Martyr would ultimately lead to his downfall anyway.  Tens of thousands of outraged mourners surged into the streets demanding justice, and President Virgilio Barco, invoking a state of siege, side-stepped the Supreme Court and re-established extradition by decree. That weekend police and military units rounded up nearly 10,000 suspects—all minor players—but while Escobar and his pals were vacationing in Panama, President Barco hit them where they lived. He dispatched the army to impound all the visible ostentation—the ranches and coastal getaways and private islands the traffickers had accumulated over the decade, and the public finally got an eye-popping view inside these baronial fortresses. Along with all the expected stuff—bearskin rugs and marble baths, stables of thoroughbreds and vintage cars—Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha had even monogrammed his bullets.^[39]

The gauntlet had been thrown.  Escobar and his colleagues picked it up. On Monday they issued a press communique saying, somewhat redundantly, “Now the fight is with blood”—signed, “The Extraditables.” What followed was a war of such stunning savagery that both sides were ultimately brought to their knees. It’s probably impossible for most Americans to grasp what the average Colombian went through in this period, but try to imagine a World Trade Center bombing every couple of days. For the next several weeks there were almost continuous explosions throughout the country, with nine banks dynamited in a single day. In September events took an even more horrifying turn when the traffickers began gunning down the wives of police and army officers as they shopped for groceries.^[40]

The Bush Administration rushed $65 million worth of military aide to Bogota, including, thoughtfuly, 500 bullet proof vests. But at the same time the U.S. was cheering the Colombians onward, they were pulling their own people out. By week two of the onslaught, the State  Department had evacuated all dependants, and 50 American students were whisked out of the country overnight.  The U.S. Embassy, surrounded by steel