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.
Curiosity got the best of him and he stuck his head out to see who was calling his name. 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.”
CHAPTER 15
Third Deck
Khalid was splayed out on his back, and we had to carefully pick our way past him on the stairs.
The steps were slick tile, made slicker by the blood. Each step was precarious. Nearby, I saw Khalid’s AK-47 rifle propped on the step.
“I am glad he didn’t man up and use that thing,” I thought.
Had the point man not called his name, we could have been pinned down on the stairwell. All he had to do was sit on the landing and fire a few rounds each time we tried to move up the stairs toward his position. That would have been a nightmare, and we would have taken some casualties for sure.
We had planned for more of a fight. For all the talk about suicide vests and being willing to shed blood for Allah, only one of the al-Kuwaiti brothers got off a barrage. At least Khalid had thought about it. When we examined his AK-47 later, we learned he had a round in the chamber. He was prepared to fight, but in the end, he hadn’t gotten much of an opportunity.
The stairwell was pitch-black to the naked eye, but under our night vision everything was bathed in a green hue. The assaulter holding security was now on point as we followed him up the stairs. We were again slowing down and taking our time. The point man was the eyes and ears for the rest of us. He controlled the pace.
Throttle on. Throttle off.
So far, everything was adding up. We knew the house had at least four men. The only one left was Bin Laden. But I pushed those thoughts out of my head. It didn’t matter who it was on the third deck. We were possibly walking into a gunfight, and most gunfights at this range only last a few seconds. There was no margin of error.
“Focus,” I told myself.
With the point man directly in front of me, there was nothing much I could do. I was there to support him. Roughly fifteen minutes had passed and Bin Laden had plenty of time to strap on a suicide vest or simply get his gun.
My eyes scanned the landing up ahead. My senses were on overdrive. My ears strained to hear a round being chambered or the footsteps of someone approaching. Nothing we were doing was new. We had all been on hundreds of missions. At the most basic level, we were clearing rooms like we learned in Green Team. Only the target and the fact that we were in Pakistan made this mission significant.
The landing at the top of the stairs opened into a narrow hallway. At the end of the hall was a door to the balcony. Roughly five feet from the top of the stairs were two doors, one to the right and one to the left.
The stairway was relatively narrow, especially for a bunch of guys in kit. It was difficult to see around the point man, since the stairwell and landing narrowed as we got to the top.
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 on 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.
With the women out of the way, I entered the room with a third SEAL. We saw the man lying on the floor at the foot of his bed. He was wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt, loose tan pants, and a tan tunic. The point man’s shots had entered the right side of his head. Blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull. In his death throes, he was still twitching and convulsing. Another assaulter and I trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body into the floor until he was motionless.
Quickly scanning for additional threats, I saw at least three children huddled in the far corner of the room near the sliding glass door that opened onto the balcony. The children—I couldn’t tell if they were boys or girls—sat in the corner, stunned, as I cleared the room.
With the man on the floor now motionless and no further threat, we cleared two small rooms just off the bedroom. Pushing the first door open, I peeked inside and saw a small, cramped, messy office. Papers were strewn all over a tiny desk. The second door revealed a small shower and toilet.
Everything was muscle memory now. In our minds, we started ticking off our mental checklist. The main threat was dead by the bed. The point man was covering the women and kids. My teammate and I cleared the small office and bathroom, while the other SEALs cleared the room across the hall.
As I went across the hall to the other room, I passed Walt on the way.
“All clear over here,” he said.
“This side too,” I replied.
The point man moved the women and kids out of the bedroom and onto the balcony to keep them calm. Tom was on the third deck and saw that both rooms were clear.
“Third deck secure,” I heard him say over the troop net.
