Toft met with de Greiff to encourage him to let Martinez stay. According to a DEA cable describing the meeting, Toft and another DEA official encouraged de Greiff to honor the president's request:
'Obviously, the impending implications and repercussions . . . would almost certainly overwhelm the Gaviria administration,' the cable said. 'Also, this type of information could potentially elevate Escobar once again to the status of national hero. . . . The BCO has enjoyed a long and successful working relationship with Colonel Martinez. . . . Of interest is the fact that the Medellin cartel has been decimated and practically brought to its knees, all under the leadership of Colonel Martinez. To date, the BCO continues to support Colonel Martinez and his subordinates.'
This was the message that got through, not the ambassador's 'veiled threat' to the president. Col. Martinez was not transferred. There were no charges against him or any members of his Search Bloc for involvement with Los Pepes, nor would there ever be. And American support for the unit never wavered.
Records pertaining to U.S. actions in Colombia in 1993 remain classified. Questioned about the vigilante group years later, former CIA Station Chief Bill Wagner said: 'I have no memory of them.'
Other American principals, including Busby and Toft, now dismiss Los Pepes as creatures of the Colombian underworld, a plague Escobar brought upon himself, and a welcome one. Gen. George Joulwon, chief of the U.S. Army Southern Command, said: 'I only vaguely remember some of that. If there was a connection it went expressly against my instructions.'
The vigilantes of Los Pepes resumed their bloody work, sometimes with dark panache. On July 14, a prize stallion owned by Roberto Escobar, Pablo's brother, was stolen, its rider and trainer shot dead. The stud, named Terremoto, or Earthquake, was worth millions and commanded a breeding fee of $600,000.
The horse was found three weeks later, tied to a tree just south of Medellin, healthy but neutered.
The hunt continued.
Col. Hugo Martinez did not protest when he learned that his superiors in Bogota were planning to replace him, and had even picked his successor. He offered to step aside. As the first anniversary of Pablo Escobar's escape passed in July 1993, there seemed to be better reasons to leave than to stay.
Col. Jose Perez, his proposed replacement, was a respected officer who had been working on a poppy eradication program, which meant he probably had a comfortable relationship with the U.S. Embassy. So Martinez requested a transfer to Bogota, citing stresses caused by long separations from his family, who had been sent back to the capital from Medellin for their protection.
The hunt for Pablo Escobar had created strains in many families, the colonel's perhaps most of all. His children had been forced out of school for long periods when they were in hiding, and he hardly saw them or his wife, who blamed him for the problems in their marriage. As much as he wanted to finish the job, and as much as he felt that to step down would be an admission of failure, he was ready to quit. The manhunt simply demanded too much.
But his request was again rejected, and Perez never came. Despite Martinez's alleged ties to the vigilantes of Los Pepes, detailed in Ambassador Morris Busby's memos to Washington, the colonel continued to receive American support, even when he wasn't sure he wanted it. He was certain that was the primary reason he remained, for it was the Americans who had bankrolled and pushed the effort from the beginning.
Besides, no one else in the National Police wanted the job. In the year that Martinez had commanded the Search Bloc, the unit had conducted thousands of raids, arrested or killed scores of Escobar's closest associates, and seen scores of police and civilians killed in return. The hunt for Escobar had evolved into a kind of civil war between Medellin and Bogota. The Search Bloc conducted its raids in Medellin, and Escobar set off his retaliatory bombs in the capital.
The toll of the hunt was terrible, but the police could afford to lose more men than Escobar could. By the summer of 1993, the once powerful Medellin cartel was in shambles. Escobar's fincas stood empty and looted. His most palatial estate, Napoles, was now a police headquarters.
Many of his former allies had abandoned him, offering to trade information for government acquiescence in their own drug trafficking (or for protection from the vigilante group Los Pepes). But the man himself was still at large, moving from hideout to hideout, trying to hold together his crumbling empire, still setting off bombs, still sowing terror.
So long as Escobar was free, the Search Bloc's lesser successes amounted to little. Every day Escobar remained at large was an insult to the rule of law, and a blot on the reputation of Colombia . . . and Col. Martinez's force.
There were those who refused to believe Martinez was really trying to catch Escobar. Semana magazine polled officials in Bogota about the Search Bloc's failure to get Escobar, and reported that 'corruption' was believed to be the primary reason. The second reason most frequently cited was 'inefficiency.' Meanwhile, prosecutors in Bogota were investigating the disappearance of some of the $1 million seized in Search Bloc raids.
Inside the fences at the Search Bloc base, Martinez wrestled daily with disappointment and frustration. He and his men lived there apart from their families for months at a time, always under the shadow of death. Escobar had evaded the police raids for so long that many had begun to doubt he would ever be caught. The colonel's top men complained that the effort was ruining their careers and often asked to be recommended for other assignments. The Americans provided money, guidance and information, and their support kept him in command, but Martinez knew he still lacked their complete trust.
One day in late summer of 1993, Santos, the Delta commander at the Search Bloc base, and DEA agent Javier Pena brought him a tape Centra Spike had recorded of a radio conversation between Escobar and his son.
Martinez was excited. It was the first time he had actually heard Escobar's voice in more than a year. He wanted his men to analyze it. The Americans allowed him to listen to the tape but refused to give him a copy. They remembered an embarrassing leak in 1989, when the transcript of a phone conversation recorded by Centra Spike wound up in the newspapers, tipping off Escobar to their capability. The orders were that no copies or transcripts could be made.
Martinez was furious. Pena and Santos were apologetic.
'Look, Colonel,' Pena said. 'I feel bad about it myself. You want to kick us all out of here . . . kick us out. We'll leave right now.'
They secretly allowed the colonel to copy the tape, but Martinez stayed angry about the official snub. He had long since embraced American technology. He had been skeptical at first, and it had led them in the wrong direction often enough. But they had come so close to nailing Escobar on several occasions that he no longer
