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

Force crew chased us back to our seats to strap in just before takeoff. The only open seat was next to Jen, a CIA analyst. Slipping the buckle of my seatbelt into the clasp, I felt the plane start to taxi to the end of the runway. Minutes later, we raced down the tarmac and quickly climbed into the sky. Once we were level, guys started to pop Ambien and settle in for the long flight.
    I wasn’t tired, so I started to talk with Jen. I’d seen her around in North Carolina, but we hadn’t gotten to talk at length since we started planning the operation. I was curious to get her take on things since she was one of the leading analysts that helped in the hunt for Bin Laden.
    “Honestly,” I asked Jen. “What are the odds it’s him?”
    “One hundred percent,” she shot back, almost defiant.
    Recruited by the agency out of college, she’d been working on the Bin Laden task force for the last five years. Analysts rotated in and out of the task force, but she stayed and kept after it. After the al-Kuwaiti phone call, she’d worked to put all the pieces together. I missed the first day’s brief, where Jen laid out how they tracked him to Abbottabad. In the weeks since, she had been our go-to analyst on all intelligence questions regarding the target.
    We’d heard the “one hundred percent” call in the past, and each time it made my stomach hurt.
    “Be careful with that shit,” I said. “When our intel folks say it is one hundred percent it, is more like ten. When they say ten percent, it is more like one hundred.”
    She smiled, undeterred.
    “No, no,” Jen said. “One hundred percent.”
    “One hundred percent like in 2007,” I said.
    Like me, she remembered 2007, when we’d been spun up to chase the guy in white flowing robes. Jen rolled her eyes and frowned.
    “That wasn’t a good lead,” she said, even though the lead had come from a CIA source. “That whole thing spun out of control quickly.”
    It was nice to hear the CIA take even some of the blame, although you could pretty much throw a stick in 2007 and hit someone responsible for that debacle. That mission had been weighed down by the typical problem of everybody wanting to be involved. Already, the differences between 2007 and now were apparent, which lent more credibility to the current mission.
    Jen wasn’t afraid to share her opinion with even the highest officers, including Vice Admiral McRaven. She had made it known in the beginning that she was not a fan of the ground-assault option.
    “Sometimes JSOC can be the big gorilla in the room,” she said. “I’d rather just push the easy button and bomb it.”
    This was a typical attitude outside of JSOC. There were a lot of haters not only from the big military side but also from the agency. Not everyone trusted us, because they didn’t know us.
    “Don’t hold back,” I said. “Love us or hate us, you’re in the circle of trust now. We’re all in this together.”
    “You mean the boys’ club,” Jen said. “You guys are just showing up for the big game.”
    She was right. This was her baby. Jen and her team spent five years tracking him to get us to where we were now. We were just here to finish the job.
    “You guys did all the hard work to get us here,” I said. “We’re happy to have our thirty minutes of fun and be done.”
    “I’ll admit, you guys aren’t what I was expecting at all,” she said.
    “See, I told you you’re in the circle,” I said.
    It was dark when we landed in Bagram. We taxied to a spot far from the main terminals at the base, the ramp opened, and we saw a C-130 with its ramp down and props turning. Bagram is the main NATO base in northern Afghanistan. A massive base just north of Kabul, it had grown into the size of a small city. Thousands of soldiers and civilian contractors called the base home. Little fighting occurred out of Bagram. In fact, it had gotten so safe that now the only danger was getting a ticket for speeding on the base’s streets or for not wearing a reflective belt at night. Spending any time at Bagram would make it tough to keep our secret.
    Thankfully, we were headed to Jalalabad. The runway there was too small and couldn’t handle C-17s. JSOC arranged the C-130 to meet us. We didn’t want to risk going to the main Bagram terminal or the chow hall and being seen. A whole troop showing up out of cycle would raise questions.
    Gathering our bags and shaking off the Ambien, we walked silently off the back of the C-17