Lone survivor: the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL team 10 (34 page)

But it’s a lot harder to hit a moving target than you might think, especially one traveling as quick as I was, out of control, racing between rocks and trees. And they kept missing. Finally I came to a stop in a flatter area, and of course my pursuers had not made the downward journey nearly as fast as I had. I had had a decent start on them, and to my amazement I had come to little harm. I guess I missed all the obstacles, and the earth beneath me was softish and loose packed. Also, I still had my rifle, which to my mind was a bigger miracle than Our Lady of Lourdes.

I began to crawl, going for cover behind a tree and trying to assess the enemy positions. I could see one guy, the nearest of them, just standing and pointing at me, yelling at two others, who were out to the right. Before I could make any kind of a decision, they both opened fire on me again. I did not have much of a shot at them, because they were still maybe a hundred yards up the cliff face and the trees were shielding them.

Trouble was, I could not stand properly, and aiming the rifle was a problem, so I decided to make a break for it, on my hands and knees, and wait for a better spot to take them out. I crawled, not fast but steady, over terrible terrain, full of little hills and dipping gullies. It could hardly have been better country for a fugitive, which I now was, except I could not walk down the gullies, and I sure as hell couldn’t get down those steep slopes on all fours, not having been born a freakin’ snow leopard.

So every time I reached one of those small precipices, I just threw myself straight off and hoped for a reasonable landing. I did a lot of rolling, and it was a long, bumpy, and painful ride. But it beat the hell out of getting shot up the ass again.

I kept it up for about forty-five minutes, crawling, rolling, and falling, staying out in front of my pursuers, gaining ground on the downward falls, losing it again as they ran up on me. And nowhere on that snaking route down the hills did I find a decent spot to get rid of the gunmen who were hunting me down. The bullets kept flying, and I kept moving. But finally I hit some flatter ground and all around me were big rocks. I decided this would be Marcus’s last stand. Or theirs. One way or another. Although I did not know exactly how many of them there were.

I remember thinking,
Now, how the hell would Morgan get out of this? What would he do?
And it gave me strength, the massive strength of my seven-minutes-older brother. I decided that in this position, he’d wait till he saw the whites of their eyes. No mistakes. So I crawled behind this big rock, checked my magazine, then flipped off the safety catch of my Mark 12. And waited.

I heard them coming but not until they were very, very close. They were not together, which was unnerving, because I could not account for them all. But I could see the spotter now, the guy who was literally tracking me down, not trying to shoot me; he didn’t even carry a rifle. His job was to locate me and then call the others to bring fire down on me. Cheeky little prick.

But it’s the Afghan way. This Sharmak was an excellent delegator. One guy carries the water, another the extra ammunition, and the marksmen don’t have to spend their time searching the terrain. They have a specialist to do this.

This particular specialist was not having much trouble tracking me, probably because I was leaving tracks like a wounded grizzly, scuffing up the ground and bleeding like a stuck pig from both my forehead and my thigh all over the shale.

I moved carefully on my knees around the rock, now with my rifle raised, and there was the Taliban spotter standing right in front of me, not ten feet away — but he had not spotted me.

In that instant I fired, dropped him dead in his tracks. And the force of the bullet knocked him backward, with blood pumping out of his chest. I think I got him straight through the heart, and I heard him hit the deck. But simultaneously right behind me I heard the soft footsteps of the chasing gunmen. I turned around and there were two of them, just above me in the rocks. Searching. I had only split seconds to work, because they were both on me, AKs raised. Fuck! I could get one, but not both.

I went for one of my grenades, ripped out the pin, and threw it straight at them. I think they got a couple of shots away but not in time to get me before I plunged back behind the rock. This was up close and personal, not five feet between us. I was just imploring the Lord to let my grenade explode, and it did, blasting the two Afghans to smithereens, splitting rocks, sending up a sandstorm of earth and sand. Me? I just kept my head well down and hoped to Christ there were no more of them.

It was around this time I began to black out a little, not from the blast of the grenade, just a general blacking-out situation. Everything was catching up with me, and as I lay there waiting for the debris to stop falling out of the sky, I started to feel pretty rotten, dizzy, unsure of myself, shaky. I think I hung around down there behind the rock for a few minutes before I ventured out, still crawling, trying to see if the other Taliban guys were following. But there was nothing.

Obviously, I had to get away from here, because that explosion from the grenade must have attracted some attention somewhere. I sat there for a few more minutes, marveling at the silence, and pondered the world. And the conclusion I reached was I needed to learn to fight all over again, not like a Navy SEAL, but like a secretive Afghan mountain man. At least, if I planned to stay alive.

The last hour had taught me a few major lessons, the main one being I must gain the ability to fight alone, in direct contrast to everything I had ever been taught. SEALs, as you now know, fight in teams, only in teams, each man relying entirely on the others to do exactly the right thing. That’s how we do it, fighting as one in a team of four or maybe ten or even twenty, but always as one unit, one mind, one strategy. We are, instinctively, always backing up, always covering, always moving to plug the gap or pave the way. That’s what makes us great.

But up here, being hunted down, all alone — this was entirely another game. And first I had to learn to move like an Afghan mountain man, stealthily, staying out of sight, making no sound, causing no disturbance. Of course, we had learned all that back in California, but not on the heightened scale which was required up here, against a native enemy even more stealthy, quiet, and unseen than we are.

Crawling around on all fours was not going to help. I had to concentrate, work myself into the correct military position before I pounced on my prey. I had to conserve ammunition, make certain I was going to kill before I carried out the deed, and above all try to stay out of sight and not betray myself by lumbering around like the wounded grizzly I was.

I resolved that when I next had to strike out against my enemy, it would be with our customary deadly force, always ensuring I held the element of surprise. Those are the tactics that invariably win conflicts for the truly ruthless underdog like the mujahideen, al Qaeda, and, from now on, me.

I dragged myself back up onto my hands and knees. I listened carefully, like an eager hound dog, turning my head sideways to the wind. Nothing. Not a sound. Maybe they’d given up or perhaps they considered I was probably dead. Either way I was out of there.

With my rifle jammed in my belt I began moving west, toward the water. It was still way below me, and since I was trying to avoid falling down this freakin’ mountain again, I would zigzag my way down the steep slopes until I found it.

I’ve long lost count of the distance, but it felt like three or four miles, crawling along, resting, praying, hoping, trying my best, just like Hell Week. I think I did black out two or three times. But finally I heard the waterfall. I heard it hissing in the afternoon sun, tumbling off a high rock and into a deep pool before running down to the lower levels of the stream.

Somehow I arrived right on the top of that waterfall, maybe twenty feet above the flow. It really was beautiful, the sun glinting on the surface and all around it the trees on the mountain, high above the valley, on the edge of which was an Afghan village, way, way below me, maybe a mile.

For the first time for as long as I could remember, no one was trying to hunt me down. I could hear nothing, I could see no one, everything seemed tranquil. I’d plainly taken out the scouting party, because if there’d been anyone sneaking along behind me, I’d have heard it, believe me. I might not yet move like a tribesman, but I had developed the hearing of one.

I’d been without water for so long, I figured another half a minute would not make much difference, and so I pulled out my rifle scope to take a look down at the village from this excellent vantage point. I forced myself up, hanging on to a rock with my left hand, right above the water.

The view from there was outstanding, and I could see the village, its upper houses clinging to the mountain, built right into the rock face by guys who were obviously craftsmen. It was like something out of a child’s picture book, like the home of the wicked witch or something, gingerbread houses on a big rock-candy mountain.

I put the scope away, and, not daring to look at the state of my left leg, I took a step forward, trying to find a spot where I could begin to slide down on my backside to the waiting ice-cold pool below me. That’s when that left leg finally gave way. Perhaps it was the newly shot part, or maybe the blown-up parts, or just the tendons which could take no more strain. But that leg buckled and flung me forward, really badly.

I twisted and fell headlong downward, sliding over loose, smooth ground, shale and sand, gaining speed rapidly, tumbling over, feet in the air, sometimes digging the toes of my boots in, fighting for a foothold, any hold would be fine. I rocketed straight past that lower pool and kept right on going. I can’t even imagine the speed I was going, but I could see it was a hell of a long way to the bottom, and I could not stop.

Up ahead of me was a sapling, and I lunged at it as I shot headlong past, trying to get a hold of anything to slow me down. My fingers closed on its thin, whippy trunk and I tried to pull myself up, but I was just going too fast, and it flipped me right over and landed me on my back. For a fleeting moment, I thought I was dead.

Didn’t make much difference whether I was dead or alive, my battered body just kept going for almost a thousand feet, then the mountain kind of swerved and I went with it, tumbling and sliding for another five hundred feet to what was more or less the bottom of that escarpment. I landed in a heap, feeling like I’d broken every bone in my body. I was out of breath, blood was trickling down my face from the cut on my forehead, and I generally felt just about as sorry for myself as it’s possible to be.

You’re probably not going to believe this, but my rifle was again right beside me, and once more it was the thirst that saved me. Instead of just lying there, a bloodstained heap in the hot afternoon sun, I thought of that water, now right above me. At least it had been when I’d flashed past it a few moments ago.

I knew I had to climb back up there or die. So I grabbed my rifle and began the long crawl to the drink that should restore my life. I scrambled and slipped over the loose ground, and I am certain by now you have comprehended what a truly horrible mountaineer I am. I can only plead the gradient. It was unbelievably steep, not quite sheer but almost. A great rock climber would probably have taken full gear in order to scale it.

Personally I’m not sure which I was worse at, going up or falling down. But it was two hundred feet to that water. It took me two more hours. I blacked out twice, and when I reached it, I plunged my head in, just to free up my tongue and throat. Then I washed my burning face, cleaned the gash just below my hairline, and tried to get the blood to wash off the back of my leg. I couldn’t tell whether the sniper’s bullet was still lodged in there or not.

All I knew was I needed to drink a lot of water and then try to attract attention and get to a hospital. Otherwise I did not think I would survive. I decided to move up a few yards to where the water was lapping off a rock and splashing into a small pool. I lowered my head and drank. It was the sweetest water I had ever tasted.

And I was just getting into this real luxury when I noticed there were three guys standing right above me, two of them with AKs. For a moment I thought I was hallucinating. I stopped drinking. And I remember I was talking to myself, just mumbling really, flicking between reality and dream.

Then I realized one of them was yelling at me, shouting something I was supposed to understand, but in my befuddled state I just couldn’t get it. I was like a badly wounded animal, ready to fight to the end. I understood nothing, not the hand of friendship, not the possibility of human decency. The only sensation I could react to was threat. And everything was a threat. Cornered. Scared. Suddenly afraid of dying. Ready to lash out at anything. That was me.

The only thought I had was
I’ll kill these guys...just give me my chance.
I rolled away from the pool and held my rifle in my get-ready position. Then I began to crawl away over the rocks, braced all the time for a volley of AK bullets to rip into me and finally finish me off.

But I “reasoned” I had no choice. I would have to risk getting killed by these guys before I could hit back. Dimly I recall that first character was still yelling his head off, literally screaming at me. Whatever the hell he was saying seemed irrelevant. But he sounded like the outraged father of one of the many Afghani tribesmen who’d been removed from the battlefield by the men seconded to SEAL Team 10. Probably by me.

As I made my way, slowly, painfully, almost blindly to the bigger rocks up ahead, it did cross my mind that if these guys really wanted to shoot me they could have done it by now. In fact, they could have done it any time they wanted. But the Taliban had been hunting me down for too long. All I wanted was cover and a fair position from which to strike back.