SANA'A, YEMEN

They descended like vultures from the C-17 transport plane, silhouettes against a quarter moon in a tar-black sky. Invisible, silent predators. Arms and legs spread wide, free-falling for the first few seconds, the wind rushing past their arched bodies at 120 miles per hour. Adrenaline surging with every heartbeat.

Twenty men had stepped out of the cargo hold at 31,000 feet, into the frigid air above the sovereign territory of Yemen. Twenty-two seconds later, at 27,000 feet, they snapped their chutes open, checked their NavBoards, and adjusted their flights. They would float through the thin and biting air for nearly twenty minutes, landing within a few hundred yards of the first rally point on a desolate mountain plateau nearly five kilometers outside the city of Sana'a.

The men were part of a Tier 1 Special Forces "asset," the best America had to offer. Among them were a farmer from New York, a swimmer from California, a hunter from Texas, a lacrosse player from Connecticut. They had trained their entire adult lives for a moment like this, a presidential mission, one the suits in D.C. were following in real time. The president herself would monitor progress from the mahogany-lined Situation Room, watching video from the team leader's camera, listening to every spoken word on the command net, the radio frequency used by the team leader and headquarters staff.

These men were part of the famed SEAL Team Six, officially known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group or DEVGRU, and this team, from the secretive Black Squadron, would be notching their own place in the history books tonight. It wasn't quite bin Laden, but unlike other covert operations, this one would not go unnoticed. In fact, if all went according to plan, the world would later watch select portions of the video. They would see the lethal efficiency of this team. Freedom for condemned prisoners. A statement that America was entitled to respect.

The mission was code-named Operation Exodus, a name Patrick Quillen and his men secretly disliked. They wanted to call it Alcatraz because it would be a spectacular jailbreak, but then the president weighed in, followed by the PR geeks, and a name of requisite nobility was chosen. The Houthi rebels running Yemen had provided no trials or due process for the two noncombatants the SEAL team had been sent to extract. The Houthis had threatened to execute the prisoners by hanging them on Easter Sunday, thumbing their noses at the United States and Saudi Arabia. The president had dispatched this team to put things right, to set the captives free. Operation Exodus was born.

The first prisoner was an American journalist named Cameron Holloman, a flamboyant reporter for the Washington Post, one of those pretty boys who inserted themselves into war-torn countries and dreamed of Pulitzers. He had flown into Saudi Arabia and snuck across the border with Yemen so he could report on the plight of the people caught in the cross fire between the Saudi air raids and the Houthis' counterattacks. But after two weeks in Yemen, he had been arrested, accused of being an American spy, and scheduled for execution.

Diplomacy with the Iranian-backed Houthis had long since failed.

In the same prison as Holloman, two cells down, sat Abdullah Fahd bin Abdulaziz, a member of the Saudi royal family, a rebellious nephew who had entered Yemen on his own unauthorized diplomatic mission. Like Holloman, he had been arrested and accused of espionage. And like Holloman, he was scheduled to be hanged on Easter Sunday. The Saudis were desperate to free him, and the mission would be a failure if he died or was left behind.

The intel for the mission came from a Yemeni asset whom the CIA had dubbed "Pinocchio," a twist on the fact that the man had proven himself with his handlers, his information always solid. He had provided the precise layout of the prison down to the cell numbers for the targets. The external layout and the daily patterns of the prison guards had been tracked through drone and satellite imagery.

Floating through the air and inhaling through an oxygen mask while making his flight adjustments, Patrick Quillen thought about the next few hours of his life. Tonight he was leading a platoon of sixteen SEALs, along with two Combat Control Team members from the Air Force and a couple of Air Force PJs, the military's best medics. If all went according to plan, it would be sufficient firepower to overwhelm the unsuspecting Houthi guards and break the targets out of Sana'a Central Prison.

Just a few years earlier, when the U.N.-sanctioned coalition government controlled Yemen, al Qaeda attackers had burst through these same prison walls with a car bomb and freed nineteen of their own prisoners. If al Qaeda could do it, certainly American Special Forces should have no problem. A surprise nighttime raid on a fortified prison in hostile territory. Piece of cake.

A few hundred meters before he hit the ground, Patrick loosened the rucksack strapped between his legs and let it hang below him, attached by a rope, out of the way of his landing. Seconds later he flared his parachute and hit the ground running. He quickly gathered his gear, stripped off his thermal outerwear and mask, and unhooked his chute. Like the other SEALs, he went about his work silently, burying the gear he would not be taking with him.

When the men had all gathered, Patrick spoke into his command net mic and let his CO know that they had hit their first checkpoint. "Roger that," his boss said, and the men were on their way. They were ready. Patrick could see it in their eyes. They were his men, every one of them, and they would have his back.

Operation Exodus was off to a good start. But the fun, Patrick knew, was just beginning.