The operation was still contingent on Obama saying “go.” They were preparing as if he would. And while intelligence hadn’t yet confirmed that The Pacer was bin Laden, Gary just knew he was. He had always been the skeptical one, but with time his confidence had increased. Everything his team had collected made sense. The pieces of the puzzle snapped together. That compound had to be bin Laden’s hideout.
The president had given McRaven three weeks to put together a possible raid. Every detail had to be perfectly planned out, from the weight each helicopter could carry to the amount of fuel needed to get there and back. Weather conditions, ambient temperatures, local religious holidays—nothing was left to chance.
They’d have to know precisely where to land, where to go in. McRaven already had an idea of how he would conduct a raid, based on surveillance photos, the model of the compound, and other information. Gary’s job was to make sure they had every scrap of intelligence they needed. He and Sam were headed down to North Carolina to advise the SEALs as they planned the operation.
There was another critical member of their team who was going to North Carolina: Maya. In her late twenties, Maya had been involved in the hunt for bin Laden for years. Maya was slender, dark, and attractive. She was smart, driven, sometimes intimidating. She was an analyst who knew every fact in a case—and was quick to tell you so. And she knew more about bin Laden than anyone else in the Pakistan-Afghanistan Department.
Gary’s wife hadn’t been surprised when he told her about the trip. She shrugged. She knew the signs, she’d seen it coming. He’d spent long hours at the office, and when he was home, he was preoccupied. He picked at his food and wasn’t interested in going out.
She didn’t know what her husband was working on. She never did. The cases were secret, a given in any relationship that involved a CIA agent. But this case was clearly a big deal. The only thing she knew was that while he was gone, she’d be carrying the full load of kids, housework, bills, errands, as well as her own work. He’d promised his family he’d take them all on a getaway trip when he got back. But honestly, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to get away until after this mission played itself out.
Everything was shifting into a higher gear now. At the beginning, Gary had briefed officials about the compound, where it was, who was there, and why The Pacer might be bin Laden. Now the meetings were more about strategy: bombs, drones, raids, escape routes, damage estimates.
In those high-level meetings, Gary was a background guy, only present in case officials had questions like “What would fourteen days of additional intelligence collection time do for you?” or “Gary, can we get more access to the compound?” That was OK with him. After all, his team had developed the information that led them to the compound in the first place.
Gary, Sam, and Maya would be the main briefers at the North Carolina base. They were a team made up of very different characters. In his late forties, with his academic-style goatee and scruffy mustache, Gary was the quiet philosophical one. He looked older and more careworn than his colleagues. He’d dropped twenty pounds in the previous months and was thinner than he’d been in years. His 180 pounds hung on his tall frame. Sam was in his early forties but had a clean-shaven baby face that made him look younger. Like Gary, he was quiet and analytical. Maya was the most outgoing of the trio. With her casual clothes and ponytail, she looked like someone who could be your sister’s best friend, a woman who was comfortable hanging out with the guys.
The three had been working so hard for so long, and now they were getting so close. They were excited about briefing the SEALs. Their job would be straightforward: Give them the information they need to successfully carry out the mission.
Even though they hadn’t identified The Pacer, Gary continued collating daily intelligence from a wide range of secret sources—from the safe house in Abbottabad, satellite photos, intercepts.
They’d monitored the compound twenty-four hours a day for months. They knew every detail. They looked for any possible change. Was The Pacer still there? What about al-Kuwaiti and his family? They were working at an unsustainable tempo, but they’d have to keep it up until the president made a decision.
Now they were striving to figure out as much as possible about the configuration of the interior of the living quarters. And they had some high-tech help. They were able to go “back in time” and look at old satellite images of the main house when it was under construction in 2005. They knew how many doors and windows there were inside, the layout of the rooms, the height of the ceilings. Not much more.
Doors, windows, crawl spaces, the angles of eaves. Gary had never been so taken up with construction details. What they didn’t know was what the people in the house had done after the roof went up. Gates, booby traps, underground tunnels—any of those things could have been installed, and they wouldn’t have a clue.
As he finished packing, he mused over how much more work remained. Good work. Gary felt positive. When he’d gone to Panetta in August with the big break, Gary wasn’t sure. There was only just enough there to tell his boss.
But over time, with more facts and experience, he’d begun to see the big picture. He was getting closer to the target. He equated it to a game of darts. Taking shots that keep landing closer and closer to the bull’s-eye, that keep checking out. In the end, if you have a tight group of shots, you know you’re on the target. It’s there. And that’s what happened here, with the compound. Everything seemed to be coming together.
And they were getting the support they needed to make it happen. Gary was struck by Obama. The president had an unbelievably impressive mind. He read every word of every report. And Panetta was a very elite leader. He pushed them hard.
And Gary did the same. He pushed his team. He reminded them that every passing day had a cost. “Every day we wait, there’s a price built into it. The opportunity could dissolve and dissipate, and the chance to get him could go away.” Every decision had to be made against that ticking clock.
Gary hammered that point home by two numbers he prominently wrote on the window running across the top of his office wall. The one in red Magic Marker represented the number of days since they had discovered the compound. That number went up every day. The point was that with each passing day, the likelihood increased that someone in the compound would discover the surveillance and The Pacer would leave. He’d be gone, just like that. The number in blue represented how much time their bosses gave them to complete a certain task related to the bin Laden operation. That number would go down every day.
When Gary had started writing the numbers on his window, he’d done so out of frustration. But then he continued the practice to build pressure on his analysts. It was the first thing they saw when they entered his office and the last on their way out. It was a reminder that they had to work faster, harder.
The work was exciting, and it was a grind. Gary felt the weight every single day.
He zipped shut his bag, kissed his wife, and told her he’d be back soon. He didn’t know just when.
COUNTDOWN: 24 DAYS
April 7, 2011
Somewhere in North Carolina
Gary and his staff set up shop in a clandestine CIA facility in the middle of Nowhere, North Carolina, networking computers and collating top-secret documents for SEAL Team 6 to study. This was going to be a long day, one of many over the next few weeks.
Some of the top brass was already in the room for the big reveal. McRaven was there. So was his boss, Admiral Eric Olson, the head of the U.S. Special Operations Command, which provided command, control, and training for all of the military’s elite units. They were joined by Captain Perry “Pete” Van Hooser, the head of the legendary SEAL Team 6. They’d tell the chosen men what their mission was about, then share the classified materials and answer any questions.
This moment was almost surreal for Gary, the culmination of years of work by his team. He knew Sam and Maya felt the same way. The trio understood every detail of th
e bin Laden operation. They fired up the coffee machine in the adjacent kitchen, tested the microphone up front, and waited.
A few miles away, a van full of SEAL Team 6 members and their gear was rolling in their direction. O’Neill and three of his SEAL buddies, Mack, Paul, and Roth, had been traveling for two days. They flew from Miami to Virginia Beach on April 6. Once back at their headquarters they had walked straight into their commander’s conference room, where most of the squadron’s leadership was waiting. O’Neill noticed they weren’t the only guys who’d been recalled from another assignment—Chesney was there, too.
Willy, the command master chief, rattled off names from a list—SEALs whose personal situations would keep them in Virginia Beach. Willy asked them to leave the room so the remaining SEALs could be “read in,” meaning they’d hear details regarding an operation.
The men left and the doors closed behind them. Twenty-four SEALs remained.
“What I’m about to tell you cannot be discussed outside this room,” Willy warned. He then told them almost nothing.
They were going to be part of a highly important mission, but he couldn’t say where, or what their objective might be. The target would resemble some of the ones they had hit many times in Afghanistan. It was in a sensitive area, and the only access was to literally be dropped on top of the target. The men would be divided into four teams, with four leaders. O’Neill would lead one of the teams.
Willy took questions, but he answered almost every one the same way: “We can’t tell you yet.”
As the day progressed, Willy disclosed that the top brass wanted only the most experienced guys on this mission. That created a strange hierarchy. Chiefs usually stayed behind at the base, while team leaders directed the mission in the field. For this operation, however, the chiefs would run the teams, and team leaders would do the “sled dog” work, serving as “assaulters, breachers, and snipers.”
Three of the teams would handle the assault on the target, Willy said. Meanwhile, O’Neill’s team would hold security on the perimeter.
“What kind of air support will be available on this target?” someone asked.
“There will be no air support,” Willy said.
Huh? No air support? What the hell was going on? O’Neill thought. Was this some kind of prank?
Chesney sat in the back of the room, listening carefully, feeling proud to be there. The one thing he knew for sure was he was on O’Neill’s squad. Chesney admired and respected O’Neill. He had enormous faith in his ability as a leader and a fighter. And as Chesney scanned the room, he smiled. Everybody there had immeasurable talent and experience. This was a Dream Team.
Chesney realized how far he had come from that trailer park in East Texas. He had worked hard, and was helped along, too, by SEALs who’d mentored him. Now he wasn’t part of some random SEAL unit. He was counted among the elite. No matter how difficult this mission turned out to be, he’d remember that.
Before Willy wrapped things up, he told everyone they’d have to be at the “The Point” the next day. The SEALs knew Willy was talking about a twelve-hundred-acre CIA paramilitary base about eighty-five miles south in North Carolina. O’Neill made plans to travel with Mack, Paul, and Roth.
The trip was only an hour and a half, time enough for the men to listen to music, share some laughs, and wonder out loud what they were heading into. Pine and oak trees finally outnumbered people and farm animals, and they pulled up to the gates.
Chesney was not far behind them, driving with his four-legged passenger, Cairo.
Meanwhile, the conference room at the base was filling up. Jeremy Bash arrived, as well as Michael Vickers. One by one, the SEALs came in, dressed in casual T-shirts and jeans. They stood among the folding tables, computers, and printers and caught up with their friends. Others followed the scent of fresh coffee to the makeshift kitchen, for doughnuts and hot drinks.
McRaven moved to a stage in the front of the room, which resembled a small theater with raised seating. Everyone stopped talking and took a seat. He stared toward the back and waited until someone shut the doors.
He thanked the men for getting there on such short notice. Then he turned the briefing over to a CIA officer who handed out nondisclosure forms. The mood in the room suddenly changed.
Some guys had been pissed off because they had just come home from long deployments and been called back from family vacations or relaxing training exercises. Their wives and children had been upset. Some believed they might be sent to Libya. Others thought they’d been called in for “some kind of no-notice exercise just to impress the brass.” But nondisclosure forms were serious business, almost never issued for training exercises. The room was silent as the men filled out the forms. Whatever was ahead could be some heavy shit.
After the forms were collected, Captain Van Hooser stepped to the stage. He said the CIA analysts would fill in the details, but he wanted to be the one to tell them the mission objective: They were going after Osama bin Laden.
The room was silent. Before the men had a chance to react, Gary came on. He had about seven minutes to give them the big overview of how they had ended up on the road to Abbottabad. It was the appetizer before the main course.
In the past, special ops had been sent on missions to get bin Laden, but they all turned out to be false alarms. Gary wanted to show the men that this time they had the goods. He wanted to say “this is what we know, and this is what we don’t know.” And if he laid out all the intelligence like that—in clear, honest terms—they wouldn’t be skeptical.
Gary told them about the man they’d dubbed The Pacer, who took daily walks in a compound in the city of Abbottabad, Pakistan. But the man, Gary said, never left the property. “We have reason to believe that The Pacer is Osama bin Laden,” he said. “You guys are going in to get him.”
A number of SEALs glanced at each other with a look that said, “Are they screwing with us, or is this for real?” There were no smiles. No high fives. Bash could tell that this was “a holy shit” moment for many of them. They finally had bin Laden in their sights—and they were the ones who were going to take him out.
The SEALs tried not to show emotion, but Chesney was pumped. Yes, he knew it would be a challenging, dangerous mission, one with a significant likelihood of casualties on the American side. But for him it was the “opportunity of a lifetime.”
For six hours, Gary, then Maya, then Sam and others laid out the genesis of their information, and the options President Obama was considering. They went over the couriers, al-Kuwaiti, the slides, videos, inhabitants, maps, and the model of the compound. The operators studied the compound’s layout—the walls, gates, driveway, and guesthouse.
O’Neill noticed that The Pacer had arranged things “to keep the world out, and himself in.” The compound was built to block every possible view from the outside. That’s why the CIA had been unable to confirm his identity.
As the reality settled in, the SEALs realized there was no way they all would get out of there alive. Bin Laden had to have bodyguards, maybe a small army. The house had to be rigged with explosives. Even if they breached the compound, they’d be blown to pieces. Hell, they might not even get there if the Pakistani air defense system brought them down on the way. They might be blown out of the sky by an RPG as they were leaving.
O’Neill’s mind kept returning to 9/11, and all the people “who went to work on a Tuesday morning and then an hour later, decided to jump out of a skyscraper because it was better than burning alive.” They were Americans. They were innocent civilians. There was still an empty place at their family dinner tables, a pain that would never heal. O’Neill knew he could die on this mission. But if they could take out bin Laden, it would be worth it.
CIA graphic of compound.
Chesney knew bin Laden’s capture or death wouldn’t mean the end of Al Qaeda or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it would be a “measure of revenge” for the deaths of almost three thousand civilians who pe
rished on September 11, 2001. That’s worth something, he thought.
After six hours, the meeting was adjourned, but the SEALs weren’t going home. McRaven said they would stay for most of the week and practice, practice, practice. The teams would get together individually in the Operations Center to plan their parts, then they’d head to another part of the base, where the CIA had built a life-sized mock-up of bin Laden’s compound. They would spend days at the site working on tactics—how to attack the target—before moving west to another location for a full dress rehearsal.
McRaven told them the mission’s name: Operation Neptune’s Spear. In Roman mythology, Neptune was the sea god, who carried a trident, a three-pronged spear, a magical weapon that wielded great power. The trident had a deep connection to the SEALs. It was part of the elite unit’s insignia, symbolizing the SEALs’ connection with the sea.
McRaven hoped it would inspire the men, and perhaps bring good luck on a dangerous mission to get rid of the world’s most notorious bad guy. They’d need all the help they could get.
Meanwhile, the SEAL Team 6 members didn’t want to waste a minute. After the meeting, they stayed in the building. Bash watched the men examine the model of the compound. He listened as they discussed tactics. The SEALs had been on so many missions that they had a general idea how they’d do this one. It didn’t take long before they had sketched out a basic plan: You got a three-story house in a compound surrounded by a big wall. Bad guys on the third floor. A helo would drop guys outside the wall to provide security. Another chopper would hover over the house, where SEALs would fast-drop to the roof and the yard. Then they’d sweep the home.
The team leaders nodded at one another, then approached their commanders. It was time to start rehearsing. And Bash wanted to be there to watch. So after he left the building, he jumped into the back of a flatbed truck with several other people. With everyone on board, the driver headed to a remote section of the base. A few minutes later, Bash glimpsed a clearing behind a thicket of pines. As he got closer, he saw it—a stack of empty shipping containers, arranged at precise angles. Plywood cutouts stood in for stairways, doors, gates, and windows.
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