I was there along with another three members of my team, plus Bryce Lang, our CIA link, and an agent from Colombia’s Narcotics Task Force named Victor Montoya, who was our local DAS—or Departmento Administrivo de Seguridad—contact. We were in the Barrio La Candelaria district of the city, surrounded by old-world buildings painted in vibrant colors. This was the area that the city was originally founded upon and it retained much of its historic charm. Over the rooftops, I could make out the ornate twin spires of the cathedral in the nearby Plaza de Boliva. Beyond the spires, the Andes were swathed in menacing clouds the same gunmetal blue as the SIG-Sauer P226 I held in my hand.

I was in an anonymous-looking government car along with Bryce and one of the guys from my team, Jack Schilling. Montoya and my other two colleagues, Pete Hillman and Robert Muir, were set up a little distance away down the road, keeping obs on the side entrance to the house we were all watching. We had a view of the front facade of the historic house. I believed that our target would exit by the front, and it was Jack’s and my responsibility to take him out. In the other car was our support team, who would only engage the enemy if we were cornered, or if we failed. Six of us to take out one man. It might sound like overkill, but I hoped it would be enough.

Jesus Henao Abadia was a key player in the Colombian drug cartels. The U.S. Treasury, Justice and State departments had applied economic sanctions against the drug cartels under Executive Order 12978 in an effort at curtailing what they termed Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers. Abadia was an SDNT, but he was more than that. He was a butcher. He was suspected of having personally executed rivals and government officials by way of hacking them to steaming chunks with a machete.

Not that I feared we weren’t up to killing one man with a big knife. It was the protection team that traveled with Abadia that gave me cause for concern. Abadia went nowhere alone. Not even here, to the home of his longtime mistress, Jimena Antonia Grajales.

Victor’s intel said that Abadia was there with the woman and only two of his protectors, who would be on the ground floor of the two-storey house. Abadia was due to return to his fortress-like home near Prado in the Colombian department of Tolima—a “department” is like a county or state—this morning. This would be our best opportunity for taking out the butcher without facing down a veritable private army of retainers.