No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden (15 page)

Walt was supposed to start Green Team a year prior, but got in some trouble and had to delay his plans for an extra year.

Walt and I got along almost immediately. He liked to shoot and loved guns as much as I did. One day on the range, I invited him out to the SHOT show, a shooting, hunting, and outdoors trade show in Las Vegas. Schedule permitting, we would go every year, to meet with vendors and see what kind of new guns and equipment were on the market.

The first day of the trip, I introduced him around to all the vendors. By the second day, my contacts were asking me where Walt was hanging out. At a bar after the show the third night, I found Walt holding court with executives from the National Rifle Association. He had a cigar in his mouth, and he was slapping backs and shaking hands like he was running for office. They all loved him.

Walt was the little guy with the big personality.

The team had a quick huddle and I told them the goat trail idea was scrapped. We were now going to patrol up together.

“We are going to go up the main trail and adjust as we get closer to the target,” I said. “Any issues?”

Everybody shook their heads no.

“Nope,” Charlie said. “We’re good.”

It was like playing pickup basketball. We knew what needed to happen and all we needed was the basic plan. If you know how to “shoot, move, and communicate,” the rest will fall into place. When operations get too complicated, it tends to slow things down. Every single man standing in the weight room that night had years of experience. Plus, the plan always changed, so it was easiest to keep things simple. We’d done this before and trusted the team.

The patrol snaked out of the gate and started down the paved road toward the village. It was a nice road, probably built with American tax dollars. Less than a kilometer from the gate, we slowly fell back from the main group before taking a right turn and heading up our valley to the west.

We followed the road for two hours. It cut back and forth, with each switchback steeper than the last. Soon we came upon a cluster of cars. I could see a Hilux truck parked on one side of the road and two station wagons with racks on the roof. As I passed, I gazed into the windshields. All of the cars were deserted.

This was as far as they could go.

It was the end of the road. The trail narrowed and got steeper as we patrolled deeper into the valley. With every step I could feel the altitude and the weight of my equipment trying to slow me down. I was getting tired, and we were only halfway. I hoped all this effort was going to be worth it.

After
another hour on the trail, I could see the target compounds and at least two small faint lights on near one of the buildings. Clumps of trees blocked most of my view. The buildings were made of stone and mud and seemed to emerge from the valley walls.

Taking the main road the rest of the way would have been easier, but we knew there were sentries watching the route. We couldn’t risk being compromised. The drones continued to report roving patrols in the trees around the main road and compound.

Surprise was key. In most cases the quickest way between two points in Kunar was a goat trail. I’d heard the same line in Alaska growing up. We had no choice but to find another way around. Nobody wanted to be in that valley when the sun came up.

“We’re going to move directly up the ridgeline and move our way around,” I heard the RECCE team leader say over the radio.

I could almost hear my legs scream, but we all knew it was the right call. The RECCE element was confident that if we shot straight up the ridgeline we’d find the original goat trail that my team was going to use.

From the road, we literally climbed up the mountain searching for the goat trail. Several times I had to tighten the sling on my weapon so I could grab boulders in front as I climbed. If I wasn’t pulling myself up the side of the mountain, I was making my own switchbacks as we climbed. No one spoke, but I could hear my teammates grunting as they climbed.

We all saw this as a juicy target. We were willing to do it if we could get the jump on them. Still, with every step, the only thought running through my mind was the target better be worth it.

After a couple of hours of climbing, we finally found the goat trail. My legs were beyond sore now, and it was tough to catch my breath because I was tired. But making it to the trail gave us renewed hope. Without a doubt our RECCE guys were the best in the business and if it weren’t for their meticulous planning before the mission there is no way we would have ever been able to pull off this operation successfully.

The goat trail wasn’t wider than a foot and straddled the ridgeline. On one side was the cliff face towering over us and the other side was an almost straight drop into the valley. We didn’t have time to dwell on how a false step could send you sliding down a near-vertical face. We just spent an hour finding the trail, and dawn wasn’t that far away, so time was of the essence.

We had to move.

We finally caught a break when the trail emptied us out into a perfect position slightly above the target compound. There were three central buildings with a courtyard in the middle, and several additional small structures scattered around the perimeter.

At the foot of the trail were a series of fields cut like stairs into the rock face. It was between seasons and the dirt was dry. Sometimes, the fields were flooded and we’d have to slog through the mud.

Setting up on the tiers, my team took the one that was level with the main target compound.

“Alpha is set,” I said over the radio.

Steve’s team climbed up one tier above my team and moved to the right flank.

“Charlie is set,” Steve said on the radio.

Bravo team climbed down one tier to focus on the southern compounds farther down the hill.

“Bravo is set.”

I could feel the adrenaline start to flood my body. I no longer felt tired or sore. Each one of my senses was heightened, and we were all on full alert. If everything went according to plan, we’d catch the enemy by surprise. But if things went bad, we’d be in a gunfight in close quarters.

“Take it,” troop chief said over the radio. “Nice and slow.”

We started to creep forward. Everyone was quiet, and each step was deliberate. Nothing got our blood pumping more than creeping into an enemy compound, sometimes directly into the rooms of enemy fighters while they were sleeping. This wasn’t like other units that had to react to a roadside bomb attack or ambush. This was deliberate and calculated. Our tactics weren’t unique. What made us different was our experience level and knowing when to take violent, decisive action and when to be patient and quiet.

I could feel my heart beating in my chest. Every sound was amplified. We’d take four or five steps and hold. Shouldering my weapon, I focused on my laser as it tracked from window to door to alley searching for any movement. I could see my teammates’ lasers doing the same thing.

“Go slow,” I thought. “Slow is quiet.”

When I got to the first building, I tried the rusty knob of the thick wooden door.

Locked.

Charlie tried the same kind of door on the building right next door. It was also locked.

There was no talking. We didn’t have any fancy Navy SEAL hand and arm signals. I just nodded at Charlie, and we started to move around the building to the other side that faced the courtyard.

A small gate led into the courtyard. Walt reached up and cut the cord that held up a sheet that blocked the way.

Moving inside, Steve, Walt, and the rest of the team stacked on multiple doors across the courtyard. I saw a RECCE sniper with a thermal scope on the roof starting to scan for sentries in a dried-up creek bed that ran north to south along the perimeter of the compounds.

My team’s point man led us through the same gate, and we approached the front door of our building.

Walt tried the door of his building and it was unlocked. He slowly pushed it open and saw a man messing with a flashlight. As Walt walked into the room to subdue the man, another man sat up from under some blankets. He was wearing a chest rack, and he had an AK-47 next to him. Walt and another SEAL who entered behind him opened fire, killing both men. Across from Walt’s room, Steve opened the door to another room and found a group of women and kids. Leaving one member of his team in the room, Steve led the rest of his team to a door farther down the wall.

A RECCE sniper on the backside of the building Steve’s team was clearing was looking for roving sentries. As he scanned the road that ran up the valley, he saw a half dozen Taliban fighters grabbing for their guns through a window. He immediately started firing just as Steve and his team reached the door to the room.

Cracking the door open, Steve could see the fighters scrambling for cover.

“Frag out.”

One of Steve’s teammates cracked the door just wide enough to toss the grenade into the overwhelmed enemy fighters. I heard the muffle of the explosion as shrapnel peppered the room, killing the fighters.

Just as we reached the door to our building, I could make out the faint sound of a second sniper’s suppressed rifle opening fire. A guard was sitting on a rock overlooking the main road. He had an AK-47 slung on his back and an RPG resting next to him.

My point man pushed the front door open and cleared into the first room. The house had a dirt floor, and sacks of food, clothes, and cans of oil littered the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as the point man opened fire. A fighter, gun in hand, was attempting to jump out a back window and escape. The bullets riddled his back and ass as he tumbled out of the window.

Outside, I heard one of Bravo team’s Squad Automatic Weapon gunners, or SAW gunners, go hot.

WHAAAAA!

The machine gun rounds echoed across the valley. It caught me off guard because most of us were using suppressors on our guns to muffle the sound.

“We’ve got movers coming from the north,” I heard over the command net on my radio. We were starting to get reports that fighters were headed toward our position from farther up the valley. This target quickly escalated into three separate firefights, and now we had reports of additional fighters advancing on our position.

The SAW gunner and Bravo team continued to maneuver just down the hill from us. One by one, Bravo team picked off at least five more fighters as they tried to move into fighting positions with RPGs and heavy machine guns. The SAW gunner fired another thirty-round burst as he sprayed the last sentry hiding between boulders in the dried creek bed.

Within minutes, I heard the buzz of an AC-130. On the radio, I could hear the troop commander passing word that the AC-130 was going hot on the movers to the north.

“You’ve got this,” I told my teammate.

I left him and another SEAL in the building while Charlie and I cleared an alley that ran between this building and the one below it. The buildings were on the same tiered steps of land as the fields where we had entered.

The alley was narrow, and it was impossible to see the end because the walls were crowded with junk. I kept getting caught up in low-hanging clothes lines strung up between the two buildings.

With a narrow alley like this, Charlie and I stood on opposite walls. I covered his side of the wall with my laser, and I could see his laser crossing the alley onto the wall in front of me. It was all an angles game.

We crept down the alley, being as quiet as possible. The key was throttle control. We’d go fast when needed, but then go back to being slow and quiet. We were about halfway down the alley when Charlie opened fire.

POP, POP, POP.

I froze. I couldn’t see what was in front of me. Charlie let loose a short burst and then started to move forward. I glanced ahead for a split second to see a fighter crumble against the wall three steps ahead of me. As he hit the ground, he dropped a shotgun.

Usually we wore about sixty pounds of gear, including those ballistic plates to protect us from gunfire. Charlie wasn’t wearing his plates either.

When we cleared all the way to the end of the alley, we paused to get our bearings.

“If I get shot tonight, no one better tell my mom I didn’t wear my plates,” I whispered to Charlie.

“Deal,” Charlie said. “Same goes for me.”