UNFINISHED BUSINESS

In the first hours of his last day of temporary duty in Colombia, DEA
Special Agent Charlie Martinez was shot straight through the chest. The
bullet tore a hole just above Charlie's right nipple and ripped an exit
wound the size of a quarter through the top of his right shoulder.

The man who shot him was Rene Benitez, a wiry little Cuban American
wanted in Florida for cocaine trafficking. Benitez had already shot
Charlie in the hip. Now he aimed his .380 automatic at the center of
Charlie's forehead and squeezed the trigger.

There wasn't much Charlie could have done. The Drug Enforcement
Administration had sent him to Colombia without a weapon.

At that same moment, in the early hours of Feb. 10, 1982, on a desolate
roadside outside a Colombian village called Turbaco, Charlie's partner
was about to be shot, too. Special Agent Kelley McCullough was in the
back seat of the car that Benitez and two accomplices had used to take
the two Americans to the countryside to execute them.

As Charlie sat bleeding in the front seat, awaiting the kill shot from
Benitez, McCullough was scrambling out of the back seat. He managed to
get his hand on the .45-caliber automatic held by Benitez's accomplice,
a hulking ex-Colombian cop named Ivan Duarte, but Duarte pulled away.
Kelley ran from the car and into the darkness.

Duarte pursued him, squeezing off several shots. One round sliced
through Kelley's knee. A second shot tore a hole through his right
buttock, and he went down. As Kelley struggled to get up, Duarte stood
over him and fired a final shot into the base of his sweaty neck.

All of that - all those gunshots and all the terror that Charlie and
Kelley absorbed as they waited to die - happened 19 years before Rene
Benitez and Ivan Duarte had to answer in an American courtroom for what
they did that night. The two gunmen sat at the defense table in federal
court in Florida in late February, looking small and diminished,
surrounded by federal marshals.

The shootings had played out a long time ago, on another continent, but
not so long ago or far away that anyone who knew Charlie or Kelley had
forgotten a single, searing detail. And it was not so long ago that
Benitez and Duarte were able to disappear forever, though they tried.
And for all those years, the United States government brought its
considerable powers to bear in order to make certain that no one might
ever believe that shooting a federal agent was a pardonable sin.

Charlie and Kelley were foot soldiers in a war against drugs in Colombia
that continues to this day. They went to help halt a flow of narcotics
that has intensified since 1982. Today, in addition to exporting tons of
cocaine and marijuana, Colombia has become the world's leading exporter
of heroin to America. Last year, Congress gave Colombia $1.3 billion,
including military assistance, in an attempt to stem the tide.

Charlie and Kelley were pursuing marijuana shipments on their 25-day
deployment to Colombia in 1982. They flew a DEA airplane along the
coast, looking for vessels suspected of hauling drugs. Nineteen years
later, DEA agents are still in Colombia, still searching for drugs.

Within the DEA, Charlie and Kelley's case has taken on mythical status.
It has lasted longer than many careers. It has forced revisions of DEA
policies on guns and temporary assignments; Charlie and Kelley were
unarmed agents on a temporary mission when they were asked to locate a
dangerous criminal in an unfamiliar country. Their case reverberates to
this day within the insular world of federal agents as an object lesson
in operational mistakes and command miscalculations.

The longest investigation in DEA history, involving hundreds of agents
on two continents over 19 years, came to a climax in court this spring.
And long before Benitez and Duarte heard the verdicts of their juries,
they had come to discover one simple truth: Some people never forget.

Kelley McCullough had never been to Colombia. He was a country boy,
raised on a ranch in West Texas. He didn't speak Spanish. So when a
teletype arrived ordering him on TDY - temporary duty - to Colombia in
February 1982, he was relieved to discover that his partner on this
mission was DEA Special Agent Charles Lazaro Martinez.

Charlie was born and raised in Miami, the son of a Cuban immigrant. He
grew up speaking Spanish. Like Kelley, he was a pilot. And like Kelley,
who had spent 15 years as a DEA street agent, Charlie was a tough,
experienced professional. He had served on several missions to Colombia.

This mission was strictly hands-off - no arrests, no takedowns, no
shootouts. The DEA had no arrest powers in Colombia, anyway. The agents
were merely to fly a DEA-owned Piper Navajo low along Colombia's
Caribbean coast, photographing boats suspected of hauling drugs. It was
part of Operation Tiburon (shark), a full-scale press on the narcos who
were drowning America in cocaine and marijuana.

Kelley's wife didn't like it. She worried about him running around in a
country full of narco-traffickers who seemed to murder people by the
truckload. But she really couldn't complain; she was the one who'd told
Kelley to quit his job as a supermarket manager trainee and get a
government job with regular hours. Charlie's wife was uneasy, too. She
never got used to all the time he spent away from home in dangerous
places since he transferred from a stable U.S. Customs job to the DEA.

The two agents were sent to Cartagena, a resort city on the Caribbean
coast. Cartagena was sunny and mellow compared to the violent, chaotic
cocaine centers of Medellin and Cali and Bogota. The DEA office in
Bogota reserved adjoining rooms for them at the Hotel Don Blas, a
whitewashed, beachfront high-rise surrounded by exotic palms. It didn't
seem so bad. There were good restaurants, a walkway to the beach, and a
short drive to the airport.

The two men had never met prior to the mission, but quickly fell into an
easy, comfortable partnership. Kelley, 39, was tall and rangy and
fair-haired, and Charlie, 34, was short and compact with a thick black
beard, but they had a lot in common. Each had joined the DEA's air wing
and earned a pilot's license. Each had young children back home. They
were both trim and fit from regular workouts. They both talked in
pilot-speak, that distinctively informal and unhurried Southern drawl
that suggests everything is under control.

They settled into a routine: Up every morning and off to the airport by
7 a.m. Prepare the plane and flight plan. Fly up and down the coastline
for a few hours. Photograph suspicious vessels and plot them on maps.
Back to the airport by midafternoon, refuel, drive to the hotel. Dinner
at a restaurant, back to their rooms by 9 or 10.

The only thing that broke the routine was a radio call from
headquarters. It came on Friday, Feb. 5, while they were hugging the
coast in the Piper Navajo. It was the DEA country attache in Bogota,
Johnny Phelps, asking Charlie to call him when he got back to the hotel.
It didn't sound urgent.

Phelps had received a telex from the State Department in Washington
regarding Rene Benitez, a Cuban American who had fled Miami in November
1978 while awaiting sentencing on a federal cocaine conviction. The
telex asked the DEA in Colombia to check out a report that Benitez might
be staying at a hotel in Cartagena. It was called the Don Blas.

When Charlie called Phelps back that day, Phelps asked him to find out
if Benitez was staying at the Don Blas. The agent was to make "discreet
inquiries."

Charlie had never heard of Benitez, though he was a was a significant
cocaine and marijuana trafficker. He was among the so-called cocaine
cowboys who helped build Miami's reputation as the violent, northern
frontier of the lucrative South American drug trade.

On Sunday, Feb. 7, his first day off since arriving in Cartagena,
Charlie went to the hotel office and asked for the manager. He was
introduced to a man named Lazaro. Charlie showed him his DEA credentials
and his government passport, and asked in Spanish if Benitez was staying
at the hotel. Lazaro said he would check it out and call Charlie in his
room later.

By the following afternoon, Lazaro had not called. Charlie went back
down and Lazaro apologized, promising again to get back to him. By
Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 9, there was still no word. Charlie went a third
time. Another man, dressed in the same resort-casual type outfit as
Lazaro, introduced himself as the manager. Charlie explained what he
wanted. The man asked for his room number and promised to call later.

By 6:30 that Tuesday evening, no call had come, so the two agents went
to dinner. At 9:30, just after they returned, a woman knocked on the
door of their two-room suite on the 18th floor and asked permission to
turn down the beds and close the blinds.

For the first time at the Don Blas, the agents were suspicious. No one
had asked such a thing the whole week they had been there. In any case,
they never allowed anyone in their hotel rooms while on assignment. They
sent the woman away, but made a point of watching her leave. She walked
all the way down the hall without knocking on another door.

They were certain she had been sent to check them out. They discussed it
for a while, and agreed that they needed to be more security-conscious.
Then they locked their doors and went to bed.

Kelley was first to awaken when someone started pounding on the door to
1804, Charlie's room. It wasn't a knock. It was a banging, a pounding,
urgent and insistent. The time was 12:30 a.m. Kelley came through the
passage between the adjoining rooms and said through the door, in
English: "Who is it?"

The answer came in Spanish: "Police! Open the door!"

Charlie was awake now. He got up and told Kelley the people outside were
claiming to be cops. Charlie had been around too long to believe
something like that. What would the police want at this hour? The police
in Cartagena already knew all about them. DEA agents didn't go anywhere
in Colombia without reporting to the national police and the DAS,
Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, Colombia's FBI.

Charlie walked into Kelley's room, 1803, and opened the door a crack. He
peered out and saw four men in civilian clothes, two of them with guns
drawn. They saw him and rushed toward the room. Charlie slammed the door
and locked it.

There was more pounding and the same voice: "Police! Open the door!"

Charlie yelled through the door in Spanish: "We're not going to open the
door till we know who you are."

A second voice, different from the first, said: "Open the door or we'll
shoot it down."

Charlie translated for Kelley. The two agents were growing more alarmed
now. They were alone, on foreign ground, on the 18th floor in the middle
of the night. And they had no weapons.

Charlie's request that the DEA's Bogota office put through the paperwork
to the Colombian authorities for a salvo conductor, a permit to carry a
gun, had gone nowhere. He had been told he wouldn't need a gun because
he was on temporary duty and was only going out on surveillance flights.
In addition, the agents had entered Colombia through Aruba, which was
notoriously strict about American agents carrying guns on the island.

Only later did Charlie learn that the pilot he and Kelley were relieving
had carried a gun while flying the same mission and staying at the same
hotel. And the DEA agents in Bogota all carried guns. Kelley knew
nothing of all this; he was new to Colombia and hadn't sought permission
to bring his gun.

The pounding grew louder. "Get away from the door," Charlie told Kelley.
"They're liable to start shooting through the door."

The two men decided to call the local police. Their rooms had no outside
lines. Charlie explained his predicament to the hotel operator in
Spanish.

She refused to place the call. The best she could do, she told him, was
to send up hotel security.

Charlie hung up and hollered again through the door of 1803: "Who are
you?"

There was more shouting. Then, under the door, a small card appeared. It
was a Colombian National Police ID card in the name of Jose Ivan
Duarte-Acero. It had a photo of square-faced man with a flat nose and
heavy brow.

The agents felt a surge of hope. Perhaps these people were police. Why
antagonize them? Charlie slid his government passport under the door.
Once the men saw proof that they were Americans on official business, he
thought, they would be satisfied and leave.

The visitors slid the passport back and repeated their demands to open
the door. As they argued back and forth with Charlie, someone knocked on
the door. It was a polite knock, not a banging. A voice said in Spanish:
"Hotel security."

Finally, help had arrived. Charlie yelled that he wanted to be sure the
men outside were police. The voice of the security man assured him that
they were indeed police officers.

Charlie and Kelley talked it over for several minutes. They were afraid
that if they held out much longer, the men would shoot off the locks and
barge in firing. This was Colombia. The police did not concern
themselves with civil rights or the rule of law. They didn't need a
reason to shoot people.

The agents clung to the hope that the men were cops. They decided to
open the door.

The first man through the door was the one called Duarte, whose photo
was on the police ID. He rushed in and pointed a gun at Charlie's head.
It was a Colt .45 automatic Model 1911 with a gray-blue finish, a
powerful weapon. Charlie knew guns; he recognized the Colt. He couldn't
help it. It was inches from his face. Duarte grabbed Charlie's arm and
spun him around and shoved him, stumbling, into Room 1804 and sat him
down on his bed.

"Who are you?" Duarte demanded in Spanish. "Why are you making inquiries
about Mr. Rene Benitez?"

Charlie told him he had been asked by the U.S. Embassy to inquire about
Benitez. Duarte repeated the question and Charlie gave him the same
answer. Duarte did not seem satisfied.

In the next room, two men had pushed Kelley against the wall. A third
man rushed over and pointed a .380 semiautomatic at his head. Kelley
could see that the hammer was cocked, ready to fire. The man frisked
him. The other men searched the room and found Kelley's DEA credentials,
his government passport, and his personal passport.

The man with the .380 walked over to Charlie's room and aimed the gun at
his head. Charlie could see that it was a Beretta Model 84, a cheap
little nasty gun with a double-action trigger.

The hammer was cocked when the man looked down at him on the bed and
said in Spanish: "My name is Rene Benitez. What do you want with me?"

The State Department telex noting that Benitez might have stayed at the
Hotel Don Blas was more accurate than anyone at the DEA realized. He'd
been living in a suite at the Don Blas since the previous September -
nearly six months. He had been negotiating to buy the hotel.

He seemed to have the run of the place. There were several cars and
drivers at his disposal, and Benitez spent his days being driven to
restaurants and clubs. He had a wife, a daughter and a home in Cali,
where he told people he operated, variously, a motorcycle repair
business, a restaurant and an egg farm. Benitez did not appear to run
any particular business in Cartagena, other than the narcotics
trafficking operation that paid for his beach-resort lifestyle.

Benitez was 39, short and slender, with a long, solemn face and eyelids
that drooped slightly, giving him a sinister aspect. He spoke English
and Spanish, both with a Cuban accent. He was born in Cuba, but became a
naturalized American citizen in 1968, and had smuggled drugs for years
in Florida.

One member of Benitez's entourage was Ivan Duarte, 30, who had quit the
national police force as a lieutenant 13 months earlier, citing a
personality conflict with a commander. Now he was Benitez's full-time
drinking buddy and driver, a squat, powerful, thick-necked Colombian of
Venezuelan ancestry.

Also at Benitez's disposal in Cartagena was his brother, Armando
Benitez, also a Cuban who had lived in Miami. Another hanger-on went by
the name Jairo David Valencia Cardenas, a career criminal from Miami by
way of Cuba.

It was these men, with their aura of authority penetrating every floor
of the towering Don Blas, who burst into Room 1803 on the morning of
Feb. 10 and abruptly dismissed the two hotel security men who had
persuaded Charlie Martinez to open the door.

When Rene Benitez ordered Charlie and Kelley to get dressed because they
were all going to the police station to sort out just who these gringos
were, the two agents were heartened. Even if the intruders weren't
police, they thought, the agents might at least get a chance to explain
themselves to actual police officers.

It occurred to Charlie to ask Benitez to let him call the U.S. Embassy
in Bogota to notify them of their trip to the police station.

Benitez turned abruptly and pointed his gun again at Charlie's head.
"You're not calling the embassy," he said, and he waved the gun in
Charlie's eyes. "This is the only law in Colombia."

As Charlie and Kelley dressed, Armando Benitez showed the agents'
credentials to his brother and said: "These are the guys. They're both
DEA agents."

Rene Benitez and Duarte herded everyone out of the rooms and down the
hall to the elevator. On the ride down, Duarte tucked his gun into his
waistband under his sport shirt. He motioned for Rene Benitez to do the
same, and Rene slid his weapon into his waistband, but with his hand
still on the gun butt.

As they crossed the hotel lobby, Charlie loudly demanded that he be
allowed to phone the embassy. He walked as slowly as possible, hoping to
catch the attention of the desk clerks and security men. They seemed
eager not to notice.

Outside the main entrance, Charlie and Kelley were ordered into an
orange Lada, a boxy, Russian-made car similar to a Jeep. Duarte drove,
with Kelley in the back seat next to Valencia and Charlie riding the
hump beside the gearshift up front, next to Rene Benitez. The agents saw
Armando Benitez walk across the parking lot and disappear.

They drove north along the beach road. Rene Benitez interrogated
Charlie, asking what kind of plane he flew, where he flew, what he had
seen, whom he reported to. Benitez kept his gun on his lap, his finger
on the trigger, the barrel pointed at Charlie's midsection a few inches
away. Charlie was terrified that the Lada would hit a bump and the gun
would go off.

He tried to answer Benitez's questions. He was explaining how he charted
the movements of what he called drug-runners' "mother ships" when
Benitez angrily cut him off. "I don't like you Americans coming down
here and getting into the middle of our marijuana business," he said,
and he shot Charlie in the hip.

It was so sudden, so unprovoked that Charlie was at first more stunned
than hurt. He felt as if someone had punched him in the side, hard. Then
he felt a deep, throbbing, burning pain. The round had smashed into his
right hip, then deflected backwards. It tore through muscle and tissue
and came to rest just below the skin of his right buttock. He was
bleeding all over the seat.

The impact had thrown him against the gearshift, knocking the car out of
gear and cutting the engine. As they coasted to a stop, Duarte began
cursing and screaming at Benitez: "You could've shot me!"

Duarte started the car again and continued on. Charlie pressed his
fingers against the wound, trying to stanch the bleeding. He announced
that he needed to go to a hospital. Both Duarte and Benitez said: "Yeah,
OK." Benitez then said something curious: "Don't worry about it. I got
shot by the DEA once. It wasn't a problem."

Now Kelley spoke to Charlie for the first time in the car: "What
happened?"

Charlie's voice came from the front seat: "This guy just shot me."

Bouncing in the backseat, pinned against Valencia, Kelley had been
getting restless even before he heard the shot. He had asked Valencia,
in English, where the hell they were going. "To the police station,"
Valencia said, and Kelley's hopes rose.

But then Charlie got shot and Kelley tensed in his seat. Valencia tried
to calm him, saying, "Don't worry, it's an accident. Rene actually shot
himself, too. We're going to a hospital."

They drove on, through Cartagena, passing into the town of Turbaco,
where Kelley saw a lighted sign that read "Clinica." He could see that
it was a small hospital. Again, he felt relief. Charlie was going to get
treated.

The Lada moved on, and Kelley turned and watched the sign fade in the
darkness. He turned to Valencia. "Hey, wasn't that a hospital?" From the
front seat came Benitez' voice: "No." Duarte said over his shoulder to
Valencia, in Spanish: "Keep an eye on that gringo in the back. He could
be dangerous."

Soon they were out of Turbaco, a good 15 miles from Cartagena, on a
two-lane road in the countryside. There were no street lights. The only
light came from a full moon. It was 1:30 a.m.

The Lada pulled off the road and stopped at the edge of the jungle.
Duarte, Benitez and Valencia climbed out. Duarte left the keys in the
ignition and the engine running. Over the top of the car, Duarte and
Benitez began to argue. Duarte was by the open driver's door, the .45
tucked in his waistband. Benitez was next to the open passenger door,
holding the Beretta.

Charlie, bleeding and in terrible pain in the front seat, still pressing
his fingers to the wound in his hip, heard them quarreling in Spanish.
It was not a heated argument, more of a brisk discussion, a careful
weighing of options and consequences. They were trying to decide whether
to kill these two Americans inside the car, or take them outside
somewhere.

Benitez said he wanted to take care of it right away, inside the car.
The Americans were right there, under control. No, no, Duarte said.
Think of the mess. "We don't want to get blood all over the car," he
said.

Charlie tried to think quickly and clearly. He considered reaching down
and putting the car into gear and trying to press the gas pedal with his
hand to somehow drive away. Then he turned quickly to Kelley and said:
"We got to do something. They're going to kill us right here."

Benitez leaned in with his gun in his hand and said to Charlie: "Get
out."

The pain in his hip was stabbing at him. Charlie scooted to the
passenger side from his perch between the seats. He grabbed the open
door to pull himself out and looked up to see the Beretta's barrel
pointed at his forehead. He ducked and dropped back into the car. Kelley
heard him shout, "No, Rene, no!"

Benitez raised the gun and fired. Charlie's arm shot up and he twisted
his torso, but there was no room to maneuver. He felt the heat of the
gases from the muzzle blast and saw a flash. The bullet ripped through
Charlie's chest and exploded out through the top of his right shoulder.

His ears rang from the blast. His eyes focused again on the Beretta,
still smoking from the shot. The barrel was aimed at his forehead. He
saw Benitez hold the gun with both hands and squeeze the trigger. The
hammer fell. There was nothing.

Instantly, Charlie realized the gun had jammed. He wondered why Benitez
didn't try to clear the chamber; it was a simple task with the Beretta.
Then his head cleared. He was focused, his senses aroused. He felt a
sudden rage. He leaped up from the seat, pushed himself through the
door, and lunged for Benitez. He wanted to kill him.

Benitez backed up toward the rear of the Lada. He pointed the gun at
Charlie again and squeezed the trigger. This time the hammer fell, but
again the gun did not fire. Charlie came at Benitez, cursing and fuming.
Benitez aimed the gun again and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed
again.

Charlie was on him now, punching wildly. Benitez's left fist snaked out
and caught Charlie's jaw and sent him twisting down and backwards. He
tumbled into a ditch beside the road. Benitez stared at his gun. Charlie
scrambled to his feet. He didn't think about his hip or his chest. He
had one thought: Run.

He climbed up the edge of ditch and stumbled toward the tree line. There
was a barbed wire fence. He leaped over it. As he rushed off into the
jungle, he looked back and saw Benitez there by the Lada, in the
moonlight, still staring at the gun in his hand.

As soon as Charlie had said, "They're going to kill us right here,"
Kelley decided to force his way out of the car. He pushed the driver's
seat up to get out the driver's door. It was one of those seats that you
have to lift all the way up, the entire seat, to get out. Duarte reached
out and pushed the seat back.

Kelley pushed again. Duarte pushed back. It was a half-hearted push;
Duarte seemed preoccupied with what Benitez was trying to do to Charlie
in the front seat.

Kelley pushed again and then he was out the door and reaching for
Duarte's gun. It was still in his waistband. He heard Charlie scream and
heard the shot from Benitez's gun. He got his hand on the butt of
Duarte's .45, but he couldn't get a good grip because it was covered by
Duarte's shirt, a slick Ban-Lon pullover.

Duarte pulled away and Kelley's hand slipped off the gun butt. He turned
and ran along the ditch. He heard three shots ring out. The vegetation
was thick, and he stumbled and fell. As he got back up, Duarte raised
his .45 somewhere behind him and fired a shot that sliced through the
inside of Kelley's right knee.

Kelley stumbled but managed to keep running. He heard another shot. A
bullet tunneled through the bottom of his right buttock and tore cleanly
through his groin. He went down face first in the grass.

He could hear the fall of Duarte's footsteps. He felt dirt and grime on
his face. His heart was racing. He heard Duarte walk up behind him. He
raised himself halfway up on his right hand and thought about trying to
stand.

Duarte aimed the .45 at the base of Kelley's neck, just to the right of
the spine. There was another shot, and Kelley Don McCullough, father of
three, son of Texas, DEA pilot, 15 years with the agency, first time in
Colombia, felt a bullet tear through his exposed neck.