WOLF CREEK TWP, Mercer County — A traffic stop just northwest of the Butler County line netted nine pounds of pure heroin, worth an estimated $2 million on the street, state police said.

Investigators believe the suspected dealers, both from New York City, were headed home about 8:55 a.m. Tuesday when they were stopped on Interstate 80 in Wolf Creek Township.

“This is my biggest seizure of drugs,” said the state police officer, a corporal, who made the stop and later uncovered the suspected heroin hidden in a secret compartment in the suspects’ Honda Odyssey minivan.

The officer did not want his name used because of his assignment with the police drug interdiction unit. The unit is comprised of specially trained officers who look for indicators of criminal and terrorist activity while on patrols. ---- The corporal said two traffic violations, which he would not specify, prompted him to stop the vehicle that was headed east.

Authorities have long acknowledged that I-80 is a major drug transportation corridor, particularly for moving narcotics in and out of New York City.

Soon after the stop, the corporal got the consent of the men; Habys O. Meran, 29, of New York and Juan W. Hernandez, 35, of the Bronx, to search the van.

The officer’s experience with drug traffickers eventually led him to the suspected heroin, which was packed in four kilo blocks.

“It most likely came straight from Mexico,” the corporal said. He described it was “raw heroin,” meaning uncut with any other additive or other drug.

He believes the suspects were coming from Chicago, where they got the heroin.

The corporal would not say if any other contraband was discovered or if either Meran or Hernandez talked to police.

The defendants were both arraigned on felony charges of possession with intent to deliver heroin and conspiracy to deliver heroin. Each is in the Mercer County Jail on $200,000 bail.