PROLOGUE



       
    In a magnificent hacienda, hidden in the high country northwest of Medellin, Columbia, an apoplectic Pedro Ramirez, the most notorious drug kingpin in South America’s Medellin drug cartel, picked up a chair and threw it across the room. With his teeth bared, he teetered on the edge of insanity as his fury unleashed a fusillade of physical and verbal tics at a jackhammer pace.
    “Arghh,…what....what…what…do you mean he escaped? How the hell could he have escaped? Ramirez pounded his desk with his fist and snarled at his son, Cesar, “Madre Dios, after six years, we had him and he escaped again? We had him right here, in my home, under my control.” He wiped drool from his chin with his sleeve and raged on, “To live forever and be young forever is a blessing! What good is all this wealth: this luxury, this power, and the women, everything, without long life? Now he's gone! He's gone! I’ve spent millions to get him and he’s gone. What is he, a phantom? He escaped again!”
  
    A short, balding, heavyset man in his sixties, his face a deep red, Ramirez’s voice reached a falsetto, “How could he have gotten away? Who was guarding him? Cesar, I want that guard burned alive…in front of his family. Go out and order it--now!  I'm going out of my mind! No wait!”
    He stomped around his office, threw everything off his desk, bent down, picked up anything he could get his hands on and threw it at the walls and then at Cesar. He ran to his desk, took a gun out of a drawer and shot at light bulbs and at Lladro and Armani figurines on the wall units. Pacing back and forth like a caged tiger in heat, he poured bullets into art masterpieces on the walls in frustration over not being able to shoot the deliverer of bad news, his oldest son. He slowly pointed the gun at Cesar then threw it at him.
        Cesar ducked, turned white, and fearing he was facing his maker (which he literally was) cried out, “Papi, believe me, it was no one's fault. This man has an angel looking after him. During the hurricane, a mudslide wiped out whole side of the building.”
    “Shut up! Shut up! I don’t want to hear it!”
    Cesar cowered in front of his father, uncertain as to what was in store for him, “Papi it’s true. If he survived, he’s trained in the ways of the jungle. What else could we do? We covered the whole territory with the helicopter and had some of the Federales helping us. How he got away is a miracle, a miracle.”
       “Miracle my ass! Did you have people checking planes, trains, buses, and the borders here and the United States? Did you? Look at you stammering like a dumb brute. Of course you didn’t, fool! Ave Maria, what incompetence! Do I have to do everything or do I have to find a more able second in command, first born son or not? Now, listen carefully and see if you can do something right. I want you to contact General Duc Trung. I’ve got to talk to him as soon as possible   Ask him if he knows anyone who can infiltrate the Montagnards. Maybe he went back there. Do it now… no, wait! Don't tell him Stone is gone!