KBL (46 page)

Khan Compound Western Courtyard, Abbottabad, Pakistan
May 2, 2011, 0100:55 Hours Local Time

Danny Walker had already scenarioed this particular clusterfuck in his head. They all had. They’d red-teamed the entire assault, coming up with everything that could go wrong and war-gaming the adjustments needed to overcome Mr. Murphy. Shit, the exact same thing had happened to 6-Charlie’s helicopter during a mission in Helmand not nine months ago. For these SEALs it was just another day at the SNAFU office: situation normal, all fucked up.

So Jackpot opened his mike and called “Execute Hotel 53” onto the net. Everything would go as planned. Then he yelled, “Ranger breacher with me, NOW!”

And rolled out of the aircraft followed by his SEALs.

Yeah, they may have been shaken. But not stirred.

And the clock was ticking.

0101:29. Jackpot knows they have to smack two walls to get to the main house. He points the Ranger toward the gate in the ten-foot-high wall. “Blow it.”

The Ranger pulls a pre-primed Spider Charge out of his chest bag, fixes it on the metal gate, slams the shock tube initiator home, and then runs backward, unspooling line as he goes. He backs off twenty feet next to a shed, plugs in his igniter, shouts, “Burning!” and hits the igniter.

The gate blows. Jackpot tells the Ranger, “You stay here. See anything unfriendly, you kill it.”

One more gate to blow before they reach front door.

0102:55. Two and a half minutes behind schedule, the SEALs are set to make entry into the main compound. As they do, they hear another explosion. It’s the Chalk Two element blowing through the compound’s southwest wall. The Chalk landed in the pasture, disgorged its SEALs, Rangers, and the K-9 team, then banked off into the night, heading for the predetermined logger site three minutes away, in the valley west of the highway and just north of Abbottabad. They’ll stay there, rotors turning, until they’re called back.

0103:40. Jackpot is first through the smoke into the fifteen-foot-wide alley. The SEALs fan left and right. Scan north and south. All clear. Gate ahead.

Jackpot: “Heron—blow it.”

0105:15. The enabler aircraft lands once Chalk Two clears the pasture. Rangers charge down the ramp, heading toward the road, where they’d set up a perimeter. They are followed by Paul Fedorko, who hits the ground running, carrying a vest with plate carrier, helmet with NODs, and two prosthetic legs.

0106:37. “Burning!” Heron blows the front door. Jackpot and Gunrunner make entry.

Jackpot: “Gun, right!” Two quick shots followed by three more. “EKIA.”

Troy: “Going left.”

Padre’s voice: “Gate. Breacher!”

Gunrunner in their headsets: “Kids on the left. Babies. No shoot!”

0107:25. In Jackpot’s headset: “Vest, left!”

Followed by shots fired from the guesthouse on the south side of the compound.

In his ear: “EKIAs.” Multiples.

The 6-Charlie SEALs swarm swiftly through the ground floor. Unlike police SWAT teams, which move deliberately and in formation, these operators function on the run, working quickly in pairs or trios.

It looks like organized chaos. They call it violence of action.

At the edge of his NODs’ field of vision Padre sees Z’s got two squalling kids wrapped up in his arms.

Padre likes that: kids running loose equals no booby traps.

On this level.

0109:35. Heron blows the gate protecting the stairwell.

Rangemaster busts through the smoke and runs up the stairs, suppressed 416 in high ready position, both eyes open as he works the wall, scanning and breathing, the red dot of his night-vision-capable Aimpoint sight bright through his NODs.

0109:55. Rangemaster sees movement. Shouts, “Landing! Gun!”

He fires two rapid shots.

Calls, “Hostile down. Stairwell.”

Keeps moving up to the second-floor landing.

Jackpot follows.

0110:25. Heron’s muzzle is pointed up the stairwell. He sees something on the third-floor landing through his night-vision sight. Face. Gray beard. “Hostile!”

The target looks down at him. Heron squeezes off two quick shots.

Misses. “Shit.”

T-Rob hurdles the corpse, a bearded kid in his twenties wearing a white T-shirt. He drops his muzzle and puts a round in the kid’s head as he goes by.

Insurance. When in doubt, double shoot the sonofabitch. You don’t want them coming up behind you.

0111.00. T-Rob and Padre have already leapfrogged Rangemaster and Jackpot, who are clearing the second floor.

Heron’s close behind. He, too, puts a bullet in the corpse’s head. He hears: “Second floor clear.” Keeps going.

Padre’s voice from above: “Gate—Heron.”

Heron reaches into his breacher kit for the prefabbed charge.

0111.00. Charlie Becker is sitting on the ground, wrapping Ace bandages on his stumps. Satisfied, he takes one of the prosthetics from Fedorko and attaches it, tests, then reaches for the second one.

When it’s on, Fedorko and a Ranger pull him to his feet.

“How they feel?”

Charlie wobbles like a drunk. “Guess it’ll take a while to get my sea legs.” He stands unsteadily. Takes a tentative step. Then another. “Kinda like riding a bicycle, huh?”

He steadies himself against Fedorko. “Thanks, bro.”

“CIA. We deliver.” The Agency man reaches into the breast pocket of his ACU blouse and hands Charlie a big cigar in a silver aluminum tube. “Humongously big one-star at J-Bad gave this to me for you.”

Charlie: “One-star?”

“General McGill. He works for Wes Bolin at JSOC.”

“Eric McGill.” Charlie laughs. “Humongous is right. We used to call him McGorilla. Shit, we were in Iraq together in ninety. And at the Regiment.” He opens the tube and lets the cigar slide out halfway, puts it under his nose, says, “Ahh,” then looks down at the tube through the NODs Fedorko had given him.

“See that? That’s a frickin’ Cuban Romeo and Julieta Churchill.” Charlie holds up his ruined left hand and mimics Churchill’s famous “V for victory” sign, except on him it looks more like a checkmark. “Best cigar ever made.” He grins at Fedorko. “Thanks. I think I’ll save it for later.”

Charlie looks up and down the empty street. “So, now that I’m standing on my own two legs again, who do you guys want killed?” He puts his head back and laughs. It feels great to be vertical.

Fedorko says, “Charlie, I have something that’s better than killing.” He looks at the bemused expressions on the two Rangers’ faces. “Okay, okay, there’s nothing better than killing. But tonight . . .”

Fedorko pulls a set of counterfeited ISI creds out of his thigh pocket and hands them to Charlie. “You are hereby deputized as an officer in the Inter-Services Intelligence service.

“Here’s the way it works: You patrol out here with the Rangers. If the neighbors get nosy, you tell ’em it’s an ISI op in cooperation with the Americans and to go back to bed before they get arrested.”

“Can do.” Charlie peers at his CIA colleague’s green face through the NODs. “What’s my rank? Do I get a weapon?”

“You’re already rank enough, Charlie,” Fedorko says. “And we all know you don’t need a weapon, you
are
a weapon.”

49

Khan Compound, Abbottabad, Pakistan
May 2, 2011, 0112:25 Local Time

Troy’s first onto the third-floor landing. Movement to his right. Runner disappearing.

Door slams.

He’s there. Kicks it open. It slaps inward, bouncing off the wall.

Heron’s right behind him.

0112:29. Troy makes entry. “Going left.”

Two women in front of a man.

Tall man.

Bearded.

Perpetual scowl.

Crankshaft.

Troy calls “Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo” into his boom mike.

0112:31. The women charge. Screaming “Sons of whores!”

From behind Troy, Heron shoots the closest one in the leg.

She goes down squealing.

Troy hears Padre’s voice: “Going right.”

0112:33. Second woman keeps coming.

Heron rushes them.

The big SEAL swats the charging woman, clubbing her onto the floor.

He catches the wounded woman’s clothing and drags her toward the far wall.

0112:35. The tall bearded man turns straight into Troy. He’s wearing a light-colored
shalwar qameez
and a Fellaheen knit cap.

0112:36. T-Rob’s crosshairs are on Crankshaft’s center mass.

The women are screaming bloody murder.

T-Rob squeezes off two, three, four quick shots.

Crankshaft’s knocked backward.

Starts to go down.

0112:37. Padre’s 416 is up. He makes a single shot at the guy’s left eye.

Crankshaft’s head snaps back.

He’s dead before he hits the deck.

Heron’s trying to keep the screaming, cursing, flailing women out of the way without killing them.

0112:42. Padre crosses to the corpse, the HK416 in low ready, finger on trigger.

If the sonofabitch even twitches, it’ll be two more in the head.

But the motherfucker doesn’t twitch.

He’s dead.

The hunt had consumed more than a decade. But the finish? Less than ten seconds in a pigsty of a room in a backwater Paki town no one back at home has ever heard of.

Until tonight.

Padre calls “Geronimo EKIA” into his boom mike.

Then he and T-Rob help Heron flexicuff the screaming bitches so they can move ’em downstairs to the Dirty Zone.

0113:45. The three SEALs take a look at Bin Laden’s corpse. The sonofabitch’s hair and beard are all gray. His face is distorted from Padre’s head shot. But it’s him. No mistaking that face. That nose. Those lips.

T-Rob thinks,
Thank you, Jesus, for allowing me to be a part of this and not screw up
.

Padre thinks,
Ten years we’ve been after this asshole, and after all the hype, he looks like every other piece of shit we’ve killed.

Heron thinks,
I missed the motherfucker. How could I have missed the motherfucker? Now I’m stuck for the fricking beer.

The White House Situation Room Annex, Washington, D.C.
May 1, 2011, 1613 Hours Local Time

“We got him,” the president said solemnly. “We got him.”

“It’s been a long time.” Secretary of Defense Rich Hansen said. “A long hunt.”

The president nodded in agreement. “Now,” he said, “we have to make sure it’s really him.”

He looked at Vince, standing at the back of the anteroom out of camera range. “That’s being done, isn’t it, Mr. Director?”