Fearless Read Free

fruitful intelligence, which led to further dismantling of the insurgency against the Afghan government and yielded more pieces to the puzzle that eventually revealed the whereabouts of bin Laden.
    Since late 2009, intelligence networks had been tracking a Kunar Province Taliban leader—code-named Objective Lake James—who had already taken credit for numerous deaths among coalition forces. The most recent intelligence confirmed that “James” planned to attack a U.S. Army battalion preparing to relocate from its current position adjacent to the Pech River Valley. The valley was a deadly piece of real estate where insurgents could strike coalition forces and then retreat into their mountain strongholds—villages and valleys whose inhabitants, in many cases, had never seen an American. There were lines on the map beyond which the insurgents knew they would not be pursued.
    That was about to change. Intelligence pinpointed James’s current location, a compound in a secluded village in the mountainous Chapa Dara district of KunarProvince. Even though this particular hamlet was a
way
-over-the-line safe haven for insurgents, Adam and his teammates began planning to either capture or kill James.
    First they viewed images of the compound. Confirming details of the landscape and structures was always difficult until the SEALs were on the ground, but the target residence didn’t appear any more problematic than the hundreds of other compounds they’d raided during multiple deployments. Further surveillance of the valley revealed men armed with rifles, mostly AK-47s, as well as light machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. The men in the photographs were of fighting age, which in the past had meant men with beards. Lately, however, the insurgents and jihadists had begun shaving to appear younger and were even donning burkas to disguise themselves as women, to better their chances of escape. So it was difficult to accurately determine overall enemy numbers.
    In the target compound, roughly five males, six females, and six children were present at various times of day. James and his men were expected to fight rather than be captured, so the civilians complicated the raid. History had shown that this enemy used both women and children freely as human shields, but the SEALs were trained to handle these scenarios.
    What made Objective Lake James one of the three most difficult (described by Command as “audacious”) missions in the war up to then were two facts. Located in a narrow valley deep within wooded mountains, the objective was surrounded by enemy who had chiseled their homes into formidable, often terraced slopes and rocky cliff faces. This meant the SEALs could not fly in, land or fast rope near the target, perform their mission, and fly out—their usual modus operandi. They would have to infiltrate by foot a great distance over extremely difficult enemy-occupied terrain, hit their target, and hike out to the helicopter landing zone (HLZ).
    Adam and his team were prepared to do whatever it took not to alert the village or the rest of the valley’s residents. That meant staying as quiet as possible and using suppressed weapons or knives to kill or capture the targeted individual. Once they had completed their task, they would search the premises for intelligence and detain the civilians. If doors did need to be blown open or the enemy fought back, the entire valley would hear and come out with weapons blazing, and it would be a battle all the way to the HLZ—a thirty- to sixty-minute hike. The SEALs knew that length of time under fire would feel like an eternity.
    An easier way to take out James and his men would have been to drop a bomb, but that was not an option because of the women and children in the compound and the families in adjacent homes. This had to be a surgical strike, aimed at one insurgent and his cell of fighters who, if not eliminated by Adam’s team, would continue to attack American or