The Bin Laden Plot

As Hillsley prepared for launch, Christine reviewed the emergency procedures she had been briefed on, which weren’t very challenging. If Alvin became disabled, the outer cladding of the submersible could be discarded via controls inside the vessel. The titanium sphere, containing Christine and Hillsley, would then rise to the surface.

The prelaunch checks were completed satisfactorily, and the sphere’s hatch was shut and sealed. Christine felt the lurch as the hydraulic piston attached to the top of Alvin lifted it from the ship’s deck. The DSV rose slowly in the air, toward the top of the A-frame Launch and Recovery System (LARS) — massive metal arms rising from each side of Atlantis, connected together at the top.

Once Alvin completed its ascent, it was locked into place. The DSV was now suspended above the ship, ready for the next phase. Brian Humm gave the order, and two massive pistons on each side of the LARS tilted the A-frame outboard, swinging Alvin into position over the ocean. The hydraulic ram above them reversed, lowering Alvin into the water where it was released from the piston. The DSV bobbed on the surface while the cable to Atlantis was detached.

When the tether was disconnected, Hillsley turned to Christine. It would take ninety minutes, he explained, to reach the ocean bottom. With no connection to Atlantis, they would be on their own until they returned to the surface.

He opened the ballast tank vents, and Alvin began its descent.

45 USS MICHIGAN

Three hours after their operations brief, as Michigan hovered at periscope depth five miles off the coast of Failaka Island, Harrison and Khalila stood on the second deck in the submarine’s Missile Compartment, each with their SEAL team. Harrison was outside Missile Tube Two with Lieutenant Tracey Noviello and the other three SEALs in his fire team — Sheakoski, Keller, and Hacker — while Khalila waited beside tube One with Senior Chief Russ Burkhardt and the other SEALs in his fire team: Pickering, Narehood, and Meyer.

Each wore a black dive suit and rubber booties and was outfitted with fins and a face mask, plus a rebreather instead of scuba tanks since they’d be underwater only a short time until they were aboard the RHIBs. Each SEAL and CIA officer also carried a waterproof rucksack, containing the weapons and other equipment they’d need for the mission.

Although both RHIBs were stored in the Dry Deck Shelter attached to Missile Tube Two, Senior Chief Burkhardt’s team would enter tube One. With two RHIBs in one shelter, there was insufficient room for all eight SEALs, plus Harrison and Khalila. Harrison’s team would extract one RHIB while Burkhardt’s team exited the other shelter, then grabbed the second boat.

Harrison and his fire team stepped through the circular hatch in the side of Missile Tube Two. Noviello shut the hatch, sealing the five men inside the seven-foot-diameter tube. Harrison led the way, climbing a steel ladder into the Dry Deck Shelter, bathed in diffuse red light.

The Dry Deck Shelter was a conglomeration of three chambers: a spherical hyperbaric chamber at the forward end to treat injured divers, a spherical transfer trunk in the middle, which Harrison had just entered, and a cylindrical hangar section where the two RHIBs were stowed. The hangar was divided into two sections by a Plexiglas shield dropping halfway down from the top, with the RHIBs on one side and hangar controls on the other.

The five men donned their fins, masks, and rebreathers, and Noviello rendered the okay hand signal to the Navy diver, already stationed in the DDS, who operated the controls.

Dark water surged into the shelter from vents beneath them, pooling at their feet and rising rapidly. The hangar was soon flooded down, except for an air pocket on the other side of the Plexiglas shield, where the diver operated the shelter. There was a low rumbling sound as the circular hatch at the end of the hangar moved slowly open to the latched position. Harrison and the SEALs hauled one of the RHIBs from the shelter onto the submarine’s Missile Deck, then connected a tether to it from a shelter rail and activated the first compressed air cartridge.

As the RHIB expanded, Sheakoski and Keller swam aft along the Missile Deck and opened the hatch to a locker in the submarine’s superstructure. They retrieved an outboard motor and attached it to the RHIB, then activated the second air cartridge. The RHIB fully inflated, rising toward the surface. Sheakoski and Keller followed the boat up while Senior Chief Burkhardt’s team pulled the second RHIB from the shelter and duplicated the process.

Sheakoski returned a few moments later, rendering the okay hand signal, as did Pickering from Burkhardt’s team. The two SEALs disconnected the RHIB tether lines from the shelter and swam toward the surface.