Tamer Elnoury - American Radical

I was Rico Jordan before I was Tamer Elnoury. Hell, I was a lot of people before I ever got in front of a terrorist. I spent a lot of days looking and acting like a criminal. I had a knack for being able to relate to people. To pull them in and make them feel comfortable, even drug dealers.

I became Rico Jordan as soon as I tied my do-rag.

I stepped in front of the mirror and smoothed out my thick mustache and goatee that grew six or seven inches off my chin. Two hoop earnings went into my left ear. I tucked my baggy pants into my black Timberland boots and slid a pistol between my waistband and the small of my back.

It was close to 6:00 P.M . on September 10, 2001. I was working narcotics in New Jersey, so most of my days started when everyone else was headed home. For months, Id been looking for the distributor of Super High, a potent batch of heroin coming out of New York. When Super High hit the streets, overdoses skyrocketed.

My target was Kit Kats crew. She and her two sons ran a network of dealers working the towns and cities in central New Jersey. After months of buying from them, they agreed to let me meet their Super High source. The suppliers street name was Black. Wed heard of him, but wed never gotten eyes on him. That was my job. Identify him and wait for the SWAT team to make the arrest.

Traffic was thick with the bridge-and-tunnel crowd coming home. Kit Kats crew worked out of a row house at the end of an alley with lookouts positioned on the roof. I parked my green Mazda 626 behind the house after circling the block a few times. Most drug dealers will make a couple of passes to make sure the block isnt hot, and I needed to look the part. It also let me relay information back to the waiting SWAT team. While I drove, I narrated what I saw into a Nokia cell phone.

Four guys at the front of the house, I said. No one on the porch.

Billy, my sergeant, was on the other end of the line. He passed each mental picture back to the staging location, a makeshift command center. At the mouth of the alley, I saw the spotters on the roof watching me. With each step, everything slowed in my mind. Id come a long way since my first drug buy three years ago.

My first buy was for dipshards of crack cocaine chipped off a bigger rock. My hands were sweating as I approached the dealer. I pressed a twenty-dollar bill into his hand and waited for him to fish out a shard from a plastic bag. I was anxious. I couldnt catch my breath. My fingers tingled with adrenaline. I probably looked like a junkie. The dealer put the shard into my hand. I barely felt it as I ran back to the undercover car.

How did it go? Mike, my handler, said.

Good, man, I said. Look.

I held out my hand. The dip was just a smear. The rock melted in my sweaty hands.

Thats great, Mike said. What was his name?

Who? I said.

The dealer, Mike said. What was he wearing?

I stared out the windshield trying to conjure an image.

Was he black or white at least?

I didnt know. I found out later the dealer had an enormous eagle tattoo on his neck. I was so full of nerves and fear I missed everything. It was embarrassing.

After that, I started to study. I found a junkie who taught me how to cook crack, cut heroin and cocaine. But the biggest lesson was the power of addiction. Just the thought of getting high aroused him. He carried a razor blade in his pocket. If he got arrested, he sliced up his leg through his pants and poured heroin into the wound. It was the only way to stave off withdrawal in jail. Rico Jordan was born out of those meetings. There was no respect in the drug world for a user. I had to be a dealer.