Mark Owen - No Easy Day

“Keep shooting,” the commander yelled into the hatch.

“What?” the gunner said.

“I want you to level the whole second floor,” the assault leader repeated. “Level it.”

The Bradley crunched back over the rubble again and started to fire. One of the insurgents screamed “ Allahu Akbar! ” and started to spray bullets out the window.

This time, there was no letup from the Bradley. Guys started to cheer as the rounds hit in successive explosions. In a few minutes, the Bradley went Winchester, which is the military term for running out of ammunition. We brought up a second Bradley and it shot until it went Winchester as well.

By the time the second Bradley pulled back, a raging fire had erupted on the second floor. Black smoke poured out of the windows and started to billow into the sky. From our position on the roof, we could still hear the insurgents yelling. I was perched on the northeast corner, holding down on the backside of the house. It was hard to see because of the thick black smoke.

Suddenly, I saw a man’s head and torso emerge from a window.

Without thinking, I put my laser on his chest and opened fire. I could see the bullets hit him and he flopped back into the room, disappearing into the smoke.

After my volley of fire, Jon raced over beside me.

“What you got?”

“Saw a guy in the back window,” I said.

“You sure?” he said, scanning the same window with his laser.

“Yeah.”

“You get him?”

“Pretty sure,” I said.

“OK. Stay put.”

Jon went back to his post and I kept searching for new targets. I didn’t have time to dwell on it nor did I have any feelings about it. This was the first person I’d ever shot and with all the time I’d spent thinking about how it would make me feel, it really didn’t make me feel anything. I knew that these guys in the house had already tried to kill my friends on the first floor and they wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to me.

Even after the two Bradleys and the fire, we still heard yelling followed by bursts of enemy fire. Tactically, it didn’t make sense to assault up the stairs.

“They’re going to blow the building,” Jon said.

Jon decided to pull us off the roof rather than expose us to the blast. We joined the others on the ground. I watched as a small breach team, led by one of Delta’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal guys, ran into the first floor to set a thermobaric charge. The charge produces a huge shock wave capable of collapsing an entire building.

A few minutes later, the charge was set and the breach team ran back and took cover next to me. Hunkered behind the Pandur, I could hear him counting down. I waited for the explosion.

Nothing.

Everybody stared at the EOD tech. We all had the same confused look on our faces. I saw Jon walk toward him.

“What the hell?” Jon said.

“The time must have been wrong,” I heard him mumble.

I am sure his mind was running a million miles an hour. He was trying to figure out why the charge didn’t blow.

“Did you dual prime?” Jon asked.

Everybody was trained to dual prime explosives, which meant attaching two detonators to the charge in case one fails. The rule of thumb was simple: One is none. Two is one.

But that didn’t help us now. We had to make a decision. Do we send more guys back into the house to reset the charge, or do we wait it out and see what happens? We had no idea if the insurgents moved downstairs and were now waiting for the assaulters to return, or if the EOD set the wrong time and it would go off unexpectedly with men inside.

Finally, they decided to send the EOD tech back inside to attach a new detonator. Again, the breach team ran back inside. We continued to cover the house, and minutes later the breach team was back behind the Pandur.

“You think it is going to go this time?” Jon asked with a smirk.

“Yeah, I am pretty positive,” the EOD tech said. “Dual primed it.”

On time, the charge exploded and the house crumbled onto itself, sending out a massive cloud covering us in thin, talc-like dust. I watched the cloud rise into the sky and hang in the muggy morning air. By now, the sun was starting to come up.

We moved in to sift through the rubble looking for bodies and weapons. There were at least six dead fighters. Most of the bodies were up on the second floor. Their faces were covered in soot. Jon noticed the sandbags near some of the bodies.

“Hey, look at this. They had the whole second floor barricaded,” he said. “We’re lucky the pilots made a mistake. It probably saved our lives.”

“Why?” I asked.

“If we’d actually landed on the right building,” Jon said, “the four of us would have assaulted into a barricaded position on the second floor. We might have had surprise on our side, but the odds wouldn’t have looked good once we made entry. Without a doubt in my mind, we would have taken more casualties.”

I was quiet. I looked up to Jon and here he was saying we were lucky. A mistake had probably saved our lives. It was nothing but a bit of random luck.

After clearing the rubble, the ride back to the base in the Pandurs was quiet. We were hungry and tired. All of our faces were covered in soot. Usually there was more smack talking and excitement after taking down such a dynamic target. I let what happened start creeping into my mind.

As we rode, Jon’s words kept echoing in my head. Had the mission gone perfectly, we would have landed the Little Bird on the roof and entered the door on the second floor, only to come face-to-face with at least four heavily armed insurgents. A four-on-four gunfight with automatic weapons in a room no bigger than a bedroom never ends well.

By the time we parked back at our base, I had finished my mental gymnastics. I simply blocked out what could have happened and moved on to what I learned: Sometimes something random can save your life. And always dual prime a charge.

At the end of the deployment, I flew back to Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, where Delta is based. When we got off the plane, members of their unit greeted me just like I was one of their own.

Before I boarded my flight to Virginia Beach, Jon handed me a plaque. It was a copy of a pencil drawing of a Delta operator and a Little Bird. It was framed with green matting and a Delta Force unit coin.

“I want you to have this,” Jon said. “Anybody who runs with this team gets one.”

Master Sergeant Randy Shughart, a Delta sniper, made the drawing, and the original was found after he was killed in Somalia. Shughart was awarded the Medal of Honor during the Battle of Mogadishu. When the Black Hawk crashed, he volunteered to defend the crash site until help arrived. He was killed by a mob of Somalis.

Before the attacks on September 11, Delta and DEVGRU were rivals. We were the two kids at the top of the block, and there was a raging debate over which unit was the best. With the war, there was no more time for rivalry and all that bullshit had gone away. They treated me like a brother during the deployment.

I shook hands with Jon and boarded my flight to Virginia Beach.

Back home at DEVGRU the next day, I met up with Charlie and Steve. They came over to my cage while I unpacked and got my gear back in its proper place. The squadron was just returning from its deployment in Afghanistan. Compared to my trip to Baghdad, their deployment had been relatively slow.

As much fun as I had in Iraq with Delta, it was still good to be back with the boys.

“Sounds like you were busy over there,” Charlie said.

“When are you moving down to Bragg with your Army brothers?” Steve said.

My jokes were weak, and I knew they were talking shit. It was great to be back.