authorities, with bad news: the ship captain Jones had been ar- rested for weapons and drug possession. The Australians tracked him down in jail, where he told them it was all a setup. In a brazen attempt to play both sides, he had met with Dave Smith hoping to recoup the rest of his fee for piloting the boat. "Jones still wanted to get paid, I think he was supposed to get paid fifty grand," Bailey said. So he'd gone to Smith to plead his case. "'Hey, I delivered the boat, I can't help it if it was seized.' In a court of law in a legitimate deal, he would have been ordered to be paid. But you can't go to a real court."

The two argued, until finally Smith agreed to pay the money. He called someone whom Jones assumed to be Le Roux, then told Jones the money would be placed in a paper bag in his truck, out- side the bar. When Jones walked out and retreived the bag, he found not $50,000 but two ounces of meth and a gun. Moments later, the Philippine police swooped in and arrested him.

Bailey and the Australians discussed their options. If they got Jones out of jail, they feared Smith and Le Roux might "move it to the next level" to silence him. But Jones wanted out, and they de- cided to hope that their would-be informant wouldn't put himself right back in danger. According to Bailey, he and the Australians decided to spring Jones from jail. (The Australian Federal Police denied having had any role in the release, suggesting instead that Le Roux's organization was responsible.)

For a while, Jones heeded the agents' advice to stay under the radar. By September 2010, it had been a year since the Ufuk, with no arrests in the case. Jones decided to venture out, confident, the reporter Mar Supnad said, "that the syndicate was no longer run- ning after him." On the morning of September 21, he drove his wife, Maricel, and young son to the Marquee Mall, in Angeles City, the former site of a U.S. military base two hours north of Manila. They were meeting friends, an American named John Nash and his wife, for lunch.

Jones and Nash knew each other from the expat circles in Subic Bay, where Nash ran a security company. Among other things, his