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As the smoke began to clear inside, the commandos organized a parade of hostages on their hands and knees--like a trail of ants, as one of them put it. They crept to the bedroom balcony and down an outside stairway to safety. "I kept my nose to the ground," says Gumucio, "but I knew at that moment that stopping us was the last thing the rebels could do."
True. They were lying in gory heaps around the residence. Each time a commando ran past one of the bodies, an army officer told Time, he would pump another bullet into it to make sure. "Each terrorist must have had 500 bullets in him when it was over," the officer said. "Their heads were destroyed."
Whether Tupac Amaru, which has been operating since 1982, is destroyed is less certain. Fujimori has made the claim before, and was proved wrong by the seizure of the embassy residence in December. Now he is not so cocksure. "They are not necessarily eliminated," he says. "There are other terrorists out there, and we're going to keep a more careful eye on them." If they can, those guerrillas will try to show they are still in business with another attack. "Sure, this is a serious defeat," says the Tupac Amaru's European spokeswoman Norma Velazco. "But it is not over yet." Peru's other, larger terrorist organization, Shining Path, would probably like to stage some other outrage to dim Fujimori's victory.
The President's approval rating jumped to 67% in one poll last week, up from 38% during the hostage crisis. But if Fujimori is to stay there and run again successfully in the election three years from now, he will have to do more than chase guerrillas. He rules with a quiet, icy authoritarianism that will have to soften if it is to make room for the social reforms and additional democracy he has promised. But last week his old-fashioned hardness, the stony style he displayed when he glared down at Cerpa's body on the staircase, unquestionably got the job done.
--Reported by Tim Padgett and Douglass Stinson/Lima