Free SEAL Target Geronimo: The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama Bin Laden by Chuck Pfarrer

stalking the sea lanes to attack neutral shipping. SEALs captured oil rigs in the Persian Gulf that were being used as Iranian observation and weapons platforms. All of these successes were carried out with minimal CIA input, and no help from the NSA. The SEALs liked it that way.
    SEAL Team Six carried out clandestine missions in the disputed zone between Chad and Libya in Operation Mount Hope III in 1988. In the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, Operation Just Cause, SEAL Six hunted for Panamanian strong man and drug boss Manuel Noriega—helping corner him in the Vatican embassy. During operations in Kuwait and Iraq (Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm) in 1991, SEAL Team Six carried out numerous special reconnaissance operations, penetrating deep behind Iraqi lines. Fast attack vehicles (FAVs) from SEAL Team Six were first into Kuwait City, and liberated both the parliament and the American embassy.
    The command carried out operations in Somalia, both overt in Operation Restore Hope, and covert in the chillingly named Operation Gothic Serpent, where SEAL Team Six elements hunted Somali warlords.
    After 9/11, SEAL Team Six’s deployment cycles doubled, and then tripled. SEAL Six has carried out countless operations against high-value targets in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor have they neglected their worldwide commitments. In Operation Aztec Silence in 2003, SEAL Team Six broke up an Al Qaeda plan to kidnap drivers in the Paris to Dakar car rally. The command has participated in numerous other still-classified special operations, including High Value Individual (HVI) operations in Chad, Somalia, the Philippines, Syria, and Pakistan.
    There is no place on Earth or in the sea that is beyond the reach of Team Six. And on April 8, 2009, when a gang of armed Somali pirates hijacked an American cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden, they would prove it.

 
     
MAERSK ALABAMA
     
    MANY OPERATIONS PROVIDED LESSONS used in Operation Neptune’s Spear. One of them was a mission that SEAL Team Six called “The Bainbridge Op.”
    In the Gulf of Aden there is little twilight; at dawn, purple clouds give way to a blazing sun, and at the end of each fierce, blistering day, there are only a few minutes of dusk before the sun sinks toward the African shore, taking with it all the light, like debris pulled down around a foundering ship.
    This close to the equator, halfway into the Indian Ocean, there are no seasons—there is only a rolling blue sea and the pitiless sun. On the night of April 8, 2009, the sun went out of the sky almost at once. The moon had yet to rise when four pirates set off from a mother ship two hundred miles off the coast of Somalia. Armed with automatic weapons, they turned a high-speed motor launch north and east toward the Gulf of Aden. Their target: a U.S.-flagged containership carrying relief supplies to Mombasa, Kenya. The vessel’s name: Maersk Alabama .
    Operating from the postapocalyptic port of Eyl, on the Horn of Africa, a flotilla of pirates has attacked almost a hundred merchant ships since 2008. The ransoming of cargo and crews has emerged as a multimillion-dollar business in the failed state of Somalia. It was inevitable that they would eventually attack a U.S.-flagged vessel. Unfortunately for the pirates, SEAL Team Six was ready.
    Using grappling hooks, the pirates climbed Maersk Alabama ’s stern and rushed across her decks. In moments, they were in control of the bridge. At gunpoint, they ordered the navigator to set a course for their base in the harbor at Eyl—where the hostages were to be sold to the highest bidder. For the first time since 9/11, Americans had fallen into the hands of hijackers.
    But the hijackers’ plan had gone badly awry. Though the pirates had captured the ship’s captain and one of the officers, the rest of the crew had made it to a secure hiding place. In a secondary control room the ship’s engineers, led by Chief Engineer Mike Perry, first cycled the ship’s rudder,