I read a book by an ex- SAS sergeant major. I can't remember the name of hit now. But after he retired he was recruited as a mercenary to help put together a force capable of carrying out a raid on Escobar- or one of his major hideouts.
They trained and trained for it. They built a mock-up compound and assaulted it many times and used up lots of explosives and bullets training. In the end, they were never given the go for it.
That SAS dude had his own interesting story- he wound up in South Africa fighting in their army and then went to Rhodesia to fight against Mugabe and other communists. He had a pretty wild military career.
The Escobar thing was a big let down from his perspective but you got the sense that he was never far enough up the food chain to understand why the mission was scrubbed in the end.
At any rate, I think it would have taken a trained force, like that, or like Search Bloc or Los Pepes to actually take Escobar down. I don't think one dude could get close enough to do it.
You'd have to have intel to do it. Really good intel on where Escobar would be and exactly when he would be there in order to do it on the street. And if the locals saw you snooping around, somebody is going to say something. Who to trust?
But if you don't do it on the street, you're going to have to get close to him in one of his compounds. One guy isn't going to do that. Not even a small team could reliably do that. You'd just be wasting a Special Forces team to send them into a situation like that.
The US government couldn't even kill Fidel Castro.
And they couldn't get bin Laden for years and when they finally did, he was hiding in a house with minimal fighting capability.
It's just not as easy to get to someone who knows your coming and has money to protect themselves as it might look in a film.
Even right-winger survivalist families can hold out against the Feds for a pretty good while with just a few rifles.
For a guy surrounded by layers of security...
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