Peter Jacob Keyes was a CIA officer who ran the Other Worldly Life Forms Program in Predator 2, played by Gary Busey. After the jungle hunt in Val Verde he interrogated Dutch Schaefer, then took a DEA cover into 1997 Los Angeles to trap the City Hunter. A smart disc cut him in half in a slaughterhouse before he could freeze that hunter. His son Sean Keyes later ran the same office, then the Stargazer lab that replaced it.
Biography
Earlier Life
Peter J. Keyes earned a Ph.D. in Physical Sciences from Cornell, then went into the Strategic Defense Institute right after college. Two years later he was commissioned as a captain in Air Force Intelligence. Detective Jerry Lambert pulled those military records in Los Angeles, in Simon Hawke's Predator 2 novelization. An FBI check only confirmed a federal task force on paper. The public file stopped at the Air Force rank. Everything after that posting was classified, and Lambert read the blank as a cover, not a missing career. That sealed stretch was CIA work. He was a Company man who wrote a long run of field notes through those years, and file photographs later showed a tall man with white-blond hair and a wide grin.
Interrogating Dutch
Keyes reached Dutch at Mountain Home, the VA hospital in Johnson City, Tennessee, after the Jungle Hunter self-destruct in Val Verde. Hawke's novelization put him in that room weeks after the blast, with doctors expecting bone cancer or leukemia from the residual radiation. Dutch and Anna Gonsalves both passed the polygraphs. An investigative team found a crater that did not match any tactical nuke in inventory, then a smaller scorched patch of jungle with the mark of rocket engines. Dutch ripped the tubes from his arms, overpowered the orderlies, stole a car from the lot, and vanished. Keyes kept the file, then spent a decade chasing odd reports, comparing the grind to Project Blue Book, and waiting for the pattern Dutch had told them to look for.
In Aftermath, published in Predator: Eyes of the Demon, Keyes and his aide Garber wanted that first hunter treated as salvage, and Dutch refused. On 12 September 1987 Dutch taped a statement as insurance against the same government that had sent his team in, then left the locked ward. News from Pisgah National Forest later reported skinned animals with skulls and spines taken, and Dutch went after the Youngblood Yuahro on that mountain. Keyes wanted both men alive, and teams with M24s moved into position, until T'an'tath's ship opened fire, killed Agent Pereira, and extracted Yuahro wounded. Dutch boarded Keyes's helicopter under that fire, then stepped off the skids as it lifted. An OWLF survey team in radiation suits had walked the Val Verde crater and found little besides the hole itself.
Arrival In LA
Ten years after Val Verde, Keyes brought a small capture team into the 1997 Los Angeles heat wave. Hawke dated that hunt to 1995. He and Garber arrived by helicopter in civilian clothes and ran the hunt from a trailer packed with monitors. Lambert's check had him transferred out of the D.C. office eight months before the heat-wave killings. The federal cover story was a DEA task force sent to sit on the city's drug war. Keyes used that story to hold Metro at the perimeter while he tracked a hunter that came into the city to feed and take trophies.
Posing As DEA
Special Agent Keyes walked into Lieutenant Mike Harrigan's office at the Alvarado precinct and introduced himself as DEA. Deputy Chief Phil Heinemann had already ordered Metro to hold the Colombian shootout for that federal team, and Harrigan had ignored the hold, shot El Scorpio off the roof, and seen a heat-haze shape at the edge of the building. Keyes wanted the street cops off the case and the crime scenes under his people. Harrigan did not believe the drug-enforcement story and did not stay out. Captain Pilgrim told him to leave Keyes alone and did not expect that order to hold.
Taking Vega's Penthouse
King Willie's Jamaican posse hung the Colombian dealer Ramon Vega in a Bunker Hill penthouse, then the hunter hit the room and wiped the Jamaicans out. Vega's mistress lived long enough to call the thing El Diablo. Keyes took that scene out from under Metro, put Garber on the reporter Tony Pope, and ordered Harrigan and his detectives off the floor. Harrigan left Detective Danny Archuleta there with a warning to watch himself. Danny climbed into the rafters, found a spear tip, and touched the hunter under a cloak in the dark.
Harrigan Slams Keyes
Harrigan came back to a partner cut apart, and Keyes held the penthouse with Garber and the rest of the federal team. Harrigan slammed Keyes into a wall and told him to stay out of the way. Keyes let him walk, then kept the cover in place while Heinemann dressed Harrigan down with the same file that listed eighteen years, ten valor commendations, and the wrecked patrol cars. Metro buried Danny in the heat. Keyes did not give Harrigan a real explanation, and Harrigan refused to wait for one.
Showing Harrigan The Hunt
After the subway massacre, Keyes's men grabbed Harrigan off the street, cuffed him, and walked him into the trailer that served as the capture command post. The hunter had followed Detectives Leona Cantrell and Jerry Lambert onto a packed car, killed Jerry when he stood and fought, and spared Leona after a scan showed a second life in her abdomen. Keyes greeted Harrigan there, then sat him in front of the monitors. In Hawke's book he wore a white lab coat over the suit and ran pheromone signatures, treating Harrigan as an audience for a secret he had held for ten years.
Inside that trailer Keyes and Garber played Harrigan a taped interview with Anna and the crater footage stamped DAT-AQ-8088, plus a heat-scent trace they treated as the killer. A Jungle Hunter had wiped a Special Forces unit in Central America, left Dutch and Anna alive, and set a blast Keyes put at three hundred city blocks. He named earlier heat-and-conflict stops at Iwo Jima, Cambodia, the Negev, and Beirut, and put hunter visits as far back as seven hundred years. He told Harrigan the hunter was on safari and that Harrigan was the lion in this city.
The team had spent two weeks learning that the hunter came to a packing house every two days to feed on beef. Capture men wore refrigerated silver suits meant to hide body heat from heat vision, and they carried nitrogen guns, a net, and restraints. Keyes meant to freeze the hunter alive, isolate the self-destruct, and keep the technology. He pulled on a silver suit that marked him from the rest of the team, told Harrigan to sit and watch, and went in.
Hit By Wrist Rocket
The suits hid the team's heat, so the City Hunter cycled through other vision modes until the work lamps gave the men away. It killed most of the capture unit on the slaughterhouse floor with a spear, darts, and speed the nitrogen guns could not match. Harrigan broke out of federal custody, went in with a shotgun and an M-203, and blew a door off its track while the hunter's shoulder cannon was tracking Keyes. A wrist rocket then hit him and threw him out of the fight, leaving Harrigan on the floor with the hunter.
Back With The Cryo Gun
Harrigan kept firing after a plasma caster bolt punched the plate under his vest, dropped the hunter long enough to pull its bio-mask, and got a look at the face underneath. He started the same line Dutch had used in the jungle. The hunter woke, finished the word for him, threw him aside, and broke the shotgun. Keyes came back into that room without his helmet, his face scarred, his suit scorched, nitrogen gun in his hands. He told Harrigan to get out and tried to freeze the hunter among the hanging carcasses.
Cut In Half
The hunter pulled a disc from its hip, set the edge glowing, and threw it before Keyes could fire a second blast. The disc cut through hanging beef, cut Keyes in half, and returned to the hunter's hand. His upper body hung in the air for a moment, caught on a slaughterhouse hook, and a large splash of blood hit the wet floor before the torso came down. Harrigan ran for the ladder while the hunter came after him. Garber watched the trailer monitors go to static, then later landed an OWLF helicopter at the crater after Harrigan killed the City Hunter aboard the Lost Tribe ship. The federal team had come close enough to lose Keyes and most of the capture unit, and not close enough to take a live hunter.
Sean Keyes, The Son Of Peter Keyes
Sean Keyes was Peter's son, played by Jake Busey. The Hunting Grounds tapes date his posting as OWLF regional director to 23 February 1996, and put him in Los Angeles that July prepping a mobile lab for a live capture. In Predator: Stalking Shadows, Peter was dead after the slaughterhouse. Sean pulled Marine Scott Devlin off the street for the retrieval, told him the hunter had killed his father, and lost the argument when Dutch ordered Garber to land and took a severed arm in a combat gauntlet. Those tapes also name Peter's associate Adam Garber as the man chosen to head operations on 21 September 1997, after the helmet and arm bought a funding extension, and they have Sean leaving Dutch off the books under a line marked Cleaning Services.
The Predator: Hunters and Hunted made Sean a medical specialist in xenobiology who had read his father's notes in school. He looked like Peter and used the same careful stare, with less of the intensity. Roger Elliott, who had broken the rules to let him see those files, remembered Peter as a CIA officer and watched Sean take a live hunter from the Reapers at the Stargazer dam lab. In The Predator (2018) evolutionary biologist Casey Brackett met Sean there beside the Fugitive Predator. The film wounded Sean in the gut and left him alive. The novelization spells him Shawn H. Keyes, shows Casey a photograph of a tall white-blond father with the same grin, and has the hunter behead Shawn and take a hand for the scanners. Predator: Hunting Grounds later credited Sean with the Yautja DNA treatment that put a 78-year-old Dutch back in the field.
Keyes In The 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, with Dan Barry on the first issue and Mark Bright on the second. In the comic Keyes briefed the team on olfactory scans that built an image from scent molecules, then sent them in with bulky freeze guns, sealed helmets, and ultraviolet radio silence. The plan was to freeze the hunter, move it into a cryogenic chamber, and get the wrist bomb off it before another jungle-scale blast could go off in downtown Los Angeles. He treated the hunters as visitors for seven hundred years, named Nam and Beirut as earlier heat-and-conflict stops, and put the Central America blast at two hundred acres of rainforest rather than the film's three hundred city blocks. Bagging a specimen for weapons work came second to stopping that device in the city.
Behind The Scenes
Gary Busey played Peter Keyes in Predator 2, and Adam Baldwin played Garber. An early draft would have opened on a golf course, with white-haired Dutch climbing out of a helicopter to team with Harrigan. Arnold Schwarzenegger left for Terminator 2, and Keyes took that federal slot. Stephen Hopkins directed the 1990 film from a script by Jim Thomas and John Thomas, and the capture team wore refrigerated silver suits so the hunter's heat vision would miss them.
Simon Hawke's 1990 novelization added Keyes's hospital hours with Dutch, and Bryan Thomas Schmidt's Aftermath put Keyes and Garber at Mountain Home in September 1987. James A. Moore and Mark Morris's Stalking Shadows left the office open under Sean after Los Angeles. Jake Busey, Gary's son, played Sean Keyes in The Predator in 2018 and voiced the Hunting Grounds tapes written by Jared Gerritzen, Chris Means, and Jordan Mathewson.
Famous Quotes
- "You don't know what you're dealing with."
- "He's on safari. Lions. The tigers. The bears. Oh, my!"
- "You're the lion. This is his jungle."
- "He comes here every two days to feed. Seems he has a taste for beef."
- "I've waited a lifetime for this, and I'm not going to miss the chance."
- "We have to capture him."
- "Guess who's back."
- "Get out of here, Harrigan. I'm gonna save your ass."
Conclusion
Peter Keyes was the CIA officer who turned the Val Verde crater into a capture office, sat with Dutch in a hospital, and took a DEA cover into 1997 Los Angeles. He learned the City Hunter's feeding pattern, hid a team in refrigerated suits, and died in that slaughterhouse when a smart disc cut him in half. Garber lived through the night, and Sean Keyes inherited the files, the office, and the same hunt.
Appearances
- Predator: Eyes of the Demon, "Aftermath" by Bryan Thomas Schmidt (2022)
- Predator 2 (1990)
- Predator 2 comic (Dark Horse, 1990-1991)
- Predator 2 novelization (Simon Hawke, 1990)
- Predator: Stalking Shadows (2020) - already dead
- The Predator: Hunters and Hunted (2018) - mentioned
- The Predator (2018) - mentioned
- The Predator novelization (2018) - photograph
- Predator: Hunting Grounds (2020) - tapes
Tag Categories: Predator Universe Characters | Predator Lore | Predator 2 Lore
