Without a Badge: Undercover in the World's Deadliest Criminal Organization

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In this mesmerizing true story, career cop Jerry Speziale chronicles his fast-living years as one of the youngest recruits for the DEA's task force on drugs -- an unimaginable odyssey of undercover intrigue, Colombian kingpins, amazing takedowns, and nerve-jangling narrow escapes. From the start, the man former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik admiringly called "a hurricane" was a highly unconventional soldier in the war on drugs. A barber's son with a background as a juvenile delinquent, Jerry was never cool and calculating, but a tenacious live wire whose remarkable instincts got him into the crack dens and shooting galleries of New York City's meanest streets -- and won him the attention of the top brass, who didn't quite know what to make of their unpredictable rising star. So they tapped him for a DEA narcotics task force, an elite group of renegades ready to take down the powerful Cali drug cartel in South America, and the education of Jerry Speziale, undercover agent, began.

Under the tutelage of Paul Alexander, a sophisticated confidential informant who had once been blacklisted by the DEA, the jeans-and-tee shirt kid from New Jersey was transformed into Armani-clad Geraldo Bartone, the world's top drug trafficker. As Geraldo, Jerry did things he never could have dreamed of -- piloting planes, building landing strips, skippering Cali-owned yachts filled with blinding-white cocaine, meeting the most powerful kingpins in the brutal drug trade, where one false move, one wrong word takes a player out for good. Within a few years, Jerry and the other officers of the task force became the most successful drug unit in U.S. history, arresting dozens of high-level dealers and confiscating twenty-two thousand pounds of cocaine. Riding a wave of glory and success, Jerry had no idea that he would be the one scammed next.

Shockingly betrayed by the mentor he'd come to trust, Jerry saw his life spiral dangerously out of control. The behind-the-scenes brutalities, the time away from his wife and daughter, and the relentless stress of undercover life -- where how convincing you can be is the line between life and death -- all took their toll. Paranoid, sleep deprived, stressed to the breaking point, Speziale nearly lost it all. But aided by the love of his family, he came back from the abyss and was awarded a Medal of Honor. By turns harrowing and heroic, compelling and inspiring, Jerry Speziale's story reads like a Hollywood thriller. It's a white-knuckle ride into a world few people ever see, a descent into the netherworld of Colombia's deadly drug cartels. And it's a rare glimpse into the back rooms of justice where the country's finest put their lives on the line every day, never forgetting their duty...or its consequences.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Washington Post

Like "Donnie Brasco," in which an FBI agent recounted his infiltration of the Mafia, this harrowing autobiography provides a fascinating peek into a subculture few of us have ever seen before. Big-time, world-class drug dealers do a great deal of macho posturing and conspicuous consuming for the sole purpose of impressing one another, and in recreating them Speziale and Seal make the whole industry seem incredibly foolish. — Les Roberts

Publishers Weekly