The Hunt For Bin Laden

The hunters stalked their prey from the sky and in the shadows, armed with instruments of death and waiting for Osama bin Laden to reveal himself. Above the gnarled ridges outside the besieged cities of Jalalabad and Kandahar, U.S. warplanes unloaded laser-guided Maverick missiles and 5,000-lb. bunker busters to collapse limestone redoubts and bury anyone taking cover inside. Members of the U.S. Army's clandestine 800-man Delta Force tracked likely bin Laden hideouts, equipped with night-vision goggles and stun grenades, in case they had to creep inside the mountains, and laser pointers, in the hope that they could get warplanes to do the dirty, risky work. Bands of local Afghan fighters--whether driven by the desire to rid their country of bin Laden or win the $25 million bounty the U.S. had placed on his head--joined U.S. special-operations forces in the pursuit. Their orders were to shoot to kill. As one Army officer told TIME, "We won't ask him if he wants to surrender."

No one expected he would. From the moment the military launched its manhunt inside Afghanistan, U.S. commanders surmised that bin Laden--like the men he has dispatched on his errands of suicidal terror--would rather endure a fiery death than be captured by the infidels. He has reportedly instructed his closest aides, including his son, to give him the glory of martyrdom and shoot him if the Americans came knocking.

The swift, shocking transformation of Afghanistan's map last week--as rebel forces seized control of at least two-thirds of the country from the Taliban--made bin Laden's demise seem imminent, even if the Pentagon could not say precisely where he was. With Taliban forces ditching their guns and switching sides by the thousands, American commandos spent last week picking up bin Laden's scent--and nudging the six-week conflict toward a decisive climax. The Taliban faced devastation in its southern strongholds, and that shrank bin Laden's theater of operation. Pashtun operatives showered Western and Pakistani intelligence agents with information about bin Laden's hideouts. Pakistani officials told TIME that U.S. forces, working from reports that Taliban informants gave to Pakistani intelligence agents, have zeroed in on the Tora Bora region near Jalalabad, where bin Laden was thought to have sought the protection of the 1,500 Arab fighters left stranded there by the retreating Taliban. With hunters closing in, he was said to be moving nightly among caves in the honeycombed mountains stretching from Jalalabad to the northern half of the Uruzgan province. American F-15Es, unmanned Predator drones and commando ground troops killed scores of Taliban and al-Qaeda lieutenants, including bin Laden deputy Mohammed Atef, the reputed architect of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The anti-Taliban storm has left the country in a state of "maximum turmoil," as military strategists call it--the ideal environment for American forces to put bin Laden on the run. A huge, nagging fear was that bin Laden would disappear inside Afghanistan, dug in so deep that he could lead the U.S. forces on a long, futile chase. But allied officials exuded more confidence than ever before that they knew where--and how--to get him.