Summary

Nine months before his dinner with Juan Pablo, Mason is invited by Colombian Special Forces command in Bogota to observe an operation near the Venezuelan border. Mason feels obliged to go, but believes that the targeted raid on a “midlevel narco” (229) is actually matter for the police, not the military. The commandos on the ground execute flawlessly, killing El Aleman's security team and making their way to the bedroom where El Aleman is in bed with his girlfriend. The soldiers order El Aleman to raise his arms for capture, but he does not and is shot dead as is his girlfriend who tries to protect him. At the time, Mason had no way of knowing the significance of the raid for its later consequences, yet knows from experience that assassinating drug lords leads not to improved stability but to an inevitable...