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

across the mangled knob and lock. I always knelt while I placed breaching charges because I had been shot at through the door in Iraq many times. Fighters liked to spray the middle of the door, blindly firing where they thought a man would be standing.
    The third member of my team entered the compound. He was one of the last guys out of the helicopter and had just gotten to us. His job was to clear a staircase that led to the roof of the guesthouse. As he started toward the stairs, which were directly in line with the door, AK-47 rounds tore through the glass above the door, narrowly missing him.
    I rolled away as the bullets cracked just inches over my head. The first rounds always surprise the shit out of you. I could feel pieces of glass hit my shoulder.
    “That is not a suppressed weapon,” I thought.
    It was easy to tell who was firing, since we had suppressors on our weapons. Unsuppressed rounds meant enemy fire. Someone inside had an assault rifle. Aiming chest high, he fired a blind barrage. He was a caged animal. There was nowhere he could go and he knew we were coming.
    Will, covering the door from the left side, started to fire back instantly. As I turned back and opened fire, I felt a searing burn in my left shoulder, probably glass or shrapnel. Our return fire cut through the metal door.
    Rolling out of the “fatal funnel” of the doorway, I made it to my feet and moved to the window a few feet down the wall from the door.
    “Ahmed al-Kuwaiti,” Will said. “Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, come out!”
    Smashing the window with my barrel, I fired back toward his likely position.
    Will was still yelling, and with no response. With no time to spare, I made my way back to the explosive charge, which was still hanging from the door. The only way to get inside was to blow the door. As I got close, I made sure to stay extra low.
    Once we blew the door, I planned to throw a grenade inside before we went in to clear it. Ahmed al-Kuwaiti had proven he wasn’t going down without a fight, and I was not going to risk anything.
    I was about to attach the detonator to the charge when we heard someone throwing the latch to the lock. Will heard it too, and we both immediately started to back away from the door. We had no idea who was coming out or what to expect. Was he going to just crack the door and throw a grenade, or hang his AK-47 out and spray?
    I took a quick look around. There was no cover. The courtyard was crowded with trash and tools used to garden. Our only option was to continue moving back, trying to stay away from the window and door.
    The door cracked open slowly, and I could hear a woman’s voice calling out. That didn’t mean we were safe. If she was coming out with a suicide vest on, we were dead. This was Bin Laden’s compound. These were his facilitators. Shots were fired, so we knew they were willing to die to protect him.
    Through the sweat running down my face and the grit in my eyes from the rotor wash, I could just make out the figure of a woman in the green glow of my night vision goggles. She had something in her arms and my finger slowly started applying pressure to my trigger. I could see our lasers dancing around her head. It would only take a split second to end her life if she was holding a bomb.
    As the door continued to open, I saw that the bundle was a baby. Al-Kuwaiti’s wife, Mariam, came out with the child pressed against her chest. Behind her, three more kids shuffled out of the house.
    “Come here,” Will called out to her in Arabic.
    I kept my rifle trained on them as they moved forward.
    “He is dead,” Mariam said to Will in Arabic. “You shot him. He is dead. You killed him.”
    Will did a quick pat down of the woman.
    “Hey, she is saying he is dead,” Will said to me, translating her Arabic.
    I was crouched at the right side of the door and pushed it open.
    I spotted a pair of feet lying in the doorway of the bedroom. There was no way of knowing if he was still alive, and I wasn’t taking any chances. Will gave me a squeeze on the shoulder so I knew he was ready, and we entered the hallway. I shouldered my rifle and squeezed off several rounds to make sure he was down.
    The house smelled of heating oil. Stepping over al-Kuwaiti’s body, I saw a pistol and an AK-47 on the ground just inside the bedroom door. I kicked them away and continued to clear the room, which had a bed in the center and then smaller beds along the walls for the children. The whole family slept