The claim is on you, the sights are on me
So what do you do that’s guaranteed?
In the back of a specially adapted MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, I closed my eyes and let the roar of AC/DC’s “Moneytalks” wash over me. Everyone had a routine—some guys slept on the way to an operation. Others tried to talk, although this was challenging given the noise in the aircraft. Some guys said nothing and merely rehearsed the mission in their heads.
Through a small iPod strapped to my shoulder, I listened to music—loud, heavy rock or country. Tonight it was AC/DC. As Brian Johnson screeched into my headphones, I leaned over and gave Cairo a pat on the head. The Black Hawk is much smaller than a Chinook, so we were packed pretty tightly. Cairo and I were both on the floor; he sat between my legs, as calm as always. I hooked a thumb through his harness—the same bloodstained vest he’d worn on every mission since getting shot the previous year—and rubbed his back. He arched his head and looked up at me eagerly.
There were roughly a dozen of us in the back of the chopper, along with a couple of badass Night Stalkers up front. Rob sat next to me on the flight in (although he had wisely planned well enough in advance to bring a small folding chair). We looked at each other a couple of times but didn’t say anything. Approximately ninety minutes earlier, around 11:00 p.m. on the night of May 2, 2011, we had left J-Bad in two MH-60s. Now we were in Pakistani airspace and closing in on the city of Abbottabad. As always, a voice crackled over the radio to let us know we were ten minutes out. This was standard operating procedure, but like so many other things about Operation Neptune Spear, it didn’t feel standard.
I turned off my music and envisioned the insertion for roughly the hundredth time. I checked my radio, my weapon, my night-vision goggles. I took a quick glance at the laminated card we each had, a map depicting the layout of the compound. I made sure Cairo was ready to go.
“Five minutes!”
The two helicopters had flown in tandem to this point, but as we approached the compound, the other chopper veered off toward the compound walls, and I lost sight of it.
“Two minutes!”
We made our approach to an area just outside the compound. The pilot set the Black Hawk down expertly, right on the X—the precise spot where we were supposed to begin the insertion. I jumped out with Cairo, the snipers and the interpreter, and immediately began working the perimeter. As we moved methodically toward the walls of the compound, I looked back over my shoulder and noticed the Black Hawk still on the ground. Seconds later, the rest of the assault team disembarked. I had no idea at this time what was happening, but it certainly didn’t look good.
Shit … we just landed and already something has gone wrong.
Plans can change in a heartbeat. It can happen on any mission, and obviously it had happened now. For some reason, the assault team on our Black Hawk had redirected—instead of fast-roping to the roof of the main house inside the compound, they had decided to leave the helicopter now and breach from the outside wall. Fine. Unless someone told me otherwise, my job remained unchanged. I took Cairo off leash and began working him in a clockwise direction around the perimeter of the compound. As explosives went off behind me—the unmistakable sound of breachers at work, blowing doors and gates and accessing the compound by any means necessary—I walked alongside Cairo as he put his formidable nose to the ground in a thorough search for explosives.
As we rounded a corner, I looked up at the compound wall. In the distance, at the next corner, I could see something sticking up … almost resting on the top of the wall. It was the tail of a helicopter. But only the tail. The rest of the aircraft, I figured, must have been on the other side. It looked almost surreal. Not so much a crash but more like a landing that hadn’t quite worked. In fact, it seemed so strange that my first thought was, Hey, that helicopter looks just like one of ours!
There was a reason for the similarity. It was one of ours!
What I did not know at the time—what none of us on the second Black Hawk realized—was that the first chopper had encountered severe and unexpected problems while hovering inside the walls of the compound, some twenty feet above the courtyard. While the helicopter tried to maintain a steady hover and the assaulters prepared to fast-rope down, the chopper began to shake violently. A combination of hot, dry air and the solid walls of the compound had created a turbulent air current that caused the chopper to basically get caught in its own rotor wash. Why hadn’t this happened during any of our training exercises? Well, because the model of the compound that had been constructed in North Carolina was surrounded by walls that were indeed the correct height but not made of solid material. This allowed wind, including air whipped up by the rotor of a helicopter, to pass harmlessly through.
In Abbottabad, as it turned out, the compound’s solid walls created a very different and far more challenging scenario. One with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Fortunately, the pilot recognized immediately what was happening; rather than fight the vortex—which would have proved disastrous—he orchestrated a perfectly executed “controlled crash.” He turned the nose of the Black Hawk away from the walls and dropped it into the ground as gently as possible, leaving the tail on top of one of the walls. No one was hurt. Everyone jumped out, without a scratch, and the mission went on as planned.
The pilot of our chopper had witnessed the entire event from the cockpit. That’s why he had decided not to elevate after dropping Cairo and me and the rest of the security team off. Instead, he told the assaulters that they would be unable to hover inside the compound. They had to exit the craft now and breach the outside walls.
All of this happened within a matter of just a few minutes and had almost no perceptible impact on the operation. We had rehearsed multiple scenarios, including one in which access to the compound was gained by breaching a gate or door or some other access point on the outside wall; that is what the assault team was doing while I worked the perimeter with Cairo. I could hear gunfire and more explosions. In my head, I tried to piece together what had happened. But I had complete trust in our guys, and so I stayed focused on my job—using Cairo to find explosives or insurgents hiding out beyond the compound walls.
Eventually, after two complete laps, it was determined that the perimeter was fully secure. In a way, this was astonishing. If this really was the home of Osama bin Laden, how could there not be IEDs rimming the compound? Where were the bombs and snipers? It was almost too easy.
With several of our team holding security outside the compound, and, so far, no apparent encroachment from curious locals, I began to work my way inside. This was my role as a dog handler on many missions, and it was no different tonight. Once the outside was safe and secure, I was supposed to bring Cairo inside and use him to detect explosives and find anyone who might be hiding. Again, it seemed totally reasonable to expect both of these things.
By the time I got to the main house—and this was perhaps only ten to fifteen minutes after we had landed—the place was littered with debris and bodies, the obvious aftereffects of breaching and gunfire. We passed a couple of bodies on the first floor; Cairo naturally wanted to get in a quick bite, but it was obvious that both people were dead and thus posed no threat whatsoever, so I pulled him away and tried to keep him focused on his primary job: odor detection.
The floor was covered with broken glass, so I repeatedly scooped up Cairo and carried him over the shards before setting him down to inspect another room. Steadily and methodically, we worked our way through the first floor. There were, at this time, more than twenty SEALs inside the compound, the majority of them in the main house. I knew very little at this point. Although gunfire seemed to have ebbed, there remained a distinct possibility that it could erupt again at any moment. For all I knew, a dozen bad guys were hiding in the basement, or behind false walls, or almost anywhere. Trip wires could be hanging from the ceiling or strung across doorways. You couldn’t let your guard down for a second. More than once, we had reached what we’d thought was the completion of an operation, with a structure apparently secured, only to be surprised by a gun-toting, suicidal insurgent leaping out from a hiding place.
We had lost more than a few people that way, so we never relaxed until we were back on the base.
The mission wasn’t over … until it was over.
With Cairo by my side, I made my way to the second floor, trailing behind a growing train of shooters. I would guide Cairo wherever he was needed, as instructed. For the most part, I tried to keep his attention focused on explosive odor. The entire time I was in that building, I figured there was a good chance it would blow up. It just seemed impossible that the place hadn’t been rigged with explosives—I mean, that’s what I would have done if I were in their position—and our best hope was that Cairo could sniff out the danger before it had a chance to kill us. That’s why I took him room to room on the first two floors. Even though we seemed to have gained control of the structure, I wanted to be sure that there were no surprises; utilizing Cairo’s extraordinary odor detection ability was the best way to do that.
As I climbed the stairs to the third floor, I noticed a significant uptick in the level of activity. We had a bunch of guys on the third floor, but there was no fighting. I heard a lot of talking, a lot of commotion. One of the shooters came down the stairs while I was walking up.
“It’s crazy up there, Cheese,” he said. “You can go up if you want, but I don’t think they need the dog. You should probably just stage the second floor unless they call you. It’s over.”
It’s over …
That could only mean one thing: the intel had been correct, and bin Laden was in the house. And now he was dead. I felt a surge of excitement; I wanted to go upstairs to see for myself what was happening, but I wasn’t going to disregard a teammate’s suggestion just to satisfy my own curiosity. I trusted my guys completely. If one of them said that Cairo wasn’t needed … then Cairo wasn’t needed. His word was good enough for me. I retreated to the second floor, continued to lightly work Cairo, and hold my position in the event something happened, and our services were needed on the third floor.
As I exited a room and walked into a second-floor hallway, Rob came down the stairs from the third floor. We both walked into another room. Our eyes met. He nodded and sort of half smiled. It was a look I had rarely seen from Rob, who was typically all business during an operation.
“Dude,” he said. “I think I just shot that motherfucker.”
“What?” I said. “Seriously?”
Rob nodded. “Yeah. I just shot that fucker in the face.”
He didn’t use bin Laden’s name, but I knew exactly who he meant. We both froze for a few seconds in the hallway. This information had already been conveyed to our ground force commander. Moments later, his voice came over the radio as he passed the information on to Admiral William McRaven, the SEAL in charge of Joint Special Operations Command.
“For God and country, Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo, EKIA.”
We had a bunch of code words used to signify various stages of Operation Neptune Spear. Geronimo referred to Osama bin Laden; not necessarily that he had been killed but that he had been found and dealt with. The second half of the message, EKIA, represented the outcome of that confrontation: “Enemy killed in action.” If the message was a little melodramatic, well, maybe the situation called for it.
“Fuck yeah!” I said, holding my hand high for Rob to smack. And right there, on the second floor of Osama bin Laden’s house, we shared a high five.
Let me explain something: I had never high-fived anyone before, during, or after a mission. I had never seen any of my teammates celebrate in this manner. It was uncool, unprofessional … unacceptable. This was not a game. We were not cowboys; we were not vigilantes. We were part of an elite Special Operations unit that took great pride in dispatching its duty with proficiency and unblinking pragmatism.
We got in, we got out, we moved on to the next assignment.
A high five after a kill?
Come on, man. Who does that?
Well, on May 2, 2011, I did it. And while it might make me wince a little in retrospect, it did happen. And it absolutely felt like the correct response at the time. It was pure, unbridled joy.
Multiple books and lengthy magazine articles have chronicled in detail the drumbeat of Operation Neptune Spear, including some written by members of SEAL Team (redacted). If you’ve read more than one of these accounts, you know that there is no consensus as to exactly what happened that night in Abbottabad. The entire operation lasted less than forty-five minutes, and in that time, not everything went smoothly, starting with the first helicopter being forced to ditch against a wall of the compound. The house and its surrounding neighborhood were mostly unlit, so night-vision goggles were needed throughout. There was tremendous pressure to complete the operation swiftly. And there was resistance.
I have neither the desire nor the qualifications to offer a definitive narrative of the mission, especially as it pertains to the climactic encounter on the third floor, where bin Laden was tracked by SEALs and killed, despite the attempted interference of two women (presumably his wives). I can tell you only what I witnessed firsthand and what I know to be certain based on evidence. I was outside the compound with Cairo looking for explosives as the assault team engaged and killed several hostiles, including one of bin Laden’s couriers and his son Khalid. I was not witness to the final confrontation with bin Laden, during which more than one SEAL took aim and fired. As to which bullet killed him? I don’t know. And I don’t care.
Here is what I do know:
We got him.
The mission did not end with bin Laden’s death. As a large group of operators gathered files, flash drives, compact discs, and other material from the third floor and threw everything into large plastic bags, I continued to work the first two floors, again using Cairo to carefully clear each room in the unlikely—but not unheard of—event that someone had survived unnoticed; or, far more likely, that the house was rigged to blow. We moved from the second floor to the first floor and slowly made our way outside into the courtyard, and finally back out to the perimeter. From there, off in the distance, I could see several small groups of people approaching the compound from the surrounding neighborhood. Not a huge mob, but enough of a presence to be of concern. This was a heavily populated city, and it wouldn’t take long for us to be outnumbered if the locals were so inclined. A situation like that could turn ugly in a hurry.
Having Cairo out there was a big help. It might seem odd, but often a large and imposing attack dog will do more to dissuade curiosity seekers or insurgents than a handful of soldiers armed with automatic weapons.
We continued to work quickly. Several women and children who lived in the compound were brought outside and instructed to huddle together against one of the walls—at the opposite end of the compound from the downed Black Hawk—while we awaited extraction.
A couple of members of the team, including our explosive ordnance expert, then rigged the downed helicopter with timed charges so that we could blow it up. For both practical and public relations reasons, you never wanted to leave a piece of equipment behind after a mission, especially one as valuable as a Black Hawk helicopter. First of all, photos and video of a downed helo screamed failure to the world. More importantly, the bird was loaded with sophisticated technology, including surveillance equipment and weaponry. There was no way you could let that stuff fall into the wrong hands. If something happened to a helicopter and it was abandoned, then it had to be destroyed before you left.
This, despite protestations from the pilot of the downed chopper, who remained a badass to the very end.
“I can fly that thing,” he said, even as it was being wired to blow.
“No, that’s okay. Don’t worry about. The Chinook is on its way.”
“No, I’m serious,” the pilot insisted, looking at the nose of the Black Hawk embedded in the ground. “I can lift it right out of here.”
Like I said, the Night Stalkers were the best. You had to admire the guy. But we weren’t taking any chances.
Four MH-47 Chinook helicopters—“flying school buses,” we used to call them, because they were so big and unwieldy—had taken off from Jalalabad shortly after we had left. Two of the buses, loaded with a quick reaction force (QRF) comprised of a couple of dozen SEALs, had waited at the border, ready to jump in if disaster struck. The other Chinooks had crossed into Pakistani airspace and landed in a remote area, where they could be summoned if needed for help during extraction or with refueling.
We needed that help now.
The first Black Hawk was already on its way back to Abbottabad when we called in the Chinooks. A few members of the assault team went back to J-Bad in the Black Hawk, along with bin Laden’s body, while the rest of us waited for one of the Chinooks in a grassy area just outside the compound. The civilians were sent back inside the house and told to remain there.
As bad luck would have it, the Chinook drew near just as the charge on the rigged Black Hawk was about to blow. We were counting it down—“Thirty seconds”—when the Chinook came into view. There was an anxious moment when we realized that the Chinook was going to fly over the compound at almost the exact moment that the Black Hawk would explode. And yet, our team leader remained calm.
“Abort,” he said into the radio. “Do a racetrack.”
This was the team leader’s way of letting the pilot know that something was wrong and that he needed to take a lap overhead (a “racetrack”) before landing.
“Copy that,” came the reply.
As the Black Hawk burst into flames, the Chinook completed a wide circle over the compound, then returned and flew dramatically through a giant mushroom cloud of smoke before settling into a safe landing nearby. It looked, and felt, like something out of a movie.
We climbed aboard quickly and huddled together, silently, as the Chinook lifted into the air and pulled away. I looked out the window and could see the flames and smoke rising above the compound. Cairo was at my feet, sitting calmly, but I reached down and scooped him up so that he could sit on my lap. Against the din of the Chinook’s rotors, it was hard to hear much of anything. That was okay, because I didn’t really feel like talking. Neither did anyone else. I think we all were shocked to be alive and weighed down by the magnitude of what we had just accomplished.
I pulled out my iPod and began scrolling through my music, stopping when I came to one of my favorite songs, “It’s a Great Day to Be Alive,” by Travis Tritt. I used to play this song all the time, but I stopped after Falco was killed in the line of duty. It had become too much of an emotional trigger, so I put it away; I literally had not cued up “It’s a Great Day to Be Alive” since the night Falco was killed. But now, with Cairo settling into me, and my brothers all around me, it just felt like the right time.
I leaned back and closed my eyes … and sang along in my head.
Well, I might go get me a new tattoo
Or take my old Harley for a three-day cruise.