Read No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden for Free Online

than fifty-fifty chance of passing Green Team. The instructors heard the same rumor, so when we got back to Virginia Beach, they kept the pressure on, never letting us forget that we were a very long way from being done.

    We were only three months into a nine-month training course. The next six months wouldn’t be any easier. After CQB, we went on to train on explosive breaching, land warfare, and communications.
    One of the SEALs’ core jobs is ship boarding, called “underways.” We spent weeks practicing boarding a variety of boats from cruise ships to cargo vessels. Although we spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and Iraq, we needed to be proficient in the water. We rehearsed “over the beach” operations where we would swim through the surf zone and patrol over the beach and conduct a raid. Afterward, we’d disappear into the ocean, linking up with our boats offshore.
    During the last month of training we practiced VIP security details. Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s first security detail were SEALs from the command. We also attended an advanced course in SERE, or Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape.
    The key to the course was managing stress.
    The instructors kept everyone tired and on edge, forcing us to make important decisions under the worst conditions. It was the only way the instructors could mimic combat. Success or failure of our missions was a direct reflection of how each operator could process information in a stressful environment. Green Team was different than BUD/S because I knew just passing the swim or run and being cold, all without quitting, wasn’t enough.
    Green Team was about mental toughness.
    During this time we were also learning the culture of the command. Throughout Green Team, we were on a one-hour recall to simulate what we would experience on the second deck. If recalled, the pager buzzed and we had an hour to get back to work and check in. Every day at six o’clock, we got a test page. The pagers became another source of pressure the instructors used. Several times, we’d get pages before dawn to come into work.
    One Sunday around midnight, my pager went off. Still shaking the sleep from my head, I rolled into the base in time and was told to put on my PT gear and stand by. We were going to have a PT test.
    We weren’t supposed to be more than an hour away and couldn’t drink to intoxication. We had to be able to perform when called upon. We could get a page and be on a plane to anywhere in the world within hours.
    Soon, my teammates started to arrive. Some seemed like the page had interrupted a trip to the bar.
    “Are you drunk right now?” I heard an instructor ask another candidate.
    “Of course not. I just had a beer at the house,” he said.
    As the hour ticked away, I still didn’t see Charlie.
    He rolled in about twenty minutes late. The instructors were pissed. He’d gotten a ticket for speeding on his way, which only delayed him more. Thankfully, it was just a verbal lashing from the instructors and Charlie was able to stay with our class.
    With only weeks left in the nine-month training, we started to hear rumors about the draft. To fill out the squadrons, the instructors would rank the whole class and then assault squadron master chiefs would sit around a table and pick new members from my Green Team class.
    The individual squadrons were in a constant state of flux as they rotated from deployments overseas to months of training and then months on standby, during which a call to deploy could come at any time.
    After the draft, the Green Team instructors posted a list. A whole bunch of my friends, including me, Charlie, and Steve, were going to the same squadron.
    “Hey, congrats,” Tom said when he saw me looking at the list. “When I am done with my instructor time I am going back to that squadron to be a team leader.”
    SEALs are deployed around the world at any given time. The heart of each squadron are the teams, each led by a senior enlisted SEAL and