Adam Garber was the second-in-command of the OWLF team in Predator 2, played by Adam Baldwin. He worked beside Special Agent Peter Keyes, watched the monitors in the team's command trailer in Los Angeles, and froze when the trap set for the City Hunter failed and the capture team was killed. Garber survived the night and took over the operation after Keyes died. Later novels showed him questioning Dutch Schaefer in 1987, flying Dutch over the crater in 1997, and recruiting Scott Devlin for the OWLF, before a hunter killed him at a police conference in Rio de Janeiro in 2022.
Biography
Earlier Life
Garber was already working alongside Peter Keyes on the OWLF task force a decade before the Los Angeles hunt. In September 1987, the two interrogated Dutch Schaefer at Mountain Home, a Tennessee veterans hospital, where Dutch was recovering after his fight with the Jungle Hunter in Val Verde. Keyes stayed polite, but Garber was hostile. When Garber warned Dutch not to cross them, Dutch jumped up, and Keyes gripped Garber's arm to keep him seated. Garber told Dutch about skinned wolves, bears, and a stag and laser burns on trees, and grinned that he could not wait to meet one. This account came from Aftermath, a story in Predator: Eyes of the Demon.
Dutch escaped from the hospital dressed as an orderly, and Keyes sent Garber to alert local police. The two agents followed him to a ranger station, where Garber snapped at the rangers for barely looking at Dutch's photograph, and then searched the area around Mount Mitchell by helicopter. When a hunter's ship opened fire on them, Garber fitted a scope to a rifle and shot back through the open side door. He wanted to capture the creature, but Keyes made Dutch the priority. Dutch later climbed out onto the landing gear and refused to come with them, and Garber ordered the pilot to take the helicopter up.
Arrival In Los Angeles
In 1997, Garber arrived in Los Angeles with Keyes and a federal team hunting the City Hunter. After the hunter killed a Jamaican gang in a Bunker Hill penthouse, Keyes took over the scene, and Garber and two other agents grabbed reporter Tony Pope's video camera and smashed it on the floor. When Lieutenant Mike Harrigan demanded to know who Keyes was, Garber stepped up to escort him out and told him that Keyes was the last person in the world he wanted to cross. Later, after Harrigan confronted Keyes in a lobby, Garber hurried over and looked to Keyes for instructions.
The Command Trailer
Garber worked from a console in the OWLF command trailer, reporting temperature readings and the saturation of the Cesium 90 tracer used to prepare the trap in a slaughterhouse. When Keyes brought Harrigan into the trailer, Garber helped show him what the team knew, including a taped interview in which Garber questioned the survivor of the penthouse massacre in Spanish. He picked up the hunter on the pheromone scanners as it reached the roof and explained that the team's suits blocked their body heat and made them invisible to its heat vision. When the hunter entered the building, Garber told the team over the intercom that it was time to move.
The Slaughterhouse Trap
Garber and a technician switched between helmet cameras and building cameras as Keyes led the capture team up a steel stairway. When the hunter moved behind the team, Harrigan realized that it could see them and shouted at Garber to pull them out. Garber panicked and could not decide what to do, so Harrigan pushed past him and warned Keyes over the intercom himself. Garber then ordered his men to stop Harrigan, but the detective knocked two of them down and ran out of the trailer. Garber returned to the monitors and tried to guide the team as the hunter attacked, while sweat ran down his face and Keyes fought for his life inside.
Inside the slaughterhouse, the OWLF capture team was killed one man after another. Garber heard screams and gunfire over the speakers, and the camera feeds turned to static. He told the technicians that the whole team was dead, although Keyes survived that first attack and was killed by the hunter shortly afterward. In Predator: Stalking Shadows, Garber took responsibility for the mission after his superior's death. He refused to accept the blame, even though his superiors believed that he had no real talent for leadership, and he knew that he would be held responsible for the failure of the operation in Los Angeles.
The Crater
Garber took the OWLF helicopter from a rooftop to search for the City Hunter and found Dutch climbing into the cockpit. Dutch made him fly, and they were circling the area when the ship of the Lost Tribe burst out of the ground and threw the helicopter into a spin. Garber regained control and spotted Harrigan at the edge of the crater. Dutch ordered him to land and ran off into the dark, and Garber walked toward the crater planning to confront Harrigan. He met Harrigan there exhausted and beaten, said that they had come so close, and watched the ship's vapor trail until Harrigan told him he would get another chance.
Leading The OWLF
Garber remained with the OWLF after Los Angeles. In Stalking Shadows he became Dutch's contact, warned him about a more ruthless rival organization inside the government, and sent his own men to meet Dutch's team after a jungle fight. At the funeral of Marcus Thorne, Dutch introduced a smiling man in a dark suit named Adam Garber to the injured soldier Scott Devlin, and Garber told Scott that he had a proposition for him. He later asked Scott to lead the OWLF Communications Hub, which tracked alien incursions around the world, and its funding grew every year after that.
Stargazer And The OWLF
According to Stalking Shadows, a rival group called Stargazer appeared in 2016 and recruited former OWLF personnel along with the government agents who had clashed with Dutch. Garber's Communications Hub worked uneasily beside Stargazer for about two years. Stargazer's attempt to capture a hunter alive in 2018, the operation shown in The Predator novelization under CIA agent Will Traeger, caused enormous death and destruction. Stargazer was dismantled after that failure, and the OWLF that Garber had helped to rebuild was reinstated in its place.
Death In Rio De Janeiro
In 2022, Garber had left government service and was selling weapons for Legends, Inc. at a police conference at the Rio de Janeiro Convention Center. He was demonstrating the LI547-B1, a rifle with a laser scope and a grenade launcher, when he recognized Harrigan, who had retired from the police two years earlier. When smoke rose over the Cortado Centro favela, Garber spotted a skinned body hanging from a tree through his rifle scope. He knew at once that a hunter was responsible and ran back inside to collect his weapons. These events took place in Drug War, a story in Predator: If It Bleeds.
Garber attacked the hunter from the rooftops of the favela with a laser-sighted grenade launcher and automatic fire. A blast tore apart the corner he had fired from and blackened his face, but he ran on to new positions and finally hit the Predator, splashing it with green blood. Moments later a missile from the hunter blew his legs apart, and the red targeting laser of its shoulder cannon settled on his head before it exploded. Harrigan later took Garber's grenade launcher and used it against the same hunter, and the weapons Garber had brought to sell were used by others in the fight.
Garber In Predator 2 Comic
Dark Horse published a two-issue Predator 2 adaptation in 1990 and 1991, written by Frank Henkel from the Thomas brothers' screenplay. Its art drew Garber older and skinnier than Adam Baldwin, with gray hair and a lined face. He had a smaller role than in the film, though the comic included his moment at the trailer monitors, where Harrigan grabbed his shoulder and shouted at him to get the team out while Garber said the hunter should not have been able to see them. The adaptation ended before he landed with the helicopter at the crater, so his closing exchange with Harrigan never appeared.
Behind The Scenes
Adam Baldwin played Garber in Predator 2, released by 20th Century Fox in 1990, opposite Gary Busey as Peter Keyes and Danny Glover as Mike Harrigan. The film called him only Garber, and the first name Adam came from later books. Simon Hawke's 1990 Predator 2 novelization retold his part in the Los Angeles hunt. Bryan Thomas Schmidt's Aftermath placed him at the 1987 interrogation of Dutch, and Schmidt and Holly Roberds wrote his death in Drug War. Garber did not appear in The Predator novelization, which mentioned the 2018 Stargazer operation that Stalking Shadows later tied to the OWLF.
Garber nearly returned in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. According to the production history of the 2007 film published by AvP Galaxy, directors Greg and Colin Strause wanted Adam Baldwin to appear as Garber, but scheduling conflicts prevented it. The part went to Robert Joy instead, who played a new character, Colonel Stevens, the officer commanding the military forces in Gunnison, Colorado. The same account noted that the filmmakers had also hoped to bring back Bill Paxton as a diner chef and Michael Biehn as a Special Forces commander, but Paxton was too expensive and the studio rejected the idea of casting Biehn.
Famous Quotes
- "He's right there! He's right there!"
- "Harrigan! What the fuck happened in there, huh?"
- "Goddamn it. We came so close!"
Conclusion
Adam Garber was the OWLF agent who stood at Peter Keyes's side from the 1987 interrogation of Dutch Schaefer to the Los Angeles hunt of 1997. When the trap in the slaughterhouse failed, he froze at the monitors while the capture team died, and he took over a ruined operation after Keyes was killed. He stayed with the OWLF and recruited Scott Devlin to run its Communications Hub. In 2022 he was selling weapons in Rio de Janeiro, where he fought a hunter from the rooftops of a favela and was killed by it.
Appearances
- Predator 2 (1990)
- Predator 2 novelization by Simon Hawke (1990)
- Predator 2 comic (Dark Horse, 1990-1991)
- Predator: If It Bleeds, "Drug War" by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Holly Roberds (Titan Books, 2017)
- Predator: Stalking Shadows by James A. Moore and Mark Morris (Titan Books, 2020)
- Predator: Eyes of the Demon, "Aftermath" by Bryan Thomas Schmidt (Titan Books, 2022)
Tag Categories: Predator Universe Characters | Predator Lore | Predator 2 Lore | Predator Hunt Survivors
