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

CHAPTER 3 The Second Deck

A few weeks before we were scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan, I printed out the packing list. It was 2005 and I was preparing for my first deployment to the central Asian country. While at SEAL Team Five, my only combat deployment had been to Iraq. Standing next to the printer, I watched as the paper rolled out. Six single-spaced pages later, I started to gather up my gear. The suggested packing list basically told us to bring everything.

We worked under “Big Boy Rules” at the command, which means there wasn’t a lot of management unless you needed it. Since getting to the team, I prided myself on being independent. For the last three months, I had trained hard and tried to be an asset. I learned that it was OK to ask questions if you have them, but you didn’t want to be the guy who didn’t know what was going on and was always asking. I didn’t want to make a mistake on my first deployment by not packing something, so when I saw my team leader in the team room I asked him about the packing list.

“Hey,” I said, grabbing a cup of coffee. “I was getting my kit together and the packing list basically wants me to load everything.”

He was sitting at the granite countertop sipping a cup of coffee and going over some paperwork. Short and stocky, unlike some of the other guys who had longer hair and thick beards, he was clean-cut, with a short haircut and a close shave. He also wasn’t the most talkative guy and he had been at DEVGRU for much longer than I’d been in the Navy.

He took “Big Boy Rules” seriously.

“How long have you been in the Navy?” he said.

“Going on six years,” I said.

“You’ve been a SEAL for six years, and you don’t know what you need on deployment?”

I felt like an asshole.

“Dude, what do you think you need to bring for deployment? Load it,” he said. “This is your guide. Bring what you think you need.”

“Check,” I said.

Back at my cage, I laid out my gear, called “kit.” Each operator at DEVGRU had a cage, sort of like a locker big enough to walk inside. It was the size of a small room, with shelves that lined the walls and a small hanging rod that ran along the back wall to hang uniforms.

Bags of gear filled with everything I needed for the different missions we could be called upon to perform rested on the shelves. One bag had everything I needed for CQB. Another had my HAHO (High Altitude, High Opening) or “jump gear.” My combat swimmer or “dive kit” was in a separate large green gear bag. Everything was color-coded and ready. My OCD was definitely in overdrive, and I had everything perfectly organized and separated.

But some of the gear, like a Gerber tool, came in handy on most missions. Back at SEAL Team Five, you were issued one Gerber tool, which had a knife blade, screwdriver, scissors, and can opener.

You were also issued only one scope for your rifle.

One fixed blade knife.

One set of ballistic plates.

That meant sorting through multiple bags to find the single item that you needed to transfer to a new bag containing the specialty gear for a given mission. It was a hassle and was not very efficient, but it was the U.S. government and I’d gotten used to it.

But it was different at DEVGRU.

My team leader came by my cage later that day to double check how I was doing and saw my load-outs in the color-coded bags. Off to the side, I had an extra bag with the gear I thought I’d need for most missions, including a Gerber tool.

“Go down to supply and get a Gerber for each bag,” my team leader said.

I looked at him confused.

“I can go get four of them?”

“Yeah, you got four different mission load-out bags. You need one Gerber for each bag,” he said.

My team leader signed my request form and I walked down to the supply office. One of the support guys met me at the window.

“What do you need?”

I showed him the list. It was basic stuff like flashlights and other tools, but I wanted four of each.

“OK,” he said without hesitation. “Be right back.”

In a few minutes, he came back with a plastic bin full of everything on the list. I had to fight to keep from smiling too much. This was a dream come true. Back at our previous teams, guys spent thousands of their own dollars buying kit we needed for work.

The armory was even better. Above the door was a sign: “You dream, we build.”

For a gun geek like me, it was heaven. I had them set up my two M4 assault rifles, one with a fourteen-inch barrel and one with a ten-inch barrel. I got an MP7 submachine gun and a collection of handguns, including the standard-issue Navy SEAL Sig Sauer P226. My primary weapon that I used daily was a suppressed Heckler & Koch (H&K) 416 with the ten-inch barrel and an EOTech optical red dot sight with a 3X magnifier. My H&K 416 with a fourteen-inch barrel I set up for long-range shooting. It was also suppressed, and on top I mounted a 2.5X10 Nightforce scope.

I also set up my fourteen-inch H&K 416 with an infrared laser and a clip-on thermal sight that allowed for more precise night shooting. I didn’t use the gun much because my primary weapon, with the ten-inch barrel, worked for most missions, but it was nice to have a gun ready with a little more range if I needed it.

I ran with a suppressed MP7 submachine gun on a few missions, but it lacked the knockdown power of my H&K 416. The submachine gun came in handy during ship boarding, in the jungle, or when weight, size, and the ability to stay extremely quiet were needed. Several times we shot fighters in one room with a suppressed MP7 and their comrades next door didn’t wake up. The H&K 416s didn’t compare to the MP7 when you were trying to be extremely quiet.

Rounding out my guns were two pistols—the Sig Sauer P226 and an H&K 45C. Both were suppressor capable and I typically carried the 45. I also carried an M79 grenade launcher, which was called a pirate gun because it looked like a blunderbuss. Our armorers cut the barrel short and modified the stock into a pistol grip.

Of course, none of my guns were standard issue. We all had individual modifications on the trigger and grips. I know for a fact the armorers took great pride in taking care of the tools that took care of us. Without a doubt, DEVGRU had the best tools in the business.

As you walked around the command, it wasn’t uncommon to hear rounds being shot at the indoor and outdoor ranges, or hear the thud of a breaching charge going off in the kill house. Training was constant. It wasn’t unusual to see guys walking between training events dressed in full kit, with their loaded weapon slung in front of them. Everything was geared toward war-fighting or training for it.

I was just getting the hang of things at the squadron in 2005 when I found myself on a plane headed overseas to Afghanistan. At the time, our unit was focused on Afghanistan, and the Army’s Delta Force was in Iraq.

Delta hit a rough patch that year and had taken several casualties in a short time. They requested additional assaulters, and DEVGRU rogered up and my team was selected to go. My squadron didn’t want my first deployment to be with Delta, so I spent some time acting as a floater working with my troop in Afghanistan. Given Delta’s needs, I eventually left Afghanistan with two other SEALs and headed to Iraq to help out.

We got into Baghdad well after midnight. The ride from the helicopter pad was dark as we weaved through the deserted streets of the Green Zone. It was summer and the humidity hung like a blanket over everything. Sitting in the bed of a pickup truck with our gear, the breeze felt good. Everything felt and smelled the same as my first combat deployment to Baghdad with Team Five in 2003.

We had arrived just after the invasion started. Our first mission was to secure the Mukatayin hydroelectric dam northeast of the Iraqi capital. Our chain of command was afraid retreating Iraqi forces might destroy the dam to slow the American advance.

The plan was simple. Based on our experience, which was zero, we planned to fly to the X, which is a tactic that means we insert directly onto the target, keeping speed and surprise in our favor. In this case the X was the dam, and once over the target in a helicopter, we planned to fast-rope into the courtyard. From there, we’d rush the main building and clear and secure it. Nearby, the GROM, Poland’s special operations unit, would clear another cluster of buildings while another group of SEALs would secure the outer perimeter using two dune buggies.

After a few days of waiting for the weather to clear up, we got the word to go. Climbing into the MH-53, I could feel my heart beating quickly. I’d been waiting for this moment since I was a kid reading about ambushes in the Mekong Delta.

I was about to launch on my first real combat operation. I’d thought about it, read about it, and now here I was about to do it for real.

I probably should have been scared, or at least concerned about the unknown, but it felt good to finally do it for real. I didn’t just want to practice the game, I wanted to actually play in the game, and this was going to be my first taste.

The flight took several hours and included a midair-refueling linkup. My team of twenty guys was crammed tightly inside the helicopter. The fuel smell wafted into the cabin as the helicopter filled its tanks using the boom in front of the cockpit. It was pitch-black inside the cabin, and I zoned out for most of the flight until we got the signal to get ready.

“Two minutes,” the crew chief screamed, signaling with his hands and turning on a red light. It was well after midnight as the helicopter approached the dam.

I took my position at the door and grabbed the rope. I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the engines. Like the rest of my teammates, I was loaded down with breaching gear and our chemical protective suits. The “good idea fairy”—which is what we called the tendency for planners to add their two cents about every possible contingency, weighing the team down with options and extra gear and “good” ideas—had struck often on this mission. We were loaded down with quickie saws to break open the dam’s gates. We had to carry food and water for a few days. We didn’t know how long we’d be there, so we needed to be self-sufficient. The rule is, “When in doubt, load it out.” Of course the more you carry, the greater a toll it takes on your body, the slower you move, the harder it is to react quickly to a threat.

As the helicopter slowed to a hover, I grabbed the rope with both hands and slid down to the ground. We were about thirty feet up, and I could see the ground coming quickly. I tried to slow my descent, but I didn’t want to be so slow that my teammates would crash down on top of me. With all my gear, I landed like a ton of bricks. My legs ached as I brought my gun up and started toward the gate less than one hundred yards away.

As soon as I stepped out from under the helicopter, the rotor wash beat me down. Small rocks pelted my body and dust tore at my eyes. I could barely make out the gate ahead of me. As I started to run toward it, the rotor wash pushed me forward into an uncontrolled sprint. It took every effort to stay on my feet, and I literally skidded to a halt at the locked gate.

The others were close behind me. I snapped the lock off the gate with my bolt cutters, then took point and headed toward a cluster of buildings. The main building was two stories and had the drab architecture of an Eastern-bloc country, made of concrete, and the door was metal. While my teammates covered me, I tried the handle. It was open.

I didn’t know what I would find as I stepped into a long hall. We could start taking fire at any second.

I could see several rooms on either side. As we started to move forward, we saw movement in one of the far rooms. Two hands came out first, followed by several Iraqi guards. They had their hands above their heads and they were unarmed.

My teammates ushered them behind me as I continued down the hall. Inside the rooms, I found their AK-47 rifles. None of the weapons had a round in the chamber. It looked like they’d been sleeping and had woken when they heard the helicopters overhead.

It took a long time to clear the building because of the size. We paid special attention to detail because we were looking for explosives rigged to blow up the dam. We’d never cleared anything this size, so it took a little longer than expected.

No one was injured except for one of the GROM guys who broke his ankle fast-roping to the target.

After we cleared the main building, my platoon chief came up to me.

“Hey, check my radio,” he said. “I am not getting comms.”

When we launched, he had his radio strapped to his back. As he stood in front of me now, I could still see the headphone cord dangling over his shoulder. I looked on his back and the whole pack was gone. All I could see was the cable.

“Your backpack is gone,” I said.

“Gone? What do you mean?” he said.

“It’s gone,” I said.

He hadn’t strapped the backpack to his body armor correctly. Body armor has nylon loops about a half-inch apart on the front and back so that you can secure pouches to the vest. My chief had only laced his backpack through the top and bottom loops, so when he fast-roped down into the rotor wash, it blew his backpack and radio off his back and into the water below the dam. The radio at the bottom of the river wasn’t going to do us much good. The same thing happened to our medic. He lost a bunch of morphine in a similar backpack.

A lot of the gear we were using on the mission was new to us. Just before we deployed, boxes of new stuff had shown up in the team room. The common mantra was “Train like you fight,” which means don’t go into battle with equipment you haven’t used before, preferably extensively. We’d broken that rule, and I knew we’d gotten extremely lucky that it didn’t bite us in the ass. It was our first lesson learned.

That wasn’t the only way we were lucky on the mission. The Iraqis had antiaircraft guns near the dam loaded and ready. Had the guards wanted to fight, they could have knocked the helicopters out of the sky as we fast-roped down.

We learned a million lessons on that mission, from the need for better intelligence about a target to how to secure equipment, and we’d learned them all without losing anybody. Usually the best lessons are learned at the toughest moments, but I didn’t like how much luck had played a role in keeping us alive on that mission, and my perfectionist tendencies took an ego hit.

As the helicopter took off to take us back to Kuwait three days later, I realized that even though each of my teammates on Team Five had different amounts of time and experience in the SEAL teams, we were all still very new to this, and this raid was a first for everyone.