Hugo! (21 page)

In Caracas, Ochoa Antich had gone to his home at Fort Tiuna. As he
was turning in for the night at about 11:30, he received a call from a
Democratic Action congressman, who told him he was hearing reports
of a military uprising in Maracaibo. He gave Ochoa the name of a commander
to call. The commander confirmed the report. The news set off
alarm bells for Ochoa. He realized the revolt was not confined to the
rumors of trouble in Caracas. He immediately called La Casona and
ordered the operator to put him through to the president. But Pérez was
sound asleep. After several failed attempts to rouse him, Ochoa called
one of Pérez's daughters, Carolina, and told her to wake the president.
It was urgent. When she did, Ochoa told him soldiers in Zulia were
revolting. A rebellion really was under way. They might want to kill the
president. A groggy Pérez responded that he would head to Miraflores
Palace right away.

Pressed for time, Pérez didn't bother to take off his pajamas. He
simply put the shirt, pants, and suit jacket he'd worn on the trip back
from Switzerland over them. He rushed out of the residence, jumped
into a car with a driver and a bodyguard, and pulled out
.
He barely
missed the rebels, who were just arriving. They didn't shoot or try to
stop him. They might not have known it was the president. Instead of
departing with his typical large entourage of cars and motorcycles, he'd
left in a single vehicle. With luck on his side, he slipped through the
rebels' fingers again.

He had barely departed when the Bolivarians attacked. In a bloody
blaze of bullets, soldiers, police, presidential guards, and rebels shot it
out in the normally quiet, leafy residential neighborhood. Startled residents
jumped out of their beds. First Lady Blanca Rodríguez Pérez
huddled inside with other family members. They gathered in her bedroom
as the building shook and bullets chewed up the white wall surrounding
it.

Half a mile away rebels led by Acosta Chirinos unleashed an
attack on La Carlota military air base. They captured the base's commanders
and blocked airplanes from taking off. It was a critical move.
It would protect the rebels on the ground from air attack. Across town,
the Bolivarians were closing in on Miraflores. They had a column of
tanks.

As Pérez's car barreled down the highway, his guards got a call on
their radios that La Casona was under attack. Pérez was shocked. At two
minutes past midnight, he pulled into the palace. His car sped through
a large metal gate that separated the palace grounds from Urdaneta
Avenue, raced one hundred yards up a paved driveway, and screeched
to a halt at the
puerta amarrilla
, yellow door. It was a special, ceremonial
entrance reserved for the president and visiting dignitaries. Palace
soldiers in colorful dress uniforms usually guarded it. But now the
gleaming white century-old palace was quiet. Many of the presidential
troops were asleep in their barracks across the street.

Pérez jumped out of the car, dashed up the stairs to the
puerta
amarrilla
, and turned left into a small waiting room that led to his
office. Waiting inside were Senator
Luis Alfaro Ucero, a leader of the
Democratic Action Party, and Virgilio Avila Vivas, the interior minister
in charge of domestic security. They had gotten word of the troubles
and rushed to the palace. Pérez was enraged with both of them. How
was it possible that a coup attempt was being planned for months, if not
years, and neither the government nor the party knew anything about
it? Why didn't you warn me? he shouted, pacing around the room and
waving his arms. Pérez said he suspected a lieutenant colonel named
Hugo Chávez was behind the revolt. Carlos Peñaloza and others had
told him all about it.

As the president vented at the two men, the head of his security
team, Vice Admiral Mario Ivan Carratú, was pulling into the palace.
Jumping out of his car, Carratú bounded up a set of ornate marble stairs
to his own office on the other side of the palace. He bumped into one
of the president's bodyguards, Romel
Fuenmayor, who looked like he
was ready for war. He had a machine gun and a pistol in his hands, a
revolver stuck in his belt, a knife strapped to his leg, hand grenades
lashed to his chest, a combat helmet on his head, and a bulletproof vest
across his torso.

Fuenmayor, Carratú, and the number two man on his security
team, Colonel Rafael Hung Díaz, made their way to the small waiting
room outside Pérez's office. A presidential bodyguard, Colonel Gerardo
Dudamel, stood at the entrance. Carratú waited for a break in Pérez's
ranting to talk to him.

About thirty seconds later they heard a loud crash outside. They
dashed out of the waiting room and through the
puerta amarrilla
. Pérez
darted over to a window behind his desk. What the men saw shocked
them: A tank had smashed through the metal gate by the street and was
coming straight at them. More tanks were following. Behind them soldiers
were running in, faces smeared with camouflage paint. Despite
the lockdown at Fort Tiuna, about two hundred rebels had managed to
escape. They were led by Blanco La Cruz and Rojas Suárez, the young
captains who had nearly betrayed Chávez in December by launching a
coup themselves.

A few seconds after the first tank smashed through the gate, flashes
of light flickered from a machine gun on one tank in the rear. It sprayed
the palace walls with bullets. Pérez flinched and backed away from the
window in his office. He might have been hit if not for the bulletproof
glass. A handful of loyalist soldiers who were across the street in towers
at the barracks opened fire, creating a blistering crossfire.

The first tank braked abruptly in front of Carratú and the others,
and a soldier gripping a FAL assault rifle leaped down. "We're going to
kill you like dogs!" he shouted. "Fatherland or death!" When the soldier
landed on the ground, Fuenmayor grabbed his weapon. Shots rang
out as the two wrestled. Caught by surprise and overwhelmed by the
assault, Carratú and the others fled inside to take cover.

In the waiting room Dudamel had run inside Pérez's office,
slammed shut the heavily fortified bulletproof metal door, and locked
it with a key. Carratú and the others ran through the
puerta amarrilla
,
passed the waiting room, and sprinted twenty-five yards to his office on
the other side of the palace. Carratú fumbled for the keys to his safebox
to get out his pistol. Amid the attack and his nervousness he couldn't
open the safe. Pérez's car was parked outside, but his chauffeur had
run inside to protect himself. Carratú shouted at him to go back and
retrieve the weapons inside the car: two mini Uzi submachine guns.
The driver got them, handing one to Carratú and the other to Hung
Díaz. His heart racing, the vice admiral quickly got on the telephone
to call for reinforcements. Hung Díaz and Fuenmayor stood near the
door, arms ready.

The rebels quickly attacked, charging through the
puerta amarrilla
with their guns blazing. Hung Díaz, Fuenmayor, and a few other
guards poked their heads out from behind the door and some large
potted plants and returned fire. The Bolivarians kept storming in,
turning left into the waiting room with the door to the president's office
ten yards in front of them. Before long the floor and even the door were
bathed in blood. At one point during the combat, a bullet grazed the
head of Blanco La Cruz, who crumpled to the ground and passed out
as blood poured. Some of the rebels thought he was dead. They dragged
him away, threw him on a tank, and later took him out of the area.

With the sound of gunfire exploding outside his door, Pérez walked
over to his desk, picked up a small black executive-style suitcase that
was lying next to it, and opened it. Inside were two pistols and an
Uzi submachine gun. Pérez's guards carried the suitcase wherever the
president went for his use in case of emergency. Pérez knew how to
handle the weapons well. He often practiced at the presidential retreat
on the Caribbean island of La Orchila and other places. He removed
the Uzi from the suitcase, turned off the safety, and prepared to defend
himself.

He decided his best chance of survival was to flee his office. He
opened a concealed door at the rear. The president, Alfaro Ucero, Avila
Vivas, and the bodyguard Dudamel darted through the door to the
adjoining office of Pérez's private secretary, and then to a stairwell. It led
to the president's private quarters upstairs — a bedroom, kitchen, and
small office. Pérez made it halfway up the stairs, and froze. He couldn't
go any farther. Bullets were coming through the windows and the roof
on the second floor. He stood paralyzed on the stairwell, clutching the
Uzi and trying to figure out where to go. He was trapped.

Down the hall Carratú was trying to get help. He was calling frantically
for reinforcements. He tried the defense minister but couldn't get
through. He called the head of the president's honor guard in the barracks
across the street; the commander told him that rebels had taken
the tunnels connecting the barracks with
Miraflores. He called the
local head of the National Guard, who said he couldn't do anything
immediately: He had to regain control of the troops and of the city first.
Carratú hung up and realized there was only one option. He had to get
Pérez out of the palace.

He waited for a break in the shooting and then sprinted down a
hallway. As he passed a ten-yard open stretch where the rebels had a
shot at him, he fired his Uzi
.
He found Pérez inside the stairwell and
told him the situation was hopeless. Mr. President, we have no time,
he said. We can't defend ourselves. The tunnels are taken. We are surrounded
by tanks. There is no possibility of help from the army. There
is no help from the National Guard. The rebels have taken the palace
militarily. We don't have the capacity to resist. We have to leave.

But Pérez did not want to leave. He wanted to fight back. We have
to defend the palace, he told Carratú. We have to defend the country
and defend democracy. Carratú insisted they would be killed if they
stayed; they had to leave. Pérez finally relented. If that's the case, he
said, then get me out of here immediately.

Carratú took off running about four hundred yards through secret
tunnels. He reached a heavy glass door that led to the parking garage
housing the presidential motor fleet. The door was locked. He didn't
have the key. So Carratú took the butt of his Uzi and smashed it. He
pounded the door at least a dozen times, carving out a jagged waist-high
opening large enough to climb through. He slipped through the gap,
ran over to a guard, and shouted for him to prepare the president's car.
He told him he wanted a gray one. Most presidential cars were black. He
didn't want to give the rebels any clues.

Rebels were inside the palace, outside the palace, and had all the
exits covered — all except one: the huge metal door that opened from
the parking garage onto the street at the rear of Miraflores. Carratú
raced back to the stairwell, told the president he was ready, and led him
and others through the tunnels. Still clutching his Uzi,
Pérez climbed
through the hole in the door, made his way to the car, and jumped in.

They were ready to leave, but now there was another problem.
No one had the key or the electronic device to open the gate. Two
parking garage guards were lying on the floor injured and yelling for
help. They'd been shot by rebels firing on the palace from outside. The
only option was to try to hot-wire the cables in the control box. Carratú
jumped out of the car, ran over to the box, and tore it open. Splicing
wires together, he got the door to open. It wasn't a second too soon.
Tires squealing, they roared out of the garage and swung wildly to the
right. Fifty yards up the hilly street to the left, a tank and soldiers were
descending on them. The president barely escaped again.

Pérez's entourage had no idea where to go. They swung onto grimy
Baralt Avenue and climbed a mile up an incline toward Mount Avila.
They turned onto Cota Mil Highway, which ran along the foot of the
mountain. They were safe for the moment, but Pérez was livid. He was
yelling about the disloyal military hierarchy and Chávez, the man he
was convinced was behind the plot.

The president told Carratú he wanted to get to a radio or television
station to show the nation he was still in control and that the rebels had
failed. He thought his appearance might demoralize them and prompt
them to give up. Picking up a car phone, Carratú called the operator at
Miraflores. The rebels had smashed a tank through the metal gates outside
the Palacio Blanco across the street from Miraflores and climbed
halfway up the stairs with it. But they had failed to reach the fourth
floor where the government's main switchboard was housed. Carratú
told the operator to get him in touch with the first radio or television
station he could. Thirty seconds later the operator called back. He had
Venevisión, one of the country's major networks, on the line.

It was the network's nighttime head of security, and Carratú knew
him. Carratú said he needed to go on the air. He didn't mention he actually
wanted the president to speak. The guard told him to come. Pérez's
car exited the highway, sped through the middle-class La Florida neighborhood,
and screeched to a halt at the television station headquarters.

The men ran in and were rushed upstairs to the office of the network's
president, Gustavo Cisneros. He was the richest man in Venezuela
and a friend of President George H. W. Bush. To the side of Cisneros's
office was a small, plain
broadcast studio. Pérez walked in and got ready
to go on the air. The president was flustered. He had just escaped from
a palace under siege. He knew the rebels were hunting for him. He still
had on his blue pajamas under his suit. Part of the shirt was sticking out
from under his collar. Carratú mentioned it. Pérez shoved the pajama
top back inside.