by local authorities at a hotel in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. The men were transported to a former Soviet prison; the cops roughed up Soborski enough that he would later require abdominal sur- gery.

That same morning, Vamvakias and Gögel stepped off a plane at Roberts International Airport outside Monrovia ready to assas- sinate the DEA agent and the snitch. The Colombians were sup- posed to meet them as they got off the plane, ready with the weapons, masks, and vehicles. Instead, the Liberian police were waiting, and the would-be assassins were quickly transferred into DEA custody and flown back to New York.

It was a year to the day since Paul Le Roux had made the same trip, with the same result. Two days later, Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, held a press con- ference in Manhattan to announce the success of the Hunter op- eration. "The bone-chilling allegations in today's indictment read like they were ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel," he said gravely. "The charges tell a tale of an international band of mercenary marksmen who enlisted their elite military training to serve as hired guns for evil ends." Paul Le Roux's name and role went unmentioned.