Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (13 page)

Within an hour, Jamie and I linked up, loaded the car, and headed back to our safe house, stopping along the way for some fresh bread and fruit. It was Saturday and our intelligence people said the guy who was our target liked to party and hold meetings on the bottom deck of the boat. We decided to return to the restaurant that same night, when money was changing hands and the busy nightlife would provide perfect cover.

Trading our soccer rags for some stylish local clothing of black slacks,
collarless shirts, and old black leather jackets, we headed out after dark for the forty-five-minute drive back to the city. It was a beautiful night, with a sky full of stars and a slight breeze off the river, and we parked and went into another restaurant believed to be frequented by the target.

Right away, we saw a small group of Green Berets at a nearby table, out partying for the evening themselves. They were part of the American commitment of Joint Commission Observer teams assigned to ensure that both the Serbs and the Bosnians upheld the Dayton Peace Accords and assist in the relocation of refugees. The Green Berets had no idea who we were and that we could understand every word they said. After nursing a beer apiece and with no sign of our target, we returned to the car and drove to the parking lot outside the casino boat restaurant.

We sat in the lot observing the place for several minutes. It was busy. The parking lot was full, too many vehicles to check for tag numbers, but after watching all the activity and hearing the live band, Jamie figured we could get inside for a closer look. If our target was a true party guy, he very likely was in there.

But how to get in? We watched the line of customers cross a long and rickety plank bridge with a rope handle rail on each side, then up an angled walkway to a second-floor bar entrance. Women were admitted without much more than a look and a smile from the two bouncers, but the guys handed over a couple of bucks for a cover charge, then were given a pat-down search. That meant we would have to leave our pistols, holsters, and spare magazines behind and venture inside with only Jamie’s Spyderco knife and a Surefire flashlight. Not a lot of weaponry when facing the Serbian Mafia.

Jamie looked more local than the locals as he walked up, paid the bouncers, calmly took the pat-down and slipped through the door. A few minutes later, I followed. We did not get any change back from the doorman.

The place was jam-packed on the upper level with young adult and middle-aged Serbians. The booming band was a perfect working atmosphere, since we would not be expected to talk. Jamie ordered two beers by sticking up two fingers, pointing at another beer bottle and flashing some money. We were inside, blending, perfectly camouflaged for the environment and hiding in plain sight.

Having a drink while on duty was an ironic part of doing the job professionally. In war-weary Bosnia, telling the bartender you are the designated driver and hoping to be given a Coca-Cola on the house would have been way too American. I enjoyed the excitement of the moment. We were on the target, but completely invisible. The experienced Delta operator, Jamie, was as comfortable as the other several hundred nightclubbers. The new guy, me, was a bit more amped.

In the farthest two corners of the club were some tables set up on a loft. Anyone of importance probably would like that location, so we left the bar and moved toward the back of the club. We tried not to bump into too many people as we edged closer to the band and the dance floor.

We stood around for a few minutes as the music blasted, trying to get a discreet look at all of the men who matched the general description of our target: dark hair, big beer belly. Lots of those were around.

Everything seemed cool, so Jamie headed for the pisser. Normally, leaving another operator alone was a violation of principle, but there are few hard-and-fast rules in this type of work. Every decision is based on what an operator thinks he can get away with. For Jamie, after taking stock of the situation, taking a quick trip to the pisser was no big risk. What could happen, anyway? It was just a nightclub full of people having fun and giving the finger to the rest of the world. A drunk in the crowd started yelling at the band’s lead singer, who was getting irritated but continued to strum his guitar.

After leaving the bathroom, Jamie went back to the bar for two more beers. So far, all was good. As he made his way back toward me, there was a sudden and thunderous rumble of human voices and pounding feet, and the crowded dance floor erupted in chaos. Within seconds, a wave of people were stampeding toward the door, giving the feeling that the party boat was capsizing.

Is our cover blown
?
If it is, these folks sure ain’t happy about it
. Trying to avoid being trampled, I stood still and tried to make eye contact with Jamie. He was no longer blending in, since he was the only one moving upstream against the crowd, toward me. Jamie also thought it was the worst-case scenario. He wondered what could have happened to cause the panic and concluded:
It must be Dalton
.

In a few seconds, we linked up and found the real cause of the
problem. One of the bouncers had just beaten the crap out of a uniformed Serbian police officer. The bouncer seemed seven feet tall and thick as a refrigerator and moved past us holding on to the cop as if he were carrying a lunch box home. The cop was out cold, his arms and head hanging limp and feet dragging behind on the floor.

Even in the Balkans, a bar fight is usually soon followed by police sirens, handcuffs, and paddy wagons, which also usually means trouble for unfortunate innocent bystanders—like us. But another immediate concern was that if these guys didn’t respect the local police, they sure as heck wouldn’t think twice about offing us. If the cops are scared of this place, maybe we should be, too.

Any chance of identifying our target that night slid to nothing in a hurry, and it was time, in military terms, to exfil the site immediately. In other words, we had to get the hell out of there.

We made our way through the door and into the outside air, only to find that police flashers had filled the parking lot and a few cops had already reached their roughed-up partner, who had regained some consciousness. Other cops were trading heated words with the bouncers while several more officers had men pressed up against the squad cars and private autos parked in the lot. Jamie and I could not risk being swept up with the crowd. Our car was only about thirty feet away, but getting there was not going to be easy.

We walked to the end of the boat as calmly as possible, attempting to not draw attention. Then we jumped over to the steep and soggy embankment and managed to flank the parking lot and approach our vehicle at a crouch before slipping inside. One of the first things a Delta operator does when handed the keys of an operational civilian vehicle is disable the interior lights that shine when a door is opened. That routine procedure allowed us to enter the car without alerting the nearby cops.

I was happy to let Jamie drive. He was back in his element as he cranked the engine, looked at me, and smiled, then calmly reversed out of the parking lot. He hit the gas and left the party in our rearview mirror.

We were going just over the speed limit on a major two-lane highway toward the safety of our house when we came upon an unexpected Republic of Serbska police checkpoint near the zone of separation, or ZOS, a mile-wide curvy line drawn on the ground to separate Bosnian Christians from Bosnian Muslims.

It was too late to turn around, and we had no choice but to approach the checkpoint and hope for the best. Police officers signaled Jamie to stop, and he put on the brakes and rolled down the window. Just as three uniformed policemen approached, flanking the car, Jamie hit the gas and burned rubber out of there.

After a hundred meters, we saw the police flashers come on behind us and several squad cars begin to chase. Jamie immediately found a cutback road a few hundred meters after rounding a small bend. He killed the headlights and simultaneously stepped on the brake, pressed down the clutch, and snapped the steering wheel hard left. The front tires grabbed the asphalt while the rear wheels slid around in a 180-degree arc, a perfect high-speed evasive maneuver executed in complete darkness and without night vision goggles. It scared the shit out of me.

Jamie gassed it and the car sped back toward the oncoming police, but with no overt lighting on our vehicle, which made it momentarily invisible to them. Once again at the turn, Jamie went sharp right, onto hard dirt and eased up about thirty meters before stopping. A few seconds that seemed like a lifetime crawled by before the police cars with their flashing lights came along and drove right past us.

I could tell our young hell-for-leather driver from New Mexico had done this kind of thing before. We were both smiling. “Damn, Jamie, that was scary shit but some excellent driving,” I told him, trying to regulate my heartbeat and not advertise my inexperience.

“Yeah,” he replied, already thinking of any errors he might have to admit in a hot-wash debriefing. “I think I gave it too much brake and not enough torque on the wheel, but it worked.”

The moment emphasized for me the importance of the Delta selection process in choosing the right kind of guys for the Unit and giving them unique training and skills. Delta operators know how to work in small teams, miles and miles away from any friendly American military unit . . . even when a routine mission turns to crap.

* The history, importance, and uniqueness of Delta’s selection process is discussed in detail by both Colonel Beckwith in his book
Delta Force
and CSM(R) Eric Haney’s book
Inside Delta Force
.

“Billy Fish,” says I to the Chief of Bashkai, “what’s the difficulty here?”

—
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
,

RUDYARD KIPLING

We awoke inside a large white and yellow striped circus tent on September 11, 2001, our Delta squadron having been deployed to a foreign country to sharpen our joint war-fighting skills. It would be another day of prepping our equipment for the upcoming mission, scrubbing vehicle and helicopter loads, reviewing contingency plans and scouting and studying intelligence reports and recent satellite photos.

A few discreet operators, trained in the delicate skill of close urban reconnaissance, were already in place near the target area. To help us refine the assault plan they would send back to us via small satellite radios digital photos of key breach points—roofs, doors, and windows. In different corners of the tent, the staff sergeants and sergeants first class were talking about the type of explosive charges needed for this door or that window.

That practice mission remains classified, but the real mission might certainly happen within the next few years. Typically, once these training exercises are complete, they are put “on the shelf,” filed away but ready to roll in an emergency. Should some terrorist organization or criminal gang
execute their end of the action at that site, Delta would trigger a response that had already been planned down to the last detail.

Super D, our squadron operations officer who never let stress or a crisis overtly raise his heartbeat above normal, and I also were up early that day, hard at work in the guarded hideaway located at an obscure end of an old European military air base taxiway. We had to put our plan for the upcoming mission before the commander for his approval soon, and were finishing the briefing slides. Eyes fixed on the laptop screen and forefinger ready on the mouse to make any minor adjustments, Super D asked, “What do you think?”

“Looks great. Let’s get past this briefing and get out there and execute this thing,” I answered.

“Yeah, good enough,” Super D said. “I’ll get the boss over here and run through it and make any changes so we can brief the general this afternoon.”

Bart, the squadron operations sergeant, walked in from another tent about fifty meters away to relay some information from our squadron sergeant major. Then he casually commented, “Hey, a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.”

We looked up at Bart, curious. “No shit?” said Super D.

I added, “No shit?”

Bart was a muscular, strong guy, a master at jujitsu and a championcaliber boxer, but he also was friendly and had a unique sense of humor. Was he joking? “Can you believe that shit? They think it was a small private plane. Geez, there you are checking out the new secretary near the watercooler and a plane comes crashing through the boss’s window.”

That day, September 11, 2001, may have started like any other, but within an hour of first call, the events taking place in America, several time zones away, would change our lives forever. They would change the lives of almost everyone in America.

Bart walked away across the grass infield, back to the other tent. Super D and I jaw-jacked a little. We gave little real thought to the airplane crash in New York, subconsciously chalking it up to mechanical failure or perhaps a heart attack overcoming the pilot above bustling lower Manhattan. We remembered that the World Trade Center had been the target of Islamic terrorists back in 1993, but no one was considering that terrorists
might also be behind this new situation. Anyway, we were deep in our own business.

A few minutes later, Bart was back, moving much quicker this time, his eyebrows raised and a look of disbelief on his face. “Hey, get this. Another plane just crashed into the other Trade Center building. Now they think it’s terrorists!”

Super D and I were dumbfounded, afraid to believe it was true. We knew how hard it would be for a terrorist to crash just one plane into a skyscraper, but two different planes hitting the side-by-side Twin Towers within fifteen minutes of each other was more than astonishing. What pilot would ever freely fly into a building if he knew the action would likely kill hundreds of people more than just his passengers? We tried to put ourselves in the mental state of the pilot, wanting to believe that, even with a gun to our heads, we certainly would let the bullet rip through our skulls before knowingly killing more innocent people.