Damn Few

by Rorke Denver

  With guidance from the FBI, Bainbridge Commander Frank Castellano had been trying to negotiate for the Maersk captain’s release. At one point, the pirates agreed to be towed by the Bainbridge. But as the talks ground on and the weather deteriorated, the Navy commander was given the authority to do more than talk. If the captain’s life was in imminent danger, the orders from the White House said, Castellano could green-light a more aggressive approach.

  He called in a SEAL assault team.

  In the normal course of business, violent, personal assaults really aren’t Big Navy’s specialty. Navy ships do not have assault teams and snipers aboard. The ship’s regular crew would surely include some aggressive seamen and perhaps a sailor or two who was a pretty good shot. But aggressive seamen and a pretty good shot wouldn’t get this job done. Some Navy ships have a VBSS team, a visit-board-search-and-seizure team. They get basic tactical training in how to board a vessel, usually in a compliant situation, and take some measure of control. But when it comes to sniper operations and commando assaults, that is what the SEALs do.

  There are other units in the U.S. military that have capable assault forces that can operate effectively at sea. But the SEALs are the maritime component of the U.S. Special Operations Command. No one else conducts hostile missions at sea with the training and intensity that we do. That unique combination—violent assault, maritime environment—is in our DNA. It is our DNA. No SEAL would ever say we have mastered the oceans, but we are far more capable there than anybody else.

  Eight years into sustained combat in arid Iraq and Afghanistan, we hadn’t been called for too many waterborne assaults and rescues. We weren’t taking down oil rigs or chasing pirates every day. Very few terrorists had nukes on private yachts. The most notable combat deployments post-9/11 have been on hot, dry land.

  When the call came from the Bainbridge, the SEALs were ready to go. Our teams are up and running in no time, even if we haven’t been using those skill sets in theater, even if we have to pull the mission plan off a shelf somewhere. We can still make a complex profile work.

  There are so many things that could go wrong on a hostage rescue at sea. The wrong person could get shot. We could lose one of our team members in a botched assault. The enemy could fire back and get lucky. We are in harm’s way every time we go out there. We can’t be overconfident. Every top military unit makes mistakes. That’s just the nature of this business we are in, even though our SEAL success rate has lately left the public expecting something close to perfection. We can never forget how quickly one bad shot leads to disaster.

  But taking those shots wasn’t the only big challenge here. Before the SEAL snipers ever had a chance to show what kind of marksmen they were, they had to get to the ship. And that was a huge undertaking in itself, a crucial part of this hostage-rescue story. Many things had to go right for those SEAL snipers to get their chance to squeeze those triggers. Their journey is worth retracing in some detail.

  When the first call came, the SEAL team was nowhere near the Horn of Africa. The SEALs had to be flown in from Norfolk, Virginia, eighteen hours by air. But no one wasted any time getting ready. SEALs are always ready. Our gear is always prepped. Our bags are always packed.

  The easiest way to get aboard a Navy ship at sea is by helicopter, but the team couldn’t be flown onto the deck of the Bainbridge. That could easily have raised the pirates’ suspicion about a coming assault. Instead, the full SEAL contingent—snipers, corpsmen, breachers, communicators, plus the senior enlisted leaders and a couple of frontline officers—flew on a Boeing C-17 military transport plane, specially outfitted to carry a stack of high-speed assault boats. The assault craft were equipped with high-performance engines and loaded with everything the SEALs might need for their mission—weapons, ammo, and enough gear for an extended stay if that was required. All of it was strapped in snugly.

  The boats were rigged with static-line parachutes, set to open automatically the instant the boats cleared the aircraft. The drop spot had to be within a mile or two of the Bainbridge or one of its sister ships but not so close that the pirates on the lifeboat would catch a glimpse of what was about to occur.

  “Ready to drop,” the SEAL jumpmaster told the crew chief as the aircraft moved into the zone.

  With a sharp, mechanical slap, the boats were released above the ocean. You never want be standing too close when SEAL boats are skidding out of an aircraft. You could just as easily be dragged along for an unexpected ride. The second the boats cleared the bird, their chutes unfurled automatically and the boats began their float toward the Indian Ocean.

  The SEALs jumped out right behind the boats with their own parachutes.

  That maneuver left little room for error: jumping out of an aircraft into an open ocean, chasing a boat with all your gear, hoping that when you climb out of the water and pull yourselves aboard, the radio and navigation equipment will all be operational so you can find your way to the ship. And you’d better pray the engine starts.

  When they hit the water in their parachutes and climbed aboard their assault boats, the SEALs didn’t go directly to the Bainbridge. They made their initial rendezvous with the nearby USS Halyburton, then transferred to the Bainbridge. Every step of the way in an operation like this, there are subtleties to manage and unknowns to confront. Critical command decisions always have to be made on the scene, frequently with uncertain or inadequate facts. Even after the SEALs arrived, there was no clear understanding yet of exactly what they were there for and what approach made the most sense—a waterborne assault, a combat-swimmer mission, a sniper operation, some combination of those, or nothing at all.

  Often, in cases like this one, large personalities will have to be managed as well. A junior SEAL officer has to coordinate with a senior Navy commander. The SEALs will be exercising significant operational autonomy aboard his ship. That’s no small thing to swallow for a man who has command at sea, submitting his craft and his crew to even the partial direction of outsiders, even if we are all part of the same U.S. Navy.

  Thankfully, Commander Castellano was engaged, supportive, and highly knowledgeable.

  As he continued negotiating with the pirates, the SEAL assault team quickly assessed the options at hand, coordinating every step of the way with the commander. Before any aggressive action was taken, all options had to be carefully explored.

  The SEALs could attack and board the lifeboat from other boats in the water. They could almost certainly overwhelm the pirates, easily outgunning and outmanning them. But at what cost? The pirates would most likely see the SEALs coming, and the captain would be dead or dying before the first SEAL got on board.

  The SEALs could swim up to the lifeboat like Toro and I did on that combat-swimmer exercise back at Roosey Roads. But even that option, it was determined, carried too much risk of detection on the way in.

  The best but most technically complex option: put SEAL snipers in a position to engage.

  The SEALs scouted for the right location to shoot from. Some spot with clear sight lines. Somewhere the snipers could lie side by side. The fantail of the Bainbridge, jutting off the stern of the ship, looked ideal.

  The snipers carefully monitored the movement on the lifeboat. The pirates and their hostage weren’t lounging on an open deck. That would have been fish-in-a-barrel. Any weekend warrior could have landed that shot. But the pirates and their hostage were sheltered inside the lifeboat’s enclosed cabin, leaving anything but a steady, unobstructed shot.

  The assault team leader remained in close, direct conversation with Commander Castellano in the ship’s combat control center. The commander had all the authority he needed. The snipers were in place. All they were waiting for now was the order to proceed.

  The order came from Castellano to the assault team leader to the SEALs on the fantail:

  “SEALs are cleared to engage.”

  They held their position, peering through their scopes, waiting for their moment to arrive. What no one cou
ld control was where the pirates and their hostage would be when the timing was right.

  “Green … red … green.”

  “Red … red … red.”

  “Red … green … green.”

  Then the moment arrived.

  Inside the door of the cabin, Captain Phillips stepped within view. One pirate was standing behind him, pointing an AK-47 at the captain’s head. The head and shoulders of the other two pirates were visible as well.

  “Green, green, green.”

  Three triggers were squeezed at almost exactly the same instant. Three shots were fired, the tiniest millisecond apart. Three pirates fell instantly to the lifeboat floor.

  Looking stunned, the captain was completely unharmed.

  And three SEAL snipers breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  In an instant, a couple of boats were off the side of the Bainbridge and in the choppy water to collect Captain Phillips. The boarding party checked to be sure none of the pirates was moving. Quickly, they hustled the captain into a boat, which took him back to the ship. He was flown by helicopter to the USS Boxer for medical evaluation to confirm he was all right.

  The SEALs had done their job.

  I wish I’d been there when senior military officials walked the new president through the details of exactly how the mission had gone down, saying, “Yes, this is how we did it.”

  I know this much: senior officials in Washington and across the military were saying to each other and to themselves, “My God, who are these guys? It’s good to know they’re on our side.”

  What began as a leap of faith by an untested president—a well-earned and well-briefed leap but a leap nonetheless—ended with a new level of trust in the talent and competence of the SEALs. The mission’s success became a turning point for the teams. The confidence that mission built would not be forgotten when the ultimate test arrived two years later and the world was watching even more closely.

  A shipborne hostage rescue will always to some extent be a case of when-we-get-there-we’ll-figure-out-what-to-do. The Somali pirate mission showed the SEALs’ remarkable ability to improvise. Getting Osama bin Laden, by contrast, demonstrated the opposite talent, our ability to plan and plan and plan some more, down to the very last detail.

  With precision fire in a third-floor bedroom, a SEAL assault team achieved what no one else had been able to in ten frustrating years, taking the terror mastermind off the battlefield he helped to define. SEALs stormed the walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was holed up, and a lingering piece of national business was taken care of.

  At last.

  That mission more than any other has become the teams’ signature.

  May 2, 2011, wasn’t just the day bin Laden was killed. It was also the day that millions of people around the world absorbed the happy news and asked themselves in wonder: What can’t these SEALs do?

  I wasn’t on that op, as I hadn’t been on the pirate rescue. I wish I had been at both. Every SEAL wishes he was. Hell, every special operator wishes he was on either mission. But here’s what surprises nearly everyone about the historic and gratifying bin Laden raid: As SEAL missions go, the assault on bin Laden’s compound near the Pak-Afghan border wasn’t all that hard for our guys. As a planning and technical matter, it was far less difficult than the Somali-pirate hostage rescue.

  Locating bin Laden was a challenge. It took almost ten years. America owes a huge debt to the CIA agents, NSA analysts, military-wide intelligence pros, and others who tirelessly pursued this most-wanted man. But for the SEAL assault team that pulled that high-profile duty, the mission was like walking out to the porch and picking up the morning paper. Everyone involved had followed this routine a thousand times before. Trained during and after BUD/S. Practiced in the field. Gamed out repeatedly in advance of the bin Laden raid. Every man knew what he was doing that night.

  Like all missions, this one had risks and surprises, one of them nearly a tragedy. But the actual mission, the X’s and O’s on the chalkboard, the execution on the ground—this is what we trained for. Most of us have executed far more challenging missions with far less preparation. Even the glitches would have to be called routine.

  I’m not minimizing the effort involved. Obviously, there were logistical difficulties. There always are. Everyone had to be secretive. The assault occurred in a denied battle space. The United States had no permission from the government of Pakistan to be there. But this was a known location, a walled compound nearly identical to the one the team had used in training. The assaulters had detailed satellite imagery and known enemy strength. The bad guys didn’t know we were coming. The area was self-contained. The target was well past his prime fighting years.

  I guarantee you there was an actual and specific discussion of what would happen if one helicopter went down. How about if two helos went down? The team had already thought out the implications and devised a clear adjust plan. On a mission so important and high profile, we doomsday every possible scenario.

  Everyone knew what a disaster failure would mean. Embarrassment at home. Outrage across the world. A newly emboldened al Qaeda. If the mission had gone wrong, we’d have been drowning in gleeful bin Laden tapes that mocked the evil and incompetence of the great Satan, America. And who knows what his henchmen would have been planning next.

  There were no rookies on any of the helicopters that came out of Afghanistan, across the border and into Pakistan. This was the SEALs’ varsity team, the best shooters, the best spec-ops pilots, the best intel leveraged for the mission’s success. And we had total support up the chain of command. The president and his top advisors were even watching a live video feed in the War Room at the White House.

  Far more difficult is what these extraordinary warriors have been doing day and night in Afghanistan and Iraq in the years since bin Laden’s vicious attack on America. All of us, including the operators on the bin Laden mission, have raided houses on the darkest of nights in the most lawless quarters of those challenging battle zones with a force of only seven SEALs and sixteen Iraqi conscripts, hunting for a target who could be almost anywhere. That’s more the norm than the exception.

  It’s those experiences that help the highest-profile missions succeed. Blast inside a quiet house and you don’t know what you’ll find there. Two old men could be asleep on the couch. Forty armed insurgents could be opening fire. No air cover. No on-scene ground support. No Rangers sealing the block and backing you up. No intel that is remotely reliable.

  You don’t know the language. The culture is impossible to crack. The good guys and the bad guys are hard to tell apart. That’s the warrior business, day in and day out. As the officer on the team, you need to be a warrior. You need to be a diplomat. You need to be a lawyer. You need to be a priest and a parent.

  Compared to those unnoticed missions, the bin Laden raid met relatively little resistance. What made the mission so sexy and spectacular and profoundly important was the identity of the target. Since the start of the Age of Terror, no target was bigger than this.

  About that glitch: On that night, one of the helicopters did go down just as the SEALs reached the compound. But even that didn’t slow the mission. In fact, as the bird quickly lost lift, the operators aboard were able to get out and meet up with the rest of the team.

  The SEALs flew bin Laden’s body out of the compound so it could be officially identified and the White House could be absolutely certain the SEALs got the man they had come for.

  The bin Laden assault team earned that mission. It was so long in coming, so crucial to the nation’s War on Terror, so important to show all the world’s terrorists and the nations that enable them that America will not allow them to win. Those extra-important missions need total support: “What do you boys need to get it done?”

  Once confirmation was in, the president made an unforgettable announcement in a special Sunday night address to the nation.

  “Tonight,” he said, “I can report to the America
n people and the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden.”

  All across America, from college campuses to downtown retail strips to the park across from the White House, people gathered and began to chant:

  “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”

  But here’s what’s also telling about the SEALs.

  The guys on that mission weren’t doing any chanting. I promise you that. Neither was anyone else in the SEAL brotherhood. We weren’t pounding our chests or bellowing into the night.

  We reacted with more of an internal, metabolized satisfaction, the chance finally to say, “Mission complete.”

  16

  MAKE MORE SEALS

  Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.

  —EURIPIDES

  * * *

  There are famous missions that get all over the media. There are momentum-shifting operations that the historians of war will look back on. “That one,” they’ll say. “That’s when the tribal leaders came to see what thugs those al Qaeda insurgents were.” Or “That’s when the Afghan Taliban really went running.” Or “That’s when America showed the world those SEAL snipers really can shoot.”

  But this brotherhood of ours isn’t about ego. We don’t care if most of our missions are never known by anyone outside our own circle.

  The time we captured that sniper who had killed a Marine.

  The time a teammate got his eye shot out then walked off the battlefield to the helicopter on his own two feet.

  The time our EOD guys saw a booby trap that everyone else had missed, saving at least half a dozen teammates’ lives.

  The time we caught a fish with a hand line in a canal off the Euphrates.

  The time I stepped into what I thought was an irrigation ditch but was really a sewer trench and then spent the rest of the mission with Iraqi toilet waste oozing through my toes. I can still smell that now.