Gunslingers

TWO YEARS LATER

So, I had stayed. We had released one final, goodbye album for Jimmy and then we had parted ways as a band. We were still the best of friends; we still loved and cared for each other, but the music wasn't the same without Jimmy, no matter how many drummers we tried. And our fans understood. They knew our pain.

Carol had completely left our group. She had needed to get away. But Rae was with us again. She was trying to bring Carol back in. Rae was the only one who could get the widow to talk to her. We all missed her, but we were glad to have Rae back.

But I stayed in the SEALs. I had stayed because I needed to be the one to get back at Jimmy's killers. I had no idea who they were, but I did know that Bin Laden had started it all. I knew he was the man who had essentially killed my friend; he needed to die for that.

Brian, Zacky, and Johnny had all moved onto teaching. They were wonderful at it too. Every single one of their students loved them. We were moving forward, slowly but surely. It was hard, and every damn step hurt. Every turn reminded of us of who we were leaving behind, but it felt good to also feel better. It was crazy. We missed him, but we loved him enough to know we needed to keep moving forward.
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"Meeting 0800." That was all the text said. It was all my commanding officer, Mike, had written. And I was as intrigued as ever.

Only a handful of guys in my squadron had received the same message. My friend, Greg, called me that night as I was getting ready for the next morning.

"You get that text?" he asked.

"Yeah. You got any scoop? Heard anything?"

"Nope. I know Walt got it too," Greg said, "I guess there is some sort of list."

He rattled off a few other names from the supposed list. It wasn't whole teams, but senior guys like me, Greg, and Walt.

"I can't wait t find out what this is all about," I said, "Sounds kind of suspect."
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Mike told us we were heading to North Carolina to do a joint readiness exercise. He had no other information, much like everyone else. All we were supposed to bring was our standard assault gear and we'd all know more Monday.

Scanning the page, I saw nothing on the long list was giving away what the mission was. I saw the other guys doing the same thing. Clearly all of us had come to the same conclusion that we knew fucking nothing.

"How long are we going to be gone?" Walt asked.

"Unclear," Mike said, "We leave Monday."

Questions continued. They were the types of questions we would have asked for any mission or training session, but everything just coming back to more confusion and questions by all of us senior guys.

When the meeting had disbursed, we all headed to our own lockers to pack. We were all making guesses, of course. That was something you did when you didn't know your mission. Some guys figured we'd be in Libya for a few weeks. Others bet on Syria or even Iran. Greg, who seemed to be mulling over all the questions and non-answers, came out with the boldest prediction we had ever heard.

"We're going to get UBL," he said with a small smirk on his face.

UBL. It was the CIA and FBI version of spelling his name... Usama Bin Laden.

"How do you figure, Greg?" I asked, pulling out gear for the pack list.

"Look, when we were asking them about the plan, they said we were going to a place where there is a base with infrastructure." Greg pulled out his own bag. "If we don't need any of these things, we're going back to Iraq or Afghanistan. Somewhere there is an American base. I'd say we're going to Pakistan, and we're basing in Afghanistan."

"No way," Walt said with conviction. "But if we are, I've been to Islamabad. It's a shit hole."
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As I pulled up the North Carolina base, I saw two of my buddies walking into one of the buildings. I gave a quick honk and parked in a nearby space. They stopped and waited for me. A light rain was beginning to fall, and I hustled over to the guys. I needed to know what was going on since I was the last to arrive.

"You're late," one of the guys said, "We just finished lunch. What time did you get on the road?"

"A little late," I said, skipping right to why we were there. "What do we have?"

"You ready?" The guy was smiling. "UBL."

"No fucking way." I couldn't believe Greg was right the whole time. I couldn't fucking believe it. Now all of the talk from the different guys made sense.

"Yep, UBL," the other guy said, "They found him."

"Where?" I asked, once again not worrying about the ramifications of needing instant gratification.

"Pakistan."
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There was a conference room filled with every possible map and CIA operation possible. This is where we'd be learning. There was a scale model of UBL's home. There was a diagram of the compound on one wall. The compound was huge with a guesthouse on its property as well. The guesthouse was a peripheral assignment; I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish I was going to the roof of the main building. But I was going to the guesthouse. Of, fucking, course.

The other guys filed into the room for what would begin a long day of debriefings. Tom, one of the team leaders, walked in and closed the door. He waited for us all to settle and then he motioned to the model.

"They call him the Pacer because he walks for hours. They keep seeing the Pacer there," Tom said, pointing to a courtyard on the east side of the compound. "According to what the intel folks are saying, he walks in the garden area to exercise from time to time. They think the Pacer is UBL."
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Training began. If we were going to do this, we were going to do it right. That meant that the CIA had built a fucking scale building exactly like the one in Pakistan for us to practice on. We were going to practice and practice until President Obama and his advisers decided what option to go with.

The White House was nervous because previous operations like this one had gone to shit. We had fucked up again and again, and if we had UBL, we did not want to fuck this one up. So while we waited for the big wigs, we practiced.

After each rehearsal, we made little changes to the plan. With each practice, we realized what we could do to improve, what we could do to make sure we were in and out as quickly as possible. The SEALs were designed to not be seen, to get in and out quickly.

It was announced that we would be heading out west for another week of training and then a full mission profile. We still weren't approved, but we were going to show the politicos that we were ready whenever they were.
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The window of opportunity to launch was short. The illumination cycle would start increasing the following week. We wouldn't have these types of optimal conditions again for a month. Plus, with everything in place, the longer we held off, the greater the concern that the mission would leak. In the three weeks since we started planning, the number of people who knew about the operation had expanded exponentially.

With the president's blessing, we'd be launching tomorrow. To say we were nervous would be a lie. SEALs didn't get nervous, but we were ready. We wanted to end this; we wanted to be the ones. No more briefs. No more good idea fairy. No more fucking waiting.
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"One minute."

The crew chief slid the door open. I slid the Fast Rope Insertion/Extraction System (FRIES) bar into place. The fast rope was connected to the FRIES bar, which allowed it to fall cleanly to the ground. The bar was held in place with a pin in its base. I ran my hand along the bar and made sure the pin was seated. The crew chief checked it as well. I gave the rope a hard tug to make sure it was secure and then slid my legs out over the edge of the helicopter and into the breeze.

I grabbed the rope and tried to lean out far enough to see ahead of us. Several of the houses we passed over had lighted pools and manicured gardens behind tall stone walls. I was used to seeing mountains or villages made up of clusters of mud huts. From above, Abbottabad reminded me of flying over the suburbs in the United States.

I leaned out the door and finally caught a glimpse of the compound. The flight from Jalalabad had taken about ninety minutes, and we would be arriving well after midnight. It was pitch-black and none of the lights in the surrounding houses were on. It seemed like the whole block was without power. Rolling blackouts in the area were common.

The engine noise changed as the helicopter started to hover. Once over the predetermined fast-rope point, I could throw the rope. The hover was rough and it was apparent the pilots were having trouble holding station. It felt like they were wrestling the helicopter, trying to force it to cooperate. My eyes flicked from the ground to the crew chief, waiting for the helicopter to get into position so I could throw the rope.

"GO GO GO" ran in a loop in my head.

The pilots never had an issue holding a hover during rehearsals. Something was wrong. We all desperately wanted out of the helicopter and onto the ground.

"We're going around," I heard over the troop net.

"Shit," I thought. "We haven't even gotten on the ground yet, and we are already going to plan B."

Suddenly, the helicopter kicked to the right ninety degrees, and I could feel my stomach drop like it was riding a roller coaster. The rotors above me screamed as the Black Hawk tried to claw its way back into the air. With each second, the helicopter slipped closer toward the earth. From my side of the chopper I could see the compound rushing up at us through the open door.

I struggled to find a handhold and slide back into the cabin. There was little room behind me as all my teammates had pushed forward prepping to fast-rope. Then I felt Walt's hand grab my gear and pull me deeper into the cabin. His other hand shot out and grabbed the sniper next to me. I leaned back with all my strength. My legs kicked in the air as I tried to get them inside. I knew if my legs were expose when we hit, they would get pinned or cut off.

The closer we got to the ground, the angrier I became. Each and every assaulter had sacrificed so much throughout their individual careers to get to this point. We all felt extremely lucky to have been chosen for this mission and now we were about to die without even getting a chance to do our part.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," I thought. "This is going to hurt."
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My body was tense and my abs screamed as I tried to fold my legs to my chest.

All I could see was the ground coming up at me through the large open door. Helicopters are not like airplanes that can glide in for a crash landing. When helicopters stop working, they fall out of the sky like a rock. When they hit, rotor blades snap off, sending shrapnel and debris in all directions. Sitting in the open door, I feared the cabin would roll, crushing me underneath.

I could feel Walt tugging on my kit, pulling me back inside the cabin. No matter how much I pulled my legs close, they were still outside the door. The sniper next to me was stuck with one leg inside the cabin and the other outside of it.

Seconds before impact, I felt the nose dip. I held my breath and waited for impact. The helicopter shuddered as the nose dug into the soft ground like a lawn dart. One minute, the ground was rushing up at me. The next minute, I was at a dead stop. It happened so fast, I didn't even feel the impact.

"Get the fuck out," Walt yelled at me, shoving me forward.

I dropped from the cabin and landed in the courtyard in a crouch. Despite wearing more than sixty pounds of gear, I didn't feel the weight or the jolt from the fall. Without looking back, I ran forward like an Olympic sprinter away from the wreck. Sliding to a halt thirty yards away, I turned back and saw the wreckage for the first time.

When the helicopter crashed, the tail boom got caught up on the twelve-foot privacy wall. The tail's single load-bearing section propped the Black Hawk up and kept the rotors from hitting the ground. If any other part of the helicopter hit the wall, or if we had tripped and the rotor hit the ground first, none of us would be walking away unscathed. Teddy and his copilot had somehow pulled off the impossible.
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Greg was prepping a charge on the locked iron gate. All around him were guys with their weapons trained out, pulling security.

I moved toward a prayer room near the gate to make sure it was clear. The room had a large, open area with thick rugs on the floor and pillow forming a perimeter around the walls. We knew from intelligent analysts that the room was most likely used to meet guests, but that seemed to be infrequent. Once cleared, I pulled off an IR chemlight and threw it by the door to alert others the room was secure.

We headed to the guest house once we saw the second helicopter land safely. Will took up a position to the left of the door we needed to get into while I tried the knob. I pulled down the L-shaped handle twice, but it was locked.

Stepping back, Will popped his sledgehammer off the back of his kit and pulled out the extendable handle. I covered him from the right.

Will reared back and hit the lock with a sharp whack. The hammer slammed into the knob, but only left a battered handle and a deep gash. Will gave it two more whacks, but nothing budge. The doors were solid metal and we knew the sledgehammer wasn't going to work.

Turning to the windows, Will tried to smash out the glass so we could pull the sheet down and look inside. Wedging the head of the hammer through the bars, he tried to break the panes of glass but each time he pulled back, the head of the hammer got jammed. The bars were too narrow.

"I am going explosive," I whispered to Will, and grabbed the breaching charge of the back of my kit.

"Failed breach," came over the radio. "We're moving to the Delta Compound at this time."

Taking a knee to the right of the door, I peeled the backing off the adhesive strip on the breaching charge and set it across the mangle knob and lock. I always knelt while I placed breaching charges because I had been shot at through the doors in Iraq many times. Fighters liked to spray the middle of the door, blindly firing where they thought a man would be standing.

The third member of my team entered the compound. He was one of the last guys out of the chopper and had just gotten to us. His job was to clear a staircase that led to the roof of the guesthouse. As he started towards the stairs, which were directly in line with the door, AK-47 rounds tore through the glass above the door, narrowly missing him.

I rolled away as bullets cracked just inches over my head. The first rounds always surprise the shit out of your. I could feel pieces of glass hit my shoulder.

"That is not a suppressed weapon," I thought.

It was easy to tell who was firing, since we had suppressors on our weapons. Unsuppressed rounds meant enemy fire. Someone inside had an assault rifle. Aiming chest high, he fired a blind barrage. He was a caged animal. There was nowhere he could go, and he knew we were coming.

Rolling out of the "fatal funnel" of the doorway, I made it to my feet and moved to the window a few feet down the wall from the door.

"Ahmed al-Kuwaiti," Will said, "Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, come out!"

Smashing the window with my barrel, I fired back toward his likely position. Will was still yelling, and with no response. With no time to spare, I made my way back to the explosive charge, which was still hanging from the door. The only way to get inside was to blow the door. As I got close, I made sure to stay extra low.

Once we blew the door, I planned to throw a grenade inside before we went in to clear it. Ahmed al-Kuwaiti had proven he wasn't going down without a fight, and I was not going to risk anything.

The latch was throw, but we had no idea who was coming out or what to expect. Was he going to just crack the door and throw a grenade, or hang his AK-47 out and spray?

The door cracked open slowly, and I could hear a woman's voice calling out. That didn't mean we were safe. If she was coming out with a suicide vest on, we were dead. This was Bin Laden's compound. These were his facilitators. Shots were fired, so we knew they were willing to die to protect him.

Notes

Yes, another flash forward. This is where the meat of the story is. So, stay in and stay focused loves cause it's about to get into the bumpy, gritty, and downright fucking crazy.

Long update... to be continued!