How María Corina Machado got to Norway to get her Nobel Peace Prize

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado faced a treacherous journey to collect her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway.

Rough seas. An almost moonless night. And a small fishing boat crossing a treacherous stretch of the Caribbean Sea, carrying precious cargo with a target on her back.

Those were the conditions that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado faced when she made perhaps the most perilous part of her journey to collect her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, according to the U.S. Special Forces veteran who planned and aided her escape.

“There were 5- to 6-foot waves, maybe even bigger waves than that, and we were doing this in the middle of the night,” Bryan Stern, who heads the Tampa, Florida-based Grey Bull Rescue Foundation, told NBC News. “It was pitch black, almost no moonlight. All of us were very cold and wet.”

But Machado never lost her composure, or her lunch, Stern said, as the skiff lurched in the rough sea and plied through waters that have been targeted, of late, by the U.S. missile strikes on suspected drug smuggling boats.

“She did fine,” Stern said. “They call her the Iron Lady for a reason.”