it plain there were no boundaries.  Bombs were going off in supermarkets, hotels, movie theaters—schools—and the squads of combat troops racing through the streets after the fact just emphasized their helplessness.^[52]  Then, a major break came in December of 1989 when Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, one of Escobar’s partners, was trapped by security forces south of Cartegena near the coastal town of Tolu.  In a withering shootout, Gacha and his 17-year-old son were cut down along with fifteen of his bodyguards.^[53] 

Five days later, the United States invaded Panama in pursuit of Manuel Noriega.  This remarkable act of gunboat diplomacy sent shockwaves throughout Latin America, and apparently it got the attention of Pablo Escobar as well. If the gringos could send in the Marines and kidnap a sovereign head of state, what the hell was next? A few days later, as General Noriega was being spirited out of his native land in handcuffs, the Extraditables sent feelers to the Colombian Government asking for a deal. Over the next several months, secret peace talks went on in fits and starts, with periods of calm punctuated by waves of mayhem. Politicians who opposed the talks were shot and killed, and journalists who opened their mouths on the subject were kidnapped.  With one noteable exception, the press had virtually stopped reporting on the drug war.  El Espectador, the valiant Bogota daily, was still blasting away at the traffickers in spite of having lost its publisher, several executives, and half a dozen reporters to the guns of Pablo Escobar. Few other Colombian journalists were willing to put a by-line on anything that even mentioned the boys from Medellin.

In May of 1990, in an election run-up punctuated by car bombs, Liberal Party candidate Cesar Gaviria won the presidential race walking away.  U.S. officials were delighted.  Gaviria, like Galan, was an outspoken supporter of extradition, and it looked like the Americans would finally get their way.^[54] But once in office, Gaviria immediately began shading his enthusiasm for the drug war.  In September he ran up the white flag. Despite howls