Mark Owen: No Easy Day

As we gathered up our backpacks, he walked down the line giving everyone a handshake and hug. He wanted to be the first to welcome us back. We were still shaking off the haze of the Ambien, so it was kind of surreal to see his lanky frame and bald head move down the line. This was the first sign that our welcome home would be bigger than we anticipated.

The whine of the engines made it hard to hear as we got off the plane. It was pitch-black outside. Moving from the bright cabin into the night made it worse. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust, but when they did I saw about two hundred of my teammates lined up to greet us. I could make out their silhouettes as I walked toward the white buses that would take us to our base. It was about a fifty-yard walk to the bus and I shook at least a hundred hands.

We always tried to meet the plane when squadrons returned home. It struck me that anybody standing in that line shaking our hands could have been in our shoes. We just happened to be at the right place at the right time. I felt really lucky.

I didn’t have but a few seconds to yell out a hello or mumble a thank-you as I passed. We were exhausted and a little overwhelmed when we got to the bus.

Thankfully, there was a cooler full of beer and some hot pizza waiting for us. I settled silently into my seat. Holding my backpack between my legs, I balanced my phone on my thigh as I ate and sipped a beer. I looked around the bus. Everybody had their noses stuck in their phones trying to sift through the glut of messages. Roughly twenty-four hours ago, President Obama had addressed the nation about the raid.

For the first time, it started to sink in. This was pretty cool. It was the kind of mission I’d read about in Alaska as a kid. It was history. But just as quickly as those thoughts crossed my mind, I forced them out. The second you stop and believe your own hype, you’ve lost.

Back at the command, I didn’t even go inside. Our gear and weapons were placed in our storage bay and locked. There was no need to unload everything, and we were lucky enough to have the next few days off work. I threw my civilian backpack into my truck and headed home. I didn’t want to go out and hit the bars and celebrate. I just wanted some quiet. The welcome was overwhelming enough.

On the way home, I spotted the neon drive-through sign at the Taco Bell. I always stopped for a south of the border fix on my way home from a deployment, usually in Germany. I had made this stop several times over the years. Pulling into the line, I ordered two crispy tacos, a bean burrito, and a medium Pepsi.

At the window, a high school kid handed me my food and drink. I pulled forward into the parking lot and took out a taco. I spread the paper in my lap and drizzled some fire sauce over the cold, crisp lettuce and ate.

On the radio, I had the country music station playing. Between bites, I tried to make sense of everything. Days before, I’d been choking down chow hall food and trying to keep the mission out of my head. Now, I was eating Taco Bell in a parking lot on my way home and still trying to keep it out of my head.

I needed a few days off.

We joked before we left Bagram about getting some time off. I knew the rest of my squadron was off the coast of Virginia practicing underways. The command had rented a cruise ship and filled it with role players. It was a massive and expensive training event. It always sounded more fun than it really was. Inevitably, it turned into hours in the cold water being pounded by waves as you climb up the side of a ship.

After the final bite of the bean burrito, I rolled up the paper and threw it back in the bag. Taking a big sip of my drink, I put my truck in gear and headed home. Before I could relax, I unpacked and took a long shower.

But I was still pretty wired. I had just slept for nineteen hours. The TV was on, and I started to surf the cable news channels. Every show was airing something related to the mission. Most of it was speculation.

They reported that we were in a forty-minute firefight.

Then I saw that we’d taken fire while we were outside the gate.

Then, Bin Laden had a weapon and attempted to defend himself before we shot him.

And of course it was reported, in Bin Laden’s last seconds, he had enough time to look into our eyes and see that it was Americans coming to get him.

The raid was being reported like a bad action movie. At first, it was funny because it was so wrong.

But then photos of the compound flashed across the screen. For weeks it had been top secret and now here it was all over the news. I saw wreckage of the helicopter. The charges destroyed the fuselage but there was still a section of the tail rotor that survived. When the explosives detonated, the tail section broke off and fell onto the ground on the outside of the wall.

The Reuters wire service even had pictures of the bodies we left behind. On the screen, shots of the al-Kuwaiti brothers—including Abrar, who Will and I shot through the door of the guesthouse—flashed on the screen. A picture of where Bin Laden’s body had been came on next. I could see the dried blood on the rug.

I struggled to wrap my mind around it.

To see these images on prime-time television was hard for me to deal with. The images broke through the tiny compartment in my brain that I’d placed this whole experience in. I had no barrier between home and work now. I’ve always been good at mentally blocking out the “work” I’d done overseas. When I was home, I was home. Seeing these images was like crossing the two streams and it made my head hurt.

I didn’t sleep well that night. I’d squirreled away a couple of Ambien. There was no way I was going to sleep without them.

For the next two days, I dodged calls from friends and family. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing. My family was asking me if I was involved. My parents knew I’d been gone, but they didn’t know where.

Before I left, I had called them and said I was going to train and wouldn’t have phone service. I always tried to keep things vague with them. I had sent my sisters a random text message before we left simply telling them that I loved them both. It wasn’t a red flag at the time, but after the news broke, my sisters knew I must be up to something.

The day after we got home, I was taking my trash can to the curb when my neighbor from across the street walked over and gave me a huge hug. She knew I was a SEAL and noticed I had been gone for a few days.

“You never really know what your neighbors do for a living, do you?” she said as she smiled and walked back to her house.

It was the same for my teammates. One buddy barely got in the door before he was back changing diapers.

“So I get home and she hands me my kid right away,” my buddy said when we got back to work. “We just shot UBL. Think I can sit down and drink a beer?”

Another spent the morning after he got home mowing his overgrown lawn. We might have been getting the celebrity treatment in the media, but at home we were just absent husbands.

When we finally came back to work officially two days later, Jay called us into a meeting in the same conference room where we first heard about the mission. There was concern at the command level about all the leaks revolving around the raid.

“It is imperative that we stay out of the media,” Jay said. “Let’s all make sure we’re keeping a low profile.”

I was astonished. We’d kept this whole thing under wraps for weeks. Now, Washington was leaking everything, and we were going to get the lecture for it. It felt like it was only a matter of time before some of our names appeared on the news. We just killed the number one terrorist in the world. The last thing we needed was our names attached to it. We simply wanted to fade back into the shadows and go back to work.