, proprietary technology, and superior equipment. You want to make sure a diplomat doesn’t get splattered or a fugitive gets captured, you call Outis.”
“So,” Laura said, “how does any of this make Page a criminal?”
Hutch moved his finger over the wall’s collage. “Every now and then, Outis is accused of something . . . let’s say unsavory.” He tapped an article. “Double billing and including profits in expense reports to make profits on profits.” He shrugged. “That’s a civil issue. No big deal. But . . .” He tapped another article. “Here, Outis soldiers staffing a detainee camp are implicated in mistreating prisoners and torture. There are reports of a dozen similar incidents involving Outis personnel.” He waved at a stack of clippings. “Drug smuggling . . . kidnapping a foreign dignitary . . . a bank robbery in Zaire . . . assassination.”
“Hutch,” Laura said, “if those things are sanctioned by the company, then it’s an international crime syndicate.”
“Hidden within an impossibly complex organization,” he agreed. “And operating under the authority of federal governments, with details classified top secret, which means they can’t be looked into without congressional approval.”
Laura added, “Not to mention they tend to be engaged in activities where the line between what’s authorized and what’s not can be blurry.” She scrunched her brow. “Right?”
“Blurry or nonexistent.” He sighed heavily. “There’s always something that exonerates either the accused soldiers themselves or the company. Often there’s no proof of who did what. Witnesses have an uncanny way of disappearing or changing their stories. Suddenly it’s self-defense—or the soldiers involved acted independently, outside company directives. This, despite witnesses or documents, even money trails, to the contrary.
“One problem is the way Outis gets involved on a legal level. It’s not a military entity, so it’s outside military law. At the same time, it doesn’t move in until its people get immunity from prosecution from the host country. Those protections can be set aside if it’s proven the accused were involved in activities outside their stated purpose for being there. But that takes time, often enough time to implement a cover-up.”
He started tapping again. “One or two times, okay. Maybe even a dozen, given the size of the organization. But . . .” He stepped back and spread his arms out to indicate the entire collection.
Laura bit her lip, taking it all in. She said, “But, Hutch, hasn’t each of these been investigated, and Page Industries exonerated?”
“Most of them,” he said. “Some of them are active. Hence, my sixteen-hour days.”
“I hate to say it, but it seems impossible trying to prove culpability when Page’s companies have already covered themselves to the point that investigators have closed the book. And they have more access than you do. Why not let it go?”
Hutch sipped from the mug, found the tea too sweet, and put it on the desk. “Because when the Roman Empire was strong, it was untouchable, undefeatable. But Caesar wasn’t.”
“You lost me.”
He moved to the left side of the wall. “Read the highlighted part.”
Laura leaned in and read: “‘Let the record show the witness identified photograph A11, Brendan Page.’”
Hutch said, “That’s the deposition of a torture victim. Now this . . .”
She read from a newspaper clipping: “‘Industrialist Brendan Page admitted being in the country at the time of the assassination, however . . .’”
“And farther down in the same article.” He pointed.
“‘A man matching Page’s description was seen leaving the building, escorted by two unidentified men. When questioned . . .’”
“He was at the scene when Colombia’s foreign minister of finance was assassinated in Switzerland,” Hutch said. He started tapping documents again. “Here he is implicated in taking part in the killing of civilians in Beirut. . . . Same thing in Baghdad. . . . Another torture. It goes on and on. Most times, if there’s any mention of Page at all, it’s lost among footnotes, with words like uncorroborated and unreliable. Or, again, the witness disappeared or said he’d been mistaken.”
“But why? The man’s a billionaire. He has people . . . an army . . . to do his dirty work.”
“Because he loves it!” Hutch said. “He’s ex–Special Forces. He made his first fortune inventing a particularly effective antipersonnel mine. He’s been known to join his soldiers on the front line in the heat of battle. He gets off on war and fighting and death. I don’t even think the money matters to him, except that it allows him to continue doing what he loves. There are rumors that every development that comes out of Page Industries he either thought up himself or personally chaperoned from inception to implementation. He’s the Steve Jobs of war.”
“Hutch,” she said, frowning. “This is huge. Why hasn’t anybody put this together before?”
“What I have now is enough to convince you Page is up to his eyeballs . . . but it’s not enough to convince anyone else, not anyone who could do something about it. There are so many vanished witnesses and documents, so much information shielded by the top-secret designation. I can’t tell you how many calls I’ve made, people I’ve visited and bribed, hours I’ve spent tracking down and poring over obscure, redacted, misfiled documents. And I’ve only got started.” Hutch smile
d. “Besides, somebody has to be first.”
“Somebody whose world was torn apart by Page’s weapons and offspring.”
“It helps.”
Footsteps padded down the hall toward them. Dillon peered around the door frame.
“Hey, you,” Hutch said. The uncertainty in the boy’s eyes broke Hutch’s heart.
Dillon stepped in, and Hutch approached him and knelt, bringing his eyes level with the boy’s. “I’m sorry. I’ve been a terrible host. Even worse, I’ve been a terrible friend. Will you forgive me?”
Dillon gave him a tight-lipped smile that within seconds became a toothy grin. He nodded.
Hutch leaned in to give him a hug. He said, “You want to hang with me awhile, maybe get some hot chocolate?”
“And popcorn?”
“Popcorn goes without saying.”
Dillon slipped out, running toward the kitchen.
Laura crossed the room, avoiding the clutter. She stopped at a plaque on the wall. She read it out loud: “‘The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.’”
Hutch stepped beside her. He touched the engraved lettering. “David Ryder and I were always challenging each other with quotations. He stumped me with that one.”
“Edmund Burke?” Laura said.
“That’s what I thought. Turned out to be Einstein. I didn’t put an attribution on it, because I like to think it’s David prodding me on with it.”
She touched his arm. “You miss him a lot.”
He nodded. “He was a good man. Best I’ve ever known. He shouldn’t have died the way he did. It was so meaningless, so random.” He tilted his head. “Terry too, and your husband. That whole mess in Canada . . . I don’t know, I guess this quote carries more weight now than when I first heard it.”
She tapped a Wired magazine cover tacked to the wall beside the plaque. Brendan Page looked out from it. She said, “What, no bull’s-eye drawn over him?”
“Reminds me how smug the guy is,” Hutch said. “Look at those eyes, those pursed lips.”
In the photo, Page stood casual and confident, holding a cigar near his face. Around him a battle raged: soldiers fired machine guns at unseen targets, a fiery explosion was frozen in mid-destruction, and over his shoulder a sleek tank crested a ridge. Where plumes of smoke obscured his feet and legs was the line HOW THIS MAN IS RESHAPING THE WAY WE FIGHT.
SIX
Brendan Page pulled off the helmet and stepped out of the boots. He unzipped the VR suit, pulling it down to his waist. Perspiration beaded over him like sequins. Close-quarters combat was a strenuous activity, mentally and physically—even in virtual reality. He glanced up at the control room.
Ian sat before a monitor, his hand gliding over a trackball. Brendan’s teenage son, Julian, stood behind him. The boy returned Page’s nod and returned his attention to Ian’s shutdown procedure.
Julian was not a happy child; he hated being housed and schooled on the Outis compound. The only part of it he did seem to enjoy were the VR facilities: learning its programming and control protocols and experiencing the VR environments himself.
Ian caught his eye and clicked on the intercom. “Got some news, Brendan. Come on up.”
Page gave the man a thumbs-up. He went into the locker room. Five minutes later, he’d showered, dressed, and was bounding up the stairs to the control room. Julian had left. Page dropped onto a leather couch.
Ian studied a computer screen displaying a map.
“Found a glitch,” Page said. “I hit my helmet with the weapons prop and got static, like what’s-his-name described the other day. It’s systemic to the design.”
“You wanted it bulletproof,” Bryson said. “You never mentioned anything about soup cans.”
“Chili,” Page corrected.
“Anyway, that’s not the problem,” Ian said. “He wasn’t ready.”
“Nothing gets you ready like doing,” Page said. “How many tactical training missions has he completed? How many VR simulations?” He felt his pockets for a cigar case and realized he’d left it in the locker room. “He’s our seed for Fireteam Bravo. The whole point of getting newbies into fully functioning teams is to eventually have entire teams made up of soldiers who’ve known nothing else but Quarterback.”
Quarterback was Outis’s latest project—the human equivalent of pushing the technological envelope. The name derived from QRBO—Quick-Response Black-Ops. They consisted of four-man teams whose sole purpose was to move in quickly, accomplish a task, and pull out just as fast. The plan had been to lease these teams to governments who needed their services, at phenomenal premiums over the everyday soldiers Outis provided.
During their development, Page had encountered his own need for their expertise. Like a drug dealer cooking the purest meth, he couldn’t resist sampling his own product. And like that dealer, waking one day under a bridge, covered in vomit, Page had felt the sting in an operation that had gone south.
Ian waved a hand at Page. He had other business on his mind. “Our guy at Purdue intercepted a call from Nichols. You were right: he tried to avoid the keyword system.”
“What got him?” Page said.
“He used your name. That, coupled with slaughtered within three words of family.”
“We got a location?”
“Pay phone in a town called Pinedale, California, between Redding and Eureka. Fireteam Alpha’s on its way there now. Shouldn’t be too hard to find him.”
“Who’d he call?”
Ian grinned. “Your favorite journalist.”
“Hutchinson?” Page shook his head. “Dog with a bone.”
“Eventually the bone splinters.” Ian rocked back in his chair.
Page said, “Guy’s only been a nuisance until now. But if he’s talking to Nichols . . .”
“He won’t be . . . not anymore.”
“I mean, if he’s making this kind of contact, he’s wormed his way in. It’s only a matter of time before he’s calling his big-media friends and the feds to show them what he’s found.”
Ian pressed his lips together, thinking. “Journalists don’t mean anything, Brendan. You know that. Witnesses are one thing. Employees with loose lips an even bigger thing. But the media sniffing around . . .” He pulled on his mustache. “Part of the territory.”
“Hutchinson is a witness,” Page reminded his friend.
“Of Declan’s lunacy, not yours.” Ian smiled. “None of his suspicions was corroborated. That case is closed. He’s nothing.”
Page smoothed his hair back, thinking.
“If anything,” Ian added, “slip him some cash.”
“Not this guy. He thinks he’s on a crusade for justice.”
“So what are you thinking, take him out?”
Page nodded slowly.
“Might not be such a good idea,” Ian said. “Not on the heels of this whole Nichols thing. Besides, who doesn’t know he’s got you in his sights? You’re the first person they’ll suspect.”
Page sighed. Ian was right. The way they’d handled Nichols was a bit of overkill. Reckless. He had simply been too eager to put his men through the paces, to give them the experience they needed and take care of a potentially devastating problem at the same time. He thought again of the methamphetamine cook sampling his own brew. It was never if he was going to OD, but when.
“Look,” Ian said, “we counsel clients about this sort of thing every day. What’s the objective?”
Page opened his hands. “Get him off my back. Shut him up.”
“He wants to put you away, and you don’t want to be put away.” Ian pushed himself up in his chair and crossed his legs. “You have a conflict. What are the tenets of conflict resolution?”
Page smiled at his friend’s analytical approach. “Diplomacy. Threat.
Use of force.”
“Well,” Ian said, “it’s clear your asking him to go away won’t work. And you don’t think he can
be bought off.”
Page shook his head.
Ian raised his bushy eyebrows. “Why jump right to use of force, especially when it could cause the equivalent of an international uproar, maybe retaliation?”
“In this case, from the media, the authorities,” Page agreed. “But, Ian—guy like Hutch, he doesn’t scare easily.”
“Neither does Iran or North Korea,” Ian said. “You have to find out what he cares about more than he cares about putting you away. You’ve done your homework; I can’t imagine you don’t already know the answer. The next step is figuring out how to deliver the message. How loud do you have to yell? Sometimes all the U.S. has to do is send a secretary of state. . . .”
“And sometimes they have to position a fleet of destroyers and aircraft carriers off the coast,” Page said.
“Let ’im know you’re serious. And have the means and willingness to back up your threats.”
“Ian, I knew there was a reason I keep you around.” Page hefted himself off the couch. “Get a couple teams ready. Put . . . ah, what’s his name, Mitch? Daniel?”
“Michael,” Ian said. “I don’t think . . .”
“Right back on the horse, Ian,” Page said. “Don’t start talking like Nichols, now.”
“You know me better than that.”
“Okay then.” Page walked to the door. He said, “Look, we’ll ease him back in. This’ll be a reconnaissance mission, no contact. Happy?”
“A little better,” Ian said. “No firepower?”
“Since when does an Outis squad not pack?” He shrugged. “What good’s an aircraft carrier without any aircraft?” He went to the door and turned back. “Remember what Sun-Tzu said. Keep your friends close . . .”
“And your enemies closer.”
“I have to get ready,” Page said, opening the door. “Company’s coming.”
SEVEN
Hutch carried a big bowl of popcorn into the living room. Laura had taken a position on the couch, looking comfortable with her leg tucked under her. She watched hearty flames consume a log in the fireplace. Dillon came up behind him, his own bowl in his hands. The boy was warming up to Hutch again, going on about life in Fiddler Falls: how fourth grade didn’t seem much different from third, since all of the town’s twenty-eight elementary students shared a single room; how last summer he’d helped old man Nelson stock and clean his mercan-tile—“For real money!”—and how the town was still rebuilding the structures Declan had demolished with his satellite weapon.