No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden

CHAPTER 8 Goat Trails

I had to take a leak.

Since boarding the helicopter thirty minutes before in Jalalabad for the ride to a combat outpost in Afghanistan’s mountainous Kunar Province, the pressure had been building. It was standard procedure for everybody to take a leak before you left. But it was such a short ride, I’d decided to hold it until we got there.

It was two months after Phil got shot. He was home recovering. We had about three weeks left on our deployment. I had been a team leader ever since Phil was medevaced. We were heading to a remote forward operating base or FOB in one of the most volatile regions of eastern Afghanistan. The FOB was going to be a staging area for an operation we were going to conduct high in the mountains.

I could feel the CH-47 Chinook helicopter come to a hover and start to descend. A few seconds after the tires hit, the ramp came down and I dashed off the bird, walking under the massive rear engine headed for a ditch about twenty yards from the landing zone. We landed about fifty meters outside the perimeter of the small firebase, so I felt pretty safe standing out in the open.

I was joined by a few of my teammates who also sought relief. It was pitch-black and no illumination. The mountains towering above me blocked any chance for light. Over my shoulder, the helicopter’s blades beat the ground, creating a dust cloud. The roar of the CH-47’s engines was deafening.

Standing at the lip of the ditch, I admired the beauty of the steep mountains. Through the green glow of my night vision goggles, it actually appeared quite peaceful. Then my eyes caught the glow of something streaking across the sky. For a split second, I thought I was looking at a shooting star until I realized it was heading right for me.

WHOOM!

A rocket-propelled grenade slammed ten feet off the tail ramp of the helicopter, showering my teammates with shrapnel. Before I could react, I saw tracer rounds and more rockets crash around us. I started to move toward a ditch on the other side of the landing zone. Everybody was stunned. In our minds, we were simply using this base as a jumping-off point for our mission. We didn’t expect to make contact until we assaulted the actual compound a few hours later.

I could hear the whine of the helicopters’ engines change as they took off and flew out of the valley. As the second helicopter lifted off in a hurry, its rotor wash set off one of the trip flares that surrounded the perimeter of the small combat outpost we were planning to stage from. The flares, in theory, were set up to alert the base of an attack, but we were now exposed, illuminated by the flare and in the open. We started to peel back in small teams away from the light as the fighters shifted fire toward the base.

I tried to get my pants buttoned up while in a dead sprint. I could hear the thump of the first outgoing mortars and then the steady hammering of an American .50 caliber machine gun as the soldiers at the base reacted to the attack. Sliding into a ditch, we watched as the American heavy weapons started raking the ridgeline. It looked like a Bloomin’ Onion at Outback Steakhouse. Guns stuck up on all sides of the base made of Hesco barriers, large wire frames filled with sand.

Once the flare died out and we had the cover of darkness again, we maneuvered our way back to the main gate and inside the protective wall of the outpost.

When we got inside the gate, our medics started working on the wounded. No one was hurt badly, but shrapnel from the RPGs hit an Army Ranger, our interpreter, an Afghan soldier partnered with us, and our combat assault dog. The helicopters were loitering nearby, and when the fire stopped, they raced back into the valley to pick up the wounded.

Once all the wounded were loaded on the helicopters and safely on their way back to the hospital, the troop chief and team leaders met with the FOB’s Army company commander and first sergeant inside the command bunker.

Charlie and the rest of the troop waited in the outpost’s weight room. Charlie had volunteered to come over for the last couple of months of the deployment and was running with my team. Since Phil had been wounded and I took over, we were a man short and needed an extra shooter. Charlie had just finished his time as a Green Team instructor.

“Heard you shot Phil to get this job,” Charlie said when he got in country. “Is that how you get a team now? Better watch your six.”

I had missed the big bully, and it was good to have him back.

Once Phil left, the pranking around the camp stopped. I was confident my room was free from glitter bombs, but the mood was never as light as when Phil was prowling around. Most of all, we missed his experience. Much like a football team, we had the “next man up” mentality. We all knew how to do the job, but it was hard to argue against experience. Phil had a ton of it. The pace of operations made it hard to dwell on the past. But he was missed for sure.

Having Charlie back made up for some of it. Fresh off of instructor duties at Green Team, he was sharp, and on this operation he was going to be vital. His experience and calm demeanor under fire were second to none.

The operations center was small, and maps of the area hung on the wall above furniture made of plywood. Antennas stuck up out of the corner of the squat building. Sandbags made up the walls and roof, protection against RPGs and mortar rounds. A radio sat in one corner, and two young Army specialists or junior enlisted men sat nearby monitoring it.

I stood next to Steve and looked at the map.

“Sorry about the welcome party,” the Army captain in charge of the outpost said. “We get it about once a week. You just happened to be at the right place at the right time.”

Operating in Kunar was tough. I’d argue it was one of the toughest places to effectively target the enemy in the entire country. It was rare that we made the trip up to the province without getting into a fight. Located in the lower Hindu Kush, the mountains and narrow valleys with steep sides serve as formidable natural obstacles. The province has been a favored spot of insurgent groups for decades. Its impenetrable terrain, cave networks, and border with the semi-autonomous Pakistani North-West Frontier Province provide significant advantages for militant groups.

Known as “Enemy Central” or “Indian Country,” between January 2006 and March 2010 more than sixty-five percent of all insurgent incidents in the country occurred in Kunar. Native Taliban forces mingle with foreign al Qaeda fighters, while mujahedeen militias also operate in the region.

On a table at the center of the room was a map of the area. We all huddled around it. The plan was to patrol deep into a valley to the south of the outpost and conduct a kill or capture operation against a group of high-level Taliban who were having a meeting.

We were coming up near the end of deployment, and this might be our last chance to hit such a juicy target. It had already been a solid deployment, despite Phil getting wounded and one of the dogs being killed. If we played our cards right, we were going to get a little payback.

From our drones overflying the suspected compound, we observed roving patrols. Over the years, Steve and I had gotten pretty good at spotting what we called “nefarious activity.”

Drone feeds by themselves don’t look like much. On the screen, people look like small ants moving around, but to me and Steve, everything we could see on the feed was adding up. Most compounds don’t have roving guards. Combine that with the location in Kunar and intelligence reports about the meeting, and it all added up to nefarious activity.

We knew we were in for a fight.

The plan was for my eight-man team to climb up the ridgeline and parallel the valley until we made our way past the target compound. We would set up a blocking position on the uphill side and contain the fighters in the valley if they tried to escape. They wouldn’t expect us on the high ground, since the compounds sat almost at the very top of a valley. The other two teams would patrol up the main road into the valley and try and flush the Taliban fighters out to where my team could ambush them. If the two teams made it all the way to the objective undetected, we would simply make our way down to the compound ourselves and help clear the target from all sides.

Most times, the fighters wouldn’t stay and fight when they saw us. Instead, they ran, trying to hide in the tree line or escape into neighboring valleys. To stop them, we set up a team on the high ground and let them wander into our kill zone. We’d cut them down easily before they had a chance to escape.

The infiltration route was about seven kilometers, not far, but only if you didn’t account for the elevation change. My team would have to do the majority of the hard climbing that night because the route took us directly up the ridgeline. Knowing we had a very challenging climb ahead, I’d chosen to dump my bulletproof plates and only carry three extra magazines, a hand grenade, my radios, and a med kit. We all tried to go as light as we could. We had a saying: “Light is right.”

But when you ditch your bulletproof plates, you have to be willing to suffer the consequences. After our surprise at the landing zone, I was already second-guessing that decision.

As we discussed the plan with the Army captain, I could feel the soldiers’ eyes on us. To the clean-cut soldiers, we probably looked like bikers or Vikings.

Most of us had long hair by military standards. None of us had the same uniform on; instead we all had mismatched pants and shirts. We also had fancy, four-tube night vision goggles, thermal scopes, and suppressors on our rifles. We pretty much had all the latest in tactical fashion. Each one of us was a professional who knew exactly what they needed for the job, and it was up to the individual operator to carry what he needed.

“Some of these guys aren’t even wearing their plates,” said one of the soldiers.

The troop’s RECCE team leader showed the captain the goat trail on the map. He was going to navigate the route for my team.

“You guys been up this goat trail?” he asked.

“I’ve seen it,” he said. “It is straight up. What kind of time line are you on?”

“We want to hit and be back before it gets light,” the RECCE team leader said.

“There is no way you’re going to make it,” the Army captain said. “The terrain is impossible, and there is no way you can do it in one cycle of darkness.”

Since his unit lived in the valley, we couldn’t really argue. It was their backyard. They’d seen the terrain in daylight.

“You guys ever been up there?” the troop chief asked, pointing at the target compounds.

“The furthest we’ve ever been is here,” he said, pointing to a spot not even halfway to where we wanted to go. “It took us six hours, and we made contact and got into a long firefight. We had to move back down out of the valley.”

We spent a few more minutes talking about the plan.

The troop chief looked at me, Steve, and the other team leaders.

“What do you guys think?”

This target was too good to pass up. Even with three fewer assaulters and no dog, we still had enough people to clear the objective. The drones watching the target reported no major movements, so we still had the element of surprise. We decided to scrap the plan of my team going up the goat trail and we would all combine into a single patrol taking the road part of the way up the valley, then split off and loop around to the high ground and assault the target from above.

“Let’s do it,” I said when the troop chief looked to me. Steve also nodded yes.

“You guys are still going?” the captain said.

“Yeah,” the troop chief said, finally.

“The attack on the base tonight might be a great cover for action,” the Army captain said. “Why don’t we send out a patrol with you guys tagging along?”

He’d take about twenty soldiers out and patrol into a nearby village that was just down the valley to the south. We’d follow along at the back of his patrol, before peeling off and sneaking up into the target valley. If people were watching, and they were most likely doing so, we’d hope they would take the bait and follow the main body of the patrol.

“You guys mind if we get some ammo before we go?” the troop chief said.

“Sure. I’ll get it.”

The captain started to organize a foot patrol, while we went back to brief the guys waiting in the outpost’s weight room. It had a few dumbbells, a weight bench or two, and a squat rack wedged into a room no bigger than a small home office. Sandbags protected the room, like the operations center, from mortar attacks.

I replaced the few rounds I fired in my magazine and checked to make sure my team was ready. I could see Walt and Charlie loading their magazines as well. Walt was on Steve’s team, and since arriving out of Green Team he’d become tight with Steve and me.

I’d heard about Walt when he was coming through Green Team. All of the East Coast SEALs seemed to know him, and they kept an eye on him as he worked his way up to the second deck.

No taller than my armpit, he had hair that was already shaggy and a thick brown beard covered his face. He was short, but his cocky swagger compensated for it. He had a healthy dose of little-man syndrome and an inordinate amount of body hair. It seemed like the guy could grow a beard in days.

Walt was supposed to start Green Team a year prior, but got in some trouble and had to delay his plans for an extra year.

Walt and I got along almost immediately. He liked to shoot and loved guns as much as I did. One day on the range, I invited him out to the SHOT show, a shooting, hunting, and outdoors trade show in Las Vegas. Schedule permitting, we would go every year, to meet with vendors and see what kind of new guns and equipment were on the market.

The first day of the trip, I introduced him around to all the vendors. By the second day, my contacts were asking me where Walt was hanging out. At a bar after the show the third night, I found Walt holding court with executives from the National Rifle Association. He had a cigar in his mouth, and he was slapping backs and shaking hands like he was running for office. They all loved him.

Walt was the little guy with the big personality.

The team had a quick huddle and I told them the goat trail idea was scrapped. We were now going to patrol up together.

“We are going to go up the main trail and adjust as we get closer to the target,” I said. “Any issues?”

Everybody shook their heads no.

“Nope,” Charlie said. “We’re good.”

It was like playing pickup basketball. We knew what needed to happen and all we needed was the basic plan. If you know how to “shoot, move, and communicate,” the rest will fall into place. When operations get too complicated, it tends to slow things down. Every single man standing in the weight room that night had years of experience. Plus, the plan always changed, so it was easiest to keep things simple. We’d done this before and trusted the team.

The patrol snaked out of the gate and started down the paved road toward the village. It was a nice road, probably built with American tax dollars. Less than a kilometer from the gate, we slowly fell back from the main group before taking a right turn and heading up our valley to the west.

We followed the road for two hours. It cut back and forth, with each switchback steeper than the last. Soon we came upon a cluster of cars. I could see a Hilux truck parked on one side of the road and two station wagons with racks on the roof. As I passed, I gazed into the windshields. All of the cars were deserted.

This was as far as they could go.

It was the end of the road. The trail narrowed and got steeper as we patrolled deeper into the valley. With every step I could feel the altitude and the weight of my equipment trying to slow me down. I was getting tired, and we were only halfway. I hoped all this effort was going to be worth it.

After another hour on the trail, I could see the target compounds and at least two small faint lights on near one of the buildings. Clumps of trees blocked most of my view. The buildings were made of stone and mud and seemed to emerge from the valley walls.

Taking the main road the rest of the way would have been easier, but we knew there were sentries watching the route. We couldn’t risk being compromised. The drones continued to report roving patrols in the trees around the main road and compound.

Surprise was key. In most cases the quickest way between two points in Kunar was a goat trail. I’d heard the same line in Alaska growing up. We had no choice but to find another way around. Nobody wanted to be in that valley when the sun came up.

“We’re going to move directly up the ridgeline and move our way around,” I heard the RECCE team leader say over the radio.

I could almost hear my legs scream, but we all knew it was the right call. The RECCE element was confident that if we shot straight up the ridgeline we’d find the original goat trail that my team was going to use.

From the road, we literally climbed up the mountain searching for the goat trail. Several times I had to tighten the sling on my weapon so I could grab boulders in front as I climbed. If I wasn’t pulling myself up the side of the mountain, I was making my own switchbacks as we climbed. No one spoke, but I could hear my teammates grunting as they climbed.

We all saw this as a juicy target. We were willing to do it if we could get the jump on them. Still, with every step, the only thought running through my mind was the target better be worth it.

After a couple of hours of climbing, we finally found the goat trail. My legs were beyond sore now, and it was tough to catch my breath because I was tired. But making it to the trail gave us renewed hope. Without a doubt our RECCE guys were the best in the business and if it weren’t for their meticulous planning before the mission there is no way we would have ever been able to pull off this operation successfully.

The goat trail wasn’t wider than a foot and straddled the ridgeline. On one side was the cliff face towering over us and the other side was an almost straight drop into the valley. We didn’t have time to dwell on how a false step could send you sliding down a near-vertical face. We just spent an hour finding the trail, and dawn wasn’t that far away, so time was of the essence.

We had to move.

We finally caught a break when the trail emptied us out into a perfect position slightly above the target compound. There were three central buildings with a courtyard in the middle, and several additional small structures scattered around the perimeter.

At the foot of the trail were a series of fields cut like stairs into the rock face. It was between seasons and the dirt was dry. Sometimes, the fields were flooded and we’d have to slog through the mud.

Setting up on the tiers, my team took the one that was level with the main target compound.

“Alpha is set,” I said over the radio.

Steve’s team climbed up one tier above my team and moved to the right flank.

“Charlie is set,” Steve said on the radio.

Bravo team climbed down one tier to focus on the southern compounds farther down the hill.

“Bravo is set.”

I could feel the adrenaline start to flood my body. I no longer felt tired or sore. Each one of my senses was heightened, and we were all on full alert. If everything went according to plan, we’d catch the enemy by surprise. But if things went bad, we’d be in a gunfight in close quarters.

“Take it,” troop chief said over the radio. “Nice and slow.”

We started to creep forward. Everyone was quiet, and each step was deliberate. Nothing got our blood pumping more than creeping into an enemy compound, sometimes directly into the rooms of enemy fighters while they were sleeping. This wasn’t like other units that had to react to a roadside bomb attack or ambush. This was deliberate and calculated. Our tactics weren’t unique. What made us different was our experience level and knowing when to take violent, decisive action and when to be patient and quiet.

I could feel my heart beating in my chest. Every sound was amplified. We’d take four or five steps and hold. Shouldering my weapon, I focused on my laser as it tracked from window to door to alley searching for any movement. I could see my teammates’ lasers doing the same thing.

“Go slow,” I thought. “Slow is quiet.”

When I got to the first building, I tried the rusty knob of the thick wooden door.

Locked.

Charlie tried the same kind of door on the building right next door. It was also locked.

There was no talking. We didn’t have any fancy Navy SEAL hand and arm signals. I just nodded at Charlie, and we started to move around the building to the other side that faced the courtyard.

A small gate led into the courtyard. Walt reached up and cut the cord that held up a sheet that blocked the way.

Moving inside, Steve, Walt, and the rest of the team stacked on multiple doors across the courtyard. I saw a RECCE sniper with a thermal scope on the roof starting to scan for sentries in a dried-up creek bed that ran north to south along the perimeter of the compounds.

My team’s point man led us through the same gate, and we approached the front door of our building.

Walt tried the door of his building and it was unlocked. He slowly pushed it open and saw a man messing with a flashlight. As Walt walked into the room to subdue the man, another man sat up from under some blankets. He was wearing a chest rack, and he had an AK-47 next to him. Walt and another SEAL who entered behind him opened fire, killing both men. Across from Walt’s room, Steve opened the door to another room and found a group of women and kids. Leaving one member of his team in the room, Steve led the rest of his team to a door farther down the wall.

A RECCE sniper on the backside of the building Steve’s team was clearing was looking for roving sentries. As he scanned the road that ran up the valley, he saw a half dozen Taliban fighters grabbing for their guns through a window. He immediately started firing just as Steve and his team reached the door to the room.

Cracking the door open, Steve could see the fighters scrambling for cover.

“Frag out.”

One of Steve’s teammates cracked the door just wide enough to toss the grenade into the overwhelmed enemy fighters. I heard the muffle of the explosion as shrapnel peppered the room, killing the fighters.

Just as we reached the door to our building, I could make out the faint sound of a second sniper’s suppressed rifle opening fire. A guard was sitting on a rock overlooking the main road. He had an AK-47 slung on his back and an RPG resting next to him.

My point man pushed the front door open and cleared into the first room. The house had a dirt floor, and sacks of food, clothes, and cans of oil littered the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as the point man opened fire. A fighter, gun in hand, was attempting to jump out a back window and escape. The bullets riddled his back and ass as he tumbled out of the window.

Outside, I heard one of Bravo team’s Squad Automatic Weapon gunners, or SAW gunners, go hot.

WHAAAAA!

The machine gun rounds echoed across the valley. It caught me off guard because most of us were using suppressors on our guns to muffle the sound.

“We’ve got movers coming from the north,” I heard over the command net on my radio. We were starting to get reports that fighters were headed toward our position from farther up the valley. This target quickly escalated into three separate firefights, and now we had reports of additional fighters advancing on our position.

The SAW gunner and Bravo team continued to maneuver just down the hill from us. One by one, Bravo team picked off at least five more fighters as they tried to move into fighting positions with RPGs and heavy machine guns. The SAW gunner fired another thirty-round burst as he sprayed the last sentry hiding between boulders in the dried creek bed.

Within minutes, I heard the buzz of an AC-130. On the radio, I could hear the troop commander passing word that the AC-130 was going hot on the movers to the north.

“You’ve got this,” I told my teammate.

I left him and another SEAL in the building while Charlie and I cleared an alley that ran between this building and the one below it. The buildings were on the same tiered steps of land as the fields where we had entered.

The alley was narrow, and it was impossible to see the end because the walls were crowded with junk. I kept getting caught up in low-hanging clothes lines strung up between the two buildings.

With a narrow alley like this, Charlie and I stood on opposite walls. I covered his side of the wall with my laser, and I could see his laser crossing the alley onto the wall in front of me. It was all an angles game.

We crept down the alley, being as quiet as possible. The key was throttle control. We’d go fast when needed, but then go back to being slow and quiet. We were about halfway down the alley when Charlie opened fire.

POP, POP, POP.

I froze. I couldn’t see what was in front of me. Charlie let loose a short burst and then started to move forward. I glanced ahead for a split second to see a fighter crumble against the wall three steps ahead of me. As he hit the ground, he dropped a shotgun.

Usually we wore about sixty pounds of gear, including those ballistic plates to protect us from gunfire. Charlie wasn’t wearing his plates either.

When we cleared all the way to the end of the alley, we paused to get our bearings.

“If I get shot tonight, no one better tell my mom I didn’t wear my plates,” I whispered to Charlie.

“Deal,” Charlie said. “Same goes for me.”

A short time later, we heard the “all clear” call over the radio. The target was secure, but now we had to do sensitive site exploitation, which we called SSE. Basically, we shot pictures of the dead, gathered up any weapons and explosives, and collected thumb drives, computers, and papers.

SSE had evolved over the years. It had become a way to rebut false accusations that the fighters we killed were innocent farmers. We knew that within a few days after the raid, the village elders would be down at the local NATO base accusing us of killing innocent civilians. The kind of innocent civilians who we knew and could now prove carried RPGs and AK-47s. The more SSE we provided, the more proof we had that everyone we shot was guilty.

“We are on a time crunch, fellas, so make it fast,” the troop chief said. “We’ve still got movers to the north.”

His voice was drowned out by the sound of the AC-130’s 120mm shells landing a few hundred meters up the valley. I checked my watch. It was well past four in the morning. We were running out of darkness, and since the shooting started there was a steady flow of reports coming from the drones alerting us to more fighters coming our way.

With the photos complete, we piled all the weapons and ammo in the center of the courtyard and set explosive charges on a five-minute delay.

With the RECCE guys in the lead, we quickly and quietly snuck back out the way we’d come. As we raced away from the compound, I heard the explosion and saw a small fireball light up the courtyard as the fighters’ weapons and ammunition were destroyed.

The walk back was easier than the walk up. We were high on the adrenaline of what we had just managed to pull off. Several times along the patrol down the hill we had to stop and direct some additional close air support on multiple groups of fighters who were searching for us. We didn’t want to be in the valley any longer than we had to, and definitely not at daybreak.

Three hours after clearing the compounds, we were back at the base. The guys slumped down along the walls, exhausted. Everyone was smoked. We sucked down water, power gels, pretty much anything we could get our hands on.

In the operations center, we gave the captain all of our SSE. He could show the elders the evidence when they came down to complain.

“We had seventeen EKIA,” the troop chief told the captain, meaning we killed seventeen fighters. “We suspect another seven or eight dead from the AC-130.”

The Army captain was stunned as he looked at the pictures on his computer. He and his men rarely got a chance to be on the offensive against the enemy. They were stuck protecting the villages and the roads leading into and out of the valley. It felt really good knowing that we eliminated Taliban fighters harassing the outpost.

On the helicopter back to Jalalabad, I finally had time to reflect on the mission. Sitting near the ramp in the dark, I was amazed that we were able to pull off an operation as dynamic as this one without taking any serious casualties.

From the patrol up the mountain, to the assault, it was a textbook raid incorporating all of the lessons we had learned from previous missions.

Instead of flying in and fast-roping down, we snuck in quietly.

Instead of blowing open all the doors, we crept in and caught the fighters off guard.

Instead of yelling and crashing through the buildings, we used suppressors and kept the noise down when possible.

We used their trails and traveled light and we had beaten them at their own game. All in all, we cleared an objective with more than a dozen well-armed fighters without taking one casualty. The raid was proof that good planning and the use of stealth was a lethal combination.