9
Right behind me I heard the soft footsteps of the chasing gunmen...there were two of them, just above me in the rocks. Searching. I had only split seconds to work, because they were both on me, AKs raised...I went for my grenades.
Even in the pitch black of the night, I could feel the shadow of the mountain looming above me. I actually thought I could see it, a kind of dark force, darker than everything else, blacker than the rock walls upon which I was leaning.
I knew it was a hell of a long way to the top, and I would have to move sideways like a delta crab if I was going to make it. It was also going to take me all night, but somehow I had to get up there, all the way to the top.
I had two prime reasons for my strategy. First, it would be flat up there, so if it came down to another firefight, I would have a good chance. No guys firing down on me. Every SEAL likes his chances of winning a fight on flat ground.
The second issue was calling in help. No helicopter ever built could land safely on these steep Afghan cliffs. The only place within the mountain range where an MH-47 could put down was in the flat bowl of the fields below, where the villagers raised crops. Dope, that is.
And there was no way I was going to risk hanging out near a village. I was going up, to the upper flatlands, where a helo could get in and then get out. Also, my radio reception would be better up there. I could only hope the Americans were still scouring the mountains, looking for the missing Redwings.
Meanwhile, I thought I might be dying of thirst, and my parched throat was driving me onward to water and perhaps safety. So I took my first steps, guessing I was probably going to climb around five hundred feet straight up. But I’d travel a whole lot farther on the zigzag course I’d have to make up the mountain.
I began my climb, out there in the dark, by moving directly upward. I jammed my rifle into my belt so I had two hands to grip, but before I’d made the first twenty feet going slightly right, I slipped badly, which was a very scary experience. The gradient was almost sheer, straight down to the valley floor.
In my condition I probably would not have survived the fall, and I somehow saved myself from falling any more than about ten feet. Then I picked it up again, clawing my way up, facing the mountain and grabbing hold of anything I could with a grip like a mechanical digger. You’d have needed a chain saw to pry me off that cliff face. All I knew was, if I fell, I’d probably plummet several hundred feet to my death. Which was good for the concentration.
So I kept going, climbing mostly sideways, grabbing rocks, vines, or branches, anything for a grip. Every now and then I’d dislodge something or snap a branch that would not bear my weight. And I guess I must have made more noise than the Taliban army has ever made in mountain maneuvers.
I’d been going for a couple of hours when I sensed I heard something behind me. I say sensed because when you are operating in absolute darkness, with no sight at all, everything else is heightened, all of your senses, particularly sound and smell. Not to mention the sixth one, same one a goat or an antelope or a zebra has, the one that warns vulnerable grazing animals of the presence of a predator.
Now, I wasn’t that vulnerable. And I sure as hell wasn’t grazing. But right then I was in Predator Central. Those cutthroat tribal bastards were all over my case and, for all I knew, closing in on me.
I lay flat, stock-still on the mountain. And then I heard it again, the distinct snap of a twig or a branch. I estimated it was maybe two hundred yards behind me. Right then my hearing was at some kind of a peak in this ultraquiet high country. I could have picked up the soft fart of a billy goat a mile away.
Then I heard it once more. Not the billy goat, the twig. And I knew for absolute certain I was being followed. Fuck! There was still no moon, and I could still see nothing. But that would not be true of the Taliban. They’d been stealing equipment from the Russians, and then the Americans, for years. Everything they had was stolen, except for what bin Laden had purchased for them. And their supplies certainly included a few pairs of NVGs. The Russians were, after all, pioneers of that particular piece of battle gear, and we knew the mujahideen had stolen everything from them when the Soviet army finally pulled out.
The presence of an unseen Afghani tracker was very bad news for me, not least for the remnants of my morale. The thought that there was a group of killers out there, stalking me across this mountain, able to see me when I could not see them...well, that was a sonofabitch in any man’s army.
I decided to press on and hope they did not decide to open fire. When I reached the top, I’d take them out. Just as soon as I could see the little bastards. First sign of light, I’d stake my position underneath some bushes where no one could see me, and then I’d deal with them as soon as they got within range. Meantime, I was so thirsty I thought I might die before that hour approached.
I was trying everything. I was breaking the thinnest tree branches off and sucking at them for liquid. I sucked at the grass when I found some, hoping for a few drops of mountain dew. I even tried to wring out my socks to find just a taste of water. There is nothing quite so terrible as dying of thirst. Believe me. I’ve been there.
As the night wore on, I began to hear the occasional U.S. military aircraft above the mountains, usually flying high. And when I heard one in time, I was out there whirling my buzz-saw lights, transmitting the beacon as well as I could, still a walking distress signal. But no one heard me. It occurred to me that no one believed I was alive. And that was a very grim thought. It would be pretty hard to find me up here, even if the entire Bagram base was searching for me in these endless mountains. But if no one believed I was still breathing, well, that was probably the end for me. I experienced an inevitable feeling of utter desolation. Worse yet, I was so weakened, and in such pain, I realized, once and for all, I was never going to make it to the top of the mountain. Actually, I might have made it, but my left leg, blasted by that RPG, was never going to stand the climb. I would just have to keep going sideways, struggling across the steep face of the mountain, sometimes down, sometimes up, and hope to get my chance.
I was still losing blood, and I still could not speak. But I could hear, and I could hear my pursuers, sometimes calling to each other. I remember thinking this was very strange because they normally moved around in total silence. Remember those goatherds? I never heard that first one coming until he was about four feet from me. That’s just the way they are, treading softly, lean, light men with no encumbrances — not even water.
When those Afghans travel, they carry their guns and ammunition and nothing else. One guy carries the water for everyone; another hauls the extra ammunition. And this leaves the main force free to move very fast, very softly. They are born trackers, able to pick up a trail across the roughest ground, and they can walk right up on you.
Of course, that assumes they are only after one of their own. Trying to follow a great 230-pound hulk like myself, slipping and sliding, crashing and breaking branches, causing minor avalanches on the loose ground — I must have been an Afghan tracker’s dream. Even I realized my chance of actually losing them was close to zero.
Maybe those calls I heard among them were not really commands. Maybe they were outbursts of suppressed laughter at my truly horrible rock-climbing abilities. Wait until it gets light, I thought. This playing field would even out real quick. That’s if they didn’t shoot me first, in the dark.
I kept skirting around the mountain. Way below I could see the lights from a couple of lanterns, and I thought I could see the flickering flame of a fire. That must have been the valley floor, and it gave me my first guidance as to the terrain, but not much. In fact, it gave me the impression the ground where I was standing was flat, which it really was not. I stopped for a minute to see if there was anything else down in that valley, any further sign of my enemy, but I could still see just about nothing except for the lanterns and the fire, all of them about a mile down.
I gathered myself and took a step forward. And in that split second I realized I had stepped into the void. I just fell clean off that mountain, straight down, falling through the air, not over the ground. I hit the side of the mountain with a terrific bang, knocked the breath right out of me. Then I rolled, crashing through a copse of trees, trying to grab something to slow me down.
But I was moving too fast, and gathering speed. I fell helplessly down a steep bit, which leveled out for a few yards and allowed me to slow down. Finally I stopped on the edge of yet another precipice, which I sensed rather than saw. And I just lay there gasping for breath for a good twenty minutes, scared to death I’d find myself paralyzed.
But I wasn’t. I could stand. I still had my rifle, although my strobe light had gone. And somehow I had to get back up to my highest point. The lower I was positioned down this mountain, the less my chance of getting rescued. I must go upward, and so I set off again.
I climbed, slipped, and scrambled for two more hours, until I thought I was more or less back to the point where I’d fallen off the mountain. It was 0200 now, and I’d been going for a long time, maybe six or seven hours. The pain was becoming diabolical, but in a way I was relieved I still had feeling in that left leg.
The Taliban army was still following me. I heard them, louder as I climbed higher, as if they’d been waiting for me. They were certainly a bigger force now than they had been two hours ago. I could hear them all around, more and more people searching for me, dogs barking, maybe a half mile back.
By now I could hear the river, which I knew was the same one I’d fallen in the previous afternoon. The same river on whose banks my three buddies lay dead. Thirsty as I was, I could not bring myself to go in search of its ice-cold flowing waters gushing down the mountainside. That was the only water on this earth I could not drink, water from the river which flowed right by the bodies of Mikey, Danny, and Axe. I had to find a different one.
With no compass, only my watch, I had to revert to navigation by the stars, which mercifully were now out, the thick high banks of clouds having passed over. I found the Big Dipper and followed the long curve of its stars all the way to the right angle at the end, where the shape angles upward, pointing directly at the polestar. That’s the North Star. We learned it in BUD/S.
If I turned directly toward it and held out my left arm at a right angle, that way was west, the way I was headed. I think at this point I may have been suffering from hallucinations, that very odd sensation when you cannot really tell reality from a dream.
Like most SEALs, I’d experienced it before, at the back end of Hell Week. But right now I was becoming very light-headed. I was a hunted animal all alone in wild country, and I tried to pretend my buddies were still alive. I invented some kind of a formation with Danny climbing out on my right flank, Axe up to the left, and Mikey calling the shots in the rear.
I pretended they were there, I just couldn’t see them. I think I was reaching the end of my tether. But I kept reminding myself of Hell Week. I kept telling myself this was just Hell Week all over again; I’d sucked it up then, and I could suck it up now. Whatever these bastards threw at me, I could take it. I’d come through. I might have been losing my marbles, but I was still a SEAL.
I could not, however, deny the fact I was also becoming disheartened. For the moment my pursuers were quiet, and I suddenly came upon a huge tree with a couple of big logs resting directly underneath it. I crawled under one of them and rested for a while, just lying there, feeling damned sorry for myself.
In my head I played over and over again one of the verses of Toby Keith’s country and western classic “American Soldier.” I remember lying there quietly singing the words to myself, the part that said I might have to die...“I’ll bear that cross with honor.”
I sang those words all night. I can’t tell you how much they meant to me. I can tell you, it’s little things like that, the words of a song, which can give you the strength to go on. Nonetheless, the fact was I had no idea what to do.
It occurred to me I could just settle in right here and make it my last stand. But I quickly dismissed this as a strategy. In my mind I was still committed to Axe’s last request: “You stay alive, Marcus. And tell Cindy I love her.” Helluva lot of good it would do Cindy Axelson if I ended up shot to pieces on the slopes of this godforsaken mountain. And who then would ever know what my buddies had done? And how hard and bravely they had fought? No. It was all up to me. I had to get out and tell our story.
I was comfortable and very, very tired, but thirst drove me on. Screw this, I decided, and I dragged myself up again and kept walking, hobbling, that is, making the most of this apparent expanse of flatter ground. It was just beginning to get light, around 0600. I knew that six hours from now, the sun would be in the south, but it was such a high sun out here, almost directly overhead, and it made navigation that much more difficult. I remember wondering where the hell I would be next time I saw the friendly polestar.
Almost immediately I found myself on a trail which was going my way. I could tell by the tight feel of the ground it was pretty well used, which meant I would have to move with immense care. Trails frequently traveled invariably lead to people, and before long I saw a house up ahead, maybe even three or four. At this distance it was hard to tell.
My first thought was of a tap or a well. If I had to, I’d get into one of these primitive residences and get rid of the occupants somehow. Then I could clean up my wounds and drink. But as I grew closer I could see there were four houses, very close together. To get their water I’d probably have to kill twenty people, and that was too much for me. I elected to keep going, praying I’d stumble upon a river or a mountain stream before much longer.
Well, I didn’t. The sun was up, and it was growing hotter. I kept going for another four or five hours, and the hallucinations were getting worse. I kept wanting to ask Mikey what we should do. My mouth and throat had just about seized up. I could barely move my parched tongue, which was now firmly stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was afraid if I tried to move it, it would tear the skin off. I cannot describe the feeling. I had to get water.
Every bone in my body was crying out for rest, but I knew if I stopped, and perhaps slept, I would die. I had to keep going. It was strange, but the thirst which was killing me was also the driving force keeping me on this long, desperate march.
I recall thinking there was no water this high up, and I resolved to go back down to slightly lower slopes where hopefully a stream might come cascading out of the rocks, the way it does up here. Right then the sun was burning down on me, really hot, and way above me, the high peaks were still snowcapped. Something had to be melting, for Christ’s sake. And all that water had to be going somewhere. I just had to find it.
Down in these lower areas, I found myself in the most beautiful green forest, so beautiful I wondered whether it might be a mirage. There were soft ferns, deep green grasses, and tall shady evergreens, a scene of verdant, lush mountain growth. Jesus Christ, there had to be water down here somewhere.
I paused often, listening intently for the sound of a running stream. But there was only silence, that shattering, merciless silence of the high country where no roads carve into the landscape, where no machines disrupt and pollute the air. Where there are no automobiles or tractors; no television, radio, or even electricity. Nothing. Just nature, the way it’s been for thousands of years up here in this land of truly terrible beauty and ravenous hatred.
Don’t get me wrong. The gradients were still very steep, and I was working my way through the forest, through the gutters of the mountain. Much of the time I was just crawling, hands and knees, trying to ease the pain in my left leg. To be honest, I really thought I might be finished now. I was full of despair, wondering if I might black out, begging my God to help me.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me . . .
That’s the Twenty-third Psalm, of course. We think of it as the Psalm of the SEALs. It is repeated at all of our religious ser-vices, all funerals. Too many funerals. I know it by heart. And I clung to its message, that even in death I would not be abandoned.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
It was all I had, just a plaintive cry to a God Who was with me, but Whose ways were becoming unclear to me. I had been saved from more or less certain death, and I was still armed with my rifle. But I did not know what to do anymore, except keep trying.
I left the trail and once more went upward, heading for high ground again. I was listening, straining to hear the sound of the water I knew must be here somewhere. I was on a steep escarpment, hanging on to a tree with my right hand, leaning out away from the cliff face. Would I ever hear the tumbling sound of a mountain stream, or was I really destined to die of thirst up here where no American would ever find me?
I kept repeating the Twenty-third Psalm in my head, over and over, trying to stop myself from breaking down. I was scared, freezing cold, without shelter or proper clothes, and I just kept saying it . . .
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake . . .
That’s how far I was in the prayer when I heard the water for the first time. I could not believe it. There it was, unmistakable, way below me, a brook, maybe even a small waterfall. In this pure mountain air, amid this awesome silence, that was swiftly flowing water. I had to find a way down to it.
I guess I knew in that moment, I was not going to die of thirst, whatever else befell me. It was just one of those moments that make your life spin right out in front of you. I thought of home, and my mom and my dad, and my brothers and friends. Did any of them know about me? And what had happened? Maybe they thought I was dead. Maybe someone had told them I was dead. And in those fleeting seconds I was overwhelmed by the sadness, the heartbreaking, crushing sadness of what this would mean to my mom, the lady who always told me I was Mama’s angel.
What I did not know at the time but learned later was that everyone thought I was dead. Back home it was now some time in the small hours of Wednesday morning, June 29, and several hours previously a television station had announced that a four-man SEAL reconnaissance team that was on a mission in the northeast mountains of Afghanistan had all been killed in action. My name was among the four.
The station, like the rest of the world’s media, had also announced the loss of the MH-47 helicopter with everyone on board, eight SEALs and eight members of the 160th SOAR Night Stalkers. Which made twenty special forces dead, the worst special ops catastrophe ever. My mom collapsed.
By the middle part of that Tuesday evening, people had begun to arrive at the ranch, local people, our friends, people who wanted to be with my mom and dad, just in case there was anything they could do to help. They arrived in trucks, cars, SUVs, and on motorbikes, a steady stream of families who all said damn near the same thing: We just want to be with you.
Outside the door of the main house, the front yard was like a parking lot. By midnight there were seventy-five people in attendance, including Eric and Aaron Rooney, from the family that owns one of the big East Texas construction corporations; David and Michael Thornberry, local land, cattle, and oil people, with their father, Jonathon; Slim, Kevin, Kyle, and Wade Albright, my boyhood friends, a lot of them Aggies.
There was Joe Lord; Andy Magee; Cheeser; Big Roon; my brother Opie and our buddy Sean; Tray Baker; Larry Firmin; Richard Tanner; Benny Wiley; the strength coach at Texas Tech in Lubbock. Those big tough guys were all in grade school with me.
Another of our local construction moguls, Scott Whitehead, showed up. He never even knew us, but he wanted to be there. He turned out to be a tower of strength for my mom, still calls her every day. Master Sergeant Daniel, highly decorated U.S. Army, showed up in full uniform, knocked on the front door, and told my dad he wanted to help in any way he could. He still shows up nearly every day, just to make sure Mom’s okay.
And of course there was my twin brother, Morgan, making all speed to the ranch, refusing point-blank to accept the broadcaster’s “fact” that I was dead. My other brother Scottie got there first, but not being an identical twin brother to me, he could only know what he was told, not what the telepathic wavelengths told him. He was almost as devastated as Mom.
My dad hit the Internet to check if there was further news or any official announcement from the SEAL HQ in Hawaii, my home base. All he found was confirmation of the MH-47 crash and four other SEALs missing in action. However, one of the Hawaiian newspapers was reporting the death of all four of us. At which moment I guess he believed it was true.
Shortly after 2:00 a.m. in Texas, the SEALs began to arrive at the ranch from Coronado. Lieutenant John Jones (JJ) in company with Chief Chris Gothro flew in, with Bosun’s Mate Teg Gill, one of the strongest men I know. Lieutenant David Duf-field arrived from Coronado right afterward, with John Owens and Jeremy Franklin. Lieutenant Josh Wynn and Lieutenant Nathan Shoemaker came in from Virginia Beach. Gunner’s Mate First Class Justin Pitman made the journey from Florida. I should stress that none of this was planned or orchestrated. They just came, strangers mingling with friends, united, I suppose, in grief for a lost brother.
And there to greet them all with my mom and dad was the mighty figure of Billy Shelton. No one had ever seen him in tears before. It’s often that way with the toughest of men.
Chief Gothro immediately told my parents he did not give a damn what the media said. There was no confirmation that any of the original four-man SEAL team was dead, although it was highly likely they had not all survived. He knew about Mikey’s last call: My guys are dying out here. But there was no certainty about any of it. He told Mom to have faith, told her no SEAL was dead until there was a body.
And then Morgan arrived and told them all straight-out I was alive, and that was an end to it. He said he’d been in contact with me, had felt my presence. He thought I may have been injured, but I was not dead. “Goddamn it, I know he’s not dead,” he said. “If he was, I’d know.”
By now there were 150 people in the front yard, and the local sheriffs had somehow cordoned off the entire ranch. No one could enter the property without passing through these guardians. There were police cruisers parked along the wide dirt road which leads to the house. Some of the officers were inside the perimeter fences, praying, at short services conducted by two naval chaplains who had arrived from Coronado in the small hours. Just in case, I guess.
Some time before 0500 my mom answered the front door to see SEAL lieutenant Andy Haffele, with his wife, Kristina, standing there. “We wanted to help, any way we could,” said Andy. “We just got here from Hawaii.”
“Hawaii!” said Mom. “That’s halfway around the world.”
“Marcus once saved my life,” said Andy. “I had to be here. I know there’s still hope.”
I can’t explain what all this meant to Mom. She hovered somewhere between hope and total despair. But she’s always said she’ll never forget Andy and the long journey he and Kristina made to be with our family.
It began, I suppose, just as neighborly visits, interspersed with more professional arrivals from SPECWARCOM. But it would turn into a vigil. No one went home, they just stayed, day after day, night after night, all night, praying to God that I was still alive.
When I think about it, these many months later, I’m kind of overwhelmed: that much love, that much caring, that much kindness to my parents. And I think about it, all of it, every day, and I still have no idea how to express my gratitude, except to say I know the door of our home is open to each and every one of them, no matter the hour or the circumstance, for all the days of my life.
Meantime, back up the goddamned mountain, unaware of the mighty gathering still building at home, I was listening to the distant flow of water. Hanging on to the tree, leaning out, wondering how to get down there without killing myself in the process. That’s when the Taliban sniper shot me.
I felt the sting of the bullet ripping into the flesh high up at the back of my left thigh. Christ, that hurt. Really hurt. And the impact of the AK bullet spun me around, knocked me into a complete backflip clean off the fucking mountain. When I hit, I hit hard, but facedown, which I guess didn’t do my busted nose a lot of good and opened up the gash on my forehead.
Then I started rolling, sliding very fast down the steep gradient, unable to get a grip, which may have been just as well. Because these Taliban bastards really opened up on me. There were bullets flying everywhere, pinging and zinging into the ground all around me, ricocheting off the rocks, slamming into the tree trunks. Jesus Christ, this was Murphy’s Ridge all over again.
But it’s a lot harder to hit a moving target than you might think, especially one traveling as quick as I was, out of control, racing between rocks and trees. And they kept missing. Finally I came to a stop in a flatter area, and of course my pursuers had not made the downward journey nearly as fast as I had. I had had a decent start on them, and to my amazement I had come to little harm. I guess I missed all the obstacles, and the earth beneath me was softish and loose packed. Also, I still had my rifle, which to my mind was a bigger miracle than Our Lady of Lourdes.
I began to crawl, going for cover behind a tree and trying to assess the enemy positions. I could see one guy, the nearest of them, just standing and pointing at me, yelling at two others, who were out to the right. Before I could make any kind of a decision, they both opened fire on me again. I did not have much of a shot at them, because they were still maybe a hundred yards up the cliff face and the trees were shielding them.
Trouble was, I could not stand properly, and aiming the rifle was a problem, so I decided to make a break for it, on my hands and knees, and wait for a better spot to take them out. I crawled, not fast but steady, over terrible terrain, full of little hills and dipping gullies. It could hardly have been better country for a fugitive, which I now was, except I could not walk down the gullies, and I sure as hell couldn’t get down those steep slopes on all fours, not having been born a freakin’ snow leopard.
So every time I reached one of those small precipices, I just threw myself straight off and hoped for a reasonable landing. I did a lot of rolling, and it was a long, bumpy, and painful ride. But it beat the hell out of getting shot up the ass again.
I kept it up for about forty-five minutes, crawling, rolling, and falling, staying out in front of my pursuers, gaining ground on the downward falls, losing it again as they ran up on me. And nowhere on that snaking route down the hills did I find a decent spot to get rid of the gunmen who were hunting me down. The bullets kept flying, and I kept moving. But finally I hit some flatter ground and all around me were big rocks. I decided this would be Marcus’s last stand. Or theirs. One way or another. Although I did not know exactly how many of them there were.
I remember thinking, Now, how the hell would Morgan get out of this? What would he do? And it gave me strength, the massive strength of my seven-minutes-older brother. I decided that in this position, he’d wait till he saw the whites of their eyes. No mistakes. So I crawled behind this big rock, checked my magazine, then flipped off the safety catch of my Mark 12. And waited.
I heard them coming but not until they were very, very close. They were not together, which was unnerving, because I could not account for them all. But I could see the spotter now, the guy who was literally tracking me down, not trying to shoot me; he didn’t even carry a rifle. His job was to locate me and then call the others to bring fire down on me. Cheeky little prick.
But it’s the Afghan way. This Sharmak was an excellent delegator. One guy carries the water, another the extra ammunition, and the marksmen don’t have to spend their time searching the terrain. They have a specialist to do this.
This particular specialist was not having much trouble tracking me, probably because I was leaving tracks like a wounded grizzly, scuffing up the ground and bleeding like a stuck pig from both my forehead and my thigh all over the shale.
I moved carefully on my knees around the rock, now with my rifle raised, and there was the Taliban spotter standing right in front of me, not ten feet away — but he had not spotted me.
In that instant I fired, dropped him dead in his tracks. And the force of the bullet knocked him backward, with blood pumping out of his chest. I think I got him straight through the heart, and I heard him hit the deck. But simultaneously right behind me I heard the soft footsteps of the chasing gunmen. I turned around and there were two of them, just above me in the rocks. Searching. I had only split seconds to work, because they were both on me, AKs raised. Fuck! I could get one, but not both.
I went for one of my grenades, ripped out the pin, and threw it straight at them. I think they got a couple of shots away but not in time to get me before I plunged back behind the rock. This was up close and personal, not five feet between us. I was just imploring the Lord to let my grenade explode, and it did, blasting the two Afghans to smithereens, splitting rocks, sending up a sandstorm of earth and sand. Me? I just kept my head well down and hoped to Christ there were no more of them.
It was around this time I began to black out a little, not from the blast of the grenade, just a general blacking-out situation. Everything was catching up with me, and as I lay there waiting for the debris to stop falling out of the sky, I started to feel pretty rotten, dizzy, unsure of myself, shaky. I think I hung around down there behind the rock for a few minutes before I ventured out, still crawling, trying to see if the other Taliban guys were following. But there was nothing.
Obviously, I had to get away from here, because that explosion from the grenade must have attracted some attention somewhere. I sat there for a few more minutes, marveling at the silence, and pondered the world. And the conclusion I reached was I needed to learn to fight all over again, not like a Navy SEAL, but like a secretive Afghan mountain man. At least, if I planned to stay alive.
The last hour had taught me a few major lessons, the main one being I must gain the ability to fight alone, in direct contrast to everything I had ever been taught. SEALs, as you now know, fight in teams, only in teams, each man relying entirely on the others to do exactly the right thing. That’s how we do it, fighting as one in a team of four or maybe ten or even twenty, but always as one unit, one mind, one strategy. We are, instinctively, always backing up, always covering, always moving to plug the gap or pave the way. That’s what makes us great.
But up here, being hunted down, all alone — this was entirely another game. And first I had to learn to move like an Afghan mountain man, stealthily, staying out of sight, making no sound, causing no disturbance. Of course, we had learned all that back in California, but not on the heightened scale which was required up here, against a native enemy even more stealthy, quiet, and unseen than we are.
Crawling around on all fours was not going to help. I had to concentrate, work myself into the correct military position before I pounced on my prey. I had to conserve ammunition, make certain I was going to kill before I carried out the deed, and above all try to stay out of sight and not betray myself by lumbering around like the wounded grizzly I was.
I resolved that when I next had to strike out against my enemy, it would be with our customary deadly force, always ensuring I held the element of surprise. Those are the tactics that invariably win conflicts for the truly ruthless underdog like the mujahideen, al Qaeda, and, from now on, me.
I dragged myself back up onto my hands and knees. I listened carefully, like an eager hound dog, turning my head sideways to the wind. Nothing. Not a sound. Maybe they’d given up or perhaps they considered I was probably dead. Either way I was out of there.
With my rifle jammed in my belt I began moving west, toward the water. It was still way below me, and since I was trying to avoid falling down this freakin’ mountain again, I would zigzag my way down the steep slopes until I found it.
I’ve long lost count of the distance, but it felt like three or four miles, crawling along, resting, praying, hoping, trying my best, just like Hell Week. I think I did black out two or three times. But finally I heard the waterfall. I heard it hissing in the afternoon sun, tumbling off a high rock and into a deep pool before running down to the lower levels of the stream.
Somehow I arrived right on the top of that waterfall, maybe twenty feet above the flow. It really was beautiful, the sun glinting on the surface and all around it the trees on the mountain, high above the valley, on the edge of which was an Afghan village, way, way below me, maybe a mile.
For the first time for as long as I could remember, no one was trying to hunt me down. I could hear nothing, I could see no one, everything seemed tranquil. I’d plainly taken out the scouting party, because if there’d been anyone sneaking along behind me, I’d have heard it, believe me. I might not yet move like a tribesman, but I had developed the hearing of one.
I’d been without water for so long, I figured another half a minute would not make much difference, and so I pulled out my rifle scope to take a look down at the village from this excellent vantage point. I forced myself up, hanging on to a rock with my left hand, right above the water.
The view from there was outstanding, and I could see the village, its upper houses clinging to the mountain, built right into the rock face by guys who were obviously craftsmen. It was like something out of a child’s picture book, like the home of the wicked witch or something, gingerbread houses on a big rock-candy mountain.
I put the scope away, and, not daring to look at the state of my left leg, I took a step forward, trying to find a spot where I could begin to slide down on my backside to the waiting ice-cold pool below me. That’s when that left leg finally gave way. Perhaps it was the newly shot part, or maybe the blown-up parts, or just the tendons which could take no more strain. But that leg buckled and flung me forward, really badly.
I twisted and fell headlong downward, sliding over loose, smooth ground, shale and sand, gaining speed rapidly, tumbling over, feet in the air, sometimes digging the toes of my boots in, fighting for a foothold, any hold would be fine. I rocketed straight past that lower pool and kept right on going. I can’t even imagine the speed I was going, but I could see it was a hell of a long way to the bottom, and I could not stop.
Up ahead of me was a sapling, and I lunged at it as I shot headlong past, trying to get a hold of anything to slow me down. My fingers closed on its thin, whippy trunk and I tried to pull myself up, but I was just going too fast, and it flipped me right over and landed me on my back. For a fleeting moment, I thought I was dead.
Didn’t make much difference whether I was dead or alive, my battered body just kept going for almost a thousand feet, then the mountain kind of swerved and I went with it, tumbling and sliding for another five hundred feet to what was more or less the bottom of that escarpment. I landed in a heap, feeling like I’d broken every bone in my body. I was out of breath, blood was trickling down my face from the cut on my forehead, and I generally felt just about as sorry for myself as it’s possible to be.
You’re probably not going to believe this, but my rifle was again right beside me, and once more it was the thirst that saved me. Instead of just lying there, a bloodstained heap in the hot afternoon sun, I thought of that water, now right above me. At least it had been when I’d flashed past it a few moments ago.
I knew I had to climb back up there or die. So I grabbed my rifle and began the long crawl to the drink that should restore my life. I scrambled and slipped over the loose ground, and I am certain by now you have comprehended what a truly horrible mountaineer I am. I can only plead the gradient. It was unbelievably steep, not quite sheer but almost. A great rock climber would probably have taken full gear in order to scale it.
Personally I’m not sure which I was worse at, going up or falling down. But it was two hundred feet to that water. It took me two more hours. I blacked out twice, and when I reached it, I plunged my head in, just to free up my tongue and throat. Then I washed my burning face, cleaned the gash just below my hairline, and tried to get the blood to wash off the back of my leg. I couldn’t tell whether the sniper’s bullet was still lodged in there or not.
All I knew was I needed to drink a lot of water and then try to attract attention and get to a hospital. Otherwise I did not think I would survive. I decided to move up a few yards to where the water was lapping off a rock and splashing into a small pool. I lowered my head and drank. It was the sweetest water I had ever tasted.
And I was just getting into this real luxury when I noticed there were three guys standing right above me, two of them with AKs. For a moment I thought I was hallucinating. I stopped drinking. And I remember I was talking to myself, just mumbling really, flicking between reality and dream.
Then I realized one of them was yelling at me, shouting something I was supposed to understand, but in my befuddled state I just couldn’t get it. I was like a badly wounded animal, ready to fight to the end. I understood nothing, not the hand of friendship, not the possibility of human decency. The only sensation I could react to was threat. And everything was a threat. Cornered. Scared. Suddenly afraid of dying. Ready to lash out at anything. That was me.
The only thought I had was I’ll kill these guys...just give me my chance. I rolled away from the pool and held my rifle in my get-ready position. Then I began to crawl away over the rocks, braced all the time for a volley of AK bullets to rip into me and finally finish me off.
But I “reasoned” I had no choice. I would have to risk getting killed by these guys before I could hit back. Dimly I recall that first character was still yelling his head off, literally screaming at me. Whatever the hell he was saying seemed irrelevant. But he sounded like the outraged father of one of the many Afghani tribesmen who’d been removed from the battlefield by the men seconded to SEAL Team 10. Probably by me.
As I made my way, slowly, painfully, almost blindly to the bigger rocks up ahead, it did cross my mind that if these guys really wanted to shoot me they could have done it by now. In fact, they could have done it any time they wanted. But the Taliban had been hunting me down for too long. All I wanted was cover and a fair position from which to strike back.
I flicked off the safety catch on my rifle and kept crawling, straight into a dead end surrounded by huge boulders on all sides. This was it. Marcus’s last stand. And, slowly, I half rolled, half turned around to face my enemy once again. The problem was, right here my enemy had kind of fanned out. The three guys somehow had gotten above me and yet surrounded me, one to the left, one to the right, and one dead ahead. Christ, I thought. I’ve only one hand grenade left. This is trouble. Big trouble.
Then I noticed there was even bigger trouble out in the clearing. There were three more guys moving up on me, all armed with AKs slung over their backs. And they too fanned out and somehow climbed higher, but they positioned themselves behind me. No one fired. I raised my rifle and drew down on the one who was doing the screaming. I tried to draw a bead on him, but he just moved swiftly behind a huge tree, which meant I was aiming at nothing.
I swung around and tried to locate the others, but the blood from my forehead was still trickling down my face, obscuring my vision. My leg was turning the shale beneath me to a dark red. I no longer knew what the hell was happening except that I was in some kind of a fight, which I was very obviously about to lose. The second three guys were moving down the rocks in rear of me, quickly, easily, right on top of me.
The guy behind the tree was now back out in the open and still yelling at me, standing there with his rifle lowered, I guessed demanding my surrender. But I couldn’t even do that. I just knew that I desperately needed help or I was going to bleed to death. Then I did what I never thought I would do in the whole of my career. I lowered my rifle. Defeated. My whole world was spinning out of control in more ways than one. I was fighting to avoid blacking out again.
I just lay there in the dirt, blood seeping out, still clutching my rifle, still, in a sense, defiant, but unable to fight. I had no more strength, I was on the edge of consciousness, and I was struggling to understand what the screaming tribesman was trying to communicate.
“American! Okay! Okay!”
Finally I got it. These guys meant me no harm. They’d just stumbled on to me. They weren’t chasing me and had no intention of killing me. It was a situation I was relatively unused to this past couple of days. But the vision of yesterday’s goatherds was still stark in my mind.
“Taliban?” I asked. “You Taliban?”
“No Taliban!” shouted the man who I assumed was the leader. And he ran the edge of his hand across his throat, saying once more, “No Taliban!”
From where I was lying, this looked like a signal that meant “Death to the Taliban.” Certainly he was not indicating that he was one of them or even liked them. I tried to remember whether the goatherds had said, “No Taliban.” And I was nearly certain they had not. This was plainly different.
But I was still confused and dizzy, uncertain, and I kept on asking, “Taliban? Taliban?”
“No! No! No Taliban!”
I guess if I’d been at my peak, I’d have accepted this several minutes ago, before Marcus’s Last Stand and all that. But I was losing it now. I saw the leader walk up to me. He smiled and said his name was Sarawa. He was the village doctor, he somehow communicated in rough English. He was thirtyish, bearded, tall for an Afghan, with an intellectual’s high forehead. I recall thinking he didn’t look much like a doctor to me, not wandering around on the edge of this mountain like a native tracker.
But there was something about him. He didn’t look like a member of al Qaeda either. By now I’d seen a whole lot of Taliban warriors, and he looked nothing like any of them. There was no arrogance, no hatred in his eyes. If he hadn’t been dressed like a leading man from Murder up the Khyber Pass, he could have been an American college professor on his way to a peace rally.
He lifted up his loose white shirt to show me he had no concealed gun or knife. Then he spread his arms wide in front of him, I guess the international sign for “I am here in friendship.”
I had no choice but to trust him. “I need help,” I said, uttering a phrase which must have shed an especially glaring light on the obvious. “Hospital — water.”
“Hah?” said Sarawa.
“Water,” I repeated. “I must have water.”
“Hah?” said Sarawa.
“Water,” I yelled, pointing back toward the pool.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Hydrate!”
I could not help laughing, weakly. Hydrate! Who the hell was this crazy-assed tribesman who knew only long words?
He called over a kid who had a bottle. I think he went and filled it with fresh water from the stream. He brought it back to me and I kept chugging away, glugging down the water, two good-sized bottles of it.
“Hydrate,” said Sarawa.
“You got that right, pal,” I confirmed.
At which point we began to converse in that no-man’s-land of language, the one where no one knows hardly a word of the other’s native tongue.
“I’ve been shot,” I told him and showed him my wound, which had never really stopped bleeding.
He examined it and nodded sternly, as if he understood the clear truth that I badly needed medical attention. Heaven knows how severely my left leg would be infected. All the dirt, mud, and shale I’d inflicted on it couldn’t have done it much good.
I told him I was a doctor too, thinking it might help somehow. I knew there would likely be savage retribution for a non-Taliban village sheltering an American fugitive, and I was praying they would not just leave me here.
I wished to hell I still had some of my medical gear with me, but that was lost a lifetime ago on the mountain with Mikey, Axe, and Danny. Anyway, Sarawa seemed to believe I was a doctor, although he seemed equally certain he knew where I’d come from. With a succession of signals and a very few words, he conveyed to me he knew all about the firefight on the mountain. And he kept pointing directly at me, as if to confirm he absolutely knew I had been one of the combatants.
The tribal bush telegraph up here must be fantastic. They have no means of fast communications, no phones, cars, nothing. Just one another, goatherds wandering the mountainside, passing on the necessary information. And here was this Sarawa, who had presumably been miles away from the action, informing me about the battle which I had helped fight the previous day.
He patted me reassuringly on the shoulder and then retreated into a kind of conference with his fellow villagers while I talked to the kid.
He had only one question, and he had a lot of trouble asking it, trying to make an American understand. In the end I got his drift: Were you really the lunatic who fell down the mountain? Very far. Very fast. Very funny. All my village saw you do it. Very big joke. Ha! Ha! Ha!
Jesus Christ! I mean, Muhammad! Or Allah! Whoever’s in charge around here. This kid really was from a gingerbread village.
Sarawa returned. They gave me some more water. And again he checked over my wound. Didn’t look one bit happy. But there were more important things to discuss than the state of my backside.
I did not, of course, realize this. But the decision Sarawa and his friends were making carried huge responsibilities and, possibly, momentous consequences: They had to decide whether to take me in. Whether to help me, shelter me, and feed me. Most important, whether to defend me.
These people were Pashtuns. And the majority of the warriors who fought under the banner of the former rulers of Afghanistan, plus a vast number of bin Laden’s al Qaeda fighters, were members of this strict and ancient tribe, almost thirteen million of whom live right here in Afghanistan.
That steel core of the Taliban sect, that iron resolve and deadly hatred of the infidel, is unwaveringly Pashtun. The backbone of that vicious little tribal army is Pashtun. The Taliban moves around these mountains only by the unspoken approval and tacit permission of the Pashtuns, who grant them food and shelter. The two communities, the warriors and the general mountain populace, are irrevocably bound together. The mujahideen fighting the Russians were principally Pashtun.
Never mind “No Taliban.” I knew the background. These guys might be peace-loving villagers on the surface, but the tribal blood ties were wrought in iron. Faced with an angry Taliban army demanding the head of an armed American serviceman, you would essentially not give a secondhand billy goat for the American’s chances.
And yet there was something I did not know. We’re talking lokhay warkawal — an unbending section of historic Pashtun-walai tribal law as laid out in the hospitality section. The literal translation of lokhay warkawal is “giving of a pot.”
I did mention this briefly when I outlined the Pashtun tribal background much earlier. But this is the part where it really counts. This is where the ole lokhay warkawal gets shoved into context. Right here, while I’m lying on the ground bleeding to death, and the tribesmen are discussing my fate.
To an American, especially one in such terrible shape as I was, the concept of helping out a wounded, possibly dying man is pretty routine. You do what you can. For these guys, the concept carried many onerous responsibilities. Lokhay means not only providing care and shelter, it means an unbreakable commitment to defend that wounded man to the death. And not just the death of the principal tribesman or family who made the original commitment for the giving of a pot. It means the whole damned village.
Lokhay means the population of that village will fight to the last man, honor-bound to protect the individual they have invited in to share their hospitality. And this is not something to have a chitchat about when things get rough. It’s not a point of renegotiation. This is strictly nonnegotiable.
So while I was lying there thinking these cruel heartless bastards were just going to leave me out here and let me die, they were in fact discussing a much bigger, life-or-death issue. And the lives they were concerned with had nothing to do with mine. This was Lokhay, boy, spelled with a big L. No bullshit.
For all I knew, they were deciding whether to put a bullet through my head and save everyone a lot of trouble. But by now I was drifting off, half asleep, half alert, and the distinction was minimal. Sarawa was still talking. Of course it occurred to me that these men might be just like the goatherds, loyal spies for the Taliban. They could easily take me in and then send their fastest messengers to inform the local commanders they had me, and I could be picked up and executed anytime they wanted.
I wished fervently this was not the case. And though I thought I understood Sarawa was a nice guy, I couldn’t know the truth about him; no one could, not under those circumstances. Anyway, there was nothing much I could do about it, except maybe shoot them all, and a fat chance I would have had of getting away. I could hardly move.
So I just waited for the verdict. I kept thinking, What would Morgan do? Is there any way out of this? What’s the correct military decision? Do I have any options? Not so you’d notice. My best chance of living was to try and befriend Sarawa, try somehow to ingratiate myself with his friends.
Disjointed thoughts were blundering through my mind. What about all the death there had been in these mountains? What if these guys had lost sons, brothers, fathers, or cousins in the battle against the SEALs? How would they feel about me, an armed, uniformed member of the U.S. military, staging various gun battles, blowing Afghanis up on their very own tribal lands?
I obviously didn’t have any answers, nor could I know what they were thinking. But it couldn’t be good. I knew that.
Sarawa came back. He sharply ordered two men to raise me up, one of them under each of my arms to give me support, and lift me off the ground. He ordered another to lift my legs.
As they approached me, I took out my last grenade and carefully pulled the pin, which placed that little bastard right in firing mode. I held it in one hand, clasped across my chest. The tribesmen did not seem to notice. All I knew was, if they tried to execute me or tie me up or invite their murderous Taliban colleagues in, I would drop that thing right on the floor and take the whole fucking lot of them with me.
They lifted me up. And slowly we began to head down to the village. I did not understand, not then, but this was the biggest break I’d had since the Battle for Murphy’s Ridge first started. These friendly Pashtun tribesmen had decided to grant me lokhay. They were committed to defend me against the Taliban until there was no one left alive.