A dramatic rescue brings Venezuelan leader Machado to Norway for the Nobel Prize

The backup operation to extract Leader of the Venezuelan opposition María Corina Machado and the transport to Norway in time to accept her Nobel Peace Prize involved a complex series of complications and various components on land, sea and air.

The mission, dubbed Operation Golden Dynamite, was led by Bryan Stern, a veteran of the United States special forces and founder of the Gray Bull Rescue Foundation of Tampa, which specializes in rescue missions and high-risk evacuations, especially from conflict and disaster areas.

Getting out of Venezuela, where she is considered a fugitive by President Nicolás Maduro, involved disguises, deception, navigating rough seas and arranging flight options.

“He’s perceived by the Maduro regime as we perceive Osama bin Laden, so,” Stern told Fox News. “That level of manhunting if you will.”

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Machado has been hiding in Venezuela since Maduro won a hotly contested election last year and has not been seen in public in months.

Stern emphasized that the US government was not involved in the operation.

His team had built a presence in the CaribbeanVenezuela and the neighboring island of Aruba in preparation for operations in the South American region.

The biggest challenge, Stern said, was getting Machado out of the country even though she was a well-known figure. To move from his home to a “landing site on the beach”, his team did “everything designed to create a bit of confusion”.

“Anything we could think of that we thought could hide his face … was employed.” Stern said. “Something we can think of, their digital signature, their physical signature. In addition to that, we did some deception operations on the ground. We made some noise in some places designed to make people think that something had happened that it didn’t.”

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The maritime operation got off to a rough start, Stern said. Of the two boats deployed for the mission, the vessel that physically extracted Machado lost GPS in rough seas and suffered a mechanical hiccup that delayed the operation. The team was forced to continue in the “dead of night” in “black darkness”, navigating seas so violent that one of Stern’s operators had to vomit for nine hours straight.

Getting to the rendezvous point added another layer of difficulty. Stern’s boat and Machado’s ship have to find each other pitch black seas maintaining radio silence to avoid detection, in order to locate each other with a flashlight.

Stern said he had to be careful, fearing the approaching boat could be a trap set by Venezuelan forces. To confirm that it was safe to proceed, his larger ship surrounded Machado’s boat and shone lights on the crew.

After Stern physically pulled Machado onto his boat, he warned the rest of the team that Machado was insured: “Jackpot, jackpot, jackpot.”

“Now we are on the run with Maria Corina Machado, the most wanted woman in the Western Hemisphere, on my boat,” he said.

“I have the most wanted person in the Western Hemisphere trying to move me,” Stern said. “Personally, she is a hero of mine. He is a hero of mine. I’ve been following him for years.”

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Once in international waters, the new concern was to avoid any appearance that they had kidnapped a Venezuelan, which would have given the government every justification to attack.

“They lied. They could have killed him for any reason,” Stern said. “We’re in the middle of the d— ocean and there’s no one around to see the truth…we’re scared, we’re nervous, we’re on the run and we’re on the ground to get to the appointment.”

Stern ordered his boat captain to drive full throttle and not stop for anything, fearing persecution by the Venezuelan regime.

“My boat guy, I told him I don’t care, I don’t care who comes,” Stern said. “It won’t stop. It won’t stop. I don’t care, I don’t care who. Don’t stop at all. Let them chase us if they have to. We have to get to the ground.”

At some point during the escape, two F-18 fighter jets had flown over. Stern described the moment as a potential complication, as they could not determine whether the jets were hostile or friendly, although he noted that it was probably not part of a Navy coordination effort.

“There’s an aircraft carrier in the Caribbean that takes planes every twenty minutes. I don’t know,” Stern said. “I can tell you that no one in the Navy said, ‘Don’t worry, bro, we’ve sent two F-18s to cover you.’

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The marine team successfully brought Machado to safety. Stern said his team had also prepared for a possible air extraction, but that plan was abandoned after a last-minute change on Machado’s part. Instead, the final flight to Norway he was arranged by his personal network using a friend’s private jet, culminating in his safe arrival.

While Gray Bull Rescue has conducted operations in highly threatened environments such as Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Haiti, Stern said Machado’s extraction was uniquely challenging, describing it as “by far” the most complicated mission in the organization’s 800-mission history.