blow open a metal door that led to the house. The team from the chopper outside the wall blasted in through another entrance. There were flashes of light on the screen. The men were moving on the house itself now, and then were inside.
Upstairs in that house, according to accounts given by bin Laden’s family, the household had been startled awake by a loud crash. One of bin Laden’s adult daughters ran up from the second floor to the third and was told to go back down. Bin Laden instructed his wife Amal to leave the lights off. They would not have been able to turn them on anyway, because CIA operatives had cut off electricity to the entire neighborhood in advance of the assault—darkness favored the SEALs. The Sheik waited upstairs with Amal in the dark.
One group of SEALs entered the garage area of the guesthouse. Teams like this had hit houses that were wired to explode, and had encountered people wearing explosives. When they encountered men, they were inclined to shoot on sight. There was a single brief spray of gunfire as they approached, but it was wild and ineffective. It had most likely come from the courier Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed—Ahmed the Kuwaiti. The SEALs returned fire, killing Ahmed and wounding his wife in the shoulder.
Another part of the team moved on the main house, clearing it methodically. Abrar Ahmed, the courier’s brother, was in a first-floor bedroom with his wife Bushra. Both were shot dead.
They cleared the first floor room by room, encountering no further gunfire. They passed through two large storage rooms and a kitchen. No one knew the layout of the interior. When they encountered a locked metal door in the rear sealing off a stairway to the upper floors, they slapped on a small C-4 charge, blew it off its hinges, and moved up the stairs. Bin Laden’s twenty-three-year-old son, Khalid, a slender bearded man wearing a white T-shirt, was shot dead at the top. There were wailing women and children on this floor, none of whom posed a threat. The team didn’t know it yet, but there was only one adult male left in the compound, and he was in the third-floor bedroom.
Originally, half the assaulting SEALs were to have come down through the balcony into the third floor, in which case bin Laden would have been encountered immediately, at about the same time the Ahmed brothers were being shot downstairs. Instead, the Sheik had about fifteen long minutes to wait in the darkness as the SEALs methodically approached. Their rifles had silencers, and if none of the victims had fired he would not have heard the blast of gunfire by Ahmed and then shouting and crying and the sound of the metal doors being blown open. He might also have heard the muted pop of the SEALs’ silenced weapons. The only windows on his secure third floor looked north, out over the compound walls. The downed chopper was in the western corner of the compound and the other had landed to the south, so he could only have surmised who was coming for him. He might have thought it was a Pakistani force. The assaulters blew off the door barring the third floor and he would have heard men ascending, coming for him.
Three SEALs came up those stairs, scanning different angles, searching while protecting each other. According to one of the SEALs,* the first man up spotted a tall, bearded, swarthy man in a prayer cap wearing traditional flowing Pakistani clothes, the knee-length shirt worn over pajama-like bottoms. One or more of the SEALs fired at him. The man retreated quickly into a bedroom, and the SEALs followed. In the bedroom they found two women leaning over a fatally wounded bin Laden, who had been shot in the head. The first SEAL violently moved the women out of the way and the other two stood over him and fired several more shots into his chest.
* An account of this killing scene by one of the three SEALs, calling himself “Mark Owen” was published after the first edition of The Finish went to press. He was the first of the raiding party to offer his version of the shooting, and as of this writing is the only member of the team to have done so. It differed in several details from the one I had pieced together in interviews with sources at JSOC. My original account had bin Laden being chased from the top of the stairs into a bedroom, where he was first shot in the chest, and then, once his wife Amal was pushed aside, shot in the head by a SEAL standing over him. The version in the above text is based on the “Owen” account, which, given the source, I assume to be more correct. I had been in discussions with “Mark Owen” early in the reporting of this book, but he opted not to tell me his story and instead pursued a contract to coauthor his own account, called No Easy Day.
The engagement was over in seconds. Amal had been shot in the leg. Bin Laden had weapons on a shelf in his bedroom but had not picked them up. His identity was unmistakable, even with the grotesque hole through his right forehead. The architect of 9/11 had become the most infamous face in the world.
McRaven heard “for God and Country, pass Geronimo. Geronimo. Geronimo.” The word “Geronimo” was part of a coded “mission execution checklist.” It meant the critical milestone of the raid had been passed successfully, securing bin Laden. McRaven conveyed the report immediately to Panetta, and it began to spread waves of excitement through the CIA and White House, and in Kabul where Petraeus and Ostlund were listening in. Petraeus pumped his fist with satisfaction.
In the White House, in the corner of the small crowded conference room, Obama heard “Geronimo ID’d.”
The president knew the ID was still tentative, so he didn’t let himself fully believe it. To whatever extent he felt relief or excitement or satisfaction… he fought those feelings down. To him it meant the SEALs could now start extricating themselves, which meant they might soon be fighting their way out. There had been a chopper crash and explosions at the compound. If the United States was going to have to defend the raiders on their way out—and there were fighters ready—it meant the worst part might still be ahead. Hearing the report, the president thought,
But after McRaven had passed that along, it occurred to him that he had not asked specifically whether bin Laden had been killed or captured.
So he asked, “Find out whether it’s Geronimo EKIA [Enemy Killed In Action].”
The answer came back, “Roger, Geronimo EKIA.” So McRaven passed that on to Panetta and the White House.
“Looks like we got him,” said Obama, only half believing it.
The delay between these two reports would cause some confusion in later accounts, which suggested that the SEALs had first found bin Laden, chased him, and then, a few minutes later, killed him. The finding and the shooting had happened in the time it took the three SEALs to crash into his room. Eighteen minutes had elapsed since the choppers had arrived.
McRaven told Panetta: “Look, I’ve got a Geronimo call, but I need to tell you it’s a first call. This is not a confirmation. Please keep your expectations managed a little here.” He explained that the adrenaline of operators was sky high on these raids. They were looking at everything through night-vision goggles. They were professionals, but… “Let’s not count on anything until they get back and we have some evidence.” Echoing the president’s thoughts, McRaven reminded Panetta, and everyone else watching, “We’ve still got SEALs on the ground without a ride.”
The video on the screen now showed SEALs emerging from the house, herding the uninjured women and children to one corner of the compound, away from the downed chopper. Some of the men came out carrying a body bag—bin Laden’s body had been dragged feet-first down the stairs, leaving a bloody trail. One of his daughters would later say that she remembered her father’s head banging each step on the way down. The SEALs eventually zipped it into a nylon bag. The assaulters moved deliberately, and Obama felt they were taking too long. Everyone was waiting for the Pakistani response at this point. The president just wanted them in the air.
But the commotion at the compound had, in fact, attracted little interest in the neighborhood, or the country. The translator, wearing a Kevlar vest under his traditional long Pakistani shirt, shooed away the few residents who came out for a look. His training to fast rope was for naught, since his helicopter had instead landed outside the compound. The dog Cairo was enough to convince most to back off. The translator told them sternly in Pashto to go back to their houses, that a “security operation” was under way. People obliged. Monitoring the Pakistani defense forces carefully, McRaven saw no sign that the country’s defenses had been aroused.
There was much to do yet at the compound, inside and out. Upstairs, SEALs were hastily bagging bin Laden’s papers and computer, discs, flash drives, anything that might contain useful intelligence—the site’s pocket litter. Bin Laden’s youngest wife, Amal, wounded, was helped down the stairs and outside, haranguing the Americans in Arabic. All four of the men who had lived in the compound, along with one woman, were dead. The surviving women and children were flex-cuffed. The women assumed they were going to be taken away. Questioned by an Arabic-speaking SEAL, the women confirmed that they had killed “The Sheik.” One of the children confirmed that it was Osama bin Laden.
