by David Fisher
“No,” I said, and that was truthful. That corpse had nothing to do with us. “I was up very late working on my painting.” I invited the police inside and served them a cup of coffee. They admired the house and left. When they had driven away I used our knock code to tell Pablo it was safe to come out. Later we learned from the people in town that the body was that of a husband who had been killed by his wife and her young lover.
Wherever we stayed we made certain there were places for us to hide quickly if necessary. It was this way with all the hunted men from the drug organizations. One time the police got a call that a major leader was hiding in an apartment. The exact address and apartment number were given. When the police went into the apartment there was warm food still on the table. They searched this apartment for hours but found nothing. The man had disappeared. The police were used to being given false information—people were always calling them to say they had seen Pablo Escobar in a store or walking into a building, for example—and this seemed no different.
A month or more later this same person again called the police and insisted the leader was at that address. From the outside the police saw a candle burning. The army knocked down the door. The candle was still burning, the bed was warm—but the apartment was empty. This time they had the answer to the mystery. They stuck the point of a pen into a tiny hole that no one could find unless they had been told it was there. The wall opened up. This man was there. He had prepared for a stay of hours—with him was a canister of oxygen. He was captured and eventually extradited to the United States.
The hideouts we built were not fancy, but effective. They allowed us to fade into the walls in an instant. One that Pablo built, I remember, could be opened only by turning a hot water faucet to one side. The difficulty with being inside one of these hideouts was that the person could not know what was taking place outside. That made it necessary to have some type of secret code, a code that said it was safe to appear.
But the best hiding place was the jungle. And eventually even we got comfortable there. With the protection of our bodyguards we could disappear into the jungle and the police and military would not risk tracking us in dangerous territory. In the jungle they were the invaders.
There also was the time that we were staying at the farm called the Parrot. We had been there for several months along with Gacha, Pablo’s brother-in-law Mario Henao, Jorge Ochoa and his wife, and some of our people. There had been no worries. Usually I would go to bed early in the evening and rise in the morning by 3:30. But one afternoon about six as everyone was watching the news on television I felt very tired and took a nap. As I slept the small priest visited me again, warning me: “You guys gotta go. The police are going to show up.”
It was a powerful dream but I was too embarrassed to tell it to anyone. I thought they would laugh at me. So instead I shared with them, “I feel very strange. I’ve just got a feeling the police are going to show up tomorrow.”
“How come?” Pablo asked. “Did you get any phone calls?”
“No, I just got the feeling.”
They didn’t pay any attention and of course I didn’t blame them. But I went to our employees and told them to get some food ready, pack some clothes, and put the seats on the mules: “Just in case we have to leave this place quickly.” The farm was right next to the beautiful Cocorná River, which is so clean you can see the fish below, so I also had them make certain there was fuel and supplies on our boat. I went to sleep that night at the usual time, but this bad feeling I had didn’t go away.
One of the radios Pablo had given to all our neighbors made a noise about 6 A.M. It was from one of the people who lived on a nearby farm by the name of José Posada. He was one of the people who would call frequently to say everything is good, everything is quiet. But this time he said, “Leave. The police are here. We’ve seen trucks and heard helicopters. Go now!”
Within a few seconds we heard the helicopters coming at us. The “damn mosquitoes,” Pablo used to call them. And then he would make a movement to slap them away like they were nothing at all to him. Not this time, though, they came too fast. There was no time to go for the mules or the boats. As they approached they started shooting from the air. We ran, firing back as much as possible. Some of us ran to the river, others into the jungle with just the clothes we had on our backs. Pablo was in his sleeping clothes without even a shirt or shoes. He left all his papers behind. Fortunately, Pablo had planted some pointed trees and bushes, which made it impossible for the helicopters to land. But they continued shooting at us from the air. Bullets hit the ground and the trees and whizzed by my ear. I ran, faster than I had ever run in training. This time there was no stopping until we got free of there.
Long ago we had made a blood pact that we would shoot ourselves behind the ear rather than be extradited. Jorge Ochoa thought it looked like this might be that time. They were all around us. Jorge took his .38 revolver and was ready to commit suicide, but Pablo stopped him. “It’s not the time,” he said. If it were, he vowed, he would do the same. Somehow we managed to get loose of the raiders. But it was close.
It was later I found out that those damn mosquitoes had killed Pablo’s brother-in-law Mario Henao, our brother in our souls, as he tried to get to the river. Pablo saw him get shot. I didn’t. Pablo was shooting back as he ran. Maybe he hit one of the choppers with a machine gun; it was said he did but I didn’t see that either. But the loss of Mario was a terrible pain to all of us. When we were safe in the woods we received the confirmation that he died and that was the only time I ever saw Pablo cry. In addition to several dead, they had captured fourteen of our people, but none of the leaders were among them.
We had many close escapes while we were negotiating. Once we were staying on a farm we call the Cake, near the top of a hill in the wealthy area of el Poblado. While there was a very old, very large house, with fourteen bedrooms, on the land, Pablo built for himself and his close friends Otto and Pinina a Swiss chalet–type.
The house was typically well defended. We lived there with 120 bodyguards. The perimeter was established by two rows of barbed-wire fences, and the gaps between those rows was patrolled by vicious dogs. There were also twenty raised watchtowers that were manned twenty-four hours each day, and a motion-detector lighting system that warned of any intruder. There was also a battery-operated bell system that would alert us if the police had shut down the power, as well as radio scanners to hear the approach of an enemy, and surveillance cameras all around to cover the perimeter. I had supervised the installation and kept checking it to be sure each piece operated successfully.
One day Pablo called me urgently on a secure line to tell me our radio communications frequency was blocked. “It’s got to be the police,” I said. “Get prepared.” A minute later I was told that truckloads of soldiers were coming up the hill. Twenty minutes later bells were off from four places, meaning the soldiers had practically surrounded the perimeter. Pablo remained calm, as always. He noted that the bells had not run from the southwestern portion of the property, so we went in that direction. Pablo picked up a submachine gun, Pinina and Otto took their weapons, and we started walking among the pine and eucalyptus trees.
When we reached the towers 13 through 16, where the bells had not rung, Pablo took armbands with the insignia of the DAS from his pocket and we all put them on our arms and kept walking. Pablo was wearing a military cap and dark glasses, and he was dressed in the civilian way, as the DAS agents always wore. The helicopters were now flying over the house. One of the guards from the watchtowers had a rope, and as planned Pablo tied the watchmen’s hands with it. Then they began walking down the hill, as if these men were Pablo’s prisoners.
Soon we spotted several soldiers. “Hey!” Pablo yelled to them. “Come help us with these guys we caught from Pablo’s command post.” Pablo handed the four men to these soldiers and told them not to mistreat them, and that he and his men were going to go after two others from the house they had seen runn
ing. Pablo took with him one of the soldiers who carried a water canteen. As they walked, Pablo asked him where the other soldiers were posted, and this young soldiers provided that information. Once Pablo learned where the other soldiers were, Pablo told him to wait right where they were standing, that his people were going to look around and would return. He was left standing there.
Eventually we arrived at a modest farm. The farmer and his wife understood who we were and took us inside. They fed us and let us stay there safely. Eventually they loaned Pablo their car—their son even rode ahead on his motorcycle to make certain the road was open. The escape was complete.
Ten days later Pablo returned to this small farm. He admitted he loved the property, because it was secluded in the mountains and looked on to a waterfall. He offered the farmer a great amount of money for it. His offer was accepted, and Pablo had another safe house set up for himself.
Each time we were attacked we would move to another place that had been prepared. While this was happening the business continued. Pablo remained convinced that in return for an end to all the violence eventually the government would agree to his terms: There would be no extradition to the United States and if we went to jail in Colombia it would be for a reasonable time and in a situation safe for us. The search for Pablo divided much of our country; while the poor people supported Pablo, others did not. For me, like Pablo, the most difficult part of it was being separated from my life. We all had to believe our families were being watched and people were listening to their phones, so it took careful plans to be able to be in contact with them. It was painful for me, for example, to watch my second marriage fall apart and be helpless to do anything to stop it. Even in the middle of this worldwide hunt our personal lives continued.
My second wife went with our ten-year-old son, José Roberto, to the beautiful vacation city of Cartagena. We owned a home there and a boat. Many members of our family were there, so my wife gave the house to some of them and stayed at a nearby hotel. One morning she said she wasn’t feeling well because she had a fever and sent José Roberto with his aunts to cruise on the boat. José Roberto was a fine boy and didn’t want to leave his mother alone, so when they reached the boat he started crying and complaining he wanted to go home. His aunts were insistent but finally he ran back to the hotel. He knocked hard on the door to her room but nobody opened it. He called down to the reception and made everybody worry: “I’m the son of Roberto Escobar and my mother is in this room and she isn’t answering. This morning she had a fever and I’m worried she is dying.” Deep inside, though, he wanted to find out the truth of a feeling he had.
When the security received no response to knocking they opened the door with the master key. Nobody was there. José Roberto told them that his aunt was staying in another room and thought, “Maybe my mother is there.”
And again, they knocked, and again no answer. They opened the door and my wife was in the Jacuzzi with another man. José Roberto was stunned. She said to him, “Please don’t say anything to your father. You don’t understand.”
José Roberto was a pretty smart kid, and kept quiet. But instead he sent me a letter telling me this whole story. I was hurt terribly when I received this letter but there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing. I thought women were just like money; neither can truly belong to you. If I said anything against her she might call the police and tell them where we were staying. She had access to much of the money. She knew the bank accounts, she knew the safe combinations. She had our son with her. So I had to lie there at night wondering what was going on and being able to do nothing about it. She was a beautiful woman, but the love and compassion I had for her quickly disappeared. Still, though, to this day, it remains unclear to me why she did that. I was a formidable husband to her, she had love, money, and everything necessary for happiness.
This was part of our lives as fugitives. There were so many feelings about being out of touch with the rest of the world and helpless to change our situation. We got our news from the television or during phone calls with our families. Our relatives would read the newspapers to us, which sometimes told us where the government thought we were staying, or where they were searching for us. Every day, every minute, our lives were up for grabs. Every time we heard an airplane approach we stopped and waited. We lived our lives ready to leave instantly.
About three months after this escape we were staying in an old house at the top of a mountain. And it happened once again. I lay down to sleep and the small priest visited me. This time I told Pablo, “I got that strange feeling again. I think they are going to be here tomorrow.”
After our last experience Pablo believed my warning. He ordered our people to pack the mules with food and water, the guns were made ready, and we all slept lightly. In the morning we got a call from a contact in the police. “The police know where you are,” he said. “They are going to come up there.” We got up on the mules and climbed into the mountains. Several of our employees stayed behind and were there when the police arrived shooting. The police killed the groundskeepers and the farmers.
I am not usually a person who believes in the mystical world, but I have experienced the warnings of this priest. I don’t know why he comes to me. He doesn’t come each time my life is in danger. There have been very bad situations that have happened with no warning. But when he does come danger follows him. So I’ve learned to listen to his warnings.
Our most difficult escape took place in 1990. This time I got the greatest warning of all from the priest that danger was coming. We were at a farm called Aquitania with about forty people. It was about a hundred miles from Medellín, in the jungle. About four in the morning we got notice from the outer security that the police were about six miles away and coming fast. Because there were so many of us, instead of a hideout, we had built a house underground about two miles away, deeper in the jungle.
An employee of Pablo’s named Godoy lived in the jungle and people believed he sold wood to earn his living, but for his real job he would build hiding places for us and guide us through the jungle. The underground house he had built was amazing. People could hide there for days if needed. The moment we got the word we ran for this shelter. Godoy took us there. We could hear the helicopters behind us shooting at the place we had abandoned. At those times you never stop to wonder how they could find you, but it was clear we had a traitor in the organization. With the rewards for Pablo and myself it’s not surprising. We reached the underground house and secreted ourselves there for the rest of the night. The next afternoon Pablo sent Godoy to his own house, which was not too far from our hiding spot, to find out as much as possible. Godoy looked like a simple workingman so he could move about without being suspect. The police had passed the whole day searching the area without finding much. About 6 P.M. the police showed up at Godoy’s farm and asked him questions. “I live here with my family,” he told them. “I work with wood. I produce a little coffee to sell to the city.” The police looked around for an hour but left when he told them he wanted to have dinner with his wife and his kids. He was not suspected.
As soon as the police cleared the area Godoy called me on the radio. “They left my place ten minutes ago. Be careful. They are very close.” Even though the hiding place was not visible from the ground, because we did not know who had betrayed us we didn’t know how much information the police had gotten. Only a very few people knew about this underground house, but if one of them had talked to the police we would be trapped with no way to run. We knew that it was better to have a chance to get away than to be trapped underground. We moved outside and gathered our supplies. While Pablo was deciding when to go we heard a helicopter flying nearby and looked up at it through the trees. There we saw a terrible sight.
One of our security people, El Negro, was hanging by his feet out the door of the helicopter. When we saw El Negro flying from his feet we knew we had to run, because he had helped Godoy build the hideout. Later we found out what had happened. El Negr
o had been captured by the police at a farm about a mile below us. They tied his legs and took him up in the helicopter and hung him outside, telling him, “If you don’t tell us where Pablo is we will drop you right now, motherfucker.”
El Negro screamed that he would talk and they saved him. He wasn’t a traitor but they were going to kill him. When they landed on the ground he started walking with them toward the underground place. But there was a miscommunication between the police walking with El Negro and the army searching for us. The army in the helicopters started shooting at the police on the ground, because they thought it was Pablo and his crew. The police on the ground started firing back. Everybody was shooting at everybody, and we took advantage of the gunfight and fled to the deepness of the jungle. El Negro also escaped, and made it to a nearby town where no one knew who he was, and the town’s priest hid him in his residence so he wouldn’t get murdered. It was twenty days later that El Negro made it back to Medellín.
Godoy led our escape. Among the forty people who ran with us were our loyal and trusted friend Otto, our cook named Gordo, and a very good soccer player we gave the name of a great Argentine soccer player. We didn’t follow an established path because, as Godoy told us, “The police won’t come this way.” It was tougher, though, climbing up a mountain covered with trees and bushes. We walked for about five hours in the night until we got into guerrilla territory. That first night about twenty of our people got separated and lost, so we arrived at a small house with the remaining twenty fighting people. We believed some of the others would find us there. A few did as the hours went by. This house was lived in by an older woman whose son was a guerrilla. At first they got scared because they thought we were the police, but when they were introduced to Pablo they relaxed. The message was simple: Many Colombians had great reason to fear the police more than drug traffickers.
