No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden (16 page)

A
short time later, we heard the “all clear” call over the radio. The target was secure, but now we had to do sensitive site exploitation, which we called SSE. Basically, we shot pictures of the dead, gathered up any weapons and explosives, and collected thumb drives, computers, and papers.

SSE had evolved over the years. It had become a way to rebut false accusations that the fighters we killed were innocent farmers. We knew that within a few days after the raid, the village elders would be down at the local NATO base accusing us of killing innocent civilians. The kind of innocent civilians who we knew and could now prove carried RPGs and AK-47s. The more SSE we provided, the more proof we had that everyone we shot was guilty.

“We are on a time crunch, fellas, so make it fast,” the troop chief said. “We’ve still got movers to the north.”

His voice was drowned out by the sound of the AC-130’s 120mm shells landing a few hundred meters up the valley. I checked my watch. It was well past four in the morning. We were running out of darkness, and since the shooting started there was a steady flow of reports coming from the drones alerting us to more fighters coming our way.

With the photos complete, we piled all the weapons and ammo in the center of the courtyard and set explosive charges on a five-minute delay.

With the RECCE guys in the lead, we quickly and quietly snuck back out the way we’d come. As we raced away from the compound, I heard the explosion and saw a small fireball light up the courtyard as the fighters’ weapons and ammunition were destroyed.

The walk back was easier than the walk up. We were high on the adrenaline of what we had just managed to pull off. Several times along the patrol down the hill we had to stop and direct some additional close air support on multiple groups of fighters who were searching for us. We didn’t want to be in the valley any longer than we had to, and definitely not at daybreak.

Three hours after clearing the compounds, we were back at the base. The guys slumped down along the walls, exhausted. Everyone was smoked. We sucked down water, power gels, pretty much anything we could get our hands on.

In the operations center, we gave the captain all of our SSE. He could show the elders the evidence when they came down to complain.

“We had seventeen EKIA,” the troop chief told the captain, meaning we killed seventeen fighters. “We suspect another seven or eight dead from the AC-130.”

The Army captain was stunned as he looked at the pictures on his computer. He and his men rarely got a chance to be on the offensive against the enemy. They were stuck protecting the villages and the roads leading into and out of the valley. It felt really good knowing that we eliminated Taliban fighters harassing the outpost.

On the helicopter back to Jalalabad, I finally had time to reflect on the mission. Sitting near the ramp in the dark, I was amazed that we were able to pull off an operation as dynamic as this one without taking any serious casualties.

From the patrol up the mountain, to the assault, it was a textbook raid incorporating all of the lessons we had learned from previous missions.

Instead of flying in and fast-roping down, we snuck in quietly.

Instead of blowing open all the doors, we crept in and caught the fighters off guard.

Instead of yelling and crashing through the buildings, we used suppressors and kept the noise down when possible.

We used their trails and traveled light and we had beaten them at their own game. All in all, we cleared an objective with more than a dozen well-armed fighters without taking one casualty. The raid was proof that good planning and the use of stealth was a lethal combination.

I stood
in my yard and ran my toes through the grass and looked up into the blue sky.

It was the early spring of 2011. Three weeks before, I had been stumbling over the thick gravel that covers the ground at the American forward operating bases and trying to stay warm through the cold Afghanistan winter. For months, it was nothing but ice, snow, and mud. After constant deployments since September 11, 2001, to one desert country or another, I had grown to appreciate the simple things like a nice green lawn.

I was glad to be home.

The last deployment, for the most part, had been slow. Winter deployments often were, as fighters moved back into Pakistan to wait for warmer weather. My three weeks of leave were winding down, and my troop would be heading to Mississippi to train. I looked forward to getting back on my gun after the break. It was one of those trips where we could still unwind a bit and just relax.

This would be the first trip in a long time that I wasn’t going to be shooting with Steve. His time as a team leader was up. When we returned from the last deployment, he transferred over to Green Team to be an instructor. There was no farewell speech. We got back, put our gear away, and when Steve came back from leave he kicked off as an instructor with the next class.

I was into work early that morning to get in a workout and get my kit together for the trip, when I ran into Steve.

“I need a break,” Steve said. “It has been a good run since Green Team, and with all the new rules it has taken all the fun out of the job.”

“I hear you,” I said. “Got one more rotation as a team leader and then we’ll see.”

Everyone in the squadron was a combat veteran. The average guy had at least a dozen deployments. Even with the pace and the sacrifices of being away from family, most of us kept coming back for more.

“It’s going to be a short break,” I said to Steve. “You’ll be back soon as a troop chief.”

“So we can both learn the art of PowerPoint,” Steve said.

Everything in Afghanistan was getting harder. It seemed with every rotation we had new requirements or restrictions. It took pages of PowerPoint slides to get a mission approved. Lawyers and staff officers pored over the details on each page, making sure our plan was acceptable to the Afghan government.

We noticed there were fewer assaulters on missions and more “straphangers,” each of whom performed a very limited duty. We now took conventional Army soldiers with us on operations as observers so they could refute any false accusations.

Policy makers were asking us to ignore all of the lessons we had learned, especially the lessons learned in blood, for political solutions. For years, we had been sneaking into compounds, catching fighters by surprise.

Not anymore.

On the last deployment, we were slapped with a new requirement to call them out. After surrounding a building, an interpreter had to get on a bullhorn and yell for the fighters to come out with their hands raised. It was similar to what police did in the United States. After the fighters came out, we cleared the house. If we found guns, we arrested the fighters, only to see them go free a few months later. Often we recaptured the same guy multiple times during a single deployment.

It felt like we were fighting the war with one hand and filling out paperwork with the other. When we brought back detainees, there was an additional two or three hours of paperwork. The first question to the detainee at the base was always, “Were you abused?” An affirmative answer meant an investigation and more paperwork.

And the enemy had figured out the rules.

Their tactics evolved as fast as ours. On my earlier deployments, they stood and fought. On more recent deployments, they started hiding their weapons, knowing we couldn’t shoot them if they weren’t armed. The fighters knew the rules of engagement and figured they’d just work their way through the system and be back to their village in a few days.

It was frustrating. We knew what we were sacrificing at home; we were willing to give that up to do the job on our terms. As more rules were applied, it became harder to justify taking the risks to our lives. The job was becoming more about an exit strategy than doing the right thing tactically.

“Good luck,” Steve said. “Who knows what we’ll see next year?”

I laughed.

“BB guns maybe,” I said. “Tasers and rubber bullets?”

The command was small enough that I would still see Steve often, even if we’d miss him on the next rotation to Afghanistan.

I quickly finished getting my kit ready and headed home. It was getting warm in Virginia Beach. Not hot enough to swim in the ocean, but nice enough for short sleeves. I was hustling to get some of the things on my “to do” list done before I left again.

The first one was new mulch for the house.

When I got home, a beat-up old F-150 Ford truck was parked in the driveway. The mulch guy had a tarp laid out with a large mound covering it. He’d load up his wheelbarrow with a pitchfork and deliver a load to one of the flowerbeds and then come back for more. It was a one-man operation.

As he loaded up the wheelbarrow, I walked over to shoot the shit. I’d never met him, but some of my teammates had recommended his work. Spreading mulch was something I should do myself, but with so little personal time, it was easier to pay for it.

“You’re in the teams, right?” the mulch guy said between scoops.

“Yeah,” I said.

From the look of him, he could have been a SEAL except for his long surfer haircut. He was tall and wiry, and he had tattoos covering both arms. He was wearing a ratty surf T-shirt and worn Carhartt pants.

“Figured, you look the part,” the mulch guy said, setting down the wheelbarrow. “I just did Jay’s house. You know him?”

“He’s my boss,” I said. “We’re actually headed out to do some shooting next week.”

Jay was my squadron commander, but I didn’t know him that well. He had taken over the squadron before the last deployment. He didn’t go out on missions with us very often, so I never really worked with him. At his rank he was typically found running the Joint Operations Center (JOC) and helping us jump through hoops to get missions approved.

We sometimes called our officers “temps” because they showed up for a few years before moving on to check another box on their career path. They bounced from one job to another, never spending enough time to build the kind of roots the enlisted guys did. We tended to stay with one team for a lot longer. Jay was my fourth commanding officer since being at the squadron.

“I guess he’s been pretty busy lately,” the mulch guy said.

I was surprised, since we’d been off for the last three weeks. After a deployment, most guys just wanted to hide out. It was normal for someone at Jay’s level to have work relating to mission coordination and planning. It just seemed strange that Jay was already so busy since we had been on leave.

“What are you talking about?”

“I did his yard the other day,” the mulch guy said between loads. “There is something big going on, and he’s been up in D.C.”

“What?” I said, confused. “He’s supposed to go to Mississippi with us in two days.”

At the time, the Arab Spring was raging. Egypt had a new government and protests had sprung up across the Middle East. Civil war had gripped Libya, with rebels calling for NATO support. With hotspots in Syria, not to mention the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan still demanding attention, speculating on what could be spinning up was difficult.

We were briefed weekly on any existing or expected threats worldwide. Our intelligence department went over each region in the world, sometimes with a special emphasis on a certain situation like Libya. The brief usually ended with the latest information and missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The better informed we were, the more prepared we’d be.

It wasn’t uncommon for us to spin up on a mission, conduct rehearsals, only to wait for decision makers in Washington to approve it. Sometimes, like with Captain Phillips, we’d go. But most times, we’d just wait and eventually stand down. Over the years, most of us learned to keep our heads down and focus on the task in front of us, and leave the speculation to others. It saved energy, if nothing else.

I wrote off the mulch guy and was thankful I was a team leader and not an officer. Officers get jerked around ten times more than we do. Either way, I was ready to go have some fun in Mississippi.