Текст книги "Lone survivor"

Автор книги: Marcus Luttrell

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

We did not have a shovel, and Mikey and Axe had to cover the rope with trees, weeds, and foliage. While they were completing this, I opened up comms to the AC-130 Spectre gunship, which I knew was way up there somewhere monitoring us. I passed my message succinctly:

“Sniper Two One, this is Glimmer Three – preparing to move.”

“Roger that.”

It was the last time I spoke to them. And now we were assembled for our journey – about four miles. Our route was preplanned, along a mountain ridge that stretched out into a long right-hand dogleg. Our waypoints were marked on our map, and the GPS numbers, detailing the precise position from the satellite, were clear, numbered 1, 2, and 3.

That was just about the only thing that was straightforward. Because the terrain was absolutely horrible, the moonless night was still pitch black, and our route was along a mountain face so steep, it was a goddamned miracle we didn’t all fall off and break our necks. Also, it was raining like a bastard and freezing cold. Within about ten minutes we were absolutely soaked, like Hell Week.

It was really slow going, clambering and slipping, stumbling and looking for footholds, handholds, anything. All of us fell down the mountain in the first half hour. But it was worse for me, because the other three were all expert mountain climbers and much smaller and lighter than I was. I was slower over the ground because of my size, and I kept falling behind. They had a rest while I was catching up, and then when I got there, Mikey signaled to go straight on. No rest for Marcus. “Fuck you, Murphy,” I said without even a pretense of good nature.

In fact, conditions were so bad it was a lousy idea to rest up. You could freeze up here, soaked to the skin as we were, in about five minutes. So we kept going, always upward, keeping our body heat as high as possible. But it was still miserable. We never stopped ducking down under the trees and hanging limbs, holding on if we could, trying not to fall off the mountain again.

In the end we reached the top of the cliff face and found a freshly used trail. It was obvious the Taliban had been through here recently in substantial numbers, and this was good news for us. It meant Sharmak and his men could not be far away, and right now we were hunting them.

At the top, we suddenly walked out into an enormous flat field of very high grass, and the moon came out briefly. The pasture stretched away in front of us like some kind of paradise lit up in the pale light. We all stopped in our tracks because it looked amazingly beautiful.

But an enemy could easily have been lurking in that grass, and an instant later we ducked down, staying silent. Axe tried to find a path through it, then tried to make his own path. But he simply could not. The pasture was too thick, and it nearly covered him. Before long he returned and told us, poetically, there in the southeast Asian moonlight, in these ancient storied lands right up near the roof of the world, “Guys, that was totally fucking hopeless.”

To our right was the deep valley, somewhere down which our target village was located. We’d already hit waypoint 1, and our only option was to find another trail and keep moving along the flank of the escarpment. And then, very suddenly, a great fog bank rolled in and drifted off the mountaintop beneath us and across the valley.

I remember looking down at it, moonlit clouds, so white, so pure, it looked as if we could have walked right across it to another mountain. Through the NODS (night optic device) it was a spectacular sight, a vision perhaps of heaven, set in a land of hellish undercurrents and flaming hatreds.

While we stood up there, transfixed by our surroundings, Mikey worked out that we were just beyond waypoint 1, and we still somehow had to proceed on our northerly course, though not through the high grass. We fanned out and Danny found a trail that led around the mountain, more or less where we wanted to go. But it was not easy, because by now the moon had disappeared and it was again raining like hell.

We must have gone about another half mile across terrain that was just as bad as anything we had encountered all night. Then, unexpectedly, I could smell a house and goat manure, even through the rain; an Afghan farmhouse. We had nearly walked straight into the front yard. And now we had to be very careful. We ducked down, crawling on our hands and knees through thick undergrowth, staying out of sight, right on the escarpment.

Miserable as all this was, conditions were really perfect for a SEAL operation behind enemy lines. Without night-vision goggles like ours, people couldn’t possibly see us. The rain and wind had certainly driven everyone else under cover, and anyone still awake probably thought only a raving lunatic could be out there in such weather. And they were right. All four of us had taken quite heavy falls, probably one in every five hundred yards we traveled. We were covered in mud and as wet as BUD/S phase two trainees. It was true. Only a lunatic, or a SEAL, could willingly walk around like this.

We could not see that much ourselves. Nothing except that farmhouse, really. And then, quite suddenly, the moon came out again, very bright, and we had to move swiftly into the shadows, our cover stolen by that pale, luminous light in the sky.

We kept going, moving away from the farm, still moving upward on the mountainside, through quite reasonable vegetation. But then all of my own personal dreads came out and whacked us. We walked straight out of the trees into a barren, harsh, sloping hillside, the main escarpment set steeply on a northern rise.

There was not a tree. Not a bush. Just wet shale, mud, small rocks, and boulders. The moon was directly in front of us, casting our long shadows onto the slope.

This was my nightmare, ever since I first stared at those plans back in the briefing room: the four of us starkly silhouetted against a treeless mountain above a Taliban-occupied village. We were an Afghan lookout’s finest moment, unmissable. We were Webb and Davis’s worst dream, snipers uncovered, out in the open, trapped in nature’s spotlight with nowhere to hide.

“Holy shit,” said Mikey.

7

An Avalanche of Gunfire

Down the mountain, from every angle. Axe flanked left, trying to cut off the downward trail, firing nonstop. Mikey was blasting away...shouting,...“Marcus, no options now, buddy, kill ’em all!”

We edged back the way we had come, into the shadows cast by the last of the trees. It was not far back to waypoint 2, and we took a GPS reading right there. Mikey handed over navigational duties to Axe, and I groaned. Moving up and down these steep cliffs was really tough for me, but the streamlined, expert mountaineer Matthew Axelson could hop around like a fucking antelope. I reminded him of those two correlating facts, and all three of my teammates started laughing.

For some reason best known to our resident king of Trivial Pursuit, he led us off the high mountain ridge and down toward the valley which spread out from the elbow of the dogleg. It was as if he had decided to eliminate the dogleg entirely and take the straight line directly across to waypoint 3. Which was all fine and dandy, except it meant a one-mile walk going steeply downward, followed, inevitably, by a one-mile walk going steeply upward. That was the part I was not built for.

Nonetheless that was our new route. After about fifty yards I was struggling. I couldn’t keep up while going down, never mind up. They could hear me sliding and cursing in the rear, and I could hear Axe and Mikey laughing up front. And this was not a fitness problem. I was as fit as any of them, and I was not in any way out of breath. I was just too big to track a couple of mountain goats. Laws of nature, right?

Our path was inescapably zigzagged because Axe was always trying to find cover, stay out of the moonlight, as we grappled our way back up the cliff to waypoint 3. We reached the top approximately one hour before daylight. Our GPS numbers were correct, as planned back at home base. And right up there on top of this finger of pure granite, Mikey picked a spot where we could lay up.

He chose a position over the brow of the summit, maybe eighty feet down, right on the uppermost escarpment. There were trees, some of them close together, but directly beyond them was more barren land. We dropped our heavy loads, the four-mile journey complete, and tipped the grit and stones out of our boots. They always find a way in.

Medically, we were all okay, no injuries. But we were exhausted after our grueling seven-hour hike up and down this freakin’ mountain. Especially Mikey and me, because we both suffered from insomnia, particularly prepping for an operation like this, and we hadn’t slept the night before. Plus it was freezing cold, and we were still soaked to the skin even though the rain had stopped. So, for that matter, was everything we carried with us.

Danny had the radio up and he informed HQ, and any patrolling aircraft, that we were in position and good to go. But this was a little hasty, because right after that communication, the moon came out once more, and we swept the area with our NODs and couldn’t see a damn thing. Not even the village we were supposed to be surveying in search of Sharmak. The trees were in the way. And we could not move out of the trees because that put us back on exposed barren ground, where there were a few very small tree stumps still in the ground but zero decent cover. Jesus Christ.

This was plainly a logging area, maybe abandoned, but a place where a lot of trees had been cut down. Away to our right, the night sky above the highest peaks was brightening. Dawn was near.

Danny and I sat on a rock in deep conversation, trying to work out how bad this really was and what to do. It was every frogman’s dread, an operation where the terrain was essentially unknown and turned out to be as bad as or worse than anyone had ever dreamed. Danny and I reached identical conclusions. This really sucked.

Mikey came over to talk briefly. And we all stared at the brightness in the sky to the east. Lieutenant Murphy, as command controller, called the shot. “We’re moving in five.” And so we picked up our heavy loads once more and set off back the way we’d come. After a hundred yards we found a down trail on the other side of the ridge, walked below the waypoint, and selected a prime spot in the trees overlooking the village, which was more than a mile and a half away.

We settled in, jamming ourselves against trees and rocks, trying to get into a position where we could rest on this almost sheer escarpment. I glugged from my water canteen and, to tell the truth, I felt like a plant on the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Danny was in his yoga position, sitting cross-legged like a goddamned snake charmer, his back against his tree.

Axe, ever alert, stood guard, blending into the mountain to my left, his rifle primed despite the quiet. He was probably doing a New York Times crossword which he’d memorized word for word in his head. He did not get much peace, though. My tree turned out to be some type of a mulberry, and since I could not even doze off, I spent the time hurling the berries at Axe on account of his shaky attitude during the climb back up the mountain.

Then another major fog bank rolled in and settled over all of us and the valley below. There was again no way to see the village, and the trouble with fog banks is they are likely to turn up in the same place often. It was plain we could not remain here in effective operational mode. Once more we had to leave.

Mikey and Axe were poring over the maps and scanning the mountain terrain above us, where there was less fog. Danny and I had to keep looking toward the village, trying to use the glass, peering at whatever there was to be seen. Which was nothing. Finally Mikey said he was leaving, alone, just taking his rifle, in search of a better spot. Then he changed his mind and took Axe with him. And I didn’t blame him. This place was enough to give anyone the creeps, because you never knew who might be watching.

Danny and I waited, and the sun climbed high over the peaks and began to dry our wet clothes. The others came back after maybe an hour, and Mikey said they had found an excellent place for observing the village but that cover was sparse. I think he considered there would be some heightened risk in this operation, no matter what, because of the terrain. But if we did not take that risk we’d likely be up here till Christmas.

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.

Mikey nodded. “Okay,” he said, “I guess that’s two votes to one, Danny abstains. We gotta let ’em go.”

I remember no one said anything. We could just hear the short staccato sounds of the goats: ba-aaaa...baaa...baaa. And the tinkling of the little bells. It provided a fitting background chorus to a decision which had been made in fucking fairyland. Not on the battlefield where we, like it or not, most certainly were.

Axe said again, “We’re not murderers. And we would not have been murderers, whatever we’d done.”

Mikey was sympathetic to his view. He just said, “I know, Axe, I know, buddy. But we just took a vote.”

I motioned for the three goatherds to get up, and I signaled them with my rifle to go on their way. They never gave one nod or smile of gratitude. And they surely knew we might very well have killed them. They turned toward the higher ground behind us.

I can see them now. They put their hands behind their backs in that peculiar Afghan way and broke into a very fast jog, up the steep gradient, the goats around us now trotting along to join them. From somewhere, a skinny, mangy brown dog appeared dolefully and joined the kid. That dog was a gruesome Afghan reminder of my own robust chocolate Labrador, Emma, back home on the ranch, always bursting with health and joy.

I guess that’s when I woke up and stopped worrying about the goddamned American liberals. “This is bad,” I said. “This is real bad. What the fuck are we doing?”

Axe shook his head. Danny shrugged. Mikey, to be fair, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Like me, he was a man who knew a massive mistake had just been made. More chilling than anything we had ever done together. Where were those guys headed? Were we crazy or what?

Thoughts raced through my mind. We’d had no comms, no one we could turn to for advice. Thus far we had no semblance of a target in the village. We were in a very exposed position, and we appeared to have no access to air support. We couldn’t even report in. Worse yet, we had no clue as to where the goatherds were headed. When things go this bad, it’s never one thing. It’s every damn thing.

We watched them go, disappearing up the mountain, still running, still with their hands behind their backs. And the sense that we had done something terrible by letting them go was all-pervading. I could just tell. Not one of us was able to speak. We were like four zombies, hardly knowing whether to crash back into our former surveillance spots or leave right away.

“What now?” asked Danny.

Mikey began to gather his gear. “Move in five,” he said.

We packed up our stuff, and right there in the noonday sun, we watched the goatherds, far on the high horizon, finally disappear from view. By my watch, it was precisely nineteen minutes after their departure, and the mood of sheer gloom enveloped us all.

We set off up the mountain, following in the hoofprints of the goats and their masters. We moved as fast as we could, but it took us between forty minutes and one hour to cover the same steep ground. At the top, we could no longer see them. Mountain goats, mountain herders. They were all the goddamned same, and they could move like rockets up in the passes.

We searched around for the trail we had arrived by, found it, and set off back toward the initial spot, the one we had pulled out of because of the poor angle on the village and then the dense fog bank. We tried the radio and still could not make a connection with home base.

Our offensive policy was in pieces. But we were headed for probably the best defensive position we had found since we got here, on the brink of the mountain wall, maybe forty yards from the summit, with tree cover and decent concealment. Right now we sensed we must remain in strictly defensive mode, lie low for a while and hope the Taliban had not been alerted or if they had that we would be too well hidden for them to locate us. We were excellent practitioners of lying low and hiding.