At the end of this weekend retreat, Blount and Divine were to fly back to Washington with the outlines of a compromise legislative agenda. If they didn’t, Kyle believed, the stalemate in Washington would be solidified in the public mind. Blount and Divine hoped to show that they and their party could lead the country and get things done.
The more he thought about it, the more Kyle’s stomach soured. He shook his head to refocus. No, he wasn’t going to write anything about a staged trout fishing event. He’d write his story about being inside the Atlas Global Security operations. Hank Benedict had impressed him with the scope and reach of his organization. Atlas Global was a prototype of private and public security forces in the future, Benedict had said. Future wars would be limited, fought by highly trained, well equipped, very mobile fighters. The kind you found in private security forces.
Kyle couldn’t argue with that. But who controlled the private security companies? Governments? Corporations? His stomach sank at the thought. Private security companies had been used extensively in Iraq to supplement regular forces. They’d been an unregulated band of modern mercenaries. They hated to be called that, but that’s what they were. Hired guns.
They were hailed as the new wave in modern warfare by the likes of former defense secretaries and vice-presidents. Outsourcing war. The policy had given rise to other private security companies run by former American, British, or South African, or Australian Special
Forces soldiers, all in the mold of Hank Benedict. Kyle had seen these private security forces buzz over Baghdad in their compact helicopters, gunners hanging out the oval doors clutching their weaponry. They monitored and managed the movement of US embassy and support personnel in and around the city. If they saw a threat, it was neutralized.
Then the inevitable happened. Private security guards shot and killed seventeen civilians in one of Baghdad’s busiest intersections. Kyle had raced to the scene, smelled the death, seen the riddled vehicles, the bodies on the streets stained with blood. Iraqis were duly outraged. Kyle shuddered at the memory. Iraqis were already fed up with the Americans by then and this was the final straw. In the end, charges were filed against the company and personnel who’d done the killing were convicted and sentenced to lengthy jail terms. But it meant nothing to most Iraqis. The victims were dead and buried. Nothing was going to bring them back. Nothing was going to repair the damage or to sweeten the bitter taste of what had happened on that day.
It had been Hank Benedict’s company back then and was called Redstone. He’d renamed it to shed the company’s trigger-happy reputation. Now all security companies like Atlas Global demanded they be exempt from prosecution if they were to work in war zones. They didn’t want to be held accountable. Kyle understood. How can you expect a soldier, private or otherwise, to work in a war zone and be liable for each and every person who might be shot and killed? But, and exemption from prosecution was effectively a license to kill.
Kyle drew a deep breath, pulled the memory card from his camera, and inserted it into his laptop. He scrolled through the photos of Benedict and the training activities he’d seen earlier in the day. He had some good ones. The editors would be happy. He began to write.
A couple of hours later, he looked up. The sun streamed in through his west-facing window as he looked over the story one last time.
VISTA VERDE RANCH, N.M.—While President Barry Harris huddles here behind closed doors with congressional leaders, he does so not only under the watchful eye of the Secret Service, but of Atlas Global, one of the world’s largest and most secretive private security firms in the world.
Atlas Global is one of the US government’s top providers of embassy security. The firm is led by Harry “Hank” Benedict, the son of billionaire real estate mogul David Benedict, who is personally hosting this unprecedented political retreat at his high desert ranch retreat.
Kyle sat back, satisfied. A knock on the door made him jump, his nerves on edge. The door swung open, revealing Ariel’s smiling face. “You okay?” she asked.
Kyle nodded. “Ah, yeah.” He glanced at his watch. 5:10. He’d been at his desk for nearly three hours. “I guess I lost track of time.”
“You coming to dinner?”
“It’s time?”
“You’re not hungry?”
“I could use a drink. Who’s at the table?”
“Same as last night,” she said. “You, Hank, Raoul, and me.” Ariel entered the bungalow, then swung an arm from behind her back. She held a bottle of the rare French wine. “Though you might like this.”
Kyle smiled. “You bet. Thanks. But do we have time?”
“I got it from the wine steward,” Ariel said. “It’s for later.”
“Good thinking,” Kyle said, then tilted his head from side to side, his neck cartilage cracking.
Ariel stepped behind him and massaged his shoulders. “My God,” she said. “These neck muscles feel like piano wires.”
She worked the tension from his shoulders and neck, her skilled hands relaxing his knotted muscles, tight for so long Kyle considered the pain normal. “Ohh, that’s feels soooo good,” he groaned. Her skilled hands spread warmth from his neck down to his shoulders and to his back. When she stopped, he stood, took her in his arms, and kissed her, her body melting against his, her arms hugging him.
As Kyle held her he thought about how Ariel had come back into his life after more than twenty years. He felt like he’d been given a gift. The nagging ache suddenly returned to his left knee and so did his memories of how it had been injured.
“Are you okay?” Ariel asked, pulling away.
Kyle snapped back. “Yeah, sure. Was just remembering something.”
Ariel nodded. “C’mon. You need to eat some food, get grounded.”
They crossed the open field from the bungalow to the main lodge, scaled the steps, passed through a brief security pat down, and entered the dining hall, which again was filled with noisy conversation.
Hank Benedict and Raoul were pouring wine as Ariel and Kyle took their seats. “Sorry,” Kyle said, “but I had to finish the story. Took longer than I expected.”
“Problems?” Benedict asked.
“Not at all,” Kyle said, sensing that Benedict was worried about the story. “I just wanted to get it right.”
Benedict knew not to ask to see the story before it was printed, Kyle suspected, but Benedict looked at him expectantly, as if he should talk about what he’d written. I’ll let Benedict dangle for a while, Kyle thought, and reached for the wine bottle, filling his and Ariel’s wine glasses. “Don’t worry,” Kyle said after a pause. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t get a few more contracts after people read it.”
Kyle glanced at Raoul, who nodded, and then at Benedict, who couldn’t stop a small smile from crawling across his face. Kyle had handled the story carefully, fighting off the temptation to cast Benedict as a gun-crazed, paranoid ex-Special Forces operative with a super-sized sense of superiority and entitlement that gave him permission to kill anyone anywhere who he viewed as bad. That included about 95 percent of humanity. Benedict had private army at his disposal. But portraying Benedict as completely crazed would only cause trouble for Raoul and himself, if not Ariel.
Kyle had played the story down the middle and quoted Benedict at length about the virtues of private enterprise meeting the global need for security in this age of terror and the rise of ISIS. All wars of the future would all be asymmetrical, Benedict claimed. No more front lines with one army facing another. Battles would be short, sporadic, and extremely violent. They would happen anywhere, anytime. In homes, in streets, in neighborhoods, in remote territories. No place was safe, no place was immune. No longer was the enemy affiliated with recognized countries or organized states. The enemy was scattered, fractured, loosely affiliated individuals and small groups sharing a vaguely common belief—a belief for which they
would gladly die and take countless others with them.
The counter to the madness, Benedict argued, private security forces were necessary because they could operate outside of traditional government structures. But they needed sophisticated intelligence and attack capabilities. Organized armies were useful only as occupiers, peace keepers, and would move into an area once the threat was neutralized.
To flesh out the story, Kyle had contacted a couple of security analysts, and after some prodding, got them to answer the question: Who controls such groups? The experts said it was obvious: whoever is paying the bill. If Benedict didn’t like what they said, that was his problem.
“The story is being edited now,” Kyle said. “I’m expecting calls on it anytime now. It’ll be available online at the Herald’s website after midnight, ten o’clock our time. You can read it then.”
Personally, Kyle doubted Benedict’s claim that his Atlas Global was the wave of future. Kyle also knew that if he thought about it too much about it, he’d tie himself up in knots. Time will tell. Kyle took solace in the adage that if you gave someone like Benedict enough rope, they’d hang themselves. Until then, he needed access to Benedict and all that he could provide.
Chapter 15
After a dinner that included another platter of grilled bison, elk, and wild turkey, along with more than enough rare wine, Kyle and Ariel walked from the main lodge across the darkened field toward Kyle’s cabin.
“You’re the last person I expected to find here,” Kyle said. “When I left New Mexico twenty years ago, I never thought I’d see you again.”
Ariel turned to him in the darkness, her face barely visible, and smiled. “Our paths have crossed once again.”
“Remember the Ojo Caliente hot springs?” he asked.
“Of course. How could I forget?”
“It was a good time,” Kyle said with a sigh. “You never know how good something is until it’s gone.”
“You were covering a big story then.”
“The land grant protests.”
“I remember the nights at the hot springs hotel,” Ariel said, but her smile dropped into a frown and her face clouded. “What happened to us?”
Kyle’s stomach sank as a wave of guilt swept over him. The affair had run its course—or so he thought. He’d grown tired of Ariel’s new age notions of the cosmos, of fate, and her view of the world as a magical, mystical place swirling with unseen forces. He saw the world in more concrete terms. Cause and effect. Actions and reactions. Something happened or didn’t happen because someone did something or didn’t do something. There wasn’t much magical about it.
She’d been a committed “vegan,” even though he told her heaven had no special place for people who ate only vegetables. Ariel was never preachy about it, but Kyle hadn’t stuck around for that eventuality. Those days felt like a foggy dream now. But they’d been real, very real, and though she’d faded from his life, she was not forgotten. Ariel was different now, as was he--far different from two decades earlier.
Kyle knew now she’d helped him land on his feet. He’d spent a few days with the land grant protesters and the nights with here soaking in the hot springs and making love. He’d come through it all with a stronger sense of himself as a journalist, having found a calling he believed made live worth living. Now back in northern New Mexico, he again felt her strong presence, just as he had then, perhaps more so now. Although they’d led separate lives, they both had let go of what didn’t work in their lives, or had fallen away, like an overloaded truck bouncing down a rough road, the excess baggage falling out.
Ariel seemed focused and settled, comfortable in herself. Maybe it was a Zen-like acceptance of reality that put her at peace with her life. What about me? Kyle remembered the Buddhists talked about surrender. He understood, because at some point, you realize you have next to no control. Like the Serenity Prayer. Accept the things you cannot change, have the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Kyle preferred acceptance over surrender. Surrender meant giving up. An appealing thought sometimes, because it meant the end of struggle. But he wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
“I’m glad we met again,” Ariel said. “I’ve changed. You’ve changed.”
“Life will do that to a person,” Kyle said, looking at her for a long moment, thinking of how neither of their marriages had turned out the way they’d wanted. “I’m sorry about your husband.”
“We all need to move on.”
“Hank was vague last night about what happened to him,” Kyle said. “His name was Jerome, right?”
Ariel paused, her face lighted by the distant lights of the lodge, and frowned at the memory of her late husband. “Hank has always been vague about it. I don’t know why. There was something strange about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jerome and I talked almost every night by phone, you know, just to touch base. Jerome was angry about something in the days before he died. I never knew exactly what. It had to do with what Benedict was doing with security in Benghazi.”
“Benghazi? As in Libya?”
Ariel nodded. “Yes. How many Benghazis are there?”
Kyle shrugged.
“He was one of the security people there.”
“Jerome was there?” Kyle’s mind raced. Atlas Global. Of course! It made sense, perfect sense.
“Yes. He was there,” Ariel said.
“I went to Benghazi right after the security fiasco there when the ambassador was killed. I can tell you what I know probably happened. But I don’t know exactly how Jerome may have been involved.”
She looked at him skeptically, then nodded. “I’d like to know.”
Ariel and Kyle walked in the cool darkness of the night, Kyle wondering where to begin.
“There’s supposed to be a partial eclipse of the moon tonight,” she said. “They call it a blood moon. I want to see it. But first you need to tell me about Benghazi.”
Kyle paused at the bungalow door, inserted the key, and the door clicked open. “This could require a glass or two of that wine you brought earlier.”
Ariel smiled and nodded. “That’s why I brought it.”
Minutes later, they sat on the bungalow steps, each with a wine glass in hand. Kyle took a deep drink. “There was a lot going at Benghazi that no one wants to talk about.”
“Like what?”
“Benghazi was primarily a CIA operation, not a diplomatic mission. The State Department functions there were secondary. They were a cover.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Libya was in chaos at the time. Complete lawlessness. It’s what happens when a maniacal dictator like Muammar Gaddafi is removed. There’s a mad scramble for power.”
Ariel nodded. “I remember seeing those awful scenes on TV when they caught him.”
Ariel shuddered. “It made me sick.”
“It was pretty ugly.” Kyle took a sip. “So much for the high and mighty.”
“Benghazi didn’t happen until later,” Ariel said.
“That’s right,” Kyle said. “In the year following Gaddafi’s death, a lot of people helped themselves to all of the weapons that Gaddafi had stockpiled for his security forces and his army. The CIA and the state department were nervous about it. They didn’t want the weapons to fall into the wrong hands.”
“Wrong hands being Islamic terrorists?” Ariel asked. “That makes sense.”
“The Arab spring was quickly becoming the Arab winter,” Kyle said. “Rather than the flowering of democracy, as President Harris and others at the state department tried to sell it, radical fundamentalist Muslims took advantage of the chaos.”
Ariel brushed hair from her face, then turned and stared, looking east over the forested mountains. A glimmer of light from the rising full moon shone like a beacon. “Oh, my Go
d. The moon is rising now.”
Kyle stared for a moment, then continued.
“In the lead-up to Benghazi, the dictators who had controlled the Arab world were falling, one after another. Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was one of the first. Then the uprising in Syria happened. Bashar al-Assad tried to squash it, but he couldn’t. It turned into a bloody civil war. Revolution spread throughout the Arab world. Gaddafi fell in Libya followed by the government in Tunisia. The state department tried to sell it as the flowering of democracy, the so-called Arab spring.”
“Okay,” Ariel said, looking from Kyle back to the moon, now a white globe hovering over the mountains.
“The dictators had kept the radical Islamists under control, but once the dictators were gone, radical Islam flowered, not democracy.”
Ariel sipped her wine. “So, what about Jerome?”
“Well, I’m not sure. But I know the US was worried about all of those weapons in Libya. So, The CIA contacted our friend Hank Benedict and arranged for a handful of his private security contractors to get the weapons out of Libya. They worried mostly about the portable ground-to-air missiles.”
“Jesus. What the hell are they?”
“They’re very useful in downing all sorts of aircraft like helicopters and commercial airliners,” Kyle said. “They can be carried by one man.
Ariel shook her head, “Hmm. Not good.”
“The CIA contractors, that being Benedict and his men, including Jerome, rounded up most of the weapons. But then they had another problem.”
“Which was?”
“What to do with them.”
“Okay.”
“The civil war in Syria was getting bad at the time,” Kyle continued. “It had been going on for two years by then, and the rebels were being pounded by the Assad regime. The rebels needed arms.”
“Like the ones in Libya.”
“Exactly. But at the time, President Harris was running for re-election. He had pulled the US out of Iraq and was trying to do the same in Afghanistan. The last thing he wanted was to drag the US into another messy war in the Middle East. And, he’d already said the US was not going to arm to the Syrian rebels. Instead, he said he was going to pressure the Assad regime to play nice. That was the official word, anyway.”
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