At the devil's table : the untold story of the insider who brought down the Cali Cartel

 by William C. Rempel. In the 1990s, Jorge Salcedo was a Colombian engineer and military reservist proud to be enlisted in an effort to assassinate Pablo Escobar, leader of the Medellin cocaine cartel. His recruiters were Cal. gentlemen. heads of Escobar's rival cocaine cartel. Salcedo admired their sense of family and their restraint, despite their unsavory business dealings. As head of security, he was only tangentially involved, at a distance that allowed him to keep his hands clean and maintain denial. But as he was drawn closer and closer to the family and its business dealings, even after Escobar's death, the Cali clan escalated its level of violence, and he could no longer deny that they were as dangerous and ruthless as Escobar. Salcedo had to find a way out and ended up working with American DEA agents to bring down the syndicate. Investigative reporter Rempel spent 10 years interviewing Salcedo (now in the U.S. witness protection program) to deliver a thrilling inside story of one man's efforts to destroy the cartel and free himself from its murderous grasp. --Booklist (Check Catalog)