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

the last to climb out. Getting to the door, he looked at the almost six-foot drop to the ground. There was no way he wanted to jump and risk injury. Kicking the fast rope out of the cabin, he slid down to the courtyard, which made him the only guy to fast-rope into the compound that night.
    The EOD tech and the SEAL got there soon after and started to place explosive charges around the fuselage. Climbing up the tail, the SEAL tried to get charges as close to the tail rotors as possible. Wearing his kit and night vision goggles wasn’t the easiest way to climb up the unstable, narrow section of tail boom. Each time he tried to reach the section propped on the twelve-foot wall, he was afraid it would break under his weight.
    Climbing up as high as he could, he placed the charges with one hand. The other hand kept him stable as he balanced precariously over the courtyard. Destroying the communications equipment and avionics was the most important part. With the charges set on the tail, he placed the remaining charges in the main cabin.
    Meanwhile, the Black Hawk that hadn’t crashed and the CH-47 carrying the QRF were flying in circles nearby, waiting for us to finish. Fuel was becoming an issue, which meant our time in the compound was shrinking quickly.
    “Ten minutes,” I heard Mike say over the radio.
    On the third deck, the lights in the room came on, bathing us in the glow of white light. The rolling blackout was apparently over. It was perfect timing and made everything easier.
    While I continued shooting pictures, Walt took DNA samples. He dabbed a cotton swab in Bin Laden’s blood. He took another and jammed it in Bin Laden’s mouth to get a saliva sample. Finally, he took out a spring-loaded syringe the CIA gave us to get a blood-marrow sample. We’d been trained to jab it into the thigh to get a sample from inside the femur. Walt jabbed it several times into Bin Laden’s thigh, but the needle wouldn’t fire.
    “Here,” I said, handing him mine. “Try this one.”
    He took it and slammed my syringe into the fleshy part of Bin Laden’s thigh, but it also didn’t fire.
    “Fuck these things,” Walt said, tossing the syringes to the side.
    I finished taking a second set of pictures using another SEAL’s camera. We took two DNA samples and sets of photos so that we had identical sets. Walt put one sample in his cargo pocket and gave another to a SEAL in the other chalk. This had been carefully planned so if one of the helicopters was shot down on our flight back to Jalalabad, a DNA sample and set of pictures would survive. We wanted proof to show to Pakistan and the rest of the world we got Bin Laden.
    Meanwhile, on the balcony, Will was trying to get confirmation that it was Bin Laden on the floor.
    Bin Laden’s wife Amal, who had been wounded in the ankle, was still hysterical and wouldn’t talk. I could hear her whimpering on the bed above me while I worked. The other woman, her eyes puffy from crying, tried to keep a stern face as Will asked her over and over again in Arabic who the dead guy was.
    “What is his name?”
    “The sheikh,” the woman said.
    “The sheikh who?” Will said. He didn’t want to lead her and stuck to open-ended questions.
    After she gave Will several aliases, he went over to the kids who were outside on the balcony. They were all sitting silently against the wall. Will knelt down and asked one of the girls, “Who is the man?”
    The girl didn’t know to lie.
    “Osama bin Laden.”
    Will smiled.
    “Are you sure that is Osama bin Laden?”
    “Yes,” the girl said.
    “OK,” he said. “Thanks.”
    Back in the hallway, he grabbed one of the wives by her arms and gave her a good shake.
    “Stop fucking with me now,” Will said, more sternly than before. “Who is that in the bedroom?”
    She started to cry. More scared than anything else, she didn’t have any fight left.
    “Osama,” she said.
    “Osama what?” Will said, still holding her arm.
    “Osama bin Laden,” she said.
    Will moved her back outside with the kids and walked back into the bedroom.
    “Hey, dual confirmation,” Will said. “Confirmed it with the kid. Confirmed it with the old lady. Both are saying the same thing.”
    As Will left the room, Jay showed up with Tom. Seeing the body, he came and stood over it.
    “Will confirmed through a woman and a kid that it is UBL,” Tom said.
    Kneeling next to his head, I pulled his beard to the left and right so Jay could get the profile shot. I