Panetta was confident. He had weighed the pros and cons of the operation a thousand times. No matter how often he and his staff examined the intelligence, it always said there was a damn good chance bin Laden was in Abbottabad. Now they were going to find out. He felt a sense of relief that, after all these months, it was finally going to happen.
He hadn’t slept well. He couldn’t get the mission out of his mind. When he woke, Panetta knew he had to go to Mass before he headed to the office.
When the Communion hymn finished, the congregation stood for the final blessing. Panetta felt good. The day and everything in it were in God’s hands.
COUNTDOWN:
4 HOURS
White House
The Situation Room was set up for a long day. Denis McDonough, the deputy national security advisor, had ordered sandwiches, drinks, and cookies from Costco.
Everybody was in place. Brennan had slept only a few hours the night before. From the time he got up, he went over everything in his mind, asking himself the same questions: What did we miss? What do we still have to do?
Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, hadn’t slept much either. Long before anyone had heard of Abbottabad or The Pacer, Leiter had scheduled his wedding for April 30. When McRaven slated an April 29 to May 1 window for the mission, McDonough had remembered his wedding invitation. He’d turned to Leiter and asked, “Isn’t that your wedding day?”
“Damn,” Leiter had muttered. “I’m in trouble.”
So, a week before their wedding, Leiter broke the news to his fiancée that he might have to work that weekend. She was stunned. They had big wedding-related events lined up, things they had planned for months. When the date of the raid changed from Saturday to Sunday, Leiter heaved a great sigh of relief—he didn’t have to postpone his wedding. Still, he told her they’d have to put off the honeymoon.
“When you find out why, you’ll understand,” Leiter said.
The wedding went beautifully. Leiter didn’t waste a moment thinking of the mission. He enjoyed the ceremony and festivities, thanks to a trick he’d learned as a navy aviator: Compartmentalize. You might be having a bad day at home, but once in the cockpit, you focus on the mission.
He walked into the Situation Room to a hail of congratulations. “Didn’t you just get married a few hours ago?” Mullen asked.
Leiter smiled, held up his hand to show the ring on his finger, and grabbed a coffee. Brennan had prepared the most up-to-date information. Afghanistan and Pakistan were quiet—at least as far as the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Pakistani military were concerned. Donilon arrived with his three-ring binder, talking points, scripts for various courses of action. They reviewed their game plan: a detailed tick-tock of who would pick up which phone and notify which official once the raid commenced.
Mullen was at the White House to make sure nobody tried to grab the steering wheel of the operation. With the live feeds and audio from the Chat Information Network, he knew that could easily happen in a room full of people accustomed to command. McRaven was running the show in Pakistan, and Mullen wanted senior officials’ opinions to stay in the Situation Room. The last thing they needed was backseat drivers meddling with the mission.
COUNTDOWN:
3 HOURS
Jalalabad, Afghanistan
The final briefing. McRaven and Van Hooser wanted to go over everyone’s role one last time.
O’Neill stepped inside the huge airplane hangar and joined a crowd of about a hundred people. For a secret mission, there sure are a lot of people here, he thought. Besides the SEALs, the aircrews, the mechanics, and the CIA people were gathered.
McRaven sat in a folding chair in the middle of the hangar. He was facing a couple of rows of chairs in front of him, but many of the military stood in a semicircle behind him. McRaven’s props were arranged up by his chair—a model of the compound and a big slide projector with key images of the mission. It was show time. The big steel doors rolled closed. McRaven was calm, cool, and confident.
He had every person taking part in the raid come to him and say his name and what his role was in the operation. They went over a checklist of everything they had to do. Sometimes McRaven stopped and grilled them. They had to answer each question without hesitation. And when one man finished, another would come up and do the same thing—from the lowest to the most important members of the team. It went on and on until the very last man.
The briefing was long. As McRaven wrapped it up, he realized he should say something to encourage the men. In a way, he wasn’t just their commander. He was their coach, and these men were his team, going into the biggest “game” of their lives. He could see them looking at him like, “OK, Boss, now’s the point where you give us some inspiring words.”
It was his role, his duty. McRaven stood up and moved closer to the group.
He told them that one of the reasons Operation Eagle Claw had failed was because the assault force was “overly conscious of operational security.” So when the C-130s hit a dust storm, they didn’t notify the assault helos. They were concerned that Iranians would pick up their communications.
“Look, here’s the deal,” McRaven said. “You’re out there, you talk to me if you have any concerns at all. I want you to talk to me. We’ll talk it out and we’ll go from there.”
He turned to the helicopter crews. The Black Hawks each had two pilots and a crewman from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers. The choppers had been modified to mask heat, noise, and movement. Even with all the stealth modifications, he urged the pilots to fly safely.
“Don’t try to fly so damn close to each other that you create a risky flight profile. Your job is to get the SEALs there safely. If you have problems with the helo, set down in a remote area and work through it. Slowly. Methodically. Safely.”
Then he focused on the SEALs. He warned them, “Don’t shoot any Pakistanis unless you absolutely have to, to save your life. Is that clear?”
They nodded. McRaven reminded them that the operation’s goal was to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. “Capture him if you can, but if he presents a threat at all, any threat whatsoever—kill him.”
McRaven had gone over the rules of engagement with them before, but he wanted to make sure there were no misunderstandings. No one knew what they’d encounter. In the middle of the night, in a confusing combat situation, anything could happen. Anyone at the site who appeared to pose a threat—male or female—would die. That’s what McRaven had told Obama and the national security team, and that’s what McRaven told the men in front of him.
He only had one more thing to convey, a little bit of Hollywood. He reminded the men that he was a big basketball fan. Some people smiled because they had played pickup games with him over the years. McRaven said he loved the movie Hoosiers. It was the story of a small-town Indiana high school basketball team in 1954 that defied the odds by making it to the state championship game.
McRaven told them about one of his favorite scenes. The team had just arrived in Indianapolis to play a squad from the big city. Most of the kids on the small-town team had never been to a city. The arena where they’d play the game looked cavernous.
“At one point, the coach, played by Gene Hackman, realizes the boys on the team are intimidated by the size of the gym, that they’ll be playing on this big stage in front of thousands of people,” McRaven said. “So in that arena, when no one else was there except his team, Hackman grabbed one of his players and handed him a tape measure. He told him to climb up on the shoulders of one of his taller teammates and measure the height of the basket. The player turns to Hackman and says, ‘Ten feet.’
“Hackman grabbed another player and told him to pace off the length of the court. The player does so. It’s ninety-four feet,” McRaven said.
The admiral was on a roll. His passion was contagious. The men gazed at him, nodding their heads. They knew where he was headed.
“The court in t
he arena is exactly the size of the court at home. The basket is exactly the height of the one at home,” McRaven said. He paused, then looked at his men. “Gentlemen, each of you has done hundreds of missions just like this one. This mission is no different. The only difference is that this time, the world will hear about it. It’s a bigger stage, but it’s exactly the same. Just play your game like you always have, and we will be successful,” he said.
McRaven was finished. The men in the front stood up. Some shook his hand as he walked out of the hangar into the warm evening.
It was the perfect message for O’Neill. He loved McRaven. The guy was born to give that speech, O’Neill thought. The men headed back to their barracks to suit up. They weren’t going to let the admiral down.
COUNTDOWN:
2 HOURS, 30 MINUTES
Langley, Virginia
Panetta had turned the large conference room across the hall from his office into a makeshift operations center. An RQ-170 Sentinel, a drone with a high-powered lens, would hover over the Abbottabad compound and provide a live video feed of the raid. Panetta would likewise be connected by secure video links to McRaven in Jalalabad and the president in the White House Situation Room.
A bank of laptops was arrayed along the tabletop. Gary would also monitor the operation from the conference room.
Morell was in Panetta’s office. They were about to head to the conference room when Panetta turned to him. “Michael, what do you think?” Panetta asked.
“I won’t be surprised if he’s there. I won’t be surprised if he’s not,” Morell said.
Panetta nodded. “I feel the same way.”
The room was starting to fill up. Admiral Eric Olson, commander of U.S. Special Operations, had just arrived. Others were testing the feeds from the drones and the audio links, ensuring clear, immediate communications with Jalalabad and the White House.
Panetta reached into his pocket and fingered his rosary. He’d keep it in his pocket for now. When the mission started, he would hold it in his hand.
Word came in: Another national security team meeting. Obama wasn’t in the Situation Room yet, but Donilon wanted a quick update. When Panetta appeared on the screen, Donilon asked if anyone had new information to share. Silence. Panetta didn’t have anything. No one did.
The meeting was over. This was it. The mission was a go. All they could do was wait. Everyone in the room felt a little tense. So many people had worked so long and so hard for them to get to this point. Analysts and operators had given up weekends, family dinners, children’s school functions—plays, conferences, graduations.
Morell was feeling the heat at home. For years, he had missed family events because of his job, and over the last few months, he’d been working longer and longer hours. Mary Beth was shouldering more of the responsibilities at home.
A few days earlier, a friend had given Morell tickets to the May 1 Washington Capitals playoff game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. When he saw he couldn’t use them, he asked his wife to come to his office to pick them up. He wanted her to give them away instead of letting them go to waste.
When she arrived at CIA headquarters, Mary Beth expected to go to his office as usual—but Morell told his security detail to meet her downstairs and hand her the tickets. With all the activity in the office, he didn’t want her to get suspicious. His security team took it a step further: They met her at the front gate. They wouldn’t allow her into the parking lot. “This is as far as you go,” they told her.
She was upset at that, but she really blew up when Morell told her he couldn’t attend their daughter’s last high school choral performance.
“It will just take an hour,” she said. “Whatever you’re doing can’t be that important.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t,” he said.
Mary Beth was furious. But what could Morell do?
Maybe if they got bin Laden, his wife would understand.
COUNTDOWN:
2 HOURS, 15 MINUTES
Jalalabad, Afghanistan
O’Neill put on his work clothes. He donned his ceramic body armor and packed his Nalgene water bottle, two protein bars, and his Heckler & Koch 416 automatic rifle with three extra magazines. He put his PVS-15 night-vision goggles on his helmet. He was ready.
The sun was setting. He walked to the fire pit where shooters from both squadrons had gathered. The thundering beat of heavy metal music blasted from the speakers. Usually, guys would joke around, throwing a few barbs at one another. They’d bullshit before heading into action. Not this time. This was serious.
Meanwhile, Command Sergeant Major Chris Faris walked into McRaven’s office. “It’s about time, sir,” he said.
McRaven nodded. Faris had become his right-hand man over the last few years. He was an Army Ranger who had seen action in some of the world’s most dangerous hot spots. McRaven bounced ideas off him, and Faris always answered with the truth. He was never disrespectful, and was fiercely protective of his commander.
Together, McRaven and Faris walked to the fire pit. The SEALs killed the music as they approached. McRaven could sense their tension. He understood that. There was always some anxiety before a mission. He’d be surprised if the men weren’t amped up.
The SEALs closed in around the commanders. Faris spoke first. He reminded them that the motto of their British counterparts, the SAS, was, “Who Dares, Wins.”
“Tonight, we are daring greatly and I’m confident that you will come home victorious,” he said. McRaven glanced at the men. They had their game faces on. He knew the men loved one another as brothers. They didn’t know what would happen to them tonight, but they knew they were lucky to have been chosen for this mission. They had worked their whole careers for a chance like this. McRaven kept his message short and simple.
“Gentlemen, since 9/11 each one of you has dreamed of being the man going on the mission to get bin Laden,” he said. “Well, this is the mission. You are the men. Let’s go get him.”
No one smiled. No one cheered. Buses rolled up to the fire pit to take the men to the hangar where the stealth Black Hawks were warming up. O’Neill had one last thing to do before he jumped on board.
He’d written letters to his wife, daughters, and family members, but he wanted to talk to his dad one last time. He always called him just before he left on a mission. It always put O’Neill in the right frame of mind. He stepped into a nearby doorway to make the call.
His father, Tom, answered right away. He had just pulled into a Walmart parking lot to pick up a few things, so he sat in the car outside the store and talked.
They had a routine. O’Neill would say he was “getting ready to hop on a bird.” His father would respond, “I wish I was there to go with you.” O’Neill would reply, “I wish you were, too, Dad.”
O’Neill stuck with the script. But after Tom said he wished he could go, O’Neill broke the code. “Don’t worry, Dad,” he said. “I’m with some great guys.”
Tom paused for a moment. Something was wrong. “Everything OK, son?”
“Yeah, everything’s good,” he said. O’Neill took a deep breath. If this was it, if he was killed in the raid, he wanted his old man to know how he felt about him. How much he loved him.
“Hey, Dad. I just wanted to say thanks for everything. Thanks for teaching me how to shoot free throws. Thanks for teaching me how to be a man. It’s nice that we got to know each other as adults,” O’Neill said.
His father knew his son couldn’t talk about the mission, but he could hear the finality in his voice. He was going into the dark. Otherwise, why would he be saying these things? Tom was scared, but didn’t know what to say. O’Neill ended the conversation, “I’ve got to go to work.”
“I love you,” Tom told his son.
“I love you, too,” O’Neill said. “Goodbye.”
O’Neill stood there for a moment in silence. He knew his father was worried, but he’d had to do it. Had to. Finally, he put the phone away and jogged to the bus
.
He stared out the window as the vehicle pulled up to the airfield about a mile away. The Black Hawks were out on the runway. Huge stadium lights with blinding beams had been set up around them. They faced outward so no one could see the helicopters on the ground.
When O’Neill got off the bus, he took a leak. No one wanted to be thinking about a full bladder in the hours to come. The men boarded in teams. O’Neill and Chesney were on Chalk 2, which would trail Chalk 1 into the compound.
COUNTDOWN:
1 HOUR, 39 MINUTES
Jalalabad, Afghanistan
McRaven was ready. He counted down the seconds, then issued the command: “Launch the assault force. I say again, launch the assault force.”
Van Hooser relayed McRaven’s message to the SEAL squadron commander on one of the two Black Hawks. Moments later, McRaven peered out of his alcove at the command center and watched on the screens as the Black Hawks lifted off.
Everything was live, including the Chinooks with the QRF, the chopper carrying the fuel, and the helo accompanying it. The gorilla package, with the fighter planes and AC-130s, was in the air—just inside the Afghan border, but ready to cross if needed. It all felt very businesslike. McRaven knew he had done everything he could do—all the right planning, all the right rehearsals, great leaders on the ground and in the helos.
There wasn’t much left for him to do but stand by to make decisions if something went sideways. He could see the view from the helicopters and listen to the pilots’ voices on the radio.
COUNTDOWN:
1 HOUR, 30 MINUTES
Somewhere over Afghanistan
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