The Accountant's Story

by David Fisher

  Our clothes had been ripped badly by the underbrush we’d run through. This woman gave me a uniform from her son, who must have been at least six and a half feet tall. It was so big over me that I had to tie it at the ankles and use rope around the waist to hold it up.

  I was carrying with me as much as $500,000 cash. I always carried money, knowing that in many situations it is much more valuable than weapons. As we sat eating the soup made for us a campesino showed up. We paid him $100,000 to lead us out of the jungle. But when we finally got ready to go Pablo realized that Otto, our loyal trusted friend, was still lost. In our escape Otto had been next to Pablo much of the time, ready to protect him, but had disappeared in the night jungle. “I know there are a lot of guys missing,” Pablo said. “But I won’t leave this jungle without Otto.” Pablo didn’t care if the police were coming; he wasn’t going to leave Otto behind. So Pablo and I, one other person, and the campesino agreed to go back and search for him. We took gas lamps with us and walked in a straight line, one behind the other. In the distance we could hear the helicopters shooting blindly into the jungle. The bullets zipping through the leaves made a snapping sound. Every few minutes we would yell for Otto. Finally we heard him answer back, saying he was hurt. I was learning the jungle; I found out that sound travels so well it’s hard to know where it is coming from. The peasant told us to be silent and led the search. It took almost an hour to climb through the vines to find Otto. He’d tripped and fallen into a deep hole. His face was cut up and we thought his arm was broken. It took us all working together another hour to cut him free from the grip of the jungle.

  We left the farmhouse the next night. I left the people $50,000. They had never seen American dollars before and I had to explain to them what they were. I warned them to wait a couple of months, then go to town and exchange it a little at a time. I explained that if they exchanged too much they would attract attention, and if the police found out where they got the money they could be killed. Before leaving, we had radioed ahead to one of our people to meet us at a place with the supplies we would need. He told us that the army and the police were everywhere, it was a major search, and it would be better to stay hiding in the jungle for a while. We were led through the jungle for several days to a dirt road, then handed a map that would take us to a bridge that crossed over the River Samaná to a safe place.

  At that road our people met us with those supplies we needed to stay safely in the jungle—food, clothing, sleeping bags, and medicine, all those tools of survival. Then we started walking again. My life on the bicycle had given me strong legs and good energy, but it was a hard walk. Some of our people struggled keeping up with us. In two days we found another small house and approached it. A man and a woman lived there with their two grown sons. Pablo told those people we were part of the guerrillas. No, the man said, “I know who you guys are because they’re talking about you everywhere.” These people didn’t have electricity; they had only a battery-run radio, and no TV. On their radio they heard the news that Pablo Escobar and his brother were in the jungle and that the government was offering a $10 million reward for each of us. “Don’t worry,” they told us. “We’re not interested in anything to do with the government.” They invited us to stay at their house and the woman cooked a meal for all of us on wood. We agreed to spend the night there.

  I woke about four in the morning and watched silently as one of the sons left and walked into the jungle. I woke Pablo and told him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Wait until a more normal hour and we’ll ask where he went.”

  Before everybody woke up I felt restless. I couldn’t wait. An hour later I got up and started making noise, waking everyone. I said casually to the couple, “Oh, where’s your other son?”

  The father said that he’d gone to the nearest neighbor to get an ax to chop the wood needed for cooking. “We want to make you a nice lunch so we need more wood to cook for all of you.”

  In the position we were in we couldn’t trust people we didn’t know. There was a lake close by and we went there to wash up. As we went back toward the house I saw a big pile of cut wood stacked up high. So I knew then that this man was lying.

  Pablo said to me, “Don’t show worry.” To everyone else he said nonchalantly, “Let’s have something to eat. Then we can move.” That was typical Pablo calm. But while we were eating a plane flew high up above us, way off the usual route. I believed it was from the army but Pablo questioned that. “It’s so high, how can you think that?”

  But I did. “You know me, man. Sometimes I feel things.” This was different. But still I had that bad feeling. A little bit later there was a helicopter flying nearby. We heard it, but didn’t see it. When I asked the father about the son, he said he would return that night. That was curious, I thought. Before he said that the son would be back with an ax to make lunch and now he’s saying he’ll come back at night? I told Pablo, “We gotta go. I don’t want to make a big deal, but I think the son left and went to the next town to talk to the people who are looking for us.”

  I was ready to go but still Pablo preferred to wait. I decided to start walking with the few people who wanted to walk with me. Pablo stayed and we agreed to keep close contact on the radios. We had been walking about an hour when we saw another helicopter coming near us. We hid. This was an army helicopter and it was flying so low I could see the people inside—and one of them was the son. I called Pablo and told him to get out right away. “I saw the son riding in the helicopter. They’re coming.”

  Pablo and our men ran into the jungle. The helicopter approached but didn’t see them. The police helicopters would randomly shoot all the time at anything, but the army only fired at targets they could see. We met up with Pablo and the rest of the group at the River Samaná bridge. There were twelve of us. As we were about to go over it we saw army guys coming from the other side. They didn’t see us so we moved away quietly. We couldn’t use the bridge so we had to swim across the river about a mile away. It was very difficult to get across carrying all our supplies. The river was wild. It carried us along for about three miles. One of our men with the nickname Ears, because he had big ears, almost drowned. Pablo was a very good swimmer and went to save him. Ears grabbed Pablo around his neck and almost dragged him under, but Pablo was able to save himself and Ears, but just.

  We were soaked and very exhausted but we knew we had to keep moving. This was on the run like never before. Helicopters were in the sky looking for us. We kept going into the safety of the night. Finally we put up the tents and covered them with brush to make them invisible in the light. Just so things could be worse, it started to rain hard. It was so cold, so cold. We had to sleep next to each other to keep our bodies warm. I was still carrying the suitcase full of money and that night I used it as a hard pillow. The smell of the damp money under my head was terrible. It was then I thought that money made such little difference in life. I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in my hands but there was nowhere I could get the small things we needed most, dry blankets and warm food. I was ready to burn the money to keep us warm.

  The days of Napoles and the great parties seemed very far behind us. Now it was just surviving.

  Late in the night suddenly we heard a huge explosion. We all got up and were ready to move quickly. I said to Pablo, “Oh man, I think they’re bombing us!” Pablo and one of our people went to look for the damage. It wasn’t a bomb. A giant rock had been loosened in the rain and tumbled down the mountain. It bounded on a ledge and flew right over us, crashing into the trees and knocking them down all the way to the river. I said we should move our base, but Pablo decided that one rock had gone over us; chances of another rock following that path were small. But if we moved we might move right into the path of another rock. No one slept soundly that night.

  In the morning we began walking. We were moving through thick jungle. A couple of times we saw poisonous snakes, frogs, and other wild animals that added to the danger. But they kept their distance. We
walked for two days, taking water from the lakes but all we had to eat was some chocolate and peanuts, because we were running out of supplies, and some of the others guys were way behind. Our blankets and tents had been made useless. We were very uncomfortable. Eventually we walked right into territory controlled by the guerrilla group FARC 47. We didn’t encounter any of the guerrillas, but we did discover a small supply area with hammocks, food and water, and some guns. I believe that discovery saved our lives. We ate like crazy and took turns sleeping in the hammocks. While Otto was sleeping a tarantula walked on him and settled on his chest. Otto still slept. Pablo saw it and put a piece of wood in front of Otto’s face, and when the giant spider walked on it Pablo tossed it away.

  We were new again, and we walked some more, reaching the very small town of Santa Isabelle. It was full of guerrillas and they welcomed us. We slept there, shaved, and ate bread, eggs, and pasta, especially lots of pasta. The guerrillas hid us in their houses. Because they didn’t want to risk anybody calling the police they took us to another small town, St. Carlos, where our employees José Fernando and Guayabita were waiting in a truck to take us to El Peñol, where Pablo owned a farm. Finally we settled there.

  The thirty-day walk had made some of us badly sick with coughing and fevers. My own fever was very high and I didn’t know where I was. They took me to a hospital under a made-up name. For three days I was unconscious with the fever. They would give me cold showers to cool me down. Sometimes I would wake up screaming, demanding to see Pablo. Fortunately, no one knew the Pablo I was calling for was the most wanted man in the world.

  Pablo also was sick but he stayed at the farm. For security there Pablo hired a gang from Medellín to protect the people while they recovered.

  We had lost some of our men during our journey but again we had escaped the wave of police and soldiers searching for us. After we got better Pablo and I and a few of the top men like Otto moved back into the comforts of Medellín.

  Not too long after the walk through the jungle Pablo decided to change his whole security situation from a big number to only a few. Rather than moving with as many as thirty people, he used only two, which made it much easier to travel around and kept us more discreet. Sometimes we stayed at the homes of regular people that we trusted, couples with no children in the house. When we moved around in the city we often wore different costumes. Some people said that Pablo dressed as a woman, but that was false. We wore fake mustaches, sometimes wigs, always different types of clothing. We would pretend to be a doctor or a laborer fixing roads; sometimes we drove our own cabs. Very few people knew where we were staying. When we had meetings with government representatives or our lawyers to try to work out a good arrangement, usually they were at farms and houses outside the city. The people who went there were always taken with their eyes covered.

  One night I will never forget for my whole life was December 1, 1990, Pablo’s birthday. We were staying in a nice home and the bodyguards with us were Otto and El Gordo, the fat one. It was nice to be calm after everything we’d been through. There were few days when we were free to be happy. At breakfast everybody was saying “Happy Birthday” to Pablo. He was happy that day, feeling confident that the government would soon be ready to make a deal. He said to me, “I’m going to have a party tonight and I’m going to bring in an orchestra. I want live music.”

  Naturally I believed he was kidding. It would be impossible to bring musicians to the house. Once they left the first thing would be to call the police, to collect the reward. The police were not interested in putting us in jail, they wanted us dead. I was concerned. “With all respect, Pablo,” I asked, “how are you going to bring this group?”

  Pablo was smiling. “Don’t worry. Just trust me. It’ll be okay.”

  Pablo and I never argued. But this made no sense to me. Sometimes Pablo thought he couldn’t be captured, but this was like giving the canary to the cat. We were watching television in the afternoon when Pablo called El Gordo and told him to get the group. “Cut it out, Pablo,” I told him. “It’s not funny anymore.” But he insisted, sending El Gordo.

  The people of the house were really worried. I went upstairs to prepare my clothes to leave. I tried once again to talk Pablo out of this crazy idea. I told him, “You’re my baby brother and I love you, but I don’t understand this. I’m staying with you until the group shows up. I’m going to listen to a couple of songs and then I’m going to be out of here. I’m already packed. I have a suitcase with money and I have another place to go. But I’m not going to stay with you.”

  We spoke for about an hour. It was a very sentimental talk, and Pablo told me, “I love you too, brother. You have been with me in all my problems, it’s not fair that you leave on my birthday.” And then he smiled mischievously. In my mind this was the time we were going to go apart. Pablo went downstairs and I could hear everyone laughing and having a good time. I took a shower and came downstairs with my suitcase and it was then I saw the six blind men playing their guitars.

  All of them, blind. They could not know who they were playing for. I didn’t know whether to laugh or be sad or be angry. But that was so Pablo. Everybody was having a blast, and no one thought that Pablo could pull something like this. It was so astute. For the meal he had ordered all kinds of seafood, lobster and octopus and four bottles of the Portuguese wine, port. He invited the musicians to join us, and he was very happy to share his birthday with this group.

  At the end of this party the musicians were ready to sing “Happy Birthday” but they asked to know the name of the man celebrating his birthday. Suddenly everyone was silent. But Pablo stood up and said, “All right, I don’t want you to be afraid, but you are singing to Pablo Escobar.” The musicians didn’t believe this, but nonetheless they sang to Pablo.

  When they were finished singing, Pablo told me to give them each $20,000. I handed them the cash. Now they believed it was Pablo. I remember watching them feeling the bills, but they couldn’t figure out what they were because they were so used to the size of Colombian money. “That’s U.S. money,” Pablo explained, and then he gave them the same warning given to anyone he paid: Be careful, don’t bring the whole amount to one place. Go with somebody you trust, cash the money in small amounts, and don’t mention my name. Otherwise you’re going to get in real trouble.

  There was no danger with these people. El Gordo and Otto returned them home. Even if they told that they had played for Pablo Escobar, they didn’t know where they were taken. Of course not, they were blind.

  Amazingly, through all this time the business continued. Nothing stopped the business from growing. The biggest problem remained smuggling even more and more product into the United States. In 1989 Pablo and pilot Jimmy Ellard purchased an old DC-3, which could make the flight from Colombia all the way to Nova Scotia in Canada. The plan was that from Nova Scotia the product would be driven over the U.S. border to New York City. But on the airplane’s test flight an employee did not pay some dollars to a local radar guy and the plane became visible to Colombian air force radar. As the DC-3 landed, military jets raced out of the sky and shot it into pieces with tracer bullets. For a stupid $20,000. Through the years the organization had used every type of airplane, from the Piper plane on top of the gate at Napoles to multi-engine jets, to planes specially built by Domínguez out of parts of other airplanes for the drug flights. Pablo’s “air force” had more planes flying than most countries. But then Ellard began searching for a stealth airplane that could not be seen on any radar. The dream was a plane with only a little metal; they made a deal to buy a Rutan Defiant, a special plane constructed almost completely of plastic. They also were going to replace the metal propellers with plastic propellers and cover it with radar-absorbent paint. But during the first flight the top of the canopy popped open and material flew out hitting the back propeller and making such tremendous damage the plane was no longer usable.

  But the profits remained so large even losses like these were easily
accepted.

  No matter what we did or where we went during these years, we lived constantly with the possibility of death coming around the next corner. That was true for all the leaders from Medellín. Pablo was forced to feel that in December of 1989. Pablo and the Mexican, Gacha, had remained in good contact with each other, maybe because there was nobody else with the equal of their power. The government had made the two men, Escobar and Gacha, the biggest targets of its war on the drug traffickers. Everyone agreed that they couldn’t stop the river of cocaine flooding into America, but they could make people think they were having success by getting these two leaders. The United States had given the Colombian government more than $60 million and helped build up the army to catch them, mostly leaving the Cali cartel and other groups from Bogotá and the northern regions of the country alone. Our president, Virgilio Barco, was also criticized a lot by the U.S. for not doing more to stop the drug smuggling. Colombia was taking houses and bank accounts and cars, but the leaders were not being caught. So the U.S. applied more pressure on Colombia to give them big names to put in their headlines.

  The Mexican and Pablo had each built their security armies for protection and fighting back against their enemies. So everyone who came near them was watched closely, everywhere they moved was searched. But the one weak spot that Pablo had, that Gacha had also, was for their families. They would do anything for their families. This was the place that the government knew they could be touched. In the end this was the lesson that Pablo never learned.