“Here,” I said, handing him mine. “Try this one.”
He took it and slammed my syringe into the fleshy part of Bin Laden’s thigh, but it also didn’t fire.
“Fuck these things,” Walt said, tossing the syringes to the side.
I finished taking a second set of pictures using another SEAL’s camera. We took two DNA samples and sets of photos so that we had identical sets. Walt put one sample in his cargo pocket and gave another to a SEAL in the other chalk. This had been carefully planned so if one of the helicopters was shot down on our flight back to Jalalabad, a DNA sample and set of pictures would survive. We wanted proof to show to Pakistan and the rest of the world we got Bin Laden.
Meanwhile, on the balcony, Will was trying to get confirmation that it was Bin Laden on the floor.
Bin Laden’s wife Amal, who had been wounded in the ankle, was still hysterical and wouldn’t talk. I could hear her whimpering on the bed above me while I worked. The other woman, her eyes puffy from crying, tried to keep a stern face as Will asked her over and over again in Arabic who the dead guy was.
“What is his name?”
“The sheikh,” the woman said.
“The sheikh who?” Will said. He didn’t want to lead her and stuck to open-ended questions.
After she gave Will several aliases, he went over to the kids who were outside on the balcony. They were all sitting silently against the wall. Will knelt down and asked one of the girls, “Who is the man?”
The girl didn’t know to lie.
“Osama bin Laden.”
Will smiled.
“Are you sure that is Osama bin Laden?”
“Yes,” the girl said.
“OK,” he said. “Thanks.”
Back in the hallway, he grabbed one of the wives by her arms and gave her a good shake.
“Stop fucking with me now,” Will said, more sternly than before. “Who is that in the bedroom?”
She started to cry. More scared than anything else, she didn’t have any fight left.
“Osama,” she said.
“Osama what?” Will said, still holding her arm.
“Osama bin Laden,” she said.
Will moved her back outside with the kids and walked back into the bedroom.
“Hey, dual confirmation,” Will said. “Confirmed it with the kid. Confirmed it with the old lady. Both are saying the same thing.”
As Will left the room, Jay showed up with Tom. Seeing the body, he came and stood over it.
“Will confirmed through a woman and a kid that it is UBL,” Tom said.
Kneeling next to his head, I pulled his beard to the left and right so Jay could get the profile shot. I had my SSE card and put it next to his face so Jay could see the real Bin Laden next to the CIA renderings.
“Yeah, that looks like our guy,” Jay said.
Jay immediately left the room to call it in. The rest of us went back to work. Once outside, Jay got on the satellite radio to Admiral McRaven, who was still in Jalalabad. The admiral was keeping President Obama and the rest of the situation room in the White House updated on our progress.
“For God and country, I pass Geronimo,” Jay said. “Geronimo E.K.I.A.”
Over the troop net I could hear the guys on the second deck. They needed more help to gather up all of the intelligence in the media rooms. It was on the second floor that Bin Laden had a makeshift office where he kept his computers and made his video pronouncements.
The rooms were immaculate and organized. Everything had its place. All of his CDs, DVDs, and memory cards were stacked up perfectly. The SEALs focused on grabbing all the electronic media—recorders, memory cards, thumb drives, and computers. The CIA had briefed us on what type of digital voice recorder they thought Bin Laden used and had even showed us one that was similar during our training. The SEALs searching the second floor actually found one exactly like the CIA had predicted. I marveled again at the intelligence team. When Jen had pronounced one hundred percent, I should have believed her.
When we were done with the DNA samples and photos, Walt and another SEAL grabbed Bin Laden’s legs and pulled him out of the room. With all the commotion and activity going on around me, I can still remember watching the guys drag his body down the stairs.
I stayed in the room and started gathering up any intelligence I could find. The office was barren of anything useful. I grabbed a few papers, possibly religious writings, and took some audiocassettes and threw them into a mesh bag. We all carried the lightweight, collapsible bags for this purpose. A quick search of the tiny bathroom with green tile on the walls had revealed nothing of value. I did find a box of Just For Men hair dye, which he must have used on his beard. No wonder he looked so young when we found him.
On the wall between the bathroom and office, I opened up a wooden freestanding dresser. It was about six feet tall with two long doors. Inside were several sets of clothes, including the long shirts, baggy pants, and vests common to the region.
I was shocked by how neat it was. Compared to some parts of his house, which looked like hoarders lived there, his dresser could have passed a Marine Corps Boot Camp inspection. All of his T-shirts were folded into squares and stacked in one corner. His clothes hung evenly spaced.
“This could be my dresser,” I thought.
I grabbed a few shirts and a vest and stuffed them in my bag. I knew we were there to collect mostly electronic media, but since there wasn’t much of that in the room I figured I’d grab this stuff instead. Throwing open the drawers at the bottom, I rifled through his stuff, looking for anything useful. For the most part, his room appeared to be for sleeping.
Before I left, I noticed a shelf that ran above the door. It was just above where he was standing when we got to the third deck. I slid my hand up and felt two guns, which turned out to be an AK-47 and a Makarov pistol in a holster. I took each weapon down and pulled out the magazine and checked the chambers.
They were both empty.
He hadn’t even prepared a defense. He had no intention of fighting. He asked his followers for decades to wear suicide vests or fly planes into buildings, but didn’t even pick up his weapon. In all of my deployments, we routinely saw this phenomenon. The higher up the food chain the targeted individual was, the bigger a pussy he was. The leaders were less willing to fight. It is always the young and impressionable who strap on the explosives and blow themselves up.
Bin Laden knew we were coming when he heard the helicopter. I had more respect for Ahmed al-Kuwaiti in the guesthouse because at least he tried to defend himself and his family. Bin Laden had more time to prepare than the others, and yet he still didn’t do anything. Did he believe his own message? Was he willing to fight the war he asked for? I don’t think so. Otherwise, he would have at least gotten his gun and stood up for what he believed. There is no honor in sending people to die for something you won’t even fight for yourself.
Over the radio, I could hear updates from the team on the security perimeter.
Ali and the four SEALs spent most of our time on target holding security along the road northeast of the compound. After they were inserted, two assaulters and Cairo, the combat assault dog, did a sweep of the perimeter.
After the patrol, they waited and watched for onlookers to come out and investigate the commotion. Residents heard the helicopters, the intermittent explosions, and gunfire. Wondering what was going on, a few small groups approached the security team.
“Go back inside,” Ali said in Pashto. “There is a security operation under way.”
Luckily for us, the Pakistanis obliged and went back into their houses. A few posted messages on Twitter about helicopters and noise.
Time was getting tight.
Mike was on the radio giving us remaining-time hacks. We’d been in the compound for almost thirty minutes. Each time he came on, my teammates on the second deck asked for additional time.
“We need ten more minutes,” a SEAL on the second deck said. “We’re not even halfway done.”
Mike just repeated the time back calmly. The mission was a balancing act. We all wanted to stay and make
