Manhunters
How We Took Down Pablo Escobar
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
For the first time, legendary DEA operatives Steve Murphy and Javier F. Peña tell the true story of how they helped put an end to one of the world’s most infamous narco-terrorists in Manhunters: How We Took Down Pablo Escobar—the subject of the hit Netflix series, Narcos.
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar’s brutal Medellín Cartel was responsible for trafficking tons of cocaine to North America and Europe in the 1980s and ’90s. The nation became a warzone as his sicarios mercilessly murdered thousands of people—competitors, police, and civilians—to ensure he remained Colombia’s reigning kingpin. With billions in personal income, Pablo Escobar bought off politicians and lawmen, and became a hero to poorer communities by building houses and sports centers. He was nearly untouchable despite the efforts of the Colombian National Police to bring him to justice.
But Escobar was also one of America’s most wanted, and the Drug Enforcement Administration was determined to see him pay for his crimes. Agents Steve Murphy and Javier F. Peña were assigned to the Bloque de Búsqueda, the joint Colombian-U.S. taskforce created to end Escobar’s reign of terror. For eighteen months, between July 1992 and December 1993, Steve and Javier lived and worked beside Colombian authorities, finding themselves in the crosshairs of sicarios targeting them for the $300,000 bounty Escobar placed on each of their heads.
Undeterred, they risked the dangers, relentlessly and ruthlessly separating the drug lord from his resources and allies, and tearing apart his empire, leaving him underground and on the run from enemies on both sides of the law.
Manhunters presents Steve and Javier’s history in law enforcement from their rigorous physical training and their early DEA assignments in Miami and Austin to the Escobar mission in Medellin, Colombia—living far from home and serving as frontline soldiers in the never ending war on drugs that continues to devastate America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
What was it like to be an American DEA agent in Colombia in the early 1990s? Like living in a war zone is how Murphy and Pe a describe their time in Bogot spent hunting drug lord Pablo Escobar in this riveting account of the multinational effort to stop the man behind the Medell n Cartel. Besides supplying cocaine to America, Escobar was behind the kidnaping and assassination of his country's attorney general and the bombing of a passenger jet in 1989. Murphy and Pe a were paid 50% more than stateside DEA agents because of the danger of their mission, and their lives were put on the line multiple times. Through it all, the two agents became trusted partners and best friends, who watched Escobar surrender on TV in 1991, only to reactivate the search when the drug lord escaped from his prison cell the next year. When Escobar was gunned down by the Colombian police in 1993, people celebrated in Colombia, and, not coincidentally, the murder rate in Medell n dropped by 80%. This is a must-read for anyone interested in one of the major campaigns in the war on drugs. 100,000 copy announced first printing.)