All language subtitles for drug.lords.s01e02.web.x264-strife-Track4

Miguel calls me and said,
"Prepare everything to go to the desert."

When I get there, the Rodríguez Orejuela
brothers, they were there,

and their bodyguards.

There was a guy,
and he had visible signs of being hurt.

Gilberto, very softly he said,
"You know you're in trouble."

And this guy, he said,
"I admit I made a big mistake."

At that point there was silence.
He knew what was gonna happen.

They tied him with chains to two cars

and, slowly, they pulled him apart
in opposite directions.

They were called
the Gentlemen of Cali.

But I had never seen any organization
so cruel, so bloody.

So bad.

December 1993, Cali.

Home to the new kings of coke.

Gilberto and Miguel Rodríguez Orejuela.

They've just become
the most powerful cartel in Colombia.

Supplying 90%
of the country's biggest export,

cocaine.

Their tentacles reached out
through all continents.

The Rodríguez brothers
were essentially defined

as the biggest criminals in the world.

The largest cartel of all time.

The brothers are pulling in
an estimated seven billion dollars a year.

The country was not in
the hands of the people,

it was in the hands of the mob.

The Rodríguez brothers owned Colombia.

But the Colombian police
and the American DEA

are joined in a bitter campaign
to bring them down.

You knew about the power, the influence
and the money that they had,

so you'd sit back and think,
"How are you gonna catch these guys?"

Rural southern Colombia,
the 1940s.

Gilberto and younger brother Miguel
grow up in small-town poverty.

As teenagers, they make
a name for themselves as hustlers

with their creative money-making schemes.

Gilberto worked in a drugstore

located just in front of one
of the main churches in Cali.

All year, they collected small bottles.

And during the Holy Week,
they filled them with water...

and sold them by saying it was holy water.

It's not long
before the pair graduate

from petty crime to the hard-core...

robbing trucks,
racketeering, even kidnapping.

When they buy a legitimate pharmacy,
it mysteriously burns down.

It was my uncle and my dad.

They took out the most expensive products.

The drugstore burnt down completely.
They did a good job.

They claimed insurance.

They collected the insurance
and opened another drugstore...

a much larger drugstore.

In the mid-'70s,

Gilberto and his brother discover
another Colombian pharmaceutical

that offers even larger profits.

There's a booming market
for cocaine in the US.

If they can get it there.

Ever inventive, the pair buy a company

exporting concrete fence posts
into Miami.

Each of them filled
with some hidden cargo.

My father's chauffeur asked me
to go to the hangar with him

because he had some work to do.

When we went down to the hangar,

he used a pneumatic hammer to break
the posts and get the cocaine out.

That's how I discovered
that my father was a drug trafficker.

By now, the brothers
are moving millions of dollars of coke.

Eager to expand, they team up
with two other ambitious traffickers

to build their distribution in America.

Chepe Santacruz and Pacho Herrera.

The Cali cartel is here.

Chepe used to send 20 kilograms
in suitcases carried by passengers.

My father said, "No."
He believed 20 kilograms was too little.

He suggested they started
sending in 100 or 200 kilograms.

By the mid-1980s,
the Rodríguez brothers

are shipping industrial quantities
of coke to the US.

They could get a 727 for a million dollars
on the used airplane market,

fill it full of tons and tons of cocaine,

fly it over the border
and land it in some place in New Mexico

and unload it and abandon the plane.

Just leave it there. The million dollars
that it cost to bring the plane in

was nothing compared
to the hundreds of millions

they were making on shipments like that.

But the new source of drugs
has started to appear on the feds' radar.

We knew
about the Cali cartel

because we had major loads
when I was in Miami.

And anytime you had ton loads
seized in Miami,

you know it had the markings
of the Cali cartel.

We always heard
about the Cali cartel,

we'd heard about the Rodríguez brothers,

but it's kinda like the bogeyman
when you were a kid.

You always knew
that they were there in the closet,

but you couldn't see 'em
or know where they were.

But you knew they were always around.

Ever secretive, the brothers
build a screen of legitimate companies

to hide their thriving narcotics empire.

To the outside world
they're just big businessmen.

They owned a bank.
They owned the best soccer team.

They owned, at that time, 250 drugstores.

We estimate that every day

they could invest $25 million
in all their businesses.

I saw rooms stuffed full of money.

At home, our safe was full of dollars.

They didn't know what to do
with the money; it was too much.

They bought works by
Picasso, Grau, Botero.

The feds try
tracking the cartel's operations,

but they can't follow the trail
of corrupt money back to the brothers.

Gilberto was
something of a genius.

He was called the Chess Player

'cause he's always looking ahead,
looking how things would work together.

In reality,
he was a great strategist

and a great corrupter.

Whereas Miguel Rodríguez was a strong man,
determined and ill-tempered.

And that match
was the perfect combination.

Cocaine is their business,
but power is their drug.

Now, at the top of their game,

these are the Gentlemen of Cali,
with friends in high places.

They liked mixing
in the circles of power

and corrupt those within.

They particularly liked mixing

with politicians, senators,
representatives, mayors.

And that was the focus
of the Rodríguez corruption.

As demand increases,

millions of dollars of Colombian coke
is flooding into the US every week.

But it's another cartel
that's monopolizing the DEA's efforts.

Run by the Rodríguez brothers'
biggest rival.

A drug lord with a taste for publicity
and a very public bloodlust.

Pablo Escobar.

Now a narco state,

Colombia is divided between these
two immensely powerful drug cartels.

Escobar's Medellín cartel in the north
and the Cali cartel in the south.

The cartels controlled, you know,
everything from the police,

the military, through the politicians.

For years,
the cartels walk a very delicate line,

respecting each other's turf.

At the beginning,
they were all close friends

and each had their own patch.

They had a rule...

New York belonged to the Cali cartel.

Los Angeles belonged
to the Medellín cartel.

Miami and Houston were shared cities
where both could enter.

And this was always respected.

Each has their own distinct way
of running their business.

Violence is Escobar's.

Pablo was basically a narco terrorist.

He killed people, he intimidated people
and he threatened people.

It was
a very tense time in Colombia.

In fact, the apartment
I ended up living in...

took some of the shock waves from
one of the bombs he exploded in Bogotá.

Pablo was disrupting
everything in the country,

and he was enemy number one.

The Cali cartel
has a subtler way of exerting its power.

Gilberto said, "Look,
we think differently.

Pablo thinks that by planting bombs,
threatening, kidnapping...

He will gain power,
but that is not our way."

Their MO was to bribe people,
to discredit people, to get them on board.

So they did everything
in a much lower profile.

They knew if they went around
killing police officers,

setting bombs in streets,
that's bad for business.

With the spotlight on Escobar,

the brothers expand their business
under the DEA's radar.

But then, a shock wave hits Colombia.

Under the threat of extradition,

Pablo Escobar declares war
on the entire Colombian state.

And, his old friends, the Cali cartel.

The first thing Pablo did,

in a raid, was burn down
18 or 20 of their drugstores in Medellín.

Four or five shopkeepers died.

It's all-out war
between the cartels.

Then, Escobar makes it very personal.

They had a phone conversation
with Pablo Escobar

in which he told them,

"If you are not with me
you're against me...

I'll show them that I can have you killed
in five minutes."

A bomb was planted
in Jardín City to try to kill my uncle.

And they tried to kidnap me
when I was at university.

The Rodríguez family
is under siege.

One time,
my father showed us a video tape

he had received in an envelope.

He sat all his children and nephews down
and made us watch it.

He had filmed us and narrated everything
with his own voice.

He said, "Look, that's your oldest son,
his name is Fernando.

He drives a red Mazda L,
with plate so and so.

He has four escorts and two motorbikes.

Look, this is your other son."

When I saw that video, I shuddered.

I went cold
because he had us fully identified.

I had thought we were invisible.

When the threats
against our family started...

and they said our children
had to leave the country...

that was the worst moment of our lives.
The saddest, the most horrible.

Gilberto and Miguel
are furious.

No more the Gentlemen of Cali,
it's time to fight back.

First, they must find someone
with the right kind of connections.

They turn to the son
of a Colombian general

who's provided mercenaries
for the Colombian army in the past.

His name, Jorge Salcedo.

Cali cartel
needed people of the ability

and the strength
to cope with Pablo Escobar.

'Cause they were merciless people...

capable of doing the most horrible,
unimaginable things.

To his surprise,

the Rodríguez brothers put Salcedo
in charge of a handpicked squad.

I was never asked,
"Will you do it?"

It was a situation where I had no way out.

But my thought is,
"Once this thing is over,

I will just leave.
That's my mission, period."

February 1989.

Salcedo flies in his band
of hardened soldiers

from special forces all over the world.

The maverick mercenaries film
every step of their secret mission.

It's very much like the movies,
like The Dirty Dozen,

there were 12 in this team.

There was one specialized in explosives,
there was a medic,

there was another guy in intelligence.

I knew they were not nuns,

but you cannot confront nuns
with Pablo Escobar.

Their leader, David Tomkins,
is a soldier of fortune,

a veteran of the battlefields of Angola.

The target was to eliminate, neutralize...

kill, assassinate Pablo Escobar.

Tomkins meets the cartel
and names his price for Escobar's head.

And kind of ceremoniously,
he said,

"This will be costing you
one million dollars."

Instantly, Gilberto said,

"Twice that amount, three times,
that's not a problem

if you are capable of giving us back
the family life that we used to have."

They named their secret mission
to assassinate their arch enemy

"Operation Phoenix."

First step,
they find a training base in the jungle.

Then the brothers equip them
with an arsenal of weapons.

No expense spared.

We had M16s,
AR-15s, Zulu grenades,

hand grenades, machine pistols,
the whole nine yards.

It was like a toy shop.

Next, they must decide
where to carry out the hit on Escobar.

Unfortunately,
he was a very elusive target.

The government were after him,
the Cali cartel were after him,

so he had lots of enemies.

So we decided, "Right, we'll train
specifically for Hacienda Nápoles."

Escobar's heavily defended
7,000 acre ranch

is the last place
he will expect an attack.

And the mercenaries have a plan.

Historically, whilst the police
had been there before,

they had never been attacked,

so we figured that we had
a tactical advantage

by approaching as police and military.

I'm about to change the color
of this United States of America chopper.

And we're gonna respray it
a nice Colombian police green.

But once the soldiers land,

they know Escobar's bodyguards
won't go down without a fight.

So we had a dress rehearsal,
rehearsed the battle without an enemy.

While we were training,

the Cali cartel
were attempting to locate Escobar.

So we waited and we waited and we waited.

Three months
after they land in Colombia,

the brothers' web of informers
locates Pablo Escobar.

Eventually, we got a call,

"He's there, sitting round
the swimming pool at a meeting."

It's very unlikely that we're gonna have
a better opportunity than now.

We got the signal,"Go."

And we flew to Hacienda Nápoles.

The hired guns set off,

while the Rodríguez brothers
monitor the mission from Cali.

They were just listening

like people will listen
to a radio at a soccer game.

And constantly "Where are you?
Where are you? How's it going?"

"Yeah, we're approaching the location."

The Cali cartel has been
waiting years for this moment.

With Pablo Escobar dead,

they will finally be
the dominant drug lords of Colombia.

After about two hours,
we hit very bad weather.

The helicopters didn't like it,

'cause they were very heavily loaded
with ammunition and explosives

and we were trying
to get over a mountain range.

Our pilot thought he could get
through this gap in the mountains.

We hit a bunch of cloud.

The pilot said, "I'm diving into it."

And that was the last thing
I heard from him.

The mercenaries' helicopter
crashes into the side of a mountain,

killing the Colombian pilot
and badly injuring some of the team.

It was terrible.
It was absolutely atrocious.

Operation Phoenix,

Gilberto and Miguel's elaborate plot
to kill Escobar fails.

The blow is devastating.

But refusing to admit defeat,

the cartel comes up
with a new plan of action.

Joining forces with an unlikely ally

which wants Escobar dead
as much as they do.

The Colombian state.

The Rodríguezes
were funneling all the funds

and information and materials
to be helpful in intelligence.

The Cali cartel...

I mean, their intelligence network...
was incredible.

It's been compared to the KGB
during the Cold War.

The brothers even managed
to tap Escobar's own phone lines.

Gilberto's partner, Aura,

is one of the few trusted to hear
the highly sensitive recordings.

When I found something important,

I recorded the relevant bits
to another tape.

And those compilation tapes with anything
interesting were sent to Miguel.

He then sent them
to the state intelligence agencies.

Letting them know about possible attacks.

From their network
of informants,

the brothers' intel
reaches the Search Bloc,

Colombia's special ops unit
dedicated to tracking down Escobar.

On December 2nd, 1993,
the hunters close in on their prey...

shooting Escobar dead

in a hail of gunfire
on a Medellín rooftop.

The Rodríguez brothers have helped
eliminate Colombia's most brazen enemy,

and their most ferocious rival.

Gilberto was totally euphoric.

He couldn't believe they had succeeded.

He cried, saying,
"I saved my children's lives."

The whole town was in carnival,
sponsored by them.

There was an open bar
for everybody who wanted to celebrate.

Gilberto and Miguel
now believe they're invulnerable.

And Salcedo's job is done.
Or so he thinks.

Naively, I thought,
"The Rodríguezes will let me go."

So I'm thinking that this
is my time to say goodbye.

But Miguel immediately answers,

"No, no, no.
No, Jorge, you've gotta stay here.

We still have some things to do."

I thought to myself,
"Oh, my god. This is not real."

Instead of standing him down,

Miguel promotes Salcedo
to head of his personal security team.

It's a decision that will come back
to haunt the brothers.

With the collapse of Escobar's empire,
the Cali cartel is triumphant.

It now controls
90% of Colombia's cocaine traffic,

worth billions and billions of dollars.

In the mid-'90s,
the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers

were essentially defined
as the biggest criminals in the world.

And control of Colombia itself
is now in the brothers' hands.

It's their drug money
which flows through the country's veins.

They paid a wage to everyone in Cali.

They had the government,
they had the mayor,

ministers, they had congressmen,
people in the president's house,

army forces, the police forces.

For many years...

the corrupting power of money
kept them safe.

My father, Gilberto, and my uncle Miguel

always believed
that money could buy anyone.

But just when
the brothers think

they finally have
everything under control,

they find themselves
on the wrong side of the law again.

The day that Pablo Escobar died,

the director of the DEA in Colombia says,

"And when are we going to capture
the Rodríguez Orejuelas?"

They were the only game in town.

Pablo was done, Medellín cartel was done.

Everybody knew the next logical move

for all of the US government
and the Colombian resources

was to target the Cali cartel.

Special agents
Chris Feistl and David Mitchell

are sent to Cali on a secret mission.
Bring down the brothers.

But not everyone is willing to play ball.

There were other people, too,
that thought,

"Hey, we kind of owe them a debt because
they helped the Colombian government

go after Pablo and Medellín cartel."

So there was a slight reluctance
to target them.

So the feds
play their trump card.

The United States provides huge amounts
of financial support and aid.

You want this aid
and you want our military help,

you need to crack down
on the drug trafficking.

Feistl and Mitchell team up
with DEA Agent Jerry Salameh,

but they soon realize that the brothers
still control the streets.

Anything that happened in Cali,
they would know about it.

They spread money around
to so many different people,

they were able to really know
what was going on at any given time.

And we were staying at the police base
where the Search Bloc was located.

We were extremely low profile.

Anything we had to do
outside of the base, we'd do at night.

We, through a source,

received some cassette tapes
of us speaking on the phone,

the hard line phones in that base.

You know, back to Bogotá or...

whoever we were talking to,
the source brought us tapes.

And said, "They got your phones.
They got your phones that you're using."

So you really didn't know
who you can trust and who you couldn't.

We knew the police in Cali
were infiltrated by the cartel.

We sacked around 10,000 police officers.

That really hurt. But it had to be done.

It's time for the authorities
to go on the offensive.

After years living in high society,

Gilberto and Miguel
are forced into hiding.

Colombian forces raid
one safe house after another.

All fitted with secret compartments,
or caletas.

But the brothers
are always one step ahead of the law.

So, for example,
if we had good information

that Miguel may have been at a location
and we get there and it's empty...

is there a possibility
that that raid got compromised?

If so, who had access to that information?

So it was kind of play as you go,
figure it out on the fly.

Like all gangsters,

the brothers fear one thing
above all others.

Betrayal.

And they make the brutal consequences
of it known to everyone around them.

Including Salcedo.

One night, Miguel tells Salcedo to meet
him at a villa on the edge of Cali.

I can hear shouting, screaming...

I couldn't understand what was happening.

There's no Miguel,
just henchmen

and a group of Panamanians
who they suspect of informing.

In one of the rooms
there was a violent fight.

Three or four guys
trying to take hold of one Panamanian guy.

And I remember there was a guy
with a big knife.

Then I got an idea what's going on.

They're killing people now.

Not even the women are spared.

Her feet were extending
like a ballet dancer.

She had been suffocated.

One of the guys was saying,

"Hey, you better move out of there,
because she's gonna urinate."

How did he know? He's experienced.

They were masters in the killing.

They were using the knives
to open their stomachs

to make sure that when thrown
in the river the bodies would not surface.

Awful. Awful.

Salcedo soon realizes
Miguel wants him to witness a massacre.

There was no reason
for me to be there.

That was something
that had been carefully planned.

They needed me somehow
to get dirty with what they're doing.

Now I am in the fraternity of the killing.

The brothers
have shown their true face.

The only way out of the cartel is death.

But what Miguel and Gilberto don't know
is how near the edge they are.

The DEA are closing in.

We had a tremendous surveillance operation
mounted in that area.

We had, you know, men, women, DEA, police.

The behavior of one man
in particular draws their attention.

They suspect he's Gilberto's assistant.

Every day, he would travel
where we suspected Gilberto was hiding.

Probably four to five miles
to get from one house to the other.

He was very hard to follow.

He would walk, he would take buses,
he would take cabs.

Changing clothes. He would dip into
a building and then slip back out of it.

Gilberto thinks
he's safe in his hideout.

But one day, his assistant leads
the pursuers right to his door.

I was in my room reading a book.

The location of the house was strategic.

And from his office window,

Gilberto saw the army vehicles loaded
with the Search Bloc approaching.

The whole street was full of officials
and people in uniforms.

He entered the room and said,
"Honey, we've been caught."

He went to hide
and told me to open the door.

They threw me on the floor.

Several men were pointing
their guns at me.

And the house was completely
swarmed with people.

All you could hear was them destroying,
breaking and hitting everything.

It looks as if Gilberto
has escaped.

Until...

He came out with his gun
hanging from his thumb.

Saying, "Don't shoot me.
I am a man of peace."

The Search Bloc discovers
Gilberto in his secret compartment.

I didn't even know about it
until that moment.

Authorities
capture Gilberto Rodríguez,

the world's most powerful
drug trafficker...

without firing a single shot.

But Gilberto is only half
of the Rodríguez duo.

His brother, Miguel, is still on the run.

It was a very strong hit for him

knowing that his brother
had been captured.

They never expected it. They thought
they had the perfect hiding spot for him.

And he was shocked.

And catching him
will prove much harder.

Miguel went further underground.

They were more compartmentalized
in their communications.

Less and less people knew his whereabouts,
where he was and what he was doing.

We figure at this point,

we really need to get
an actionable source of information

that is with Miguel real-time.

And then the DEA
catches a break.

They get a call from a source who claims
to be one of the cartel's inner circle.

If he wants to work
with the US government and DEA

in order to capture Miguel Rodríguez,

he could potentially be a gold mine.

The only way
to check him out is a secret meeting.

We would've never received permission
or authority from the embassy,

or DEA for that matter, too,
to go and speak with him,

so we didn't tell anybody
where we were going.

But the agents know
the unauthorized meeting could be a trap.

The tension was fairly high.

"Is this a setup?

Is the cartel going to try
to kidnap or kill us?"

We had weapons on us

and I had every magazine ammunition
in case there was shooting.

And I remember at one point,
I looked over at Dave and...

"What are we doing here?

What's going on?"

And then we saw him coming

and he parked a little bit ahead of us
and he got out the car.

After seven years of trusted
service to the Rodríguez brothers,

Jorge Salcedo wants out.

I was totally convinced
that it was my last resource

to get in contact
with the American government.

Not the Colombian police,
not the Colombian army, nobody.

And I start walking slowly.

At a certain point, I just hold my ID.

I said, "I handle Miguel's security.
This is my position.

My life is in your hands."

In exchange for protection
for himself and his family,

Salcedo will betray
the biggest drug lord in the world.

But Miguel is becoming
increasingly paranoid.

Changing safe houses unexpectedly.

Finally, in July 1995,

the man on the inside
thinks he has pinpointed the location

and the hunt begins.

We start searching.

We're going through the apartment,

pulling bookcases and, you know,
tapping on walls.

It looks like Salcedo
has failed the agents.

Mitchell and Feistl call their informant.

"Hey, we're inside. He's not here.
We can't find him."

An hour later,
Salcedo rings with more details.

"He's there. He's in the apartment.

Is there a bathroom in the apartment?

He's in a caleta."

So Chris and I,
we kinda look at the restroom

and we saw a yellow hose going down
and we're tugging on it.

Then we realize,
"Hey, this is the hidden compartment."

But Miguel's literally
on the other side of the wall.

I mean, we know he's there.

Now it's just a matter of time,
however long it can take us

to get through that wall and to be able
to extract Miguel from there.

Mitchell and Feistl
are inches away

from the biggest coup of their careers.

And then, the unthinkable happens.

There's a captain,
and he goes, "Who's your source?"

He's screaming, "Who's your source?
Who's your source?

How do you know
there's a hidden compartment?"

"Stop what you're doing.
This operation's being shut down."

We all look at each other like,

"Is this, like, a joke?
What do you mean stop?

Miguel Rodríguez is here.
He's behind this wall.

There's a hidden compartment here.
Look, how the..."

We're showing the drill bit going through.

"Look, there's space back there.
He's back there."

The captain's insistence
can only mean one thing.

He's corrupt.

Once we had to leave,
you gotta realize

that Chris and I were responsible
for this source.

I mean, this source
could possibly get killed now.

And not only the source,
but his family members.

Agent Feistl
delivers the bad news.

Chris was saying,
"I'm very sorry, we had to leave."

"What? You're no longer there?"

"No."

I knew that even the slightest suspicion
that I had provided information,

that will mean I'm dead.

Ever suspicious,

Miguel now keeps his whereabouts
under even tighter secrecy.

But he makes one fatal mistake.

He calls me
and tells me, "Listen."

He was very direct.

"I've been told that you, the day
of the raid, you acted very nervously."

I said, "Of course.

It was my responsibility
to take care of you and it was blown.

I don't know how they did it."

He said, "Yeah, sounds reasonable."

Now security is even tighter.

But within three weeks,
Salcedo finds Miguel's new hideout.

The DEA know this is their last chance.

Nobody knew what we were doing
except a small group,

a compartmentalized group of people
that were with us.

Navy operators

and some Colombian national police
operators that were with us.

The bulk of the team
had no idea what we were doing.

We didn't wanna have any sound,
so we ran up ten flights of stairs.

We didn't take the elevator,

because I was afraid
that when you push the elevator button

and the elevator got to the tenth floor,
it would make that "ding."

We got to the top, and there's the door.

There's a lot of noise,
confusion,

and then I hear, "Ya lo cogí. Ya lo cogí."

"You got 'em." "Who got who?"

The Colombian commando grabbed him,

took him out of the caleta,
and we captured him.

He was in shock.

I don't think he was expecting that.

Miguel's life on the run
is over.

I saw Miguel there and said,
"Se acabó, señor". "It's over."

I think he realized at that point

that his reign as the head
of the Cali cartel had come to an end

and he was gonna go to prison
for a very, very long time.

The cartel,

one of the world's biggest
and most sophisticated drug operations,

is finally cracked, from the inside.

And then, about 6:00 in the morning,
I got a call...

"We got him. Thanks to you, we got him."

I said, "Thank you, God."

It was wonderful,
like it happened yesterday.

It was a great time.

I felt that the country
had really turned a page...

on big cartels that had
pretensions of taking power.

We all worked together
to reach the same goal.

I'm proud of it, yeah.