On one of these missions, a fellow contractor told him about a well-paying job involving “a highly specialized security group to protect and secure high-profile clients.” He gave Gögel an email address, and Gögel sent off his CV to Joseph Hunter. A few days later, he got an email back. “Got it,” Hunter said. “Your definitely in.”

Next, Gögel connected Hunter with another former German soldier he’d served with, a high school dropout named Michael Filter, who had also left the service in 2010. With young twin daughters to support, Filter had jumped at the prospect of a job that paid well, for a client that Gögel said “you don’t want to know the details about.” Filter saw it “as a possibility to do some- thing useful and be able to provide for his girls properly,” his sister recalled.

The third team member, Slawomir Soborski, was a Polish ex- policeman. He’d worked for fifteen years in law enforcement, in- cluding five spent protecting the Polish president, and would later claim to have provided protection for President George W. Bush and Pope John Paul II. He too had drifted into contract work— including a stint in the French Foreign Legion—but struggled to make ends meet. In February, Soborski received Hunter’s job so- licitation from a friend in the Foreign Legion and wrote to Hunter directly. “I am convinced that my experience, commitment, and professionalism, confirmed by my references, will lead to the suc- cess of your company and mutual satisfaction,” he said. His ré- sumé included such qualifications as “sniper,” “close-combat specialist,” and “parachutist.”

With the three recruits, Hunter felt they were ready to get to work for the South Americans. He wrote to Le Roux that Soborski and Gögel in particular were “highly qualified individuals that will get a lot of stuff done for us.”

In March, Hunter traveled to Phuket, Thailand, and met Le Roux’s South American contacts at one of Le Roux’s houses, a stucco ranch with a red terra-cotta roof near the Loch Palm Golf