WHEN PUSH CAME TO SHOVE

KILLING PABLO: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw. By Mark Bowden.
Atlantic Monthly Press, $25

The movies "Traffic" and "Blow" have helped rekindle the nation's obsession
with cocaine's devastating effects, as well as spit-shine the drug's
insidious cool. Now, Mark Bowden, author of 1999's "Black Hawk Down," takes
us back to the glory days of our infamous war on drugs, when it seemed we
had the enemy in our cross hairs.

And shot him dead. It was reported that Colombian soldiers brought down
Pablo Escobar, the notorious head of the Medellin cartel, on Dec. 2, 1993,
but the suspicion remains that Delta Force operatives were in on the kill.

They were certainly in on the hunt for the multi-billionaire drug lord, as
was an array of U.S. operatives, there nominally to advise the Colombian
forces in what was clearly a search-and-destroy mission. When it came to
Escobar, both governments took "due process" to mean "dead on delivery."

For too long, Colombia had been ruled by Pablo's law.

It had staggered under it, in fact. From 1984 on, Escobar assassinated
everyone from a presidential front-runner and high-level ministry officials
to judges to bend the country to his will. Of course, policemen were mere
fodder. It was his way or the morgue.

It was in 1984 that Colombia had signed a treaty agreeing to extradite
narco-criminals to the U.S. for trial. In his retaliatory campaign of
terror, Escobar blew up an Avianca plane in midair in 1989, killing 100
people. That made him a U.S. military target.

Bowden's narrative relies on accounts from both U.S. and Colombian
personnel, and presents in detail the frustrating operational conflict that
erupted between them. Along with Escobar's ability to corrupt the
Colombians, either through bribes or intimidation, this divide created an
impasse that allowed him eventually to set the terms of his imprisonment.

He established a luxury prison near his home base of Medellin, from which
he did business freely. The U.S. pressured the Colombians to correct what
was an intolerable situation. But when the attempt was made to establish a
harsher regime, Escobar easily escaped.

What followed was a 15-month manhunt that amounted to a military campaign
involving hundreds of casualties and millions in expenditure. Legend has it
that Escobar, flushed from his hiding place, came out shooting. But the
pattern of bullets in the corpse suggests he was, again, running.

American media reported his death to be a major disruption in the drug
trade. But cocaine prices in the U.S. continued to decline through the '90s
-- a sure sign of a steady, abundant supply, suggests Bowden.

"Killing Pablo" is a down and dirty -- indeed, harrowing -- primer on the
drug war as fought in real-world terms. Bowman refers to the emergence of a
new class of criminal, armed and combat-ready, as narco-terrorism. It's a
term as apt as it is chilling.