among other tasks, was seeking office space for Rainbow Force, at Le Roux's direction. He needed a location with access to the highest-speed Internet, and generators so that the power would be guaranteed to stay up twenty-four hours a day. Eventually Fadlon settled on space in a bland twenty-story office building in Rio, and posted a job seeking an IT officer to administer the company's computer systems.

As GISE conveyed to Bailey and Brill everything they were see- ing and hearing, the contours of Le Roux's plan began to emerge: He was reconstituting his online pharmacy operation in Brazil, while doubling down on international narcotics and weapons traf- ficking from his new base. His equipment supplier back in Ken- tucky, Jon Wall, was now shipping goods directly to the address of the woman on the Rainbow Force registration. The ultimate purpose of those goods—which included satellite phones and "side-scan sonar" used for mapping the sea floor—wasn't hard to imagine.

Over the early months of 2012, Le Roux's employees around the world began showing up on the Rio surveillance. Shai Reuven, the Philippines-based Israeli who now seemed to have a hand in all parts of the business, arrived to talk in person. In surveillance photos the Brazilians took and passed back to the DEA, Le Roux could be seen in a pale-yellow-striped polo and sky-blue shorts, hands on hips, as he chatted with Reuven outside a Pizza Hut in a Rio mall.

It was the kind of direct surveillance of Le Roux that Bailey and Brill had been missing since the investigation began, almost five years before. And they were about to be twice lucky. Some of Le Roux's former employees appeared ready to talk.

It had been more than a year since Robert McGowan, the Zimbab- wean whose name was all over Le Roux's companies, had autho- rized an attorney in the United States to contact the FBI. The request languished, but by early 2012 it finally wound its way to