Al Dillon was the CIA officer who brought Alan "Dutch" Schaefer and his rescue team into Val Verde in Predator, the 1987 film in which Carl Weathers played him. An old comrade of Dutch from the army, he sold the mission as the rescue of a cabinet minister and then joined the team in the jungle. After the raid on the guerrilla camp exposed the cover story, he lost the trust of the men. He later went after the Jungle Hunter alone to buy the survivors time and was killed in the trees.
Biography
Earlier Life
The film gave Dillon little backstory beyond his old bond with Dutch. The two men had served together in the army, and Dutch greeted him at the base with a grip that turned into a test of strength, the Predator handshake that later became a famous meme. Dutch won and teased him about pushing too many pencils at the CIA. In the helicopter Dillon showed the men a lighter and said that he and Dutch had each received one in 1972, a gesture the team met in silence.
The novelization by Paul Monette filled in more of his past. There he was Colonel Al Dillon, a career intelligence man in his mid-thirties who had grown up in South Central Los Angeles. The book said he was the only kid of color from his block who had made it out for good, and that his combat training started on the streets. He had shared special services duty with Dutch in Thailand, and the lighter bore the snarling panther crest of the commando unit they had served in.
By the time of the mission the novel placed him behind a desk at Langley. He had received his orders only a day before he flew south, and he arrived in jungle fatigues so new that the creases still showed. The book used that detail to set him apart from the men of Dutch's rescue team, who saw him as a desk man and an opportunist. In the jungle he paid for the lost years, nursing an aching calf and a back he had twisted when he tripped over a root.
Recruiting Dutch
Dillon joined the briefing in the office of General Phillips, who told Dutch that a helicopter carrying a cabinet minister and his aide had strayed across the border and come down in guerrilla country. When Dutch asked why the regular army could not handle it, Dillon answered that some fool had accused him of being the best. He mentioned a job that Dutch had turned down, and Dutch replied that his men were a rescue team, not assassins. Dillon then laid out a simple plan to pick up the trail at the wreck, grab the hostages and get back.
Dutch bristled when Dillon said he was coming along, since his team always worked alone. The general settled the matter with an order that Dillon would evaluate the situation and take charge once the team reached its objective. The film treated the briefing as a sales pitch, and Dillon spoke of friends who were about to get squeezed without naming them. The novel added that he praised a hostage rescue the team had carried out at the Sudanese embassy in Berlin weeks earlier, flattery meant to win Dutch over.
Flying Into The Jungle
The team flew in by Huey before dawn and rappelled into the trees, and Dillon told Dutch that he had never known how much he missed the work. Dutch answered that he had never been that smart. At the wreck Dillon brushed off the heat-seeking missile that had brought down the helicopter, saying the guerrillas were getting better equipped every day. On the trail he made too much noise for Mac, who put a knife to him and warned that he would bleed him quietly and leave him there if he gave away their position again.
The trail led to the skinned bodies of Jim Hopper's team, Green Berets out of Fort Bragg whom Dutch had known. When Dutch asked what the men had been doing there, Dillon claimed that nobody had told him of any operation in the area. The novel showed him taking the flight plans from the crash site and treating the second set of tracks as just another rebel patrol. He kept the team moving toward the guerrilla camp, where he expected to find the men he had come for.
Raiding The Guerrilla Camp
At the camp the team watched a Soviet adviser shoot one of the prisoners, and Dutch gave the order to attack. He put Dillon with Hawkins as the backup group while Mac and Blain took the nest and Billy and Poncho dealt with the guard. Dutch then blew the fuel dump, and the team overran the camp in minutes. Dillon fought through the huts with the others, and the novelization added that Hawkins set aside his earlier rudeness toward him once the shooting started.
Once the camp was quiet, the men found that the dead hostages were not Central American officials at all. Mac reported that the cabinet minister had been CIA and that the dead guerrillas included Russian military advisers. Dillon went straight for the papers in the camp and sorted them with obvious delight. In the novel he told Dutch that they had the rebels cold, and even the bills for printing antigovernment posters seemed to matter to him. Dutch handed him the one sheet that told him more than the rest.
Facing The Cover Story
Dutch pinned Dillon against a wall and accused him of setting the team up. Dillon defended the operation, saying that they had stopped a major invasion and that the guerrillas would have crossed the border within three days. He admitted that his own men had been aboard the downed helicopter and that the camp had been sought for months. When Dutch asked about Hopper, Dillon said that he had gone in and disappeared, and he had needed someone who could crack the rebels.
Dutch said he had once been a man he could trust, and Dillon replied that he had simply woken up. He called Dutch an expendable asset whom he had used to get the job done. Dutch answered that his men were not expendable and that he did not do that kind of work. The novelization went further and had Dillon say that the CIA and the White House had used the rescue as cover, with the CIA team flying too close to the rebels on a reconnaissance run.
Marching With The Prisoner
With guerrilla reinforcements close by, Dillon insisted that the team take Anna, the only survivor of the camp, because she knew the rebel network. Dutch argued that she would give away their position at every chance, but Dillon reminded him that he was still under orders. Dutch gave in on the condition that she was Dillon's baggage and that he would be on his own if he fell behind. The team then headed for a valley to the east, the only way out of the area.
On the march Dillon struggled to keep Anna moving and fell behind the others. During one stop Mac called him over, told him to turn around and flicked a scorpion off his back with a knife. Dillon thanked him, and Mac answered that it was no trouble. In the novel Anna promised him that he would wish he were the scorpion once her people caught him, and Poncho mocked him for failing to control a prisoner half his size.
Losing The Team
When Anna broke away, Hawkins chased her down and was killed by something none of the men saw. Soon afterwards Blain died in the same way, and Mac emptied his minigun into the trees without finding a body. Dillon blamed the guerrillas and was told by Dutch to get on the radio. The reply was that extraction was denied because the area was still compromised, and the team would have to reach another sector for pickup. Dillon cursed the people on the other end of the line.
Dutch threw his own words back at him, saying that they were all expendable assets. Dillon answered that it came with the job and that he could accept it, but Dutch told him that he was just like the rest of them. The exchange marked the first time the two men stood on the same side since the camp. In the novelization Dillon claimed over the radio that the team was just over the border with two dead and guerrillas in pursuit.
Holding The Ridge
The team dug in for the night on a ridge, and Dillon questioned Anna in Spanish about what had happened to Hawkins. She said that the jungle had come alive and taken him. When Billy warned that something was waiting for them and that it was no man, Dillon insisted that a couple of guerrillas were out there and that the team had to take them down. Dutch asked whether he still did not understand that whatever had killed Hopper wanted them next.
At dawn Anna said that the attacker changed colors like a chameleon and used the jungle. Dillon called it a psych job and mocked the idea that a lizard had killed Blain and Hawkins, insisting that there were two or three men at most. He wanted to take Anna and head for the helicopter, which was ten miles away. Dutch refused, saying that the team had to make a stand or nobody would be left to reach it, and the men built a trap in the trees.
Going After Mac
The trap caught only a wild boar, and when the creature struck again it wounded Poncho, and Mac ran off after it. Dutch moved to follow, but Dillon stopped him and said that he would go after Mac himself. Dutch told him that it was not his style, and Dillon answered that he had picked up some bad habits from Dutch. When Dutch warned him that he could not win, Dillon said that maybe he could get even, and he told Dutch to hold on to the helicopter.
The novelization gave the scene more weight. There Dillon pulled rank, reminded Dutch that he was still his commanding officer and promised that he and Mac would be right behind the others. The book said that Dutch was almost touched by his sincerity and saw in him a glimpse of the man he had once been willing to die for. In both versions the two men parted as friends, and Dillon ran into the trees after Mac.
Last Stand & Death
Dillon caught up with Mac, and the two men planned a simple ambush, with Dillon flushing the creature toward Mac so that he could kill it. Before the plan could work, the hunter killed Mac with a plasma bolt. Dillon found the body and opened fire, but a shot from the plasma caster blew off his arm. The severed hand kept firing into the ground as he screamed, and the Jungle Hunter then came out of hiding to finish him off.
The creature lifted him off the ground and drove its wrist blades through his body, and his dying scream carried back to the survivors. In the Monette novel the hunter used a spear instead, taking his arm above the elbow and then opening his abdomen with a second throw. The book closed his death with the thought that nobody at Langley would ever know that their desk man had died in heroic combat. His death left Dutch with only Billy, Poncho and Anna.
Personality & Traits
Dillon began the mission as a man who had traded loyalty for the agency. He lied to an old friend, sent the team into a fight it had not chosen and called its men expendable without apology. He was also proud, eager to show that his desk years had not softened him, and quick to dismiss anything that did not fit his view of the enemy. Even after Blain died, he held on to the idea of a few well-trained guerrillas.
The hunt broke that certainty. By the time he volunteered to go after Mac, he had accepted that he was as expendable as the men he had used, and he chose to face the creature so that Dutch could escape. His last words to Dutch, about holding the helicopter, put the survivors ahead of himself. The arc turned the cold officer of the camp back into the comrade Dutch remembered, though only in his final hour.
Weapons & Equipment
In the film Dillon carried a Heckler & Koch HK94 styled as an MP5 submachine gun as his main weapon, with an M1911A1 pistol as his sidearm. When he went after Mac he took a second submachine gun and fought with one in each hand until the hunter shot off his arm. He wore a dark green field cap for most of the mission and a vest over his fatigues, and he wore a white shirt at the base before the flight. The pistol never came into use during the hunt.
The Monette novelization had him carry a rifle during the march, and in one scene Anna tried to grab it before Poncho put a gun to her ear. The book also described the battered lighter with the panther crest that he carried in his pocket, the one personal item it gave him. In the novel's account of his death, the severed hand still gripped the trigger and fired a last round of bullets into the sky as he died.
Echoes After Val Verde
Dillon did not return after Predator, but later stories looked back on the mission he had organized. In Predator 2, the government agent Peter Keyes hunted a new creature in Los Angeles with knowledge drawn from the Central American incident in which Dutch's team had died. The novel Predator: Concrete Jungle by Nathan Archer showed General Philips recalling the account that Dutch had brought back from the jungle eight years earlier. Neither work named Dillon, but both treated the mission he set up as early proof that the hunters had come to Earth.
Behind The Scenes
Carl Weathers played Dillon in Predator, which John McTiernan directed for 20th Century Fox from a script by Jim Thomas and John Thomas. A former professional football player, Weathers was best known at the time as Apollo Creed in the Rocky films. The film opened in the United States in June 1987. The handshake between Weathers and Arnold Schwarzenegger at the start of the film later became one of the best-known internet memes drawn from an action movie.
In early drafts of the script, then titled Hunter, the character was named John Dixon. The film never gave Dillon a first name, and the name Al came from the novelization, while some later sources used George. In 2015 the Predator content for the fighting game Mortal Kombat X added a skin for Jax based on Weathers as Dillon, with new lines recorded by the actor. In 2012 the goblin spider Predatoroonops dillon was named after the character, and Weathers died on February 1, 2024, at the age of 76.
Famous Quotes
- "Some damn fool accused you of being the best."
- "Make it easy on yourself, Dutch."
- "That was in '72. Me and Dutch both got one."
- "Never knew how much I missed this, Dutch."
- "You're an asset, an expendable asset, and I used you to get the job done."
- "I picked up some bad habits from you."
- "Maybe I can get even."
- "Just hold on to that damn chopper."
Conclusion
Al Dillon was the CIA officer who lured his old friend Dutch into Val Verde with a false rescue story to destroy a guerrilla force. The deception cost him the trust of the team, and he spent most of the hunt dismissing the creature as a few rebels. As the men died around him, he came to see himself as expendable as they were. He went after Mac to buy the survivors time and died at the hands of the Jungle Hunter in Val Verde, leaving Dutch to finish the fight.
Appearances
- Predator (1987)
- Predator novelization by Paul Monette (1987)
- Predator 2 (1990), indirect mention
- Predator: Concrete Jungle novel by Nathan Archer (2005), indirect mention
Tag Categories: Predator Universe Characters | Predator Lore
