"Jackpot. Jackpot. Jackpot." This is how Bryan Stern, on Tuesday morning, reported the success of Operation Golden Dynamite to his Grey Bull team, composed of former Special Forces soldiers and 007. The war veteran, tasked by the Trump administration with exfiltrating Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, breathed a sigh of relief. For the previous three hours, the South American politician and a small crew had been adrift on a fishing boat after their GPS device fell into the sea due to three-meter waves. The backup had failed.
And the sworn enemy of Bolivarian dictator Nicolas Maduro, determined to travel to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, failed to show up at the agreed-upon meeting point, sparking a frantic search. In a video of her life, sent to US authorities and shared with the Wall Street Journal, the woman can be seen struggling to keep her balance while being tossed by the waves. "My name is María Corina Machado," says the figure shrouded in darkness. "I am alive, safe, and very grateful."
According to details provided by Stern, as well as messages, videos, and photos of the mission reviewed by WSJ, the three-day trip involved about forty people, including the CIA and secret services, and nearly failed at least once. According to reports, on Tuesday morning, the "libertadora," as her supporters call her, donned a wig and, escorted by two men, left her hideout in Caracas, driving toward the north of the country, embarking on a daring escape worthy of a le Carré spy story. After passing through a dozen checkpoints, in a Venezuela gripped by the government's authoritarian grip and under pressure from the escalation of tensions with Washington, which has deployed its ships off the coast since September, Machado faced the most difficult moment of her journey while lost at sea.
"I was scared," she admitted. But "she never lost heart," said Stern, who greeted her after the rescue with a snack, Gatorade, and a dry sweater. Accompanied by Grey Bull agents, Machado reached the Caribbean island of Curaçao, where she boarded a private jet to Miami, and then flew to Norway, with a stopover in Bangkok. However, she was unable to arrive in time to receive the award in person, as she had wanted. Her daughter, Ana Corina Sosa, accepted it for her.
The leader's race against time ended on the night between Wednesday and Thursday, when, in the freezing darkness of a Northern European winter, at 2:30 a.m., she appeared on a balcony of the Grand Hotel in Oslo, where a hundred or so people—including Venezuelan politicians in exile based in Spain, such as Leopoldo López, Lilian Tintori, and Antonio Ledezma—welcomed her with a standing ovation, singing the national anthem. "Our country will breathe again," Machado assured, intending to return to Caracas to closely monitor the transition to democracy. Perhaps not without first stopping in Washington, where work continues on a plan.
(Unioneonline)
