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Jack Hook's superiors in Washington saw the powerful cartels in Colombia as their bigger fight. They could pay only scattered attention to the AFO, even after Hook unearthed evidence that the cartel was employing gang members from the troubled Logan Heights neighborhood in San Diego as hit squads across the border. Everything changed, though, with one shocking murder.When Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman-Loera pulled into the parking lot at Guadalajara's airport on May 24, 1993, the assassins were waiting. Armed with AK-47s and grenades, the gunmen opened fire on Guzman's caravan of armored cars. Most of the cars sped away in the hail of bullets, but one -- a chauffeured sedan bearing a distinguished elderly gentleman clad in black -- remained. The gunmen threw open its doors, shot the chauffeur in the head, and fired 14 bullets into the chest of his passenger.
The killers were exultant. They were almost certain the man in black was Guzman, and the Arellanos had placed a $30,000 bounty on him -- reward money they thought would soon be theirs. They slid their AK-47s into duffel bags, jumped into a car and sped away.
Other AFO associates, meanwhile, made their way past security at the Guadalajara airport and then boarded a commercial flight. In the air, the men ordered champagne, drank and laughed. Over and over, they regaled each other with what had happened -- how their people had killed Joaquin Guzman-Loera!
But the man in black was not Guzman, or even a member of his cartel. He was Juan Jesus Posadas-Ocampo, a Roman Catholic cardinal who had traveled to the airport to receive Monsignor Girolamo Prigione, the Vatican's papal nuncio, and had unwittingly mixed in with the drug lord's caravan.
Posadas's death sent shock waves through Mexico, an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country, and made headlines worldwide. It also galvanized U.S. law enforcement to finally bring down the cartel. A special task force composed of agents from the DEA, FBI, IRS and other agencies was created in San Diego. But the real action unfolded just down the street, in Hook's office, where he set an elaborate sting in motion.
Hook saw the Logan Heights gangs as the cartel's greatest vulnerability. If he could get confessions from gang members about their work for the cartel, perhaps he could bring a case against the brothers.
The bait would be drugs. Hook had an informant's car wired for video and sound, and fronted him enough money to make deals. After a half-year, Hook's team had sufficient evidence of drug buys to make a move. One night his agents swept through seedy neighborhoods in Logan Heights, bursting into homes, apartments and bars, and arrested dozens of gang members. Then they put the squeeze on for everything from petty drug possession to weapons violations to immigration laws.
Faced with stiff jail sentences and deportations, some in the gang cracked. They told Hook how they were flown down to remote ranches in Mexico, supplied by the cartel with guns and trained to be assassins and AFO bodyguards. They reported directly to Ramon, they said.
Not long after, Ramon landed on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list, and the State Department placed $2 million bounties on both brothers' heads.
Within six months, Hook was supervising the task force. Right away he pressed for indictments, hoping to get a bead on the brothers' whereabouts and identify more and more associates.
But by then, Benjamin and Ramon had slipped underground. The two used multiple safe houses across the country, traveled under false names and left few trails.
Whenever they did venture out in public, it was always with an army of bodyguards. "A lot of people think you can just go arrest guys like this with a squad of six, seven people," says Mike Vigil, the DEA head in San Diego. "They don't understand. Quite frankly, it's easier to get to the President of the United States."
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