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

and forcing them to run in the opposite direction. I chuckled as I watched a few of the women stagger away on their heels.
    The rehearsal went off without an issue on our end.
    “So, you think we’ll get the go-ahead?” Charlie asked me after the dress rehearsal.
    “Dude, I’ve got no clue,” I said. “I’m not holding my breath.”
    The flight back the next day was low-key. We were ready to go. There was nothing we could do now but wait.



CHAPTER 11
Killing Time
    The sun was fading as I flashed my ID card to the guard at our base in Virginia Beach. He saw my decal as I pulled closer and waved me through. I passed a long line of cars heading home for the day.
    I was a few hours early for our flight, but I was tired of waiting. It had been a long week at home. When we are home too long, we get antsy. It was Easter, and I called my parents to check in. We caught up, but I couldn’t tell them what I was really doing. While the rest of America was coloring Easter eggs, we were sitting on the biggest secret of our lives.
    After the dress rehearsal out west, it all came down to the politicians in Washington making a decision. We made one more trip to North Carolina to conduct a last walk-through of the compound, before returning to find out we’d finally gotten orders to move forward and stage in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
    We were all still very skeptical. Nobody was jumping up and down; everybody digested the news in their own way and went about their business. At least we were one step closer to actually roping into the compound.
    I parked my truck and grabbed my backpack. I could see some of my teammates walking toward the headquarters. I’m sure we all had the same thoughts running through our minds.
    “Holy shit, I can’t believe they actually approved this.”
    I think most of us were convinced there was no way this was actually going to happen. In a way, it’s a defense mechanism. That way, if it got turned off at the last minute, we wouldn’t be too upset.
    “Yeah, whatever. I’ll believe it when we are airborne,” Walt said, walking with me into the lobby of the building.
    “This has a good chance if they are actually sending us over,” I said.
    By moving us, they risked more and more leaks. The rest of our command definitely knew something was going on. Even a troop movement of this relatively small size could cause spikes when a bunch of operators came through Bagram on a non-scheduled rotation.
    Inside the team room, guys were eating a last-minute snack before the long flight. Some just stood around talking. We were all dressed in jeans and button-up collared shirts, our normal travel attire. We looked like a bunch of guys going on vacation. If we’d been carrying golf clubs instead of rifles and night vision goggles, you might mistake us for a professional sports team.
    Other than my equipment for the raid itself, I was traveling light, with only a few changes of clothes, my shower kit, and flip-flops. We weren’t staying long. The plan was to fly over, spend two days getting acclimated, and conduct the mission on the third night.
    Buses soon took us from our base to a nearby airport. On the tarmac sat a massive gray C-17 Globemaster. Its engines idled as the Air Force crew did pre-flight checks. Already on board were the helicopter mechanics. Nearby, a group of National Security Agency and CIA analysts kept to themselves.
    As we sat down, it felt comfortable, like a place we’d been many times before. This was the same way we always went on deployment. Inside the belly of the aircraft, our equipment and the helicopter crews’ tools were strapped to the deck. Seats lined the walls. I threw my backpack on the deck and fished out my nylon green jungle hammock. Looking around the cargo bay for a place to hang it, I saw my teammates crawling around the plane like ants looking for a comfortable spot to stretch out. We were experts in making the flight as comfortable as possible.
    I attached my hammock between two containers holding gear. Other guys claimed spots on top of containers or in the open space between the seats and the cargo. Some of my teammates pumped up camping mattresses, but I was one of the few who used the hammock. It was issued to us for jungle missions, but I liked that it kept me off the cold floor.
    We had a nine-hour flight to Germany and after a short layover another eight hours to get to Bagram. Getting as much sleep as we could on the flight was imperative.
    The Air