Lone survivor: the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL team 10 (25 page)

And once more we all hoisted our packs and set off to the new hiding place. It was only about a thousand yards, but it took us an hour, moving along, and then up, the mountain, right onto that granite finger at the end of the ridge. And when we got there, I had to agree it was perfect, offering a brilliant angle on the village for the lens, the spotting scope, and the bullet. It had sensational all-around vision. If Sharmak and his gang of villains were there, we’d get him. As Mikey observed, “That guy couldn’t get to the goddamned communal shitter without us seeing him.”

Danny’s reply was not suitable for a family story such as this, entailing as it did the possible blasting of one of Sharmak’s principal working parts.

I stood there gazing at our new mountain stronghold with its massive, sheer drops all around. It was perfect, but it was also highly dangerous. If an attacking force came up on us, especially at night, we’d have no choice but to fight our way out. If someone started firing RPGs at us, we’d all be blown to pieces. There was only one way out, the way we had come. A skilled strategist like Sharmak could have blockaded us out here on this barren, stony point, and we’d have needed to kill a lot of guys to get out. And there was the ever present, disquieting thought that Sharmak’s buddy bin Laden might also be in the area — with probably the biggest al Qaeda force we’d ever faced.

But in its way, this place was perfect, with the most commanding views any surveillance team could wish for. We just somehow had to burrow into this loose, rocky shale, keep our heads down, stay camouflaged, and concentrate. We’d be okay as long as no one saw us. But I still had a very uneasy feeling. So did the others.

We all had something to eat, more water, and then we lay there facedown, quietly steaming as the sun dried our clothes. It was now hotter than hell, and I was lying under a felled log, jammed into the curve right against the wood, my feet out behind me. But unhappily, I was on top of a stinging nettle that was driving me mad. I could not, of course, move one muscle. Who knew if a pair of long-range binoculars was trained on us at this very moment?

I was on glass, silently using the scope and binos. Murph was fifty yards away, positioned higher than me among some rocks. Axe was to my right, perched in an old tree stump hollow. Danny was down to the left in the last of the trees with the radio, hunkered down, the only one of us with any shade from the burning sun. It was approaching noon, and the sun was directly in the south, high, really high, almost straight above us.

We could not be seen from below. And there was definitely no human being level with or above us. At least, not on this SEAL’s mountain. We only had to wait, stay very still, shut up, and concentrate, four disciplines at which we were all expert.

It was deathly quiet up there, just as silent as the night. And the silence was broken only by the occasional terse exchange between one SEAL and another, usually aimed toward Danny’s privileged position in the shade, out of the direct rays of the sweltering mountain sun. They were not particularly professional exchanges either, lacking grace and understanding.

“Hey, Danny, wanna switch places?”

“Fuck you!”

That type of thing. Nothing else. Not another sound to drift into the mountain air. But suddenly I did hear a sound, which carried directly to the southwest side of my felled tree. The unmistakable noise of soft footsteps right above me. Jesus Christ! I was lucky I didn’t need to change my pants.

And just as suddenly, there was a guy, wearing a turban and carrying a fucking ax. He jumped off the log, right over the top of me. I damn near fainted with shock. I just wasn’t expecting it. I wheeled around, grabbed my rifle, and pointed it straight at him, which I considered might at least discourage him from beheading me. He was plainly more startled than I was, and he dropped the ax.

And then I saw the other Axe, standing up and aiming his rifle right at the guy’s turban. “You must have seen him,” I snapped at him. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? He nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Just didn’t want to make any noise,” said Axe. “I drew a bead on him and kept him in my sights until he reached your log. One false move, I’d have killed him right there.”

I told the guy to siddown, against the log. And then something ridiculous happened. About a hundred goats, all with little bells around their necks, came trotting up the mountain, swarming all around the spot where we were now standing. Then up over the hill came two more guys. All of us were now surrounded by goats. And I motioned for them to join their colleague on the ground against the log. That’s the Afghans, not the goats.

Finally, Mikey and Danny made their way up through the bleating herd and saw immediately what was going on. Like me, they noted that one of the three was just a kid, around fourteen years old. I tried to ask them if they were Taliban, and they all shook their heads, the older men saying, in English, “No Tali-ban...no Taliban.”

I gave the kid one of my power bars, and he scowled at me. Just put it down on a rock next to him, with no thanks or nod of appreciation. The two adults glared at us, making it obvious they disliked us intensely. Of course, they were probably wondering what the hell we were doing wandering about their farm with enough weapons and ammunition to conquer an entire Afghan province.

The question was, What did we do now? They were very obviously goatherds, farmers from the high country. Or, as it states in the pages of the Geneva Convention, unarmed civilians. The strictly correct military decision would still be to kill them without further discussion, because we could not know their intentions.

How could we know if they were affiliated with a Taliban militia group or sworn by some tribal blood pact to inform the Taliban leaders of anything suspicious-looking they found in the mountains? And, oh boy, were we suspicious-looking.

The hard fact was, if these three Afghan scarecrows ran off to find Sharmak and his men, we were going to be in serious trouble, trapped out here on this mountain ridge. The military decision was clear: these guys could not leave there alive. I just stood there, looking at their filthy beards, rough skin, gnarled hands, and hard, angry faces. These guys did not like us. They showed no aggression, but neither did they offer or want the hand of friendship.

Axelson was our resident academic as well as our Trivial Pursuit king. And Mikey asked him what he considered we should do. “I think we should kill them, because we can’t let them go,” he replied, with the pure, simple logic of the born intellect.

“And you, Danny?”

“I don’t really give a shit what we do,” he said. “You want me to kill ’em, I’ll kill ’em. Just give me the word. I only work here.”

“Marcus?”

“Well, until right now I’d assumed killing ’em was our only option. I’d like to hear what you think, Murph.”

Mikey was thoughtful. “Listen, Marcus. If we kill them, someone will find their bodies real quick. For a start, these fucking goats are just going to hang around. And when these guys don’t get home for their dinner, their friends and relatives are going to head straight out to look for them, especially for this fourteen-year-old. The main problem is the goats. Because they can’t be hidden, and that’s where people will look.

“When they find the bodies, the Taliban leaders will sing to the Afghan media. The media in the U.S.A. will latch on to it and write stuff about the brutish U.S. Armed Forces. Very shortly after that, we’ll be charged with murder. The murder of innocent unarmed Afghan farmers.”

I had to admit, I had not really thought about it quite like that. But there was a terrible reality about Mikey’s words. Was I afraid of these guys? No. Was I afraid of their possible buddies in the Taliban? No. Was I afraid of the liberal media back in the U.S.A.? Yes. And I suddenly flashed on the prospect of many, many years in a U.S. civilian jail alongside murderers and rapists.

And yet...as a highly trained member of the U.S. Special Forces, deep in my warrior’s soul I knew it was nuts to let these goatherds go. I tried to imagine what the great military figures of the past would have done. Napoleon? Patton? Omar Bradley? MacArthur? Would they have made the ice-cold military decision to execute these cats because they posed a clear and present danger to their men?

If these Afghans blew the whistle on us, we might all be killed, right out here on this rocky, burning-hot promontory, thousands and thousands of miles from home, light-years from help. The potential force against us was too great. To let these guys go on their way was military suicide.

All we knew was Sharmak had between 80 and 200 armed men. I remember taking the middle number, 140, and asking myself how I liked the odds of 140 to 4. That’s 35 to 1. Not much. I looked at Mikey and told him, “Murph, we gotta get some advice.”

We both turned to Danny, who had fired up the comms system and was valiantly trying to get through to HQ. We could see him becoming very frustrated, like all comms operators do when they cannot get a connection. He kept trying, and we were rapidly coming to the conclusion the goddamned radio was up the creek.

“That thing need new batteries?” I asked him.

“No. It’s fine, but they won’t fucking answer me.”

The minutes went by. The goatherds sat still, Axe and Murph with their rifles aimed straight at them, Danny acting like he could have thrown the comms system over the goddamned cliff.

“They won’t answer,” he said through gritted teeth. “I don’t know why. It’s like no one’s there.”

“There must be someone there,” said Murph, and I could hear the anxiety in his voice.

“Well, there isn’t,” said Danny.

“Murphy’s god-awful law,” I said. “Not you, Mikey, that other prick, the god of screwups.”

No one laughed. Not even me. And the dull realization dawned on us: we were on our own and had to make our own decision.

Mike Murphy said quietly, “We’ve got three options. We plainly don’t want to shoot these guys because of the noise. So, number one, we could just kill them quietly and hurl the bodies over the edge. That’s probably a thousand-foot drop. Number two is we kill them right here, cover ’em up as best we can with rocks and dirt.

“Either way we get the hell out and say nothing. Not even when the story comes out about the murdered Afghan goatherds. And some fucking headline back home which reads, ‘Navy SEALs Under Suspicion.’

“Number three, we turn ’em loose, and still get the hell out, in case the Taliban come looking.”

He stared at us. I can remember it just like it was yesterday. Axe said firmly, “We’re not murderers. No matter what we do. We’re on active duty behind enemy lines, sent here by our senior commanders. We have a right to do everything we can to save our own lives. The military decision is obvious. To turn them loose would be wrong.”

If this came to a vote, as it might, Axe was going to recommend the execution of the three Afghans. And in my soul, I knew he was right. We could not possibly turn them loose. But my trouble is, I have another soul. My Christian soul. And it was crowding in on me. Something kept whispering in the back of my mind, it would be wrong to execute these unarmed men in cold blood. And the idea of doing that and then covering our tracks and slinking away like criminals, denying everything, would make it more wrong.

To be honest, I’d have been happier to stand ’em up and shoot them right out in front. And then leave them. They’d just be three guys who’d found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Casualties of war. And we’d just have to defend ourselves when our own media and politicians back in the U.S.A. tried to hang us on a murder charge.

None of us liked the sneaky options. I could tell that. I guess all four of us were Christians, and if we were thinking like ordinary law-abiding U.S. citizens, we would find it very hard to carry out the imperative military decision, the overriding one, the decision any great commander would have made: these guys can never leave this place alive. The possible consequences of that were unacceptable. Militarily.

Lieutenant Murphy said, “Axe?”

“No choice.” We all knew what he meant.

“Danny?”

“As before. I don’t give a shit what you decide. Just tell me what to do.”

“Marcus?”

“I don’t know, Mikey.”

“Well, let me tell you one more time. If we kill these guys we have to be straight about it. Report what we did. We can’t sneak around this. Just so you all understand, their bodies will be found, the Taliban will use it to the max. They’ll get it in the papers, and the U.S. liberal media will attack us without mercy. We will almost certainly be charged with murder. I don’t know how you guys feel about that...Marcus, I’ll go with you. Call it.”

I just stood there. I looked again at these sullen Afghan farmers. Not one of them tried to say a word to us. They didn’t need to. Their glowering stares said plenty. We didn’t have rope to bind them. Tying them up to give us more time to establish a new position wasn’t an option.

I looked Mikey right in the eye, and I said, “We gotta let ’em go.”

It was the stupidest, most southern-fried, lamebrained decision I ever made in my life. I must have been out of my mind. I had actually cast a vote which I knew could sign our death warrant. I’d turned into a fucking liberal, a half-assed, no-logic nitwit, all heart, no brain, and the judgment of a jackrabbit.

At least, that’s how I look back on those moments now. Probably not then, but for nearly every waking hour of my life since. No night passes when I don’t wake in a cold sweat thinking of those moments on that mountain. I’ll never get over it. I cannot get over it. The deciding vote was mine, and it will haunt me till they rest me in an East Texas grave.