Colombia . Red explained that after the accident , the lab foreman tossed him out , half-dead , into a jungle clearing . What little strength he had left , he said he used to bat away vultures . And , against the odds , he made his way to safety and slowly recovered . When Red left the clinic months later , he said he went straight back to the drug lab and gunned down the foreman and three of his henchmen . That was n't his first killing though , he told me . When he was just 11 years old , Red recounted , he took a razor to the throat of a neighborhood drug pusher who had been molesting his little sister . The other man , `` C '' , sat quietly as I listened to Red . Like Red , my source told me , `` C '' was also the so-called `` chief '' of a number of neighborhoods -- running local drug-peddling operations , extortion rackets and organizing hits for a big cartel boss he simply referred to as `` El Cucho , '' or `` The Old Man . '' It
MEDELLIN , Colombia -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- This city 's drug underworld is littered with `` poseurs '' -- lowlife triggermen pretending they 're the real hard cases . Samir Romero , wanted by police for two murders , was killed in August . He was shot 13 times . But a longstanding and trusted source , with intimate knowledge of Medellin 's violent subculture , assured me the two men I was about to meet were the real deal . My destination : a single-story home in the city 's notorious `` Commune 13 '' district where I had set up a meeting with two hit men , who have for years hired their lethal services out to the cocaine cartels . Inside the house , a man called `` Red '' sat on a couch toying a fully loaded 9mm Ruger pistol . `` This will stop somebody nicely , '' he said , as I glanced at it . His face and arms were covered in burn marks . He said it was a testament of the day a barrel of acid spilled onto him as he was working in a clandestine cocaine processing lab in northern