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

machine guns. The SAW gunner fired another thirty-round burst as he sprayed the last sentry hiding between boulders in the dried creek bed.
    Within minutes, I heard the buzz of an AC-130. On the radio, I could hear the troop commander passing word that the AC-130 was going hot on the movers to the north.
    “You’ve got this,” I told my teammate.
    I left him and another SEAL in the building while Charlie and I cleared an alley that ran between this building and the one below it. The buildings were on the same tiered steps of land as the fields where we had entered.
    The alley was narrow, and it was impossible to see the end because the walls were crowded with junk. I kept getting caught up in low-hanging clothes lines strung up between the two buildings.
    With a narrow alley like this, Charlie and I stood on opposite walls. I covered his side of the wall with my laser, and I could see his laser crossing the alley onto the wall in front of me. It was all an angles game.
    We crept down the alley, being as quiet as possible. The key was throttle control. We’d go fast when needed, but then go back to being slow and quiet. We were about halfway down the alley when Charlie opened fire.
    POP, POP, POP.
    I froze. I couldn’t see what was in front of me. Charlie let loose a short burst and then started to move forward. I glanced ahead for a split second to see a fighter crumble against the wall three steps ahead of me. As he hit the ground, he dropped a shotgun.
    Usually we wore about sixty pounds of gear, including those ballistic plates to protect us from gunfire. Charlie wasn’t wearing his plates either.
    When we cleared all the way to the end of the alley, we paused to get our bearings.
    “If I get shot tonight, no one better tell my mom I didn’t wear my plates,” I whispered to Charlie.
    “Deal,” Charlie said. “Same goes for me.”

    A short time later, we heard the “all clear” call over the radio. The target was secure, but now we had to do sensitive site exploitation, which we called SSE. Basically, we shot pictures of the dead, gathered up any weapons and explosives, and collected thumb drives, computers, and papers.
    SSE had evolved over the years. It had become a way to rebut false accusations that the fighters we killed were innocent farmers. We knew that within a few days after the raid, the village elders would be down at the local NATO base accusing us of killing innocent civilians. The kind of innocent civilians who we knew and could now prove carried RPGs and AK-47s. The more SSE we provided, the more proof we had that everyone we shot was guilty.
    “We are on a time crunch, fellas, so make it fast,” the troop chief said. “We’ve still got movers to the north.”
    His voice was drowned out by the sound of the AC-130’s 120mm shells landing a few hundred meters up the valley. I checked my watch. It was well past four in the morning. We were running out of darkness, and since the shooting started there was a steady flow of reports coming from the drones alerting us to more fighters coming our way.
    With the photos complete, we piled all the weapons and ammo in the center of the courtyard and set explosive charges on a five-minute delay.
    With the RECCE guys in the lead, we quickly and quietly snuck back out the way we’d come. As we raced away from the compound, I heard the explosion and saw a small fireball light up the courtyard as the fighters’ weapons and ammunition were destroyed.
    The walk back was easier than the walk up. We were high on the adrenaline of what we had just managed to pull off. Several times along the patrol down the hill we had to stop and direct some additional close air support on multiple groups of fighters who were searching for us. We didn’t want to be in the valley any longer than we had to, and definitely not at daybreak.
    Three hours after clearing the compounds, we were back at the base. The guys slumped down along the walls, exhausted. Everyone was smoked. We sucked down water, power gels, pretty much anything we could get our hands on.
    In the operations center, we gave the captain all of our SSE. He could show the elders the evidence when they came down to complain.
    “We had seventeen EKIA,” the troop chief told the captain, meaning we killed seventeen fighters. “We suspect another seven or eight dead from the AC-130.”
    The Army captain was stunned as he looked at the pictures on his computer. He and his men rarely got a chance to be on