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nations. "That one year, we killed nine people," he said. "We hand-grenaded the people's houses. We, ah... not kidnapped a guy, but we conned him to come with us. We put him in the ocean, shot at him; he gave us the money back. Ah... assassinated peo- ple. Ah, what else we did? We smuggled gold. We smuggled weap- ons.

"You gotta use your head," he continued. "If you gotta kidnap somebody to recover funds, you know how you gotta plan a kid- napping, right? Knock the fucking... you knock the guy out in your minivan or your SUV. You already gonna have a place to hide, right? A place to hold him. You just gotta drive there and get to the place, and then once he's inside the building it's no problem. You're gonna handcuff him and all that shit, and then I'm sure he's gonna give you the money, right, or arrange for the money right away. If you have to waterboard him, it's easy, you just put a wet towel on his face and pour water on him about, you know, fifteen to twenty seconds till he talks."

The next day the Colombians arrived at the house. The cartel representatives met individually with each member to make sure that everyone understood the expectations. "You do whatever you have to do," one of the Colombians said. "If we call you and say, 'This fucking guy ain't gonna pay,' that's it. We want you to be magicians.... You disappear people."

Hunter's crew moved into villas in Phuket, where Hunter ordered them to stay in shape while awaiting the next assignment. To his younger charges, he appeared introverted, often sullen. But he also sometimes offered the mentorship of a senior officer, a seasoned veteran with a thousand stories and an eye for all the angles. "Hunter and I built a strong bond as he took me under his wing," Gögel later said. "After a short while our relationship expanded, and I began to view Hunter not only as mentor but as a father figure, something I never had before."

The DEA now had two sets of targets on the hook—the North