The Operator

by ROBERT O'NEILL

  Obviously, some part of this brief was real, but we didn’t know which part. We made a religion of attention to detail. Nothing was ever glossed over like this. Things were getting downright spooky.

  Willy explained that the only way to get to this target in such a sensitive area and out on time was to insert right on top of it, on the X, with all the additional risk that implied. He knew we wouldn’t be happy to hear that, but he said that he and others had been in Washington planning this for the past two weeks and it was the only way. The more experienced shooters around the table frowned. It wasn’t that we didn’t trust our bosses—rather, it was that we shooters simply had more experience in combat. We weren’t going to go into an extremely dangerous situation based on the words of a bunch of officers looking at maps around a conference table. We had questions.

  Where is the target? From where will we be launching? Will we be coming from a ship or a land base? How long is the flight?

  We can’t tell you yet. We can’t tell you yet. You’ll be launching from land. We can’t tell you yet.

  I asked, “What type of platform will we be flying?” At this point, I was imagining the target would be some compound in Libya, and it struck me that to fly that kind of distance we’d be using a fixed-wing aircraft. I knew Ospreys—an ungainly combination of helicopter and turbo-prop—were the shiny new toy because of their ability to take off and land like a helicopter but fly like an airplane. I also knew that Ospreys had a troubled past and a tendency to crash and kill everyone on board. I may have asked the question just to prepare myself for the possibility of flying in a death trap.

  Willy: “We can’t tell you yet.”

  When I got specific about my concern with Ospreys, he said, “We won’t be inserting in an Osprey, I assure you. Gentlemen, we’ll be inserting to a target that is in a bowl surrounded by mountains on aircraft that are like helicopters.”

  Like helicopters? What the hell was that?

  Willy called a break and said we’d reassemble in the same conference room in ten minutes. He reminded us—again—that the other members of our squadron were out in the main Team Room, and we weren’t to discuss a word of what we’d just been told. Every man in the room knew that this would cause a problem. The other guys would be wondering why they were not read-in and would think we were arrogant for not telling them what was going on.

  Mack and I headed to the far corner of the Team Room where our computers were. I glanced at the other members of the squadron as I walked across the room. They were going on with their normal day’s work: Some were typing, some were walking to the copy machine, some were sitting at the conference tables eating. Every last one was pointedly ignoring us, like a jealous girlfriend who didn’t want to come out and say that she felt left out.

  When we got to our side of the room, I said in a low voice, “Well, this is awkward.”

  “Yeah,” said Mack. “Why would the headshed [our somewhat ironic term for the commanders] be so adamant about us not telling the other guys what’s going on when we don’t even know what’s going on? This is getting weird.”

  It sure was. The guys who weren’t included felt it as a judgment of their worthiness. These guys had never failed anything. They were all combat veterans, all highly decorated. Needless to say, they were alpha males and had supreme confidence in themselves. It was bad enough being told they hadn’t made the cut—that the twenty-four who had were somehow better than them. The salt on the raw wound was that we clearly didn’t even trust them enough to tell them what was going on. They’d been told all of this by being told nothing at all.

  In fact, the seemingly puzzling selection was rooted in strategic practicality. The commanders wanted to raise as few flags as possible to avoid any chance of alerting al-Qaeda or even Pakistan that something unusual was afoot. They wanted to use one squadron, and the one that would be the most prepared and the least conspicuous. If the squadron already at war was suddenly reassigned, the locals on their base would notice. If the squadron on four-month standby in Virginia Beach left to train somewhere else the families would start talking, rumors would fly. We’d just gotten back from war, so we were still battle-ready, and we were already away training. We were the obvious choice, but only in retrospect.

  In the moment, Mack and I still hadn’t grasped the seriousness of what was happening, mostly because our leaders were still lying to us. Remember, the Team Room was prank central. We had always needed to have extremely thick skin because any sign of weakness would be exploited. Messing with the other guys was our first instinct. We came up with a name for the select twenty-four: Team Awesome—an acronym for Alienate, When Ever Suitable, Others in My Employment … or something like that. It never really got off the ground. Willy got wind of it and said, “The next person I hear refer to this element as ‘Team Awesome’ will be removed from ‘Team Awesome.’ ”

  We reconvened in the Commander’s Conference Room for a few more hours. Although the target, insertion method, and reason for being there were vague (and intentionally misleading), we planned the best we could with the information given. Willy drew up a target complex on a large whiteboard and listed the four teams, 1, 2, 3, and 4, with the team leaders at the top of each list. All twenty-four of us were normally in leadership roles. Because the bosses wanted only the most experienced guys on this mission, Troop Chiefs would run teams and team leaders would do the “sled dog” work—serve as assaulters, breachers, and snipers.

  Three of the teams would handle the assault on the target. My team was responsible for holding security on the perimeter. I was still assuming we were going into the African desert where there could be scores of insurgents. Holding them off would be my team’s responsibility, so I wanted to go a little bit heavy. I was thinking at least three machine guns, depending on …

  “Willy,” I asked, “what kind of close air support will be available on this target? Will we have DAPs, Apaches, AC-130s, and fast movers? What about bombers?”

  “No air support.”

  It kept getting better.

  But it wasn’t getting any clearer. Here we were: handpicked for a delicate mission, and all we had for mission planning was a drawing on a whiteboard. Willy had drawn up a large square off to the left of the list of four teams. Below that box, he drew a smaller rectangle and to the left of those he drew an acute triangle. He informed us that we would insert on that mysterious helicopter aircraft, my team would hold the perimeter, and the other three teams would assault the shapes. We would have the next few days to get gear together. Because command wanted to bring the maximum number of shooters in a minimum number of aircraft—four teams and only two helicopters—our normal support personnel couldn’t accompany us. That meant no medics. Instead, those among the twenty-four who’d had previous experience as corpsmen would have to bone up on their medical skills, and the two officers would have to figure out a way to carry their own radios.

  When someone pressed for a clearer idea of the assault teams’ objective, Willy said, “They’re going to assault the buildings like we always do. Go in, grab something, and bring it out. Then we leave.

  “One more thing,” Willy added. “Nizzro, your team will have the dog with you so make sure you save room for Cheese and Cairo. Also, there’ll be one more guy who is not on the list.”

  “The ’terp?” I asked.

  “Yes, the ’terp.”

  “What language will he be speaking?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  Willy added, “Probably Arabic but we’re still working on that.”

  What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  At least I knew what to expect from Cairo.

  “Okay, see you guys Sunday morning,” Willy went on. “Once we get where we’re going, we’ll be read-in. There’ll be VIPs there: General Thomas, the CO of SEAL Team **** … possibly the Secretary of Defense … and the Chief of CTC/PAD.”

  CTC/PAD? I don�
��t think anyone else caught that, but I did. This was the CIA’s Counter Terrorism PAK/AFGHAN Desk. Libya my ass!!

  We were set to leave on Sunday morning for a government facility in North Carolina, so we had the remainder of the week and Saturday to prepare. The majority of the time was spent tweaking gear that was already built and just adding additional pouches. Every guy picked for this mission had seen more than his share of combat, and each had a setup he was comfortable with. The issue was that we’d be going in with fewer people so each guy had to bring more stuff and execute more roles. Team leaders had been breachers just a few years ago, so they knew the drill. They’d only need to add a few extra pouches to carry the explosives and detonators. The former corpsmen had carried all of the medical gear in their conventional SEAL platoons before making Team ****, so they just needed to re-build. I’d carried an M60 for years at SEAL Team Two; no worries. The only thing that was eating at us was the fact that we didn’t know what we were going to do. Everyone knew it was big, but exactly how big was it?

  The word was starting to spread around the command. Everyone wanted to know why the bosses were planning some secret operation and including less than half of one squadron. A lot of suspicion fell on our new Commanding Officer. Some guys liked him, some even loved him, but most hated working for him. He had a reputation for overplanning everything and committing to things that weren’t even remotely possible. He could work on virtually no sleep, ever, and expected the same from his men. He had a tendency to wear guys out and an uncanny ability to sell ideas to higher-ranking officers. Most shooters at the command assumed that all the above was happening again.

  Guys from other squadrons were constantly pulling their buddies from our squadron aside trying to get intel.

  “What are you guys spinning up on?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “C’mon … you can tell me.”

  “Seriously, I don’t even know.”

  And I didn’t. But I was beginning to form a suspicion because of the very last thing Willy had said about the involvement of the counter terrorism/Pakistan desk. I couldn’t quite believe it, though. I mean … no way.

  *

  SUNDAY MORNING, GUYS STARTED ROLLING in around 0600 and rolling out shortly after. Mack and I got in a van along with Paul and Roth. We’d loaded all of our bags onto a box-truck earlier so we had plenty of room. I was looking forward to the short, ninety-minute drive down to North Carolina because it was going to be great company. Mack drove and Paul rode shotgun. Roth and I were in the back, and we prepped for the drive south. We got coffee and grabbed some Copenhagen at some mom-and-pop gas station, along with some terrible breakfast sandwiches. On the way down, we mostly just shot the bull, and things didn’t get terribly interesting until we started brainstorming about what was going on.

  Roth was the only officer in the van so we figured he might have some info to which the other three of us weren’t privy. We picked his brain but were wrong. He did have his assumptions, though. He mentioned some imagery he’d seen while spending the majority of our last deployment in Afghanistan. There were rumors about a target that sounded like the place Willy kept referring to. I brought up the small bit of information that nobody else seemed to have noticed in the brief. I said, “Why would the PAK/AFGHAN desk be briefing us today if we’re flying into Libya?”

  Finally, after a long silence, I just said it: “I’ll tell you what, guys: I think we’re going after Osama bin Laden.”

  Instantly, Roth replied, “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  Mack’s voice boomed from the driver’s seat, “Man, O’Neill … if we kill Osama bin Laden, I will suck yo’ dick!”

  It was an odd feeling, to be driving down the highway on a spring morning in such a beautiful part of the country beginning to suspect what we suspected. What would the people in all the cars passing by say if they knew what the big bearded guys in that van beside them might be on their way to do?

  The hour and a half drive seemed more like thirty minutes. When we arrived at the front gate of the facility, one of the most top secret defense facilities in the country, we encountered a fog bank of confusion. No one had given a list of our names to base security, not because they forgot, but because nobody wanted a list of the shooters to ever exist. We’d been top-secreted into an interesting discussion with the guards. It took some time to sort it out, but we finally rolled past the gate.

  The government facility isn’t much to look at—basically, it’s a lot of trees with a small airstrip in the center. All of the buildings are at least forty years old and one-story. Our destination was even less impressive than most—a small structure that looked like two doublewide trailers stuck together. Inside, in a large conference room, about eight people were milling about, setting up for a brief. Some of the people I recognized; some I didn’t. Pete, our Commanding Officer, was in a conversation with some other top brass. There were several other sidebars taking place while everyone waited for the meeting to start. Most of the shooters, including me, went into the kitchen where there were several pots of coffee brewing and about four dozen doughnuts. At least there were four dozen to begin with.

  After about five minutes of making small talk with friends, we were called into the room. Captain Perry Van Hooser—we called him Pete—stood in front of the crowd, which consisted of the entire assault force and a half dozen people I’d never seen before, including four women.

  Pete waited as one of the men I didn’t recognize closed both of the doors. They took a long look around the room to ensure that no one was in the room who didn’t belong. Even the security guards were asked to remain in the kitchen area while we talked. The man in back made sure that none of the guards could hear what was about to be spoken.

  “I appreciate you all cutting your training trips short and making your way down here,” Pete said when the room was secure. “I know that you all had a long deployment and have just gotten back but it’s time to get back after it.”

  He paused, and then he said it. “We have a line on UBL. This is the best intelligence we’ve had on his position since Tora Bora.”

  A man I’d figured for the Agency moved up to the front of the room as one of the four women passed out documents for us to sign. As we did, the man, Steve, who turned out to be with the counter terrorism/Pak desk, and two of the other women began the brief. This was the first time I’d ever heard the word “Abbottabad.” I loved the way it sounded.

  Steve said they were particularly interested in one man. He was usually dressed in white, taller than everyone else in a compound in Abbottabad, which he never left. Ever. He’d just walk around the interior yards and gardens day after day. They’d dubbed him “The Pacer.” The Pacer walked in the garden for hours at a time, stopping to talk to children and the other men who lived in the compound. But he never did anything menial. If some of the inhabitants were gardening or digging, he’d occasionally stop near them but was never seen helping with any task. The intelligence analysts were convinced that The Pacer never interacted with anyone from the outside.

  The housing structure was very large, much bigger than anything in the neighborhood, and was at the end of a road. There was a “T” intersection, but it was rarely, if ever, used. When looking at photographs of the compound, with north being the top, it looked like an upside-down triangle surrounded by a series of walls varying in height from ten to eighteen feet. The base of the walled triangle ran along an east-west road for 385 feet. The main house, three stories high, was in the center of the compound just a few feet from the northernmost wall. A front door to the south opened on a small yard.

  Just to the west of the main house, still inside the main compound, was a privacy driveway oriented north-south about twenty yards long and gated on both sides. The north gate had an intercom system. The south gate opened to a garage and was connected to the southernmost structure, which was in a secondary compound inside the main compound. The second structure was thought to be the guest
house. The garage was only big enough to fit one car completely. Intelligence analysts told us this was extremely fortunate. The residents owned two cars: They could always tell when someone had left, or when everyone was home. When both cars were there, one would stick partially out of the garage into the driveway.

  To the west of the driveway, a large, roughly triangular-shaped yard contained two small structures on the wall bordering the driveway. They were assumed to be animal pens and storage. It also appeared that this enclosure was where trash was burned. To the east of the three-story house was a large garden, also surrounded by a wall. A gate on the northeast wall appeared to open to the exterior street, but it was actually a decoy, which I would personally discover in a few weeks. Off to the east of the garden was yet another triangular yard, surrounded by walls but containing nothing.

  The three-story house was a bit of a puzzle. There was definitely an entrance on the south side facing the wall and there could have been one on the north. Because of how close the north side of the house was to the wall, though, it was impossible to see. The Pacer had never been seen coming out of the visible door, so it was assumed there must be a northern entrance. This also led to questions about the interior layout. We assumed three families lived in the entire compound: one in the guesthouse and probably two in the main house. If The Pacer only left through a northern door, maybe it was accessed directly by stairs from the second or third story, meaning the main house was actually two separate residences. The analysts believed that The Pacer lived on the third deck, again, because of an oddity in the architecture: A balcony on the third floor’s south side had been completely enclosed by a seven-foot-high privacy wall. No one from the ground outside could see in nor could anyone in any of the neighboring houses.

  This was a common theme for the entire compound. The guesthouse had an exterior stairway on its southeast side that led to the roof and served as a balcony. It also had a privacy wall built around it. While the majority of the exterior wall was twelve to thirteen feet high, this small portion was eighteen feet high, high enough to block every possible view from the outside. The entire exterior wall was covered in barbed wire.