Mark Owen - No Easy Day

I have no idea if Phil was the culprit. I know he was the one who found it, but to date the Staff of Power is unaccounted for.

The only thing Phil loved more than a good prank was parachuting. As my team leader, Phil had a passion that drove our team to air operations, in particular High Altitude, High Opening (HAHO) jumps. The technique offered the best and most stealthy way to infiltrate a target. During a HAHO jump, you exit the aircraft, open your parachute a few seconds later, and fly your canopy to the landing zone.

I got my free-fall qualification at Team Five, but it wasn’t until I got to DEVGRU that I truly mastered the art of jumping.

Let me be clear, at first jumping out of an airplane scared me.

There is something unnatural about walking to the edge of the ramp and jumping out. Not only did it scare me, I hated it at first. I was the guy sucking down oxygen on the ride up. After every jump, when I was back on the ground, I loved it. But the next morning, I’d sweat it all over again. By forcing myself to do it over and over, eventually it became easier. Just like in BUD/S, quitting wasn’t an option and jumping was a big part of our job, so it was something I learned to love.

While I was with Delta on my 2005 deployment to Iraq, Phil successfully led a HAHO jump in Afghanistan. We always trained for this type of mission but I never thought I’d do one for real. Since I’d joined the command, I rotated between Iraq and Afghanistan, deployment after deployment. Things had fallen into a pattern of deployments, training, and standby. There were so many missions they started to blur together. We were rapidly gaining combat experience with each deployment. The command as a whole continually refined its tactics and had become even more combat effective.

In 2009, we finally got something different.

I was on personal leave, waiting for a commercial flight back to Virginia Beach, when I saw the breaking news bulletin flash across the TV screen in the airport. The Maersk Alabama , a cargo ship with seventeen thousand metric tons of cargo, was headed for Mombasa, Kenya, when Somali pirates attacked it in transit near the Horn of Africa. It was Wednesday, April 8, 2009. The pirates captured the Maersk Alabama ’s captain, Richard Phillips, and fled with the captain in one of the ship’s eighteen-foot covered lifeboats. They had nine days of food rations. The USS Bainbridge , a destroyer, was shadowing the lifeboat, which was motoring about thirty miles off the Somali coast. Four pirates were on board armed with AK-47s.

Sitting in the airport, I wondered if we were going to get the call. Getting personal time off was a huge feat since my squadron was on standby and could be called to deploy anywhere in the world with an hour’s notice.

Watching the TV at the airport, I could see the orange lifeboat bobbing in the surf. Nearby was the gray-hulled USS Bainbridge . I tried to stand close so I could hear the report over the noise of the airport. Nothing was going on when I’d left Virginia Beach a few days earlier, but now I had a feeling we’d be getting a call. As footage of the lifeboat popped up on-screen again, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Phil.

“You watching the news?” he said.

“Yeah. Just saw it,” I said.

“Where you at?”

At this point, I was the most senior member of my team besides my team leader.

“I am at the airport,” I said. “I am literally waiting for my flight.”

“OK, good,” Phil said. “Get back as soon as you can.”

Instantly, I could feel my mind racing. The plane couldn’t fly fast enough. This mission was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. I didn’t want to miss it.

Boarding a plane is frustrating enough when you’re not in a rush. I watched as folks meandered to their seats or fussed with the overhead bins. I pleaded with them in my head to hurry. The sooner we took off, the faster I could get back to work. Plus, I knew once I was airborne I’d be in a communications blackout. There was no way to contact me if they got the word to go. For all I knew, as the flight attendant sealed the doors to my plane, I was getting the recall notice telling me I had one hour to get to the command, and by the time we landed the team would be gone.

Putting my headphones in, I tried to zone out but I couldn’t. Five steps from the gate after we landed in Virginia I was on the phone.

“Hey, what’s up?” I said when Phil picked up.

It was well after eight at night, since I’d come from the West Coast.

“Still here,” he said. “Come into work tomorrow early and I will get you up to speed. Planning is underway. But we’re waiting for D.C. to make a decision.”

The next morning, I was at work early. Phil met me in the squadron room. We sat down at the conference room table.

“We’ve got one hostage,” Phil said. “Four pirates. They want two million dollars for him.”

“Nothing like knowing exactly what you’re worth,” I said.

“I’d ask for more,” Phil said. “A couple of million seems a bit light, unless you ask my ex-wife.”

“Where are they going?” I asked.

“They want to link up with their buddies and try and get Phillips to a camp or a mother ship,” Phil said. “So, we’ve got to be ready to do a ship takedown or go over the beach and take out one of the camps.”

We’d spent years preparing for either mission.

“We’ve already got a handful of guys on the Bainbridge ,” Phil said. “They were working in Africa and jumped in last night. Negotiations broke down Thursday.”

“How long do we have before they make shore?” I asked.

“They don’t want to make landfall where they are now because of some tribal issues,” Phil said. “Their tribe is a little farther south so they can’t make landfall for another two days, so hopefully we have a timeline to work against.”

I asked about the recall.

“No recall, but it’s being discussed,” Phil said.

“Why haven’t we heard anything yet?” I said. “It doesn’t make any sense that it takes this long to make a decision.”

“Dude, it’s Washington,” he said. “Does anything make sense?”

A day later, we finally got a page recalling us. Most of us were already at the command. Our gear was packed and ready.

About twenty hours later, the ramp of the C-17 cracked open and sunlight spilled into the cabin.

I could feel the breeze on my face as I shielded my eyes from the bright East African sun. Minutes later, I saw the small parachute attached to a massive gray high-speed assault craft (HSAC) snap open and start to drag the boat out of the back of the plane. The boats were loaded with all the gear we needed. The plan was to drop them and the crews first, followed by the assault teams.

CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.

I could hear the boat on the metal rollers as it started toward the door, picking up speed before disappearing off the ramp. Moments later, a second parachute opened and the gray blur of the second boat flew past as it shot out, followed by the boat crews.

“Yeah,” I yelled as I watched the boats go. Others around me cheered as the boat crews disappeared off the ramp.

My heart was beating faster, more from excitement than anything else, as I waited for the thumbs-up from my teammates on the ramp. They were watching to make sure the chutes on the boats opened.

We were jumping over the horizon from the USS Bainbridge so the pirates couldn’t see us. The USS Boxer , an amphibious assault ship used to carry Marines into battle, was going to rendezvous with us and we’d stage off of her deck.