The new commander, a lieutenant put in charge by Col. Martinez himself, was the colonel's son, also named Hugo. Because of the unit's failures, and young Hugo's role in them, he was regarded with amused contempt by the men who worked for his father.
Determined to redeem themselves, Hugo and the other men began working round-the-clock shifts with the CIA's electronic-surveillance experts, monitoring the known frequencies on the radio used by Juan Pablo, the son of Pablo Escobar. Juan Pablo, holed up in an apartment building in Medellin with his mother and sister, used code words to communicate by radio with his fugitive father.
Hugo's unit had been presented with an opportunity in August 1993, when Centra Spike was ordered out of Colombia temporarily to assist with the U.S. military operation in Somalia. With Centra Spike gone, the Colombians placed an antenna on a hilltop just outside the city that helped the mobile units fix on the signal from Juan Pablo's radio.
This round-the-clock surveillance quickly showed that Escobar restricted his radio communications to one hour each evening, roughly between 7:15 and 8:15. So each day at that time, Hugo's unit began trying to zero in on the signal the minute Escobar started talking. Hugo assigned one scanner to monitor the frequencies most often used, and another to scan the entire 120-140 MHz range that could be used by Juan Pablo's radio.
Eventually, through patient trial and error, they were able to break the code employed by father and son. If Pablo said, 'Let's go up to the next floor,' or 'the evening has ended,' it was a signal to shift to a specific frequency. Once the police units knew the code, they were able to follow the signal as it shifted. It was clear to Hugo that the Escobars believed their precautions made it impossible for their conversations to be tracked for more than a few moments at a time.
Still, in early October 1993, the Colombians experienced more setbacks.
Working with the CIA officials, Hugo's team tracked Escobar's location to San Jose Seminary in Medellin. The drug boss had a long-standing relationship with the Catholic Church in Medellin, and Juan Pablo had attended San Jose's elementary school. It was considered a promising target, and so Col. Martinez began planning a major raid.
The next day, Pablo Escobar's voice came up on the radio at the appointed time. The signal on the screen and in his headphones told Hugo that Escobar was speaking on the radio inside the main building in the seminary complex.
The raid was launched as Hugo listened to Escobar talking. Doors were blown off, flash-bang grenades exploded, police assault forces loudly descended . . . and the fugitive kept talking, as though nothing were happening. When the leaders of the assault teams told Hugo they hadn't found anything at the seminary, Escobar was still talking calmly on the radio.
'He's in there!' Hugo insisted, trusting his equipment and his ability to read the signals.
'He's not in there,' the major in charge of the raid said. 'We're in there. We've done our search.'
Escobar was still talking. There was no background noise, and he still seemed unperturbed. Hugo had to conclude that the raid had not even come close.
The assault teams were more convinced than ever that they were wasting their time. With deepening scorn for the colonel's son, the CIA and their worthless gizmos, the teams continued searching on the chance that Escobar had a secure hiding place somewhere on the grounds. Five hundred men proceeded over the next three days to take apart the seminary and an attached school. They poked holes in walls and ceilings, probed the buildings, looked for secret rooms and tunnels. They found nothing, and left behind furious officials from the archdiocese.
It was not possible to fail more spectacularly. Hugo was a laughingstock at the Search Bloc base. He was demoralized. He gave up his command over the surveillance teams, turning the main effort back over to the CIA officials.
Hugo did, however, prevail on his father to let him keep his small Mercedes van and two men to work on the equipment alone. Working with the little direction-finding kits had always been his favorite part of the job anyway.
Now there were competing groups trying to track Escobar: Hugo's vehicle and the ones coordinated by the CIA. Over the next few weeks they picked up Escobar's signal several times, and even though the force had no faith in the equipment, it was ordered to conduct raids.
Col. Martinez protested that they needed to marshal their intelligence and men, wait until the fix was certain and the opportunity was right. But his superiors in Bogota had grown suspicious and impatient. Even the U.S. Embassy wanted more raids.
The most spectacular of these came Oct. 11, after radio telemetry placed Escobar in a finca, or estate, on a high hill near the village of Aguas Frias. Located in a well-to-do suburban area just outside Medellin, the finca had a clear line of sight to the high-rise apartment building where Escobar's family was staying.
After the raid on the seminary, Escobar's voice had disappeared from the radio waves. The Search Bloc feared the raid might have frightened him. But after days of silence he finally made a call, coming on at one of the regular times with his son.
It was this call that the Search Bloc picked up and placed at the hilltop finca in Aguas Frias. In the tone of his voice and the thrust of his conversation, Escobar gave no indication that anything untoward had happened.
By the autumn of 1993, Pablo Escobar was in bad shape. His lifelong, fabulously wealthy organization had been dismantled and terrorized by the vigilantes of Los Pepes.
In a single two-week period, five members of his extended family had been killed, presumably by Los Pepes, and several of his remaining key business associates had been kidnapped and murdered. Others were in prison, on the run or in hiding.
In an effort to raise money for his war against the state and to continue his flight, Escobar's associates were selling off his assets around the world. A DEA cable dated Oct. 21 noted that an Escobar family physician was traveling and selling off the family's properties: a 70,000-acre timber farm in Panama, estates in the Dominican Republic, and two 20-acre lots in South Florida. Efforts were also under way to sell his art collection, jewelry and precious stones, including a collection of uncut emeralds valued at more than $200,000.
Escobar's primary link with the rest of the world was now his loyal teenage son. Just as Col. Hugo Martinez now hunted Escobar with his son at his side, the drug boss and his son conspired daily to evade them. They were now talking by radio four times daily. So long as the Search Bloc knew where Juan Pablo was, and could monitor
