The Lion of Sabray

by Patrick Robinson

  Money raised that memorable day in the parking lot went immediately toward a beautiful new retreat at Crystal Beach, way down on the scenic Bolivar Peninsula, northeast of Galveston Bay.

  • • •

  Before Gulab could make to it the United States, the Taliban somehow got through the security patrol, burst into his apartment, and took a shot at him. Only one, because Gulab went immediately for his rifle, causing the assassins to flee. But the one bullet ricocheted off the rock wall of the apartment and slammed into Gulab’s groin.

  Luckily, his wife was close by and gave instant first aid, and they had him in the nearby hospital within twenty minutes. If they had been in remote Sabray, far from a city hospital, things might have been very different.

  Eventually they heard at last that Gulab’s entry visa had come through, and on a hot August morning, Gulab’s plane landed at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, named for President George H. W. Bush, one of Gulab’s real heroes—the man in the White House when the heavy-hitting Reagan Stinger missiles were shipping steadily into the mujahideen mountains.

  “My man Joe traveled with him,” said Marcus. “And my wife and I just stood there waiting for them to exit customs. It was five years and one month since we’d last met, and the reunion was even more moving than the one I had with Colonel Spanky. When Gulab finally showed up, I just threw my arms around him and hugged him. I remember thanking both this son of Islam and my own God simultaneously for giving me a second chance at life.

  “I had a government interpreter, but this was a time when no words were needed between Gulab and me. We each knew what the other was thinking; ten thousand words locked into a couple of big grins. Warrior grins. Me and Gulab had, after all, slugged it out together. We’d always been ready to kick some serious ass, if necessary. That kind of friendship has its own lasting words that need not be spoken.”

  EPILOGUE

  After Gulab and Marcus’s brief reunion, complete with a whirlwind tour of Texas and Washington, DC, Gulab returned to Afghanistan. But he was able to come back to the United States later on a six-month visa as an advisor on the Lone Survivor movie. In a great turn of events, he was introduced to a new interpreter, Nawaz Rahimi, the son of a very prominent Afghani military officer, Colonel Rahimi Gul Ala-Akbar, who’d trained in Washington and acted as an advisor to the US armed forces. Nawaz is fluent in Pashtun and English, having been to school in the United States, where his family lived for much of the year. His father was revered in Gulab’s part of the world, as a former mujahideen officer who’d fought the Russians. Nawaz was the best interpreter Gulab could ever have. He worked for the government, but his knowledge of the language and of the military history of Afghanistan was incredibly valuable. Nawaz has been an incredible asset in helping make this book possible.

  Gulab spent many hours wondering if he could live in America. He gazed out at the endless grasses of Texas and could see the prosperity of the ranches and sense the peace. He tried to imagine those vast, flat grazing plains as his home. And sometimes he was successful.

  Everyone was kind wherever he went. The question was, could he still find happiness when the cheerfulness was past, and people returned to their own lives, and the novelty of the Afghan tribesman had long departed?

  “I agonized over my decision,” Gulab says. “Even with all the security of America, I had to go home. I had to go back to my mountains. I had to go back to Afghanistan. But in two little corners of this world, in the Hindu Kush and eight thousand miles away in Southeast Texas, love, respect, and friendship will forever hold Marcus and me together.”

  Mohammed Gulab

  This is Shuryek ridge, high above Sabray, the moonscape where the three goat-herders stumbled upon Marcus, Mikey, Danny, and Axe, and the place where the fate of Operation Redwings was decided.

  This is the ever-widening mountain torrent that flows below Sabray down into Kunar River. Mohammed Gulab carried the 250-pound Marcus across this dangerous waterway, twice, when the badly wounded SEAL was unable to walk.

  This ancient drystone wall guards the Sabray mosque, the holiest place on the mountain, and where Marcus Luttrell once stood in daily worship with Gulab.

  The bright white building on the side of the mountain is Sabray’s new mosque—paid for with money sent by Marcus in gratitude after he returned safely to Texas. It serves as a place of Islamic worship and as a place of learning for the local children—“my kids” as the big Navy SEAL often called his youngest friends.

  This vehicle, laden with sacks of locally grown rice, waits on the road that Maluk, the Sabray village elder, once walked in order to tell the US base that Marcus was, temporarily, safe. Visitors to Sabray must walk up and over that huge mountain in the background, as the seventy-five-year-old Maluk indeed did.

  White clouds finally break over Korangal Valley, which, right here, joins the Shuryek pass. It was somewhere up there that Marcus had his final fall—hundreds of feet down the sheer rockface. Lucky he was a SEAL—anyone else would have been killed by the impact.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The obvious consideration in writing this book was the question of how Mohammed Gulab should sound, the voice of the manuscript. And this was made more difficult by the fact that he speaks not a word of English, and I speak limited Pashtun (zero, that is).

  But Gulab is a great deal more than a tribesman. His father was a learned man, and so was his grandfather. He himself is a very respected man in his village, and he becomes more so once you know him. Most importantly, Gulab sees himself not as a tribal foot soldier but as an officer. When I asked him, through our interpreter, what he thought would be his equivalent mujahideen rank if he were in the US armed forces, he replied without hesitation.

  “I would be a colonel,” he said. “Because I was a commander in the field, and if the mujahideen recalled me, that’s where I would begin.”

  He’s a wise and accomplished strategist, and he’s proud of the fact that if he were to return to Sabray, he would one day be called to serve as the village elder. He’s an authority on Pashtun law and tribal traditions stretching back hundreds of years. And among his own people, he is recognized as such. He’s a custodian of a folklore that is ever verbal, and is retained, often without documents, in the hearts and minds of the Pashtun nation.

  Thus, there was no question of quoting him as a person struggling for words in English. In his own language, he is plainly erudite. Both his US college-educated interpreter, Nawaz, and his eminent father, Colonel Rahimi Gul, insisted that Gulab’s words be translated into fluent English, with correct grammar, as if he were a US Army colonel—an officer and a gentleman.

  Mohammed Gulab is a proud and dignified man. His story bespeaks a rare nobility. This book is written to afford him the utmost respect.

  A portion of the author’s proceeds from The Lion of Sabray will contribute to Gulab’s mission of finding safety for himself and his family.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © JAMES ROBINSON

  Patrick Robinson is the coauthor of the #1 New York Times nonfiction bestseller Lone Survivor, on which the 2013 blockbuster film starring Mark Wahlberg is based. He is also the author of seven internationally bestselling suspense thrillers, including Intercept, Diamondhead, To the Death, and The Delta Solution, as well as several nonfiction bestsellers, including the coauthored New York Times bestseller A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers. He lives in the Cayman Islands and spends his summers on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

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  INDEX

  A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.

  A-10 Thunderbolt II airplane, 162, 197–98, 200, 208

  Abdul, “Commodore” (Taliban leader), 138, 143, 152, 155–56

  AC-130 Spectre gunship, 162, 198–99

  Afghan army: and Soviet defeat in Soviet-Afghan war, 35–36

  Afghani Patriots. See mujahideen

  Afghanistan

  crops of, 23

  culture of, 24

  Gulab’s return from U.S. to, 241, 242

  lion as national symbol of, 34

  misconceptions about, 22–23

  terrain of, 23

  traditional religion in, 24

  U.S. relations with, 63–64

  weather in, 23–24

  See also specific person, location, or topic

  Air Force Space Command, 178

  Air Force, U.S., 178, 195, 208, 216

  AK-47 rifles (“Kalash”)

  characteristics of, 2, 3

  children and, 2, 3

  DShK-38 compared with, 6

  of Gulab, 3, 5, 6, 7, 15, 27, 88, 116, 134, 144, 234, 236

  and Gulab and family departure from Sabray, 232, 233

  and Pashtun giving rifles to Taliban, 73

  popularity of, 1–2, 4

  Soviets as throwing away, 28–29

  Taliban’s, 81, 84, 87, 88–89, 147, 210, 222

  and Taliban’s ambush of Gulab, 234

  Al Qaeda

  and AC-130 Spectre gunships, 198

  attacks on Pashtuns by, 4

  Gulab’s views about, 44–45, 173

  and helicopter incident, 78

  in Sabray, 44–45

  Taliban and, 58, 59

  and U.S. jihad, 78

  and U.S. search for bin Laden, 65, 66, 69, 70, 93

  and white station wagon incident, 69

  See also bin Laden, Osama

  Ala-Akbar, Rahimi Gul, 241

  Alam, Azer (Gulab’s father), 43–44, 45, 46, 110

  Allah, Gulab’s message from, 94–96, 99, 100–101, 104, 107–8, 116, 117, 124, 130, 134, 153, 205, 231

  ambush: as specialty of mujahideen, 5, 9, 11–12, 15, 21–22

  Andropov, Yuri, 39

  Anglo-Afghan War, Second, 53

  Apache helicopters: and U.S. rescue of Marcus, 162, 195–97, 200, 203–4

  Army, U.S., 161, 188. See also Green Berets, U.S. Army; Special Operations Forces, U.S.

  Asadabad (Afghanistan)

  Gulab and family in, 229, 230, 231–33, 236, 239–40

  Gulab in, 219–21, 239–40

  Maluk’s journey to, 129, 130–31, 134, 136–37, 138, 141, 143, 148–49, 156, 187–88

  mosque at, 46

  and rescue of Marcus, 160, 187–88, 219–21

  Taliban attempt to kill Gulab in, 239–40

  as U.S. intelligence hub, 219

  Axelson, Matthew Gene “Axe,” 157, 160, 199, 221, 222–25

  Bagram Air Force Base (Afghanistan), 77, 157, 179, 181, 184, 185, 188, 189, 190, 220, 221

  Battle of Maiwand, 51–53

  BBC World Service, 39, 67

  beards: among U.S. military men, 90

  Berlin Wall, 25, 39

  bin Laden, Osama

  escape from White Mountains of, 66

  Gulab’s comments about, 61–63

  and Massoud assassination, 55, 60–61, 62

  Omar’s relationship with, 49

  in Pakistan, 76

  Pakistan as supporter of, 63

  Pashtuns as anti-, 73, 75

  photograph of, 65

  Saudi background of, 61

  and September 11, 2001, 62–63

  Taliban and, 58, 59, 60–62, 73, 173–74

  U.S. search for, 62–66, 67–68, 69–70, 76, 87

  Black Hawk helicopters, 93, 137

  BLU-82 “Daisy Cutter” bombs, 65–66

  bravery (tureh)

  as Pashtunwali principle, 71, 127

  and white station wagon incident, 71

  Brezhnev, Leonid, 7, 14, 26, 39

  British forces

  invasion of Afghanistan by, 9–10, 14

  and Maiwand battle, 51–53

  and Second Anglo-Afghan War, 53

  and U.S. capture of Kabul, 68

  Burrows, George, 51

  Bush, George H. W., 39, 240

  Bush, George W., 64–65, 100, 163, 173

  Camp Wright (Afghanistan), 230

  Canadian forces: and U.S. capture of Kabul, 68

  Carter, Jimmy, 26

  cave: Marcus as hiding in, 114–19, 156

  Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 30, 32, 219, 230

  Chernenko, Konstantin, 39

  children

  and Americans in Sabray, 171–72

  as boy soldiers, 8–9

  as casualties in U.S. search for bin Laden, 69

  Marcus and, 98, 99, 107, 120–21, 131, 134

  religious instruction of, 109

  and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 8–9

  Taliban and, 172

  and Taliban attack on Sabray, 148

  and Taliban capture of Marcus, 112

  and U.S. rescue of Marcus, 204

  Chinook helicopters, 86–87, 137, 157–58, 179, 181–82, 194, 199

  “chosen people”: Taliban as, 73

  civilians: as casualties in U.S. search for bin Laden, 69–70

  Cold War, 25

  “collateral damage”: and U.S. search for bin Laden, 70

  Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force (CJSOTF), 158

  Crystal Beach (Galveston Bay): Lone Survivor Foundation funding for, 239

  “Death to the infidel,” 18

  Dietz, Danny, 157, 160, 199, 221–22, 225

  disbelief: and kalimas, 42

  DShK-38 “dushka” machine gun, 6–7, 10, 15–16, 17, 23–24

  Elphinstone, William, 9–10, 14, 29

  European Parliament: Massoud’s address to, 63

  family, Gulab’s

  and airlifting of Marcus, 170–71, 218

  in Asadabad, 231–33

  departure from Sabray of, 228, 229, 230–31

  and Marcus-Gulab friendship, 124, 139

  and murder of Gulab’s father, 45

  Taliban threats against, 125, 126, 168, 174–75, 218, 227–28, 231, 232

  and U.S. rescue of Marcus, 204–5, 218

  Fortieth Army, Soviet, 38–39

  Forty-Fifth Space Wing, U. S., 177

  Forty-Fourth Regiment of Foot (the Fighting Fours of Essex), British, 9–10

  Friendship Bridge, 13, 38

  Galbraith, James, 52

  Gandamak Pass: British stand at, 9

  gender

  religious instruction and, 43

  See also women

  Genghis Khan, 13, 28

  Ghaffar (Pashtun tribesman), 32

  Gonzales, Dave “Gonzo,” 183, 188, 206, 208, 209, 211, 212, 213

  Gorbachev, Mikhail, 39, 49

  Green Berets, U.S. Army

  and rescue of Marcus, 158, 159, 160–62, 167, 192, 193, 203

  SEALs rivalry with, 161, 162

  and U.S. air attack on Taliban, 172–73

  Gromov, Boris, 38–39

  Gromyko, Andrei, 39

  Gul, Haji Nazer (Gulab’s brother)

  and Gulab’s first command, 34

  Marcus guarded by, 117, 118

  and misconceptions about mujahideen, 21

  reputation of, 5–6, 48, 74

  and Soviet-Afghan war, 6, 7, 11–12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 26

  Taliban’s fear of, 126

  and white station wago
n incident, 71–72

  wounding of, 34

  Gul, Mohammed (Gulab’s son), 27, 81

  Gulab

  AK-47s and, 3, 5, 6, 7, 15, 27, 88, 116, 134, 144, 234, 236

  ambitions of, 48

  in Asadabad, 219–21, 229, 230, 231–33, 236, 239–40

  and Axelson search, 223–25

  birthplace of, 4

  book learning of, 27, 41

  as child fighter against Soviets, 3, 5, 6–8, 10–12, 13, 15–22, 24–25, 26, 27, 36, 38, 43, 45, 170

  departure from Sabray of, 175–76, 228, 229

  as “enemy” of some members of Pashtun tribe, 228

  as field commander, 36, 110

  financial affairs of, 47, 48, 230

  first command of, 34

  first helicopter ride of, 218

  and Gulab’s return to Afghanistan from U.S., 241, 242

  home of, 110–11

  last view of Sabray by, 218

  Lion as nickname of, 34

  as machine gunner, 6–7, 10, 11, 15–19, 22, 23–24, 36, 43, 170

  and Maluk search, 222–23

  marriage of, 26–27

  personality and skills of, 81

  religious instruction for, 42–43

  reputation of, 10, 27, 34, 48, 74, 81, 95, 103, 110

  rewards for, 140

  role of religion in life of, 43

  skills of, 139–40

  Taliban ambush of, 234

  Taliban attempts on life of, 239–40

  Taliban threats against, 113, 126, 168, 174–75, 218, 227–28, 231, 232, 234

  timber business of, 47–48, 76, 78, 88

  turning point in life of, 93–94

  U.S. military work for, 229

  U.S. trip of, 236–37, 240, 241–42

  warrior status of, 45

  wounding of, 239–40

  See also family, Gulab’s; Gulab—and Marcus; Taliban—and Gulab; specific topic

  Gulab—and Marcus

  and airlifting out of Marcus, 170–71, 174–76

  and Allah’s message to Gulab, 94–96, 99, 100–101, 104, 107–8, 116, 117, 124, 130, 134, 153, 205, 231