Lone survivor: the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL team 10 (37 page)

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.