Cindric and Stouch took Jack to Paris and had him write LeRoux that his new contact, a Shan State Army representative, was looking to buy small and medium-sized arms, including SAMs, antiaircraft missiles, specifically, Russian Strelas, models SA-7 and SA-14.
The email the agents wrote for Jack to send LeRoux said:
He has requested prices on the following items:
For area air defense: SA-7’s or equivalent. They would like to purchase 50 kits (1 launch tube with 3 missiles—50 launch tubes 150 missiles). They would then like to purchase an additional 150 missiles.
For point air defense: SA-14’s or equivalent. They would like to purchase 12 kits (1 launch tube with 3 missiles-12 launch tubes 36 missiles).
They also requested prices for:
M147- time delay firing device, M224- lightweight company mortar system, M249 squad automatic weapon, M107 special application scoped rifle, and M242 vehicle rapid fire weapon system.
They asked if you could package in weapon round containers or missile round containers and delivered at sea either in Bay of Bengal or South China Sea.
Advised they can get an euc [end user certificate], but would prefer no paper trail.
I would like to be able to assure them we can supply weapons to combat US and UN planes and helicopters involved in counter narcotics efforts in the Shan State
Once they hit “send,” they broke for lunch and wandered to a cafe on Victor Hugo Circle. In minutes, the agents’ phones went off one after the other, with urgent texts from Milione.
“Call me now.”
They called.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?” he said.
“We’re sitting on the street in the Trocadero,” Stouch said.
“Eating,” Cindric said. “Food’s pretty good here.”
In so many coughs and grunts, Milione let them know that somebody had intercepted an email from Jack to LeRoux. Somebody had asked him about it.
In more grunts and sniffs, they let him know that they had just sent the Shan State Army shopping list to LeRoux.
“All right, I’ll get this straightened out,” Milione said. He was laughing when he said it, so they finished their lunch and took a stroll.
Milione didn’t tell them, then or ever, who somebody was, or anything else about the conversation. He didn’t have to. If you’re an experienced hiker, you don’t have to meet a bear nose to nose to know when one’s been snuffling around the trail. The agents had been in the federal government long enough to assume that Milione’s contact was somebody in the NSA or CIA, whose agency had intercepted the email with the Shan State Army weapons list. The mention of the SAMs might have triggered a red flag in some classified intercept system.
Several reasons: an ordinary hacker couldn’t have broken into the encrypted channel Jack and the agents used to contact LeRoux. French, British, or Russian intelligence could have done it, but intelligence agents from these nations would not have contacted Milione in a matter of minutes, nor would they have told him what they had intercepted.
No, it had to be somebody from the United States—probably CIA. The agency had liaison officers inside the SOD. They knew what the 960 Group was, that the boss was Lou Milione, and how to get to him fast.
The cryptic coughs and grunts were Milione’s way of warning the agents to go darker—that people in the CIA might be watching them and might figure out who LeRoux was.
“Dude, I think they were going to do direct action on him,” Milione joked later. Direct action meant kill or capture, and “capture” meant kidnap, but neither he nor the agents seriously thought the CIA would kidnap a man out of the center of Paris or drop a drone on a luxury high-rise in Rio.
What they feared was that the CIA might try to poach LeRoux. It had happened plenty of times before. Somebody at the CIA could take it into his or her head to approach LeRoux, expose the DEA investigation, and make him an offer he couldn’t refuse, to become an CIA “asset,” meaning enrolled source.
“They might try to flip LeRoux and turn him to their own,” Stouch said. “Why wouldn’t they want him as a source? A guy operating in all these unstable countries? Embedded in the Philippines, with access to networks of terror, Iran and North Korea? If I were operating in that world, hell yeah, I’d try to flip that guy—grab him and put him on a plane. If he tells them he’s on board, they don’t have to play by the Constitution. But we don’t play in that world. We go at somebody because he’s committing crimes. We’re pretty much black and white, and transparent.”
Theoretically, CIA assets weren’t immune to criminal investigation and prosecution, but in the real world, plenty of them cut deals with intelligence officers in order to beat the criminal justice process. Whenever somebody at the DEA, FBI, or the Justice Department wanted to charge a CIA asset with a crime, he had a fight on his hands. In some cases, disputes over whether to charge a CIA asset went all the way to the National Security Council. In many cases, the DEA and other law enforcement agencies just gave up.
These turf battles were happening with increasing frequency. Some senior CIA officials were rankled by the DEA’s Operation Containment, an initiative launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001, that expanded deployments of narcotics agents to the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Mike Braun, DEA’s chief of operations, devised Containment for all the right reasons, to help deprive terrorists of money derived from transnational organized crime, but in Washington, no good deed goes unpunished. CIA officials regarded DEA (and FBI) agents as clumsy interlopers who would surely mess with their carefully cultivated relationships with local officials. They complained bitterly when more DEA people turned up in Middle Eastern and Central and South Asian countries they regarded as their turf.
Having invested a lot of time and money in LeRoux, Cindric and Stouch were desperate not to lose him. They didn’t know what Milione was going to do, but they trusted that he would quietly solve the problem. He generally did. Sure enough, they never picked up further hints of blowback from their Shan State Army wish list.
The day Cindric, Stouch, and Jack were to fly out of Paris, more evidence they needed to support conspiracy charges against LeRoux arrived, in the form of a wiretap transcript. LeRoux had made a telephone call that was intercepted by the Brazilian police and forwarded by Jim Sparks in Sao Paolo. In it. LeRoux was barking orders to an RX Limited middle manager, Shai Reuven. LeRoux was trying to tell Reuven to take care of a crucial detail in anticipation of his meeting in Monrovia with the Colombian cartel representative. Determined to wow the Colombian, he wanted to offer a master chemist to show the Colombian’s cook how to make primo meth.
LeRoux was trying to talk to Reuven in an impromptu code, but it was too subtle by half. Reuven just wasn’t getting it. The conversation went like this:
LEROUX: We need to get us a cook.
REUVEN: Okay.
LEROUX: I like Mexican food and I want to get me a cook, you know what I’m saying?
REUVEN: Yeah.
LEROUX: I have some guys out of Liberia. Liberia, okay?
REUVEN: Yeah.
LEROUX: Who are partnership with us, we need to send them the cook, all right?
REUVEN: You mean a real cook, yeah?
LEROUX: No, no, no. I am talking for meth, dude. Are you retarded?
REUVEN: For what? For what?
LEROUX: For meth!
REUVEN: Okay, okay, I got you.
LEROUX: Come on now. JEEZUZ CHRIST!
The light evidently dawned on Reuven, who replied that he would recruit a meth chemist from Florida.
LEROUX: (Exasperated) Bye-bye.
For Cindric and Stouch, the wiretap transcript hit jackpot. They could picture LeRoux getting madder and madder and redder and redder, until he finally blurted out that he was making and selling meth and planning to teach some Colombians how to do it. This was damning, irrefutable evidence, straight out of LeRoux’s big mouth. It was exactly the evidence the prosecutors wanted—proof that LeRou
x was ordering subordinates to put an illegal meth scheme in motion. His state of mind—what prosecutors call criminal intent—had to be crystal clear to a judge and jury. The wiretap, especially LeRoux’s exclamation—“I am talking for meth, dude. Are you retarded?”—left no room for reasonable doubt about what he was thinking.
Cindric and Stouch strolled to the Eiffel Tower to watch the evening laser light show. It was springtime in Paris, a Van Gogh starry night. Perfect.
Cindric chose the moment to call his wife, Gena, and also Michael Lockard, an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan who had been assigned to handle the LeRoux case. He wanted to let them know he was on the job, slugging it out, working day and night. Gena had just come in from the stable where she worked and their daughters competed. Lockard was at his desk as always. Cindric decided he had better not rub it in about the Eiffel Tower and the stars.
Stouch didn’t want to call his wife, Kelli, who rose early for her work in a medical practice. He had other ways of celebrating.
“I think we owe ourselves a crepe,” he said.
He walked over to a kiosk and ordered a couple of thin pancakes drizzled with Nutella, a hazelnut and chocolate spread beloved by French children and so much classier and je ne sais quoi than the jar of Skippy that usually powered his twenty-mile runs.
Aw hell, Stouch decided, special occasion. A little sugar wouldn’t kill him. He could put up with Paris.
Jack flew from Paris to Rio on Sunday, May 11, 2012, checked into his hotel, and donned two bugs, one that recorded audio, the other, an audio-video recorder. He was on his own for the first time. Cindric and Stouch couldn’t accompany him to Rio because they couldn’t get visas. Relations between the United States and Brazil were so sour that U.S. government employees faced long delays whenever they tried to visit Brazil on their official passports.
The agents flew on to Panama City, where Jack would join them after his session with LeRoux. Jack had told LeRoux that after they met in Rio, he would go straight to Panama to meet with the Colombian cartel people. Good tradecraft dictated that he go exactly where he said he was going to go. LeRoux would be scrutinizing Jack’s expense accounts and airplane ticket receipts for any anomalies. He might even hire someone to shadow Jack, physically or virtually. Jack would follow the script—meet with LeRoux, as planned, then fly to Panama City, check into his hotel, hand off the body wires, and get some sleep.
Jack’s cab pulled up outside LeRoux’s condo in the Barra da Tijuca about 9 p.m. Sparks met him on a side street with a crew of cops from the Brazilian anti-narcotics unit. He told Jack that they’d hit a snag. The Brazilian cops had heard from the DEA agents in Minneapolis that LeRoux was extremely dangerous—a killer. They didn’t want Jack to go into the building. If Jack went inside the condo and got shot by LeRoux, the Brazilians cops would be dealing with the corpse of an American operative. That would be impossible to explain to their superiors, much less the Brazilian press. Couldn’t Jack talk LeRoux into coming out and meeting him in a public place? A restaurant, perhaps?
Jack didn’t think LeRoux would pull a gun on him. They were going to talk business “like two best friends. I was his golden boy at that time.”
He phoned Cindric and Stouch. “They want me to meet him somewhere else. Paul won’t go for that.”
Cindric and Stouch told Sparks that he had to convince the Brazilian cops they were overreacting. It was true that LeRoux had ordered killings. But he had paid hit men to carry them out. As Jack said, he was a klutz with weapons. Besides, he wasn’t going to open fire in his own condo, in front of his own child.
Sparks told the Brazilians all that and explained that the recording devices Jack was wearing were tiny and well concealed. After some rapid-fire negotiations in Portuguese, Sparks convinced the cops to let Jack pass.
Jack headed up the elevator. A woman answered the door, holding a chubby, beady-eyed baby. “If that’s not a little fucking LeRoux, I don’t know what is,” Cindric said when he saw the video.
The woman wasn’t Cindy Cayanan, LeRoux’s regular girlfriend. Cindy was model-thin, with high cheekbones and long, straight hair. This woman was short and chunky—maybe the Brazilian baby mama of LeRoux’s anchor kid, or maybe yet another girlfriend. She averted her eyes and let the men get on with business.
Like LeRoux’s places in Manila, the Rio apartment had a spectacular view and almost nothing in it. LeRoux motioned Jack out onto the balcony. More hospitable than their previous meetings, LeRoux offered Jack a stool and a Coke Zero and got down to business.
Jack launched into a spiel about the reasons for his visit. The Colombians wanted to make meth in Liberia, ship it to Portugal, store it there briefly, and then distribute it in smaller parcels to Europe and the United States.
LeRoux leaned in. Listening to the tape later, the agents could hear his intensity and excitement. LeRoux’s command of detail was extraordinary. He had already thought out the minutiae of setting up a meth lab in Liberia, including which officials to bribe where. He knew where to buy supplies and how, when, and where to smuggle them. He knew chemistry and materials science.
“The deal’s like this,” LeRoux said. “Everything’s cool, everything’s good, the chemicals will be priced. I have the prices on the hydrophosphorus acid, I have the prices on the iodine crystal, the sulfuric acid—all that stuff’s cheap. I’m waiting for confirmation on the pseudoephedrine. It’s all straightforward to buy, there’s no problem. As far as I’m aware, from China, we don’t need a license for the hydro or the iodine or the sulfuric . . . we buy it in Hong Kong, no problem without a license. But the pseudo, yes, we will need a license, but if they have an EUC [end-user certificate] it’s no issue.”
Pseudoephedrine—pseudo—was the active ingredient in meth. Law enforcement agencies worldwide were always on the alert for shipments of this powerful chemical. LeRoux showed that he had researched how to get it by the barrel and the options. He knew that one course of action would cost more time. Another would cost more money. The Colombians would have to decide which was more valuable to them—time or money.
Chinese pseudo, he explained, was cheapest and he could order it by the ton, but Chinese chemical manufacturers required an end-user certificate and paperwork. It would take two months to ship.
Indian vendors, on the other hand, were faster. “We can ship any amount of pseudo they want from India right now. In fact, we have fifty keys ready to ship,” LeRoux said. “It will make it much faster if we just ship it from India without a license. We could just ship it unofficial as pool chemicals from India or whatever.
“The difference is like this,” LeRoux said. “On the one hand, the EUC will be cheaper because we don’t have to pay any bribes [to the Chinese]. On the other hand, if we ship from India, we have to pay bribes through customs, [and] the price per kilo is around twice the Chinese price. So in China, instead of $1,500 it will become $2,500 or something like that. So, that’s the difference. But we can send . . . whatever the fuck he wants. Anything! Either from India or from China.”
As he listened to LeRoux, Jack glanced down to see the edge of the secret recording device coming out of its hiding place under his cuff. A spike of electricity ran up his spine. He slid his hand over the loose part, trying to keep his cool as he tucked it back in his cuff. If LeRoux grabbed his arm to inspect what was under his sleeve—catastrophe. The investigation would be blown, and Jack with it.
“Don’t panic,” Jack said to himself, starting to panic. “Lie. He’ll believe. You’re still his golden boy.”
LeRoux’s eyes followed his hand. He missed nothing. He looked at Jack quizzically but kept silent.
“Stupid diving gadget,” Jack said, shrugging. “Always some problem.”
LeRoux nodded and got back to business. Jack breathed. After swearing that he would never trust anyone, LeRoux was showing that he trusted Jack, at least long enough to make the connection he so desperately wanted with the Colombians. LeRoux started talking about the cl
ean room, the meth industry term for a mobile lab. “Everything—the chemical, the fume room, the clean room—I suggest we containerize it and ship it to them,” he said.
“Yeah, because it’s Africa,” Jack said. His heart had slowed to normal.
“Yeah, otherwise it will have been months trying to get all the parts and assemble it,” LeRoux replied. “. . . Personally, you know, I know how these things work. It’s better we just give them ready-to-go, otherwise you just fuck around, six months.”
And, by the way, LeRoux said, “I’m ready to take the other product.” He meant Colombian cocaine. He was eager to get his hands on a lot of cocaine, which he could sell for a whopping price in Australia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. His previous attempts through people who were not Colombians had failed miserably. He was ready to buy from the factory.
“How soon can they get the other product to Europe?” LeRoux pressed. “I need it in those places I told you. Either UK or Spain.” He wanted ten kilograms of cocaine to begin with and, if it was good, he would take up to fifty kilos.
He returned to the subject of the North Korean meth that he wanted to broker to the Colombians. “There’s no top end on that, no top end,” he said happily. “We can get, if they wanted, the highest-quality product. The highest-quality product! It’s coming from the North Koreans, believe it nor not. They’re manufacturing the shit! There’s no control. Up to six tons a month is available, I am told, [and] nobody is buying that quantity because that’s the upper limit. The Chinese [Triads] are the biggest buyers. We buy from them. They deliver to us at sea.”
North Korean meth was more expensive than Mexican or Colombian meth but, he said, it commanded a much higher price in Asia. He was getting it through Kelly Reyes Peralta, the bartender at Sid’s Pub, and Reyes’s connection, the Chinese Triad rep in Manila, Lim Ye Tiong Tan. LeRoux had recently agreed to buy forty-eight kilograms of pure North Korean for $60,000 a kilogram through Reyes and Lim. It was an exorbitant price. He could get acceptable meth for as little as $10,000 a kilogram wholesale in Thailand. But LeRoux knowingly overpaid for the sake of guanxi—connections—an all-important concept for anyone who wanted to do business in China. He was determined to cultivate contacts in the Chinese Triads so they would help him buy arms manufactured by state-run arms industries of the People’s Republic of China. These factories turned out good-quality, cheap, popular guns, grenades, mortars, and mines.
Hunting LeRoux Page 20