“Hey, are these doors on C1 inward or outward opening?” I asked her.
She was back in a few minutes with the answer.
“Double metal door,” she said. “Opens outwards.”
It was like that all week. If we had a question, they had the answer, including where the Pacer walked, who else lived on the compound, which gates were locked or unlocked, and even where they frequently parked their cars. They had a huge number of images from drones and satellites, and there wasn’t much they didn’t know about the outside environment of the compound.
In Washington, President Obama and his advisors were still discussing different options. The president still had not signed off on the ground-assault option. All we had been authorized to do up to now was to start planning and conduct rehearsals. The White House was still considering an Air Force option, a massive air strike using B-2 Spirit bombers to level the house.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates supported the air strike because it kept American ground forces out of Pakistan, which made the mission less like an invasion of the country’s sovereignty.
The United States didn’t have a great track record when it came to commando raids like the one we were planning. Since Operation Eagle Claw, there was a lot of risk in putting troops in harm’s way in a sovereign country.
During Eagle Claw, one of six helicopters flying to a desert staging base in Iran before the raid hit a fierce sand cloud and crashed into an MC-130E containing fuel. The fire destroyed both aircraft and killed eight servicemen. The mission, one of the first operations conducted by Delta Force, was aborted. Eagle Claw was a disaster and contributed to Carter losing his reelection campaign.
The air-strike option required thirty-two two-thousand-pound smart bombs. The barrage would last for a full minute and a half and the crater would penetrate at least thirty feet into the earth in case the compound had a bunker system. The possibility for collateral damage was high, and the possibility of finding identifiable remains after that kind of destruction was low.
If we were going to conduct this mission either with an air strike or raid, they wanted proof it was Bin Laden. The assault was risky, but the air strike added additional complications.
A few days after we arrived in North Carolina, we saw the Pacer for the first time.
Standing around the computer screen, we watched drone footage of the compound. The feed was black- and-white with little detail. I could make out the main building and the courtyard that took up the northeastern part of the compound.
After a few seconds, I saw the Pacer enter the frame. From the video feed, he looked like an ant. There was no way we could make out his face or even how tall he was. But we could see him walk out of the north door and start pacing in an oval clockwise around the courtyard. A makeshift awning was rigged up to cover him, but it only shaded part of the garden.
“He does this for hours,” one of the agency analysts said. “I’ve seen him walk by guys doing work, but he never helps. He just paces.”
Sometimes, he walked with a female or a child. None of them stopped to do any work. When a veterinarian came to treat the cow that lived in the courtyard, they moved it to another courtyard for treatment.
“We believe the reason they moved the cow is they don’t want anyone to see that side of the compound,” the analyst said. “It’s circumstantial, but it looks like they are hiding someone. Hey, take a look at this.”
Clicking to another day’s feed, we could see the compound and then, from the right side of the screen, a Pakistani helicopter flew over.
“Where did that come from?” I said.
“A PakMil Huey,” the analyst said. “Not sure where it came from, but it was leaving the military academy.”
We all stared at the screen, waiting to see if anyone in the compound reacted. We didn’t see the Pacer sprint to a car and run. Instantly, we all thought the same thing. This meant he was accustomed to hearing helicopters.
“We might actually be able to get on the deck before they really figure out what is going on,” Charlie said.
With the mission planned out, we began rehearsals.
The Black Hawk swooped over the North Carolina pine forest and came to a hover over the compound. From my perch, sitting legs blowing in the breeze just outside the left door of the helicopter, I could see the life-size mock-up of Bin Laden’s compound. Nestled in a remote part of the base, the practice compound was built to scale using plywood, chain-link fence, and shipping containers.
Sliding down the fast-rope, I landed in the courtyard and moved to the double doors at C1. All around me, my teammates were racing to their objectives. The roar of the engines above us made it hard to talk, but after three days of practice we didn’t need to talk. The whole mission had become muscle memory. Besides some time hacks that were called out over the radio, the net was silent. Everyone knew their individual jobs. We had years and years of experience among the groups, so everything moved smoothly. This target wasn’t any more complicated than hundreds of others we’d assaulted over the years.
The rehearsals were less about training and more about selling to the White House that we could do it.
The level of detail on the mock-up was impressive. The construction crews at the base had planted trees, dug a ditch around the compound, and even put in mounded dirt to simulate the potato fields that surrounded the compound in Pakistan.
After a few runs, we asked if they could add the third-floor balcony and move some of the gates to better simulate the layout of the actual compound.
Before the next rehearsal, the changes were made.
The construction crew didn’t ask why and never said no. They just showed up and made all requested changes. We’d never been treated like this. All of the bureaucracy was gone. If we needed something, we got it. No questions asked. It was a far cry from what we were forced to deal with in Afghanistan.
The only black hole in the practice compound was the interiors. We had no idea what the inside of the house looked like. It wasn’t a big concern. We had years of combat experience, and we could apply it to this problem. We had no doubt we could pull this off; we just needed to get on the ground.
Stopping at the door of the container that simulated C1, I scanned inside before entering. During the real mission, I had no idea if Ahmed al-Kuwaiti would be armed or if he had a suicide vest. We anticipated all of the men—Bin Laden, Khalid, and the two Kuwaiti brothers—would fight back.
After we rehearsed the best-case scenario, we started running through the contingencies. Instead of roping into the courtyard, we landed outside the walls and raided the compound from there. We also practiced tracking down squirters if someone ran from the target before the assault.
Every single contingency was practiced to the point where we were tired of it. We had never trained this much for a particular objective before in our lives, but it was important. The mission was straightforward, but the extra preparation helped us mesh, since we’d been drawn from different teams.
After the last rehearsals, we all met in the operations center. Jay was there with an update.
“We’re headed home and then Monday we head out west for another week of training and a full mission profile,” he said.
I raised my hand.
“Do we have any official word if this thing is approved yet or not?” I said.
“Nope,” he said. “Still waiting on Washington.”
I looked at Walt. His eyes rolled. It was the “hurry up and wait” routine we had experienced with the Captain Phillips operation.
“My money says we don’t launch,” Walt said as we left.
We flew out to our training site early Monday. On Thursday, almost two weeks after we got the initial tasking, we had our dress rehearsal.
The entire team and all the planners gathered in a massive hangar at the base. On the floor was a map of
