“The American people do not see their work, nor know their names,” he said.
We’d expected him to give away details. If he had, we could have talked some smack. But I didn’t think his speech was bad at all. If anything, it was kind of anticlimactic.
“OK, enough of this,” I said to Walt. “Let’s go find some food or at least a hot shower.”
Word went out we had a flight home in a few hours. I found my backpack with my civilian clothes and boarded a bus for the JSOC compound. The team decided to try and squeeze in showers before heading back to Virginia Beach.
The compound had a handful of shower trailers. Standing under the scalding water, I could feel my body slowly starting to unwind.
Plus, I was hungry.
DEVGRU has a small section of the JSOC compound. It was our ground mobility shop. Basically, they kept all of our trucks, motorcycles, four-wheelers, and Humvees working. A SEAL headed it up and worked with a bunch of Seabees and mechanics.
The flight home got delayed a few hours, so we made ourselves at home. Inside the work area, the garage was littered with parts, tools, and vehicles in all phases of repair. We gathered in a small office area with a sitting room and lounge. The SEAL who ran the shop welcomed us with open arms.
“What do you need?” he said.
Comprised of a few modular buildings and a covered motor pool, they had carved out a small patio with a brick pizza oven and a large gas grill. Walt walked around the patio passing around a box of cigars the NRA had sent him weeks before to welcome him home from deployment. They had no idea we’d smoke them to celebrate the mission that killed Bin Laden.
Everybody was there except Jay, Mike, and Tom. The head shed were still over at the airfield briefing Admiral McRaven.
We spent most of the time on the patio soaking up the warm spring sun. The Seabees who lived at the compound were firing up the grill to cook steaks and lobster tail they had liberated from the chow hall. I could smell popcorn in the office and pizza cooking in the brick oven.
I was half asleep on the patio getting some sun when I heard someone yell out.
“You guys aren’t going to believe this shit. It’s already out.”
At one of the computer terminals, the team leader of the perimeter security team was reading the news sites. It took less than four hours before the news was reporting that it was SEALs who had carried out the mission. Then it was SEALs from DEVGRU based in Virginia Beach.
The mission had been secret for almost a month now, and suddenly it was all over the news. We watched footage of the crowds that spontaneously gathered outside the White House, Ground Zero, and the Pentagon. At a Major League baseball game in Philadelphia, fans started to chant “U-S-A.” Everyone commented about how young they looked. Kids like that didn’t know what the United States was like before September 11, 2001.
We watched the madness on TV, and I couldn’t help but wonder what my friends and family were thinking back at home. Nobody knew I was in Afghanistan. I told my parents I was out of town training and wouldn’t have my cell phone. I was sure everybody was calling my phone trying to see where I was.
The sun was warm as we sat outside and ate. Now full, all I could think about was sleep. The bus came back a few hours later to take us to the plane. The adrenaline was gone as we dragged ourselves on board.
The C-17 was empty except for the aircrew.
Our containers boarded first and then we followed, spreading our ground pads on the deck. As we got settled, I could see the crew chiefs talking with the pilots. Air Force C-17 flights are always hit or miss. Sometimes you’ll score a cool aircrew that will let you sleep wherever you want, while others are by-the-book and keep you in your seats.
As the plane’s engines warmed up, the crew chief got on the intercom.
“Hey, guys, we’re not stopping in Germany so we’ll be getting gas from an airborne tanker in route back to the United States,” he said. “You guys get some sleep.”
They obviously figured out who their passengers were, and the crew was cool enough to let us get some much-needed sleep. Typically, we stop in Germany for gas. Everybody was stoked the aircrew was going to be cool and that we were going to fly straight through. At this point we’d been up for almost twenty-four hours. Takeoff was quiet and then the plane headed west.
We were spent.
The media blitz we had just seen on TV and online was jarring. I don’t think anybody was prepared for it. But stretching out on the deck of the C-17, I didn’t have the energy to give a shit. My mind needed to turn off.
I took two Ambien and was fast asleep before we got out of Afghan airspace.
CHAPTER 19
Touch the Magic
My phone vibrated, pinged, buzzed, and beeped as it started to receive a day’s worth of messages.
Seconds after our C-17 landed in Virginia Beach, every one of us turned on a phone to a cacophony of ring tones. I placed my phone next to me while it practically popped like corn in a kettle.
While we cruised over the Atlantic, news of the raid dominated TV and the Web. Reporters flooded Virginia Beach searching for real live Navy SEALs to interview. In Washington, anyone on Capitol Hill or in the Pentagon who had even a shred of information was leaking it.
When my phone finally stopped, I started to scroll through the messages. People had no idea I’d been on the raid. But anybody and everybody that knew I was a SEAL contacted me to talk about it. I had messages from my family and even friends from college who I hadn’t talked to in years. All the messages were the same:
“Hey, buddy, what’s going on? I’m watching the news. Just wondering if you’re in town.”
It was so top secret when we left that we weren’t even telling people in our own unit where we were going. But now, I had close to one hundred e-mails, fifty voice mails, and three dozen text messages asking me if I happened to be in Pakistan or if I knew what was going on. My family just wanted to know if I was in town and safe.
The plane barely came to a stop when the crew door popped open and the old commander of our squadron sprinted aboard. He was waiting to take command of DEVGRU. They had delayed the change of command until after this mission, so he was not with us in Afghanistan. He was one of the best leaders I’ve ever worked for. All of the guys loved him because he always had our back.
As we gathered up our backpacks, he walked down the line giving everyone a handshake and hug. He wanted to be the first to welcome us back. We were still shaking off the haze of the Ambien, so it was kind of surreal to see his lanky frame and bald head move down the line. This was the first sign that our welcome home would be bigger than we anticipated.
The whine of the engines made it hard to hear as we got off the plane. It was pitch-black outside. Moving from the bright cabin into the night made it worse. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, but when they did I saw about two hundred of my teammates lined up to greet us. I could make out their silhouettes as I walked toward the white buses that would take us to our base. It was about a fifty-yard walk to the bus and I shook at least a hundred hands.
We always tried to meet the plane when squadrons returned home. It struck me that anybody standing in that line shaking our hands could have been in our shoes. We just happened to be at the right place at the right time. I felt really lucky.
I didn’t have but a few seconds to yell out a hello or mumble a thank-you as I passed. We were exhausted and a little overwhelmed when we got to the bus.
Thankfully, there was a cooler full of beer and some hot pizza waiting for us. I settled silently into my seat. Holding my backpack between my legs, I balanced my phone on my thigh as I ate and sipped a beer. I looked around the bus. Everybody had their noses stuck in their phones trying to sift through the glut of messages. Roughly twenty-four hours ago, President Obama had addressed the nation about the raid.
