12

“Two-two-eight! It’s Two-two-eight!”

In her mind, there could be only one possible reason for the call...They’d found my body on the mountain...A voice came down the line and demanded, “Is the family assembled?”

They were gone for five minutes, and they came back together. Ben Sharmak stood for a few moments staring at me, and then he climbed away, back to his army. Gulab walked down the hill to me and tried to explain Sharmak had handed him a note that said, Either you hand over the American — or every member of your family will be killed.

Gulab made his familiar dismissive gesture, and we both turned and watched the Taliban leader walking away through the trees. And the village cop offered me his hand, helped me to my feet, and once more led me through the forest, half lifting me down the gradients, always considerate of my shattered left leg, until we reached a dried-up riverbed.

And there we rested. We watched for Taliban sharpshooters, but no one came. All around us in the trees, their AKs ready, were familiar faces from Sabray ready to defend us.

We waited for at least forty-five minutes. And then, amid the unholy silence of the mountain, two more guys from my village arrived. It was obvious they were signaling for us to leave, right now.

Each of them gave me support under my arms and led me up through the trees on the side of this steep escarpment. I have to admit I no longer knew what was going on, where we were going, or what I was supposed to be doing. I realized we could not go back to the village, and I really did not like the tone of that note Gulab had shoved in his pocket.

And here I was, alone with these tribesmen, with no coherent plan. My leg was killing me, I could hardly put it to the ground, and the two guys carrying me were bearing the whole of my weight. We came to a little flight of rough rock steps cut into the gradient. They got behind pushing me up with their shoulders.

I made the top step first, and as I did so, I came face to face with an armed Afghani fighter I had not seen before. He carried an AK-47, held in the ready-to-fire position, and when he saw me, he raised it. I looked at his hat, and there was a badge containing the words which almost stopped my heart — BUSH FOR PRESIDENT!

He was Afghan special forces, and I was seized by panic because I was dressed in the clothes of an Afghan tribesman, identical to those of the Taliban. But right behind him, bursting through the undergrowth, came two U.S. Army Rangers in combat uniform, rifles raised, the leader a big black guy. Behind me, with unbelievable presence of mind, Gulab was roaring out my BUD/S class numbers he’d seen on my Trident voodoo tattoo: “Two-two-eight! It’s Two-two-eight!”

The Ranger’s face suddenly lit up with a gigantic smile. He took one look at my six-foot-five-inch frame and snapped, “American?” I just had time to nod before he let out a yell that ripped across the mountainside — “It’s Marcus, guys! We got him — we got him!”

And the Ranger came running toward me and grabbed me in his arms, and I could smell his sweat and his combat gear and his rifle, the smells of home, the smells I live with. American smells. I tried to keep steady, not break down, mostly because SEALs would never show weakness in front of a Ranger.

“Hey, bro,” I said. “It’s good to see you.”

By this time there was chaos on the mountain. Army guys were coming out of the forest from all over the place. I could see they were really beat up, wearing battered combat gear, all of them with several days’ growth of beard. They were covered in mud, unkempt, and all grinning broadly. I guessed, correctly as it happened, they’d been out here searching for my team since early last Wednesday morning. Hell, they’d been out all night in that thunderstorm. No wonder they looked a bit disheveled.

It was Sunday now. And Jesus, was it great to hear the English language again, just the everyday words, the diverse American accents, the familiarity. I’m telling you, when you’ve been in a hostile, foreign environment for a while with no one to whom you can explain anything, being rescued by your own kind — tough, confident, organized guys, professional, hard-trained, armed to the teeth, ready for anything, bursting with friendship — well, it’s a feeling of the highest possible elation. But I wouldn’t recommend the preparation for such a moment.

They moved into action immediately. An army captain ordered a team to get me up out of the forest, onto higher ground. They carried me up the hill and sat me down next to a goat pen. U.S. Corpsman Travis instantly set about fixing up my wounds. He removed the old dressings which Sarawa had given me and applied new antiseptic cream and fresh bandages. He gave me clean water and antibiotics. By the time he’d finished I felt damn near human.

The atmosphere was unavoidably cheerful, because all the guys felt their mission was accomplished. All Americans in combat understand that feeling of celebration, reflecting, as we all do, that so much could have gone wrong, so much we had evaded by our own battlefield know-how, so many times it could have gone either way.

These Rangers and Green Berets were no different. Somehow, in hundreds of square miles of mountainous terrain, they’d found me alive. But I knew they did not really understand the extreme danger we were all in. I explained to them the number of Taliban warriors there were out here, how many there had been against us on Murphy’s Ridge, the presence of Sharmak and his entire army, so close, maybe watching us...no, forget that. Most certainly watching us. We were all together, and we would make a formidable fighting force if attacked, but we would be badly outnumbered, and we were now all inside a Taliban encirclement. Not just me.

I debriefed them as thoroughly as I could, first of all explaining that my guys were all dead, Mikey, Axe, and Danny. I found that especially difficult, because I had not told anyone before. There had been no one for me to report to, definitely no one who would understand what those guys meant to me and the gaping hollow they would leave in my life for the rest of my days.

I consulted my thighs, where I still had my clear notes of routes, distances, and terrain. I showed them the areas where I knew the Taliban were encamped, helped them mark up their maps. Here, here, and here, guys, that’s where they are. The fact was, the bastards were everywhere, all around us, waiting for their chance. I did have a feeling that Sharmak might have grown wary of facing heavy American firepower head-on. He’d had half his army wiped out on the ridge by just four of us. There were a lot more of us now, gathered around the goat pens while Travis did his number.

I asked the Ranger captain how many guys he had. And he replied, “We’re good. Twenty.”

In my view that was probably a bit light, since Sharmak could easily be back to his full strength of maybe 150 to 200 warriors, reinforced by al Qaeda.

“We got gunships, Apache Sixty-fours, standing by,” he said. “Whatever we need. We’re good.”

I stressed once more that we were undoubtedly surrounded, and he replied, “Roger that, Marcus. We’ll act accordingly.”

Before we left, I asked them how the hell they’d found me. And it turned out to be my emergency beacon in the window of the little rock house in the mountain. The flight crews had picked it up when they were flying over and then tracked it back to the village. They were pretty certain the owner of that PRC-148 radio was one of the original SEAL team but had to consider the fact it might have been stolen by the Taliban.

They did not, however, think it had been operated by Afghan tribesmen in this instance, and they thought it unlikely the beacon had been switched on and aimed skyward by guys who had not the slightest idea what it was for.

They thus reasoned that one of the SEALs was right down there in that village, or in any event pretty damned close. So the guys just closed in on me, somehow moving their own dragnet right past the Taliban dragnet. And suddenly there I was, dressed up like Osama bin Laden’s second in command, arms wrapped around a couple of tribesmen like we were three drunks falling up the hill, the village policeman right behind yelling, “Two-two-eight!”

Led by Gulab, we set off for the village and moved back into my second house, the one where we’d sat out the storm. The army threw a security perimeter all the way around Sabray, and they carried me up past that big tree and into the main room. I noticed that rooster was right there in the tree; he was quiet for a change, but the memory of him still made me want to blow his freakin’ head off.

The guys rustled up some tea and we settled down for a detailed debriefing. It was noon in Sabray, and in attendance was a very serious group of army personnel, from captains on down, mostly Rangers and Green Berets. Before we started, I was compelled to tell ’em I had hoped to be rescued by the SEALs — because now I’d definitely have to put up with a lot of bullshit from them, telling me, “See that, the SEALs get in trouble, and they gotta send for the army to get ’em out, like always.”

That got a loud cheer, but it did not disguise my eternal gratitude to them and what they had risked to save me. They were really good guys and took total control in the most professional way. First they radioed into base that I had been found, that I was stable and unlikely to die, but regretfully, the other three team members had died in action. I heard them confirm they had me safe but that we were still in a potentially hostile Afghan village and that we were surrounded by Taliban and al Qaeda troops. They were requesting evacuation as soon as night fell.

The debriefing went on for a long time as I tried to explain details of my actions on and off the battlefield. And all the time, the kids kept rushing in to see me. They were all over the place, hanging on to my arm, their own arms around my neck, talking, shouting, laughing. The adults from the village also came in, and I had to insist they could stay, especially Sarawa, who had reappeared, and Gulab, who had never left. I owed my life to each of them.

So far, no one had found the bodies of Mikey, Danny, and Axe. And we spent a long time going over satellite photographs for me to pinpoint the precise places they had died. The army guys had some data on the battle, but I was able to fill in a lot of stuff for them. Especially to explain how we had fallen back under Mikey’s command, and then kept falling back, how we never had any option but to establish our defense farther down the mountain, always farther down.

I recounted how Axe had held our left flank with such overwhelming gallantry, and how Danny, shot so many times, kept firing, trying to hold our right flank until his dying breath. And how, in the end, there were just too many of them, with too much firepower, too many of those big Russian-made grenades, the ones that finally blew Axe and me clean out of the battle.

Taliban casualties had been, of course, high. It seemed everyone knew that. I think all of us in that little room, including Gulab, thought the Taliban would not risk another frontal assault on the Americans. And so we waited until the sun began to slip behind the mountains, and I said good-bye to all the kids, several of whom were crying. Sarawa just slipped quietly away. I never saw him again.

Gulab led us down to the flat field at the base of the village, and with the comms up and running, we waited it out. The Ranger security guard was in formation around the perimeter, in case the Taliban decided to give it one last shot. I knew they were out there, and I never took my eyes off that mountain slope as we all sat there, around twenty army personnel and maybe ten villagers, the guys who had stuck by me from the beginning.

We all sat in the dark, backs to the stone wall, looking at the field, just waiting. Way over the high horizon, shortly before 2200, we could hear the unmistakable distant beat of a big U.S. military helicopter, clattering in over the mountains.

We saw it circling, far away from the slopes where I believed the main Taliban and al Qaeda forces were camped. And then suddenly Gulab grabbed my arm, hissing, “Marcus! Marcus! Taliban!”

I stared up at the escarpment and there in the darkness I could see white lights, moving quickly, across the face of the mountain. “Taliban, Marcus! Taliban!” I could tell Gulab was really uneasy, and I called over the army captain and pointed out the danger.

We all reacted instantly. Gulab, who was unarmed, grabbed my rifle, and he and two of his buddies helped me climb the wall and jump down the much deeper drop on the other side. Several of the villagers ran like hell up the hill to their rocky homes. Not Gulab. He took up position behind that wall, aiming my sniper rifle straight at the enemy on the hillside.

The army comms guys moved into action, calling in the United States air armada we knew was out there — fighter bombers and helicopters, ready to attack that mountain if there was even a suggestion the Taliban might try to hit the incoming rescue helo.

I considered it was obvious that they were planning one last offensive, one last-ditch attempt to kill me. I grabbed a pair of NVGs and took up my position as spotter behind the wall, trying to locate the mountain men, trying to nail them once and for all.

We could still see the rescue helo way out in the distance when the U.S. Armed Forces, who’d plainly had it up to their eyeballs with this fucking Ben Sharmak, finally let it rip. They came howling across those pitch-black crevasses and blasted the living hell out of those slopes: bombs, rockets, everything they had. It was a storm of murderous explosive. No one could have lived out there.

The lights went out for the Taliban that night. All those little white beams, their fires and lanterns — everything went out. And I just crouched there, calling out the information to the comms guy next to me, identifying Taliban locations, the stuff I’m trained to do. I was standing up now with a smile on my face, watching my guys pulverize those little bastards who beat up my kids and killed my teammates. Fuck ’em, right?

It was a grim smile, I admit, but these guys had chased me, tortured me, pursued me, tried to kill me about four hundred times, blown me up, nearly kidnapped me, threatened to execute me. And now my guys were sticking it right to ’em. Beautiful. I saw a report confirming thirty-two Taliban and al Qaeda died out there that night. Not enough.

The shattering din high in the Hindu Kush died away. The U.S. air offensive was done. The landing zone was cleared and made safe, and the rescue helo came rocketing in from the south.

The Green Berets were still in communication, and they talked the pilot down, into the newly harvested village opium field. I remember the rotors of the helo made a green bioluminescent static in the night air.

And I could hear it dropping down toward us, an apparition of howling U.S. airpower in the night. It was an all-encompassing, shattering, deafening din, thundering rather than echoing, between the high peaks of the Hindu Kush. No helicopter ever smashed the local sound barriers with more brutality. The eerie silence of those mountains retreated before the second decibel onslaught of the night. The ground shuddered. The dust whipped up into a sandstorm. The rotors screamed into the pure mountain air. It was the most beautiful sound I ever heard.

The helo came in slowly and put down a few yards from us. The loadmaster leaped to the ground and opened the main door. The guys helped me into the cabin, and Gulab joined me. Instantly we took off, and neither of us looked out at the blackness of the unlit village of Sabray. Me, because I knew we could not see a thing; Gulab, because he was uncertain when he would pass this way again. The Taliban threats to both himself and his family were very much more serious than he had ever admitted.

He was afraid of the helicopter and clung to my arm throughout the short journey to Asadabad. And there we both disembarked. I was going on to Bagram, but for the moment Gulab was to stay on this base, out there in his own country, and assist the U.S. military in any way he could. I hugged him good-bye, this rather inscrutable tribesman who had risked his life for me. He seemed to expect nothing in return, and I had one more shot at giving him my watch. But he refused, as he had done four times in the past.

Our good-bye was painful for me, because I had no words in his language to express my thanks. I’ll never know, but perhaps he too would have said something to me, if he’d only had the words. It might even have been warm or affectionate, like...well...“Noisy bastard, footsteps like an elephant, ungrateful son of a gun.” Or “What’s the matter with our best goat’s milk, asshole?”

But there was nothing that could be said. I was going home. And he may never be able to go home. Our paths, which had crossed so suddenly and so powerfully in a life-changing encounter for both of us, were about to diverge.

I boarded the big C-130 for Bagram, back to my base. We touched down on the main runway at 2300, exactly six days and four hours since Mikey, Axe, Danny, and I had occupied this very same spot, lying here on this ground, staring up at the distant snowcapped peaks, laughing, joking, always optimistic, unaware of the trial by fire which awaited us high in those mountains. Less than a week. It might have been a thousand years.

I was greeted by four doctors and all the help I could possibly need. There was also a small group of nurses, at least one of whom knew me from my volunteer work in the hospital. The others were stunned at the sight of me, but this one nurse took one look at me standing at the top of the ramp and burst into tears.

That’s how terrible I looked. I’d lost thirty-seven pounds, my face was scoured from the crash down mountain one, my broken nose needed proper setting, I was racked with pain from my leg, my smashed wrist hurt like hell and so did my back, as it will when you’ve cracked three vertebrae. I’d lost God knows how many pints of blood. I was white as a ghost, and I could hardly walk.

The nurse just cried out, “Oh, Marcus!” and turned away, sobbing. I declined a stretcher and leaned on the doctor, ignoring the pain. But he knew. “Come on, buddy,” he said. “Let’s get you on the stretcher.”

But again I shook my head. I’d had a shot of morphine, and I tried to stand unassisted. I turned to the doc and looked him in the eye, and I told him, “I walked on here, and I’m walking off, by myself. I’m hurt, but I’m still a SEAL, and they haven’t finished me. I’m walking.”

The doctor just shook his head. He’d met a lot of guys like me before, and he knew it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good arguing. I guess he understood the only thought I had in my mind was What kind of a SEAL would it make me if they had to help me off the plane? No sir. I won’t agree to that.

And so I entered my home base once more, moving very slowly down the ramp under my own steam until I touched the ground. By this time, I noticed two other nurses were in tears. And I remember thinking, Thank Christ Mom can’t see me yet.

Right about then I think I caved in. The doctors and nurses ran forward to help me and get me stretchered into a van and directly to a hospital bed. The time for personal heroics had passed. I’d sucked up every goddamned thing this fucking country could throw at me, I’d been through another Hell Week to the tenth power, and now I was saved.

Actually, I felt particularly rough. The morphine was not as good as the opium I’d been given. And every goddamned thing hurt. I was met formally by the SEAL skipper, Commander Kent Pero, who was accompanied by my doctor, Colonel Carl Dickens.

He came with me in the van, Commander Pero, a very high-ranking SEAL officer who had always remembered my first name, ever since the day we first met. He sat beside me, gripping my arm, asking me how I was. I recall telling him, “Yes, sir, I’m fine.”

But then I heard him say, “Marcus.” And he shook his head. And I noticed this immensely tough character, my boss’s boss, had tears streaming down his face, tears of relief, I think, that I was alive. It’s funny, but it was the first time in so long that I was with someone who really cared about me, the first time since Mikey and Axe and Danny had died.

And I found it overwhelming, and I broke down right there in the van, and when I pulled myself together, Commander Pero was asking me if there was anything I needed, because no matter what it was, he would get it.

“Yes, sir,” I replied, drying my eyes on the sheet. “Do you think I could get a cheeseburger?”

The moment I was secured in Bagram, they made news of my rescue available. I had been in the hands of the U.S. military for some hours, but I know the navy did not want anyone to start celebrating until I was well and truly safe.

The call went around the world like a guided missile: Bagram — Bahrain — SATCOM to SPECWARCOM, Coronado — direct phone link to the ranch.

The regular call had come in on time at around one that afternoon, and they were expecting another “no news” update at four. But now the phone rang at three. Early. And according to my dad, when Chief Gothro came outside and walked through the crowd to collect my mom, telling her there was a call from Coronado, she almost fainted. In her mind, there could be only one possible reason for the call, and that was the death of her little angel (that’s me).

Chief Gothro half carried her into the house, and when they arrived at the bedroom where the phone was installed, the first thing she saw was Morgan and my other brother, Scottie, with their arms around each other, sobbing uncontrollably. Everyone thought they knew the military. There could be only one reason for the early call. They’d found my body on the mountain.

Chief Gothro walked my mom to the phone and informed her that whatever it was, she had to face it. A voice came down the line and demanded, “Chief, is the family assembled?”

“Yessir.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Luttrell?”

“Yes,” whispered Mom.

“We got him, ma’am. We got Marcus. And he’s stable.”

Mom started to collapse right there on the bedroom floor. Scottie moved swiftly to save her from hitting it. Lieutenant JJ Jones bolted for the door, stood on the porch, and called for quiet. Then he shouted, “They got him, guys! Marcus has been rescued.”

They tell me the roar which erupted over those lonely pastures way down there in the back country of East Texas could have been heard in Houston, fifty-five miles away. Morgan says it wasn’t just your average roar. It was spontaneous. Deafening. Everyone together, top of their lungs, a pure outpouring of relief and joy for Mom and Dad and my family.

It signaled the conclusion of a five-day vigil in which a zillion prayers had been offered by God-fearing folk; they understood in that split second after the announcement that those prayers had been asked and answered. For them, it was a confirmation of faith, of the unbreakable hope and belief, of the SEAL chaplain Trey Vaughn and all the others.

Immediately, they raised the flag, and the Stars and Stripes fluttered in the hot breeze. And then the SEALs linked arms with my family and my friends and my neighbors, people who they might never see again but to whom they were now irrevocably joined for all the days of their lives. Because no one, according to Mom, could ever forget that one brief moment they shared, that long-awaited moment of release, when fears and dreads were laid to rest.

I was alive. I guess that’s all it took. And all these amazing guys, with hearts as wide as the Texas prairies, burst suddenly into song: “God bless America, land that I love . . .”

That’s Mrs. Herzogg and her daughters; Billy Shelton; Chief Gothro; Mom and Dad; Morgan and Scottie; Lieutenant Andy Haffele and his wife, Kristina; Eric Rooney; Commander Jeff Bender; Daniel, the master sergeant; Lieutenant JJ Jones; and all the others I already mentioned. Five days and five nights, they’d waited for this. And here I was, safe in a hospital bed eight thousand miles away, thinking of them, as they were thinking of me.

Matter of fact, at the time I was just thinking of a smart-ass remark to make to Morgan, because they’d told me I was about to be patched through to my family, on the phone. I guessed Morgan would be there, and if I could come up with something sufficiently slick and nonchalant, he’d know for sure I was good. Of course, it wasn’t as important to talk to him as it was to speak to Mom. Morgan and I had been in touch all along, the way identical twins usually are.

Right around this time, I was assigned a minder, Petty Officer First Class Jeff Delapenta (SEAL Team 10), who would never leave my side. And remember, damn near everyone on the base wanted to come and have a chat. At least that’s how it seemed to me. But Jeff was having none of it. He stood guard over my room like a German shepherd, taking the view that I was very sick and needed peace and rest, and he, PO1 Jeff, was going to make good and sure I got it.

Doctors and nurses, fine. High-ranking SEAL commanders, well...okay, but only just. Anyone else, forget it. Jeff Delapenta turned away generals! Told ’em I was resting, could not be disturbed under any circumstances whatsoever. “Strict orders from his doctors...Sir, it would be more than my career’s worth to allow you to enter that room.”

I spoke privately to my family on the phone and refrained from mentioning to Mom that I had now contracted some kind of Afghan mountain bacteria that attacked my stomach like Montezuma’s revenge gets you in Mexico. I swear to God, it came from that fucking Pepsi bottle. That sucker could have poisoned the population of the Hindu Kush.

Didn’t stop me loving that first cheeseburger, though. And as soon as I was rested, the real intensive debriefing began. It was right here that I learned, for the first time, of the full ramifications of lokhay, that the people of Sabray were indeed prepared to fight for me until no one was left alive. One of the intel guys told me those details, which I had suspected but never knew for sure.

These debriefing meetings revealed sufficient data to pinpoint precisely where the bodies of my guys were lying. And I found it really difficult. Just staring down at the photographs, reliving, as no one could ever understand, the place where my best buddy fell, torturing myself, wondering again if I could have saved him. Could I have done more? That night, for the first time, I heard Mikey scream.

On my third day in the hospital, the bodies of Mikey and Danny were brought down from the mountains. They were unable to find Axe. I was told this, and later that day I dressed, just in shirt and jeans, so Dr. Dickens could drive me out for the Ramp Ceremony, one of the most sacred SEAL traditions, in which we say a formal good-bye to a lost brother.

It was the first time anyone had seen me outside of my immediate entourage, and they probably received a major shock. I was scrubbed and neat, but not much like the Marcus they knew. And I was ill from my brutal encounter with that goddamned Pepsi bottle.

The C-130 was parked on the runway, ramp down. There were around two hundred military personnel in attendance when the Humvees arrived bearing the two coffins, each draped with the American flag. And all of them snapped to attention, instantly, no commands, as the SEALs stepped forward to claim their brothers.

Very slowly, with immense dignity, they lifted the coffins high, and then carried the bodies of Mikey and Danny the fifty yards to the ramp of the aircraft.

I positioned myself right at the back and watched as the guys carefully bore my buddies on their first steps back to the United States. A thousand memories stood before me, as I guess they would have done to anyone who’d been at Murphy’s Ridge.

Danny, crashing down the mountain, his right thumb blown off, still firing, shot again and again and again, rising up as I dragged him away, rising up to aim his rifle at the enemy once more, still firing, still defiant, a warrior to his last breath. And here he comes in that polished wood coffin.

Out in front was the coffin that carried Mikey Murphy, our officer, who had walked out into the firestorm to make that last call on his cell phone, the one that placed him in mortal danger, the one chance, he believed, to save us.

Gunned down by the Taliban, right through the back, blood pouring out of his chest, his phone in the dust, and he still picked it up. “Roger that, sir. Thank you.” Was anyone ever braver than that? I remember being awestruck at the way he somehow stood up and walked toward me, tall and erect, and carried right on firing until they finally blew half his head away. “Marcus, this really sucks.”

He was right then. And he was still right at this moment. It did suck. As they carried Mikey to the plane, I tried to think of an epitaph for my greatest buddy, and I could only come up with some poem written by the Australian Banjo Paterson, I guess for one of his heroes, as Mikey was mine:

He was hard and tough and wiry — just the sort that won’t say die —

There was courage in his quick, impatient tread;

And he bore the badge of gameness in his bright and fiery eye,

And the proud and lofty carriage of his head.

That was Lieutenant Michael Patrick Murphy precisely. You can trust me on that. I lived with him, trained with him, fought with him, laughed with him, and damn near died with him. Every word of that poem was inscribed for him.

And now they were carrying him past the crowd, past me, and suddenly my senior commanders came over and told me it would be fitting for me to stand right by the ramp. So I moved forward and stood as rigidly to attention as my back would allow.

The chaplain moved up the ramp, and as the coffins moved forward, he began his homily. I know it was not a funeral, not the one their families would attend back home in the States. This was our funeral, the moment when we, his other family, all serving overseas together, would say our final good-byes to two very great men. The voice of the priest, out there on the edge of the aircraft hold, was soft. He stood there speaking in praise of their lives and asking one last favor from God — “To let perpetual light shine upon them . . .”

I watched as around seventy people, SEALs, Rangers, and Green Berets, filed forward and walked slowly into the aircraft, paused, saluted with the greatest solemnity, and then disembarked. I stayed on the ground until last of all. And then I too walked slowly forward up the ramp, to the place where the coffins rested.

Inside, beyond the SEAL escort to the coffins, I saw a very hard combat veteran, Petty Officer Ben Saunders, one of Danny’s closest friends, weeping uncontrollably. Ben was a tough mountain boy from West Virginia, expert tracker and climber, kind of spiritual about the wild lands. And now he was pressed against the bulkhead, too upset to leave, too broken up to go down the steps. (He was SDV Team 2, same as Danny.)

I knelt down by the coffins and said my good-bye to Danny. Then I turned to the one that contained Mikey, and I put my arms around it, and I think I said, “I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry.” I don’t really remember it very clearly. But I remember how I felt. I remember not knowing what to do. I remember thinking how Mikey’s remains would soon be taken away, and how some people would forget him, and others would remember him slightly, and a few would remember him well and, I know, with affection.

But the death of Mikey would affect no one as it would affect me. No one would miss him in the way that I would. And feel his pain, and hear his scream. No one would encounter Mikey in the small hours, in their worst nightmares, as I would. And still care about him, and still wonder if they had done enough for him. As I do.

I stepped out of the aircraft and walked unaided to the bottom of the steps. Dr. Dickens met me and drove me back to the hospital. I stood there and listened for the C-130 to take off, to hear it roar off the runway and carry Mikey and Danny westward into the setting sun, a few miles closer to heaven.

And the words from a thousand memorial services flickered through my mind: “Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. / At the going down of the sun and in the morning / We will remember them.” Right here in bed in Bagram, Afghanistan, I was conducting my own military service for my two fallen buddies.

My new worry was Axe. Where was he? Surely he could not have lived? But the guys could not find him, and that was bad. I’d pinpointed that hollow where we both had rested and waited for death while the unseen Taliban rained fire down on us from behind the rocks and finally blew us both across the open ground to oblivion.

I’d survived, but I had not been shot five times like Axe. And I knew to the inch where he was last time I saw him. I talked to the guys again, and the SEAL command was not about to leave him up there. They were going in again, this time with more intel if possible, more searchers, and more local guidance.

I suggested they find the village elder from Sabray, if he was still in residence. Because he of all people could surely lead them to the dead SEAL. I learned right then from the intel guys that the gentleman I referred to was the headman of all the three villages we had observed. He was a man hugely revered in the Hindu Kush, because this is a culture that does not worship youth and cheap television celebrity. Those tribesmen treasure, above all things, knowledge, experience, and wisdom.

We did contact him immediately, and a few days later, the same old man, Gulab’s father, my protector, walked through the mountains again for maybe four or five miles. This time he was at the head of an American SEAL team, the Alfa Platoon, which contained many of my buddies, Mario, Corey, Garrett, Steve, Sean, Jim, and James. (No last names. Active special ops guys, right?)

There was also a group from Echo Platoon. All day they tramped over the steep mountainside, and they took extra water and food with them, in case it took longer. But this time they were not coming back without Axe. No sir. We never leave anyone alone.

The elder hardly spoke one word to them. But he walked directly to the exact place where the body of Matthew Gene Axelson was lying. His face had been blasted by close-range gunfire, in that quaint, old-fashioned way the Taliban have when they find a mortally wounded American. By the way, if anyone should dare to utter the words Geneva Convention while I’m writing this, I might more or less lose control.

Anyway, they found Axe, with the bullets the Taliban rifles had emptied into his face as he lay dying, just as they had done to Mikey. But Axe was in a different place from where I thought. I know we were both blown out of the hole by the RPG, because I went over the precipice. But Axe was a few hundred yards even farther away. No one quite knows how he got there.

Axe still had three magazines left for his pistol when the grenade hit us. But when they found him, he was on the last one. And that could mean only one thing: Axe must have fought on, recovering consciousness after the blast and going for those bastards again, firing maybe thirty more rounds at them; must have driven them mad. I guess that’s why, when he inevitably succumbed to his most shocking injuries, they had accorded him that barbaric tribal finale.

I used to think Audie Murphy was the ultimate American warrior. I’m not so sure about that. Not now. Not anymore. And it upsets me more than I can say, thinking what they did, in the end, to Mikey and Axe. It upsets Morgan so bad, no one can even mention Axe’s name without him having to leave the room. I guess you had to know him to understand that. There were not many like Matthew Axelson.

Well, by the time they brought Axe down, I was gone. They flew me out on the night of July 8, in a big military Boeing, the C-141, on a long journey to Germany. Jeff Delapenta accompanied me, never left my side once. And there I checked in to the regional medical center at the U.S. Air Force base at Landstuhl, up near the western border with France, about fifty-five miles southwest of Frankfurt.

I was there for about nine days, recovering and receiving treatment for my wounds and therapy for the healing bones in my back, shoulder, and wrist. But that Pepsi bottle bug wouldn’t budge from my stomach. It showed major resistance for long months and made it hard to regain my lost weight.

But I came through it and finally left Germany for the four-thousand-mile ride back to the U.S.A. This time Lieutenant Clint Burk, my swim buddy in BUD/S, accompanied me, along with Dr. Dickens. Clint and I have been closest friends forever, and the journey passed pretty quickly. We traveled in a C-17 cargo plane, upstairs in first class...well, nearly. But in seats. It was great. And we touched down nine hours later in Maryland. Then the navy hitched a ride for us in a Gulfstream private jet owned by a senator.

And I guess I arrived back in some style to San Antonio Airport, Texas, which stands almost two hundred miles west of Houston, right along Route 10 and over the Colorado River. Back home I guess there had been some talk that I might be taken on to San Diego, but apparently Morgan just said, “You can forget all about that. He’s coming home, and we’re going to get him.”

They saddled up the family Suburban, Morgan and my kid brother, Scottie, plus the SEALs Lieutenant JJ, and JT. And they set off across the Lone Star State to collect the brother they had been told by the media was dead. I couldn’t believe it when I saw them all waiting there when my private jet landed.

There were a few tears from all of us. Just tears of happiness, I guess, because they had all lived with the darkest of threats, that we would not see one another ever again. I have to say the thought had also crossed my mind a few times as well.

But mostly I remember the laughter. “Jesus, you look awful,” said Morgan. “Mom’ll have a nervous breakdown when she sees you.” It reminded me of what I’d said to Axe when he’d been fatally wounded on the mountain — “Hey, man, you’re all fucked up.”

It’s just the way we talk to each other. Remember, Morgan was a SEAL, and his words, even to his twin brother, were tempered with humor, like all of our words among ourselves. One day it could be Morgan trapped on the mountain and me waiting for him, beside myself with worry and fear for his life. I recall he did tell me he loved me, though, and so did Scottie. And that meant a lot to me.

In the absence of Commander Pero, Scottie rustled up a bagful of cheeseburgers for the five-hour journey home, and we guffawed our way across Texas; me making light of my ordeal, telling ’em it wasn’t much really, none of them believing me. I guess it’s impossible to look as bad as I did when it wasn’t much really.

But we had some fun, and in the end, I told them a few of the bits that were on the serious side of horrendous. Morgan wept like a child when I told him about Axe. We all went pretty quiet while that was happening, because there were no words which could comfort him, nothing that could ever be said to ease his sadness. In my view, nothing ever will. Same with me and Mikey.

Eventually we ran into our little corner of East Texas. Everyone pulled together as we drove down that wide, red dirt road to the ranch, the home I thought I might never see again. Those big oaks still towered over the place, and Dad’s dogs came running out to meet us, barking like hell, with Emma unusually out in the lead, wagging her tail, as if she knew something the others didn’t.

Mom predictably broke down at the sight of me, because I was still more than thirty pounds lighter than when she last saw me. And I guess I still looked pretty ill. I never told her about the goddamned typhoid-laden Pepsi bottle. A ton of people were there, from all around the neighborhood, to greet me.

I didn’t know at the time that these people had formed the bedrock of the five-day prayer vigil that had taken place on the property while I was missing. A vigil to which no one had been invited, and no one knew if anyone else would be there; a vigil born of pure friendship and concern, which started with such melancholy prophesies of doom and tenuous hopes, but ended on the sunlit uplands of answered prayers. I could scarcely believe it when I heard what had happened.

And yet, standing right before me, was the cast-iron evidence of the love those Texans must have had for me and for what I had tried to do on behalf of my country. It came in the form of a brand-new stone house standing across a new paved courtyard, maybe twenty feet from the main house. It was two floors high, with a wide, timbered upper deck around the bedrooms, which abutted a tall, stone-walled shower, custom-made for me. Inside, the house was perfectly decorated, carpeted, and furnished, with a big plasma television.

“How the hell did that get here?” I asked Mom. And what she then told me blew me away. It started with a visit, after the vigil had ended, from a marvelous Texan landowner called Scott Whitehead. He was just one of so many who came to see my parents and express his delight that I had been found. He’d never, by the way, met any of the family before.

And before he went, he explained he had a close friend who owned a construction company in Houston and wondered if there was anything Marcus might like when he came home.

Mom explained how I had always wanted a little space of my own where I could...well...chill, as the late Shane Patton would undoubtedly have expressed it. And perhaps a small extension off my lower-floor bedroom might be really nice. She was thinking rock-bottom price, and maybe she and Dad could manage that.

Next thing that happened, she said, two of the biggest trucks she’d ever seen came rolling into the drive, accompanied by a crane and a mechanical digger, a couple of architects, site engineers, and God knows what else. Then, Mom says, a team of around thirty guys, working twenty-four hours a day in shifts over three days, built me a house!

Scott Whitehead just said he was proud to have done a small favor for a very great Texan (Christ! He meant me, I think). And he still calls Mom every day, just to check we’re all okay.

Anyway, Morgan and I moved in, freeing up space for the stream of SEALs who still kept coming to see us. And I stayed home with the family, resting for two weeks, during which time Mom fought a fierce running battle with the Pepsi bottle bug, trying to get some weight on me.

Scott Whitehead’s boys had thought of everything. They even had the house phone wired up in my new residence, and the first call I received was a real surprise. I picked it up and a voice said, “Marcus, this is George Bush. I was forty-one.”

Jesus! This was the forty-first president of the United States. I knew that real quick. President Bush lives in Houston.

“Yessir,” I replied. “I very definitely know exactly who you are.”

“Well, I just called you to tell you how proud we all are of you. And my son’s real proud, and he wants you to know the United States of America is real proud of you, your gallantry, and your courage under fire.”

Hell, you could tell he was a military man, right off. I knew about his record, torpedo bomber pilot in the Pacific, World War II, shot down by the Japanese, Distinguished Flying Cross. The man who appointed General Colin Powell as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Victor of the Gulf War.

Are you kidding! “I’m George, forty-one, calling you to let you know how proud we are of you!” That really broke me up. He told me if I needed anything, no matter what, “be sure to call me.” Then he gave me his phone number. How about that? Me, Marcus? I mean, Jesus, he didn’t have to do that. Are Texans the greatest people in the world or what? Maybe you don’t think so, but I bet you see my point.

I was thrilled President Bush had called. And I thanked him sincerely. I just told him at the end, “Anything shakes loose, sir, I’ll be sure to call. Yessir.”

By mid-August, still being in the U.S. Navy, I had to go back to Hawaii (SDV Team 1). During my two weeks there I had a visit from the chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mike Mullin, direct from the Pentagon.

He asked me to come over to the commanding officer’s office and promoted me right there on the spot, made me a Petty Officer First Class, no bullshit.

He’s the head of the U.S. Navy. And that was the greatest honor I had ever received. It was a moment I will never forget, just standing there in the presence of Admiral Mullin. He told me he was very proud of me. And it doesn’t get a whole lot bigger than that. I nearly cracked up.

Perhaps civilians might not appreciate why an honor like that means all the world to all of us; that sacred recognition that you have served your country well, that you have done your duty and somehow managed to live up to the highest possible expectations.

Even though it may seem like a strange ritual in a foreign tribe, kinda like lokhay, probably, I hope y’all get my drift.

Anyway, he asked me if there was anything he could do for me and I told him there was just one thing. I had with me the Texas patch I’d worn on my chest throughout my service in Afghanistan, fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda. This is the patch that bears the Lone Star. It was burned from the blast of that last RPG, and it was still blood-spattered, though I’d tried to get it cleaned. But I’d wrapped it in plastic, and you could see the Star of Texas clearly. And I asked Admiral Mullin if he could give it to the president of the United States.

He replied that he most certainly would and that he believed that President George W. Bush would be honored to have it.

“Would you like to send a brief letter to the president to accompany the battle patch?” Admiral Mullin asked me.

But I told him no. “I’d be grateful if you’d just give it to him, sir. President Bush is a Texan. He’ll understand.”

I had another request to make as well, but I restricted that to my immediate superiors. I wanted to go back to Bahrain and rejoin my guys from SDV Team 1 and ultimately bring them home at the conclusion of their tour of duty.

“I deployed with them, and I want to come back with them,” I said, and my very good friend Mario, the officer in charge of Alfa Platoon, considered this to be appropriate. And on September 12, 2005, I flew back to the Middle East, coming in to land at the U.S. air base on Muharraq Island, same place I’d left with Mikey, Axe, Shane, James, and Dan Healy, bound for Afghanistan, five months ago. I was the only one left.

They drove me out over the causeway, back to the American base up in the northeast corner of the country on the western outskirts of the capital city of Manama. We drove through the downtown area, through the places where people made it so plain they hated us, and this time I admit there was an edge of wari-ness in my soul. I knew now, firsthand, what jihadist hatred was.

I was reunited with my guys, and I stayed in Bahrain until late October. Then we all returned to Hawaii, while I prepared for another arduous journey, the one I had promised myself, promised my departed brothers in my prayers, and promised the families, whenever I could. I intended to see all the relatives and to explain what exemplary conduct all of their sons, husbands, and brothers had displayed on the front line of the battle against world terror.

I suppose, in a sense, I was filling in a part of me, which had missed seeing the outpouring of grief as, one by one, my teammates returned from Afghanistan. I had missed the funerals, which mostly took place before I returned. And the memorial services immaculately conducted by the navy for my fallen comrades.

For instance, the funeral of Lieutenant Mikey Murphy on Long Island, New York, was enormous. They closed down entire roads, busy roads. There were banners hanging across the highway on the Long Island Expressway in memory of a Navy SEAL who had paid the ultimate price in our assault on the warriors of al Qaeda.

There were police escorts for the cortege as thousands of ordinary people turned out to pay their last respects to a local son who had given everything for his country. And they did not even know a quarter of what he had given. Neither did anyone else. Except for me.

I was shown a picture of the service at the cemetery graveside. It was held in a slashing downpour of rain, everyone soaked, with the stone-faced Navy SEALs standing there in dress uniform, solemn, unflinching in the rainstorm, as they lowered Mikey into the endless silence of the grave.

Every one of the bodies was flown home accompanied by a SEAL escort who wore full uniform and stood guard over each coffin, which was draped in the Stars and Stripes. As I mentioned, even in death, we never leave anyone behind.

They closed Los Angeles International Airport for the arrival of James Suh’s plane. There were no arrivals and no takeoffs permitted while the aircraft was making its approach and landing. Nothing, until the escort had brought out the coffin and placed it in the hearse.

The State of Colorado damn near closed down for the arrival of the body of Danny Dietz, because the story of his heroism on the mountain had somehow been leaked to the press. But like the good citizens of Long Island, the people of Colorado never knew even a quarter of what that mighty warrior had done in the face of the enemy, on behalf of our nation.

They actually did close down the entire city of Chico, in northern California, when Axe came home. It’s a small town, situated around seventy-five miles north of Sacramento, with its own municipal airport. The escort was met by an honor guard which carried out the coffin in front of a huge crowd, and the funeral a day later stopped the entire place in its tracks, so serious were the traffic jams.

It was all just people trying to pay their last respects. The same everywhere. And I am left feeling that no matter how much the drip-drip-drip of hostility toward us is perpetuated by the liberal press, the American people simply do not believe it. They are rightly proud of the armed forces of the United States of America. They innately understand what we do. And no amount of poison about our alleged brutality, disregard of the Geneva Convention, and abuse of the human rights of terrorists is going to change what most people think.

I doubt any editor of any media outfit would get a reception like the SEALs earned, even though these combat troops had achieved their highest moments in the enforced privacy of the Hindu Kush. Perhaps the media offered the American public a poisoned chalice and then chugged it back themselves.

Some members of the media might think they can brainwash the public any time they like, but I know they can’t. Not here. Not in the United States of America.

Certainly on our long journey to visit the relatives, we were met only with warmth, friendship, and gratitude as representatives of the U.S. Navy. I think our presence in those scattered homes all over the country demonstrated once and for all that the memories of those beloved men will be forever treasured, not only by the families, but by the navy they served. Because the U.S. Navy cares enormously about these matters. Believe me, they really care.

The moment I suggested to my superiors that the remaining members of Alfa Platoon should make the journey, the navy offered their support and immediately agreed we should all go and that they would pay every last dollar the trip might cost.

We arrived back in San Diego and hired three SUVs. Then we drove up to Las Vegas to meet the family of my assistant Shane Patton, who died in the helicopter crash on the mountain. We arrived on Veterans Day. They made us guests of honor at the graveside for the memorial service. It was very upsetting for me. Shane’s dad had been a SEAL, and he understood how well I knew his son. I did the best I could.

Then we flew to New York to see Mikey’s mother and fiancée, and after that I went to Washington, D.C., to see the parents of Lieutenant Commander Eric Kristensen, our acting commanding officer, the veteran SEAL commanding officer who dropped everything that afternoon and rushed out to the helicopter, piling in with the guys, slamming a magazine into his rifle, and telling them Mikey needed every gun he could get. I think it was Eric to whom Mikey spoke when he made that last fateful phone call.

I told Admiral Kristensen, his father, that Eric would always be a hero to me, as he was to all of those who died with him on the mountain. Our CO was buried at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

We went to Arlington National Cemetery afterward to visit the graves of Lieutenant Mike McGreevy Jr. and Petty Officer First Class Jeff Lucas, of Corbett, Oregon. They both died in the helicopter and were laid to rest shoulder to shoulder in Arlington, as they had died in the Hindu Kush.

Next we flew back across the country to visit the huge family of Petty Officer James Suh. Everyone came to the cemetery to say a prayer for one of the most popular guys in the platoon.

Chief Dan Healy is buried in the military cemetery at Point Loma, San Diego, not far from Coronado. We all made the journey to northern California to see his family. Then we drove to Chico, and I told Axe’s wife, Cindy, how hard he had fought, what a hero he was, and how his final words to me were “tell Cindy I love her.”

Danny Dietz was from Colorado, and that’s where he was buried. But his family lived in Virginia near the base at Virginia Beach. I went to see his very beautiful, dark-haired wife, Patsy, and tried the best I could to explain what a critical role he had played in our team and how, in the end, he went down fighting as bravely as any man who ever served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

But grief like Patsy suffered is very hard to assuage. I know she felt her loss had smashed her life irrevocably, though she would try to put it together. But she sat with Danny’s two big dogs, and before I went, she said simply, “I just know there will never be another man like Danny.”

No argument from me about that.

As the year drew to an end, my injuries improved but remained, and I was posted back to Coronado. I detached from SDVT 1 and joined SEAL Team 5, where I was appointed leading petty officer (LPO) to Alfa Platoon. Like all SEAL platoons, it has a near-clockwork engine. The officer is responsible, the chief is in charge, the LPO runs it. They even gave me a desk, and the commanding officer, Commander Rico Lenway, instantly became like a father to me, as did Master Chief Pete Naschek, a super guy and veteran of damn near everywhere.

But it was a very reflective time for me, returning to Coronado, where I had not lived since BUD/S seven years ago. I walked back down to the beach where I’d first learned the realities of life as a Navy SEAL and what was expected and what I must tolerate; the cold, the freezing cold and the pain; the ability to obey an order instantly, without question, without rancor, the bedrocks of our discipline.

Right here I’d run, jumped, heaved, pushed ’em out, swum, floundered, and strived to within an inch of my life. I’d somehow kept going while others fell by the wayside. A million hopes and dreams had been smashed right here on this tide-washed sand. But not mine, and I had a funny feeling that for me this beach would forever be haunted by the ghost of the young, struggling Marcus Luttrell, laboring to keep up.

I walked back to my first barracks and nearly jumped out of my boots when that howling decom plant screamed into action. And I went and stood by the grinder, where the SEAL commanders had finally offered me warm wishes after presenting me with my Trident. Where I had first shaken the hand of Admiral Joe Maguire.

I looked at the silent bell outside the BUD/S office and at the place where the dropouts leave their helmets. Soon there would be more helmets, when the new BUD/S class began. Last time I was here I’d been in dress uniform, along with a group of immaculately turned-out new SEALs, many of whom I had subsequently served with.

And it occurred to me that any one of them, on any given day, would have done all the same things I had done in my last combat mission in the Hindu Kush. I wasn’t any different. I was just, I hoped, the same Texas country boy who’d come through the greatest training system on earth, with the greatest bunch of guys anyone could ever meet. The SEALs, the warriors, the front line of United States military muscle. I still get a lump in my throat when I think of who we all are.

I remember my back ached a bit as I stood there on the grinder, lost in my own thoughts, and my wrist, as ever, hurt, pending another operation. And I suppose I knew deep down I would never be quite the same physically, never as combat-hard as I once was, because I cannot manage the running and climbing. Still, I never was Olympic standard!

But I did live my dream, and then some, and I guess I’ll be asked many times whether it had all been worth it in the end. And my answer will always be the same one I gave so often on my first day.

“Affirmative, sir.” Because I came through it, and I have my memories, and I wouldn’t have traded any of it, not for the whole world. I’m a United States Navy SEAL.