High Flight (108 page)

The downed chopper no longer mattered, all that counted in Peter Barnes's head was staying on mission, something he'd trained for his entire career. All of them were senior operators, in their thirties, well experienced in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other hot spots over the past ten years or so, and they'd all worked the mission plan over and over again, until no one had to give orders, everyone knew his job.

The other assaulters stacked up behind Barnes, all of them turning away and lowering their heads as Tony hit the detonator. The charge went off with a very loud bang, blowing a large hole in the gate.

Tony was first through and within ninety seconds of the crash the team was back on mission. Anderson peeled off to race up the outside stairs to clear the roof of possible snipers.

It was believed that bin Laden and perhaps two or more of his wives had an apartment on the third deck of the main house. The problem was no one knew how heavily armed they might be, how many soldiers or relatives might also be in the building, and who of them—especially the women—would be decked out with suicide vests ready to pull the pin as soon as the house was breached.

Don, Bob, and Greg the Ratman raced across the courtyard to the north door while four other operators went to the south door.

Barnes, who at five eight with a slender build, a scruffy beard and long hair, was the smallest member of the two teams on the crashed bird, glanced over his right shoulder in time to see Chalk Two disappear behind the north wall. They were supposed to hover over the main building to let at least one team fast-rope to the roof. But they knew that Chalk One had crashed and made the right decision to put the operators on the ground outside the perimeter.

In their final briefing the admiral had stressed the absolute importance of placing boots on the ground ASAP. The team was at its most vulnerable point in the air, and especially fast-roping into the compound.

The troop net lit up with radio calls as the team aboard Chalk Two piled out of the chopper and headed toward a gate on the north side of the compound.

Tony raced across the inner courtyard to the guesthouse, where it was believed that Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who was one of bin Laden's important couriers, lived with a wife and two or three kids.

A pair of sturdy metal doors with barred windows above and on either side were locked solid.

Barnes stepped aside as Tony pulled a sledgehammer from the back of his vest, extended the handle and hit the lock with three sharp blows, doing nothing but denting the metal.

He broke out one of the windows, but the bars wouldn't budge when he tried to pry them apart.

By now anyone anywhere inside the compound or in the fairly upscale neighborhood who wasn't dead or totally deaf knew that something was going on.

“I'm going explosive,” Barnes said softly, thinking that whispering at this point was the dumbest thing he'd ever done. He pulled the breaching charge from his kit.

There was an explosion from the north side of the compound, and a second later Chalk Two's team leader radioed that the breach had failed.

“We're moving to the Delta compound gate at this time.”

Barnes dropped to one knee, peeled the adhesive strip off the back of the breaching charge, and stuck it in place on the door.

Don, their translator, the last man out of the chopper, raced across the compound toward them when someone inside the guesthouse opened fire with the unmistakable rattle of an unsuppressed AK-47.

Tony returned fire from the left side of the door as Barnes moved to the window on the right, smashed out the glass with the barrel of his Heckler & Koch 416, and fired several short bursts inside, walking the rounds left to right.

Don was right behind Barnes. “Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, come out now!” he shouted in Arabic.

No one responded.

Barnes was on autopilot now—in the zone—no stray thoughts, not even curiosity about how all of this was going to turn out. He was on mission, following the plan.

He went back to the door, made sure the explosive charge was in place, and pulled a detonator out of his kit. He was about to attach it to the charge when someone inside opened the lock and cracked the door.

Barnes stepped back. There was nowhere for the three of them to take cover. If al-Kuwaiti tossed out a grenade it would be game over.

A woman appeared at the open door, a bundle of something in her arms. She was crying.

Barnes raised his rifle. The laser pointer on her forehead lit up like day in his four-tube night vision goggles. For just a moment his finger tightened on the trigger, until he realized that the bundle in the woman's arms was a baby. Three other children stood behind her.

“Come here,” Don told her.

“He is dead,” she said in Arabic as she stepped out of the house. “You shot him. You killed him.”

Don translated.

Barnes patted the woman down, and he and Tony entered the house, which smelled of heating oil. Al-Kuwaiti lay on the floor in a pool of blood, and Barnes fired several shots into his body to make sure he was dead.

It took less than one minute to clear both rooms, and when they were finished Barnes activated an IR chemical light stick at the front door. It could only be seen by someone wearing NVGs and it indicated that the place was clear.

“C One is secure,” Barnes radioed on the troop net.

The team from Chalk Two had breached the gate to Delta compound and had already reached the main house in A One where it was believed that UBL and his brother Abrar al-Kuwaiti lived. Another breaching charge blew and moments later one shot was fired, followed by several more.

By the time Barnes, Tabeek, and Don reached the west side of the building and stacked up behind the other assaulters waiting to enter through the north door, Stew reported that a metal gate blocked access to the second floor and he was going explosive.

Barnes and the others could only wait and pull security, laser points dancing just about everywhere in the A One courtyard, especially along the second- and third-floor windows and rooflines.

The mission commander from Chalk Two, realizing that the Chalk One chopper was never going to fly, got on the satellite radio and called for one of the Quick Reaction Force CH-47 Chinooks standing by for refueling and help if needed.

Stew had set the breaching charge on the gate, and since the blast was going to be inside a structure and would create a very intense pressure wave, most of the assaulters took cover. The charge blew with an impressive bang, and the chickens in the wire coop next to where Barnes and the others were waiting started raising hell. It was like a three-ring circus inside the compound. All they needed now were klieg lights and a ringmaster with a bullhorn.

Everyone in the stack hustled inside and started up the spiral staircase, all of them trying to be as quiet as possible.

When Barnes reached the second deck, just about everyone ahead of him was already clearing four doorways down a long corridor.

An assaulter was halfway up the stairs to the third floor when a man stuck his head around the corner. He was clean-shaven. The intel briefings they'd been given made it likely that he was one of UBL's sons.

“Khalid,” the assaulter called softly.

The man appeared around the corner again. The assaulter shot him in the head and he fell down the stairs all the way to the second deck.

Barnes and the others stepped over the body and headed up the stairs where they found Khalid's AK-47 propped against the wall. If the guy had held his position and fired down the stairs they would have been bottled up and it would have been an entirely different game.

But Barnes had seen random shit like that happen all the time—and not always for the team's benefit.

It was very dark inside the house, but with NVGs everything was lit up green. Skip Faircloth, the lead assaulter, was the point man, and Barnes was next; several others were stacked up on the stairs. They moved slow.

If UBL was on the third floor he'd had plenty of time to strap on a suicide vest or at the least arm himself.

This had become nothing more than a CQB—close quarters battle—drill, that Barnes and every other operator on the mission had done hundreds of times.

Just a few steps from the top deck landing, Skip fired two suppressed shots at a head poking out of an open doorway.

Barnes was right behind him, their rifles at the ready as they approached the doorway and looked inside.

Two women dressed in long gowns were wailing and crying over a man lying on his back at the foot of a bed.

One of them looked up and suddenly charged Skip. It was impossible to tell if they were wearing suicide vests, but Skip deflected her charge, and hustled her and the older woman to the other side of the room without thinking what could happen if either of them were wired.

The downed man lay on his back, blood and brains leaking out of the side of his head where one of the shots had entered his skull. He was dressed in a white T-shirt, loose slacks, and a desert-colored vest.

It was bin Laden. Same build and height, same face, same nose, same hair and beard, though it appeared as if he'd dyed away the gray. He was twitching, still not quite dead.

Barnes was sure of the solid ID, and he and another assaulter fired several rounds into the man's chest, killing him.

It was over, finally.

They cleared an adjoining bathroom and a room that looked as if had been used as an office. The women and three children were hustled out. The team leader securing the rest of the third deck reported all clear when Barnes came out.

“Secure,” Barnes said, and the team leader reported the situation on the troop net.

UBL was dead. It was time to gather up intel, including papers and hard drives, plus samples of the dead man's body fluids for positive DNA proof, then bag the body and boogey out before the Pakistani military finally woke up and came charging.