THE STORY SO FAR: Hours before DEA agents are to arrest Internet drug dealers in a worldwide sweep, Temple grad student Akhil Bansal races from his Roxborough apartment to flee home to India. Today's installment takes us back to the day the case began. It is February 2004.

PHILA. INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

It all began on a frigid February 2004 morning - back when Akhil Bansal still viewed shipping pills as a chore for his father, back when DEA agents didn't even have Internet access at their desks.

At the airport, a squat Airborne Express supervisor noticed three suspicious packages on the green conveyer belt and, because they lacked manifests, broke them open.

Inside the first, he found 120 tablets of generic Valium. Inside the others, he found more Valium and knockoff Viagra.

Anonymous packaging. No dosage directions. No evidence of a prescription.

The supervisor called police.

NEAR UPPER CHICHESTER

Carlos Aquino, tired from a three-day training session in Quantico, Va., pulled into the driveway of his canary-yellow suburban home. He planned to take the rest of the day off as comp time, maybe tinker with his fishing boat, an 18-foot Manatee.

The DEA investigator, his once-trim body softened by desk work and agency meetings, hauled his suitcase inside.

He had found the seminar interesting enough - DEA had established a new priority, targeting Internet pharmacies. But Carlos had left the session hoping he never got such a case. It looked complicated, a pain.

"Little cases, little headaches," he'd say. "Big cases, big headaches."

Carlos had had enough big cases. He'd spent 24 years as a Philly cop, nine of them assigned to a DEA task force, busting crackheads, kicking down doors, recovering kilos of dope, nearly getting himself killed working undercover against Jamaican thugs. He could be a hard-ass, but his warm smile revealed an empathetic nature.

Now, at 56, Carlos worked for the DEA division that regulated pharmaceuticals. He carried a clipboard instead of a gun, pursuing a softer kind of criminal, often doctors and pharmacists who violated prescription laws. As bad guys went, they made easy targets. He would say, "Doc, whatcha been doing, huh?" Usually, the doctor would confess on the spot, case closed.