Traffic is never light on that Bogotá thoroughfare. All through the day and night it is loaded with buses, taxis, and those few private cars which are courageous enough to venture into the melee. It was 3:37 in the afternoon, though, so the heavy five o'clock rush hour traffic had not yet started. And the driver was skillful.

Forty-three minutes later Luis German Palacios was on a gurney being wheeled into the emergency room of the Hospital Militar. He was not a happy caballero and was still screaming at his two ministers and the DAS agents to find the terrorists. Fortunately for him his wounds were not life threatening. Within the hour he was resting in a hospital bed sipping a Chivas.

Hernando Vega was the DAS agent in charge. After getting the doctor's permission, he approached the president.

"Doctor Palacios, we are doing our best to find out who your attackers were and capture them."

Everyone in Colombia with a clean business suit was a "Doctor," a fact that had amused Palacios since he was a child. It was a regionalism - in Mexico the term was "Licenciado." "Patron" was an even older one. Mostly the terms were snobbish relics of a bygone age. He had known a few of his compatriots who waged campaigns against such snobbery, but he had long ago thrown in the towel. The language of business was English anyway.