Mark Owen - No Easy Day

At least we could laugh at it. Maybe they figured humor would help us endure. The truth is, if we got to that point, no story we could come up with was going to cover up twenty-two SEALs packing sixty pounds of hi-tech gear on their backs, an EOD tech, and an interpreter for a total of twenty-four men, plus a dog, raiding a suburban neighborhood a few miles from the Pakistani military academy.

At the end of the brief, the commanding officer of DEVGRU came walking in. A captain with silver hair and a mustache, he’d lost his leg in a parachute accident years ago. As he walked to the front of the conference room, I barely noticed the slight hitch in his step from the prosthetic limb.

The officer briefing us faded into the background as the commander got to the front. All of the laughing and grumbling about the cover story receded, and the room was silent.

“OK, guys,” the DEVGRU commander said. “Just got off the phone with McRaven. He just talked to the president. The operation has been approved. We’re launching tomorrow night.”

There were no cheers or high fives. I glanced back at some of the fellas sitting on the benches around me. The guys I’d operated side by side with for years.

“Holy shit,” I thought. “I didn’t think it was really going to happen.”

No more briefs.

No more good idea fairy.

And most of all, there was no more waiting.

I couldn’t sleep.

I’d spent the last couple of hours trying to get comfortable. But I found no peace on the hard mattress or in my own head. It was go day, and there was no getting around the significance of the mission now.

Sliding open the camouflage poncho liner hung over my bunk to shield the light, I swung my legs out and rubbed my eyes. After three days of trying not to think about the mission, it was impossible to keep it from my mind now. If everything went as planned, in less than twelve hours we’d be roping into Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.

I didn’t feel tired. The only evidence I’d slept was the empty baggie that once held a couple of Ambien and a handful of empty bottles now filled with urine. Since we lived in overflow housing, it was a two-hundred-yard walk to the nearest bathroom. So I saved my empty water or Gatorade bottles to piss in instead. Standard practice. We’d flip on our headlamps and relieve ourselves without every truly waking up.

I felt fresh physically, but mentally I was amped up. Not on edge, but restless. The “hurry up and wait” routine was grating on my nerves. We were all just happy the wait was almost over.

Careful to be quiet since some of my teammates were still sound asleep, I slid from the bunk and got dressed. I could hear the faint snores of the others in their rooms. Grabbing my sunglasses, I walked out of the hut and into the daylight. The sun hit me like a sledgehammer. It felt like walking out of a casino in Vegas after playing all night.

It took me a second to adjust, but soon the late afternoon sun felt good on my face and arms as I started walking toward the chow hall. I looked at my watch. For those of us on the compound on vampire hours, it was morning.

For the rest of the base, it was the middle of the workday. The constant roar of helicopters provided the sound track. As I walked, a shit-sucking truck passed by after cleaning a bank of Porta-Johns on the camp. The pungent chemical smell of the disinfectant hung in the air as it passed.

I kept my head down and walked on the gravel that kept the dust down to the first gate. Each unit changed the combination on the gate when they arrived. I fished a slip of paper out of my pocket with the code. My head was still cloudy from the Ambien. Pressing the numbers, I tried the doorknob.

No luck.

It took me three tries to get out, but I was finally on my way.

“Just get through breakfast,” I thought.

I was back to surviving Green Team. I knew if you focused on the whole thing, you cracked. The only way to survive was getting through the day one meal at a time. Now, hours before the biggest mission of my career, I was just focused on getting to breakfast.

It was success one step at a time.

Inside the chow hall, I washed my hands under a blast of cold water. The stench of greasy fried cafeteria food was so thick it clung to your clothes. The chow hall still had old holiday decorations pasted on the concrete wall. A long-faded 1970s poster of the four food groups took up most of the bulletin board next to the menu of the day.

I surveyed the long stainless-steel buffets. Behind each one, in an apron and hat, was a civilian contractor ready to serve me a scoop of grits or pile bacon on my plate.

Nothing looked good. The bacon was more fat than meat, and soggy from the grease. But I needed energy. I headed straight for the grill, where a small line was formed. A short-order cook was poised behind the flat top. Scooping up a buttery omelet folded into a greasy mess, he slid it on the plate of the guy in front of me.

“Four eggs,” I said as the cook looked at me. “Scrambled please. Ham and cheese.”

While the cook started on my eggs, I got some toast and fruit. The selection was the same on every deployment: large trays of unripe dark orange cantaloupe and honeydew with an almost chemical green color. During my last rotation, I had seen a box in the chow hall marked “FOR MILITARY OR PRISON USE ONLY.” Seemed about right.

No one joins the military for the food.

I grabbed two pieces of bread and ran them through the restaurant-grade toaster and piled some pineapple onto my plate. You can’t screw up pineapple. Back at the grill, I picked up my eggs and stopped to scoop some oatmeal and raisins into a bowl.

I surveyed the tables arranged in long rows in the dining area. The murmur of conversations, coupled with the big-screen TV tucked in the corner tuned to cable news, created a dull roar. I saw a few of my teammates at a table far from the TV and dropped off my tray on my way to get coffee.

The chow hall was for JSOC personnel only, but not everyone knew about the mission.

As I sprinkled some pepper on my eggs, I muttered a hello to my teammates, including Charlie and Tom. They returned the greeting, but like me, no one wanted to talk. We were more comfortable alone with our thoughts.

“How did you sleep?” I said.

“Like shit,” Charlie said.

“You take any Ambien?”

“Two,” he said.

“Look at the bright side, at least we’re enjoying this glorious breakfast. It’s like the buffet at Hotel del Coronado.”

The hotel was one of the oldest resorts on the Pacific Coast, not far from where we’d all gone through BUD/S.

“Right,” Charlie said. “Is that all you can come up with?”

I was trying to be funny, but it was too early. Charlie always gave me shit about my weak jokes. I knew they sucked, but it was part of the fun.

Beyond that, there was no talk of home. No talk of the mission. There was nothing more to cover. The food wasn’t good, but you wouldn’t have known by looking at our plates when we were through.

I doubt any of us really tasted breakfast. It was just fuel for later. After my eggs and fruit, I forced down the bowl of oatmeal and finished a glass of orange juice. Walking back to my room, I was stuffed. I didn’t know when I’d eat next.

The rooms were still quiet when I got back. Some of my teammates were trying to sleep until the last minute, but I was too amped. Getting my toothbrush and a bottle of water, careful not to grab my piss bottle, I walked out to a thick gravel area off to the side and brushed my teeth and spit on the ground.