Wearing a wig and a disguise, María Corina Machado began her escape from Venezuela on Monday afternoon.

The Venezuelan opposition leader was trying to get to Norway by Wednesday in time to receive the Nobel Peace Prize that she won for challenging Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro. First she had to get from the Caracas suburb where she had been in hiding for a year to a coastal fishing village, where a skiff awaited her.

Over the course of 10 nerve-racking hours, Machado and two people helping her escape hit 10 military checkpoints, avoiding capture each time, before she reached the coast by midnight, said a person close to the operation.

She rested for a few hours, the person said, before the next leg of her journey: a perilous trip across the open Caribbean Sea to Curaçao. She and her two companions set out on a typical wooden fishing skiff at 5 a.m., the person said, with strong winds and choppy seas slowing them down.

She had almost completed an escape that had been in the works for about two months and was carried out by a Venezuelan network that has helped other people flee the country, the person close to the operation said. The group said it made an important call to the U.S. military before they set out to sea, warning American forces in the region of the vessel’s occupants to avoid the kind of airstrike that has hit more than 20 similar vessels in the past three months, killing more than 80 people.

“We coordinated that she was going to leave by a specific area so that they would not blow up the boat,” said the person close to the operation.

The Trump administration was aware of the operation, said people familiar with the matter, but the extent of its involvement was unclear.

The U.S. Navy and the Pentagon declined to comment. Administration officials denied the accuracy of the military contact.

Around the same time of their crossing, a pair of U.S. Navy F-18s flew into the Gulf of Venezuela and spent roughly 40 minutes flying in tight circles near the route that would lead from the coast to Curaçao, according to flight-tracking data. It was the closest incursion of U.S. aircraft into Venezuelan airspace since the U.S. military buildup began in September.

Machado arrived in Curaçao around 3 p.m. Tuesday. She was met by a private contractor who specialized in extractions and was supplied by the Trump administration, the person said. Exhausted by the long trip, Machado checked into a hotel and stayed overnight, the person said.

As the sun rose in Curaçao and as guests began to gather in Oslo, an executive jet provided by a Miami associate took off from the island and headed for the Norwegian capital, after making a stop in Bangor, Maine, the person said. Before boarding the aircraft, Machado recorded a short audio message thanking “so many people…[who] risked their lives” so she could leave Venezuela.

She touched down in Oslo on Wednesday evening.

Her escape was kept so closely held that the Nobel Institute told Norwegian media it didn’t know where she was as the prize ceremony in Oslo began. Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee, told the award ceremony that she had been through “a journey in a situation of extreme danger.”

Machado’s daughter accepted the award on her behalf. “She will be back in Venezuela very soon,” she told the audience, which included U.S. lawmakers, international supporters and foreign leaders.

After arriving in Oslo, Machado stood on the balcony of the city’s central Grand Hotel and waved to supporters. They yelled “valiente”—Spanish for brave—and sang the Venezuelan national anthem.

“I’m still trying to believe that I’m here in Oslo at last,” Machado said in an interview with the BBC early Thursday local time.

Now, Machado plans to rest for a few days. She has been living in a completely isolated place and hasn’t been eating well. After about a week, she intends to tour European countries to drum up support for the Venezuelan cause. Eventually she will also visit Washington, said a person who talks frequently with Machado.

On Wednesday evening, as her supporters and foreign officials sat down for a five-course dinner served on a special Nobel dining service in the banquet hall of Oslo’s Grand Hotel, details of Machado’s escape circulated among the guests, according to U.S. and Venezuelan attendees.

Meanwhile in Caracas, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez accused Machado and the opposition of working to advance U.S. imperialist interests to loot Venezuela’s vast oil and mineral wealth. “The show failed. The lady didn’t show up,” she said. “Those extremist, fascist lackeys who have been asking for blockades, invasions and bombings against Venezuela are going to be defeated again, the same way their cheap show in Norway fell apart.”

Leaving the country carries the risk that Machado could be barred from returning. It could diminish her influence at home, as has happened to several opposition leaders forced into exile in the past. Venezuela’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab , has said that Machado would be considered a fugitive if she traveled to Norway.

Venezuelan opposition activists said that having Machado out of Venezuela will energize their cause, allowing the opposition leader to more effectively lobby foreign governments than she could from a remote video connection, and push for more economic and political pressure on Maduro. Machado has voiced support for Trump’s military buildup in the region and argued that a credible threat of force is needed to push Maduro from power.

Asked whether she would support U.S. airstrikes on the country, Machado didn’t address the question directly, saying the Venezuelan people didn’t want a war.

“It was Maduro who declared a war on the Venezuelan people with state terrorism and abroad with narco terrorism,” she said. “What we have asked, and I have been very insistent in this, is the international community to help us stop the flows of resources, criminal resources, which are used by the regime for repression of the Venezuelan people.”

Machado was barred from running for president last year, but she still led a successful campaign, with her candidate winning in a landslide, according to opposition figures and the U.S. Maduro declared victory anyway and led a brutal crackdown on protesters. Machado went into hiding, and her successful presidential candidate, Edmundo González , fled Venezuela.

Machado has pledged she will return to Venezuela, where she could face arrest and prosecution. She has taken secret trips out of Venezuela before, the person close to this week’s operation said, using similar secret methods on journeys to Colombia to meet Iván Duque, then president of Colombia and a political ally.

She also returned to Venezuela on those clandestine trips.