made ready, and we all slept lightly. In the morning we got a call from a contact in the police. “The police know where you are,” he said. “They are going to come up there.” We got up on the mules and climbed into the mountains. Several of our employees stayed behind and were there when the police arrived shooting. The police killed the groundskeepers and the farmers.
I am not usually a person who believes in the mystical world, but I have experienced the warnings of this priest. I don’t know why he comes to me. He doesn’t come each time my life is in danger. There have been very bad situations that have happened with no warning. But when he does come danger follows him. So I’ve learned to listen to his warnings.
Our most difficult escape took place in 1990. This time I got the greatest warning of all from the priest that danger was coming. We were at a farm called Aquitania with about forty people. It was about a hundred miles from Medellín, in the jungle. About four in the morning we got notice from the outer security that the police were about six miles away and coming fast. Because there were so many of us, instead of a hideout, we had built a house underground about two miles away, deeper in the jungle.
An employee of Pablo’s named Godoy lived in the jungle and people believed he sold wood to earn his living, but for his real job he would build hiding places for us and guide us through the jungle. The underground house he had built was amazing. People could hide there for days if needed. The moment we got the word we ran for this shelter. Godoy took us there. We could hear the helicopters behind us shooting at the place we had abandoned. At those times you never stop to wonder how they could find you, but it was clear we had a traitor in the organization. With the rewards for Pablo and myself it’s not surprising. We reached the underground house and secreted ourselves there for the rest of the night. The next afternoon Pablo sent Godoy to his own house, which was not too far from our hiding spot, to find out as much as possible. Godoy looked like a simple workingman so he could move about without being suspect. The police had passed the whole day searching the area without finding much. About 6 P.M. the police showed up at Godoy’s farm and asked him questions. “I live here with my family,” he told them. “I work with wood. I produce a little coffee to sell to the city.” The police looked around for an hour but left when he told them he wanted to have dinner with his wife and his kids. He was not suspected.
As soon as the police cleared the area Godoy called me on the radio. “They left my place ten minutes ago. Be careful. They are very close.” Even though the hiding place was not visible from the ground, because we did not know who had betrayed us we didn’t know how much information the police had gotten. Only a very few people knew about this underground house, but if one of them had talked to the police we would be trapped with no way to run. We knew that it was better to have a chance to get away than to be trapped underground. We moved outside and gathered our supplies. While Pablo was deciding when to go we heard a helicopter flying nearby and looked up at it through the trees. There we saw a terrible sight.
One of our security people, El Negro, was hanging by his feet out the door of the helicopter. When we saw El Negro flying from his feet we knew we had to run, because he had helped Godoy build the hideout. Later we found out what had happened. El Negro had been captured by the police at a farm about a mile below us. They tied his legs and took him up in the helicopter and hung him outside, telling him, “If you don’t tell us where Pablo is we will drop you right now, motherfucker.”
El Negro screamed that he would talk and they saved him. He wasn’t a traitor but they were going to kill him. When they landed on the ground he started walking with them toward the underground place. But there was a miscommunication between