Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (14 page)

I remarked, “If it’s terrorists, I wouldn’t doubt it if they cancel this training exercise immediately.”

Super D nodded agreed. “Yeah, kind of makes what we’re doing here a lot less important than it was a few minutes ago. Let’s get over to the head shed and see if they have the news on.”

The Tactical Operations Center, or TOC, was wall to wall that morning with concerned soldiers, staff officers, commanders, Rangers, army helicopter pilots, air force officers, and a few Delta operators. All eyes were glued to the CNN reports as we tried to make heads or tails out of what was happening back in our country, thousands of miles away.

Everybody thought not only of their own family’s safety, but also the families of the reportedly tens of thousands of people who were believed to have been killed after both Trade Towers collapsed, on live television. As the death toll grew, we were back inside our circus tent, and intelligence analysts were posting hourly pen-and-ink updates. What we were reading was beyond belief:

American F-15 fighter jet deliberately downs American Airlines flight 1089 over the Atlantic Ocean
.

American F-16 shadowing United Airlines flight 283, believed heading toward Washington D.C., not responding, lethal force authorized if plane reaches U.S. airspace
.

F-15 downs Delta Airlines flight 766 over northwest Virginia. U.S. Capitol and White House struck by jumbo jets. Both on fire
.

The enormity of what we read jerked us into action. Retrieving our weapons from the metal storage containers, we upgraded our perimeter security. One thing was for certain: We weren’t going to be surprise victims of a terrorist truck bomb or a rocket attack without returning the violence in spades.

The father of one of our mates worked in the Pentagon and was there during the attacks. Sergeant First Class Brandon Floyd called his mother to make sure his dad was okay, but she had not heard from him either. We were all worried for Brandon and tried to keep his spirits up, silently praying and hoping his dad was at a coffee shop downtown or still stuck in traffic—anywhere but at his desk that morning. As darkness fell, another call home turned up good news. Thankfully, the former army colonel was okay, but was knee-deep in the twisted steel and burning rubble at the Pentagon, helping the injured and recovering the dead.

By the morning of September 12, twenty-four hours after the attacks, the makeshift scoreboard in the tent tallied thirteen jets hijacked, with four deliberately engaged and blown out of the sky by American fighter pilots over American soil or waters. The other nine successfully struck targets in New York and Washington, D.C. What in the world was happening? How could this be? Who could coordinate such a complex operation like this? Is this war?

It was the second day, September 13, before we learned the actual toll from that horrible day of infamy. An uncanny phenomenon of the crisis
business dictates that a first report is always suspect. Miscommunication, manifested in multiple reports by various news agencies of the same event, the jammed telephone lines and cell towers bulging from maximum usage, and the fact we were on the other side of the world had contributed to the fantastic and inaccurate reports.

It didn’t matter, though. Whether it had been thirteen or only four hijacked jets, to a man we wanted to pull those target folders off the shelf, kit up, lock and load, and hop a plane to wherever we might execute some quick and pure revenge for this unparalleled attack on our homeland. Whether we were at war seemed largely irrelevant.

Even years later, it is hard to imagine any Americans not having the fireball images or the dual collapsing of the Trade Towers ineradicably engraved in their minds. Over and over again, for days on end, television ensured that caustic morning would be remembered as vividly as the jumpy black-and-white footage of the Hindenburg disaster or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The attack had taken one hour and twenty-four minutes from the first strike on the North Tower to the crash of an airliner in a Pennsylvania field. Nowhere near the time it takes Mom to prepare a typical Thanksgiving meal, and less time than it takes to trim the hooves and shoe a couple of stubborn horses.

Although what had actually happened inside America remained cloudy to us, one thing was absolutely clear. It was time for America to stand up and be counted. Somebody would pay; Americans would accept nothing less than old-fashioned vigilante justice on this one.

The feeling we had at the time is indescribable as I sit here now with my pen, so many years after the event. But in that awful moment of national uncertainty and irrefutable vulnerability, one thing was a given: This was a good time to be in Delta—and we knew it.

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

   
—
THE DEVIL ’S DICTIONARY
, AMBROSE BIERCE

It would have been an understatement before the Twin Towers fell to say that senior American government and military officials were hesitant to send Delta to far-off places to resolve sensitive problems. “Too risky,” they said. “Not your mission,” they said. “It’s a police action and does not require your unit’s unique skills.”

Delta operators are well known inside the Special Ops community as being excellent decision makers in action, but first you have to get to the target. The decision to deploy the Unit seemed to be controlled by folks who were echelons above the Almighty himself, and the political will prior to 9/11 to do anything more than peacekeeping efforts simply was not there.
*

Strategically, the recommendation to deploy American troops,
particularly Delta Force, is made by a very small crowd in Washington, with the final decision being made by the president. If the commander in chief’s key advisors consistently tell him Delta’s services are not required or necessary, then Delta stays home. These key advisors take their cues from various general officers located both inside and outside of the Washington Beltway.

One former Special Operations commander likened the Clinton administration’s hesitancy to use Delta to never putting a Super Bowl—caliber team into the game. The former operator added that our nation’s leaders were risk averse, with former secretary of state Madeleine Albright being the most aggressive.

Delta apparently was only to be used for fine carpentry work. That did not change until nearly three thousand innocent citizens died on 9/11.

Back in Europe, before the World Trade Center dust had time to settle, we could feel the hands of fate reaching down and tearing the shackles of timidity loose from our nation’s decision makers. The aversion to risk displayed up our chain of command, particularly since the Mogadishu misadventure eight years earlier, was a character flaw that the American people would no longer accept. This new challenge was so much bigger, so much more important.

President George W. Bush’s aggressive response to 9/11 seemed like a relief to us, but it did not mean we were finally in the game.

Unfortunately, Bush’s offensive mind-set didn’t trickle down through the ranks of the military’s general officers with the speed one might expect. Even though President Bill Clinton left office in January, 2001, our nation was still hamstrung in September by the same timid senior military officers he had confirmed.

Over the next year in Afghanistan, my men and I were continuously shocked to see the national security apparatus still sluggishly displaying the same reluctance to take risks that existed before 9/11.

The operational kid gloves did not come off until the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Delta operators had stopped shaving after 9/11, knowing that sooner or later, we likely would be working among men with long beards. Our squadron returned home and was bustling with anticipation and activity, but one of our sister squadrons was already on standby and well into the planning phase. It would lead the Unit, and the nation, into Afghanistan to begin to right the colossal wrong.

Waiting for our number to be called was tough. For those serving in an elite military unit, the idea of being left behind when a fight looms is utterly devastating. We clung to the belief, however, that our country was on the verge of a total war with terrorists, so if our sister squadron was served the main course in Afghanistan, then we would be happy with the global leftovers.

We spent our days developing new or reviewing the shelved courses of action for numerous unique and politically sensitive target sets. In fact, while our senior military commanders on Capitol Hill were desperately searching for answers and appropriate response methods, Delta already had a playbook for this very eventuality. Over the years, Delta intelligence analysts had amassed a priceless encyclopedia of who’s who in terrorism, and it was filled with information about what makes them tick, and was updated daily according to the twist and turns of their evil minds.

Only a month after the attack, down at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, the home of SOCOM, talented covert operatives, intelligence officials, and Special Forces commanders gathered to author the nation’s way ahead to destroy terrorists and their infrastructure around the world.
*
The men and women in Florida were also to figure out what could be done to
kick off the campaign of vengeance and to give the president viable and realistic options.