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Elsewhere, a boat filled with Noriega gunmen landed at one of the San Blas islands off Panama's Caribbean coast and took hostage eleven people working at a Smithsonian Institutions marine-research project. The group, including five Americans, was taken to the mainland and forced to march into the jungle. Next day, they were abandoned without food and finally rescued. At the international airport two terrified American women were threatened with death by a group of 30 P.D.F. soldiers, who used them as a shield against U.S. paratroopers surrounding the terminal. The two were freed just before dawn after the American soldiers told the gunmen that Noriega had been killed and their cause was futile.
That episode illustrated Noriega's crucial role in the continuing resistance. American commanders have made capturing him a high priority, since as long as he remains at large, some Panamanian units might rally around him. Yet the wily dictator managed to evade the net. American troops surrounded the Cuban and Nicaraguan embassies in Panama City to prevent Noriega from seeking refuge. Six hours after the invasion began, U.S. soldiers burst into the "Witch House," a Noriega residence on the Pacific coastline. Inside, they found cigarettes still smoldering in ashtrays, suggesting that the strongman might have slipped away only moments before. Later on Wednesday, Noriega's apparently tape-recorded voice was heard on a private FM station, exhorting his supporters "to win or die, not one step back."
That appeal may have worked. As U.S. forces moved into the chaotic streets of Panama City, they faced not only widespread looting but also pervasive sniper fire from the Dignity Battalions and a few black-uniformed members of an elite special-forces unit. On Friday, as Pentagon briefers asserted that organized resistance in Panama City had faded, Noriega loyalists opened fire on the car of newly installed First Vice President Ricardo Arias Calderon as it sped away from the National Assembly building. Arias was unhurt. Mortar shells landed near the U.S. Southern Command Headquarters at Quarry Heights, and fighting erupted at a nearby police station. Thurman said that the fighting seemed to be "centrally controlled" and that Noriega himself might be "the guiding force." He estimated that 1,800 irregular troops might be involved.
If the resistance persists for long, Operation Just Cause may lose some of its sheen. As the Pentagon boasted, immense force was speedily dispatched to Panama, the canal was quickly protected, key P.D.F. installations were overrun or neutralized, and Noriega was removed from any effective power. The cost, however, may have been a distressingly high loss of life among Panamanian civilians. An unofficial check of hospitals showed that more than 200 noncombatants had died. A drawn-out struggle with rising American casualties also loomed. At week's end, as 2,000 more troops were sent into Panama, the Pentagon conceded that it might take more than a week for Operation Just Cause to pacify the tiny nation's capital.