sure we didn’t leave anything behind, but the helicopters were running out of fuel and there wasn’t any time to give.
“Post assault, five minutes,” Mike finally said. That meant drop what you’re doing and get to the landing zone within five minutes.
I was done on the third deck, and I started for the door. I felt like I was leaving something undone. We took pride in coming back with every bit of intelligence we could find and collect. There was so much still to do. We all had to face the fact we were leaving areas unsearched, and then put it out of our minds. We all knew the risks of running out of gas or remaining on target too long, giving the local police or military time to react. We got what we came for: Bin Laden. It was time to get out while we still could.
“Hey, consolidate the women and children and get them out of the compound,” Mike said over the radio.
I could hear Will trying to get the women and children to move outside. We didn’t want them to wander over to the helicopter before it exploded. But it was like herding cats, and Will wasn’t making any headway. The women were still sobbing, and the kids were either crying or sitting in a daze. None of them wanted to move.
I didn’t have time to help. I still needed to get over to C compound. I followed the smear of blood from Bin Laden’s body. It left a slippery trail all the way to the first deck, where Walt had put Bin Laden’s body into a body bag. As I climbed down the steps, I could see where they’d dragged the body over Khalid’s body. His son’s white shirt was stained with his father’s blood.
I headed for C1. The others had gotten photos and DNA of al-Kuwaiti. When I got there, his wife and kids were squatting in the corner of the courtyard. I tried to get them up and moving when Mike’s urgent call came across the radio.
“Hey, guys,” he said. “Drop what you’re doing and move to exfil HLZ.”
Low on fuel, the Black Hawk and the C-47 were inbound to pick us up. Using arm signals, I got al-Kuwaiti’s family up and shepherded them into the guesthouse. I knew the charges on the helicopter were going off nearby. This was going to be a big explosion, but the guesthouse was far enough away. They’d be safe if they stayed inside the room.
Once inside, I tried to get across the idea that there was going to be a big explosion, using my hands and making an explosion sound.
“Stay here,” I said in English.
I have no idea if they understood. I backed out of the room and shut the door behind me.
Racing down the rutted driveway, I saw Teddy and the other helicopter crew standing near Mike. They looked funny in their large aviation helmets and Army ACU uniforms. They looked lost and out of their environment, uncomfortable with actually being on the ground.
I looked at Mike as I passed.
“The women and kids are staying in C1,” I said. “There is no way I can move them.”
The SEALs from the second deck were spilling out of the building. We looked like a gypsy camp, or like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Guys had mesh bags over their shoulders so full they seemed to waddle more than run. I saw one SEAL carrying a CPU in one hand and a leather gym bag overflowing in the other. The SEALs on the second floor had collected so much intelligence material that they had run out of the collapsible bags that they carried and started taking bags that they found in the house and filling them too. SEALs carried 1950s leather briefcases like they were on their way to the office, and knockoff Adidas athletic bags as if heading home from the gym.
Outside the gate I turned right and sprinted toward the rest of the guys who were beginning to line up in our chalk loads. I could see the snipers had already set up the landing zone. My chalk was going to exfil on the remaining Black Hawk because we had the body. The smaller, more maneuverable aircraft had less of a chance of being shot down. The CH-47 would pick up all the SEALs from Chalk Two as well as Teddy and his crew from the crashed Black Hawk.
All around us, lights in the houses were on. I could see several heads in the windows watching us. Ali was barking in Pashtu for them to go back inside. We started to get a head count. I was missing Will.
“Where’s Will?” I said, moving down the line.
“He was getting the kids and women when I left,” Walt said, standing next to the body, ready to move it to the helicopter.
I started to get on the radio to try and find his location when I saw Will run out of the compound. He was the last one out.
Taking my place near Walt on the body bag, I could make out the Black Hawk coming in right on top of the IR strobe in the field. As the helicopter flared out, I looked down, shielding my eyes from the cloud of dust and debris from the rotors. Once the cloud passed, we picked up the body and took off on a dead sprint toward the waiting helicopter. This was our freedom bird and we weren’t going to miss it.
The field was recently plowed and we stumbled over eighteen-inch mounds of earth as we hustled the one hundred yards to the helicopter, carrying the six-foot-four body. We looked like drunks stumbling and falling our way to the bird.
The dead weight wasn’t easy to carry for any of us, but Walt had a tough time trying to stay upright. Being five foot six inches tall, his stride was much shorter than the rest of us.
Every few steps, he’d fall over one of the mounds. With curse words cascading from his lips, he’d bounce back up and press on.
Racing under the spinning rotors, we threw the body on the deck and quickly climbed aboard. I found a spot up against the back of the pilots’ seats. After the sprint, we were exhausted. My chest was heaving, trying to gulp in air.
“Holy shit, we’re going to pull this off,” I thought.
When we didn’t immediately leap into the sky, I got anxious. In Afghanistan, the helicopter was practically taking off with the last boot still on the ground. The longer we waited, the more I prepared for a rocket-propelled grenade to tear through the door.
“Go, go, go,” I kept thinking. “Come on man, go. GO!”
But the Black Hawk waited. It even throttled back. The pilots didn’t want to take off before the CH-47 arrived. Helicopters liked to fly in pairs. The charges on the downed Black Hawk were seconds away from exploding. The SEAL and EOD tech put the charges on a five-minute timer. That would have been plenty of time if we’d been on schedule.
But we were running late. At this point, we were eight minutes past our planned drop-dead time. We factored in ten extra minutes, but we were about to run out of that too.
We had to assume law enforcement and Pakistani military were inbound and headed to investigate the situation. We were an invading military force who had entered their sovereign territory. I could see the expression on Tom’s face. He was on the helicopter’s intercom radio trying to figure out what was going on. He wanted the pilots to hurry up and lift off.
“Let’s go,” he finally said. “We have to take off right now!”
Less than a minute remained on the explosive charges on the downed Black Hawk. The SEAL who set the charges ran up to Jay and grabbed him. They were both still on the landing zone waiting for the CH-47 to arrive. Jay had been so focused on getting the helicopters in safely, he hadn’t heard his name being called.
“Call off the 47,” the SEAL said to Jay. “You need to get all the birds out of the immediate area, the charge is going to blow in under thirty seconds.”
Jay started to work the radios. He knew the explosion would knock the inbound CH-47 out of the sky and shrapnel would destroy the idling Black Hawk.
I heard the rotors come to life, and the Black Hawk quickly climbed into the sky. Swinging to the northeast, we picked up speed. Seconds after takeoff, I saw a big flash of light. The explosion bathed the cabin in light for a second, before it faded back to black.
The CH-47 flew around to the south and landed after the explosion. The remaining SEALs and the aircrew loaded up on the helicopter. Since they’d burned up so much fuel loitering, the CH-47 didn’t have any to spare. And with the extra weight of the additional SEALs on board, they had just enough gas to head straight back to the base in Jalalabad.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. The cabin was dark. The only lights were from the dashboard in the cockpit, and from where I was sitting, I could just make out a few gauges on the console, including the gas gauge.
