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

cargo pockets. Most of the guys were back now and coming into the hangar. There were a lot of smiles.
    Teddy was one of the last guys to walk into the hangar. I could tell by his face he was mad and maybe even a little embarrassed by the helicopter crash. I intercepted him as he walked into the hangar and gave him a crushing bear hug.
    “Teddy,” I said. “You’re the heat.”
    He gave me a sheepish smile and tried to wiggle out of my grip.
    “Dude, seriously,” I said.
    I know for a fact he kept the mission on track by ditching the way he did. Everybody was focused on who pulled the trigger but it was a lot harder to land a crashing helicopter than it was for any of us to pull the trigger. One wrong move and we all would have been in a pile of debris in the courtyard. Teddy saved all of our lives.
    “Strong work,” Walt said, giving me a handshake that turned into a hug.
    For the next few minutes, we all rotated around, congratulating one another. People were still coming into the hangar. I don’t remember who I talked to as much as I do how it felt to be back safe.
    It didn’t take long for the shit-talking to start.
    “Blow up the house? Really?” I heard Charlie say to the EOD guy.

    Eventually , we got together for a few posed pictures. We were one big team. As soon as the picture-taking ended, we all went back into work mode. Our five minutes of fun was over and it was time to get to Bagram to get the intelligence processed.
    The Rangers had already packed up the body and were on their way to Bagram. We were following close behind in another plane. On the flight line, we loaded all our gear and strapped it down to the deck of the C-130. We walked on board still wearing our kit and carrying our weapons. There were few seats, so I found a spot near the front of the plane and sat down.
    Nearby, I could see Jen sobbing. She was sitting on the floor, hugging her legs to her chest in the fetal position. I could just make out her eyes in the red light of the cabin. They were puffy, and she seemed to be staring into the distance. I got up and tapped her on the shoulder.
    “Hey, it was one hundred percent!” I said, leaning close so she could hear over the roar of the engines.
    She looked at me in a daze.
    “Seriously, no shit,” I said. “It was one hundred percent.”
    She nodded this time and started crying again. I scrambled back to my seat on the floor as the aircrew shut the cabin lights off. Minutes later, we were airborne and headed to Bagram. For most of the forty-five-minute flight I zoned out. I didn’t really sleep but just rested. I knew we had hours of work left to do.
    The C-130 let us out at a hangar along the flight line. Inside, a small cadre of FBI and CIA specialists waited to help us go through all the papers, thumb drives, and computers we recovered from the compound. As we walked into the hangar, it caught me off guard to see that the analysts were all standing at their individual tables with their hands folded behind them like in military parade rest.
    A ring of tables with green plastic tubs full of food sat in one corner. Piled high in the containers were chicken fingers and French fries. A large coffee maker was pumping out one awful cup of coffee after another. It had been at least seven hours since we had eaten breakfast, but nobody touched the food. We had work to do.
    Just inside the door, we started to offload our gear. As I pulled off my kit, I could feel pain shoot through my shoulder. It wasn’t sharp, but there was a nagging, dull ache. I tried to push my shoulder forward enough to get a look, but I couldn’t see any blood.
    “Hey, Walt, is there something on my shoulder?” I asked.
    He was unloading his gear too.
    “It doesn’t look like anything crazy,” he said. “Looks like you caught some frag. Not bad enough where you need to get stitches.”
    Inspecting my gear, I grabbed the bolt cutters on my back and felt a shard of metal cut into my fingertip. Holding the bolt cutters in my hand, I saw a good-size chunk of shrapnel embedded in the handle.
    “From a bullet,” I thought.
    When al-Kuwaiti opened fire, fragments from the rounds must have hit me before I fired back. The cutters rode high on my back, so the handle was only a few inches from my head. I was damn lucky none of the shrapnel hit me in the neck.
    After a quick after-action review to go over the mission, we started to unload all of the stuff we’d taken from the house. It had been ingrained