On a moonless night 79 American commandos in four helicopters descended on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. Shots rang out. A helicopter stalled and would not take off. Pakistani authorities, kept in the dark by their allies in Washington, scrambled forces as the American commandos rushed to finish their mission and leave before a confrontation. Of the five dead, one was a tall, bearded man with a bloodied face and a bullet in his head. A member of the Navy Seals snapped his picture with a camera and uploaded it to analysts who fed it into a facial recognition program.
And just like that, history’s most expansive, expensive and exasperating manhunt was over.
