He looks out the window.
We lift off from Monrovia, Liberia.
He hasnt uttered a word about the irony.
Credit: VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images; William Morrow
The Libyan informant has just arrested him.
The targets were a setup.
On that Gulfstream, the man opposite Dennis Gogel, the hired killer, is Taj.
William Morrow
Taj is a superstar undercover DEA agent, working with the agencys elite and secretive 960 Group.
Taj and the groups boss, Lou Milione, staged themselves as targets.
That was so that none of LeRouxs teams could alert any of the others.
Elaine ShannonsHunting LeRouxdelivers us into close proximity to dangerous people in the most ungoverned places on the planet.
The moment-to-moment, heartbeat-to-heartbeat suspense of the take-downs pervades many sections of Shannons book.
Fiction would be hard pressed to match the tension and color and the new dimensions of criminality revealed here.
There is nothing else quite like it.
It, simply, is better than most crime stories people can make up.
Shannon has the magical ability to write from inside the flow of actual events, making them come alive.
You know its real, and you are there.
The atmosphere of danger and continual scrutiny is tangible.
Its as if were captive in a series calledLifestyles of the Rich and Malevolent.
The revelation at the center of this true-crime saga is Paul Calder Le Roux and the transformation he innovated.
LeRoux is a cybertech genius turned crime lord committing coldblooded murders along the way.
He created a revolution in how transnational organized crime organized itself.
LeRoux deconstructed the conventional ways even sophisticated drug cartels or arms merchants operated.
They still had farm-to-the-arm, vertically integrated business models often locking them to physical locales.
Infrastructure and personnel hierarchies made them vulnerable, visible, and out-o-fdate to LeRoux.
He deconstructed that model and created something completely different.
They corrupt struggling small countries into failed nation-states to provide transport hubs and service regional con icts.
This new worlds innovator and its architect is Paul Calder LeRoux.
They believe LeRoux is the new now as well as the near future.
Many in LeRouxs presence describe his lethal aura of brilliance, deviance, and sociopathy.
That is, our proximity.
We are brought there because people trust Elaine Shannon.
Their perspectives are woven into the compelling fabric of this narrative.
So, too, is the perspective of Jack, the man LeRoux calls his golden boy.
Were flattered by his seductive speech and feel the danger of his MRI-like stare.
Threat is redolent in the heat and humidity.
Not only had LeRoux created squads of killers, hed begun pulling the trigger himself.
The 960 Group, quietly, is law enforcements heavy-hitter.
It is a revelatory true-crime saga.
Michael Mann is an acclaimed four-time Oscar-nominated director, writer, and producer.
