We hit the deck and spread, moving twenty yards away from one another. It was really cold up there, and the downward gale from the rotors, beating on us, whisking up the dust, made it much worse. We did not know if we were being watched by unseen tribesmen, but it was plainly a possibility, out here in this lawless rebel-held territory. We heard the howl of the helicopter’s engines increase as it lifted off. And then it clattered away into the darkness, gaining speed and height rapidly as it left this godforsaken escarpment.
We froze into the landscape for fifteen minutes of total silence. There was not a movement, not a single communication among us. And there was not a sound on the mountain. This was beyond silence, a stillness beyond the concept of silence, like being in outer space. Way down below us we could see two fires, or perhaps lanterns, burning, probably about a mile away, goatherds, I hoped.
The fifteen minutes passed. To my left was the mountain, a great looming mass sweeping skyward. To my right was a group of huge, thick trees. All around us were low tree stumps and thick foliage.
We were way below the place where we would ultimately operate, and it was very unnerving, because right here anyone could hide out. We couldn’t see a damn thing and had no idea if there was anyone around. Sixteen years ago, not too far away from here, I guess those Russian conscripts sensed something very similar before someone slashed their throats.
Finally, we climbed to our feet. I walked over to Danny and told him to get the comms up and let the controllers know we were down. Then I walked up the hill to where Mikey and Axe had the big rope which had, absurdly, been cut down and dropped from the helicopter.
This was definitely a mistake. That helo crew was supposed to have taken the rope away with them. God knows what they thought we were going to do with it, and I was just glad Mikey found it. If he hadn’t and we’d left it lying on the ground, it might easily have been found by a wandering tribesman or farmer, especially if they had heard the helicopter come in. That rope might have rung our death knell, signifying, as it surely must, that the American eagle had landed.
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? r />
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.”