I thought about them all the time and worried, too. We had FaceTime and used it often, but means of connecting only went so far. I’d promised them that we’d go to Great Wolf Lodge when I got home, and I knew they couldn’t wait. But they’d have to. I’d told them I’d be home after Christmas, which was true, but only because March was “after Christmas.” The four-year-old would never grasp that I’d stretched the truth, but my oldest daughter could look at a calendar and know that Christmas was just around the corner. Her mother told me she’d packed a suitcase and insisted on leaving it by the front door so she’d be ready to go when I got home “after Christmas.” I couldn’t wait to be done with this and take them to the Lodge. They’d been dealing with my absence all of their lives, but that didn’t make our separation any easier.
I was getting too old for this. Walking down the hill to the showers—the steep, slippery, icy, and brutally cold hill—feeling every day of my thirty-four years, I nearly ran into a young Ranger emerging from the two-story complex in a towel. He was twenty-three and had about 7 percent body fat, just a complete stud. He saw me and said in a thick Boston accent, “Oh, you guys are the new SEAL Team **** guys in town. Right?”
I admitted as much.
He said, “Cool, you can play us in a game of tackle football for Thanksgiving. SEALs versus Rangers.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? You guys will destroy us. There’s no way, man,” I said. “If you want to talk tactics, I’ll teach you guys some tactics. But I’m not going up against a bunch of Rangers in a contact sport.”
It was so cold and uncomfortable—for the bad guys and for us—that we didn’t work much. The few missions we did come up with had a different feel. This was our first time working with the CST, the Cultural Sensitivity Team. The team is made up of junior Army officers, women. They’d go out with us and make sure we didn’t unnecessarily trample on Afghan cultural niceties. On target, we paid much more attention to things like respecting the Quran, because to be honest our first few deployments, we didn’t give a fuck. We started to realize how serious these Afghan Muslims were about their holy book and their women. Having female personnel with us who could speak a little bit of the language made things a lot less incendiary when we were rousting suspected bad guys. The CST officers could search the women and talk to the kids.
There’s debate now about having women in combat roles. I believe any woman who can get through the same training as the men is fully capable. I remember walking through miserable frosted-over swamps with a woman named Amy who was maybe 5-feet tall and up to her waist in muck. She never once complained, and never fell behind. On this deployment, we got in a few gunfights with the women. There was one I worked out with a couple times. We’d go on five-mile runs, and she’d beat me. Granted, I’d gotten fat, 230 pounds, but she could run her ass off. Truth is, most SEALs bitched a hell of a lot more about conditions than these ladies did.
The female officers were good to have around, but it all contributed to this growing sense that I’d done my time, and my time was passing. Even when we had bad guys to go after, it wasn’t the same. We’d do an offset insert, several kilometer hike, climb a few fences, blow the doors off. Occasionally, we’d think we were going after what we’d call a high-value target, but in Afghanistan by this point there was really no such thing. We were going after thugs mostly, not terrorists. In our minds, we were building them up into something they weren’t. The real bad guys were all over in Pakistan.
Our missions had become what we called “strike to develop.” We’d be sitting there for six or seven days, doing nothing but working out and playing Xbox. We’d find a target more out of boredom than a real sense of mission. I always disagreed with that—if there were no missions, there were no missions.
I guarantee that nobody will remember or care who the alleged high-value target was in the Extortion 17 mission. The bad guy was meaningless. We lost all those men because someone got bored.
My very last mission as a SEAL came out of one of those slow weeks. The intelligence people had been going over film from one of their drones, just looking for something to target. They noticed a group of guys in a shitty little mountain village—what we call MAM, military-age males—who were obviously armed. They could see that these guys had rocket-propelled grenade launchers—from the air it looked as if they were carrying 2 x 4s. These guys would load up their weapons and drive out of the village, winding through mountain passes on this miserable little road making their circuitous way to neighboring villages. They thought that by taking this remote road they wouldn’t be seen. That’s where they guessed wrong.
The intel guys saw them do this one day, a Monday, and told us it was highly suspicious. We weren’t impressed. Then they did it again. Same thing. Same spot. They were obviously waiting to ambush a convoy. We still didn’t want to launch. We didn’t want to waste our time sitting out in the middle of nowhere waiting for something that might happen. They did it again Thursday, and now we were starting to summon some interest. We said, “All right. If they do it again on Friday—their day of prayer—then for sure they’ll be doing it on Saturday.”
Friday came, and they sure as shit did it again.
So now we made a plan. We knew their pattern. Saturday morning they’d say their morning prayer as the sun came up, load up the car, and drive out to their ambush spot on the side of the mountain. We’d be waiting for them, staging a little ambush of our own. It’s called an L ambush, because you set up one line perpendicular to the bad guys’ route of travel, then another line parallel to the route and at ninety degrees to the first line. It’s one of the oldest military maneuvers in the world. Soldiers have been doing L ambushes for two thousand years.
We presented our plan to our Army bosses—the Army was running this FOB. We said, “We’re going to insert one kilometer away from this point right behind the mountain and we’re going to walk in while it’s still dark. We’re going to hang out until the sun comes up. When it does we’re going to hide behind this rock, and we’re going to station these guys here. We’re going to set up an L ambush.”
The Army officer said, “L ambush? What’s that?” I looked at him disbelievingly. “You’re serious? An L ambush is the second thing they teach you when you join the Army. The first thing is, ‘There’s your bed.’ The second thing is, ‘This is an L ambush.’ ”
“Explain it.”
So I explained it, pointing at the map. “These guys are going to get out here. We’re going to get out here. I’m going to be the team leader on this spot right here with one guy to my left flank, and I’m going to move out there when the cars come up.”
He said, “How are you going to stop them? You don’t speak Pashto.”
I said, “I’m going to point my gun at them. Everybody speaks gun.”
Then he asked, “What if he doesn’t stop?”
“I’m going to fucking shoot him. Where did you come from?”
We finally talked the Army guys into it. They even assigned a manned aircraft to watch the guys in the village. We set up a series of pro words—words to say over the radio conveying necessary information without giving anything away. We used colors this time, a modified traffic signal. Black was baseline, then red when the enemy started out, yellow for when they were on the way, followed by green. Green was when we’d step out from the rocks and speak gun.
Saturday, a few hours before dawn, we flew out to the mountain and hiked up to the spot. We set up behind some rocks so the enemy wouldn’t be able to see us as they approached in their cars. The leg of the L, the maneuver element, set up, and our snipers climbed high on the mountain with their MC24 .30-caliber sniper rifles, about two hundred meters out from the target. For them at that distance it’s like, “Which nostril do you want the bullet to go in?” The sun came up and nothing happened. There was a mountain between us and the village, a total visual block. So we were out there smoking cigars and bullshitting with each other. Here we were, armed and ready t
o kill these five insurgents, having a little cigar social.
The guy in the observation plane was keeping us updated, and sure enough, the guys came out from their prayers with their rocket-propelled grenade launchers and started loading up the car. Then we got word that the fucking car wouldn’t start. We were still smoking. We knew it would take them fifteen minutes to get there, assuming their lousy car ever started, so we just chilled. They messed with their car for another twenty minutes, and then the pilot reported that they actually put the RPGs and machine guns down so they could push-start it.
So now it was pro word yellow; they were on their way. We smoked for another five minutes, and then figured it was time to get all Navy SEAL and hide behind the rocks. We’d just take a few more tokes on the stogie, then kill these five dudes. No adrenaline whatsoever.
Finally, we stubbed out the cigars and waited. An engine wound up the grade just out of sight. We leveled our guns at the spot where it would emerge. This is the funny thing about war: Our targets had been driving the only vehicle that had been on this road for months, because it was barely a road. But our eye in the sky piped up. “Hang on! Wrong car.” A blue van emerged from the mountain and rolled past. I could see inside: a mom, a dad, and some kids going who knew where. Jesus. I’d come within seconds of going hot on the Brady Bunch.
This was taking forever. Those guys must have been driving like ninety-year-old ladies. It started to snow. We heard the whiny little Nissan before we saw it. Five of us walked out from behind the rocks, forming what we call the line of death, the base element. As the car came up to us, the “L” part of the deal would sweep through, leaving them no escape.
I was standing there in the road, staring straight at the driver. At about twenty meters, he braked. I saw him push the Nissan into reverse. His face creased, and his lips moved. I swear he was saying, in English, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” He stomped on the accelerator, and the bald tires whaled helplessly in the snow. Stuck.
I shouted, “Hey, get out of the car. You need to get out of the car.”
Now this was the point where tensions rise rapidly. The passenger-side door slammed open. A guy hopped out holding a belt-fed machine gun. He ran toward the trunk. One of my line of death guys fired and the machine gunner went down like a sack of cement. Almost at the same time, the driver’s head exploded. One of the snipers had decided, “Fuck this. They’re moving.” So he took the guy’s head out. The guys in the backseat started scrambling for the exits and the whole thing just turned into a shit storm, everybody on the line firing their weapons. The two guys in the back fell out of the car and the shooting stopped.
As we cleared the scene, we found more belt-fed machine guns, AK-47s locked and loaded, grenades stuffed into pockets. We were thinking, Wow, we just saved a lot of lives, look at these fucking people, when one of our Afghan partners—every mission was now nominally “Afghan led”—came running up holding the grenade part of the RPG in his hand. It was green and shaped roughly like one of those toy rockets you fill with water, pump with air, and shoot off into the sky. In fact, this guy was as excited as a kid with a new toy. As we watched him approach with dawning horror, we noticed that there was a goddamn bullet hole through the shaped charge.
We all yelled. “Put that fucking thing down. Jesus. What’s wrong with you?”
That was my last mission ever. At that point, we had all become so used to war, none of it was a big deal. That was part of the reason I was getting out. I knew I was getting complacent. If I kept at it, the next destination was sloppy, and sloppy kills.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I’d completed four hundred combat missions, walked through minefields, flown a hostile mission through the missile defense system of a nuclear power, been pinned down by a superior force in a dead-end valley. But the scariest thing I ever did was leave the Navy.
After sixteen and a half years, I had two Silver Stars, four Bronze Stars with Valor, a Joint Service Commendation Medal with Valor, three Presidential Unit Citations, and a Navy/Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Valor. I also had a mortgage, no pension, no college degree, no job.
I went to talk to the Navy exit people and asked, “What’s the grace period? How many months after I get out can I keep my kids on my health insurance?”
They said, “You get out on 24 August. Health care for your kids ends midnight on the 23rd.”
Thanks for your service. Now beat it.
Four other SEALs and I had put together a plan. We’d all get out and start a consulting firm. Security. Leadership. Team building. Or maybe we’d just make gear and sell hats. We didn’t know. We’d been in the SEAL bubble so long we had no idea what we were doing, no sense of the real obstacles. I was the first to get out, and they were going to come right after me.
It didn’t happen. Someone heard what we were doing and a particular group started giving the guys who were getting out with me a bunch of shit, calling them sellouts. Predictably, perhaps, the pressure caused them to cave. The SEAL bubble was all they knew.
One thing I’ve learned since becoming a civilian is that being a Navy SEAL is only part of your life. High school is a part of your life and it’s the most important thing when you’re in it. Then it’s over. For me, for over a decade, being a Navy SEAL was everything. Those hard-as-nails instructors at Coronado and the officers I served under in the years after taught me to meet, and rise above, challenges I wouldn’t have imagined. And my SEAL brothers—they taught me a sense of comradery that I still consider priceless. But to keep growing, we all have to move to the next phase. That’s life.
Guys who are still in sometimes have difficulty appreciating that. Some pay too much attention to what others in the squadron room say about them. They get caught up in the alpha male bullshit. And that’s a shame.
When we were in combat—before all the absurdly restrictive rules of engagement, before we’d killed anybody famous—being a SEAL was the best experience in the world. I was able to go to work with people who were better than me. I was never a “cool guy,” I simply worked with cool guys, walked behind cool guys. Sometimes, by chance, I found myself in the front, would turn a corner, and do something cool myself. That’s how I found myself in Osama bin Laden’s bedroom; I arrived on the shoulders of giants.
And because I did, I have this ability to influence, and I plan to use it to do as much as I can for others. There are veterans out there who had much more dangerous jobs than I did. The soldiers who spent months on end in the valleys of Afghanistan, the Marines who patrolled through minefields day after day, the everyday soldiers rolling through the IED-strewn streets of Iraq—all had tougher jobs than I had. My fellow SEALs and I had the ability to fight on our terms; those other guys didn’t. Now I have a platform and they have nothing. Some are in the same position that I was, leaving the military before meeting the retirement requirement, no pension waiting for them. I want to raise awareness and help.
There are also the thousands of people most affected by 9/11.
I got to meet some of those who lost loved ones in the 2001 attacks for the first time in the summer of 2015. I’d been asked to donate something I’d worn on the mission to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York. I agreed, with one condition: I’d do it anonymously. My name wouldn’t be on it. They agreed, and even gave me a private tour of the place before it opened. At the end of the tour, I entered a room filled with 9/11 families. There was a politician speaking to them, and she brought me up on stage. “Just say a few words to these people.”
For once, I wasn’t at all prepared. I just started talking about the shirt I was donating, and I could see something happen in the eyes of all these people whose wives and husbands, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters went to work one crisp September morning and never got to see their loved ones again. I felt this powerful connection, and I just kept talking, for the first time publicly telling my story of the bin Laden mission. After, people crowded around me to say how much hearing my sto
ry meant. One woman said, “I’m not afraid anymore. I’ve lived the worst nightmare imaginable, and because of today I’m not afraid anymore. There’s a face with this, and you’re telling me the truth. All the conspiracy theories are gone and he’s dead.”
A man came up with his grandson. His son, the boy’s father, had been one of those who through no fault of his own ended up dying on 9/11. The man said, “Every single day, my grandson has asked me, ‘Why did God do this?’ and I always say, ‘God didn’t do this. The devil did this.’ ”
He looked up at me, a tear running down his cheek and a defiant gleam in his eyes. He said, “You, sir, killed the devil.”
Since the early hours of May 2, 2011, I’ve had many moments when I’ve wondered if being the one who killed Osama bin Laden was the best thing that ever happened to me, or the worst. I’m still trying to figure that out. It’s a difficult position to be in, one that has caused anxiety and sleepless nights. I’m confident, though, that this all happened for a reason. I’m committed to making the most of it.
My father, Tom, and my siblings and me (far left) in Missoula, Montana, in the summer of 1981. Courtesy of the author
Here I am as a high school senior in the spring of 1994. I’m wearing my letter jacket from Butte Central Catholic High School. Courtesy of the author
My dad and I took down this Boone and Crockett records book ram on November 2, 2001. From an early age, hunting with Dad was both a bonding experience and a lesson in making every shot count. Courtesy of the author
Here I’m demonstrating the “Slide for Life” during the third phase of BUD/S in December 1996. One of our snipers used this technique in rescuing Captain Richard Phillips, who’d been taken hostage by Somali pirates. Courtesy of the US Navy
SEAL trainees holding a log in water. The hard-nosed instructors never lacked for ways to test our resolve. Courtesy of the US Navy. Photo by Chief Special Warfare Officer (SEAL) Darren McBurnett.
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