Gunslingers

Through the sweat running down my face and the grit in my eyes from the rotor wash, I could just make out the figure of a woman in the green flow of my night vision googles. She had something in her arms, and my finger slowly started applying pressure to my trigger. I could see our lasers dancing around her head. It would only take a split second to end her life if she was holding a bomb.

As the door continued to open, I saw that the bundle was a baby. Al-Kuwaiti's wife, Mariam, came out with the child pressed against her chest. Behind her, three more kids shuffled out of the house.

"Come here," Will called out to them in Arabic.

I kept my rifle trained on them as they moved forward.

"He is dead," Mariam said to Will in Arabic as well. "You shot him. He is dead. You killed him."

Will did a quick pat down of the woman.

"Hey, she is saying he is dead," Will said to me, translating her Arabic so I could understand what the fuck was going on.

I was crouched at the right side of the door and pushed it open. I spotted a pair of feet lying in the doorway of the bedroom. There was no way of knowing if he was still alive, and I wasn't taking any chances. Will gave me a squeeze on the shoulder so I knew he was ready, and we entered the hallway. I shouldered my rifle and squeezed off several rounds to make sure he was down.

The house smelled of heating oil. Stepping over al-Kuwaiti's body, I saw a pistol and an AK-47 on the ground just inside the bedroom door. I kicked them away and continued to clear the room, which had a bed in the center and then smaller beds along the walls for the children. The whole family slept in the same room.

On the other side of the hall was a kitchen area. Our return fire had destroyed the room, shredding the pantry and exploding dry goods all over. Water trickled off the counter. The stove had several holes in it and the cheap tile was smashed, with chunks strewn across the counter and floor.

The floor was slippery from the water and al-Kuwaiti's blood, which had pooled in the hall and gotten on our boots. We hastily cleared both rooms and headed outside.

"Shots fired C1, building is secure at this time," I said over troop net, and tossed an IR chemlight at the guesthouse's front door. We moved toward the main building to backfill the other teams.

It hadn't even been ten minutes since our chopper crash as Will and I headed through the open gate to the main compound. We were headed toward the north door of A1.

When the charges were set on the doors, we entered one of the main entrances. Our point man snapped off a shot. The round struck the occupant, later confirmed to be Abrar al-Kuwaiti, and he disappeared into the room. Slowly moving down the hall, the team stopped at the door. Abrar al-Kuwaiti was wounded and struggling on the floor. Just as they opened fire again, his wife Bushra jumped in the way to shield him. The second burst of rounds killed both of them.

At the end of the hall was a locked door, which was directly in line with the north door. With the south side of A1 secure, Tom's team quickly exited.

Usually, we would have left someone to watch the woman and kids in the bedroom, but we didn't have the time or enough assaulters. The remaining woman and kids were just left in the room.

As the other team exited the south door, one of the SEALs threw Abrar al-Kuwaiti's AK-47 into the courtyard. It was dark and there was little chance anyone would come out looking for it.

Seconds after hearing the call from Tom over the radio, I heard the boom as Greg set off his breaching charge. Will and I had made our way around the west side of the building and stacked behind the guys lined up to enter the north door, which was now open.

The SEALs from Chalk Two had by now made their way into the compound. After the failed breach, they had moved over to the main gate and were let in by Mike. They were already stacked on the north door.
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The tile stairs were set at ninety-degree angles, creating a sort of spiral staircase separated by small landings. We had no idea what to expect. By now, Bin Laden or whoever was hiding inside had plenty of time to get a weapon and prepare a defense. Since the only way was through a spiraling staircase, we could easily get bottlenecked.

It was dark and we were doing our best to be quiet. Every step was deliberate. No talking. No yelling. No running.

In the old days, we'd storm the castle, throwing flash grenades as we cleared through an objective. Now we stayed as quiet as possible. We had the advantage with our night vision, but it would be lost if you went barreling into a room. It was all about throttle control. There was no reason to run to our deaths.

When I reached the landing on the second deck, most of the other assaulters had fanned out. The second floor opened into a long hallway heading to a terrace that ran along the south side of the building. The floor had four doors, two right near the landing and two farther down near the terrace. I could see my teammates creeping down the hall, stacking on the doors before quietly clearing inside.

I noticed another assaulter three or four steps up the stairs holding security on the landing between the second and third decks. A body was on the landing. Blood was trickling out onto the marble floor.

While holding security, the assaulter had seen a man quickly poke his head down around the landing. Intelligence reports said there could be up to four males living at the compound. Khalid, one of Bin Laden's sons, was most likely living on the second floor, while Bin Laden lived on the third floor.

The head peeking around the corner was clean-cut with no beard. It had to be Bin Laden's son.

"Khalid," the assaulter whispered. "Khalid."

Everyone in the compound had heard the helicopter engines. They heard the shots fired at the guesthouse, and they heard the explosive breaches.

But by then, everything was quiet again. All they could hear was our footsteps. Then the man on the landing heard his name being called. I'm sure he was wondering how anyone knew his name and curiosity got the best of him. He stuck his head out to see who was calling his name, and the second he stuck his head back around the corner, the assaulter shot him in the face. His body rolled down the stairs and rested on the landing.

Looking back, I saw we had several more SEALs coming up the stairs and beginning to stack behind me. The second-floor hallway was already full of assaulters and they didn't need any more help.

The only place to go was up. Standing behind the point man, I gave him a squeeze to let him know we were ready.

"Take it."
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We were less than five steps from getting to the top when I heard suppressed shots. BOP. BOP.

The point man had seen a man peeking out of the door to the right side of the hallway about ten feet in front of him. I couldn't tell from my position if the rounds hit the target or not. The man disappeared into the dark room.

The point man reached the landing first and slowly moved toward the door. Unlike in the movies, we didn't bound up the final few steps and rush into the room with guns blazing. We took our time.

The point man kept his rifle trained into the room as we slowly crept toward the open door. Again, we didn't rush. Instead, we waited at the threshold and peered inside. We could see two women standing over a man lying at the foot of a bed. Both women were dressed in long gowns and their hair was a tangled mess like they had been sleeping. The women were hysterically crying and wailing in Arabic. The younger one looked up and saw us at the door.

She yelled out in Arabic and rushed the point man. We were less than five feet apart. Swinging his gun to the side, the point man grabbed both women and drove them toward the corner of the room. If either woman had on a suicide vest, he probably saved our lives, but it would have cost him his own. It was a selfless decision made in a split second.

We searched for additional threats, but we found none. It was time to verify if the man on the floor was the man we wanted.

The man's face was mangled from at least one bullet wound and covered in blood. A hole in his forehead collapsed the right side of his skull. His chest was torn up from where the bullets had entered his body. He was lying in an ever-growing pool of blood. As I crouched down to take a closer look, Tom joined me.

"I think this is our boy," Tom said.

He wasn't about to say it was Bin Laden over the radio because he knew that call would be shot like lightning back to Washington. We knew President Obama was listening, so we didn't want to be wrong.

I went through the checklist in my head. He was very tall. I figured approximately six foot four inches. Check. He was the one adult male on the third deck. Check. The two couriers were exactly where the CIA said they'd be. Check.

The more I looked at his mangled face, my eyes seemed to go back to his nose. It wasn't damaged and seemed familiar. Pulling my booklet out of my kit, I studied the composite photos. The long and slender nose fit. His beard was dark black and there was no trace of gray like I expected to see.

"Walt and I will run with this," I said to Tom.

"Roger."

Walt and I took DNA samples and sets of photos. We put our sets of photos in two separate and secure places so that if something happened to one of us, we had another. The same thing would happen with the DNA samples.

Will was trying to speak to the women in the room while Walt and I figured things out.

"What is his name?"

"The sheikh," one of the women said.

"The sheikh who?" Will asked. He didn't want to lead her and stuck to open-ended questions.

After she gave Will several aliases, he went over to the kids who were outside on the balcony. They were all sitting silently against the wall. Will knelt down and asked one of the girls, "Who is that man?"

She didn't know to lie. "Osama Bin Laden."

He triple checked, making sure before he went back over to the two wives. When he was satisified, he grabbed one of the wives by her arms and gave her a good shake.

"Stop fucking with me now," Will said, more sternly than before. "Who is that in the bedroom?"

She started to cry. More scared than anything else, she didn't have any fight left. "Osama," she said.

"Osama what?" Will asked, still holding her arms.

"Osama Bin Laden," the wife said.

"For God and country, I pass Geronimo," I said into a radio. "Geronimo, E.K.I.A."

I looked up toward the sky and closed my eyes. "We did it, Jimmy. We fucking did it."

Notes

So, the last two chapters have come almost directly from the book "No Easy Day" which is a firsthand account of Operation Neptune's Spear (aka Bin Laden dead). Most of the words are his, but I have been paraphrasing greatly. I altered names and left out a lot of details, so it's not the full story of the UBL take down. I just want to give the credit where it's due. Obviously, never having been in the military, I had no idea about the SEALs beyond my own research, so props to Mark Owen for this account.

The next chapters will all be mine, but I wanted the UBL operation to be as real as possible. Sorry if that seems like cheating!