For the first time, it started to sink in. This was pretty cool. It was the kind of mission I’d read about in Alaska as a kid. It was history. But just as quickly as those thoughts crossed my mind, I forced them out. The second you stop and believe your own hype, you’ve lost.
Back at the command, I didn’t even go inside. Our gear and weapons were placed in our storage bay and locked. There was no need to unload everything, and we were lucky enough to have the next few days off work. I threw my civilian backpack into my truck and headed home. I didn’t want to go out and hit the bars and celebrate. I just wanted some quiet. The welcome was overwhelming enough.
On the way home, I spotted the neon drive-through sign at the Taco Bell. I always stopped for a south of the border fix on my way home from a deployment, usually in Germany. I had made this stop several times over the years. Pulling into the line, I ordered two crispy tacos, a bean burrito, and a medium Pepsi.
At the window, a high school kid handed me my food and drink. I pulled forward into the parking lot and took out a taco. I spread the paper in my lap and drizzled some fire sauce over the cold, crisp lettuce and ate.
On the radio, I had the country music station playing. Between bites, I tried to make sense of everything. Days before, I’d been choking down chow hall food and trying to keep the mission out of my head. Now, I was eating Taco Bell in a parking lot on my way home and still trying to keep it out of my head.
I needed a few days off.
We joked before we left Bagram about getting some time off. I knew the rest of my squadron was off the coast of Virginia practicing underways. The command had rented a cruise ship and filled it with role players. It was a massive and expensive training event. It always sounded more fun than it really was. Inevitably, it turned into hours in the cold water being pounded by waves as you climb up the side of a ship.
After the final bite of the bean burrito, I rolled up the paper and threw it back in the bag. Taking a big sip of my drink, I put my truck in gear and headed home. Before I could relax, I unpacked and took a long shower.
But I was still pretty wired. I had just slept for nineteen hours. The TV was on, and I started to surf the cable news channels. Every show was airing something related to the mission. Most of it was speculation.
They reported that we were in a forty-minute firefight.
Then I saw that we’d taken fire while we were outside the gate.
Then, Bin Laden had a weapon and attempted to defend himself before we shot him.
And of course it was reported, in Bin Laden’s last seconds, he had enough time to look into our eyes and see that it was Americans coming to get him.
The raid was being reported like a bad action movie. At first, it was funny because it was so wrong.
But then photos of the compound flashed across the screen. For weeks it had been top secret and now here it was all over the news. I saw wreckage of the helicopter. The charges destroyed the fuselage but there was still a section of the tail rotor that survived. When the explosives detonated, the tail section broke off and fell onto the ground on the outside of the wall.
The Reuters wire service even had pictures of the bodies we left behind. On the screen, shots of the al- Kuwaiti brothers—including Abrar, who Will and I shot through the door of the guesthouse—flashed on the screen. A picture of where Bin Laden’s body had been came on next. I could see the dried blood on the rug.
I struggled to wrap my mind around it.
To see these images on prime-time television was hard for me to deal with. The images broke through the tiny compartment in my brain that I’d placed this whole experience in. I had no barrier between home and work now. I’ve always been good at mentally blocking out the “work” I’d done overseas. When I was home, I was home. Seeing these images was like crossing the two streams and it made my head hurt.
I didn’t sleep well that night. I’d squirreled away a couple of Ambien. There was no way I was going to sleep without them.
For the next two days, I dodged calls from friends and family. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing. My family was asking me if I was involved. My parents knew I’d been gone, but they didn’t know where.
Before I left, I had called them and said I was going to train and wouldn’t have phone service. I always tried to keep things vague with them. I had sent my sisters a random text message before we left simply telling them that I loved them both. It wasn’t a red flag at the time, but after the news broke, my sisters knew I must be up to something.
The day after we got home, I was taking my trash can to the curb when my neighbor from across the street walked over and gave me a huge hug. She knew I was a SEAL and noticed I had been gone for a few days.
“You never really know what your neighbors do for a living, do you?” she said as she smiled and walked back to her house.
It was the same for my teammates. One buddy barely got in the door before he was back changing diapers.
“So I get home and she hands me my kid right away,” my buddy said when we got back to work. “We just shot UBL. Think I can sit down and drink a beer?”
Another spent the morning after he got home mowing his overgrown lawn. We might have been getting the celebrity treatment in the media, but at home we were just absent husbands.
When we finally came back to work officially two days later, Jay called us into a meeting in the same conference room where we first heard about the mission. There was concern at the command level about all the leaks revolving around the raid.
“It is imperative that we stay out of the media,” Jay said. “Let’s all make sure we’re keeping a low profile.”
I was astonished. We’d kept this whole thing under wraps for weeks. Now, Washington was leaking everything, and we were going to get the lecture for it. It felt like it was only a matter of time before some of our names appeared on the news. We just killed the number one terrorist in the world. The last thing we needed was our names attached to it. We simply wanted to fade back into the shadows and go back to work.
“With that out of the way,” Jay said, “here is your schedule. Take a week off.”
“But not a real week off, right,” Walt said.
I heard a chuckle from some of the others.
“When does the dog and pony show start?” I said.
“The agency will be down in a few days,” Jay said. “SecDef is also planning a visit soon. We will pass the word on the schedule once we have it. Enjoy the break.”
This time I laughed.
“Come on, everybody wants to touch the magic,” Tom said as we walked out of the conference room.
The mission hadn’t been that complicated or difficult.
Weeks and months after the mission, details about the raid were appearing with a renewed focus on the unit. It raised a lot of concerns for our personal safety. Most of us had already invested in home security systems.
Some of us voiced concerns to Jay and Mike at what seemed like a weekly meeting.
“What if our names are leaked to the media?” I said.
ABC News had come out with a ridiculous story about how to spot a SEAL. Reporter Chris Cuomo reported that the SEAL who shot Bin Laden was probably a physically fit white man in his thirties with a beard and longer hair. Then Cuomo did what the other reporters did. They found any SEAL who would talk about us, in this case DEVGRU founder Richard Marcinko.
“They have gazelle legs, no waist, and a huge upper body configuration, and almost a mental block that says, ‘I will not fail,’” Marcinko told Cuomo.
Other telltale traits: calloused hands from firing a weapon, shrapnel wounds from previous missions, and big egos.
“They are basically individual egomaniacs that make music together. They learn to depend on each other. When they are bored they play with each other to keep pushing. Otherwise, they get in trouble,” Marcinko told ABC News.
We laughed our asses off. I know he was a founder of DEVGRU, but he was hopelessly out of touch with the modern force. I didn’t know a single SEAL who fit his profile. We’d evolved past being egomaniacs. There wasn’t a soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine in the special operations community that fit his profile. It wasn’t part of our ethos. We were team players who always tried to do the right thing.
But we weren’t in the meeting to talk about leaks and security concerns.
