Bloody Killing of Cocaine Kingpin Fills Colombia With Glee, Tension : War on Narcotics: The army is placed on full alert in expectation of a retaliatory blow.

In the afterglow of the most successful battle yet in their war on narcotics traffickers, Colombia’s top police officers called the bloody death of drug lord Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha “a splendid Christmas present,” and editorial writers crowed Saturday that it broke “the myth of invulnerability of the barons.”

But along with exhilaration there was an air of tension here, as if people were waiting for the other shoe to drop from the powerful cocaine cartel that has killed hundreds in terrorist assaults.

Only hours after announcing the slaying, the government of President Virgilio Barco Vargas placed the army on full alert in apparent expectation of a retaliatory blow to avenge the death of the 42-year-old drug chieftain.

Rodriguez Gacha, his 17-year-old son, Freddy, and at least five bodyguards were slain Friday in a shoot-out near Cavenas on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

According to some Bogota press reports Saturday, the gun battle was a lopsided affair, pitting Rodriguez Gacha’s small band against 1,000 police and troops backed by helicopter gunships who swooped down on their hideaway at a waterfront ranch owned by Pablo Escobar, 39, reputed as the top boss of the notorious Medellin drug cartel.

One report said that Escobar was in the area at the time of the shooting but slipped away, as he did in another escapade two weeks ago when police closed in.

Capitalizing on the stunning police victory, chief of investigating police Miguel Maza Marquez reversed the ranking that most drug experts gave to the two billionaire drug traffickers. Rodriguez Gacha, a ruthless enforcer, has generally been credited as being No. 2 to Escobar in the cartel hierarchy. Both have been blamed for scores of killings, including the bombing of an Avianca jetliner that killed 111 people Nov. 27 and a massive truck bomb in Bogota that killed 63 and injured about 1,000 in the vicinity of Maza’s headquarters Dec. 8.

“The head of the most dangerous and forceful terrorist organization on Earth has just died,” said Maza, who was himself twice targeted by cartel assassins’ bombs.

Pledging to go after the elusive Escobar next, Maza added: “We cannot say that we have broken the back of organized crime, but since the head has lost its brain, what follows will be a little easier. . . . We just need a little luck like we had with Rodriguez Gacha.”

Sincilejo county coroner Luis Osorio told reporters that all of the slain men died of multiple gunshot wounds.

A communique from the government of Sincilejo gave a sparse description of the confrontation. “When police followed him, they were repelled by grenades and firearms, which made it necessary for police to use their arms,” it said.

But, citing both police sources and a local journalist, La Prensa gave a more colorful account that described the encounter with the outlaws as more of a doomed chase than a pitched battle.

In its Saturday edition, the newspaper said that Rodriguez Gacha and his band were in the historic port city of Cartagena, where President Bush plans to join a drug summit with Barco in February, when they “felt” police following them. Eluding the police net, they slipped away to Cavenas in a small boat, but their boatman later informed police where he had taken them.

An elite police squad then struck at the waterside ranch, killing Freddy and some bodyguards outright, but Rodriguez Gacha and five of his men escaped in a truck to the nearby mountains, La Prensa said.

Aware that he was being followed by two helicopters, Rodriguez Gacha left his bodyguards with the truck and set off on foot while the guards blundered into an army roadblock where they were gunned down, the newspaper said. But in a short time the helicopters zeroed in on the fugitive drug chieftain. Looking up at them, he realized there was no escape and blew himself up with a hand grenade, according to the account in La Prensa.

Police spokesmen Saturday stuck with their official version of a single shoot-out and declined further comment.

A presidential spokesman said that Barco would make no weekend appearances or statements concerning the shoot-out.

The U.S. Embassy in Bogota also remained silent, referring all questions to Washington to avoid the appearance of intruding in what officials portray as a purely Colombian triumph against the drug cartel.

Rodriguez Gacha, a one-time pig farmer who was a hired killer before organizing a cocaine network that became one of the largest and richest in the cartel, has been described by U.S. drug enforcement agents and others as the most dangerous of the cartel leaders because he had no compunction about indiscriminate killing and destruction.

Along with the recent bombings, he has been blamed, either separately or with Escobar, for the murders of a top anti-drug presidential candidate, a justice minister, a newspaper publisher and a political party chief, as well as unknown scores of other people including judges, civic leaders and journalists.

According to a late report on the Colombian radio network RCN, police refused to permit a funeral home to take the bodies to Medellin, the cartel’s headquarters city. The broadcast said that Rodriguez Gacha and his son were instead unceremoniously buried in a paupers’ plot, the location of which was not disclosed.