I SENT FOUR MEN NORTH TO MEDELLIN. Gary and Jack Alvarez went to the police headquarters. Tony Mafnas and Joe Vega went to establish a sniper/observer position at La Catedral prison, which overlooked all of the Medellin valley. They weren’t up there to shoot anyone, but with their laptop computer, satellite phone, and long-range scopes and lenses, they could receive SIGINT on Escobar’s location and zero in visually on any location in the valley below. On the grounds of his private prison, Escobar built rustic little individual cottages. The one where Mafnas and Vega set up was actually picturesque, with a little wooden railed balcony where they put up their observation gear. Compared to missions where we’d slept in rat-infested barrios and snake-riddled jungles, we joked that they were living high on the hog.
The next morning, I went with Ambassador Busby to meet El Presidente. Cesar Gaviria worked out of a kind of presidential palace, an elaborate office building in the heart of downtown Bogota. But his office was not at all opulent. Instead, it was simple and elegant, with a burnished conference table and some framed original landscapes on the walls. Busby made the introductions in Spanish, and my first impression of the Colombian president was that he was a man laboring under a heavy burden. His would-be murderer was on the loose again, now threatening not only his personal future, but that of the country he meant to lead.
We gathered around the conference table and I began to brief the president in my crappy Spanish, muddling along, mangling the syntax. Embarrassed, I said to Gaviria, “Con su permiso, quiero hablar ingles.”
“Certainly,” said Gaviria, who spoke perfect English.
Relieved, I went on to explain the composition of our element and how our people were positioned. Then I concluded. “Senor Presidente, the United States is offering a $2 million reward for Escobar. We are prepared to train your people, and support them with all the intelligence we can gather on Escobar’s whereabouts. We will stay as long as we have to.”
“Thank you very much, Colonel,” Gaviria said. “We need your support. I think you understand the importance of finding Escobar. This is in the best interests of both our countries.”
While I was meeting with Gaviria, Gary and Jack Alvarez met with two senior Colombian military officers, including Lieutenant Colonel Lino Pinzon who would be in charge of the “Search Bloc,” the military component tasked with hunting Escobar.
Gary and Pinzon immediately despised each other.
Pinzon, with his salt-and-pepper crew cut, was considered a bit of a Casanova and had a reputation as a careerist who saw other people as stepping stones to the next rank. He was exactly the kind of leader Gary couldn’t stand. At their first meeting, Gary sized Pinzon up as unserious about the mission—at best afraid of failure, at worst on the take. And it quickly became clear Pinzon resented Gary’s good-ol’boy, take-charge manner. Clearly, Pinzon wanted to be deferred to. And Gary wasn’t interested in deferring to a man he considered no better than a bureaucrat.
For credibility’s sake and to avoid offending our hosts, Gary introduced Jack Alvarez as “Colonel Santos.” Delta was working with a very aggressive ambassador who expected us to convince the Colombians to undertake a task that to them meant certain death. We could not force them to act, and so had to rely on persuasion, and on the Colombians’ confidence that we were a highly trained force. Jack Alvarez was one of the world’s elite warriors. But none of the Latin American countries had a professional NCO corps. If the Colombians thought Alvarez was an enlisted man, they would likely have dismissed his advice as that of an untrained grunt.
Back at the embassy, I got comms set up in the CIA station. With my radio operator and intel analyst, I could receive SIGINT reports from NSA, and human intel from Bill Wagner and Joe Toft. From there, I also had radio comms with Gary, SouthCom, and the guys up at the observer position. The next morning, I called SouthCom to update Joulwan on what we’d done to that point.
Joulwan’s operations officer got on the phone and immediately went on the offensive. “What are those guys doing up there at La Catedral?”
“Just observing,” I said.
“Are they armed?” the J-3 demanded.
“Yes, they’re armed.”
“Do they have rules of engagement? Are they allowed to engage targets?”
“No. It’s purely a defensive position.”
“Who else is up there with them?”
“There are a couple of Colombian soldiers up there for force protection.”
“Okay. Don’t do anything until we get back to you.”
Oh, good, I thought as the line clicked dead in my ear. Now I can go back to watching soaps and eating bon-bons.
Three hours later the J-3 called back. “Your observers up at La Catedral? Just make sure they understand they’re in an observer role. They’re not up there to engage any cartel people unless it’s in self-defense.”
“We understand the rules, sir,” I said.
That annoyed the crap out of me. First, I felt like the folks at SouthCom didn’t trust Delta, that they were convinced we were down there freelancing, gunning for Escobar ourselves. Second, I felt Joulwan didn’t trust Morris Busby, thought he was too aggressive. I knew SouthCom was concerned about the legal and public relations issues associated with Americans getting involved in ground ops. The South American media—particularly those on Escobar’s payroll—could certainly be counted on to call the use of any U.S. firepower an American invasion of Colombia, whether we were there to liberate them from under Escobar’s boot heel or not.
Still, I thought SouthCom’s reluctance was very strange: usually it was the other way around, with the generals ready to launch, but frustrated by foot-dragging diplomats.
I brushed my irritation aside, and all of us began working the intel really hard. Escobar liked to use a cordless phone, not radios. From the embassy, SouthCom, and from the air, analysts monitored all cordless calls, listening for the drug lord’s voice. We relied very heavily on a couple of analysts who had listened to him again and again on tape, until they could recognize his voice instantly. And on the second day, Pablo Escobar made a phone call.