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

left.
    The stairway was relatively narrow, especially for a bunch of guys in kit. It was difficult to see around the point man, since the stairwell and landing narrowed as we got to the top.
    We were less than five steps from getting to the top when I heard suppressed shots.
    BOP. BOP.
    The point man had seen a man peeking out of the door on the right side of the hallway about ten feet in front of him. I couldn’t tell from my position if the rounds hit the target or not. The man disappeared into the dark room.
    The point man reached the landing first and slowly moved toward the door. Unlike in the movies, we didn’t bound up the final few steps and rush into the room with guns blazing. We took our time.
    The point man kept his rifle trained into the room as we slowly crept toward the open door. Again, we didn’t rush. Instead, we waited at the threshold and peered inside. We could see two women standing over a man lying at the foot of a bed. Both women were dressed in long gowns and their hair was a tangled mess like they had been sleeping. The women were hysterically crying and wailing in Arabic. The younger one looked up and saw us at the door.
    She yelled out in Arabic and rushed the point man. We were less than five feet apart. Swinging his gun to the side, the point man grabbed both women and drove them toward the corner of the room. If either woman had on a suicide vest, he probably saved our lives, but it would have cost him his own. It was a selfless decision made in a split second.
    With the women out of the way, I entered the room with a third SEAL. We saw the man lying on the floor at the foot of his bed. He was wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt, loose tan pants, and a tan tunic. The point man’s shots had entered the right side of his head. Blood and brains spilled out of the side of his skull. In his death throes, he was still twitching and convulsing. Another assaulter and I trained our lasers on his chest and fired several rounds. The bullets tore into him, slamming his body into the floor until he was motionless.
    Quickly scanning for additional threats, I saw at least three children huddled in the far corner of the room near the sliding glass door that opened onto the balcony. The children—I couldn’t tell if they were boys or girls—sat in the corner, stunned, as I cleared the room.
    With the man on the floor now motionless and no further threat, we cleared two small rooms just off the bedroom. Pushing the first door open, I peeked inside and saw a small, cramped, messy office. Papers were strewn all over a tiny desk. The second door revealed a small shower and toilet.
    Everything was muscle memory now. In our minds, we started ticking off our mental checklist. The main threat was dead by the bed. The point man was covering the women and kids. My teammate and I cleared the small office and bathroom, while the other SEALs cleared the room across the hall.
    As I went across the hall to the other room, I passed Walt on the way.
    “All clear over here,” he said.
    “This side too,” I replied.
    The point man moved the women and kids out of the bedroom and onto the balcony to keep them calm. Tom was on the third deck and saw that both rooms were clear.
    “Third deck secure,” I heard him say over the troop net.



CHAPTER 16
Geronimo
    Back in the bedroom, the youngest woman was lying on the bed, screaming hysterically, clutching her calf.
    Walt was standing next to the body. It was still dark and it was hard to make out the man’s face. The house was still without power. I reached up and flipped on the light clipped into the rail system on my helmet. The target was now secure and since all the windows were covered, no one could see us from the outside, so the use of white light was safe.
    The man’s face was mangled from at least one bullet wound and covered in blood. A hole in his forehead collapsed the right side of his skull. His chest was torn up from where the bullets had entered his body. He was lying in an ever-growing pool of blood. As I crouched down to take a closer look, Tom joined me.
    “I think this is our boy,” Tom said.
    He wasn’t about to say it was Bin Laden over the radio because he knew that call would be shot like lightning back to Washington. We knew President Obama was listening, so we didn’t want to be wrong.
    I went through the checklist in my head.
    He was very tall. I figured approximately six foot four inches.
    Check.
    He was the one adult male on the