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

eagle, we’ve got a wounded eagle request immediate medevac.”
    One of the snipers with me was a medic and immediately started moving toward Phil’s team. We still hadn’t found the missing enemy fighter, so I pushed the thought of who might be wounded out of my mind and three of us continued to search.
    I helped the EOD tech gather up the fighters’ guns and mopeds. The fighters had morphine kits and grenades. They were professionals, not some farmers who picked up AK-47s when the crops weren’t in season.
    We never found Bergdahl on that deployment, and as of the summer of 2012 he was still a prisoner. But in my gut, I think he was there at some point. We probably missed him by a few hours, or maybe in the fight they were able to escape.
    After things quieted down, the EOD tech set charges to blow the enemy’s equipment.
    “I’m ready,” the EOD tech said.
    We moved to a safe distance, and he set off the charge, blowing the gear and the fighter’s body to shreds. The charge gashed the hay bale, setting some of it on fire and leaving a black scorch mark on the rest.
    We never found the other fighter’s body, but when we went back to make sure the gear was destroyed, we found three human hands. We guessed the fighter probably crawled into the hay bale and died.
    Before long, I heard the familiar sound of an inbound CH-47 Chinook. It set down just long enough to hustle the patient on board before it was back in flight and moving fast toward the trauma hospital in Bagram, a massive airfield north of Kabul.
    “Alpha 2, this is Alpha 1,” Phil said over the radio. I was Alpha 2. Phil was Alpha 1. It was the first time I’d heard from Phil since we split off to chase the squirters.
    “Hey, man, take care of the guys for me,” Phil said.
    The wounded eagle was Phil. He was sitting on the deck of the helicopter with his pant leg cut open. Blood soaked the deck and his uniform. He was feeling no pain thanks to a heavy dose of morphine.
    I found out later his team had been closing the distance on two heavily armed fighters. They sent the combat assault dog ahead. The fighters saw the dog and opened fire. Phil was hit and the dog was killed. The bullet tore open Phil’s lower leg. He almost bled out and died, but quick work by our two medics not only saved the leg but also his life.
    “Hey, you got it, brother,” I said. “Take care.”
    Walking back to the landing zone to regroup with the troop, the jokes already started.
    “Good job taking out Phil so you can be in charge,” said one of my teammates. “We saw you shoot him in the leg and run over and grab his call-sign patch.”
    Phil wasn’t even at the hospital yet, and the shit-talking had already begun.



CHAPTER 8
Goat Trails
    I had to take a leak.
    Since boarding the helicopter thirty minutes before in Jalalabad for the ride to a combat outpost in Afghanistan’s mountainous Kunar Province, the pressure had been building. It was standard procedure for everybody to take a leak before you left. But it was such a short ride, I’d decided to hold it until we got there.
    It was two months after Phil got shot. He was home recovering. We had about three weeks left on our deployment. I had been a team leader ever since Phil was medevaced. We were heading to a remote forward operating base or FOB in one of the most volatile regions of eastern Afghanistan. The FOB was going to be a staging area for an operation we were going to conduct high in the mountains.
    I could feel the CH-47 Chinook helicopter come to a hover and start to descend. A few seconds after the tires hit, the ramp came down and I dashed off the bird, walking under the massive rear engine headed for a ditch about twenty yards from the landing zone. We landed about fifty meters outside the perimeter of the small firebase, so I felt pretty safe standing out in the open.
    I was joined by a few of my teammates who also sought relief. It was pitch-black and no illumination. The mountains towering above me blocked any chance for light. Over my shoulder, the helicopter’s blades beat the ground, creating a dust cloud. The roar of the CH-47’s engines was deafening.
    Standing at the lip of the ditch, I admired the beauty of the steep mountains. Through the green glow of my night vision goggles, it actually appeared quite peaceful. Then my eyes caught the glow of something streaking across the sky. For a split second, I thought I was looking at a shooting star until I realized it was heading