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Authors: James Patrick Hunt
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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
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
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