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time at all DPR had connected him with a dealer on the site, and after agreeing to the $27,000 price,
Carl had been given the address of a man named Curtis Green, who worked for DPR and who had
agreed to take possession of the coke as a middleman for the buyer.
As soon as the deal was struck, the Marco Polo task force had to scramble to get things in order.
Thankfully, Carl had a connection at the Major Crimes Unit in Utah, which had agreed to loan the
agents the kilo of cocaine from the evidence vault for their sting operation.
A few days later Carl picked up the coke and a Priority Mail package. Before placing the drugs
inside, he drove over the package in a truck a few times to make it look like it had been through the
mail. The agents decided to do a “controlled delivery” of the drugs, with one guy posing as a postal
worker to drop off the package at Green’s house and then, hopefully, arrest him. But given that this
was the Marco Polo task force, the operation was a mess from the moment they landed in Utah. In
particular, the agent tasked with dressing up like a mailman had decided not to dress up like an actual
mailman. He just lazily slipped the postal jacket over his normal clothes for the delivery.
“This guy looks nothing like a postal worker,” Carl said to the gruff agent next to him as they
watched the fake postal worker slip back into the white van.
A few minutes went by, and finally the door to the dilapidated house creaked open and a heavyset
man with short, dark hair emerged, peeking out of the doorway like a timid and lost animal. This was
Curtis Green, who appeared to be in his early forties and who had a visible look of worry across his
face. Green, Carl knew, was one of the key lieutenants in the Dread Pirate Roberts’s vast drug
network, spending his days holed up in the house, brokering deals between buyers and sellers and
resolving disputes when transactions went wrong.
Green looked directly toward the white van, then down at the package, and walked cautiously out
onto the porch. A pink walking stick in hand, he hobbled toward the parcel, then leaned down to pick
it up and examine it. The package was a Priority Mail box, no bigger than a brick, and there was no
return address anywhere. He wore a fanny pack around his waist, and it shifted slightly as he ambled
across the porch. Seemingly deciding he wanted nothing to do with the package, Green threw the
parcel into a trash bin on the lawn and limped back inside.
“What the fuck?” Carl exclaimed. The men in the van were in disbelief too. What now? They all
knew that you can’t arrest someone for throwing a brick of cocaine in the garbage. As they
contemplated what to do, Green reappeared, slowly peering out of the doorway as he had a few
minutes earlier. This time he retrieved the package from the garbage and brought it inside.
The door clicked closed behind Green. It was go time.
It took only a few seconds for the back of the white van to burst open, which prompted a cascade
of subsequent thuds from the doors of the cars parked around the corner. Dozens of men from the local
SWAT team and DEA streamed out of the vehicles, with long dark guns drawn, and trampled across
the dead grass on the lawn. A black battering ram appeared and slammed into the front door of the
little white house. The agents of the Marco Polo task force stormed inside. “On the floor!” one of
them yelled as Green stood over the now-open package of powder with a pair of scissors in his hand,
a plume of cocaine covering his face.
Green, stuttering, did as he was told, lying down on the ground as quickly as he could. He called
out the names of his two Chihuahuas, Max and Sammy, as they yapped at the men with guns. “Keep
your hands where we can see them!” an agent yelled. Max, the older of the two dogs, couldn’t handle
the mayhem and lost his continence, shitting himself on the living room floor, while Sam, the smaller