Just like Saddam Hussein did before his capture, Nicolás Maduro changed his sleeping location every night, rotating through eight different places to try to confuse his enemies. But the agents spying on him already knew his movements. For the plan to succeed, they had to wait for him to spend the night in that bunker. It was supposed to happen four days earlier, on December 30, but bad weather and low visibility advised delaying it to avoid unnecessary risks. A week before, on December 23, a White House official had made a final attempt to persuade Maduro to accept a flight to exile offered by Turkey. The Chavista refused. At that moment, his fate was sealed.
On the night of January 2-3, the deployed drones (not intercepted by Venezuela's anti-aircraft defenses) located Maduro as he returned to the compound. The night was clear. From the Mar-a-Lago patio, where he was dining with his collaborators, Trump himself gave the final order to act at 10:46 pm on Friday, Florida time.
As the hours pass, U.S. authorities are gradually leaking more details of the operation that ended Nicolás Maduro's mandate and led the Chavista leader to a prison in New York, as reported by several U.S. media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The Delta special forces, known for their role in the elimination of Al Baghdadi, self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State, are an elite group that trains and disbands according to the mission at hand. In this case, under the leadership of a Spanish-speaking commander in the team, they used all the intelligence information to create a bunker at their Kentucky base similar to the one used by Maduro, practicing the entry, extraction, and exit repeatedly in record time.
Although all members know each other perfectly, the choreography must be timed and flawless. Two minutes at the door to place the explosive and blow up the steel sheets. It was that explosion that woke the couple, who were surprised by the weapons and flashlights, preventing them from reaching the secure room, which is armored and would have delayed the operation. In fact, the Delta team had torches to break down his door, although it was not necessary.
Five more minutes inside detaining Maduro and his wife, then back to the helicopters. FBI and DEA agents briefly read the drug trafficking charges to the Chavista leader, already in handcuffs. Some sources claim he resisted and had to be dragged out of his room, injuring his left leg in the process. According to The Washington Post, the entire mission was broadcast live by a camera placed on the front of one of the helicopters. Trump enjoyed it as if it were a "show," as he confessed.
The training was provided by a person close to the regime and knowledgeable about Maduro's personal dependencies, as reported by The New York Times, and a CIA team that had been deployed clandestinely in Caracas for months without any diplomatic coverage, as the U.S. embassy remains closed, as explained by the mission commander and Chief of Staff, General Dan Caine.
Flying at just 100 feet from the Iwo Jima ship in their approach to Venezuela around 4:30 am on Saturday, to evade radar detection, an unknown number of Chinook troop transport helicopters (equipped with two large propellers) supported by other Apache ground attack helicopters began flying over Caracas without lights, while F35 and F18 fighter jets from the air forces cleared their path by destroying all known S300 and Buk anti-aircraft defense positions, both batteries provided by Russia, as well as the main radars.
The Venezuelan air force, composed of old F16 fighters sold by the U.S. before the rise of Chavismo and Russian Su27 aircraft, did not even take off. The U.S. fleet also took care to deploy powerful electronic warfare to cut off all frequencies over the city. A cyberattack brought down Caracas' power grid to eliminate the few existing lights, the ideal playing field for the Night Stalkers, the military unit of the air forces (160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment) responsible for these nocturnal incursions, which previously led the Navy Seals to Bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad.
The Chavista commandos scattered throughout the city were deployed not to prevent the aerial raid but to maintain control of the streets. There were no tracer bullets in the skies of Caracas, so the resistance was minimal, although Trump later claimed that one of the helicopters had been hit and two of its crew members were injured.
The attack left about 40 dead, mostly military personnel, according to regime sources. Other sources claim that many of them are members of the Bolivarian dictator's Praetorian Guard, mostly composed of Cuban commandos trained on the island and known as "black wasps."
Although the attack was considered a success because it achieved its objective, the U.S. Navy remains on alert. According to Trump himself, there are other plans in progress in case they are needed in the coming days. So far, he has not deemed them "necessary," but that could quickly change in the volatile mind of the blond president.