Deadline Man

But when I get there, it’s just a dark door. No window. No gold plate with the company name. Just a suite number. I place my damp hand on the door handle and press it. It doesn’t turn. It’s locked.

“Nobody’s there.”

He has crept up on me so silently that I didn’t hear anything. I don’t like it and my

hand drops into my right pocket and finds the butt of the .357. But he looks benign enough. A medium-sized Hispanic man with dark skin and a white shirt with “Oscar” embroidered on the left side. He has a large set of keys dangling from his belt by a red carabiner. Maybe a janitor.

“There’s never anybody there.”

“Really? I was looking for Olympic Defense Systems. I have an appointment there at two…”

He shrugs. “Whatever. But I’ve never seen anybody come or go. You tried the door? Locked right? Always is. They don’t want it cleaned. Not much to clean. It’s the smallest office on the floor. Just one room and a closet. Building manager says, never go inside.” He gives me a sly smile and jangles his keys. “I went in once. There’s nothing there. Not even a chair. Nothing.”

***

Back at the motel, I start making calls to the East Coast: analysts at defense industry think tanks, my trusted Wall Street research people, a finance professor at Wharton who is an expert on corporate structures. While I wait for return calls, I read the Phoenix paper. It’s the typical Gannett piece of crap, full of stories based on one source or press releases, “news you can use,” boring features. Stuff that mostly screams “Don’t read me.” It’s a pretty product, with color, graphics, boxes, and assorted doodads. But there’s not much worth reading. Too bad Wall Street loved Gannett and every other chain followed its lead. It doesn’t surprise me that Olympic Defense Systems would have something down here. It’s the kind of town where the press wouldn’t ask tough questions. You could get away with anything. What that is, though, I don’t know. I’ve hit another Olympic dead end. There’s only one other possibility here, based on my digging through the corporate reports, but it’s getting too late to check it out today.

I had a friend years ago who worked with me, then came to Phoenix for a job at this newspaper. His wife wanted sunshine. He completely dropped off the national radar, and he was a fine reporter. I consider calling him, but decide against it. Instead, when I get back to my room I call another old friend and colleague. We’ve known each other going on thirty years, and we talk every year. His wife answers and we chat. When she hands him the phone, he gives his characteristic greeting.

“Fitz happens!” Then he gives a high cackle that I know is totally out of keeping with his sturdy, six-foot-six body, handsome coffee brown face, and position in the world. I circle slowly around the real reason for my call. Then he says he wants to call me back. He does so in fifteen minutes. It’s on a secure line. The kind of communications available to Lt. Col. Tony Fitzgerald of U.S. military intelligence.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Friday, November 5th

At precisely nine a.m., a black Dodge Ram pickup pulls under the portico of the motel. He has driven hours to reach Phoenix from Fort Huachuca, but the truck looks immaculate. I am standing there wearing the same outfit I wore when I walked off the ferry, today enjoying the dry, cool morning. A light cloud cover mutes the previous day’s intense sunshine. The truck is an extended-cab job, jacked up so that the door handle is at my eye level. The tinted window rolls down and Fitz is behind the wheel wearing a white polo shirt and jeans. I use the steel rung step to lift myself up into the cab and settle into the passenger seat.

“Turned into a goddamn hippie.” He indicates my beard.

“Long story.”

Fitz’s close-cropped hair is going gray and he’s wearing wire-rimmed glasses that give him an unaccustomed professorial look. In my mind’s eye, we’re both young and wearing green.

“So you want to go to prison?” His voice is a low rumble above the truck’s diesel chant. I show him what I had printed out that morning at the motel business center: a page from the state corrections department on the Arizona State Prison Complex-Cortez Peak and a Mapquest route to get there. It’s a private prison operated by another subsidiary I had never heard of: Olympic Correctional Services. Fitz studies the map and hums to himself. I look in the back and see a red cooler and a long black duffel. The cooler has ice and water. The shapes inside the duffel feel like firearms.

“You came prepared.”

“Always out front,” Fitz says. I lean over and check the map. The prison “complex” is more than out in the middle of nowhere. The writer and editor in me itches against the jargon word “complex.” What the hell does that mean? Sounds like a psychiatric disorder. I’d have a complex if I were in prison, too. I wish this were my biggest care in the world.

Fitz slips the truck into gear and we roll. Half a mile to the freeway—eight clicks, Fitz would say—then we drive west. It takes a long time for the suburban sprawl to fall away and be replaced by desert.

“So how the hell did you get in with ODS?” He’s the kind of driver who looks at you as he steers casually with one hand.

“Another long story.”

“Well, I’m not surprised you were supposed to be dead. My friend, you have fallen down the rabbit hole of the hidden defense budget. Everything down looks up and you can’t believe your own eyes. The world has changed since you left the Army. Now almost half of national security has been privatized, and it’s not just wiring barracks showers that electrocute soldiers. It’s everything. And ODS is the best-kept secret of all.”

I tell him that’s what happens when newspapers cut back on investigative reporting, but he doesn’t seem interested.

“Makes no sense for Olympic to be running a private prison.” He shakes his large head. “Makes no sense unless it’s a black site, in country. They’ve got terror suspects out there, and nobody knows it. Sons of bitches…”

I make no comment. The floor of the truck is solid under my feet and even with the clouds the sky is an endless vault of light, but I feel as if I am sliding deeper into darkness.

“So, since we’re talking about secrets, ever heard of something called Praetorian?”

“That’s a secret,” he says solemnly. Then, a perfect comedic beat and his cackle laugh fills the cab. “Praetorian started out CIA. It was a brass-plate operation that claimed to be in the shipping industry but was really involved in satellite surveillance. North Korea. Iran. Iraq. All the places we couldn’t go. This was years ago. Then the CIA closed it. Fast-forward to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Praetorian shows up as an ODS outfit.”

“They’re part of Olympic? You’re sure?”