No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden

and I could see fighters with weapons slung on their backs, racing away from the helicopters. A road ran from north to south across the field, past the compounds and out of the valley. I could just make out two guys on a pair of mopeds racing away. Phil spotted a group of four fighters running west away from the road toward a small house.
    “I’ve got me plus two,” Phil said. “We’ll take the guys to the west. You take the guys on the bikes.”
    Steve’s team cleared the target compound. There was no sign of Bergdahl, but we figured he had to be somewhere nearby. There were too many fighters here, and they were well armed.
    With me were two snipers from our reconnaissance unit, called RECCE, plus the EOD tech. Phil took the dog team and one assaulter.
    As we ran across the field, we practically stepped on top of a fighter hiding in the grass. I didn’t see him at first; one of the snipers made him out and opened fire. As we moved forward, I noticed he was wearing Cheetahs. Guilty.
    Moving forward again, I saw the fighters’ mopeds parked just off the road. I picked up two heads popping up over a hay bale, which had to be four to five feet tall at least, and ten or fifteen feet wide.
    “I’ve got a visual on two pax roughly three hundred meters at twelve o’clock,” I said.
    In military jargon, “pax” are people. The snipers saw them too, and we stopped in the field and took a knee. We needed a quick plan.
    “I’m going to set up on the road and see if I can get a shot,” one of the snipers said.
    He was one of the most experienced snipers at the command. In a previous deployment in Iraq, he had hunted down an Iraqi sniper who was shooting Marines. It took him weeks, but he eventually found the Iraqi sniper holed up in a house. He shot the Iraqi sniper through a missing brick in the wall.
    The road was to the left of the hay bale and had a little rise, giving him some high ground.
    “I’ll take the right flank,” the EOD tech said.
    “OK,” I said. “I’ll take the middle and try and get a hand grenade over the top of the hay bale.”
    I didn’t love this plan, but we didn’t really have a choice. With our fields of fire and Phil’s team to our right flank, we were limited on how we could maneuver to clear around behind the hay bale.
    I trusted the snipers to cover me as I moved up. It was about a two-hundred-meter shot—not easy—but with their scopes and night vision it was not difficult either.
    We quickly moved to our positions.
    “RECCE set.”
    I was carrying a small, extendable ladder on my back. I dumped it in the grass and marked it with an infrared or “IR” chemical light.
    “EOD set.”
    Transferring my rifle to my left hand, I knelt down and took a grenade from my pouch. I slid the pin out and held it in my right hand. I took a deep breath and started to sprint toward the hay bale. I could hear only my breathing and the wind whipping by as I tried to close the distance before the fighters peeked over the top again. About halfway to the hay bale, I heard an AK-47 open fire off my right flank. Phil and his crew must have tracked down the enemy fighters.
    The sprint didn’t take more than a few seconds, but in my mind everything slowed like a television replay. I was less than one hundred feet from the hay bale when a head popped up.
    I was in the open with no cover. I couldn’t freeze. I had to get to the hay bale. I didn’t have the best arm, so I knew I couldn’t clear the hay bale with a throw from this distance. I had to keep closing. A split second later, several rounds from the snipers hit the fighter in the chest, sending him tumbling back like a rag doll.
    One of the rounds ignited the propellant on an RPG rocket strapped to the fighter’s back. As he tumbled back behind the hay bale, I saw sparks and fire shoot out of his backpack. He looked like a giant sparkler.
    Sliding to a stop at the base of the hay bale, I tossed the grenade over the top and rolled away. I heard the crack of the explosion and turned to run.
    Under the cover of the sniper, I linked up with the EOD tech and the other sniper in the field. We maneuvered back to the hay bale while the second sniper covered us. Coming around the left side with our guns at the ready, we found one fighter on his back, the RPG still burning underneath him. There was no sign of the other fighter.
    As we began the search for the missing fighter, a message crackled across the radio.
    “We’ve got a wounded