DEA memo pointed out in summarizing the raid against Uribe, the Colombian police officer in charge 'relayed a message that they were continuing their search for Escobar and preferred that Escobar not surrender.'
As determined as its leadership was, the Search Bloc was still a step or two behind its prey. The team simply could not close the last one hundred yards.
This was the assessment delivered by 'Col. Santos,' the chief Delta operator assigned to the Search Bloc headquarters in Medellin. After the first blundering raids in 1992, when Escobar and his entourage had driven down one side of a mountain while the Search Bloc lumbered up the other, the unit had blown one good lead after another.
Despite these failures, the Americans were impressed with Col. Hugo Martinez after he took command following Escobar's escape. None of the Americans assigned to the Search Bloc headquarters had been in Colombia during the first war against Escobar, so they didn't realize at first how far back went this war between the colonel and the drug lord.
The colonel knew how the game was played. American soldiers working closely with the Search Bloc knew that when Martinez grabbed somebody associated with Escobar, the man had better start talking fast. If the man did talk, he would end up arrested instead of having his photo added to the growing pile of photographs of bloody corpses in the colonel's desk drawer.
Between October and the end of December 1992, 12 major players in Escobar's empire had been killed by the Search Bloc. Often the photos in the colonel's drawer would show the victim with a bullet wound in the forehead, or through the ear. Each one was reported killed 'in gun battles' with the Search Bloc.
The Americans based at the Search Bloc headquarters in Medellin occupied a small room where they slept on cots or air mattresses. They covered the walls with giant photo-maps of the city of Medellin and surrounding areas.
Whenever the American electronic eavesdropping experts from Centra Spike would forward the coordinates for a target, 'Col. Santos,' the Delta Force chief and his men would locate the exact spot on their maps. Col. Hugo Martinez, the Colombian commander of the Search Bloc, was always glad to receive the information, and usually acted upon it, but he was too proud to permit the Americans to help plan his assaults.
For Santos and his squad, usually six U.S. Army Delta operators and Navy Seals who rotated in for shifts, the mission had become a sometimes numbing routine. They spent most of their time holding classes for Search Bloc members, or in their small rooms playing cards or video games and counting the days until they got to go home.
Two CIA agents and a Centra Spike technician normally shared this cramped space. Whenever DEA agents Steve Murphy or Javier Pena rotated through, usually for a day or two at the end of the month, they stayed there as well. The Americans were allowed to wander outside the compound's barbed-wire fence to visit the little stores or restaurants inside the main checkpoint, but otherwise they were forbidden to leave the compound.
Despite Ambassador Morris Busby's strict orders, the Delta operators and DEA agents left the compound anyway, usually for Search Bloc assaults. Over time, the Americans became illicit forward observers, heading off with a new set of Centra Spike coordinates, searching for a convenient observation post where they could watch a suspected hideout, sometimes for days.
Usually they went along with Col. Martinez's assault forces, operating global positioning devices that they knew how to use better than the Colombians. Such sojourns were unauthorized, but the Americans believed they were essential for earning the respect of Martinez and his men.
Escobar's reputation was so frightening that the Search Bloc initially would only go after him with a large force. In time, Col. Martinez began employing smaller units for assaults, as Delta suggested, but always the sound of approaching helicopters or vehicles was enough to send Escobar fleeing.
'The last hundred yards' became a refrain among the frustrated Americans, a gap some feared the Search Bloc would never learn to close. The Delta operators were eager to set up a solo American raid, perhaps four or five men. They believed they could nail Escobar their first time out.
Santos had to calm them. If one of them were killed or injured it would end the mission - not to mention their careers. But concerns about getting in trouble with the U.S. Embassy or with the military chain of command weighed unimpressively against the risks the Colombians were taking every day.
Pena and Murphy felt the same pressure to put themselves on the line, and also went along on raids. They continued, according to members of the Search Bloc, even after they were ordered to stop. It was hard to continually urge the Colombians to put themselves at risk, then wave good-bye to them from the safety of the compound.
The Americans would ride in on choppers with Martinez or one of the other Colombians leading an assault. There were occasional firefights, but few members of the Search Bloc were killed on such raids; most of the unit's casualties came when off-duty members were killed by Escobar's assassins.
Sometimes Search Bloc commanders would ask the Americans to accompany them with a video camera to record payoffs to informants. There was such suspicion about corruption that the agents were asked to keep the camera focused on the bag of money from the minute it left the base until it was handed over to an informant.
When word of unauthorized excursions reached the U.S. Embassy, there was usually trouble. Murphy was told once, 'If you do it again, you will be back in the United States before your luggage arrives.' But with so little else to do inside the compound, it was hard for the Americans to sit back and watch.
The Search Bloc was, after all, trained, financed and even clandestinely guided by Americans. As Col. Martinez later described his feelings, the whole thing was in that sense an American production.
And now, just as friction between the Americans and Colombians at the Holguin Academy was beginning to subside, problems developed among the Americans. There is nothing unusual about competition between military and nonmilitary units thrown together on a mission, but in Colombia it grew into a significant bureaucratic battle.
The appetite for fresh intelligence from Medellin was fierce in Washington, which was pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the hunt. Each organization was out to prove that its men, equipment and methods were superior. Success on this unconventional mission in Colombia would likely have a big impact on future funding.
The CIA operated two kinds of aerial surveillance. It flew the wide-winged, silent Schweitzer aircraft to provide imagery, and had its own version of Centra Spike, code-named Majestic Eagle, to electronically eavesdrop on targets and pinpoint their location.
