Club. Gögel, Soborski, and Filter arrived for their first in-person meeting. Hunter had told them to dress like tourists for the trip— “nothing military police looking”—and had wired them expense money for their tickets. Once everyone was present, Hunter, dressed in a Batman T-shirt and cargo shorts, gathered them around the kitchen table. None of them noticed the small video camera mounted inside what looked like an electric junction box in the ceiling, in- stalled by a DEA technician a few days earlier and feeding into a DVD recorder hidden in the panel above it. The DVR in turn was connected to the Internet, transmitting the crew’s discussions to a team of local Thai police and DEA agents.

Hunter, projecting the authority of an experienced commander, disclosed the identities of their clients: two men from a Colombian cartel, associates of Hunter’s boss, whom he referred to as “Benny.” “You’re gonna see tons of cocaine,” Hunter told them. “You’re gonna see millions of dollars. You’re gonna see gold.”

The team’s work, he said, could include surveillance and counter-surveillance of drug shipments, collecting money from people who hadn’t paid the Colombians, and carrying cocaine. “There’s bonus work,” Hunter said. “It’s assassinations. So if you are interested in that, you can do it. If you are not interested, you don’t have to.” A “minor” assassination, he estimated, might earn someone $25,000, with the price escalating “depending on the threat level.” Regardless, the three of them would be joining a rarified group. “Once a mission is received, that mission becomes sacred to you,” Hunter said. “You will accomplish it to the end at all costs.”

For the next hour, Hunter delivered a sermon extolling merce- nary life under the boss, pausing only for the occasional “yeah” from his team. “It’s just like a military mission,” he said. “You see James Bond in the movie and you’re saying, ‘Oh, I can do that.’ Well, you’re gonna do it now. Everything you see or you’ve thought about, you’re gonna do. It’s real and it’s up to you.”

Hunter’s soliloquy wandered from dramatic recounting of his own exploits to detailed instructions on kidnappings and assassi-