MAP's index for the series: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n000/a251.html

Bookmark: Reports about Colombia: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia

A FATHER AND SON'S HIGH-TECH CONNECTION

Chapter 25 of a continuing serial

On one of his many visits to the apartment building that housed Pablo
Escobar's wife and family in Medellin, the Colombian prosecutor Fernando
Correa had noticed several cellular phones. On another visit, he discovered
a radio transceiver hidden behind the trap door on the ceiling of the
building elevator.

This information was relayed to Col. Hugo Martinez at the Search Bloc
headquarters outside Medellin. The colonel passed it on to his son Hugo, a
member of a Colombian electronic surveillance unit recently dispatched to
Medellin to assist in the hunt for Escobar.

Hugo asked his father to have Correa note the make and model number of the
radio, and its frequency range. He also asked his father to get Correa to
do what he could to encourage 15-year-old Juan Pablo Escobar to speak for
longer periods with his father.

Provided with the frequency of Juan Pablo's radio, and with a rough idea of
when father and son spoke, Hugo and his surveillance teams set about
intercepting these calls.

At first they tried working with the CIA, which had its own eavesdropping
team in Medellin. The Americans were not having much luck tracking Escobar,
but Col. Martinez urged his son to work with them because he wanted to keep
an eye on them. He didn't fully trust the American spy agency. The gringos
jealously guarded their methods, and they would often fail to share
everything they uncovered.

The younger Martinez had his own reasons for wanting to work with the
American team. He thought he might learn from them, and he, too, wanted to
find out everything the Americans were doing. "With me there, you know you
will get everything," he told his father.

One of the first problems faced by the new unit was deciphering the coded
lingo Juan Pablo and his father had constructed to confuse their pursuers.
They used key words as a signal to switch frequencies, which they did
quickly and often.

At first this tactic prevented the surveillance teams from getting even a
general fix on Escobar's location, because every time father and son
switched frequencies the signal would temporarily be lost. The
direction-finding cars drove in randomly throughout the city, racing a few
blocks in the direction of a signal and then pulling over to the curb when
they lost it.

After a few days of this it became clear that the streets of Medellin, with
so many walls, overhead wires, high-rises and other obstructions, were the
worst kind of environment for direction-finding.

In the first few weeks, the Search Bloc followed the efforts of the younger
Martinez and his teams with great interest. Once or twice they launched
raids, breaking into the houses of startled Medelliners who had no
connection to Pablo Escobar. Very quickly, enthusiasm for this new tool
dried up. The new little vans and CIA equipment were just another
disappointment.

Col. Martinez told them to keep at it, but in time everyone assumed the
only reason the teams were still around was because Martinez's son was
working with them. This was humiliating for the son, because he knew it was
true. But it wasn't true in the way everyone suspected. Without a doubt,
their rapid series of failures would have sent any other unit packing,
their antennae and weird little boxes heaped with scorn.

But Hugo had his father's ear. They would sit together into the night, with
Hugo selling his father on the amazing potential of the technology, how
close they were to actually making it work. When it failed again and again
he would explain to his father exactly why, his crew-cut head hunched
between his shoulders as he sketched out his diagrams with arrows and
filled the margins with math.

"It isn't something simple and straightforward," Hugo said. His father
listened and asked questions, and, in time, was converted. The rest of the
Search Bloc may have considered the technology a useless whim, a father's
indulgence, but the colonel had become a believer.

It wasn't just that he loved his son and wanted him to succeed, although
the colonel was smart and honest enough to know that was part of it. The
equipment, he was convinced, had potential. If Hugo and his men could work
out the bugs, this was the thing that would give him a decisive advantage
over Escobar, the magic device that could pick him out of the city.

The best thing about it was that Escobar knew absolutely nothing about
Hugo's team. By now he knew the American spooks could pinpoint him with
some accuracy from the air. He had even taken to talking on his cell phone
while in the backseat of a car, moving through city streets, just to throw
them off. But he did not yet suspect that their technology might, at least
in theory, enable a team like Hugo's to find him in his moving car and
follow him home.

In time, the colonel became convinced that when they finally got Escobar,
it would be with Hugo's equipment, while the fugitive was talking on the
phone, unsuspecting. He believed this in part because of Hugo, but also
because he needed to believe it. He needed to believe there would be a way
out of this endless struggle. And it didn't hurt that the one showing the
way was his son.