10
Then I found a piece of flinty rock on the floor of the cave, and, lying painfully on my left side, I spent two hours carving the words of the Count of Monte Cristo onto the wall of my prison: God will give me justice.
Sarawa and his friends did not attempt to take away my rifle. Yet. I carried it with me in one hand while they slowly lifted me down the steep track to the village of Sabray, a distance of around two hundred yards and home to perhaps three hundred households. In my other hand I clutched my last grenade, no pin, ready to take us all to eternity. It was a little after 1600, and the sun was still high.
We passed a couple of local groups, and both of them reacted with obvious astonishment at the sight of an armed, wounded American holding his rifle but being given help. They stopped and they stared, and both times I locked eyes with one of them. Each time he stared back, that hard glare of pure hatred with which I was so familiar. It was always the same, a gaze of undisguised loathing for the infidel.
They were, of course, confused. Which was not altogether surprising. Hell, I was confused. Why was Sarawa helping me? The worrying part was Sarawa seemed to be swimming against the tide. This was a village full of Islamic fanatics who wanted only to see dead Americans. Up here in these lawless mountains, the plan to smash New York’s Twin Towers had been born.
At least, those were my thoughts. But I underestimated the essential human decency of the senior members of this Pashtun tribe. Sarawa and many others were good guys who wished me no harm, and neither would they permit anyone else to do me harm. Nor would they kowtow to the bloodlust of some of their fellow mountain men. They wanted only to help me. I would grow to understand that.
The hostile, wary looks of the goatherds on the trail were typical, but they did not reflect the views of the majority. We continued on down to the top house in Sabray. I say top house because the houses were set one above the other right into the almost sheer face of the mountain. I mean, you could step off the trail and walk straight onto the flat roof of a house.
You had to descend farther to reach the front door. Once inside, you were more or less underground in a kind of man-made cave of mud and rocks with a plain dirt floor, obviously built by craftsmen. There were rock stairs going down to another level, where there was another room. This, however, was an area best avoided, since the villagers were likely to keep goats in there. And where there are goats, there is goat dung. All over the place. The smell is fiendish, and it pervades the entire dwelling.
We arrived outside this house, and I tried to let them know I was still dying of thirst. I remember Sarawa handed me a garden hose with a great flourish, as if it had been a crystal goblet, and turned on a tap somewhere. I replaced the pin in my hand grenade, a process deeply frowned upon by the U.S. military, and stuck it safely in the battle harness I still wore.
Now I had two free hands again, and the water was very cold and tasted fabulous. Then they produced a cot from the house and set it up for me, four of them raising me up and lowering me carefully onto it under the supervision of Sarawa.
Above me I could see U.S. warplanes screaming through the high mountain sky. Everyone except me was pointing up at them. I just stared kind of wistfully, wondering when the hell they would come for me.
By now the entire population of Sabray was surrounding my cot, watching as Sarawa went to work. He carefully cleaned the wounds to my leg, confirming what I had suspected, that there was no bullet lodged in my left thigh. Indeed, he located the bullet’s exit hole. Christ! I’d been bleeding from both places. No wonder I didn’t have much blood left.
Then he took out a small surgical instrument and began pulling the metal shrapnel out of my leg. He spent a long time getting rid of every shard from that RPG he could find. That, by the way, hurt like hell. But he kept going. And then he cleaned it all again, thoroughly, applied antiseptic cream, and bound me up.
I just lay there, totally exhausted. Pretty soon, I guess around six o’clock, they came back and moved me inside, four of them carrying the cot. They gave me clean clothes, which was the best thing since my first drink of water. They were soft Afghan garments, a loose shirt and those baggy pants, unbelievably comfortable. I felt damn near human. Actually, they gave me two sets of clothes, identical, white for daytime, black for night.
The only hitch came as I changed from my battered U.S. battle dress, really only my cammy top, into the tribal garments. My shoulder still ached like the devil, and they had to give me a hand. And when they saw the somewhat extravagant tattoo I have on my back — a half of a SEAL Trident (Morgan has the other half) — they damn near fainted.
They thought it was some kind of warlike tribal emblem, which I suppose it was. And then they thought I might be the devil incarnate, and I had to keep telling them I was a doctor, anything to stop them believing I was a special warrior from the U.S. Armed Forces, a man who sported a symbol of a powerful voodoo on his back, which was surely evil and would definitely, one day, wipe them all out. Happily, I managed to win that argument, but they were real pleased that I now had my shirt on, and they pulled down my sleeve to cover my upper arm, where a part of the design was visible.
By the time they began to leave, they were smiling, and I had become, for the rest of my stay in the village and I suppose far beyond, Dr. Marcus.
My final request was to be taken out to the communal head for a pee, and they took me but made me adopt the traditional Afghan body position for this operation. I remember falling over backward, which made them all laugh helplessly.
However, they carried me back safely to my cot, still giggling, and I suddenly realized with horror they had removed my rifle. I demanded to know where it was, and the tribesmen tried hard to explain they needed to take it away, lokhay or no lokhay, because if the Taliban ever did get into this room, they would not believe I was a wounded doctor, not with a sniper rifle like that. Lokhay or no lokhay.
At that stage I did not understand them, and anyhow there was little I could do about it. So I just cast it from my mind. And I lay there in the fading light when they finally left me entirely alone.
I had had water and I’d eaten some of that flat bread they bake in the East. They had offered me a dish full of warm goat’s milk into which I was supposed to dip it. But the combination was without doubt the worst-tasting sensation I’d ever had. I damn near threw up, and I asked them to take the milk away, telling them it was against my religion! I thus tackled that hard, awful bread bone dry. But I was grateful, and I tried to make that clear. Hell, I could have been dead up the mountain. But for them, I would have been.
And now once again I was alone. I stared around me, looking for the first time at my surroundings. A thick, loose-woven Afghan carpet covered the floor, and colored cushions were placed against the wall. There were carved hanging ornaments but no pictures. There was glass in the windows, and below this house I could see others had thatched roofs. They were definitely skilled builders up here, but I was uncertain where the raw materials came from, the rocks, glass, and straw.
Inside my room there was one very large, locked wooden box. In there, I learned, were the most valued possessions of every member of the household. And there was not much. Trust me on that. But what they had they seemed prepared to share with me.
I’d been given a couple of blankets, and as the night drew in, I discovered why. The temperature plummeted from the searing heat of the day straight into the thirties.
I noticed there was also an old iron woodstove in one corner of the room, where I later learned they baked bread every day. The system up here is for the two main houses, like this one, to do the baking for everyone, and the bread is then distributed. I lay there wondering where all the smoke went when they lit the stove, since there was no chimney. But that was a discovery yet to come. Answer: nowhere. That wood smoke stayed right in my bedroom.
I drifted into a half sleep, my wounds still throbbing but thankfully not becoming infected. Hooyah, Sarawa! Right?
The door to my new residence was quite thick but ill fitting. It would keep out the wind and the rain, but the guys had to give it a mighty shove to open it. I’d already noticed that, and I knew no one could enter the room without waking me, so I had no need to sleep on high alert.
What happened next, however, took me by surprise. The door gave way to a kick that shattered the silence. I opened my eyes in time to see eight armed Taliban fighters come barging into the room. The first one came straight over to my cot and slapped me across the face with all his force. That really pissed me off, and he was a very lucky boy that I could not move and was effectively a prisoner. If he’d even thought about putting his hands on me when I was fit, I’d have ripped his fucking head off. Little prick.
I knew they were Taliban because of their appearance, very clean cut, manicured beards, clean teeth, hands, and clothes. They were well fed and could speak broken English. None of them was very big, maybe around five feet eight on average, and they all wore those old Soviet leather belts, the ones with the red star in the middle of the buckle. They wore Afghan clothes, but each one had a different-colored vest. Every man carried a knife and a Russian pistol jammed into his belt. Everything made in Moscow. Everything stolen.
There was nothing I could get my hands on to defend myself. I had no rifle, no grenade, just my own personal badge of courage, the Lone Star of Texas on my arm and chest. I needed some of that courage because these bastards laid into me, kicking my left leg and punching my face and upper body, beating me to hell.
I didn’t give that much of a shit. I can suck this kind of crap up, like I’ve been trained. Anyway, they didn’t have a decent punch among them. Essentially they were all very lucky boys, because in normal circumstances, I could have thrown any one of them straight through the freakin’ window. My main worry was they might decide to shoot me or tie me up and march me off somewhere, maybe over the border to Pakistan, to film me and then cut off my head on camera.
If I’d thought for one moment that was their intention, it would have been bad news for all of us. I was hurt, but not so bad as I was making out, and I was formulating a fallback plan. Up above me in the rafters, I could see a four-foot-long iron bar, just resting there. Could I get it if I stood up? Yes.
In a life-or-death situation, I’d grab that bar, carefully select the most violent of them, and smash it right through him. He’d never get up again. Then I’d lay into the front two, taking them entirely by surprise. At the same time, using the bar, I’d ram the whole group into a corner, crushing them together, as per standard SEAL combat strategy, making it impossible for anyone to draw down on me, pull a knife, or get out.
I’d probably have to obliterate the skulls of another couple of them before using one of those Russian pistols to finish anyone still alive. Could I have done it? I think so. My buddies back in SEAL Team 10 would have been mighty disappointed in me if I’d failed.
My absolute fallback position would have been to kill them all, grab their weapons and ammunition, then barricade myself in the house until the Americans came to get me.
The problem was, where would all this get me in the short term? What was the point of being a bad-ass SEAL, the way some guys would be? The house was surrounded by more Taliban, all of them with AKs. I saw those guards come in and then go out again. Some of the little creeps were right outside the window. Anyway, the entire sprawl of the village of Sabray was surrounded by the Taliban. Sarawa had told me so, and it beat me why I’d been left alone...unless they knew...unless they were indoctrinated...unless I really was in the hands of off-duty Taliban warriors.
But the guys at my bedside were not off duty. They were right on my case, demanding to know why I was there, what the American planes were doing, whether the United States was planning an attack on them, who was coming to rescue me (good question, right?). I knew that right now discretion was, by a long way, the better part of valor, because my objective was simply to try and stay alive, not to get into a brawl with knife-wielding tribesmen or, worse, get myself shot.
I kept telling them I was just a doctor, out here to help with our wounded. I also told them a huge lie, that I had diabetes. I was not a member of the special forces, and I needed water, which they ignored. The main trouble was, strangely, my beard, because they knew the U.S. Army did not permit beards. Only the U.S. Special Forces allows that.
I managed to persuade them I needed to go outside, and they gave me this one single opportunity, one last desperate try to slip away. But I could not move fast enough, and they just dragged me back inside, threw me on the ground, and beat me even more seriously than they had before. Broke the bones in my wrist. That hurt, and I’ve since needed two operations to correct it.
By now they had lit their lanterns, maybe three of them, and the room was quite light. And their inquisition went on for maybe six hours. Yelling and beating, yelling and kicking. They told me my buddies were all dead, told me they’d already cut everyone’s head off and that I was next. They said they had shot down an American helicopter, killed everyone. They were just full of bravado, shouting, boasting they would in the end kill every American in their country and then some...We will kill you all! Death to the Satan! Death to the infidel!
They pointed out with huge glee that I was their main infidel and I had mere moments to live. I took a sidelong glance at that iron bar, perhaps my last hope. But I told them nothing, stuck to my guns, kept on telling them I was only a doctor.
At one stage, one of the village kids came in, about seventeen years old. I was pretty certain he had been in one of the groups I’d passed on the way down here. And he had what I now call the Look. That sneering hatred of me and my country.
The Taliban guys let him come in and watch them knocking me around. He really liked it, and I could tell they regarded him as “one of us.” He was allowed to sit on the bed while they kicked at the bandage on my left thigh. He just loved it. Kept running the edge of his hand over his throat and laughing, “Taliban, heh?...Taliban!” I’ll never forget his face, his grin, his triumphant stare. And I kept looking right up at that iron bar. The kid, too, was a very lucky boy.
Then my interrogators found my rifle laser sight and my camera and wanted to take pictures of one another. I showed them how to use the laser to achieve their pictures, but I showed them the wrong way around and told them to stare into the beam with their naked eye. I guess the last favor I did them was to blind the whole fucking lot of ’em! Because that beam would have burned their retinas right out. Sorry, guys. That’s show business.
Right after that, must have been around midnight, a new figure entered the room, accompanied by two attendants. I knew this was the village elder, a small man with a beard, a man who commanded colossal respect. The Taliban immediately stood up and stepped aside as the old man walked to the spot where I was lying. He kneeled down and offered me water in a little silver cup, gave me bread, and then stood up and turned on the Taliban.
I was not certain what he was saying, but I found out later he was forbidding them to take me away. I think they knew that before they came, otherwise I’d probably have been gone by then. But there was no mistaking the authority in his voice. It was a small, quiet voice, calm, firm, and no one spoke while he spoke. No one interrupted either.
They hardly said a word while this powerful little figure laid down the law. Tribal law, I guess. When he left, he walked out into the night very upright, the kind of posture adopted by men who are unused to defiance. You could spot him a mile off, kind of like an Afghan Instructor Reno. Christ! What if he could see me now?
Upon the departure of the village elder, six hours after they had arrived, at around 0100, the Taliban suddenly decided to leave. Painful eyes, I hoped.
Their leader, the chief talker, was a thin character almost a head taller than all the rest. He led them outside, and I heard them walk off, moving softly up to the trail which led out of Sabray and into the mountains. Once more I was left, bleeding badly and very bruised, eternally grateful to the village elder, drifting off into a form of half-awake sleep, scared, really scared those bastards would somehow come back for me.
Bang! Suddenly, there went that door again. I nearly jumped out of my new Afghan nightshirt with fright. Were they back? With their execution gear? Could I get up and fight again for my life?
But this time it was Sarawa. And I had to ask myself, Who was he really? Had he tipped someone off? Was he in the clutches of the Taliban? Or had they just come for me and broken in when no one was looking?
I still had not been informed of the concept of lokhay. Possibly because they had no way to inform me, and anyway I had no choice but to trust them. It was my only shot at survival.
Sarawa was carrying a small lantern, accompanied by a few of his friends. I sensed them but could not really see in the pitch dark, not in my condition in this flickering light.
Three of the villagers lifted me off the floor and carried me toward the door. I remember seeing their silhouettes on the mud walls, sinister, shadowy figures wearing turbans. Honestly, it was like something out of Arabian Nights. Big Marcus being hauled away by Ali Baba and his forty thieves to meet the fucking genie. I could not, of course, know they were acting on the direct orders of the village elder, who had told them to get me out of there in case the Taliban decided to ignore the ancient rules and take me by force.
Once outside, they doused the light and set up their formation. Two guys to walk in front with AK-47s and one guy in the rear also carrying an AK. The same three guys as before carried me, Sarawa included, and began to walk out of the village, downward along a trail. We traveled for a long way, the guys walking for more than an hour, maybe even two. And they walked tirelessly, like Bushmen or Bedouins.
In the end we headed down a new trail all the way to a river — I guess the same one where I’d met them — by the waterfall, on a higher reach. I must have been a complete dead weight, and not for the first time I was amazed by their strength.
When we reached the river, they stopped and adjusted their grip on me. Then they walked straight into it and in near total silence carried me across, in the darkness of this moonless night. I could hear the water rippling past but nothing more as they waded softly through it. On the other side, they never broke stride and now began to make their way up a steep gradient through the trees.
It was lush and beautiful in the daylight. I’d seen it, and even in this cold night, I could feel its soft, dark green isolation, heavy with ferns and bushes. Finally we reached what I took to be a cave set deep into the mountainside. They lowered me to the ground, and I tried to talk to them, but they could not see my signals or understand my words, so I drew a blank. But I did manage to make Sarawa understand I suffered from diabetes and required water at all times. I guess the dread of dying of thirst remained uppermost in my mind, and right then I knew I could not get down to that river, not by myself.
They carried me to the back of the cave and set me down. I think it was around 0400 when we got there. It was Thursday, June 30. They left me with no food, but they did come up with a water container, an aged Pepsi bottle actually, the most evil-smelling piece of glass on this planet. I thought it must have been used for goat shit in a previous life. But it was all I had, a bottle from a sewer, but filled with water.
I was afraid to put it to my lips, in case I contracted typhoid. Somehow I held it above my face and poured its contents into my mouth like one of those Spanish guys tending their bulls, or whatever they do.
I had no food or weapon, and Sarawa and his guys were on their way out. I was terrified they’d never come back and had just made a decision to dump me. Sarawa told me he’d be back in five minutes, but I was not sure I could believe him. I just lay there on the rocky floor, in the dark, all alone, shivering in the cold, uncertain of what would befall me next.
In the remains of that night, I fell to pieces, finally lost my mind and sobbed hopelessly out of pure fear, offering no further resistance to anything. I thought I could not take it any longer. Reno would have kicked my ass, for sure and certain. Hopefully on the right side, not the left.
I kept on thinking of Morgan, crazily trying to communicate with him, trying to get my thought waves tuned in with his, begging God to let him hear me. And soon it began to get light. Sarawa had been gone for over two hours. Jesus Christ! They’d dumped me out here to die; Morgan didn’t know where I was or whether I was dead or alive; and my SEAL buddies had given me up for dead.
My brain would have been racing but for the fact that I had suddenly been attacked by a tribe of big black Afghan ants, and that really got my attention. I might have given up, but I was fucked if I was going to be eaten alive by these little sonsa-bitches. I got myself raised up and laid into ’em with my Pepsi bottle.
Most of them probably died from the smell, but I killed enough to beat them off for a while. And the hours ticked by. Nothing. No Pashtun tribesmen. No Sarawa. No Taliban. I was getting desperate. The ants were trickling back. And I no longer had the strength to mount a full assault on them. I went into selective-killing mode, going for the leaders with my Pepsi bottle.
Then I found a piece of flinty rock on the floor of the cave, and, lying painfully on my left side, I spent two hours carving the words of the Count of Monte Cristo onto the wall of my prison: God will give me justice.
I wasn’t sure I quite believed it anymore. He’d been out of touch for some time now. But I was still alive. Just. And maybe there was help on the way. He works in awful mysterious ways. Still, even my rifle was gone now, like most of my hope.
I was just beginning to drift off again, maybe a little before 0800, when the place seemed to come alive. I could hear the little bells around the necks of the goddamned goats, and they seemed to be above me. When sand and rocks started raining down on me, I realized there was no roof to my cave. I was open to the sky, I could hear those goat hooves pounding away up there somewhere, and the sand kept pouring down on me.
The good news was it buried the ants, but I was trying to stop it getting in my eyes, and so I turned facedown, shielding my eyes with my hands, my right wrist aching like hell from that Taliban gun butt. Suddenly, to my complete horror, I saw the barrel of an AK-47 easing round the corner of the rock which guarded my left side. I couldn’t hide, I couldn’t even take cover, and I sure as hell couldn’t fight back.
The barrel kept coming, then the rest of the rifle, the hands, and the face — the face of one of my buddies from Sabray, grinning cheerfully. I was in such shock I could not even bring myself to call him a crazy prick, which he plainly was. But he brought me bread and that appalling goat’s milk and filled my water bottle. The one from the sewer.
Half an hour later Sarawa came, five hours after he said he would. He looked at my bullet wound and gave me more water. Then he posted a guard at the entrance to my roofless cave. The guard was thirtyish and, like the rest of them, whip-thin and bearded. He sat on a rock a little way above my entrance, his AK-47 slung over his shoulder.
I kept drifting off, lying there on the floor, and every time I came awake I leaned out to see if the guard was still there. His name was Norzamund, and he always smiled real friendly and gave me a wave. But we could not speak, no common words. He came down once to fill my water bottle and I tried to get him to share his with me. No dice.
So I lifted the evil Pepsi bottle and splashed the water directly into my mouth. Then I chucked it to the back of the cave. Next time Norzamund brought water, he went back and found the goddamned thing and filled it yet again.
I was alone in the late afternoon, and I saw the goatherds come by a couple of times. They never waved or made contact, but neither did they betray my position. If they had I do not believe I would be here. Even now I’m not sure whether lokhay works for a guy who’s left the village.
Norzamund had left me some fresh bread, for which I was grateful. He went home shortly after dark, and for several hours I saw no one. I tried to stay calm and rational because it seemed Sarawa and his men were intent on saving me. Even the village elder was plainly on my side. That’s nothing to do with my charm, by the way. That’s strictly lokhay.
I sat there by myself all through that long evening and into the night. June 30 became July 1; I checked my watch around midnight so I knew when that happened. I tried not to think of home and my mom and dad, tried not to give in to self-pity, but I knew it was around 3:00 p.m. back home in Texas, and I wondered if anyone had the slightest clue about how much trouble I was in and whether they realized how badly I needed help.
What I definitely did not know was that there were now well over two hundred people gathered at the ranch. No one went home. It was as if they were willing a hopeless situation to become hopeful, as if their prayers for me could somehow be answered, as if their presence could somehow protect me from death, as if they believed that if they just stayed in place, no one would announce I had been killed in action.
Mom says she was witnessing a miracle. She and Dad were serving three meals a day to every person on that ranch, and she never knew where the food came from. But it kept coming, big trucks from a couple of food distributors were arriving with steaks and chicken for everyone, maybe two hundred meals at a time. No charge. Local restaurants were trucking stuff in, seafood, pasta, hamburgers. There was Chinese food for fifty, then for sixty. Eggs came, sausage, ham, and bacon. Dad says the barbecues never went out.
Everyone was there to help, including the Herzogg family, big local cattle ranchers, churchgoers, patriots, ready to step up for a friend in need. Mrs. Herzogg showed up with her daughters and without asking just went to work cleaning the place up. And they did it every day.
The navy chaplains made everyone recite the Twenty-third Psalm, just like I was doing. During the open-air services, everyone would stand up and solemnly sing the navy hymn:
Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bid’st the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep . . .
And of course they always ended with the special verse exclusively for the Navy SEALs, the everlasting anthem for SPECWARCOM:
Eternal Father, faithful friend,
Be quick to answer those we send,
In brotherhood and urgent trust,
On hidden missions dangerous,
O hear us when we cry to Thee,
For SEALs in air, on land, and sea.
People just slept whenever and wherever they could. We have a large wood guesthouse at the entrance to the property, and people just went in there. The SEALs came into the house and slept where they could, on beds, on sofas, in chairs, wherever. And every three hours, there was a telephone call, patched in directly from the battlefield in Afghanistan. It was always the same: “No news.” No one ever left Mom alone, but she was beside herself with worry.
As June turned into July, many were beginning to lose faith and believe I was dead. Except for Morgan, who would not believe it and kept saying he’d been in communication, mentally. I was hurt but alive. Of that he was certain.
The SEALs also would not even consider the possibility that I was dead. He’s missing in action, MIA. That was their belief. And until someone told them different, that’s all they would accept. Unlike the stupid television station, right? They thought they could say any damn thing they felt like, true or not, and cause my family emotional trauma on a scale only a community as close as we are could possibly understand.
Meanwhile back in the cave, Norzamund came back with two other guys, again frightening the life out of me. It was about 0400 on Friday, July 1, and they had no lantern. They communicated with whispers and hissing signals for silence. Once more they lifted me up and carried me down the hill to the river. I tried to throw the foul-smelling water bottle away, but they found it and brought it right back. Guess there was a heavy shortage of water bottles in the Hindu Kush. Anyway, they looked after that bottle like it was a rare diamond.
We crossed the river and turned up the escarpment, back to the village. It seemed to take a real long time, and at one point I flicked on the light on my watch, and they almost went wild with fury: No! No! No! Dr. Marcus. Taliban! Taliban!
Of course I didn’t know what they were talking about. The light was tiny, but they kept pointing at it. I soon realized that light was an acute danger to all of us, that the village of Sabray was surrounded by the Taliban, waiting for their chance to capture or kill me. My armed bearers had the same Pashtun upbringing and knew the slightest flicker of a light, no matter how small, was unusual out here on the mountain and could easily attract the attention of an alert watchman.
I switched that sucker off, real quick. And one of my guys, walking out in front with his AK, had some English. He came back to me and whispered: “Taliban see light, they shoot you, Dr. Marcus.”
Finally we reached high ground, and I picked up the word helicopter. And right here I thought someone might be coming to rescue me. But it was just a false alarm. Nothing came. I stretched out on the concrete, and some time before dawn, Sarawa showed up with his medical bag and attended to my leg. He removed the blood-soaked dressings, washed out the wounds, and applied antiseptic cream and fresh bandages. Then, to my astonishment, he produced some insulin for the diabetes I didn’t have.
Guess I was a better liar than I thought. And I obviously had to take it. The stuff I do for my country. Unbelievable, right?
They moved me into a house up there near the top of the village, and soon after I arrived I met my first real friend, Mohammad Gulab, the thirty-three-year-old son of the village elder, and the resident police chief. Everyone called him Gulab (pronounced Goo-larb), and his position in the community was very strong. He made it clear the Taliban were not going to take me while he had anything to do with it.
He was an extremely nice guy, and we became good friends, or as close to good friends as it’s possible to be when the language barrier is almost insurmountable. Mostly we tried to communicate about families, and I understood he had a wife and six children and God knows how many cousins and uncles. Conveying news about my identical twin brother was a tough one, so we just settled for brother, mainly because Gulab unfailingly thought Morgan was me. Like a lot of other folk have done down the years.
Gulab had a friend with him who was also a solid man, plainly an appointed relief guard. Between them they never left me alone. By this time I knew why. The village was entirely embarrassed when the Taliban had crept in here armed to the teeth and conducted an interrogation regardless of the wishes of the people. Those warriors had been on the verge of causing the ultimate retribution under the laws of lokhay, which would have obliged the village to go to war to the last man on my behalf.
I did not yet comprehend the full implications of lokhay but I knew it was important and that I would not be surrendered. And now I had a full-time guard detail in my room. This did not prevent other visitors from coming in, and my first on that morning in my new house was a little boy, maybe eight or nine years old.
He sat on the edge of my cot and tried to teach me a Muslim prayer: La La e La La — Muhammad del la su La La. I pretty soon got the hang of it and repeated it with him. He was thrilled, clapped his hands and laughed, and charged out through the door to round up a posse of other kids. Gulab tried to inform me that the repetition of that prayer meant that I was now a Muslim. And almost immediately the first little boy came racing back into the room with all his buddies, about twenty of them, all eager to pray with the new Texan convert.
I tried to explain I was a doctor, and they understood this pretty quickly, started saying over and over, “Hello, Dr. Marcus,” laughing like hell and falling about like kids do. I could tell they really liked me, and I borrowed a marker pen one of them had and wrote each of their names in English on their arms. Then I let them write their names on mine.
We exchanged words for ears, nose, and mouth. Then for water (uba) and for walk (ducari), both of which I found useful. In the end they left, but other local tribesmen came in to speak to Gulab, and I began, with his encouragement, to converse with the guys who walked the goats, the men who would understand distance. Slowly, during the course of the day, we established there was a small American base two miles away.
They pointed out the window directly at a mountain which looked like a spare part from the Rockies. It towered above us, a great wall of granite that would have caused a mountain goat to back off. “Over there, Dr. Marcus, far side,” one of them managed to say. And since I probably could not have reached the window, never mind the mountain, I put that plan on the back burner for the moment.
They had been referring to the village of Monagee, in the district of Manrogai, where I knew the U.S. military had some kind of an outpost. But it was out of the question right now. I couldn’t get there or anywhere else until my leg improved. Nonetheless, the goatherds had some good information about the terrain and the distances to various villages and U.S. bases. These guys walk around the mountains for a living. Local knowledge. That’s key to every serving SEAL, especially one who was planning a kind of soft jailbreak, like me.
With the goatherds, I was able to work out that from the scene of the original battlefield where the others died, on that terrible night of June 28 I had traveled around seven miles, four walking, three crawling. Seven miles! Wow! I couldn’t believe that. But these herders knew their land. And they, like everyone else, knew all about the Battle for Murphy’s Ridge, where it had been fought and the very bad losses sustained by the Taliban...“You shoot, Dr. Marcus? You shoot?”
Me? Shoot? Never. I’m just a wandering doctor trying to look after my patients. But I was real proud of traveling seven miles over the mountain in my beat-up condition after the battle.
I took my ballpoint pen and marked distances, drew maps, made diagrams of the mountains on my right thigh. When that got a little crowded, I had to use my left. (Shit! That hurt. That really hurt!)
At noon the kids came back for prayers, bringing with them several adults, clearly eager to meet the new American convert, no longer an infidel. We prayed together to Allah, kneeling — painfully, in my case — on the floor. After which we all shook hands, and I think they welcomed me to their prayers. Never told ’em, of course, I slipped in a quick one to my own God while I was at it, respectfully wondering, if it was all right with Him, whether I could get my rifle back anytime soon.
They all came back for afternoon prayers at 1700, and again at sunset. The little kids, my first friends, had to leave for bed right after that, but I remember they all came and hugged me before they left, and, not having mastered “Good-bye” or “Good night” yet, they repeated their first American phrase again and again as they left the room: “Hello, Dr. Marcus.”
The older kids, the young teenagers, were allowed to stay and talk with me for a while. Gulab helped them to communicate and we parted as friends. The trouble was, I was getting sick now, and I was beginning to feel pretty ropy, not just the pain of my wounds but kind of like flu, only a bit worse.
When the kids had finally left, I received a visit from the village elder himself. He brought me bread, gave me fresh water, then sat down for maybe three hours while we discussed, as best we could, how I could get to an American base. It was clear I was a major problem to the village. Threats were already being received from the Taliban, informing the villagers how urgent it was for their cause that I be surrendered to them immediately.
The old man imparted this to me but took the view I was in no shape to travel and that it would simplify matters for a member of his Pashtun tribe to make the journey, on foot, to the big U.S. base at Asadabad and inform them of my whereabouts. I had no clue at the time he was preparing to make the journey himself, some thirty to forty miles alone in the mountains.
He asked me to write out a letter for him to take to Asadabad. I wrote, This man gave me shelter and food, and must be helped at all costs. At the time I was under the distinct impression that he and I were going to make the journey together, possibly with an escort and a few guys to help carry me. Departure time was set for 1930, right after evening prayers.
But I had misunderstood. The old man had no intention of traveling with me, correctly reasoning I’d be a far greater nuisance on such a trek over the mountains than I would be lying here. Also, if the Taliban found out we’d gone, we would be highly susceptible to ambush. I never saw him again, to thank him for his kindness.
I waited all afternoon and half the night for him to come and have me collected. But of course he never did. I remember being hugely disappointed, not for the first time, that more definite plans were not being formulated for my evacuation.
At one point during the evening, the tribal leaders came and had a meeting in my room. They just sat on the floor and talked, but they brought me back the little silver cup I’d had in the first house. And they poured me several cups of that chai tea they drink and, I think, grow on a small scale up here. The ceremony included sweet candy, which you eat while you drink your tea. And that tasted great after my enforced diet of very, very dry baked flat bread.
Gulab stayed with me and was cheerful as ever, but he either could not or would not answer questions about his father and his immediate plans. I think the tribal leaders felt it was better for me not to know — classified, Pashtun-style, FYO and all that. The work of the elder was information provided on a need-to-know basis only. I was getting used to operating outside the loop, everyone’s freakin’ loop, that is.
Gulab spent much of the evening trying to explain to me the complex threads that hold together the Pashtun tribes and al Qaeda, still working in conjunction with the Taliban army. The United States had been busy trying to clear all of them the hell out of Afghanistan for four years but with only limited success.
The jihadists seem to have some kind of hammerlock on tribal loyalties, using a whole spectrum of Mafia-style tactics, sometimes with gifts, sometimes with money, sometimes promising protection, sometimes with outright threats. The truth is, however, neither al Qaeda nor the Taliban could function without the cooperation of the Pashtun villages.
And often, deep within the communities, there are old family ties and young men who sympathize with the warlike mentality of the Taliban and al Qaeda chiefs. Kids barely out of grade school — joke, they don’t have grade schools up here — are drawn toward the romantic cutthroats who have declared they’ll fight the American army until there is no one left.
I guess there’s something very alluring about that to some kids. You can see these potential Taliban recruits in any of the villages. I’ve seen dozens of them, too young to have that much hate and murder in their eyes and hearts. Christ, one of the little bastards had sat on my bed urging eight armed men to torture me. Nice. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen.
But there is another side to this. Sabray was obviously governed wisely by Gulab’s father. And there was a sense of law and order and discipline in an essentially lawless land. Al Qaeda effectively owns great swaths of land in Kunar Province, which had now been my home for the better part of three months. And this is mostly because of the terrain.
I mean, how the hell do you impose national government on a place like this? With no roads, no electricity, no mail, little communication, where the principal industry is goats’ milk and opium, the main water company is a mountain stream, and all freight is moved by mule cart, including the opium. You’re whistling Dixie. It’s never going to happen.
Al Qaeda are running around in broad daylight, mostly doing what the heck they want, until we show up and chase the little pricks back over the border to Pakistan. Where they stay. For about ten minutes, before launching their next foray into these tribal mountains, which their ancestors have ruled for centuries.
These days there are less gifts and a lot more fear. The Taliban is a ruthless outfit, with instincts about killing their enemies which have barely changed in two thousand years. They should somehow by now have frightened the bejesus out of my buddy Gulab and his father, but they had not succeeded, so far as I could see. There’s just something unbreakable about them all, a grim determination to follow the ancient laws of the Pashtuns — laws which may yet prove too strong even for the Taliban and al Qaeda.
But from where I was sitting, in the smoky main room of one of Sabray’s high houses, talking to the village cop, that’s not the way the tide was running. And until the United States decides to wield a very large stick up here in support of the elected government of the people, in Kabul, I’m not looking for any serious change real soon. The enemy is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve victory, terrorizing its own people, if necessary, and resorting to barbaric practices against its enemy, including decapitating people or butchering them.
We are not allowed to fight them on those terms. And neither would we wish to. However, we could fight in a much more ruthless manner, stop worrying if everyone still loved us. If we did that, we’d probably win in both Afghanistan and Iraq in about a week.
But we’re not allowed to do that. And I guess we’d better start getting used to the consequences and permit the American liberals to squeak and squeal us to ultimate defeat. I believe that’s what it’s called when you pack up and go home, when a war fought under your own “civilized” terms is unwinnable.
We’re tougher, better trained, better organized, better armed, with access to weapons which cannot be resisted. The U.S. Armed Forces represent the greatest fighting force this world has ever seen, and we keep getting our butts kicked by a bunch of illegal thugs who ought to be eliminated.
Look at me, right now in my story. Helpless, tortured, shot, blown up, my best buddies all dead, and all because we were afraid of the liberals back home, afraid to do what was necessary to save our own lives. Afraid of American civilian lawyers. I have only one piece of advice for what it’s worth: if you don’t want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place.
Because that’s what happens. In all wars, down all the years of history. Terrible injustices, the killing of people who did not deserve to die. That’s what war is. And if you can’t cope with it, don’t do it.
Meantime, I was stuck in the house waiting for the old man to show up, when he was already miles away, walking through the mountains, the thirty or so miles to Asadabad. Once I wandered outside when no one was looking, and I tried to find him. But he seemed to have gone missing. Even then I never dreamed that little old guy was walking to Asadabad by himself.
I couldn’t really tell, but I sensed something was making my guys jumpy. And about ten or eleven o’clock that night, we moved. They had just brought me fresh water and bread, which I consumed gratefully, and then I was instructed to pack up and leave. By this time my leg was a little better, even though it hurt, and with some assistance I was able to walk.
We made our way in the dark down to a different house and stepped off the trail directly onto the roof. We had some kind of a sheet, and the three of us laid down close together for warmth. It was very, very cold, but I guess they felt there was some danger if I’d remained in my old spot. Maybe they had suspicion of someone in the village, worry that someone had tipped off the Taliban as to my precise whereabouts. But whatever, these guys were taking no chances. If Taliban gunmen burst into my old house, they would not find me.
I was up here on the freakin’ roof, huddled with Gulab and his buddy, freezing to death but safe. And once more I was amazed by the silence, that mountain silence. There was not one single sound in the entire village of Sabray, and for a Westerner that’s really hard to imagine.
Gulab and his pal made no sound. I could scarcely hear them breathing. Whenever we did anything, they were always telling me shhhhh, when I had thought I was being silent as the grave. It’s another world up here, so quiet it defies the logic of Western ears. Maybe that’s why no one has ever conquered these high lands of the Afghan tribesmen.
I slept on and off through the night, up there on the roof. Once I dared to change position, and you’d have thought I’d set off a fire alarm from the reaction of my new friends. “Shhhhh, Dr. Marcus...Quiet.” It just showed how jumpy they were, how nervous of the hushed killers of the Taliban army.
At dawn we packed up and returned to the house. I wanted to sleep some more, but there was a big tree right outside the window that had a view down the mountain, and in that tree lived the world’s loudest rooster. That sucker could have awakened a graveyard. And he did not give a damn about dawn, first light and all that. He let it fly right after midnight and never let up. There were several times when, if it had come to a straight coin toss between taking out Sharmak or the rooster, I could easily have spared Sharmak.
The tribal chiefs came back again around 0700 to conduct their early morning prayers in my room. Of course I joined them in reciting the bits I had learned, and then, when the adults left, the door flew open and a whole bunch of kids came charging through the door, shouting, “Hello, Dr. Marcus.”
They never knocked, just came tumbling in, grabbing me and hugging me. And it went on intermittently throughout the day. Sarawa had left his medical bag in my room, and I fixed up their cuts and scrapes, and they taught me bits of their language. Those kids were great. I’ll never forget them.
By that Saturday morning, July 2, I was still in a lot of pain; my shoulder, back, and leg were often killing me. Gulab knew this, and he sent an old man from the village to see me. He came with a plastic pouch containing tobacco opium, which looks like green bread dough. He gave me the pouch, and I took a pinch of the stuff, put it in my lip, and waited.
I’m here to tell you, that was a miracle. The pain slowly vanished, completely. It was the first time I’d ever done drugs, and I loved it! That opium restored me, set me free. I felt better than I had since we all fell down the mountain. What with the Muslim prayers and now my becoming a devotee of the local dope, I was drifting into the life of an Afghan peasant. Hooyah, Gulab, right?
The old man left the bag with me, and it helped me get through the next hours more than I can say. When you’ve lived through a lot of pain for a few days, the relief is terrific. For the first time I understood the power of that drug, which is, of course, the one the Taliban and al Qaeda feed to suicide bombers before they obliterate themselves and everyone else within range.
There’s nothing heroic about suicide bombers. They’re mostly just dumb, brainwashed kids, stoned out of their minds.
Outside the house, I could see the U.S. helicopters flying overhead, Black Hawk 60s and MH-47s, obviously looking for something. Hopefully me. I knew from what the Taliban had said that one of our helos was down, but not, of course, who had been on board, that eight more of my buddies from Alfa Platoon were dead, including Shane Patton, James Suh, and Chief Healy.
I also did not know that neither Mikey’s, Danny’s, nor Axe’s body had been found and that the helos were circling the area trying to pick up any trace of the original four who had set off on the ill-fated Operation Redwing. The aircrew did not know whether any of us were alive or dead. And back home, the media were vacillating between dead and missing, whichever made the best story on the day, I guess. Didn’t help any in East Texas, I can say that.
Anyway, when I saw those helos, I charged outside. I took off my shirt and waved it over my head, yelling, “Here I am, guys! I’m right here. It’s me, Marcus! Right here, guys!”
But they just flew off, leaving me a somewhat forlorn figure standing outside the house, trying to put on my shirt, and wondering again whether anyone would ever come and rescue me.
In the fullness of time I understood the quandary for the American military. Four SEALs, fighting for their lives, had made one final communication that we were dying up here. Since then, there had been neither sight nor sound of the four of us.
Militarily, there were several possibilities, the first being we were all now dead. The second was we were all still alive. The third was there were survivors, or at least a survivor, and they were somewhere on the loose, possibly wounded, in steep country where there is almost no possibility of making a safe landing in any aircraft.
I guess the last possibility was that we had been taken prisoners and that in time there would be either a ransom note demanding an enormous cash payment or a television film showing us first as prisoners and then being executed.
The last option was unlikely when the missing were Navy SEALs. We don’t habitually get captured. Either we kill our enemy or our enemy kills us. SEALs don’t put their hands up or wave white flags. Period. The command post knew that back in Asadabad, or Bagram.
They would not have been expecting a communiqué from the Taliban saying SEALs had been captured. There’s an old SEAL motto: Never assume a frogman’s dead unless you find his body. Everyone knows that.
The most likely scenario, aside from all dead, was that one or more of the Redwings was hurt, out of communication, and unable to make contact. The problem was location. Where were we? How could we be found?
Plainly, the Taliban were not saying a thing; therefore, they had no prisoners. Equally, the missing SEALs weren’t saying anything. Dead? Probably. Wounded in action and still holding out in the mountains, out of contact? As the days went by, this must have seemed increasingly less likely.
By now Gulab had told me that his father had departed to walk to Asadabad alone. All my hopes rested in the soft tread of this powerful yet tiny old man.