Controversial book also breaks code of silence
was that they believed that Allah would guide their bullets. So why bother to aim?” he writes. “Their faith is probably a key reason I’m still in one piece.”
With the building cleared, O’Neill and Jonny moved into an alley where two more men with guns suddenly stepped into their path. The Americans fired simultaneously.
“S---, Jonny,” O’Neill recalls saying, “I just killed that guy.”
His first kill. The same was true for Jonny.
“It wasn’t like what you see in the movies,” he recalled. “Guys don’t fly through the air when you shoot them. They just collapse on themselves in awkward positions.”
Much as Osama Bin Laden did when O’Neill opened fire on America’s most wanted terrorist.
The action came to a head at a mosque where the mujahedeen made their last stand. A U.S. Ranger, hauling a heavy rocketlauncher on his shoulder, fired three into the building.
The job was done after two, but the Ranger fired the third to lighten his load.
“When we got in there . . . bodies were flung everywhere, sliced and diced. It was pretty bad,” O’Neill recounts. “But the thing that haunted me wasn’t so much the gruesome sight — rather, it was sound, a sound like water pouring out of a spigot.
“It was blood flowing from a severed arm.”
Back at base, a remorseless O’Neill considered his initiation into the club of combat killers.
In his mind, he created an epitaph to an enemy responsible for a cult of death: “Enjoy paradise, gentleman.”
In 2009, O’Neill was on the mission that freed Capt. Phillips — and writes that he got a foretaste of the stigma accompanying a high-profile kill.
His buddy Savio had eyes on Ali Aden Elmi, the increasingly erratic Somali pirate holding an AK-47 on Phillips. Savio fired the fatal shot from the fantail of the U.S. warship Bainbridge with an OK from his commander.
The backbiting started immediately, according to O’Neill. Fellow SEALs turned on Savio, as the rumor flew he was going to be kicked out of a command for an unjustified shot taken too early.
“All of a sudden, people who weren’t quite ready to shoot got p-ssed at him,” O’Neill writes, drawing the comparison to the heat he would take within the ranks after he brought down Bin Laden.
In the weeks after the Bin Laden mission, word reached O’Neill that his brother SEALS were accusing him of bragging — even as congratulatory calls poured in from across the nation.
His bosses demanded to know who and how many others he told. O’Neill says he always gave them the same answer: No one.
The unrelenting attention led to his 2012 retirement after 400 missions and numerous decorations — including two Silver Stars and four Bronze Stars with Valor.
“I felt hugely uncomfortable in the spotlight,” he claims.
Nevertheless, O’Neill outed himself to a Washington paper in 2014 and launched a lucrative career for himself as a motivational speaker. Even when reportedly targeted by ISIS, O’Neill didn’t go into hiding.
“I’m confident this all happened for a reason,” he writes at the book’s close. “I’m committed to making the most of it.”