Zero Hour

On a balmy evening in October 2002, young Western tourists and Balinese revelers pack the bars and nightclubs that line the main strip of Kuta, on the resort island of Bali. The night seems full of promise; of sizzling romance and unfettered fun. However, for hundreds of these partygoers this night will be their last.

To some, Pablo Escobar was the greatest criminal in history. A brutal man who terrorized, tortured and murdered thousands as the billionaire king of the Columbian cocaine racket. To others, he was a Robin Hood - giving back to the very poorest the money made from selling drugs to the spoiled and decadent rich. But saint or sinner, in his final hour, Escobar cuts a pathetic figure.

In the evening of September 27, 1994 The Estonia, one of the largest passenger/car ferries in the world, sets sail from the Estonian capital of Tallinn. She is bound for Stockholm in Sweden but she will never arrive. Six hours into her voyage, catastrophe strikes the 500-foot long ship and she sinks to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

He seemed the quintessential, hometown American, with a childhood of little league baseball, Santa Claus, and cowboys. But on a bright spring morning in April 1995, Timothy James McVeigh shattered the image and took his place among the pantheon of mass murderers. His homemade bomb blew the face off the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

On a warm May evening in 1981 Pope John Paul II rides through the adoring throngs in St. Peter's Square during his weekly audience in Rome. But not all are there to receive a blessing. Amongst the crowd, an assassin grips his 9mm Browning pistol and inches forward. On this evening the Pope, who has been in office for less than three years, will brush close to death when he is shot at close range.

Capturing Saddam reconstructs the final hour of the raid leading to the capture of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator reviled and feared crimes committed against his people; the mass poisoning of Kurds; torture and executions in his macabre prisons; the invasion of Kuwait; and the brutal suppression of the Shia uprising in 1991.