Mark Owen - No Easy Day

The president stressed that soon after being elected, he told Leon Panetta to make killing or capturing Bin Laden a priority and outlined how we found him. That part of the speech was deftly crafted and didn’t reveal any harmful details.

“Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability,” Obama said. “No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”

None of us were huge fans of Obama. We respected him as the commander in chief of the military and for giving us the green light on the mission.

“You know we just put admiral’s stars on Jay,” Walt said during the speech. “And we just got this guy reelected.”

“Well, would you rather not have done this?” I said.

We all knew the deal.

We were tools in their toolbox, and when things go well they promote it. They inflate their roles. But we should have done it. It was the right call to make. Regardless of the politics that would come along with it, the end result was what we all wanted.

“McRaven will be running SOCOM in a year and will probably be CNO someday,” I said.

Obama called the mission the “most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda” and thanked us for our sacrifice.

“The American people do not see their work, nor know their names,” he said.

We’d expected him to give away details. If he had, we could have talked some smack. But I didn’t think his speech was bad at all. If anything, it was kind of anticlimactic.

“OK, enough of this,” I said to Walt. “Let’s go find some food or at least a hot shower.”

Word went out we had a flight home in a few hours. I found my backpack with my civilian clothes and boarded a bus for the JSOC compound. The team decided to try and squeeze in showers before heading back to Virginia Beach.

The compound had a handful of shower trailers. Standing under the scalding water, I could feel my body slowly starting to unwind.

Plus, I was hungry.

DEVGRU has a small section of the JSOC compound. It was our ground mobility shop. Basically, they kept all of our trucks, motorcycles, four-wheelers, and Humvees working. A SEAL headed it up and worked with a bunch of Seabees and mechanics.

The flight home got delayed a few hours, so we made ourselves at home. Inside the work area, the garage was littered with parts, tools, and vehicles in all phases of repair. We gathered in a small office area with a sitting room and lounge. The SEAL who ran the shop welcomed us with open arms.

“What do you need?” he said.

Comprised of a few modular buildings and a covered motor pool, they had carved out a small patio with a brick pizza oven and a large gas grill. Walt walked around the patio passing around a box of cigars the NRA had sent him weeks before to welcome him home from deployment. They had no idea we’d smoke them to celebrate the mission that killed Bin Laden.

Everybody was there except Jay, Mike, and Tom. The head shed were still over at the airfield briefing Admiral McRaven.

We spent most of the time on the patio soaking up the warm spring sun. The Seabees who lived at the compound were firing up the grill to cook steaks and lobster tail they had liberated from the chow hall. I could smell popcorn in the office and pizza cooking in the brick oven.

I was half asleep on the patio getting some sun when I heard someone yell out.

“You guys aren’t going to believe this shit. It’s already out.”

At one of the computer terminals, the team leader of the perimeter security team was reading the news sites. It took less than four hours before the news was reporting that it was SEALs who had carried out the mission. Then it was SEALs from DEVGRU based in Virginia Beach.

The mission had been secret for almost a month now, and suddenly it was all over the news. We watched footage of the crowds that spontaneously gathered outside the White House, Ground Zero, and the Pentagon. At a Major League baseball game in Philadelphia, fans started to chant “U-S-A.” Everyone commented about how young they looked. Kids like that didn’t know what the United States was like before September 11, 2001.

We watched the madness on TV, and I couldn’t help but wonder what my friends and family were thinking back at home. Nobody knew I was in Afghanistan. I told my parents I was out of town training and wouldn’t have my cell phone. I was sure everybody was calling my phone trying to see where I was.

The sun was warm as we sat outside and ate. Now full, all I could think about was sleep. The bus came back a few hours later to take us to the plane. The adrenaline was gone as we dragged ourselves on board.

The C-17 was empty except for the aircrew.

Our containers boarded first and then we followed, spreading our ground pads on the deck. As we got settled, I could see the crew chiefs talking with the pilots. Air Force C-17 flights are always hit or miss. Sometimes you’ll score a cool aircrew that will let you sleep wherever you want, while others are by-the-book and keep you in your seats.

As the plane’s engines warmed up, the crew chief got on the intercom.

“Hey, guys, we’re not stopping in Germany so we’ll be getting gas from an airborne tanker in route back to the United States,” he said. “You guys get some sleep.”

They obviously figured out who their passengers were, and the crew was cool enough to let us get some much-needed sleep. Typically, we stop in Germany for gas. Everybody was stoked the aircrew was going to be cool and that we were going to fly straight through. At this point we’d been up for almost twenty-four hours. Takeoff was quiet and then the plane headed west.

We were spent.

The media blitz we had just seen on TV and online was jarring. I don’t think anybody was prepared for it. But stretching out on the deck of the C-17, I didn’t have the energy to give a shit. My mind needed to turn off.

I took two Ambien and was fast asleep before we got out of Afghan airspace.

My phone vibrated, pinged, buzzed, and beeped as it started to receive a day’s worth of messages.

Seconds after our C-17 landed in Virginia Beach, every one of us turned on a phone to a cacophony of ring tones. I placed my phone next to me while it practically popped like corn in a kettle.

While we cruised over the Atlantic, news of the raid dominated TV and the Web. Reporters flooded Virginia Beach searching for real live Navy SEALs to interview. In Washington, anyone on Capitol Hill or in the Pentagon who had even a shred of information was leaking it.

When my phone finally stopped, I started to scroll through the messages. People had no idea I’d been on the raid. But anybody and everybody that knew I was a SEAL contacted me to talk about it. I had messages from my family and even friends from college who I hadn’t talked to in years. All the messages were the same:

“Hey, buddy, what’s going on? I’m watching the news. Just wondering if you’re in town.”

It was so top secret when we left that we weren’t even telling people in our own unit where we were going. But now, I had close to one hundred e-mails, fifty voice mails, and three dozen text messages asking me if I happened to be in Pakistan or if I knew what was going on. My family just wanted to know if I was in town and safe.

The plane barely came to a stop when the crew door popped open and the old commander of our squadron sprinted aboard. He was waiting to take command of DEVGRU. They had delayed the change of command until after this mission, so he was not with us in Afghanistan. He was one of the best leaders I’ve ever worked for. All of the guys loved him because he always had our back.