oping a reputation as the eager beaver of Le Roux's mercenaries. Unlike many of his colleagues, he lacked military experience, and Le Roux's other mercenaries viewed him alternately as a weekend warrior and a dangerous idiot. He'd met Dave Smith more than a decade before through Samia's brother, a police officer in Massa- chusetts, who had taken a SWAT training course taught by Smith. Samia, who was working construction, had tagged along and played the role of a bad guy in some of the training exercises. After- ward, Smith had encouraged him to start doing executive protec- tion work, and years later brought him into Le Roux's organization. Although Samia had asked Smith for “wet work,” he mostly was given humdrum tasks like transporting gold in Africa or guarding a yacht under repair in a Hong Kong shipyard. He hadn't worked a mission for The Company in years.

But Hunter was desperate to keep Le Roux happy. So he emailed Samia, hoping to line him and a partner up for multiple jobs in Manila. “Boss says you are on standby until the other guy is ready and you guys will come here together for Ninja stuff,” Hunter wrote. “We want you guys, but are just waiting until you and your partner can get on the same time table.”

Finally, in October 2011, Le Roux requested to meet Samia in person in Brazil. Le Roux wired him money to purchase a ticket, only for the would-be international assassin to discover—upon ar- riving for his departing flight—that he needed a Brazilian visa. “You fucked this up,” Hunter replied when Samia emailed to re- port that he wouldn't be making the trip. “We are not paying for your ticket. You'll be paid to do a job with a result. The key word is ‘result.’ We do not pay for thinking about it. We do not pay for trying. We do not pay for your time. We pay for the end result.”

Despite the fuckup, Hunter still had no other options for the job. Samia identified a partner for the operation, a Roxboro friend named David Stillwell. Stillwell was a former IT contractor with financial problems and a love of guns. Roxboro friends described the pair as well-liked local guys who ran a small gun-paraphernalia company together. They traveled to gun shows to market acces-