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

surrendered and started talking to an interpreter and a pair of FBI negotiators. His almost casual surrender had reduced the bad guys’ firepower by 25 percent.
    The SEALs were able to listen to conversations within the boat by pointing a laser beam at the lifeboat’s Plexiglas windows. The pirates’ conversations were translated in real time and transcribed on typed sheets. Since Abduwali had gone aboard the destroyer, the pirates became increasingly nervous. The plan was to sweat them, stress them, and it was working. Wilson now hoped it wasn’t working too well. He thought the pinch would come at dusk, and it had.
    Greg Wilson had deployed SEAL snipers into an aft compartment below Bainbridge ’s flight deck. During the day they draped a piece of mosquito netting over the inside of a pair of portholes that faced aft, a technique that works remarkably well to prevent a distant eye from seeing in an open window. The sniper cell rotated a shooting pair, one trigger and a spotter, on and off in four-hour shifts. The first few rotations the shooters ran pieces of tubular nylon webbing from shackles on the overhead. Looping the cord around the fore grips of their rifles allowed the snipers to keep their weapons constantly trained on the lifeboat. The snipers were in the TACTAS compartment, a room intended to be the underwater eyes of the ship during antisubmarine warfare; now the compartment looked backward as Bainbridge towed a boatload of pirates.
    The muzzles of the snipers’ weapons were a foot back from the openings, allowing them to observe and cover the lifeboat from air-conditioned comfort. No shooters were visible on the fantail or flight deck. During the day the mosquito netting prevented even a glimpse inside. At night, the pairs rotated, the net was lifted and optical scopes were traded for electronic, low-light aim points.
    The snipers’ craft and equipment was impressive. The SEALs have no “standard” sniper weapon—no single firearm could perform all the jobs the SEALs are required to do—and the Navy gives individual operators considerable leeway. But there are favorites. One is the Heckler & Koch PSG-2. The weapon is essentially a match-grade version of the German G-2 assault rifle. The PSG-2 is an exceptionally accurate and versatile weapon. It can use five-, ten-, or thirty-round magazines, has provision for fast changes of aiming packages, and has the option of fully automatic fire.
    The PSG-2 has earned its spurs with the SEALs, and has served in combat as a precision rifle and antisniper weapon in hundreds of deployments. It was the weapon of choice for the primary shooters in the TACTAS perch. The snipers were loaded with M855 green tip “Predator” cartridges. Unlike ball ammunition, or even conventional hollow points, Predator rounds can be counted on to fly straight and true, even after initial impact. The bullet itself is an aerodynamic masterpiece. A case-hardened steel needle is covered with an aluminum “ogive,” a shroud designed to allow the bullet to pass through the outer walls of a vehicle, building, or boat and still retain linear flight—that is, until it hits something soft, where the bullet is designed to spall and do maximum damage.
    Predator rounds would allow the snipers to engage targets inside the boat.
    Every SEAL marksman is paired with a spotter, who is himself a trained and designated sniper. The spotter’s job is to provide cover for the primary shooter, work communications, and update firing information. In a fixed hide position, or “stoop,” the spotter will usually observe the target with a powerful optical spotting scope. In the TACTAS compartment, the snipers were “screwed in,” meaning they had established a fixed, customized shooting stage. Settled in, zeroed out, the snipers came to know by face and body movements each of the men on the lifeboat. They knew them all, and kept a running fix on where in the boat they were at any moment. The lifeboat was