Lone survivor: the eyewitness account of Operation Redwing and the lost heroes of SEAL team 10 (44 page)

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.