one car from his unit had followed him. There were three men in it. The men in the other car either hadn't heard him or were ignoring him.
Escobar's conversation with his son continued.
Juan Pablo repeated a question from a list of 40 given to him by a Colombian journalist. He and his father were formulating Escobar's replies. This question asked why so many other countries had refused to allow Juan Pablo, his mother and sister entry.
The family, under death threats from the vigilantes of Los Pepes, had been trying desperately to flee Colombia.
'The countries have denied entry because they don't know the real truth,' Escobar said, answering the question.
'Yes,' Juan Pablo said, evidently taking notes as his father spoke.
'We're going to knock on the doors of every embassy from all around the world because we're willing to fight incessantly,' Escobar continued. 'Because we want to live and study in another country without bodyguards and hopefully with a new name.'
'Just so you know,' Juan Pablo said. 'I got a phone call from a reporter who told me that President Alfredo Cristiani from Ecuador, no, I think it is El Salvador . . .'
'Yes?' Escobar got up now and moved to the second-floor window, mindful that this conversation had dragged on for several minutes; twenty seconds was his usual limit. As he listened, he looked at the cars moving on the street below.
'Well, he has offered to receive us. I heard the statement, well, he gave it to me by phone,' Juan Pablo said.
'Yes?'
'And he said if this contributed in some way to the peace of the country, he would be willing to receive us, because the world receives dictators and bad people, why wouldn't he receive us?'
'Well, let's wait and see, because that country is a bit hidden away.'
'Well, but at least there's a possibility, and it has come from a president.'
'Look, with respect to El Salvador,' Escobar said.
'Yeah?'
'In case they ask anything, tell them the family is very grateful and obliged to the words of the president, that it is known he is the president of peace in El Salvador.'
'Yeah.'
Escobar stayed at the window, still mindful of the length of the call. When Juan Pablo related a question about the family's experiences under government protection, his father answered: 'You respond to that one.'
Juan Pablo rattled off three more of the questions, but then his father abruptly ended the conversation. He had seen something on the street below.
'OK, let's leave it at that,' Escobar said.
'Yeah, OK,' Juan Pablo said. 'Good luck.'
'Good luck.'
'Yeah.'
. . and commit massacres in Medellin.' '
'Yes, all right.'
'OK,' Pablo said. 'The next one.'
The radio signal pointed Lt. Hugo Martinez straight ahead.
The line on his computer screen lengthened and the tone in his headphones grew stronger as his unmarked police surveillance van moved down a street in a middle-class neighborhood of Medellin on Dec. 2, 1993.
Electronic surveillance from the air and the ground had traced calls made by fugitive drug trafficker Pablo Escobar to this neighborhood. Hugo and his driver were trying to find the exact house. They drove down the street until the signal peaked and then began to diminish, the line pinching in at the edges of the screen and the tone slightly falling off.
They turned around and crept back. The line stretched slowly until it once again filled the screen. They stopped. This was it. They drove past that point again just to make sure; again the signal grew, peaked and then slightly diminished.
The driver turned around again. As they approached the house where the signal was strongest, Hugo looked up . . . and saw him.
A fat man stood in the second floor window. He had long, curly black hair and a full beard. The image hit Hugo like an electric shock. It was Pablo Escobar.
He was talking on a cell phone. Suddenly he stepped back from the window. Hugo thought he had seen a look of surprise. Through his headphones, he heard Escobar say 'Good luck,' and end his conversation with his son.
Hugo and his team had been eavesdropping on Escobar for three days as he telephoned his wife and son at a hotel in Bogota. The fugitive was trying to get his family safely out of Colombia. Until this moment, the officers had not been able to tell exactly where his calls were coming from.
Now Escobar was literally right in front of them. Years of effort, hundreds of lives, thousands of futile police raids, untold millions of dollars, countless man hours, all of the false steps, false alarms, blunders. And here he
