May 1, 2011, 30 minutes after midnight, or 0-dark-30.

Two Black Hawk helicopters hurtle through the Pakistani sky.

They were flying mere feet above the rooftops, the city of Abadabad, to avoid military radar.

This was the result of years of CIA intelligence operations.

Their mission, kill or capture the man responsible, the deaths of almost 3,000 Americans,

Osama bin Laden.

For over 10 years, this man had escaped justice, hiding out under the radar.

But finally, American Special Forces were certain they had him cornered.

I don't think the CIA or the military had any idea that how difficult it would be to apprehend this guy.

But if the operation didn't go like clockwork, bin Laden would very likely escape as he had before.

But when those planes hit 9-11, we had no one they were going to do that.

Not that specific day of that specific target, but that medium of operation they intended to do that since 1995.

We spent from December 2000 and won until May of 2011 looking for it.

The Navy SEAL team's six fighters were flying in, prepared to repel into bin Laden's compound, when disaster struck.

The helicopter crash landed, throwing half the SEAL team to the ground and attracting unwanted attention.

All around the noise was waking up the people of the city who were starting to fill the streets.

If the SEALs didn't immediately take action, the world's most wanted man would avoid justice once again.

And you know you're fighting against time, and you know that people are going to die.

The towns wake, and so they're thinking, any minute now we can be run down with a lot of enemy forces coming at us.

They had just minutes to kill Osama bin Laden.

It's rare and I've ever goes like it's planned. There's always something that comes up for that we expect.

From audio boom and world media rights, this is Covert, a podcast about the shadowy world of the international espionage and top secret military operations.

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