Jacob Diaz

By the dawn of the century, the Gulf Cartel had grown to become the most powerful drug trafficking syndicate in the world.

Based in the city of Matamoros in the Gulf state of Tumalapas, directly across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, the organization smuggled 20 tons of cocaine into the United States every month.

Osiel Cardenas had taken over the leadership of the legendary cartel after orchestrating the murder of its leader, Angel Gomez Herrera, in July 1999.

Cardenas was part of the new generation of Mexican drug traffickers, young men who weren't only bold and technologically savvy, but also vicious and willing to kill at the slightest provocation.

The key to Cardenas' ascendancy was his relationship with Lieutenant Arturo Guzmán de Sena, an officer in the Mexican Airborne Special Forces Group, or GAFE.

Together, Cardenas and Guzmán de Sena formed Los Zetas, a paramilitary group of 31 former Mexican Army Special Forces soldiers whom Cardenas had persuaded to defect from the military.

They took the name Los Zetas, the Zs, from the radio call sign of the GAFE.

To ensure their anonymity, the Zetas were only identified by their call sign designations.

Guzman de Sena was Z1, with the others following in order of rank, Z2, Z3, Z4, and so on.

Originally, these soldiers had been groomed by the Mexican military to combat drug traffickers.

They were trained by Israeli defense forces at the infamous School of the Americas in Georgia and by American special forces at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

In a diabolical twist, Cardenas assigned them the responsibility of securing drug trafficking routes, collections, and executions, often carried out with unspeakable savagery.

The Zetas were armed with military-grade assault rifles to 50mm machine guns, grenade launchers, and ground-to-air missiles.

Led by Z-1, the Zetas were ruthless.

Because Cardenas offered salaries considerably higher than those paid by the Mexican government, more special operations troops soon defected and joined.

Training camps near the border of Texas were established, and experts from Guatemala's counterinsurgency special forces were brought in to run them.

Now 300 strong, the Gulf cartel's paramilitary wing was the most powerful group of enforcers in the history of organized crime.

Once Cardenas became the undisputed leader in 2000, he then set his sights on the biggest prize of all, the plazas controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel, led by Yaquin El Chapo Guzman.

Bobby, a friend of Stacy's, was a white guy from Alabama.

Sometime in 2001, he was busted by the DEA for running a grow house.