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

Six single-spaced pages later, I started to gather up my gear. The suggested packing list basically told us to bring everything.
    We worked under “Big Boy Rules” at the command, which means there wasn’t a lot of management unless you needed it. Since getting to the team, I prided myself on being independent. For the last three months, I had trained hard and tried to be an asset. I learned that it was OK to ask questions if you have them, but you didn’t want to be the guy who didn’t know what was going on and was always asking. I didn’t want to make a mistake on my first deployment by not packing something, so when I saw my team leader in the team room I asked him about the packing list.
    “Hey,” I said, grabbing a cup of coffee. “I was getting my kit together and the packing list basically wants me to load everything.”
    He was sitting at the granite countertop sipping a cup of coffee and going over some paperwork. Short and stocky, unlike some of the other guys who had longer hair and thick beards, he was clean-cut, with a short haircut and a close shave. He also wasn’t the most talkative guy and he had been at DEVGRU for much longer than I’d been in the Navy.
    He took “Big Boy Rules” seriously.
    “How long have you been in the Navy?” he said.
    “Going on six years,” I said.
    “You’ve been a SEAL for six years, and you don’t know what you need on deployment?”
    I felt like an asshole.
    “Dude, what do you think you need to bring for deployment? Load it,” he said. “This is your guide. Bring what you think you need.”
    “Check,” I said.
    Back at my cage, I laid out my gear, called “kit.” Each operator at DEVGRU had a cage, sort of like a locker big enough to walk inside. It was the size of a small room, with shelves that lined the walls and a small hanging rod that ran along the back wall to hang uniforms.
    Bags of gear filled with everything I needed for the different missions we could be called upon to perform rested on the shelves. One bag had everything I needed for CQB. Another had my HAHO (High Altitude, High Opening) or “jump gear.” My combat swimmer or “dive kit” was in a separate large green gear bag. Everything was color-coded and ready. My OCD was definitely in overdrive, and I had everything perfectly organized and separated.
    But some of the gear, like a Gerber tool, came in handy on most missions. Back at SEAL Team Five, you were issued one Gerber tool, which had a knife blade, screwdriver, scissors, and can opener.
    You were also issued only one scope for your rifle.
    One fixed blade knife.
    One set of ballistic plates.
    That meant sorting through multiple bags to find the single item that you needed to transfer to a new bag containing the specialty gear for a given mission. It was a hassle and was not very efficient, but it was the U.S. government and I’d gotten used to it.
    But it was different at DEVGRU.
    My team leader came by my cage later that day to double check how I was doing and saw my load-outs in the color-coded bags. Off to the side, I had an extra bag with the gear I thought I’d need for most missions, including a Gerber tool.
    “Go down to supply and get a Gerber for each bag,” my team leader said.
    I looked at him confused.
    “I can go get four of them?”
    “Yeah, you got four different mission load-out bags. You need one Gerber for each bag,” he said.
    My team leader signed my request form and I walked down to the supply office. One of the support guys met me at the window.
    “What do you need?”
    I showed him the list. It was basic stuff like flashlights and other tools, but I wanted four of each.
    “OK,” he said without hesitation. “Be right back.”
    In a few minutes, he came back with a plastic bin full of everything on the list. I had to fight to keep from smiling too much. This was a dream come true. Back at our previous teams, guys spent thousands of their own dollars buying kit we needed for work.
    The armory