Lone Survivor

by Marcus Luttrell

  Gulab was sanguine. And since we were growing very efficient at communicating, he was able to tell me he knew it was the first time I had been able to sleep for a long time, and he thought it would be better to leave me. Anyway, he said, we could not possibly have gone out in that weather because it was too dangerous. The overnight walk to Monagee had been out of the question.

  One way and another, I took all this pretty badly. I actually stormed out of the house, racked by yet another disappointment; after the helicopters that never came, Sarawa’s sudden vanishing while I was in the cave, the village elder taking off without me. And now the trip to Monagee in ruins. Christ. Could I ever believe a goddamned word these people said?

  I’d been asleep for so long, I decided to indulge myself in a luxurious and prolonged pee. I walked outside wearing my harness and a very sour expression, temporarily forgetting entirely that I owed my life to the people of this village. I left my rifle behind and walked slowly down the steep hill, which was now as slippery as all hell because of the rain.

  At the conclusion of this operation, I took myself up the hill a little way and sat down on the drying grass, mainly because I did not wish to be any ruder to Gulab than I already had been, but also because I just wanted to sit alone for a while and nurse my thoughts.

  I still considered my best bet would be to find a way to get to the nearest American military base. And that was still Monagee. I stared up at the towering mountain I would have to cross, the rain and dew now glinting off it in the early morning sun, and I think I visibly flinched.

  It really would be one heck of a climb, and my leg was aching already, not at the thought of it but because I’d walked a hundred yards; bullet wounds tend to take a while to heal up. Also, despite Sarawa’s bold efforts, that leg was, I knew, still full of shrapnel, which would not be much of a help toward a pain-free stroll over the peak.

  Anyway, I just sat there on the side of the mountain and tried to clear my mind, to decide whether there was anything else I could do except sit around and wait for a new night when Gulab and the guys could assist me to Monagee. And all the time, I was weighing the possibility of the Taliban coming in on some vengeful attack in retribution for yesterday’s bombardment.

  The fact was, I was a living, breathing target as well as a distress signal. There sat the mighty Sharmak, with his second in command, “Commodore Abdul,” and a large, trained army, all of them with essentially nothing else to do except kill me. And if they managed to make it into the village and hit the house I was staying in, I’d be lucky to fend them off and avoid a short trip to Pakistan for publicity and execution.

  Christ, those guys would have loved nothing more in all the world than to grab me and announce to the Arab television stations they had defeated one of the top U.S. Navy SEAL teams. Not just defeated, wiped them out in battle, smashed the rescue squad, blown up the helicopter, executed all survivors, and here they had the last one.

  The more I thought about it, the more untenable my position seemed to be. Could the goatherds of Sabray band together and fight shoulder to shoulder to save me? Or would the brutal killers of al Qaeda and the Taliban in the end get their way? It was odd, but I still did not realize the full power of that lokhay. No one had fully explained it to me. I knew there was something, but that ancient tribal law was still a mystery to me.

  I stared around the hills, but I could see no one outside of the village. Gulab and his guys always behaved as if the very mountainside was alive with hidden danger, and while he did not in my mind make much of an alarm clock, he had to be an expert on the bandit country which surrounds his own Sabray.

  It was thus with rising concern that I saw Gulab racing down the hill toward me. He literally dragged me into a standing position and then pulled me down the trail leading to the lower reaches of the village. He was running and trying to make me keep up with him, and he kept shouting, signaling, again and again: Taliban! Taliban are here! In the village! Run, Dr. Marcus, for God’s sake, run!

  He pushed his right shoulder up under my left arm to bear some of my fast-dwindling weight, and I half hobbled, half ran, half fell down the hill. Of course by my own recent standards this was like a stroll on the beach.

  I suddenly realized we might have to fight and I’d left my rifle back in the house. I had my ammunition in the harness, but nothing to fire it with. And now it was my turn to yell, “Gulab! Gulab! Stop! Stop! I don’t have my gun.”

  He replied something I took to be Afghan for “What a complete fucking idiot you’ve turned out to be.”

  But whatever had put the fear of God into him was still right there, and he had no intention of stopping until he had located a refuge for us. We ducked and dived through the lower village trails until he found the house he was looking for. Gulab kicked the door open, rammed it shut behind him, and helped me down onto the floor. And there I sat, unarmed, largely useless, and highly apprehensive about what might happen in the next hour.

  Gulab, without a word, opened the front door and took off at high speed. He went past the window like a rocket, running hard up the gradient, possibly going for the Hindu Kush all-comers 100-meters record. God knows where he was going, but he’d gone.

  Three minutes later he kicked open the door and came charging back into the house. He was carrying my rifle as well as his own AK-47. I had seventy-five rounds left. I think he had more in his own ammunition belt. Gravely he handed me the Mark 12 sniper rifle and said simply, “Taliban, Dr. Marcus. We fight.”

  He looked more serious than I’d ever seen him. Not afraid, just full of determination. Up on that mountain, when he had first seen me, Sarawa had made the decision with his buddies that I, a wounded American, should be granted lokhay. The doctor knew perfectly well from the first moment by that gushing mountain river that the situation might ultimately come to this. Even if I didn’t.

  It was a decision that, right from the start, had affected everyone in the village. I think most people had accepted it, and it had obviously been endorsed by the village elder. I’d seen a few angry faces full of hatred, but they were not in the majority. And now the village chief of law and order, Mohammad Gulab, was prepared to stand by that unspoken vow his people had given to me.

  He was doing it not for personal gain but out of a sense of honor that reached back down the generations, two thousand years of Pashtunwalai tradition: You will defend your guest to the death. I watched Gulab carefully as he rammed a new magazine into his AK. This was a man preparing to step right up to the plate. And I saw that light of goodness in his dark eyes, the way you always do when someone is making a brave and selfless action.

  I thanked Gulab and banged a new magazine into my rifle. I stared out the window and assessed the battlefield. We were low down on almost flat terrain, but the Taliban’s attack would be launched from the higher ground, the way they always preferred it. I wondered how many other rock-and-mud houses in Sabray were also shielding men who were about to fight.

  The situation was serious but not dire. We had excellent cover, and I didn’t think the enemy knew precisely where I was. So far as I could see, the Battle for Murphy’s Ridge represented a two-edged sword. First of all, the tribesmen could be seething with fury about the number of their guys killed in action by Mikey, Axe, Danny, and me. This might even mean a suicide bomber or an attack so reckless they’d risk any number of warriors just to get me. I wasn’t crazy about either option.

  On the other hand, they might be slightly scared at the prospect of facing even one of that tiny American team that had wiped out possibly 50 percent of a Taliban assault force.

  Sure, they knew I was wounded, but they also knew I would be well armed by the villagers, even if I had lost my own rifle. I guessed they would either throw everything at me, the hell with the expense, or take it real steady, fighting their way through the village house by house until they had Gulab and me cornered.

  But an impending attack requires quick, expert planning. I needed to operate fast and
make Gulab understand our tactics. He immediately gave way to my experience, which made me think he had never quite accepted my story about being a doctor. He knew I’d fought on the ridge, and right now he was ready to do my bidding.

  We had two areas to cover, the door and the window. It wouldn’t have been much good if I’d been blasting away through the window at Taliban down the street when a couple of those sneaky little bastards crept through the front door and shot me in the back.

  I explained it was up to Gulab to cover the entrance, to make sure I had the split second I would need to swing around and cut ’em down before they could open fire. Ideally I would have preferred him to issue an early warning that the enemy was coming. That way I might have been able to get into the shadows in the corners and take ’em out maybe six at a time instead of just gunning down the leader.

  Ideally I would have liked a heavy piece of furniture to ram in front of the door, just to buy me a little extra time. But there was no furniture, just those big cushions, which were obviously not sufficiently heavy.

  Anyway, Gulab understood the strategy and nodded fiercely, the way he always did when he was sure of something. “Okay, Marcus,” he said. And it did not escape me, he’d dropped the Dr. part.

  When battle began, Gulab would man the end of the window that gave him the best dual view of the door. I would concentrate on whatever frontal assault might be taking place. I’d need to shoot steadily and straight, wasting nothing, just like Axe and Danny did on the mountain while Mikey called the shots.

  I tried to tell Gulab to stay calm and shoot straight, nothing hysterical. That way we’d win or, at worst, cause a disorderly Taliban retreat.

  He looked a bit vacant. I could tell he was not understanding. So I hit him with an old phrase we always use before a conflict: “Okay, guys, let’s rock ’n’ roll.”

  Matter of fact, that was worse. Gulab thought I was about to give him dancing lessons. It might have been funny if the situation had not been so serious. And then we both heard the opening bursts of gunfire, high up in the village.

  There was a lot of it. Too much. The sheer volume of fire was ridiculous, unless the Taliban were planning to wipe out the entire population of Sabray. And I knew they would not consider that because such a slaughter would surely end all support from these tribal villages up here in the mountains.

  No, they would not do that. They wanted me, but they would never kill another hundred Afghan people, including women and children, in order to get me. The Taliban and their al Qaeda cohorts were mercilessly cruel, but this Ben Sharmak was not stupid.

  Besides, I detected no battlefield rhythm to the gunfire. It was not being conducted with the short, sharp bursts of trained men going for a target. It came in prolonged volleys, and I listened carefully. There was no obvious return of fire, and right then I knew what was happening.

  These lunatics had come rolling out of the trees into the village, firing randomly into the air and aiming at nothing, the way they often do, all jumping up and down and shouting, “Death to the infidel.” Stupid pricks.

  Their loose objective is always to frighten the life out of people, and right now they seemed to be succeeding. I could hear women screaming, children crying, but no return of fire from the tribesmen of Sabray. I knew precisely what that would sound like, and I was not hearing it.

  I looked at Gulab. He was braced for action, leaning in the window with me, one eye on the front door. We both clicked our safety catches open.

  Up above we could still hear the screaming, but the gunfire subsided. Little sonsabitches were probably beating up the kids. Which might have inspired me to get right back up there and take on the whole jihadist army single-handed, but I held back, held my fire, and waited.

  We waited for maybe forty-five minutes and then it was quiet. As if they had never been here. That unseen village calm had returned, there was no sense of panic or sign of injured people. I left it to Gulab to call this one. “Taliban gone,” he said simply.

  “What happens now?” I asked him. “Bagram?”

  Gulab shook his head. “Bagram,” he said. Then he signaled for the umpteenth time, “Helicopter will come.”

  I rolled my eyes heavenward. I’d heard this helicopter crap before. And I had news for Gulab. “Helicopter no come,” I told him.

  “Helicopter come,” he replied.

  As ever, I could not really know what Gulab knew or how he had discovered what was happening. But right now he believed the Taliban had gone into the house where I had been staying and found I was missing. No one had betrayed me, and they had not dared to conduct a house-to-house search for fear of further alienating the people and, in particular, the village elder.

  This armed gang of tribesmen, who were hell-bent on driving out the Americans and the government, could not function up here in these protective mountains entirely alone. Without local support their primitive supply line would perish, and they would rapidly begin to lose recruits. Armies need food, cover, and cooperation, and the Taliban could only indulge in so much bullying before these powerful village leaders decided they preferred the company of the Americans.

  That’s why they had just evacuated Sabray. They would still surround the village, awaiting their chance to grab me, but they would not risk causing major disruption to the day-to-day lives of the people. I’d been here for five nights now, including the night in the cave, and the Taliban had crossed the boundaries of Sabray only twice, once for a few hours of violence late in the evening, and once just now for maybe an hour.

  Gulab was certain they had gone, but he was equally certain we could not dare go back to the house. It was almost ten in the morning by now, and Gulab was preparing to leave and take me with him, once more out into the mountains.

  It had passed midnight back in Texas and the vigil at our ranch continued. The media was still voicing its opinion that the SEAL team was dead, and the latest call from Coronado had been received. There was still no news of me. They all knew there would be another call at 0400, and everyone waited out there in the hot July night, their hopes diminishing, according to Mom, as the hours ticked by.

  People were starting to speculate how I could possibly have survived if no one at the American base knew where I was. But news was really scarce, except for the part some members of the media invented. And people were beginning to lose heart.

  Except, apparently, for Morgan and the other SEALs, none of whom would even consider I was dead. At least that’s what they always told everyone. “MIA,” they kept repeating. “MIA. He’s not dead till we say he’s dead.”

  Morgan continued to tell everyone that he was thinking about me and I was thinking about him. He was in contact, even if no one else was. And Senior Chief Gothro kept a careful eye on my mom in case she disintegrated.

  But she remembers that night to this day, and how there were people growing sadder by the minute. And how the SEALs held it all together, the chaplains, the officers, the noncoms, some ordering, some imploring, but asking everyone to keep the faith.

  “Marcus needs you!” Chaplain Trey Vaughn told this large and disparate gathering. “And God is protecting him, and now repeat after me the words of the Twenty-third Psalm. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.’ ”

  Solemnly, some of the toughest men in the U.S. Armed Forces stood shoulder to shoulder with the SEAL chaplain, each of them thinking of me as an old and, I hope, trusted friend and teammate. Each of them, at those moments, alone with his God. As I was with mine, half a world away.

  At 0400 the call came through to the ranch from Coronado. Still no news. And the SEALs started the process all over again, encouraging, sharing their optimism, explaining that I had been especially trained to withstand such an ordeal. “If anyone can get out of this, it’s Marcus,” Chaplain Vaughn said. “And he’ll feel the energy in your prayers — and you will give him strength — and I forbid you
to give up on him — God will bring him home.”

  Out there in the dry summer pastures, surrounded by thousands of head of cattle, the words of the United States Navy Hymn echoed into the night. There were no neighbors to wake. Everyone for miles around was in our front yard. Mom says everyone was out there that night, again nearly three hundred. And the policemen and the judges and the sheriffs and all the others joined Mom and Dad and the iron men from SPECWARCOM, just standing there, singing at the top of their lungs, “ ‘O hear us when we cry to Thee, for SEALs in air, on land and sea …’ ”

  Back in Sabray, Gulab and I were making a break for it. Clutching our rifles, we left our little mud-and-rock redoubt in the lower street and headed farther down the mountain. Painfully, I made the two hundred yards to a flat field which had been cultivated and recently harvested. It was strictly dirt now, but raked dirt, as if ready for a new crop.

  I had seen this field before, from the window of house two, which I could just see maybe 350 yards back up the mountain. I guess the field was about the size of two American football fields; it had a dry rock border all around. It was an ideal landing spot for a helicopter, I thought, certainly the only suitable area I had ever seen up there. It was a place where a pilot could bring in an MH-47 without risking a collision with trees or rolling off a precipice or landing in the middle of a Taliban trap.

  For a few moments, I considered writing a large SOS in the dirt, but Gulab was anxious, and he half carried, half manhandled me out of the field and back onto the lush mountain slopes, and there he found me a resting place at the side of the trail where I could take cover under a bush. And this carried a bonus, because the bush contained a full crop of blackberries. And I lay down there in the shade luxuriously eating the berries, which were not quite ripe but tasted damned good to me.