SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden

by Chuck Pfarrer

  This technological wonder was an RQ-170 “Sentinel” drone. Unlike its famous cousins, Predators and Grey Eagles, the Sentinel was unarmed. It defended itself by being invisible to radar and flying faster than any fighter that might lay eyes on it. Still a closely guarded secret, the RQ-170s were only flown at night. For the next six hours, this unmanned supersonic spy plane would circle the city of Abbottabad and provide real-time video and audio uplinks from the SEALs on target. Their crews called the Sentinel “the Beast of Kandahar.” Tonight, in support of Operation Neptune’s Spear, an RQ-170 would use the call sign “Beast,” and its control van and pilots would answer to the apt handle “Beastmaster.” In a moment, the drone had climbed vertically into the darkest part of the sky and vanished.

  McRaven walked back to the JOC. Part of the reason he’d taken his walk was to allow the assault element leaders and SEAL Six’s commanding officer Scott Kerr to talk to his Team. The two Red Squadron assault element commanders, Frank Leslie and Rich Horn, would also add their own mission-specific briefings. Mel Hoyle, Red Squadron’s master chief, would inspect the gear of each operator before they were put into “chill”—an hour-long spell for the operators to relax and compose themselves before launch.

  The operation had originally been planned for the previous night, April 30, but clouds over the target pushed the mission back twenty-four hours. The delay was tough on a Team that was ready to go, but it added an extra day for Red Squadron to rehearse and Det Alpha to be sure that everything was perfect—racked, stacked, and ready to fly.

  In the final hours before the operation, JSOC planners actually worried that the compound in Abbottabad might be a trap. Osama had often stated that he would fight to the death rather than be captured by the United States, and he went so far as to issue instructions to his bodyguard to shoot him if it looked as though he were about to fall into American hands. Analysts wondered why, after ten years of hiding, Al Qaeda’s courier system had become so obvious. Was Ayman Zawahiri burning Osama bin Laden, or was Al Qaeda using their leader as bait to lure American special operations into a clever ambush?

  McRaven was surprised when a skeptical JSOC intel analyst first declared that Osama was being set up. Many thought the continued use of Abu Ahmed al Kuwaiti as a courier was merely an operational mistake. But Al Qaeda had gone ten years without mistakes. Was this a ruse? Was Al Qaeda planning to mark the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 by blowing a SEAL Team out of the sky?

  All of these last-minute doubts stemmed from the odd-looking, three-sided structure on the roof of the compound’s main building. To photo experts, it looked like the firing position for a MANPADS—a man-portable antiaircraft system. A machine gun placed there could sweep the skies above the house. A man with a shoulder-fired missile could destroy any helicopter that got within a mile of the building. It was known that Osama’s bodyguard possessed Soviet-made SA-7s. They had been used in Mombasa against an Israeli airliner. Were they now in Abbottabad?

  The possibility that SEAL Team Six was being led into an Al Qaeda trap had been discussed with the assault force. The SEALs considered it an acceptable risk. If it was an ambush, Red Squadron would give as good as they got.

  As McRaven walked back toward the command center he could hear the operators joking as they suited up. That was another reason why he went for a walk. The guys were different around him because he was an admiral. He knew they needed space to get ready in their own way for the mission.

  SEAL Team Six is one of the most storied units in American military history. And rightly so. The operators of Red Squadron are among the most highly decorated men in the United States military. Many were entering into their seventh or eighth consecutive year of combat service. There are no veterans in American history who have endured more combat. The operators of Team Six are heroes, and their operational credentials allow them to speak freely to the men who lead them into battle.

  The price of their obedience is truth.

  These men are highly intelligent, well educated, and resourceful. Many of them have graduate degrees. They are well read, and they have a thorough understanding of what is and is not happening in world affairs. The operators of SEAL Team Six put their lives at risk daily for a country they love. They may be forgiven if they have precious little tolerance for leaders who put “table manners” ahead of speaking the truth.

  This group can only be led by men who share their values and have undergone the same hardships. Especially respected are those SEAL officers who have themselves sweated through Green Team. A SEAL officer puts his career on the line when he enters a Green Team class. Not all SEAL officers make it. To earn a leadership slot at SEAL Six one must compete against the best SEALs in the business. A lieutenant who is attrited from Green Team can expect to be shunted from one dead-end assignment to another until he either resigns his commission or is forced out of the Teams. The members of SEAL Team Six care very little for what they called “ticket punchers,” officers who back-door their way into JSOC staff assignments without the risk of going through Green Team. Red Squadron, like the other operational entities at Six, is led into combat only by chief petty officers and officers who are Green Team alumni. These men put the concept of Team and Teammate above all other considerations—within Six and outside it.

  Bill McRaven knew as well as anyone that it was an honor to command these men, and it was a test of his own skills as a leader. McRaven had been a shooter once himself. He spent the first fifteen years of his SEAL career as a well-respected operator, first as a platoon commander, then as an element leader. He had helped train the SEAL platoons that had operated in Beirut. In the second fifteen years of his career McRaven advanced to captain, commodore, and then rear Admiral. He commanded Task Force 10 during the early part of the Afghan war, distinguishing himself from all his contemporaries. TF-10 hunted Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri over the rough mountains of Afghanistan—and also into the tribal areas of Pakistan.

  Once he was at the top, Bill McRaven did not always swim to the rescue of every Teammate who got in over their head, but he continued to look out for the SEAL community and did much to help loosen “Big Army’s” iron grip on JSOC’s command structure. McRaven put SEAL operators into positions of responsibility, and the Army had to get used to the idea of Navy commanders ordering about special operations ground troops hundreds of miles from the ocean in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  That wouldn’t have happened in the days of “Demo Dick” Marcinko. During the course of Bill McRaven’s career, the SEAL Teams went from being considered the “Hell’s Angels” of the Navy to being regarded as consummate professionals. He helped make it happen.

  But whenever SEALs come into contact with elected officials, it is the fine sense of honor of the SEALs that suffers the embrace. Bill McRaven’s outstanding record in Afghanistan brought him to the attention of the White House, and on April 6, 2011, as the noose was closing around Bin Laden, President Barack Obama appointed William McRaven a four-star admiral and made him the first SEAL to lead the Joint Special Operations Command. Whether he liked it or not, Bill McRaven was a political player. He had accepted both a White House appointment and a tactical assignment from the commander in chief.

  It was Sunday, May 1, and Bill McRaven had been at his new job just over three weeks. As darkness fell, he was a few hours away from launching his first combat operation in the capacity of JSOC commander.

  If he was nervous, he didn’t show it.

  Courage, SEALs learn at BUD/S, is not the absence of fear. The absence of fear in combat is the result of insanity, or an extreme lack of situational awareness. SEALs learn not to ignore fear but to channel it. One of the most popular books at SEAL Team Six is Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings, a 350-year-old manual for the Samurai that touches on strategy and tactics and how a warrior should comport himself. It teaches that a warrior should be calm, use all his senses, and achieve his goals expending the minimum amount of energy. The Book of Five Rings is the cornerstone of
the Japanese code of Bushido, the philosophy that is “the Way of the Warrior.” This code includes concepts of law, respect, obedience, duty, and self-sacrifice, qualities that overlap perfectly with the SEAL Teams’ own highly evolved sense of commitment and valor.

  One of Musashi’s axioms was posted on a bulletin board in an office in Virginia where Neptune’s Spear was planned. It said: “Know the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things as if they were a straight road mapped out on the ground. From one thing, know ten thousand things. When you attain the way of strategy there will be nothing you cannot see.”

  Admiral Bill McRaven knew that his plan was solid.

  The CIA made sure that Red Squadron knew everything about the mission that was possible to know.

  A forensics lab with state-of-the-art DNA analysis equipment had been set up in one of the hangars—in the event the operation went south, it would be used as a morgue for SEALs killed in action. High above Abbottabad, the Sentinel had started to send back video of the compound. The one hundred technicians and intelligence specialists that supported Red Squadron had done their best to make sure the operation went off and that all of Neptune’s equipment functioned as it should.

  Bill McRaven was a student of history. He had written a book on special operations and had studied the subject all his adult life. Now it was his turn—not to write about history, but to make it.

  * * *

  Not even Abraham Lincoln could resist the temptation of interfering with the plans of his generals. No sooner had Red Squadron deployed to Afghanistan than the White House began to fiddle with the plan. Fearing an aerial confrontation with the Pakistani air force, the White House first canceled plans for F-18 Hornet fighters from the carrier USS Carl Vinson to fly combat air patrol over the helicopters inserting SEAL Team Six into Pakistan.

  It is a very small thing for a man in the calm quiet of a map room five thousand miles from the battlefield to cancel air cover for a ground operation. It is quite another experience for the men who have to traverse 120 miles of potentially hostile airspace and do so in a pair of unarmed helicopters.

  The cancelation of fighter cover was accepted but there was grumbling. There were sound reasons to scrub the fighter mission. Intruding in Pakistani airspace to interdict the most famous terrorist in the world was probably excusable. It was quite another matter to do so and shoot down the fighters of what was, at least on paper, an ally. The Hornets were left on the carrier, and probably for the best.

  TF-160’s Ghost Hawk helicopters had been transported to Jalalabad aboard a pair of C-5A Galaxy transports. Reassembled in locked hangars, the mission aircraft included two of the older model Stealth Hawks, and a pair of newer and more powerful Ghost Hawks. In addition to being quieter, the Ghost Hawks were longer ranged and had a greater payload. The latest Ghost Hawks also had advanced avionics, and carried their own onboard electronic countermeasures. The Ghost Hawks were some of the most highly classified technology that America had ever developed.

  The men planning Operation Neptune’s Spear were faced with a dilemma. Now that fighter cover was not available they could not in good conscience send this highly classified technology into harm’s way. If the Pakistani air force detected an airspace violation they would, at the very least, force the intruders to land. It was more likely that they would shoot first and sort it out later.

  For decades, a near state of war has existed between Pakistan and India. Both countries have nuclear weapons and stare at each across a contested frontier that is covered by sophisticated radar and early warning systems. SEAL Team Six would have to skirt this border area to enter Pakistani airspace, cross almost one hundred miles of ground, conduct their operation, and then withdraw back into Afghanistan.

  The mission had not changed, but the support package had. If the Pakistanis discovered the helicopters, TF-160’s pilots would have two choices: surrender and land, or be blown out of the sky. In either case, America’s most precious technological secrets would be exposed. Very reluctantly, the decision was made to use the older Stealth Hawk models, though they were smaller, had less range, and could carry fewer operators.

  To accommodate the reduced range of the Stealth Hawks, it was necessary to plan a forward air refueling point (FARP) midway between Jalalabad and Bin Laden’s compound. No one had to be reminded that an accident at a forward refueling position had doomed the American rescue effort in Iran in 1979. The catastrophic failure of Operation Eagle Claw saw an incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, tossed from office in the 1980 presidential elections.

  The Stealth Hawks carried enough fuel to reach Abbottabad, but not enough fuel to return to base. It was decided to fly two CH-47s to a dry riverbed inside Afghanistan to meet the Stealth Hawks when they returned. One of them would carry the fuel bladders and aircrew trained to conduct the refuel operation. It is no small feat to refuel two helicopters with rotors churning on a moonless night in the middle of nowhere. And it required a little luck, too.

  Operation Eagle Claw had gone haywire when its refueling spot was stumbled on by a busload of Iranian civilians. In the confusion, a helicopter collided with a C-130 filled with fuel and ammunition. The resulting explosion lit the night sky for miles and forced the rescuers to abandon their plans, three American helicopters, and the bodies of eight dead Americans.

  In this operation, two MH-47 helicopters were designated Flashlight 1 and 2. Flashlight 1 was loaded with fuel bladders, and hoses and pumps to gas up the Stealth Hawks when they flew back across the border into Afghanistan. Flashlight 2 would be loaded with twenty SEAL Team Six operators who would secure the forward air refueling position and guard the helicopters from Taliban insurgents. The operators securing the fuel stop were equipped with Stinger antiaircraft missiles in case the Pakistani air force fighters declared hot pursuit and followed the Stealth Hawks back across the border. It would be their lawful right to do so. In the event that an ambush awaited the SEALs at Osama’s compound, the operators aboard Flashlight 2 could be used as a quick reaction force to help the SEALs fight their way off the target and back into friendlier territory.

  The decision not to risk the Ghost Hawks added layers of complexity to the mission, but was considered absolutely necessary. It would have been foolish to send the Ghost Hawks into combat without cover. Though the fighters were canceled, an EA-6B “Prowler” electronic warfare aircraft would be launched from the USS Carl Vinson to jam Pakistan’s air defenses as the Stealth Hawks penetrated Pakistani airspace. It was a lot better than nothing.

  The Navy’s EA-6B Prowlers are complex and highly classified themselves. Prowlers usually fly unarmed. They are not particularly fast or agile, but they have the ability to spoof an enemy’s radar, blinding it to airplanes that are present, and even making would-be interceptors see bogies that are not actually there. A lone Prowler would be used to jam Pakistani radar for the 210 minutes that the Stealth Hawks would be in Pakistan. In order to fly this mission, the Prowler would have to be refueled itself, conducting an in-flight rendezvous over the Indian Ocean, at night, with another Prowler fitted with air-to-air refueling gear. On every level, Operation Neptune’s Spear depended on the consummate skills of air crews.

  At 2100 hours, 9:00 p.m. Afghan time, on the evening of May 1, live video of Bin Laden’s compound began to stream into the Joint Operations Center at Jalalabad. The Sentinel’s high-resolution cameras rendered the compound in shades of green. The resolution was so precise that one of Bin Laden’s bodyguards could be seen checking the lock on the front gate and walking between the buildings carrying a flashlight. Invisible to radar, the Sentinel flew in a circular pattern over Abbottabad. At an altitude of twenty thousand feet, no one on the ground could see or hear it. The Sentinel was a tiny speck in a vast, dark night.

  Red Squadron’s element commanders joined Admiral McRaven in the operations center and watched the video feed of the compound. Nothing looked different from the hundreds of aerial photographs t
hey had studied. There had been no increase in security, and most important, the overhead imagery revealed that the sliding glass doors of the third floor were open. This would be the SEALs’ main entrance.

  On the third floor, where Osama had his bedroom, some of the windows facing the front of the compound had been bricked in. The other windows were closed tight as well. The only source of ventilation for the third floor was three sliding glass doors that adjoined a walled-in back patio.

  In most other respects the compound was well fortified. Osama and his bodyguards had planned for almost every eventuality to thwart an attack from the ground. The compound was surrounded with a high wall topped with barbed wire. The gates of the compound wall were metal. The doors of the main building were each secured by iron grillwork, and even inside the house similar metal gates were used to cut off one section of the house from another. The stairway through the center of the main house was locked with an iron gate on the first floor. Osama and his bodyguards had considered attack from every angle—except the sky.

  * * *

  Red Squadron’s leader is a muscular six-footer with a trace of a Tidewater, Virginia, accent and quick, piercing green eyes. There was almost always a pinch of Copenhagen snuff tucked into Frank Leslie’s lower lip. He had been in command of the Red Men for almost two years and was well liked by his shooters. There were two other officers in Red Squadron, and both would play key roles in tonight’s mission.

  The element commander of Group Two did not present the picture that the American public probably has of a SEAL Team Six operator. He had the lean build of a cross-country runner and was an expert kayaker. He, too, had a trace of a southern drawl, and like his boss seemed to subsist on Copenhagen and black coffee. Rich Horn was fond of saying that all he needed to run an operation was caffeine, nicotine, and kerosene. The kerosene was to be burned by the helicopter that carried him. Nicotine and caffeine he considered health food. The third officer in Red Squadron was a recent graduate of Green Team. He’d seen a lot of Afghanistan as a platoon commander and later a troop leader for SEAL Teams Four and Eight. Although he was relatively new to Six he was no stranger to indoor gunfights.