Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (9 page)

We rode bicycles with banana seats and monkey handlebars, replayed Super Bowls with neighborhood buddies using Nerf footballs, rode skateboards around the lake in the summer and skated on it in the winter, and swam in the community pool. In a few years, we graduated to tunneling around the large labyrinth of an underground sewer system from one side of the neighborhood to the next, where old
Playboy
magazines were tucked away in a dry crack.

It was another magazine that had a critical impact on my young brain. I had always considered the U.S. Army to be just my father’s employer, and was too young to understand what it was really about. Like many who grew up after the Vietnam era, I viewed the military as a deadend profession. The army was the path taken by the rejects, the last guys chosen during neighborhood pickup games, or by deviants who were “encouraged” to sign up by small-town judges offering a venue other than jail, and by those uncertain of where they would fit into corporate society.

That attitude had begun to slowly change along with my weird affection for risk taking. One day as I browsed the magazine rack of a local 7-Eleven while sucking on a cherry-flavored Slurpie through a curly straw, I saw the cover of a
Gung Ho
magazine that featured a full-color picture of retired U.S. Army colonel James “Bo” Gritz. His dress uniform, heavily adorned with the shiny medals and colorful ribbons of a modern warrior, was propped on a chair near him.

After leafing through the periodical, I bought it, went home, and read how Colonel Gritz was in the fight of his life as he tried to explain a botched attempt to rescue American prisoners of war believed to have been left behind in Laos after the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia in 1975.

The journey that took Gritz and his small team of former commandos and adventurists through oceans of bureaucratic red tape and over administrative walls had ended without success. Regardless of one’s personal opinion of those raiders, their personal sacrifice and commitment were intoxicating.

The magazine remained in my small personal library over the years, unofficially filed under What I Want to Be When I Grow Up. But I was only about thirteen years old, and my career choices also still included professional football and baseball.

Before seeing that magazine, I honestly had not paid much attention to what my father did for a living. But now, when I occasionally looked into Dad’s closet, I noticed that some of his honor ribbons looked the same as those that Gritz had: Purple Heart, the Vietnam ribbons, and a Bronze Star with a V for valor. Still, that was not enough to make the military seem attractive to me as a profession.

I was not talented enough to be any sort of professional athlete, but I loved sports and, like all kids, dreamed of making the all-star team, scoring the winning goal, or sinking the buzzer shot. When I was fourteen, I returned a kickoff for a touchdown, and when I hit the end zone, I launched into a flamboyant dance like the pro wide receiver Billy “White Shoes” Johnson. My hips gyrated like a cheap pop star as I repeatedly thrust the ball into the air. My dad, who had volunteered to work the chains on the sidelines for that game, watched the whole pathetic display and was not amused.

His disappointment in my self-serving actions frustrated and confused me.
C’mon Dad, lighten up a little. I just scored a touchdown here. What harm can a little victory dance do?
His reaction and comments seared me to the core, but it would take a few more years for the lessons to fully register. Teamwork was more important than individualism, and selflessness was better than selfishness. The greatest lesson my father taught me was of humility.

In high school, my teammates voted me captain of the football team, and I thought it would be pretty cool to walk to midfield for a coin toss each Friday night. Other than that, how hard could this team captain stuff be? Again, my dad was there to puncture the selfish bubble. Being team captain meant that I was a leader, he said, so simply playing hard
and fair, basic blocking and tackling, no mental mistakes, and enjoying the game were no longer good enough. More is expected of a leader. I didn’t understand that lesson for a while, either.

It was not until well into my army career that I realized that my personal success hinged much more on the performance of my fellow soldiers than on my own. If one hopes to be considered a leader in deed more than in just a word, he or she had better learn to deliberately and consciously shun the spotlight and embrace the humility of selfless service. After a while, learning to turn credit outward rather than inward begins to feel natural.

I entered college, but quickly determined that it was not for me. I dropped College Physics 102 and turned in my ROTC pickle suit after barely three months’ use. Armed with my Dad’s critical lessons in humility and teamwork, knowing a little bit about leadership, and having the distant memories of West German terrorism and Bo Gritz’s selfless adventures, I joined the army. Under no pressure at all, I simply chose to serve. I was not drawn to duty to defend Mom, the flag, and apple pie, but the lure of the risks involved, the possibility of going into harm’s way, was intoxicating. It was 1983 and I was nineteen years old.

I had found a home, and would serve for twenty years.

By the middle of October of that same year, just a week before the United States invaded the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada, Pvt. Dalton Fury found himself packed with about fifty other Airborne Rangers in the back of an MC-130 Talon aircraft, running an exercise.

I was part of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry (Ranger) and making the space even tighter was a pair of modified M-115 black gun jeeps strapped bumper to bumper along the centerline of the aircraft’s floor. Four 125cc olive drab green motorcycles were strapped near the tail ramp of the aircraft.

As we waited at the departure airfield, I looked out the back of the plane and watched two late 1970s pickup trucks hurrying toward us. The men in the trucks were strikingly different than the uniformed Rangers all around me. Some were much older, some had short, well-groomed hair,
while a few had very long hair that blew in the wind. Others wore long and thick mustaches or goatees.

I was curious, but resisted the urge to wake up my team leader, who was catching a quick nap next to me. I knew better.

One of the trucks pulled up to the ramp of our plane and four men deliberately stepped down onto the tarmac. All wore blue jeans, one had a dark sweatshirt, another a tight T-shirt, and the remaining two wore plaid western-style shirts with big collars. In their hands were .45-caliber grease guns.

The mystery men grabbed small black bags from the truck, walked on to the plane, and took seats on the cold metal flooring without a word, a gesture, or even a simple hello. They didn’t check in with anyone. No, they just went about their business and pulled out a small tube of black cream. A few dabs on their palms, they slathered it all over their faces, as if applying sunscreen lotion. Two of them work black balaclavas—skintight thug hats that hid their faces while showing only the eyes and lips.

It was my introduction to Delta.

The very existence of Delta is officially classified by the Department of Defense. No open discussions of the Unit’s existence are entertained with the media. Very few former operators have chosen to violate the unwritten code against speaking about the Unit publicly, and very few unofficial sources are available.

Ironically, the first member of Delta to break the code of silence was the man responsible for its birth, and its original commander, Col. Charlie Beckwith, in his book
Delta Force
, written in the early 1980s. It provides factual insight and describes in tremendous detail the exhausting selection process that is used to find the
right
guy for Delta.
*

Although published just seven years after the unit was officially
established, Beckwith’s comments about the extensive training program to mold an individual, to hone and maintain his war-fighting skills to a razor’s edge, and teach him “how to think” and not “what to think” are characteristics that have stood the test of time. Above all else, Beckwith told the country what can be expected from someone who earns the right to call himself a Delta operator.

Opinions still vary as to just how factual Beckwith’s story was. Did he reveal sensitive information that could heighten the danger of already high-risk operations? Did Beckwith unnecessarily endanger future unit members? Or did he inform terrorists worldwide of the phenomenal abilities of the unit and what it can do to protect America?

As an insider, I’m convinced that Beckwith revealed no important secrets and that the Delta operators fighting the ongoing war on terror today, many years after his book was published, are still of the high standards that Beckwith demanded.

In the spring of 1998, I found myself with 121 other officers and sergeants at a remote camp in the steep hills and mountains of the northeastern United States. We had been especially recruited and had already survived numerous pre-tryout physical and psychological tests. For the next month, we would be further assessed mentally, psychologically, and physically for “potential service with Delta.”

I was by then a captain in the Rangers, and had decided before arriving that my definition of success was to make it through the entire month without getting hurt or quitting. If I was not selected, then okay. It would be a blow to my ego, but simply representing the Rangers as best I could and returning with my head held high would be my bottom line. I think most of those around me harbored similar feelings, because the odds of being around at the end of tryouts, and actually being selected for Delta, were extremely slim. We knew it would be difficult. We had no idea.

By the time I reached the final event, after enduring twenty-five days
of hell, I was happy that I had not gotten my hopes up too high, for my performance so far had been sketchy.

It had rained all day and showed little sign of letting up. Huddled in the back of the covered truck, unable to see outside, we waited for our assigned code name to be called. Once it was, we scrambled out as gracefully as possible with minds and bodies already at their limits from twenty-five days of hell, and moved toward a nearby area that was faintly lit.