Mark Owen - No Easy Day

“We’re going to get UBL,” he said.

Since there is no universal standard for translating Arabic to English, we used the FBI and CIA’s spelling of his name, Usama bin Laden, shortening it to UBL.

“How do you figure?” I said.

“Look, when we were asking them about the plan, they said we were going to a place where there is a base with infrastructure,” Charlie said. “If we don’t need any of these things, we’re going back to Iraq or Afghanistan. Somewhere there is an American base. I’d say we’re going into Pakistan and we’re basing out of Afghanistan.”

“No way,” Walt said. “But if we are, I’ve been to Islamabad. It’s a shit hole.”

Walt and I had already been on one wild-goose chase looking for Bin Laden and his flowing white robes.

It was 2007 and I was on my sixth deployment. This time, I was working with the CIA at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost Province.

Khost Province was one of the places where the hijackers who crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon trained. Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters were constantly in the province, slipping easily in and out of neighboring Pakistan.

About midway through the deployment, the whole squadron was called back to Jalalabad from multiple bases throughout the country. One of the CIA’s leading sources on Osama bin Laden reported he saw the al Qaeda leader near Tora Bora. It was the same place U.S. forces almost captured him from in 2001.

The Battle of Tora Bora started on December 12, 2001, and lasted five days. It was believed Bin Laden was hiding in a cave complex in the White Mountains, near the Khyber Pass. The cave complex was a historical safe haven for Afghan fighters, and the CIA funded many of the improvements during the 1980s to assist the mujahedeen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

U.S. and Afghan forces overran the Taliban and al Qaeda positions during the battle but failed to kill or capture Bin Laden. Now the CIA source said he was in Tora Bora.

“They saw a tall man in flowing white robes in Tora Bora,” the commander said. “He is back to possibly make his final stand.” This was 2007, and 9/11 was six years behind us. Until this point, there was no credible intelligence to his whereabouts. We all wanted to believe it, but the details weren’t adding up.

We were going to fly into Tora Bora—which sat on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, between Khost and Jalalabad—and raid his suspected location. It sounded great in theory, but the operation was based on a single human source. Single-source intelligence rarely added up. No one could confirm the report, despite dozens of drones flying day and night over Tora Bora. The mission was set to launch a few days after we arrived, but it kept getting delayed.

Every day it was a new excuse.

“We’re waiting on B-1 bombers.”

“The Rangers aren’t in place yet.”

“We’ve got Special Forces heading to the area with their Afghan partner units.”

It seemed to all of us that every general in Afghanistan wanted a piece of the mission. Units from every service were involved. The night before the operation was going to launch, they called Walt and me to the operations center.

“Something came up, and you two are going to work with the PakMil,” the commander said. “If we get squirters toward the border, we need you guys on the PakMil side to coordinate blocking positions.”

“Are we bringing our kit?” I asked.

“Yeah. Bring all your op gear. You may be operating with the Pakis.”

Once on the ground, we got word Walt had to stay in Islamabad because the Pakistanis only allowed one of us to move forward. Since I was senior, the mission fell to me. An intelligence officer and a communications tech joined me.

I spent the better part of a week in a small command center in a U-shaped building made of concrete. I watched feeds from drones doing laps over Tora Bora and monitored the radio.

The night I got into Pakistan, the Air Force started their bombing campaign leading up to the team’s air assault into the area. My teammates landed in the mountains high above Tora Bora and started to search the area for Bin Laden and his fighters.

I frequently called the PakMil into the command center to look at the drone feed. Once, the drones spotted what looked like a camp near the border. I could make out tents and several men with guns walking around the area. The men didn’t appear to be in uniform, but the PakMil officers said it was a border checkpoint.

It was awkward because I didn’t know if I could trust the PakMil officers. Everyone had a different story, and I was stuck in the middle trying to keep it all together. The intelligence officer didn’t help, and I felt like a politician trying to keep my hosts and my bosses across the border happy.

After a few days of this balancing act, PakMil shut down my portion after the operation turned out to be a dry hole. There were no squirters, and the next day we headed home. Back in Islamabad, I met up with Walt. He was ready to go back to Afghanistan.

For all the time and effort, we essentially bombed some empty mountains and my teammates went on a weeklong camping trip. There was no sign of any man in flowing white robes. When we finally got back to Afghanistan a week later, “flowing white robes” became an inside joke for a bad mission.

This training exercise down in North Carolina sounded like another bad mission.

But I wouldn’t know until Monday. Unfortunately, I needed an extra day in Virginia Beach, which meant the whole team was heading down without me. I hoped my delay wouldn’t cost me my slot on the team, just in case it was something big. I stressed to Mike that I could cancel my plans and come down with the team.

“Don’t sweat it,” Mike said. “Just come down Tuesday morning.”

On Monday afternoon, I started texting Walt and Charlie, trying to get some scoop. Both wrote back basically the same message:

“Just hurry up and get down here.”

They would have said something if it was lame. The lack of response meant it was legit. I didn’t sleep Monday night.

I was up before dawn Tuesday morning. Speeding through a pouring rain, I had to force myself to slow down on the rural roads. I knew something good was on tap, but I also didn’t want to slide off the road and wrap my truck around a tree.

The two-hour drive on Tuesday morning felt like eight hours.

Finally rolling up to the gate of the training base around seven A.M., I met the guard. From the outside, it looked innocent except for the screens hung along the fence to block anyone from looking inside.

Giving him my name, which was on the list, I got my laminated security badges and headed to a building where the team was based. I kept my window down after speaking with the guards. The base was tucked into a pine forest. The morning rain brought out the scent of the trees.

I was three hours early, but I didn’t care. I was already a day behind. Not being there almost bothered me more than not knowing. There was no way I was going to wait until late morning to get started. I needed to catch up.

A single-lane cement road led to a gate. Large ten-foot-tall wooden security barriers lined the road, making it impossible to see inside the compound. Pulling through the gate, I started toward the parking lot in front of two 1970s-era two-story concrete buildings.

As I pulled up, I saw two of my buddies walking into one of the buildings. I gave a quick honk and parked in a nearby space. They stopped and waited for me. A light rain was falling, and I hustled over.

“You’re early,” they said. “We just finished breakfast. What time did you get on the road?”