ABSTRACT
It was the middle of the night of May 1, 2011, and Rob O’Neill had been in this situation dozens of times-at this point, maybe even hundreds. 1 Seated aboard a helicopter fl ying close to the ground, he counted to himself from zero to one thousand, and then from one thousand to zero. Then he did it again. He didn’t do this out of fear, but rather as a way to keep focused. You see, this wasn’t just any helicopter, and he wasn’t sitting among strangers. This was a high-performance, combat-ready U.S. Navy Blackhawk copter. To O’Neill’s left and right were fellow members of Seal Team Six, the navy’s most elite counterterrorism unit. Some of the men are napping, others are listening to their iPods. Their objective on this particular mission, code named Neptune Spear, was to kill or capture Osama bin Laden. In less than an hour, Rob O’Neill would come face to face with America’s most wanted enemy.
