Hunting LeRoux

by Elaine Shannon

  Meanwhile, Shackels and Stammers had showed up in Phuket, eager to make drug deals and arms deals. As usual, they had lots of irons in the fire. On March 9, 2013, at a hotel in Phuket, Stammers introduced Diego and Geraldo to a Chinese man named Chen, who was willing to sell a large quantity of small arms. Speaking through an interpreter, Chen offered, among other things, HN-5 missiles, Chinese-made knockoffs of Soviet Stingers, sought after by militant groups everywhere. Chen and his partner, an Englishman, said they could deliver at least 100 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile systems, including a launcher and two missiles, for a mere $25,000 per unit, or $2.5 million. The informants started negotiations.

  Shackels and Stammers, sniffing fat commissions for brokering arms to the Colombians, set up a series of meetings with more arms dealers of various nationalities. In April, they invited Diego and Geraldo to accompany them to Mauritius to meet some of their contacts in the Serb mafia—men whom Shackels and Stammers had nicknamed “the war criminals.” Cindric and Stouch approved the meeting, seeing it as an opportunity to open a window into a seldom-seen underworld of arms merchants. The agents decided to have LeRoux order the mercenaries Gögel, Filter, and Soborski to go along, ostensibly to provide security for the Colombians. The mercenaries’ willingness to participate might eventually serve as evidence against them.

  The agents, working with the police in Mauritius, set up bugs in the meeting rooms and took photos. To their astonishment, the session turned into a gun-runner summit. Four Serbs showed up, representing Serb mafia organizations in South America, Europe, Africa, and Australia. They seemed deeply entrenched on each continent. They expressed interest in forming a partnership with the Colombian cartels on cocaine deals and with the North Koreans and Chinese triads, moving meth and ecstasy.

  A second meeting, convened strictly to educate the agents about the international arms business, involved a well-known registered arms dealer, Johan Erasmus, a South African who helped governments and reputable security contractors acquire arms legitimately, and Erik Iskander-Goaied, a Swedish-Tunisian businessman. Cindric and Stouch wanted to pick the men’s brains about how the Iranian Defense Industries Organization made arms deals. Interviewed later by the author, Erasmus recalled that he explained to the agents that he didn’t deal with Iran himself, but, for business reasons, he did try to monitor that nation’s arms deals, particularly in Africa. “Iran has a very good small arms industry,” he said. “Their equipment is superior to the Chinese. However their range of weapons is very limited. Their ammunition is also of a good quality. In return for the weapons and ammo they supply to West Africa, they get oil and gold. Lots of it. Plus, due to sanctions, they have got very good delivery channels set up.” Erasmus added that during the meeting, Billy Meintjes, LeRoux’s South African lawyer, pressed him on LeRoux’s behalf to help collect some or all of the $100 million the Iranians had promised for the missile navigation system. Erasmus said he demurred.

  One objective of the Mauritius sessions was to test LeRoux’s theory that arms dealers would snap up his missile navigation system, under development for Iran, and also a small surveillance drone design. The theory went that the arms dealers would compete to broker these systems to small governments and large militant groups. The agents decided to find out more about the potential market for this technology and perhaps develop other useful leads into the world of gray- and black-market arms dealers. They had LeRoux draw up highly technical descriptions of his navigation systems. To explain them and answer questions, the agents introduced a new undercover operative, a Canadian pilot named John. He was a genuine expert in sophisticated small weapons systems and could geek out endlessly on the latest and greatest innovations in the field. Sure enough, the Serbs were impressed with LeRoux’s achievements in navigation technology and wanted to know more.

  But backstage, things were tense. Georges, the French bush pilot, accompanied the mercenaries to Mauritius to make sure they got where they were supposed to go. He was delighted to encounter Erasmus, with whom he had bonded when both had worked for Joseph Mobutu, president and military dictator of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Erasmus, once with South African intelligence, was a military advisor to the strongman; Georges was his pilot. “The old croc!” Georges hailed the arms dealer.

  Georges did not have warm feelings for his supposed partner, John the Canadian. Georges enjoyed swashbuckling, drinking, and checking out the ladies of Mauritius. John was quiet, detail-oriented, somewhat guileless, and devoutly religious. Things went bad when John took it into his head to try to save Georges. Georges emphatically did not want to be saved, and if he talked to God, he didn’t want to say so. Also, he thought John was wrong about some aspects of the weapons system and was about to blow the undercover scenario.

  “If you guys keep putting me with him, I’m going to fucking kill him,” he warned the agents. “This idiot nearly got us caught. I had to use all my military skills to get out of this shitty situation.”

  Fortunately, no blows were exchanged or shots fired before everyone had to head back to Phuket.

  Tensions worsened during the next undercover meeting, in Phuket on May 18, 2013. That day, Diego summoned Hunter and the team to his hotel to hear good news. “Finally, you guys were asking for it, we have a bonus job,” he announced, using the group’s term for contract murder. “There is a leak on the inside.”

  Geraldo piped up that the leak was connected to the “boat that ran ashore.” He referred to the wreck of LeRoux’s yacht, the JeReVe, on Tonga and the loss of its cargo, 204 kilos of cocaine. The discovery of the wreck had made the Australian papers. Diego claimed that after the JeReVe incident two more of his group’s loads were seized. His organization was investigating the losses and possible leakers. He would soon reveal the details of the bonus job.

  “We will take care of it,” Hunter said solemnly.

  That should have been cause for celebration at the safe house. The mercenaries were enjoying traveling around on somebody else’s dime. Diego spoiled the mood by giving Hunter a tongue-lashing for arriving late. He insulted the mercenaries as “little bastards” and “dogs” who would lie down and get up when he said so.

  This was not in the scenario Cindric and Stouch had discussed with Diego. The Colombian was improvising. He had gotten caught up in his character and decided he wanted to portray his cartel guy as an overbearing asshole.

  On May 20, 2013, Hunter fired off a blistering email to LeRoux about Diego’s high-handed behavior:

  Diego said he was disappointed in me, because he gave us one hour to reach his destination. It was impossible to do this. First, not even Delta Force has a one-hour recall. There is a two hour recall, and that’s just to get everyone assembled, and does not include movement. We do not have taxi service where the house is. We have to ride double on 125cc motorbikes except for one guy and their hotel was 35 kilometers away. All Diego gave us was an address and we did not know where it was, there was an electricity outage at the house and we could not even look the address up on the Internet because it was not working. We busted our ass to get there, and then we here shit about being late and what if we were needed. If they might need us in an emergency situation it has to be planned in advance, it is impossible to get everyone together and move to an unknown location in a hour!!! . . . The guys will get the mission done. Diego needs to lighten up, we are here to [do] missions, not play around and be told we have a mission at the end of June. Give us the mission and the guys will do it, they do not need to be treated like their [sic] owned. I’m not being disrespectful, but the guys are professionals and will apply their selves to the mission, when they are needed.

  Georges agreed with Hunter. Diego was making trouble needlessly. Georges went straight from the meeting with Hunter to the room where Cindric and Stouch were holed up, waiting for the audio and video feed, and told the agents he was appalled at Diego’s over-the-top performance. He didn’t think American and European military veterans were going to stand fo
r that kind of bullshit.

  “The way he talks, it’s going to blow up,” Georges told the agents. “The situation is very volatile. Diego is really talking to them like shit. I can read it in their eyes. They’re ready to do something.”

  “Do you think you can hold them?” Cindric asked.

  “Bien sûr,” Georges said with a Gallic shrug. “I can play a game with them and get them back on track.”

  The agents fired up LeRoux’s smartphone, which they carried with them, and sent Hunter this message under LeRoux’s name:

  i will discuss the issues with Diego. relax i know he can be a arrogant colombian but he is good at making money. i will take care of him

  They juggled the assignments. From then on, Georges would play LeRoux’s right-hand man and alter ego in Africa and Asia and would take over as the point of contact for Hunter.

  Diego and Geraldo would deal with the drugs-and-arms trafficking crew—Stammers, Shackels, Lim, and Reyes Peralta. The traffickers didn’t know the mercenaries because LeRoux had kept the branches of his organization stovepiped, as a security measure. There was no chance they would gossip about the Colombian informants or anything else.

  Diego wasn’t happy, but he had no choice. The agents explained that it was for the good of the operation; it wasn’t an option.

  The day after the disastrous meeting, Georges strolled into Hunter’s rented villa, all brisk competence. He said he had spoken to LeRoux, who agreed that Diego’s behavior was “unacceptable.” They were changing operational management. From that time on, Georges would handle all coordination and planning.

  Hunter looked relieved. “We just want the mission,” he said.

  Georges smiled sympathetically and distributed smartphones with a PGP encryption key that double-coded text messages. He asked the men to use these phones to communicate with him and the Colombians. These were the phones that Cindric and Stouch could tail virtually, with a satellite-based cell phone tracking system.

  In June, the mercenary team was dispatched to Nassau to stand guard while 300 kilos of cocaine, actually benign powder, were loaded onto a private plane heading for the United States. The gig went without incident.

  Just when Cindric and Stouch thought they had gotten everything back on track, things went off the rails again. On August 15, Hunter pulled up to Georges’s hotel in Phuket. With him were Gögel and Tim Vamvakias, Hunter’s army buddy, a Californian who had worked for LeRoux since 2009. He was a compact man of forty-two. He must have been good-looking once, but his face said he’d seen hard times.

  “I need to talk to you for a minute,” Hunter told Georges. He wasn’t smiling. “We’re gonna use advanced security measures, right? So, what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna go to your room, we’re gonna search everybody. Leave all the phones, everything there, get whatever paperwork you need, we’ll go talk out at the beach.”

  Georges was worried. Would they discover the body bug he was wearing? Georges tried to avert the search of his body by saying that he was there simply as a messenger, to convey information from LeRoux about the “bonus job.” But Hunter insisted.

  “When you start working with people, you know, you might be good today but two months from now . . . I mean, like him”—he gestured toward either Gögel or Vamvakias, Georges wasn’t sure which—“like he might be a rat tomorrow. I don’t know. Checks and balances.”

  Georges took a close look at Hunter’s eyes. They were glassy. He looked stoned. And he stunk. His hygiene was terrible. Hunter told people he didn’t drink, but he was on something now, Georges was pretty sure of that. Or maybe the stress was getting to him. Georges thought Vamvakias looked drunk, and Gögel looked like a fool, but Hunter looked the worst. They started to make their way to Georges’s room.

  Georges had heard the recording in which Hunter boasted about all his firearms and tactical training. Georges thought Hunter was not only stoned but also a coward. If he was such a hot operator, why was he hiding in the back? Why didn’t he go out with his men and lead from the front? Besides, Georges had figured out that he was embezzling and padding from everyone. What kind of leader would steal from his own men?

  “He is a real fucking piece of shit,” Georges said to himself. “If I could kill this guy myself I would.”

  It wouldn’t be the first time Georges killed someone.

  As Georges walked through the hotel with Hunter, Gögel, and Vamvakias, he considered the fact that he wasn’t in a position to kill any of them. There were three of them and one of him. There was no way to break away from them without risking getting shot. He didn’t know whether Hunter had a sensor that would find his wire. He had never worked with this new kind of body bug before, and he didn’t know how it functioned.

  When they reached room 4305 on the third floor, Georges looked at the windows. One was directly over the pool. Good. He thought he could jump out of a window and into the pool. On the other hand, you could get shot in a pool. . . .

  Non. He needed a Plan B. If they found the wire, he decided to say that LeRoux and Georges didn’t trust Hunter—that LeRoux insisted that Georges tape the meeting and send him the audio for analysis. Georges knew that Hunter was terrified of LeRoux and his Colombian partners and would believe it.

  Hunter told everyone to set their belongings in the room to be searched. Gögel ran a small scanner up and down Georges’s body. He slid the device over the wire in Georges’s pocket and pronounced Georges clean. Georges relaxed momentarily.

  Hunter summoned the group to follow him to the beach so that they could talk freely. Though he had swept the room for bugs and found none, he wasn’t totally confident there wasn’t a recording device still hiding someplace.

  “You’re fucking paranoid,” Georges growled. “They can pick us up on the beach. You’re going to kill a DEA agent!”

  Hunter insisted, so off they went. When they returned to the room, Georges handed Hunter the fake surveillance photos of Casich and Sammy and a document with details of their daily routines in Monrovia. The document was formatted as if drafted by a cartel surveillance team.

  “This is the number one subject,” Georges said. He showed the mercenaries a photo of Milione/Casich by himself and a second photo of Milione/Casich and Taj/Sammy.

  “Joseph Casich with his friend,” he said.

  Hunter pointed to the image of Taj. “He looks a little different with his beard.”

  He ran his finger down a list of cafes and restaurants the pair supposedly frequented. He pointed to one name.

  “Before this place, before the restaurant,” Hunter said. “All right, this is going to be no problem.”

  “Oh yeah, this is looking good,” Vamvakias said.

  “Do they have a car?” Hunter said.

  “Yes.”

  “We will need the license number and the car.”

  Georges said they usually took cabs.

  “So, they’re walking around a lot?” Vamvakias said.

  “They feel very safe there, huh,” Gögel said.

  “According to your intel these guys are out eating and drinking every day? And they’re together?” Vamvakias said.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, good.”

  Georges said that the agent and the Libyan drank a lot and chased women.

  “Perfect,” Gögel replied.

  There was a brief discussion of the latex masks that Hunter had bought to transform the pale German and American into black-skinned Liberians. They were theatrical-quality, moved like flesh, and cost $1,400 apiece. The mercenaries dared not travel to Monrovia with them. Customs agents might raise questions. Georges said he would get them into the country. He promised they would have cars and motorbikes to move around Monrovia.

  “And a couple [of] helmets if we need them because we might just do a motorcycle hit,” Vamvakias said.

  They turned to their favorite topic, “tools,” meaning guns.

  “I think the two biggest weapons we need, two apiece, would be the MP7
with suppressor and two .22s with suppressors,” Vamvakias said. “So two MP7s and two .22s with suppressors.”

  Georges asked if they wanted a .308 sniper rifle. This was a precision long-distance weapon, standard for U.S. and NATO military snipers.

  “That’s just a contingency, if we use it,” Vamvakias said, “But, the bottom line is I think we’re probably gonna have to get up close to them, you know what I mean, to make sure it gets done. And that’s why, if we have, you know, automatic MP7s. . . .”

  “The thing with the .308 is it’s fucking loud,” Gögel said. “You can’t suppress a .308. You know if we use the weapons with a suppression system it’s gonna be easier for us to get in, eliminate the subject, and get out.”

  “Yeah, the whole point in having the .22 is to finish the job,” Vamvakias replied, “or, if I have a weapons malfunction with my primary, that’s my secondary. You know, we gotta do this, hit it hard, hit it fast, make sure it’s done, and get the fuck out of there. That’s all that’s to it. If we got the right equipment we’re good to go. You’ll take the masks; we got a motorbike and a car. We’re all set.”

  “Oh, one last item I was thinking of off the top of my head, was latex gloves,” Vamvakias added. “You know those cheap latex gloves . . . if you got some of those, that’s for handling the equipment, make sure we don’t get gun residue on our hands or anything else.”

  The tension seemed to have eased somewhat. Vamvakias said, somewhat apologetically, that their original list of guns needed was extensive because they weren’t sure how it would go down. Now that they knew more, perhaps they could shrink the list.

  Georges said relax, he had good contacts in South Africa to get the weapons they wanted.

  “That would be sweet if we can get the MP7s,” Vamvakias said. That’s when he referred to the waterfront bar where the assassinations would likely occur as the “kill zone.”

  “The most important thing is to have a suppressor and automatic to get as many rounds into them as possible,” Vamvakias added.