No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden (24 page)

“Everybody on the Black Hawks take buses one and two,” I heard one of the support guys yell. “Buses three and four are going to the forty-sevens.”

The buses were lined up and already running. On board, I wedged myself into a seat near the middle. Will crammed in next to me. The buses were old and dusty. The vinyl seats were worn from years of transporting assaulters in full gear to the flight line.

The bus didn’t drive as much as it ambled. The shocks were worn from carrying all the extra weight, so every bump shot through our legs and backs. The ride took only a few minutes, but it felt much longer.

After a while, I could see massive spotlights set up facing outward near the hangar where I knew the Black Hawks waited for us. It looked like a star exploded, and it was impossible to see inside the globe of light. A generator hummed in the background as we got off and walked behind a fence that surrounded the hangar.

Inside, the helicopter crews were making final checks. The noise from the rotors made conversation impossible. I snuck off to the fence to take one last leak. When the helicopters were ready, I saw some of the support crew push open the gate, and the helicopters rolled out.

I nodded to a few guys on Chalk Two, flashing them the middle finger with a smile. We separated in silence. Anything said was lost in the rotor wash, but the gestures all said the same thing.

See you on the ground.

There was nothing more to say.

We formed up on either side of the helicopters. I looked at my watch. We had ten minutes. I found a spot by the tarmac to lie down. I rested my head on my helmet and looked at the stars. For a second, I just relaxed. Finally, the crew chief signaled us to load up.

I was one of the last to get on board, since I would be the first one down the rope. After everyone else had loaded up, there was a small spot by the door, next to Walt and the sniper who would cover us as we fast-roped down. Wedging my ass in as best I could, it was already cramped. I checked my weapon to make sure it was on safe. When you’re crammed into a helicopter with little room to move, the last thing you need is for your weapon’s safety to get kicked off inadvertently.

I cradled my helmet in my lap to make sure my night vision goggles didn’t get damaged. Flipped up, they looked like antlers on the helmet.

Once the door clicked shut, the helicopter picked up and hovered for a few seconds before setting back down. Then, right on schedule, the helicopter leapt from the tarmac. I could feel the nose dip down as we picked up speed. Once we cleared the airfield, the Black Hawk banked to the right and headed for the border.

The cabin was dark and crowded. I could feel Walt’s knees dig into my back when he moved. The radio in my ear was silent. I could see a faint glow from the controls in the cockpit, but nothing outside the window. It was pitch-black.

About fifteen minutes into the flight, the first message crackled over the troop net.

“Crossing the border.”

“I guess we’re actually doing this,” I thought.

Soon,
my head was bobbing as I dozed. As we got closer to Abbottabad, I could hear the pro words for the different checkpoints come over the troop net. But each time, I slipped back to a light sleep.

“Ten minutes.”

That shook me from my daze. I wiped my eyes and wiggled my toes to start working the circulation back. I must have slept more than I thought, since the ten-minute call seemed to come quickly. I think most of the guys on the helicopter actually caught some much-needed sleep on the ride in.

“Six minutes.”

All the hype was gone and it was just another night at work for us. I pulled on my helmet and snapped the chinstrap closed. Pulling my NVGs down over my eyes, I made sure everything was in focus. I pulled the gun tightly to my chest so it didn’t get hung up when I roped out, and checked the safety one last time. It was still dark in the cabin, but I knew everyone else was making the same checks.

“One minute.”

The crew chief slid the door open. I slid the Fast Rope Insertion/Extraction System (FRIES) bar into place. The fast rope was connected to the FRIES bar, which allowed it to fall cleanly to the ground. The bar was held in place with a pin at its base. I ran my hand along the bar and made sure the pin was seated. The crew chief checked it as well. I gave the rope a hard tug to make sure it was secure and then slid my legs out over the edge of the helicopter and into the breeze.

I grabbed the rope and tried to lean out far enough to see ahead of us. Several of the houses we passed over had lighted pools and manicured gardens behind tall stone walls. I was used to seeing mountains or villages made up of clusters of mud huts. From above, Abbottabad reminded me of flying over the suburbs in the United States.

I leaned out the door and finally caught a glimpse of the compound. The flight from Jalalabad had taken about ninety minutes and we would be arriving well after midnight. It was pitch-black and none of the lights in the surrounding houses were on. It seemed like the whole block was without power. Rolling blackouts in the area were common.

The engine noise changed as the helicopter started to hover. Once over the predetermined fast-rope point, I could throw the rope. The hover was rough and it was apparent the pilots were having trouble holding station. It felt like they were wrestling the helicopter, trying to force it to cooperate. My eyes flicked from the ground to the crew chief, waiting for the helicopter to get into position so I could throw the rope.

“GO, GO, GO” ran in a loop in my head.

The pilots never had an issue holding a hover during rehearsals. Something was wrong. We all desperately wanted out of the helicopter and onto the ground.

“We’re going around,” I heard over the troop net.

“Shit,” I thought. “We haven’t even gotten on the ground yet and we are already going to plan B.”

Suddenly, the helicopter kicked to the right ninety degrees and I could feel my stomach drop like riding a roller coaster. The rotors above me screamed as the Black Hawk tried to claw its way back into the air. With each second, the helicopter slipped closer toward the earth. From my side of the helicopter I could see the compound rushing up at us through the open door.

I struggled to find a handhold and slide back into the cabin. There was little room behind me as all my teammates had pushed forward prepping to fast-rope. Then I felt Walt’s hand grab my gear and pull me deeper into the cabin. His other hand shot out and grabbed the sniper next to me. I leaned back with all my strength. My legs kicked the air as I tried to get them inside. I knew if my legs were exposed when we hit, they would get pinned or cut off.

The closer we got to the ground, the angrier I became. Each and every assaulter had sacrificed so much throughout their individual careers to get to this point. We all felt extremely lucky to have been chosen for this mission and now we were about to die without even getting a chance to do our part.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I thought. “This is going to hurt.”

My body
was tense and my abs screamed as I tried to fold my legs into my chest.

All I could see was the ground coming up at me through the large open door. Helicopters are not like airplanes that can glide in for a crash landing. When helicopters stop working, they fall out of the sky like a rock. When they hit, rotor blades snap off, sending shrapnel and debris in all directions. Sitting in the open door, I feared the cabin would roll, crushing me underneath.

I could feel Walt tugging on my kit, pulling me back inside the cabin. No matter how much I pulled my legs close, they were still outside the door. The sniper next to me was stuck with one leg inside the cabin and the other outside of it.

It is hard to describe the feeling of riding a helicopter into the ground. I don’t think my mind fully grasped what was happening. I had it in my mind that maybe I could stay in the door like a
Looney Tunes
cartoon character. You know, when the house falls off the cliff and the character escapes by opening the front door. For a split second I figured that when the helicopter hit and rolled, I’d land in the door and be safe.

The privacy wall around the compound quickly passed by as we headed for the ground.

When the helicopter rotated ninety degrees, the tail rotor barely missed the wall on the south side of the compound. I could feel fear grip my chest as the ground rushed toward me. I had no control, and I think that scared me most of all. I always figured I would probably die in a gunfight, not in a helicopter crash. We were all used to stacking the odds in our favor. We knew the dangers. We did the battlefield calculus and we trusted our skills. But clinging to a helicopter, there was nothing we could do.

Seconds before impact, I felt the nose dip. I held my breath and waited for impact. The helicopter shuddered as the nose dug into the soft ground like a lawn dart. One minute, the ground was rushing up at me. The next minute, I was at a dead stop. It happened so fast, I didn’t even feel the impact.

The blades didn’t snap off. Instead, the rotors blasted the muddy courtyard, blowing dust and debris and creating a maelstrom around us.

I exhaled and blinked the dust out of my eyes. Squinting against the assault of rocks and dust, I realized we were still about six feet above the ground at a steep angle.

“Get the fuck out,” Walt yelled at me, shoving me forward.

I dropped from the cabin and landed in the courtyard in a crouch. Despite wearing more than sixty pounds of gear, I didn’t feel the weight or the jolt from the fall. Without looking back, I ran forward like an Olympic sprinter away from the wreck. Sliding to a halt about thirty yards away, I turned back and saw the wreckage for the first time.

When the helicopter crashed, the tail boom got caught up on the twelve-foot privacy wall. The tail’s single load-bearing section propped the Black Hawk up and kept the rotors from hitting the ground. If any other part of the helicopter hit the wall, or if we had tipped and the rotor hit the ground first, none of us would be walking away unscathed. Teddy and his copilot had somehow pulled off the impossible.

I could see my teammates dropping out of the cabin and dashing through a gap underneath the helicopter as it rested at an angle against the wall.

Like my teammates, I had gotten good at compartmentalizing stressful situations over my career, and now I had to block the crash out. Two minutes ago, I was pissed we were going to land outside the compound, but now we were alive and on the ground inside the walls. Despite the near-disaster the mission was still on track.

My teammates were already headed to the gate that led us back into the main compound. I needed to get my ass in gear because if Charlie or Walt saw me standing there while they were already moving to their positions I would never hear the end of their shit-talking.

We had scheduled thirty minutes to complete the mission based on the helicopter’s fuel consumption and a possible response time from the Pakistanis. We had built in an additional ten minutes of flextime just in case. Running back toward the helicopter, I figured we needed those extra minutes now.

The way the helicopter was perched on the wall, I didn’t have enough room to clear the rotors in the front. It was dark and even with my night vision it was impossible to be sure how high the rotors were spinning. The only way to get to the compound was by going underneath the wreck.

“I am going explosive,” I heard Charlie say over the troop net. I could see him at the gate to the main compound, setting the charge.

Putting my head down, I raced toward the wreck. As I got close, I tried to hug the wall as I ran underneath the tail boom. Hot exhaust blew down from the engines as I passed. It was like walking inside a hair-dryer for a few seconds.

Coming out on the other side, I could see Charlie prepping a charge on the locked iron gate. All around him were guys with their weapons trained out, pulling security.

I moved toward a prayer room near the gate to make sure it was clear. The room had a large open area with thick rugs on the floor and pillows forming a perimeter around the walls. We knew from the intelligence analysts that the room was most likely used to meet guests, but that seemed to be infrequent. Once cleared, I pulled off an IR chemlight and threw it by the door to alert the others the room was secure.