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TASK FORCE SEMPER FIDELIS. Essentially a blocking force deployed on Panama City's western border, its Marine rifle company and light armored infantry company occupied the Bridge of the Americas, which spans the canal, to prevent a P.D.F. counterattack on the crucial Howard Air Force Base.
TASK FORCE RED. Assigned targets on both sides of the capital, its rangers had the night's most difficult chores. As Pathfinder planes dropped flares to illuminate the drop areas, the Rangers jumped from planes that flew as low as 500 ft., well within the range of small-arms fire. The Rangers on the west landed near Rio Hato, assaulted the barracks of the 6th and 7th P.D.F. companies and took 250 prisoners. The bulk of P.D.F. soldiers had slipped away. To the east, other commandos dropped in large numbers on Torrijos International Airport.
TASK FORCE PACIFIC. Once Task Force Red had secured the airport, two waves of 82nd Airborne paratroopers jumped from 20 C-141 transports. They fanned out to assist Rangers and Special Forces units that had blocked the Pacora River bridge to prevent Battalion 2000 from reaching Panama City and to turn back any attack from P.D.F. infantry and cavalry units based at Fort Cimarron. When the Americans reached the fort, the crack battalion was no longer there.
TASK FORCE BAYONET. This mechanized battalion and light tank force attacked the P.D.F. headquarters with a vengeance, igniting a huge fire that gutted the main Comandancia building. When the bombardment was over, its troops searched the building room by room -- and found no one. By 8 a.m. Wednesday, Powell felt confident enough to proclaim that "for the most part, organized resistance has ended."
U.S. forces then focused on the plight of hostages who had been seized by Noriega's men. At the Marriott a foreign journalist was approached at about 12:25 a.m. Wednesday by three gunmen in ski masks and civilian clothes. They ordered her to join eleven other guests, including seven Americans being held hostage in the hotel by thugs toting AK-47s. They were marched into a van, driven to a house and held in a kitchen for three hours. "You're bombing our children; you're bombing our people," one told the Americans. "If we were in another country, we would kill you." The group was placed in two cars and released near the hotel with a final word from their captors: "We will continue the fight, the struggle."
Not until Wednesday night did American troops finally fight their way through Dignity Battalions to protect 64 frightened guests and workers at the hotel. The next day one U.S. unit at the hotel sighted a personnel carrier approaching and opened fire. The shots were returned. In the hotel parking lot a Spanish photographer, Juan Antonio Rodriguez, was killed and Patrick Chauvel, a photographer on assignment for Newsweek, was wounded. The shooting was a tragic mistake; the approaching vehicle was carrying American soldiers.