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

with the semi-autonomous Pakistani North-West Frontier Province provide significant advantages for militant groups.
    Known as “Enemy Central” or “Indian Country,” between January 2006 and March 2010 more than sixty-five percent of all insurgent incidents in the country occurred in Kunar. Native Taliban forces mingle with foreign al Qaeda fighters, while mujahedeen militias also operate in the region.
    On a table at the center of the room was a map of the area. We all huddled around it. The plan was to patrol deep into a valley to the south of the outpost and conduct a kill or capture operation against a group of high-level Taliban who were having a meeting.
    We were coming up near the end of deployment, and this might be our last chance to hit such a juicy target. It had already been a solid deployment, despite Phil getting wounded and one of the dogs being killed. If we played our cards right, we were going to get a little payback.
    From our drones overflying the suspected compound, we observed roving patrols. Over the years, Steve and I had gotten pretty good at spotting what we called “nefarious activity.”
    Drone feeds by themselves don’t look like much. On the screen, people look like small ants moving around, but to me and Steve, everything we could see on the feed was adding up. Most compounds don’t have roving guards. Combine that with the location in Kunar and intelligence reports about the meeting, and it all added up to nefarious activity.
    We knew we were in for a fight.
    The plan was for my eight-man team to climb up the ridgeline and parallel the valley until we made our way past the target compound. We would set up a blocking position on the uphill side and contain the fighters in the valley if they tried to escape. They wouldn’t expect us on the high ground, since the compounds sat almost at the very top of a valley. The other two teams would patrol up the main road into the valley and try and flush the Taliban fighters out to where my team could ambush them. If the two teams made it all the way to the objective undetected, we would simply make our way down to the compound ourselves and help clear the target from all sides.
    Most times, the fighters wouldn’t stay and fight when they saw us. Instead, they ran, trying to hide in the tree line or escape into neighboring valleys. To stop them, we set up a team on the high ground and let them wander into our kill zone. We’d cut them down easily before they had a chance to escape.
    The infiltration route was about seven kilometers, not far, but only if you didn’t account for the elevation change. My team would have to do the majority of the hard climbing that night because the route took us directly up the ridgeline. Knowing we had a very challenging climb ahead, I’d chosen to dump my bulletproof plates and only carry three extra magazines, a hand grenade, my radios, and a med kit. We all tried to go as light as we could. We had a saying: “Light is right.”
    But when you ditch your bulletproof plates, you have to be willing to suffer the consequences. After our surprise at the landing zone, I was already second-guessing that decision.
    As we discussed the plan with the Army captain, I could feel the soldiers’ eyes on us. To the clean-cut soldiers, we probably looked like bikers or Vikings.
    Most of us had long hair by military standards. None of us had the same uniform on; instead we all had mismatched pants and shirts. We also had fancy, four-tube night vision goggles, thermal scopes, and suppressors on our rifles. We pretty much had all the latest in tactical fashion. Each one of us was a professional who knew exactly what they needed for the job, and it was up to the individual operator to carry what he needed.
    “Some of these guys aren’t even wearing their plates,” said one of the soldiers.
    The troop’s RECCE team leader showed the captain the goat trail on the map. He was going to navigate the route for my team.
    “You guys been up this goat trail?” he asked.
    “I’ve seen it,” he said. “It is straight up. What kind of time line are you on?”
    “We want to hit and be back before it gets light,” the RECCE team leader said.
    “There is no way you’re going to make it,” the Army captain said. “The terrain is impossible, and there is no way you can do it in one cycle of darkness.”
    Since his unit lived in the valley, we couldn’t really argue. It was their backyard. They’d seen the terrain in