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

no control, and I think that scared me most of all. I always figured I would probably die in a gunfight, not in a helicopter crash. We were all used to stacking the odds in our favor. We knew the dangers. We did the battlefield calculus and we trusted our skills. But clinging to a helicopter, there was nothing we could do.
    Seconds before impact, I felt the nose dip. I held my breath and waited for impact. The helicopter shuddered as the nose dug into the soft ground like a lawn dart. One minute, the ground was rushing up at me. The next minute, I was at a dead stop. It happened so fast, I didn’t even feel the impact.
    The blades didn’t snap off. Instead, the rotors blasted the muddy courtyard, blowing dust and debris and creating a maelstrom around us.
    I exhaled and blinked the dust out of my eyes. Squinting against the assault of rocks and dust, I realized we were still about six feet above the ground at a steep angle.
    “Get the fuck out,” Walt yelled at me, shoving me forward.
    I dropped from the cabin and landed in the courtyard in a crouch. Despite wearing more than sixty pounds of gear, I didn’t feel the weight or the jolt from the fall. Without looking back, I ran forward like an Olympic sprinter away from the wreck. Sliding to a halt about thirty yards away, I turned back and saw the wreckage for the first time.
    When the helicopter crashed, the tail boom got caught up on the twelve-foot privacy wall. The tail’s single load-bearing section propped the Black Hawk up and kept the rotors from hitting the ground. If any other part of the helicopter hit the wall, or if we had tipped and the rotor hit the ground first, none of us would be walking away unscathed. Teddy and his copilot had somehow pulled off the impossible.
    I could see my teammates dropping out of the cabin and dashing through a gap underneath the helicopter as it rested at an angle against the wall.
    Like my teammates, I had gotten good at compartmentalizing stressful situations over my career, and now I had to block the crash out. Two minutes ago, I was pissed we were going to land outside the compound, but now we were alive and on the ground inside the walls. Despite the near-disaster the mission was still on track.
    My teammates were already headed to the gate that led us back into the main compound. I needed to get my ass in gear because if Charlie or Walt saw me standing there while they were already moving to their positions I would never hear the end of their shit-talking.
    We had scheduled thirty minutes to complete the mission based on the helicopter’s fuel consumption and a possible response time from the Pakistanis. We had built in an additional ten minutes of flextime just in case. Running back toward the helicopter, I figured we needed those extra minutes now.
    The way the helicopter was perched on the wall, I didn’t have enough room to clear the rotors in the front. It was dark and even with my night vision it was impossible to be sure how high the rotors were spinning. The only way to get to the compound was by going underneath the wreck.
    “I am going explosive,” I heard Charlie say over the troop net. I could see him at the gate to the main compound, setting the charge.
    Putting my head down, I raced toward the wreck. As I got close, I tried to hug the wall as I ran underneath the tail boom. Hot exhaust blew down from the engines as I passed. It was like walking inside a hair-dryer for a few seconds.
    Coming out on the other side, I could see Charlie prepping a charge on the locked iron gate. All around him were guys with their weapons trained out, pulling security.
    I moved toward a prayer room near the gate to make sure it was clear. The room had a large open area with thick rugs on the floor and pillows forming a perimeter around the walls. We knew from the intelligence analysts that the room was most likely used to meet guests, but that seemed to be infrequent. Once cleared, I pulled off an IR chemlight and threw it by the door to alert the others the room was secure.
    When I got back outside, Charlie was checking his back blast to make sure no one could get hit by shrapnel from the breaching charge. I saw the quick flash as Charlie hit the detonator and smoothly rolled back out of the way like he had done thousands of times.
    We all dipped our heads to protect our eyes. No one was panicked or nervous. We were on the ground and finally it was up to us to get the job done.
    The explosion sent a shock wave