A man’s voice was heard amid the pouring rain in the pitch black Caribbean Sea, between two boats surrounded by 10-foot high waves.
On the small craft, a simple fishing boat, there were people holding cellphones like emergency flares at night. The big vehicle came closer.
A figure wearing a heavy jacket and black ball cap waved his arms. “It’s me, Maria.”
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has suffered the most right now his dangerous leg flee your home country She was going to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. It was Tuesday morning when the extraction team rescued him. Part of it was recorded on video seen by the Wall Street Journal.
For the past three hours, Machado and a small crew had been adrift on a boat in the Gulf of Venezuela after its GPS was lost in rough seas and backups failed. She did not meet the extraction team at the designated pickup point, leading to a race to find her in the dangerous waters.
Brian Stern, a bearded American combat veteran sent to extract Machado from Venezuela, said he took him to a larger boat and gave him snacks, Gatorade and a dry sweater. He alerted his team that Machado was on the board: “Jackpot, jackpot, jackpot.”
In the life-affirming video sent to US authorities and shared with The Wall Street Journal, Machado tries to steady himself as the boat bounces on the waves. “My name is Maria Corina Machado,” she says, “I am alive, safe and very grateful.”
Stern, who leads an organization specializing in such extractions, staffed by former special operations and intelligence veterans, has called the mission Operation Golden Dynamite. This is a reference to the Nobel Peace Prize and its founder Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist who invented dynamite.
New details from Stern and another person familiar with the operation, as well as timestamped text messages, videos and photos from the mission reviewed by the Journal, paint a picture of a dangerous mission that almost failed.
Over three days, Stern and more than three dozen colleagues spoke amid the Trump administration’s escalating campaign to expel Venezuela’s main rival, Nicolas Maduro, an authoritarian leader, from the country. remove him from powerShe has been living in hiding since the 2024 elections, in which she was barred from participating, but her party nevertheless won, according to the US – with Maduro ignoring the results,
Stern said he was in constant contact with senior US military officials before and during the operation: sharing his live location, describing obstacles, sending updates and at one point asking if the military could see Machado’s boat when they lost contact with him.
The State Department and the Pentagon referred questions to the White House. The White House did not respond to requests for comment and administration officials have previously disputed the military contact.
The operation was funded by private donors, without U.S. government money, Stern said. But US officials – from the White House to senior military officials to regional diplomats – followed the trip in real time through WhatsApp messages and voice memos from Stern and his team.
Machado’s journey took about three days: he traveled by land from a suburb of Caracas to a fishing village on Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, and then by boat to the Dutch island of Curaçao – a sea journey that took about 12 hours.
From there, a private jet picked him up and took him to Oslo. She did not attend Wednesday’s awards ceremony, where her daughter accepted the award.
Stern’s operation began at 9 pm on Friday, December 5. He was waiting to board a flight from Miami to Tampa when he received a call from a former colleague who worked in US intelligence.
His contact said he had been given a special assignment to get an important “package” out of Venezuela.
When his contact slipped out that it was “her”, Stern immediately knew it was Machado. He also knew that this would be the highest-stakes extraction of his career. “It’s a counterintel man’s dream or nightmare,” he said.
Stern’s Tampa-based Gray Bull was deploying teams to the Caribbean to provide its services to U.S. citizens in Venezuela in case of possible military action. “We’ve had a plan for all this for months,” he said.
Stern, a Purple Heart-awarded U.S. Army and Navy veteran, founded Gray Bull in 2021, leading private evacuation missions in war zones from Afghanistan to Gaza. He had also worked in Venezuela and had recently prepared for possible US military action there, and had established a base of operations on the nearby island of Aruba in case US citizens needed to quickly evacuate. Stern said his company has close ties to the US military and intelligence agencies.
To oust Machado would require an instantly recognizable figure, Venezuela’s iconic opposition leader who went into hiding after a government crackdown on opposition activists who exposed election fraud, just when everyone expected him to step up.
“Everyone knows his face,” Stern said. “Moving Mariah is like moving Hillary Clinton.”
As they planned for at least nine possible scenarios, ranging from rescue by air or helicopter to evacuating her via Guyana or Colombia, Stern said his team spread false rumors to get the world to find her in the wrong places. Some stories showed her in Europe, others in a car headed to Colombia, and others that she had sneaked out of the country aboard a U.S. flight carrying Venezuelans being deported.
Inside and outside Venezuela, those who were following the drama closely debated whether the Maduro regime had infiltrated his movement and was quietly allowing him to leave, calculating that Machado would quickly become politically irrelevant outside the country. Stern denied receiving any help from Venezuelan government or military authorities.
On Monday afternoon, Machado left his hideout wearing a wig and a disguise to hide his recognizable features. Stern’s team also took special care to ensure that Machado and the team were not digitally tracked.
The plan, Stern said, was for Machado and his associates to meet operatives waiting for him in a fishing village, then travel on their small boat across the Gulf of Venezuela to an agreed upon meeting point in the middle of the ocean. From there, Stern would take her to Curaçao.
Almost immediately, things started going wrong.
The operators waiting for Machado on the beach were struggling with mechanical problems. They had deliberately chosen a scrapped fishing boat, hoping to distinguish it from the special-purpose boats used by drug smugglers, which the US military has been bombing in recent months.
The team knew there was little chance of a chance. Once Machado reached the beach, every minute would count.
There was a 12-hour delay in repairing the engine problem. Machado and the crew planned to leave at dawn on Tuesday, but left as the sun set. Once at sea, the open boat encountered waves up to 10 feet high, causing a crew member to vomit overboard during the voyage, Stern said. While rough conditions slowed their speed, bad weather also helped hide the ship from maritime radar, he said.
Being bombed by the US was a constant concern. The US recently launched the largest military buildup seen in the region in decades, sinking more than 20 alleged drug-trafficking ships. Stern said he told US defense officials he was working in the area. He knew that two boats colliding with each other in the dark of night would look suspicious.
Stern repeated what he told American military contacts. “Number one, keep an eye on us. Number two, don’t kill us. And number three, if you’re doing something, let us know and we’ll stay out of the way.”
Stern approached the agreed pickup point on a 31-foot center console boat – which was larger than Machado’s boat but still unsafe in the dangerous open sea. At 5 pm, near sunset, they sent a message to a senior US Navy officer with their location and details of the operation. Six hours later, Machado’s boat still had not arrived. What is more worrying is that it was completely dark.
“He did not show,” Stern wrote to the U.S. military officer in messages read by the Journal. “Any eyes in the sky?”
The officer immediately sent a message: “Uh, cold feet? Maybe reset and try again?”
Stern decided to keep it. “We’ll wait two hours, give them a chance, and then we’ll pounce.”
All the while, Stern feared that his boat was a useless thing to Venezuelan security forces.
“We’ll get really, really quiet, shut everything down,” he said.
Suddenly the communication system was restored at around 11 pm. Machado’s boat was 25 miles from the agreed meeting point. When they finally located the boat, they searched the passengers to ensure they were not armed. Machado boarded another ship.
“Hi, my name is Brian Stern, nice to meet you,” he said to Machado, thinking his American accent would be reassuring.
They sent a photo via satellite phone and Starlink to US government and military officials, showing the two of them smiling wearily on a dark boat.
On the arduous trip to Curacao, Machado talked mostly about his daughter, whom he has not seen in two years, Stern said.
In Curaçao, Stern said, he once spoke to Dutch officials on the island, but deliberately withheld information so as not to be considered involved and incur the wrath of neighboring Venezuela.
Curaçao allows 24 hours to formally enter the country and pass through customs. Machado stayed on the island for only a few hours. On Wednesday morning, she boarded a private jet that had flown there from Miami, provided by one of the donors to the operation. It left for Oslo at 6:42 am
In a speech to supporters there, he described the rescue operation as a “miracle”.
Write to Jose de Cordoba jose.decordoba@wsj.comOn Vera Bergengruen vera.bergengruen@wsj.com And on Alex Leary alex.leary@wsj.com
