O’Neill and his team ran toward the house and the sound of gunfire. This was bin Laden’s house. There had to be Al Qaeda fighters in there. The SEALs probably wouldn’t all make it out alive. O’Neill was going to do every-thing he could to take a few terrorists with him.
COUNTDOWN:
6 MINUTES
Jalalabad, Afghanistan
On the video feed, McRaven could see SEALs moving toward the main house. He could hear the explosions and the rounds being fired. But he couldn’t see anything inside the building.
He heard someone say, “One EKIA.” The SEALs had killed someone. Then he saw multiple explosions. Dark figures moved across the compound, SEALs methodically clearing the outbuildings. He could see beams of infrared light from their weapons’ laser sights sweep across the grounds, through the windows, into shadowy spaces where people could be hiding.
Then McRaven noticed something else—something disturbing. Some locals were gathering near one of the entrances. So far, no police. No military. But he knew that could change in a heartbeat.
White House
Leiter had been a navy pilot for six years. When he saw the helo’s tail clip the wall, he knew it was curtains. You can’t hit anything that hard and fly again, he thought.
Now that the SEALs were entering the main house, Mullen was frustrated. Sure, they were getting the video feed of the exterior, but they could only guess what was going on inside the building.
The packed conference room was silent. Mullen had been through this before. He learned a long time ago that there are some moments when you’re just not in control. He had a lot of faith the SEALs could pull this off. All he could do was wait.
It was excruciating. Clinton looked at Obama, who was hunched over, chin in hand. He looked calm. She didn’t know how he did it. There was so much chaos on the ground, the video was just gray swirls, blinking lights, then nothing. For Clinton, this had become a “really intense, stressful experience.”
McDonough couldn’t sit there. He knelt on one knee, then stood and left the room. He paced up the hall, then went back inside. Now that the SEALs were inside the house, you could hear the silence, he thought.
Langley, Virginia
Bash stared at the monitor. His heart raced as he watched the SEALs, who moved like ants on the screen. He kept checking the time. They had thirty minutes to get in and out. He heard gunfire. He longed to know what was going on.
Panetta sat quietly, his face pale. If people inside the house were firing weapons, they were protecting somebody important.
COUNTDOWN:
5 MINUTES
Abbottabad, Pakistan
O’Neill glimpsed two bodies on the floor just inside the door of the house, a man and a woman, lots of blood. Someone, more than one, was crying. Children. A SEAL came up to O’Neill, his eyes wide. He’d shot the man, he said, but the woman jumped at him as he was shooting. “I didn’t mean to hit her,” he said. “Am I going to get in trouble?”
“Let’s finish the mission,” O’Neill said.
Women martyring themselves was a sign they were in the right place. He checked out the dead man. He didn’t look like bin Laden. Probably the courier or his brother. O’Neill moved on.
A few of the guys were ahead of him, making their way down a long hallway with four doors. The SEALs went methodically through each room, bringing out little girls, boys, a couple of women. Frightened but unhurt. The SEALs took them to one of the first rooms to keep them out of harm’s way.
O’Neill heard a high wail coming from the final room up the hall, a chillingly familiar sound. He stepped inside. It was a tiny girl, maybe four years old, frightened out of her mind. All hell was breaking loose, the world’s most notorious bad guy was hiding upstairs, but he couldn’t just leave her alone in there. One of the SEALs picked her up and carried her down the hall to the safe room.
The last room secured, O’Neill spotted two SEALs at the end of the hallway using a sledgehammer to smash down a metal gate that blocked the stairway leading to the second floor. O’Neill’s eyes scanned the ceilings, the floors, looking for any signs of a bomb. He couldn’t stop thinking the house had to be booby-trapped, that it would explode any second. They had to get through that barricade. The longer they stayed in the house, the more danger they faced.
Standing in one place was driving him crazy. For the moment, there was nothing he could do. He heard one of his teammates say something about a helicopter crash. At first, O’Neill thought it was the Chinook with the reserves. Then he learned it was Chalk 1.
The pilot had encountered a mechanical issue while hovering over the compound, and dropped down hard. The rotors had blasted the muddy courtyard, blowing dust and debris everywhere. The chopper was toast.
Oh, shit, O’Neill thought. How the hell were they going to get out of here? At that point his training kicked in. Forget the helo, he thought. It was time to get upstairs and get the son of a bitch before he blew up the house. The mission had become a race against time.
COUNTDOWN:
4 MINUTES
Abbottabad, Pakistan
Chesney completed two laps around the compound. The perimeter was secure. If this was bin Laden’s house, why weren’t there IEDs rimming the compound? Where were the bombs and snipers? How could they leave this place so unprotected?
With other SEALs providing security on the perimeter, Chesney took the dog and headed inside as planned. Cairo’s job was to detect explosives and find anyone who might be hiding. So far, he hadn’t found a thing.
Chesney and Cairo stepped carefully inside the house. It was dark and the electricity didn’t seem to be working. Debris was everywhere. They passed by the bodies on the first floor.
Chesney was calm. He could hear shooting above him. There were about twenty SEALs in the house already, and he and Cairo had to work through the first floor, then the second and the third.
He didn’t know what Cairo might find. There might be a dozen bad guys hiding in the basement, or behind the walls. He couldn’t let his guard down for a second.
By the looks of the first floor, the SEALs had engaged the enemy. Steadily and methodically, Chesney and Cairo worked their way through the rooms. When broken glass crunched underfoot, Chesney picked up Cairo and carried him over the danger.
Meanwhile, at the end of the first-floor hallway, the SEALs gave up on the sledgehammer and set an explosive charge. Seconds later, the barricade blew apart. Now they could sweep the second floor.
O’Neill recalled something Maya told them during the briefings: Khalid bin Laden, Osama’s twenty-three-year-old son, lived on the second floor. If they made it up there, he’d be armed and waiting to protect his father.
“If you find Khalid, Osama’s on the next floor,” she’d said.
The staircase was inky dark. The entire house was dark, but with night-vision goggles, the SEALs had the advantage. Whoever was up there on the second floor could hear them coming, but couldn’t see them.
The SEALs started clearing the staircase. Suddenly a figure with an AK-47 appeared on a landing between the first and second floors. His head poked quickly into sight, then disappeared behind a banister.
This wasn’t good. The man could toss a grenade down the stairs and the shrapnel could take out several SEALs. They didn’t know how many others were up there behind him. But they couldn’t just stand there. They had to move.
COUNTDOWN:
2 MINUTES
Chesney headed toward the stairs. Cairo was nose to the floor, sniffing for bombs. Chesney was worried the building was wired to blow. Something was going on overhead, gunfire. Yelling. They were almost done here….
Meanwhile, on the staircase, O’Neill was five guys behind the point man. He was wondering whether he should pull them back, but the point man had thought out a brilliant next move. Before the mission, he had learned how to say a few phrases in Arabic and Urdu.
“Khalid, come here,” he whispered.
Confused by heari
ng his name, Khalid poked his head around the banister and said, “What?”
The point man shot him in the face. He dropped onto the stairs, spattering the walls and floor with flesh and blood. The SEALs quickly moved up the stairs to the second floor, stepping over the body on the way.
The men spread out, clearing rooms on the right and left. Meanwhile, the point man stayed on the stairs, aiming his gun at a curtain covering a doorway on the third floor. O’Neill moved up behind him.
Just before O’Neill reached him, the point man fired a shot at something moving behind the curtain. He didn’t know if he’d hit anyone. How many people were up there? Were they suicide bombers? There wasn’t much time to analyze the situation. O’Neill laid his hand on the point man’s shoulder. With a touch, he could give him the sign to halt or advance.
COUNTDOWN:
1 MINUTE
O’Neill heard the men spreading out all over the house. Some were still on the first floor; others were clearing the second. He and the point man stood still, staring up the steps at the curtain on the third floor.
O’Neill had had enough. Maybe he should wait for a few more guys, or have Cairo run up ahead of them. But time was running out. They had already been in the compound for a good while. The man in the room upstairs might be putting on a suicide vest or getting ready to detonate a bomb to blow up the house. Hell, he might toss a grenade down the stairwell.
O’Neill squeezed the point man’s shoulder. They charged up the steps—the point man in front, O’Neill right behind. The point man pulled the curtain to the side and moved straight ahead into the darkness, while O’Neill bolted into a room to his right.
The point man ran into two screaming women. He didn’t know what they were shouting, but it didn’t matter. Thinking one might be wearing a suicide vest, he tackled them to the ground. This way, if they detonated a bomb, he’d absorb most of the blast. He would die, but O’Neill might live.
O’Neill pressed forward into the darkness of the other room. A few steps inside, he saw a man in the half-light, standing at the foot of a bed. He was taller and thinner than O’Neill had expected. His beard was shorter, and his hair whiter. The deep eyes, the sunken face… there was no mistaking who he was. It was the face O’Neill had seen a thousand times before. Osama bin Laden.
The man lunged, grabbed a small woman O’Neill hadn’t even seen, and pulled her body in front of his, a human shield. She cried out. O’Neill didn’t know if bin Laden had a suicide vest, or if other soldiers were about to burst into the room to protect him.
It would be difficult to get a clean shot. He didn’t want to kill the woman, but this was the moment of truth. After all these years, O’Neill wasn’t going to leave without bin Laden—dead or alive. O’Neill tuned out the chaos—the screaming, the gunfire. He slowed everything down. He focused on the man holding the woman. He aimed his gun above her right shoulder, then squeezed the trigger. Once, twice. And in that moment, everything changed.
COUNTDOWN: GERONIMO
May 1, 2011
Abbottabad, Pakistan
O’Neill’s shots hit the man above his eyebrow, splitting his face open. Blood and skull sprayed the floor and walls. O’Neill put another bullet in his head, just to be sure.
The woman toppled toward O’Neill. He caught her, then carried her to the bed. Her face was blank, stunned.
No wonder. If the man was bin Laden, this was probably one of his wives. Nine minutes earlier, she had been here in this room with him, probably fast asleep. She had to have heard the helicopters, the gunfire and explosions, all the screaming downstairs and men running up the staircases, closer and closer. What had her husband said to her? Then a soldier crashed into their bedroom, her husband held her hard against him, and the flash of gunfire lit up the room. O’Neill had shot her husband in the face, just inches from her own. She’d felt him drop to the floor behind her. Of course the woman was in shock. If Maya was right, this was Amal, the youngest of bin Laden’s four wives.
Someone was crying, a child. O’Neill glimpsed a toddler boy, maybe two years old, in the corner. That had to be bin Laden’s youngest son.
O’Neill took a deep breath. The room was dark. Maybe the boy hadn’t seen anything. He thought about the child, a baby really, innocent of his father’s sins. Yet here he was, surrounded by strangers and screaming women, his father a heap on the floor, his mother lying impassive on the bed.
O’Neill stepped to the corner, tenderly scooped up the boy and placed him on the bed next to his mother. Other SEALs barged into the room. They saw O’Neill standing there, breathless, trying to process what had just happened.
“You OK?” one of them asked. He nodded, then asked, “What do we do next?”
The SEAL smiled at the body on the floor. It was dressed in a white sleeveless T-shirt, loose tan pants, and a tan tunic. Half the head was gone, but that SEAL didn’t need DNA to know that the guy on the floor was Osama bin Laden. Before they did anything else, they had to let the squadron commander know they had gotten their man.
Jalalabad, Afghanistan
McRaven continued to monitor the mission from his small alcove. Van Hooser gave him regular updates. The admiral watched the clock. They had been in the compound for fifteen minutes. The longer they stayed, the more likely it was that Pakistani police or the military would show up at the scene. Hell, people were already gathering outside.
Van Hooser told McRaven that the SEAL squadron commander was on the radio with an urgent message. “OK, put him on,” McRaven said.
A deep, clear voice said the words McRaven had been hoping for: “For God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo.”
“Geronimo” was the code name they’d given bin Laden before the mission. The message could only mean one thing: They’d found bin Laden. McRaven quickly relayed the message to Panetta.
Moments later, Van Hooser confirmed that “Geronimo was EKIA.” Enemy Killed in Action.
He passed the information to Panetta. The JOC exploded in cheers. McRaven wasn’t ready to celebrate yet. Neither was Van Hooser. “Shut the fuck up!” he shouted at the others. “We still have to get these guys home.”
Langley, Virginia
Panetta took a deep breath. All their hard work had paid off. Bin Laden was there, and they’d gotten him. They still had to positively identify the remains. The SEALs still had to get safely back to Afghanistan. But Panetta was relieved. He had risked so much pushing this mission. He stood up and hugged Morell. Aside from that brief moment, it was all business.
Gary, who had spent years chasing a ghost when others had given up, felt a great sense of pride. The Pacer was bin Laden, just as he, Sam, Maya, and the rest of his team had predicted. But his work didn’t end just because bin Laden was dead. The mission wasn’t over. They had to make sure Al Qaeda wouldn’t strike back, launch a 9/11-style attack in retaliation for bin Laden’s death.
But sitting there at the conference table, how could Gary not feel joyful? He had redeemed himself. Years ago, he had been disciplined for telling the truth about an insurgency that threatened to tear apart Iraq. At that point, Gary could have thrown in the towel. He could have moved on to other cases. Maybe he could have left the CIA altogether. But that wasn’t his style. He was relentless. When he did a job, he finished his work.
It was perseverance that had led to the fortress at the end of the street in a little-known resort town in the shadow of the Himalaya Mountains. He didn’t know if this would bring closure to bin Laden’s victims, or save his marriage. He only knew that bin Laden was dead, and the world was a better place.
And at some point, maybe they could celebrate. Maybe they could tap into the stock of alcohol they’d been accumulating for such an occasion. In the past, when they thought they were on the verge of getting bin Laden, someone would buy a bottle of scotch or gin or champagne. Then, when it didn’t work out, they’d leave it at the office, save it for a better day. Well, the future was now. They just had to pick the right
time to open the stash.
White House
President Obama stared at the screen with the live video feed, but he wasn’t really looking at the images. The words sank in.
“We got him,” Obama said.
Nobody left their seats. They still had to take bin Laden’s body out of the house, secure the women and children, look for computers and Al Qaeda documents that might be stored in the compound. They’d have to destroy the downed Black Hawk. With all its new technology, they didn’t want to leave it behind.
There was still a load of work to be done.
Biden began tucking a rosary ring back into his wallet. Mullen touched the rosary ring he wore and said, “Mr. Vice President, I’ve got fifty guys in a foreign country illegally. I’ve still got to fly them for an hour and a half through enemy airspace, find out who it is for sure, and then fly him on an Osprey down into the Gulf and bury him properly. Please, put the ring back on.”
Biden slipped the rosary back into his hand.
Abbottabad, Pakistan
The compound was secure. The women and children were together in one room. No one else had been found hiding in the house. They ransacked the compound for documents, computers, notebooks, maps—anything that could help them fight Al Qaeda in the future. O’Neill joined fellow SEALs as they loaded everything they could find into bags.
Meanwhile, Chesney and Cairo were headed up the stairs to the third floor when another SEAL stopped him. He said it was “crazy” on the third floor. They didn’t need Cairo up there. “It’s over. Bin Laden’s dead,” the SEAL said.
Countdown bin Laden Page 24