zures depleted them. One of the real ones was a large cocaine ship- ment, set to depart for Asia on a pair of yachts out of Ecuador. A captain was flying in from South Africa and preparing to travel on the Ecuadorian coast to pilot one of the vessels. On one call, Le Roux and an unidentified contact in Ecuador worked out bribe money for the Ecuadorian coast guard:

UNKNOWN: I need to pay thirty thousand U.S. I'll send it to you in the afternoon and then you have to pay the Coast Guard and these people here.

PAUL: You cannot do that. There's no way I can send thirty thousand by Western Union.

UNKNOWN: Or a bank account.

PAUL: Yes, there is no way to send thirty. Not even three thousand. They would ask questions, you know?

UNKNOWN: So let me see . . . maybe I can give you the name of the Coast Guard and the names of the guys and you send it to them directly.

PAUL: Yes. yes. No problem, it can be like this.

UNKNOWN: Right, right. I'll tell him to give you the names for Western Union and give you the names of the other people we have to pay, and you send the money.

PAUL: Right. No problem. All right, my friend.

The Ecuador shipment was to be the first of a series of South American cocaine deals, and Le Roux made arrangements to hire another South African boat captain, named Kevin Ashby, to pur- chase boats in South Florida and deliver them south, where they would be filled with drugs and sent off to markets in Southeast Asia and Australia. “It's a cyclical thing,” he told Ashby. “Buy a boat, you sail it to Panama, use it in Asia . . . and then go back to the U.S. and buy another boat.”

Le Roux seemed to be taking greater and greater risks, discuss- ing more of his business by phone. In one conversation, he was heard saying he needed two hundred kilos of methamphetamine a