Of more immediate use was Lehder's description of Escobar's daily routine while in hiding - how he would move from safe house to safe house, how he would almost certainly stay close to his home base in and around Medellin. He drew a crude map and provided insights into Escobar's habits and preferences:
"Escobar is strictly a ghetto person, not a farm or jungle person. . . . Escobar always tries to keep within distance range for his cellular phone to reach Medellin's phone base. That's approximately 100 miles, so he can call any time.
"Generally, P. Escobar occupies the main house with some of his hit men, radio operator (Big High Frequency radio receiver), cooks, hores [whores] and messengers. For transportation they have jeeps, motorcycles and sometimes a boat. I have never seen him riding a horse. Escobar gets up at 1 or 2 p.m. and goes to sleep at 1 or 2 a.m.
"Fugitive Escobar uses from 15 to 30 security guards, with arms and WT [walkie-talkies]. Two shifts of 12 hours each. Two at the main road entrance, some along the road, the rest around the perimeter of the main house (one mile) and one at his door. . . .
"The main house always has two or three gateway paths which run to the forest and thus toward a second hideout or near a river where a boat is located, or a tent with supplies and radios. Escobar is an obese man, certainly not a muscle man or athlete. He could not run 15 minutes without respiratory trouble. Unfortunately, the military police has never used hunting dogs against him."
Lehder told the agents that any time the lookouts on the far perimeter saw a vehicle approaching or a low-flying airplane or helicopter, they would "scream through those walkie-talkies" and Escobar would immediately flee.
In addition to Dolly Moncada and Lehder, the DEA noted with approval the cooperation of another former Escobar associate with a grudge. Colombian paramilitary leader Fidel Castano was a charismatic assassin who occasionally exported drugs and smuggled diamonds. A onetime friend of Escobar's who had helped him hide during the government's first war against the narcos, Castano turned against Escobar after the murders of Castano's friends, the drug-dealing Moncada and Galeano brothers.
In a dispatch to DEA headquarters on Feb. 22, 1993, DEA agent Javier Pena identified Castano as "a cooperating individual who was once a trusted Pablo Escobar associate." He reported that Castano had actually accompanied the Search Bloc on a raid 10 days earlier, when one of the unit's top officers drowned as the raiding parties crossed the Cauca River. Castano had reportedly made heroic efforts to rescue the man.
In Castano, Lehder and the Moncada and Galeano families, the hunt for Escobar had gained allies willing to play by the bloody rules of Medellin's underworld. The Colombian government and the U.S. Embassy used them throughout the fall and winter of 1992 to gather information about Escobar and his organization.
As early as September, the search effort seemed to be acting on Dolly Moncada's suggestion to go after Escobar's lawyers. On Sept. 26, the Search Bloc raided an estate owned by Escobar's attorney, Santiago Uribe, one of those named by Dolly. The raiders were in the process of ransacking the place when Uribe himself drove up. He was arrested and questioned.
Uribe acknowledged that he was one of Escobar's lawyers but denied knowing his fugitive client's whereabouts. Among Uribe's files the Search Bloc found letters from Escobar and tapes linking him to drug dealing, bribes and murder - including the assassination just days before of Judge Myrian Velez, one of the "faceless" judges in Medellin, who had been appointed, supposedly in secret, to investigate the murder of a crusading newspaper editor. Velez had been preparing to indict Escobar as the "intellectual author" of the murder.
The evidence added to the government's criminal case against Escobar, but by now few in the government - and virtually no one within the Search Bloc - were talking about arresting Escobar and putting him on trial. As a 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.