It was very quiet again now, and my trained sniper’s ear, honed perhaps better than ever before, detected no unusual sound in the undergrowth. Not a snapped twig, not an unusual rustling in the grass. No unusual shadow behind a tree. Nothing.
We waited there for a short while before Gulab stood up and walked a little way, then turned and whispered, “We go now.” I got hold of my rifle and twisted onto my right side, ready to heave myself upward, a movement that this week had taken a lot of concentration and effort.
I don’t know why it happened. But something told me to look up, and I cast my eyes to the slope behind us. And right there sitting very quietly, his gaze steady upon me and betraying nothing, was Sharmak, the Taliban leader, the man I had come to capture or kill.
I’d seen only a grainy, not very good photograph of him, but it was enough for me. I was certain it was him. And I think he knew I knew. He was a lean character, like all of them, fortyish, with a long, black, red-flecked beard. He wore black Afghan garb, a reddish vest, and a black turban.
I seem to recall he had green eyes, and they were filled with a hatred which would have melted a U.S. Army tank. He stared right through me and spoke not one word. I noticed he was unarmed, and I tightened my grip on the Mark 12 and very slowly turned it on him until the barrel was aimed right between his eyes.
He was not afraid. He never flinched, never moved, and I had a powerful instinct to shoot that bastard dead, right here on the mountain. After all, it was what I had come for; that or capture him, and that last part wasn’t going to happen.
Sharmak was surrounded by his army. If I’d shot him, I would not have lasted twenty seconds. His guys would have gunned down both me and Gulab and then, minus their beloved commander in chief, probably would have massacred the entire village, including the kids. I considered that and rejected shooting him.
I also considered that Sharmak was clearly not about to shoot me. The presence of Gulab made it a complete standoff, and Sharmak was not about to call in his guys to shoot the oldest son of Sabray’s village elder. Equally, I did not feel especially inclined to commit suicide. Everyone held their fire.
Sharmak just sat there, and then Gulab nodded to the Taliban boss, who I noticed made an infinitesimal incline of his head, like a pitcher acknowledging a catcher’s signal. And then Gulab walked slowly across to talk to him, and Sharmak stood up, and they turned their backs on me and moved farther up the mountainside, out of my sight.
There was only one subject they could possibly be discussing. Would the people of Sabray now agree to give me up? And I could not know how far Gulab and his father would still go to defend me.
I just slumped back under the blackberry bush, uncertain of my fate, uncertain what these two mountain tribesmen would decide. Because each of them, in his way, had so far proved to be unbending in his principles. The relentless killer, a man who saw himself as the warrior-savior of Afghanistan, now in conference with the village cop, a man who seemed prepared to risk everything just to defend me.
12
“Two-two-eight! It’s Two-two-eight!”
In her mind, there could be only one possible reason for the call…They’d found my body on the mountain…A voice came down the line and demanded, “Is the family assembled?”
They were gone for five minutes, and they came back together. Ben Sharmak stood for a few moments staring at me, and then he climbed away, back to his army. Gulab walked down the hill to me and tried to explain Sharmak had handed him a note that said, Either you hand over the American — or every member of your family will be killed.
Gulab made his familiar dismissive gesture, and we both turned and watched the Taliban leader walking away through the trees. And the village cop offered me his hand, helped me to my feet, and once more led me through the forest, half lifting me down the gradients, always considerate of my shattered left leg, until we reached a dried-up riverbed.
And there we rested. We watched for Taliban sharpshooters, but no one came. All around us in the trees, their AKs ready, were familiar faces from Sabray ready to defend us.
We waited for at least forty-five minutes. And then, amid the unholy silence of the mountain, two more guys from my village arrived. It was obvious they were signaling for us to leave, right now.
Each of them gave me support under my arms and led me up through the trees on the side of this steep escarpment. I have to admit I no longer knew what was going on, where we were going, or what I was supposed to be doing. I realized we could not go back to the village, and I really did not like the tone of that note Gulab had shoved in his pocket.
And here I was, alone with these tribesmen, with no coherent plan. My leg was killing me, I could hardly put it to the ground, and the two guys carrying me were bearing the whole of my weight. We came to a little flight of rough rock steps cut into the gradient. They got behind pushing me up with their shoulders.
I made the top step first, and as I did so, I came face to face with an armed Afghani fighter I had not seen before. He carried an AK-47, held in the ready-to-fire position, and when he saw me, he raised it. I looked at his hat, and there was a badge containing the words which almost stopped my heart — BUSH FOR PRESIDENT!
He was Afghan special forces, and I was seized by panic because I was dressed in the clothes of an Afghan tribesman, identical to those of the Taliban. But right behind him, bursting through the undergrowth, came two U.S. Army Rangers in combat uniform, rifles raised, the leader a big black guy. Behind me, with unbelievable presence of mind, Gulab was roaring out my BUD/S class numbers he’d seen on my Trident voodoo tattoo: “Two-two-eight! It’s Two-two-eight!”
The Ranger’s face suddenly lit up with a gigantic smile. He took one look at my six-foot-five-inch frame and snapped, “American?” I just had time to nod before he let out a yell that ripped across the mountainside — “It’s Marcus, guys! We got him — we got him!”
And the Ranger came running toward me and grabbed me in his arms, and I could smell his sweat and his combat gear and his rifle, the smells of home, the smells I live with. American smells. I tried to keep steady, not break down, mostly because SEALs would never show weakness in front of a Ranger.
“Hey, bro,” I said. “It’s good to see you.”
By this time there was chaos on the mountain. Army guys were coming out of the forest from all over the place. I could see they were really beat up, wearing battered combat gear, all of them with several days’ growth of beard. They were covered in mud, unkempt, and all grinning broadly. I guessed, correctly as it happened, they’d been out here searching for my team since early last Wednesday morning. Hell, they’d been out all night in that thunderstorm. No wonder they looked a bit disheveled.
It was Sunday now. And Jesus, was it great to hear the English language again, just the everyday words, the diverse American accents, the familiarity. I’m telling you, when you’ve been in a hostile, foreign environment for a while with no one to whom you can explain anything, being rescued by your own kind — tough, confident, organized guys, professional, hard-trained, armed to the teeth, ready for anything, bursting with friendship — well, it’s a feeling of the highest possible elation. But I wouldn’t recommend the preparation for such a moment.
They moved into action immediately. An army captain ordered a team to get me up out of the forest, onto higher ground. They carried me up the hill and sat me down next to a goat pen. U.S. Corpsman Travis instantly set about fixing up my wounds. He removed the old dressings which Sarawa had given me and applied new antiseptic cream and fresh bandages. He gave me clean water and antibiotics. By the time he’d finished I felt damn near human.
The atmosphere was unavoidably cheerful, because all the guys felt their mission was accomplished. All Americans in combat understand that feeling of celebration, reflecting, as we all do, that so much could have gone wrong, so much we had evaded by our own battlefield know-how, so many times it could have gone either way.
These Rangers and Green
Berets were no different. Somehow, in hundreds of square miles of mountainous terrain, they’d found me alive. But I knew they did not really understand the extreme danger we were all in. I explained to them the number of Taliban warriors there were out here, how many there had been against us on Murphy’s Ridge, the presence of Sharmak and his entire army, so close, maybe watching us…no, forget that. Most certainly watching us. We were all together, and we would make a formidable fighting force if attacked, but we would be badly outnumbered, and we were now all inside a Taliban encirclement. Not just me.
I debriefed them as thoroughly as I could, first of all explaining that my guys were all dead, Mikey, Axe, and Danny. I found that especially difficult, because I had not told anyone before. There had been no one for me to report to, definitely no one who would understand what those guys meant to me and the gaping hollow they would leave in my life for the rest of my days.
I consulted my thighs, where I still had my clear notes of routes, distances, and terrain. I showed them the areas where I knew the Taliban were encamped, helped them mark up their maps. Here, here, and here, guys, that’s where they are. The fact was, the bastards were everywhere, all around us, waiting for their chance. I did have a feeling that Sharmak might have grown wary of facing heavy American firepower head-on. He’d had half his army wiped out on the ridge by just four of us. There were a lot more of us now, gathered around the goat pens while Travis did his number.
I asked the Ranger captain how many guys he had. And he replied, “We’re good. Twenty.”
In my view that was probably a bit light, since Sharmak could easily be back to his full strength of maybe 150 to 200 warriors, reinforced by al Qaeda.
“We got gunships, Apache Sixty-fours, standing by,” he said. “Whatever we need. We’re good.”
I stressed once more that we were undoubtedly surrounded, and he replied, “Roger that, Marcus. We’ll act accordingly.”
Before we left, I asked them how the hell they’d found me. And it turned out to be my emergency beacon in the window of the little rock house in the mountain. The flight crews had picked it up when they were flying over and then tracked it back to the village. They were pretty certain the owner of that PRC-148 radio was one of the original SEAL team but had to consider the fact it might have been stolen by the Taliban.
They did not, however, think it had been operated by Afghan tribesmen in this instance, and they thought it unlikely the beacon had been switched on and aimed skyward by guys who had not the slightest idea what it was for.
They thus reasoned that one of the SEALs was right down there in that village, or in any event pretty damned close. So the guys just closed in on me, somehow moving their own dragnet right past the Taliban dragnet. And suddenly there I was, dressed up like Osama bin Laden’s second in command, arms wrapped around a couple of tribesmen like we were three drunks falling up the hill, the village policeman right behind yelling, “Two-two-eight!”
Led by Gulab, we set off for the village and moved back into my second house, the one where we’d sat out the storm. The army threw a security perimeter all the way around Sabray, and they carried me up past that big tree and into the main room. I noticed that rooster was right there in the tree; he was quiet for a change, but the memory of him still made me want to blow his freakin’ head off.
The guys rustled up some tea and we settled down for a detailed debriefing. It was noon in Sabray, and in attendance was a very serious group of army personnel, from captains on down, mostly Rangers and Green Berets. Before we started, I was compelled to tell ’em I had hoped to be rescued by the SEALs — because now I’d definitely have to put up with a lot of bullshit from them, telling me, “See that, the SEALs get in trouble, and they gotta send for the army to get ’em out, like always.”
That got a loud cheer, but it did not disguise my eternal gratitude to them and what they had risked to save me. They were really good guys and took total control in the most professional way. First they radioed into base that I had been found, that I was stable and unlikely to die, but regretfully, the other three team members had died in action. I heard them confirm they had me safe but that we were still in a potentially hostile Afghan village and that we were surrounded by Taliban and al Qaeda troops. They were requesting evacuation as soon as night fell.
The debriefing went on for a long time as I tried to explain details of my actions on and off the battlefield. And all the time, the kids kept rushing in to see me. They were all over the place, hanging on to my arm, their own arms around my neck, talking, shouting, laughing. The adults from the village also came in, and I had to insist they could stay, especially Sarawa, who had reappeared, and Gulab, who had never left. I owed my life to each of them.
So far, no one had found the bodies of Mikey, Danny, and Axe. And we spent a long time going over satellite photographs for me to pinpoint the precise places they had died. The army guys had some data on the battle, but I was able to fill in a lot of stuff for them. Especially to explain how we had fallen back under Mikey’s command, and then kept falling back, how we never had any option but to establish our defense farther down the mountain, always farther down.
I recounted how Axe had held our left flank with such overwhelming gallantry, and how Danny, shot so many times, kept firing, trying to hold our right flank until his dying breath. And how, in the end, there were just too many of them, with too much firepower, too many of those big Russian-made grenades, the ones that finally blew Axe and me clean out of the battle.
Taliban casualties had been, of course, high. It seemed everyone knew that. I think all of us in that little room, including Gulab, thought the Taliban would not risk another frontal assault on the Americans. And so we waited until the sun began to slip behind the mountains, and I said good-bye to all the kids, several of whom were crying. Sarawa just slipped quietly away. I never saw him again.
Gulab led us down to the flat field at the base of the village, and with the comms up and running, we waited it out. The Ranger security guard was in formation around the perimeter, in case the Taliban decided to give it one last shot. I knew they were out there, and I never took my eyes off that mountain slope as we all sat there, around twenty army personnel and maybe ten villagers, the guys who had stuck by me from the beginning.
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 pitc
h-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.
Lone Survivor Page 32
