Killing Pablo

by Mark Bowden

  Pardo knew this would be welcome news to Mendoza, of all people, who had begged him several times in vain for help with the Escobar problem. Pardo had always insisted that the military would not get involved. So his announcement was a significant capitulation. Mendoza tried not to show his pleasure.

  Then Pardo surprised him.

  "We want you to go there," he said.

  "To legalize," said Gonzalez.

  "Legalize?" Mendoza asked.

  "You know, formalize the transfer," said Pardo.

  This was typical. Little happened in Colombia that didn't require the presence of a lawyer. In a nation of such sweeping uncertainty, where the government itself could be toppled by a strong enough push, everyone was obsessed with self-protection. Just as one always traveled with bodyguards and built walls around his house, one made no official move without first digging a legal moat. Mendoza sensed that he was being handed the shovel. By dispatching a vice minister of justice to the scene, the officials in Bogotá would be shielded from blame if anything illegal or untoward occurred.

  Still, Mendoza was excited. Something bold was afoot At last the army was moving against Escobar, this monster, this menace to Colombian society. Real power was being flexed here, the legitimate power of the people. For once action had shouldered aside caution. It was heady, and for that moment everyone seemed pleased to be playing a part. Shrewd enough to know he was being used, Mendoza was nevertheless eager to accept a leading role.

  Gaviria meant business. The president had seen reports of the executions Pablo had carried out from inside the jail. The bodies of one set of Moncada and Galeano brothers, Mario Galeano and William Moncada, had been found. For now, the discovery of the bodies remained a secret—not even Mendoza knew about them—but the president knew it would leak. His critics in the press would use the killings to prove all the rumors about Escobar and would claim that the Gaviria administration was in the pocket of the imprisoned narco king. The government would be further discredited in the eyes of the United States and the world, for whom it relied on assistance to combat the guerrillas. There would be inquiries and investigations. Gaviria had been embarrassed enough.

  So he had decided. Pablo would be moved that day to a real prison. He had ordered the army to enter the sanctum, by storm if necessary, and take him. This step would violate the agreement he had made with Escobar, and Pablo's army of lawyers and their civil-libertarian allies would descend like a pestilence, but the drug lord had certainly violated the agreement himself by committing capital crimes in the "jail." Still, there were bound to be legal complications. That's where Mendoza came in.

  He was instructed to fly to Medellín with Colonel Hernando Navas, the military director of prisons, to represent the administration on the ground.

  "What exactly do you mean by formalize?" he asked again before he left.

  "Look, everything is under control," said Pardo. "You just ask the general there for instructions. He'll know what to do."

  "Am I to bring Pablo back to Bogotá?"

  "Yes. We're moving him to a military base in Bogotá," answered the defense minister. "Now, run." Pardo said that one of the army's rapid deployment planes was waiting for him at the airport.

  So Mendoza took off in his car, stopping to pick up Colonel Navas on the way. When he explained what was happening, the director of prisons shook his head.

  "This is totally crazy," he said. "This is totally, absolutely crazy. You cannot do this to Escobar and get away with it"

  Navas complained that they were just asking for more trouble. They had their agreement with Pablo, and so far he had honored it. Breaking it meant nothing short of going back to war. "This is going to kill lots of people," Navas said.

  "Colonel, this is not my decision," said Mendoza. "We have been ordered to go and we are going to put him on a plane and bring him back."

  As certain as he sounded to Navas, Mendoza was still unclear about what exactly he was supposed to do. They arrived at the airport to discover that the "rapid deployment" plane had no fuel. So while they waited for that to be remedied, Mendoza phoned the president's office again to ask for clarification. He asked to speak to his boss, the new justice minister.

  "Andrés, I really don't understand what's going on. Tell me again, what exactly am I to do?"

  "Look, if the prisoners give you any trouble, you tell them it is because of the construction. Tell them we are having problems because they have been bullying the workers. So we've had to move them temporarily out of the way."

  As the wait for fuel stretched absurdly on into the evening, Mendoza called Defense Minister Pardo. Again he was told to report to the general in charge of the Fourth Brigade. "Just do whatever he tells you," said Pardo.

  The flight to Medellín in the little Cessna took about forty minutes. It was still daylight when they took off, and Mendoza watched the land fall away as they flew northwest out of the Cordillera Central. The green mountains dropped suddenly to sea level, where the Magdalena River coursed through the valley between ranges. The river was already in darkness. Mendoza watched the sun ease slowly toward the snowcapped peaks of the Cordillera Central. Far to the south rose the towering peak of Nevado del Ruiz.

  It was nearly dark when they landed outside Medellín. A jeep was waiting for them at Olaya Herrera Airport, and they drove east through the suburbs outside Medellín and then began climbing the hills toward the exclusive neighborhoods of Envigado. Past there the paved roads ended, and they wound their way up a steep, dirt road higher still into the mountains. This was Pablo's country, Mendoza realized. He noticed that with nightfall it had suddenly grown very cold. Mendoza turned up the collar of his business suit and listened for gunfire. He heard nothing. It must all be over. The jeep came to a halt on a dirt road just a short walk uphill from the outer prison gate. General Gustavo Pardo (no relation to the defense minister) strode up to the jeep as Mendoza and Navas stepped out. The general was wearing his neatly pressed green camouflage fatigues with a green jacket and cap, and he looked very determined and industrious. Mendoza had met him on several occasions and had always found him to be a serious, businesslike man. He liked him and was happy to see him there. The general greeted him warmly, but seemed less than his usual efficient self.

  "Eduardo, what are your orders?" he asked.

  "General, my orders are to take Escobar back to Bogotá."

  "I have different orders," said the general. He explained that he had been told only to surround the prison and make sure no one entered it or left it. Mendoza was shocked. Nothing had happened! As far as he could see in the dark, there were soldiers milling around, waiting. So much for hitting La Catedral with everything.

  "We have to check this out with Bogotá," Mendoza said.

  When the orders were read again over the radio, they were entirely different from what Mendoza had been told that morning. He was disgusted. It was the worst thing about this government he served, exactly the thing that drove the Americans crazy and made Colombia seem so inept and corrupt. Orders might begin with great purpose and enthusiasm, but by the time they made their way down the chain of command, with everyone backing away from responsibility, pushing it off on someone else, the great machine of state always wound up confused, impotent, mired. Back in Bogotá, Gaviria's office had already issued a press release saying that Escobar had been transferred to another prison. Yet not a thing had happened at La Catedral.

  "If they want Escobar, I'll go in there myself and get that bandido and tie him up and bring him out!" boasted the general. "But until my orders change…."

  Mendoza explained the scene at the president's office that morning, when the top officials in the government believed the raid on the prison was under way. He said they would be angry to learn that nothing had happened.

  "This is very, very confusing," the general said, and he startled Mendoza by asking, "Do you think we should do this tonight, or should we wait until tomorrow morning?"

  "General, look, I ha
ve no idea," said Mendoza. "I was sent to do this immediately. I thought it had already been done. I don't have the authority to tell you to wait until tomorrow. Maybe if it would be easier for you to do it in daylight, maybe we should wait, but I'm not a military officer. I don't know. Let's call Bogotá."

  The general got back on his radio phone. Mendoza was annoyed when he heard him say, "I'm here with the vice minister, and he wants me to do this thing tomorrow." Then the general hung up the phone and invited Mendoza to join him for a nice dinner at a restaurant in Medellín.

  The president's office called back, for Mendoza. The caller, a presidential military aide, told Mendoza that the president was furious. He had been sent to observe; why was he interfering with a military operation? Mendoza didn't have time to defend himself or explain. He said he would try to get something done. It was clear that no one wanted to assume responsibility, so he decided to take charge himself.

  "You must do it tonight," he instructed the general. "Immediately."

  But the general again delayed. He seemed determined to do nothing. He phoned his own superiors again, and together they came up with the idea of sending Mendoza's companion, Colonel Navas, into the jail to check things out, gather intelligence. By now, of course, because of radio and TV reports, Escobar and the rest of the country knew that armed forces were massing around his prison. Any hope for surprise was gone. For the first time Mendoza began to worry that Escobar was going to escape. The hunt for Pablo had consumed years and thousands of lives and many millions of American dollars and Colombian pesos. Escobar was the most famous prison inmate in the world. His incarceration was vital to Colombia's standing as a modern, law-abiding nation. Mendoza could just imagine the embarrassment if he were somehow to get away. Any faith he might have had in General Pardo and his four-hundred-man Fourth Brigade was fast eroding.

  Mendoza argued with Navas for a moment about going in. "I should be the one to go in, not you," he said, since he was nominally Navas's superior.

  "No, no, no, Doctor. Don't worry about it. We have control."

  Mendoza felt relieved when the colonel started downhill toward the main gate and disappeared into the darkness. Navas shouted, "Open up!" and they heard the squeak of the gate.

  It was forty-five minutes before Navas returned.

  "Well, the situation is under control, but these people are very scared," he said. "They told me that they will start blowing the place up if the army tries to come in and take Escobar, which is what they hear on the radio is about to happen." Then he turned to Mendoza. "Doctor, if you were to go in there and explain what is going on and calm them down, we may be able to save a lot of lives."

  Mendoza decided to go in. He was tired and cold and frustrated. Maybe he could force this thing to happen, and without bloodshed. So he walked with Navas down the hill toward the gate. When it swung open for them, the guards, all technically Ministry of Justice employees, lined up and snapped to attention.

  "Señor Vice Minister, welcome to La Catedral," said the captain, reeling off with practiced formality the number of inmates and the number of prison guards and what weapons they had, and concluding with a reassuring, "All is quiet"

  Mendoza noticed that he was trembling, and not just because of the cold. He was about to meet the notorious outlaw Pablo Escobar face-to-face, and he knew Pablo would be angry. The slender young lawyer reasoned sternly with himself. He was a vice minister of justice for the Republic of Colombia. With him was Hernando Navas, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, and surrounding them were fifteen armed prison guards. They were here representing the power of a nation. And what was Pablo? A prison inmate. A criminal. Mendoza's job was to inform him that he was being transferred to a different prison. It was a simple matter, and, as Mendoza saw it, he had all the power. He stuck his hands in his pockets to stop them from shaking.

  The dirt road wound downhill in blackness. Up ahead he saw light. It was from a single bulb, suspended from a wire attached to another stretched across the road, and it threw a big circle of light on the ground. Just to the left of the circle, at the edge of the shadow, stood a short, fat man. A group of about a dozen other men stood arrayed behind him like, Mendoza thought, the chorus in a Greek play. The fat man, who looked to be about forty years old, had to be Pablo, but he seemed much shorter, fatter, and less imposing than Mendoza had imagined. He wore jeans, bright white Velcro-strapped sneakers, and a thick dark jacket. His black hair was wet and slicked back, as though he had just showered. He was clean-shaven. In most pictures, even those going back to the earliest arrests in Medellín, Pablo had a mustache. Before Mendoza now was just a round little man with a fleshy face and broad double chin. Prison food must have agreed with him, Mendoza thought. Nearly all the men behind him were fat, too, like men with nothing to do but eat. None of them appeared to be armed, which made Mendoza relax. He felt he was in control of the situation.

  "Good evening, Doctor," said Pablo, softly, calmly, but without a smile.

  Mendoza introduced himself and shook the prisoner's hand. He had rehearsed many times that evening the speech he would make when he finally met Pablo, but now when he tried to speak, his voice squeaked. He swallowed and forced out the words as authoritatively as he could. "As you have no doubt heard, you are going to be transferred—"

  "You have betrayed me, Señor Vice Minister," Pablo interrupted. He spoke softly but was clearly angry. "President Gaviria has betrayed me. You are going to pay for this and this country is going to pay for this, because I have an agreement and you are breaking the agreement."

  Mendoza did not know what to say to this, so he resumed the statement he had rehearsed. "You have nothing to fear for your life," he said.

  "You are doing this to deliver me to the Americans," said Pablo.

  "No, we—"

  "Kill them!" shouted one of Pablo's men.

  "Sons of bitches!" shouted another. Mendoza glanced at the guards who had escorted him in. They all looked away.

  "You are going to deliver me to Bush so that he can parade me, before the election, just like he did with Manuel Antonio Noriega," Pablo said, "and I'm not going to allow that, Doctor."

  "We should have killed this one during the campaign!" one of the men shouted. "It would have been easy!"

  "Look," said Mendoza. "It would be unconstitutional for us to send you to the United States." This was true. The new constitution forbade extradition.

  "Then you are going to kill me," Pablo said. "You are going to take me out of here and have me killed. Before I allow that to happen, many people will die."

  "Let us kill them, patrón!" one of his men pleaded.

  "Do you really think they are going to send someone like me to kill you?" Mendoza said. "There are hundreds of soldiers outside and other officials—do you think we would send for this many witnesses if we were going to kill you? This is just not reasonable. I will stay with you, if you want, all night. Wherever you go, you are a prisoner and we are obligated to guarantee your safety. So you don't have anything to worry about."

  Escobar just glared at him silently.

  "All we have to do is finish the prison, and we can't do that with you here."

  "No, no, no, Doctor," said Escobar. "That problem we had with the workers, that was just a misunderstanding."

  Mendoza could see that Pablo did not want his deal with the government to break down. The vice minister again felt as if he had some leverage.

  "Look, I'm going to walk out of here; I will be right out there," said Mendoza, pointing back up the road he had walked in on. "We are going to deliver the prison to the army, and I will be out there and I will stay with you guys wherever you are going."

  Pablo said nothing. He looked away toward the fences, as if trying to see through the night whatever forces were arrayed against him. He seemed to be thinking hard, calculating.

  Mendoza decided he had said everything that needed saying.

  "I'll talk to you later," he said, and turned with Navas and th
e guards and started walking back toward the gate. It surprised him, but it appeared as though Pablo was going to let them go. Behind him he heard the drug boss's men pleading, "Patrón! That son of a bitch is going to betray us. We should kill them all! Are you going to let them walk out?"

  Mendoza did not turn around. They were almost to the gate when they heard the men running to overtake them, and then they were surrounded. Pablo's men now had automatic weapons, which Mendoza realized must have been hidden under their jackets. When Mendoza looked to his armed guards, urging them to do something, the men drew up their weapons and pointed them…at him! The moment struck Mendoza with the force of revelation. Welcome to the real world. What a fool he had been! He wasn't the authority here! Mendoza turned to Navas, who made a pained, helpless expression.

  "Patrón, look! Look! They are sending messages to each other!" screamed a round-faced thug with slightly crossed eyes, a man shorter than Pablo who, unlike the others, looked lean and wild. This was the one they called Popeye, the notorious Medellín sicario Jhon Jairo Velasquez. Popeye bounced in agitation from foot to foot and screamed, "Kill him! Kill him, the son of a bitch!"

  Pablo's men began pushing them back downhill. Mendoza looked at the ground as he walked. His mind raced, trying out different scenarios for how this would turn out, none of them good. He would reflect on this later, on the cliché that a condemned man in his last moments sees his life pass before his eyes, and it wasn't true. He thought of nothing except his next footfall. He had never felt so completely focused on a particular moment in time. He was scared, very scared, but also oddly calm. He wasn't angry, not even at the guards who had just betrayed him. Who was he to them? Some pampered son of Bogotá, an effete rich kid—he felt as powerless as a child—come to order them around with his important title and his fancy business suit. He knew they couldn't do otherwise. The best word for how he felt was impotent. Utterly impotent. And foolish, for having believed that his words would carry some weight inside this prison. There was nothing he could say or do to help himself. What was going on now was just about power, about who had the most guns at this place, at this time. He was now in the hands of the most notorious killer in Colombian history, a man who had ordered the deaths of thousands, including generals, judges, presidential candidates, Supreme Court justices—what chance did he have of coming out of this alive? His eyes searched the path as they walked, and he wondered, At what spot along this path will I die?