SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden (30 page)

THIRTY-EIGHT MINUTES

THE SOUND MADE BY
Stealth Hawk helicopters is difficult to describe: Some claim that they don’t so much hear it as “feel” it. It is an aircraft that renders a sensation before it makes a noise. An approaching Stealth Hawk makes a low sound but it is neither resonant nor deep. It begins at the threshold of hearing as a fizzing, a hissing, and then proceeds to a steady hum like a fan blowing in a distant room. Even when waiting for one—knowing that it will come, and knowing where it will land—your ears deceive you. It is not silent but it is also not loud enough for a person to connect the noise with an aircraft that can hover and fly. Hovering, they make the noise of a small waterfall, a blank, white noise. It is a sound that doesn’t carry very well.

Impressive and frightening, Stealth Hawks carry a crew of three and can hold as many as twenty men in the cabin. They and their big brothers the Ghost Hawks are only flown by TF-160, and only operate at night. The rear fins angle sharply, and the tail rotors are shrouded. The acutely angled cockpit windshields and the steeply pitched fuselage sides make it look sinister, like a thing that is alive, not something that was made by men.

A series of black triangles are set around the frames of all the windscreens and the cabin doors. These zigzags scatter radar waves as they hit the glass. The Stealth Hawks are painted the color of the sky they fly in—some are black, some are gray, and a few are a mottling of both. Up close, the Stealth Hawk looks like a long, slightly humpbacked shark.

That night, two of them flew out of the mountains and then low across the fields outside Abbottabad. Razor 1 was “on the deck,” lower than fifty feet and Razor 2 trailed in echelon to the left, maybe twenty feet higher. They made their run into the target at 130 miles an hour. That low to the ground, and flying that fast, they would be on top of the compound mere seconds after the noise of their engines could be heard.

Osama’s third-floor bedroom was down a short hall from the stairs. The room in which he slept with Amal and his other wife opened to a third-floor patio screened by a seven-foot cement wall. The terrace’s wall provided complete privacy. It meant no one could see in, but no one could see out either. A person on this terrace or in a room next to it could only hear “up”—the only direction that sound could come. That helped to block the noise of the approaching Stealth Hawks. Osama did not hear the helicopters until they were right on top of him.

At five minutes to one, he was in bed, and he was asleep. The lights were off. At 1:00 a.m., his bedroom started to fill with a buzzing sound. The night had been calm and the sliding glass doors that led to the terrace had been left ajar to let in some air. As Razor 1 hovered, the down blast of its rotors poured a hurricane into the narrow space of the terrace, hurling a pair of plastic chairs against the windows. A violent gust of air hammered the sliding glass doors and they shook in their tracks and bowed in against the pressure. The curtains next to the open doors flailed into the room, pulling the curtain rods out of the wall as they fell.

Osama threw back the blanket from his bed. He tried to put his feet on the floor and he could feel the house shake. He had ninety seconds to live.

Osama’s third wife, Khairah, stepped into the hall and ran toward the terrace doors. She saw the curtains and she saw the plastic chairs and then she saw the shapes of men. They were jumping from the roof onto the terrace, landing with thuds that shook the floor. She could not see their faces. They were like solidified chunks of night.

It took less than six seconds for the assaulters of Razor 1 to jump from the hovering helicopter, land on the roof, and crawl over to the back. There, they jumped again, seven or eight feet down onto the terrace. Khairah saw them come through the glass doors, and she saw them come toward her in the hallway, weapons raised.

Khairah must have expected to be torn to pieces by a hail of gunfire, but the men did not shoot. Instead, a searing white strobe light flashed into her eyes. It erased her vision, turned it white, and then to a pulsating red-pink and she stumbled backward.

She was grabbed by her arm and pushed to the floor. Only twenty seconds had passed since she’d heard the noise of a waterfall and thrown herself out of bed. The men made no noise. Khairah curled onto the tiles and the other men went past—two straight down the hallway one behind the other, their weapons at the ready.

Then two things happened very quickly.

A door in the third-floor hallway opened. Osama stuck his head out, saw the Americans, and slammed the door loudly.

One of the operators hit his inter-squad radio and called out, “Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo,” indicating that he had “eyes on.”

Some of the assaulters ran toward Osama’s door as the stairwell lights suddenly lit up, switched on from the second floor. Khalid bin Laden ran up the stairs to the landing. When he saw the men remaining at the top of the stairs, a green laser swept from the wall toward his chest, and as his momentum carried him forward, two suppressed shots were fired. Khalid was struck in the chest just below his throat. He twisted forward, landing on his right side with his arm tucked under his head. A pair of spent cartridges tinkled down the cement stairs past his corpse.

In the hallway above, the first assaulter reached the door where Bin Laden had been glimpsed. He waited two seconds to feel that another operator had joined him, then kicked the door open and went inside. He was followed closely by his shooting partner.

The blinding lights on their weapons swept down a short hallway, and then into the open space of the bedchamber. The lights and lasers swept into the room, illuminating the figures of a man and a woman. The woman was shouting but seemed to be moving in slow motion. So, too, the man behind her—he was moving toward the bed, just reaching it, diving across it—but all of this seemed to be unfolding in a slide show:
click, click, click
. The lights on the SEALs’ weapons clearly illuminated an AKSU machine pistol leaning against the left side of the bed. The SEALs both saw it, both measured its length and breadth and determined that the man was turning, extending his hand and reaching toward it. The man with the beard shoved the woman toward the men and moved behind her. He was a threat; the woman was nothing. He was one. She was zero. The SEALs lifted their weapons and tracked the man.

When a room is entered, SEALs go into a state like satori—a wide-awake Zen consciousness that allows them to perceive and react with a minimal space between for thought. It puts them instantly in the here and now—connected not only to the situation, but tapping into the thoughts and intentions of the enemies. Time dilates. All of a SEAL’s senses are magnified; the smallest sound, the slightest smells, the textures of the floor and walls, all are burned into his consciousness. Movements made by the enemy seem to take minutes instead of seconds—while the movements made by the shooters seem to glide on a plane removed from exertion. To move, a SEAL needs only to think. To place a bullet he needs only to concentrate.

Every member of SEAL Team Six has engaged in hundreds, even thousands of close-in gun battles. The two shooters who entered Osama’s bedroom had spent so many hundreds of hours in combat that they had seen almost every sort of behavior that could be exhibited by a fleeing, fighting, or surrendering human.

There are SEALs that report that in a firefight they seem to remember the entire event as though it were filmed by a camera placed above and behind them. Something like slow motion that zooms into every move of the enemy, and allows the operators to even see themselves as though they, too, were objects moving about a stage. First person meets third person.

Amal was screaming. She’d heard the voices in the hallway, and a multisyllable word said over and over. “Geronimo” was even now crackling from headsets all over the compound. She had been shoved toward the end of the mattress, kneeling half on and half off, steadying herself on the end of the bed. To her left, two SEALs aimed past her and their lights converged.

She shouted in Arabic,
“No, no, don’t do this.”

Osama was standing by the back wall. He dived across the king-size bed to get at the AKSU rifle he kept by the headboard. The room smelled like old clothing, like a guest bedroom in a grandmother’s house, a place sort of frozen in time.

Pinned in the lights, Amal lifted her hands to her eyes. She said, “It’s not him,” in Arabic, and then something else that the operators could not hear.

Four suppressed shots were fired, two rounds and two rounds. Both SEALs discharged their weapons in the same second and the reports all seemed pushed together into a single phrase.

The first round sailed past Osama’s face and thudded into the mattress. Osama shoved Amal as he clawed across the bed. A second bullet, aimed at Osama’s head, grazed Amal in the calf.

SEALs do not shoot to wound: they are trained to shoot to kill. Amal was hit because Osama placed her between himself and the men who entered his bedroom. As his wife crouched forward, wounded, Osama’s hand reached for his AKSU. He never made it. Two U.S. Navy M855 5.56 mm Predator bullets slammed into him. One struck him next to his breastbone, blowing apart his aorta. The last bullet went through his skull, killing him instantly.

*   *   *

Across the compound Razor 2 was still on its “perch” hovering over the guesthouse. Razor 2 was lowering to land on the guesthouse roof when the call of “Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo” came over their radios. Razor 2 would land and then the breachers would blow a hole through the second compound wall that separated the guesthouse from the main house. The assaulters would climb through the hole, rush in, and start clearing the outbuildings, all in twenty seconds.

Some thought it might have been better to simply fast rope onto the guesthouse roof, but Razor 2 carried two combatants who weren’t much good at fast roping. One of them was the canine Karo, Red Squadron’s K-9 badass. The other was the CIA interpreter who was a novice fast roper at best. The team didn’t think that he was ready to try a hundred-foot fast rope, at night, with bullets flying. If he broke his leg or fell to his death, there would be no one to question the noncombatants.

As Mel and the sniper covered the compound, Razor 2 lowered itself toward the guesthouse roof. When the tires bounced, the assaulters all tumbled out. Karo and the “Terp” (the interpreter) were manhandled off the roof. Razor 2 lifted back up fifty feet and perched on a hover, Mel and his shooter back to covering the entire compound—looking for “squirters,” anyone trying to flee from the buildings.

“Geronimo Geronimo Geronimo, third deck,” came over their headsets again. Led by Rich Horn, four shooters of Razor 2 split off for the main house. They had no idea what Razor 1 had gotten into. As cool as it sounds when cops say it, SEALs do not call out “shots fired.” All Razor 2 knew was that their boss was in the main building and things were going to get hot.

The other operators from Razor 2 had plenty to do. The guesthouse was a low, flat-roofed shoe box of a building. Three families shared two bathrooms and each living space had a small kitchenette. There was a warren of adjoining spaces, and one shooter had already come out of the building. If there were more hostiles in the guesthouse the SEALs would have to take them out surgically.

A three-year-old boy had toddled out of one of the open doors and was crying, pointing up at the helicopter. There were women and children in the building, so “clearing it out” could not involve just throwing in a hand grenade. It meant that each room would have to be entered. The SEALs would have to determine bad guys from nonplayers during active gunfights. Shooting to separate hostage from hostage-taker and terrorist from human shield is called “close quarters combat.” There are no practitioners in the U.S. military who come close to Six in this regard. They are unexcelled at precision combat marksmanship and the process of flowing through targets.

As they swept in to secure the rooms, the SEALs stepped over the body of Abu al Kuwaiti. He had achieved his life goal of martyrdom and had gone down fighting. Had he aimed up, instead of firing into the compound, he could have shot down Razor 2 and killed every man onboard.

But that wasn’t to be. Not tonight.

Each of the rooms was entered. There were a half-dozen children inside. The noncombatants were secured and the sweep continued until all the rooms were cleared. The process took about two minutes and no shots were fired.

A runner was sent to tell Razor 2 that the guesthouse was secure. There had been no other traffic on the radio since the Geronimo call, but the Command Bird had declared “Palm Beach,” meaning it was inbound.

Razor 2 returned to its hover position over the south apex. It would remain on perch for the rest of the SEALs’ time on target. The sniper and spotter on Razor 2 were the SEALs high ground, covering the entire compound as the team consolidated on the main house.

The bodies of al Kuwaiti and his wife were placed on the grass and al Kuwaiti’s rifle was collected. Now that the SEALs determined that no shooters had tried to hide among them, an operator was detailed to carry the youngest of them out of the building. They went out through the far western door, away from the places where the bodies were, and were told to sit in a group in the corner formed by the guesthouse and the compound wall. As the other buildings were cleared, more children and women began to arrive behind the building as the nonshooters were separated from the shooters.

This part of an operation is called “the sort.” And as more children arrived, Rich Horn called for the interpreter.

“Group them up with their moms. Get everyone’s name, and get their pictures. Keep them all here, in the corner,” he shouted. “No one in, no one out. Keep a count.”

Rich could hear the pounding rotors of the Chinooks as they lumbered out of the mountains and converged on the compound. At this point the chickens came out and started to walk around. Perhaps they expected to be fed. It was later determined that there were more than a hundred chickens—and that was a count of the ones who had flapped their way over the walls. The cows and a pair of buffalo were also lowing; the target was beginning to seem like Noah’s Ark.