The Traffickers

THREE

D/E Connector Philadelphia International Airport Wednesday, September 9, 3:10 P.M.

Juan Paulo Delgado sat at a rental Dell laptop computer inside the Road Warrior Connection kiosk.

He reached into his camo shorts and pulled out the flash drive. He stuck it in a USB slot on the side of the laptop, and simultaneously hit the CONTROL, ALT, and DELETE keys. When the screen went blank, he held the CONTROL and Z keys simultaneously. The computer restarted, loading the secure program from the flash drive that mirrored his laptop in the safe of his converted warehouse loft.

As the computer booted up, he wondered if there actually was something to what Jorge Aguilar had suggested in his text message.

Did Los Zetas have anything to do with the kid’s disappearance?

The Zetas, led by Heriberto “The Executioner” Lazcano, were mercenaries working as the enforcement arm of the narco-trafficking Gulf Cartel. They numbered some five hundred men, and were heavily armed and well-trained. The majority of them had been commandos in the Mexican Army’s Grupo Aerom?vil de Fuerzas Especiales, which, ironically, went after members of the drug cartels. They were ruthless and fearless. And what they could not or would not do-assassinations inside the United States, for example-they hired others, most notably gangbangers, to carry out for them.

The Gulf Cartel-if not the biggest of the Mexican drug-trafficking organizations (MDTOs), then one of the richest-was based due south of Brownsville, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico, thus the source of the cartel’s name. Since the 1970s, the Gulf Cartel had trafficked pot, coke, meth, and smack into the United States. And they taxed anyone who used their “plazas,” or smuggling routes. The Zetas acted as their lethal collection agency for slow- or no-payers.

Thus, Juan Paulo Delgado knew that the Zetas were not to be fucked with.

He also knew that, compared to the gangs to whom the cartel wholesaled drugs for resale in the United States, he was a very, very small player. He operated on the fringes of what to the cartels was a multibillion-dollar-per-year enterprise. As long as he kept paying the plaza taxes that the Gulf Cartel levied on him, and he didn’t step on their toes, and he didn’t try to become a bigger player, he would more or less be left alone with his crumbs.

Which meant that it had been a damned dumb move to pump forty-two rounds-two of 9-millimeter and forty of 5.7-millimeter-into his former business associate in that South Dallas crack house. Not because it was wrong to take out the bastard who owed him for the kilo of black tar smack. But because that property had also been an occasional stash house for the Zetas.

Not long afterward, he’d learned on the street that they were not exactly pleased that El Gato (a) had drawn unwanted attention to the stash/crack house and (b) had made the mess with what once had been their P90 Fabrique Nationale submachine gun.

Like toothpaste from a tube, there of course was no way to put fired bullets back in a gun. The damage was done. But Delgado had a hard time believing that any of that actually warranted the anger of the Zetas.

You never know, though, what sets those fuckers off.

Or whom they’ll hire to pull the trigger.

They could’ve grabbed the kid-or had him grabbed-to send a message.

Or it could be the kid’s just out getting laid…

For two days?

He shook his head, then clicked on the Firefox browser icon to connect to the Internet.

He signed in to his Gmail account. There was nothing new to read except junk mail. He deleted that. He then decided that while he was signed in, he would just send an e-mail to Jorge Aguilar. Typing took less effort than thumbing and, like text messages, the e-mails also went to Jorge’s cellular phone.

He opened a new window and wrote:

From: jjd ‹4.n.dallas.high@gmail.com›

Date: 09SEPT 1520

To: jorge ‹cowboys_fan_16@yahoo.com›

Subject: the kid send someone (maybe Gomez?) to A amp;M to see if he can find out anything. we need to know if something?s happened.

Then he clicked to send it, and logged out of Gmail.

He typed PHILLYBULLETIN.COM and hit the RETURN key.

A second later, the screen loaded.

He saw that the image of the Philly Inn ablaze had moved farther down the screen. Now the main image was that of emergency vehicles at the Reading Terminal Market. And below that was a photograph of the Temple University Hospital surrounded by Philadelphia Police Department squad cars and what looked to Delgado to be very likely unmarked police cars.

The red text of the ticker crawling from right to left across the top of the page read: BREAKING NEWS… Police Investigating Suspicious Burning of 2 Vehicles Parked in West Kensington… BREAKING NEWS…

Delgado saw that under the photograph of Reading Terminal Market there was a caption:

Gunfire killed two people and injured four others this morning at Reading Terminal Market in Center City Philadelphia. Click here for full story. (Photograph by Jimmy Bell / Bulletin Photographer) And under the image of Temple University Hospital was also a caption. It read:

Temple University Hospital on North Broad Street was the scene of a shooting late this morning, Philly’s second of the day. (See related story by clicking here.) Police said that they were withholding details pending the initial investigation. Witnesses, however, stated that police pursued an armed gunman running from a hospital exit. The gunman fired at the officer chasing him. Click here for full story. (Photograph by Phan Hoang / Bulletin Photographer) That gunman was El Gigante.

And so it was a cop who chased him… and shot him.

Delgado clicked on the link to read the story: ARMED MAN MURDERS BURN VICTIM BEFORE FLEEING HOSPITAL, FIRING AT POLICE

While police remain mum on details of the murder, witnesses claim gunman fired shots at man who shouted “Police!” while chasing gunman from hospital.

By A.A. O?Reilly

Bulletin Staff Writer

Posted Online 09/09 at 11:30 a.m.

Philadelphia-A critically burned man who had just been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit of the Temple University Hospital was shot multiple times by an unknown assailant this morning, according to a source inside the hospital who asked to remain anonymous.

Witnesses on the sidewalk outside the hospital said that about 10:50 a.m. the gunman ran out of the hospital from an exit door at street level. He then fled eastward down Tioga Street. When the exit door opened again, witnesses said, the gunman fired back at it, narrowly missing a man who identified himself by shouting “Police! Stop!”

“It was absolute chaos,” said Sylvia Morris, who was returning to her job at the hospital. “Everyone on the sidewalk was running for their lives.”

As the gunman ran toward Germantown Avenue, witnesses said, he reloaded his pistol. The man who identified himself as police then pursued him.

A short time later, witnesses said that they heard at least four more gunshots in the direction that the two had run, but that they could not see them at that point.

The gunman was described as being a Hispanic male of tiny stature, no older than a teenager. He wore royal blue hospital scrubs and carried in his right hand a black semiautomatic pistol. He remains at large.

A spokesman for the Philadelphia Police Department confirmed that a sergeant from the department had been the one who had chased the shooter. But the spokesman would neither identify the sergeant nor give any details on what happened in the hospital prior to the street chase.

Check back for updates as they become available.

COMMENTS (3)

From PutGodbackinPhilly (1:48 p.m.):

How on earth can something like this be possible? Is there no place in our city of brotherly love that?s not safe? This is what happens when we stop teaching The Bible. What part of “Thou Shalt Not Kill!” do these people not understand?

Recommend [12] Click Here to Report Abuse From PhillyEaglesFan (2:34 p.m.):

Amen, sister. And thank God for our men in blue.

Recommend [14] Click Here to Report Abuse From Hung.Up.Badge.But.Not.Gun (2:56 p.m.):

I talked to an inside source, too, and was told that this was a hit job. Maybe not a professional one, but the burn victim (there?s more to that story that I cannot share) was targeted. So sad to see this happening in Philly. I?ll say it again: Shoot?em all and let the Good Lord sort?em out.

Recommend [6] Click Here to Report Abuse What bullshit! Delgado thought.

He clicked on the page to leave a comment, then typed one and clicked SEND.

After a moment, his message appeared last on the list of comments:

From Death.Before.Dishonor (3:20 p.m.):

What about “Thou Shalt Not Steal”??

The only sad thing about what happened is the gun didn?t empty all of its bullets into that pendejo! Skipper deserved every damn bullet!

Recommend [0] Click Here to Report Abuse Delgado shook his head disgustedly, then shut down the Dell rental lap top. He pulled out his USB flash drive. And then he walked out of the kiosk, headed to the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint for Concourse E.