Gulab stayed with me and was cheerful as ever, but he either could not or would not answer questions about his father and his immediate plans. I think the tribal leaders felt it was better for me not to know — classified, Pashtun-style, FYO and all that. The work of the elder was information provided on a need-to-know basis only. I was getting used to operating outside the loop, everyone’s freakin’ loop, that is.
Gulab spent much of the evening trying to explain to me the complex threads that hold together the Pashtun tribes and al Qaeda, still working in conjunction with the Taliban army. The United States had been busy trying to clear all of them the hell out of Afghanistan for four years but with only limited success.
The jihadists seem to have some kind of hammerlock on tribal loyalties, using a whole spectrum of Mafia-style tactics, sometimes with gifts, sometimes with money, sometimes promising protection, sometimes with outright threats. The truth is, however, neither al Qaeda nor the Taliban could function without the cooperation of the Pashtun villages.
And often, deep within the communities, there are old family ties and young men who sympathize with the warlike mentality of the Taliban and al Qaeda chiefs. Kids barely out of grade school — joke, they don’t have grade schools up here — are drawn toward the romantic cutthroats who have declared they’ll fight the American army until there is no one left.
I guess there’s something very alluring about that to some kids. You can see these potential Taliban recruits in any of the villages. I’ve seen dozens of them, too young to have that much hate and murder in their eyes and hearts. Christ, one of the little bastards had sat on my bed urging eight armed men to torture me. Nice. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen.
But there is another side to this. Sabray was obviously governed wisely by Gulab’s father. And there was a sense of law and order and discipline in an essentially lawless land. Al Qaeda effectively owns great swaths of land in Kunar Province, which had now been my home for the better part of three months. And this is mostly because of the terrain.
I mean, how the hell do you impose national government on a place like this? With no roads, no electricity, no mail, little communication, where the principal industry is goats’ milk and opium, the main water company is a mountain stream, and all freight is moved by mule cart, including the opium. You’re whistling Dixie. It’s never going to happen.
Al Qaeda are running around in broad daylight, mostly doing what the heck they want, until we show up and chase the little pricks back over the border to Pakistan. Where they stay. For about ten minutes, before launching their next foray into these tribal mountains, which their ancestors have ruled for centuries.
These days there are less gifts and a lot more fear. The Taliban is a ruthless outfit, with instincts about killing their enemies which have barely changed in two thousand years. They should somehow by now have frightened the bejesus out of my buddy Gulab and his father, but they had not succeeded, so far as I could see. There’s just something unbreakable about them all, a grim determination to follow the ancient laws of the Pashtuns — laws which may yet prove too strong even for the Taliban and al Qaeda.
But from where I was sitting, in the smoky main room of one of Sabray’s high houses, talking to the village cop, that’s not the way the tide was running. And until the United States decides to wield a very large stick up here in support of the elected government of the people, in Kabul, I’m not looking for any serious change real soon. The enemy is prepared to go to any lengths to achieve victory, terrorizing its own people, if necessary, and resorting to barbaric practices against its enemy, including decapitating people or butchering them.
We are not allowed to fight them on those terms. And neither would we wish to. However, we could fight in a much more ruthless manner, stop worrying if everyone still loved us. If we did that, we’d probably win in both Afghanistan and Iraq in about a week.
But we’re not allowed to do that. And I guess we’d better start getting used to the consequences and permit the American liberals to squeak and squeal us to ultimate defeat. I believe that’s what it’s called when you pack up and go home, when a war fought under your own “civilized” terms is unwinnable.
We’re tougher, better trained, better organized, better armed, with access to weapons which cannot be resisted. The U.S. Armed Forces represent the greatest fighting force this world has ever seen, and we keep getting our butts kicked by a bunch of illegal thugs who ought to be eliminated.
Look at me, right now in my story. Helpless, tortured, shot, blown up, my best buddies all dead, and all because we were afraid of the liberals back home, afraid to do what was necessary to save our own lives. Afraid of American civilian lawyers. I have only one piece of advice for what it’s worth: if you don’t want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place.
Because that’s what happens. In all wars, down all the years of history. Terrible injustices, the killing of people who did not deserve to die. That’s what war is. And if you can’t cope with it, don’t do it.
Meantime, I was stuck in the house waiting for the old man to show up, when he was already miles away, walking through the mountains, the thirty or so miles to Asadabad. Once I wandered outside when no one was looking, and I tried to find him. But he seemed to have gone missing. Even then I never dreamed that little old guy was walking to Asadabad by himself.
I couldn’t really tell, but I sensed something was making my guys jumpy. And about ten or eleven o’clock that night, we moved. They had just brought me fresh water and bread, which I consumed gratefully, and then I was instructed to pack up and leave. By this time my leg was a little better, even though it hurt, and with some assistance I was able to walk.
We made our way in the dark down to a different house and stepped off the trail directly onto the roof. We had some kind of a sheet, and the three of us laid down close together for warmth. It was very, very cold, but I guess they felt there was some danger if I’d remained in my old spot. Maybe they had suspicion of someone in the village, worry that someone had tipped off the Taliban as to my precise whereabouts. But whatever, these guys were taking no chances. If Taliban gunmen burst into my old house, they would not find me.
I was up here on the freakin’ roof, huddled with Gulab and his buddy, freezing to death but safe. And once more I was amazed by the silence, that mountain silence. There was not one single sound in the entire village of Sabray, and for a Westerner that’s really hard to imagine.
Gulab and his pal made no sound. I could scarcely hear them breathing. Whenever we did anything, they were always telling me shhhhh, when I had thought I was being silent as the grave. It’s another world up here, so quiet it defies the logic of Western ears. Maybe that’s why no one has ever conquered these high lands of the Afghan tribesmen.
I slept on and off through the night, up there on the roof. Once I dared to change position, and you’d have thought I’d set off a fire alarm from the reaction of my new friends. “Shhhhh, Dr. Marcus...Quiet.” It just showed how jumpy they were, how nervous of the hushed killers of the Taliban army.
At dawn we packed up and returned to the house. I wanted to sleep some more, but there was a big tree right outside the window that had a view down the mountain, and in that tree lived the world’s loudest rooster. That sucker could have awakened a graveyard. And he did not give a damn about dawn, first light and all that. He let it fly right after midnight and never let up. There were several times when, if it had come to a straight coin toss between taking out Sharmak or the rooster, I could easily have spared Sharmak.
The tribal chiefs came back again around 0700 to conduct their early morning prayers in my room. Of course I joined them in reciting the bits I had learned, and then, when the adults left, the door flew open and a whole bunch of kids came charging through the door, shouting, “Hello, Dr. Marcus.”
They never
knocked, just came tumbling in, grabbing me and hugging me. And it went on intermittently throughout the day. Sarawa had left his medical bag in my room, and I fixed up their cuts and scrapes, and they taught me bits of their language. Those kids were great. I’ll never forget them.
By that Saturday morning, July 2, I was still in a lot of pain; my shoulder, back, and leg were often killing me. Gulab knew this, and he sent an old man from the village to see me. He came with a plastic pouch containing tobacco opium, which looks like green bread dough. He gave me the pouch, and I took a pinch of the stuff, put it in my lip, and waited.
I’m here to tell you, that was a miracle. The pain slowly vanished, completely. It was the first time I’d ever done drugs, and I loved it! That opium restored me, set me free. I felt better than I had since we all fell down the mountain. What with the Muslim prayers and now my becoming a devotee of the local dope, I was drifting into the life of an Afghan peasant. Hooyah, Gulab, right?
The old man left the bag with me, and it helped me get through the next hours more than I can say. When you’ve lived through a lot of pain for a few days, the relief is terrific. For the first time I understood the power of that drug, which is, of course, the one the Taliban and al Qaeda feed to suicide bombers before they obliterate themselves and everyone else within range.
There’s nothing heroic about suicide bombers. They’re mostly just dumb, brainwashed kids, stoned out of their minds.
Outside the house, I could see the U.S. helicopters flying overhead, Black Hawk 60s and MH-47s, obviously looking for something. Hopefully me. I knew from what the Taliban had said that one of our helos was down, but not, of course, who had been on board, that eight more of my buddies from Alfa Platoon were dead, including Shane Patton, James Suh, and Chief Healy.
I also did not know that neither Mikey’s, Danny’s, nor Axe’s body had been found and that the helos were circling the area trying to pick up any trace of the original four who had set off on the ill-fated Operation Redwing. The aircrew did not know whether any of us were alive or dead. And back home, the media were vacillating between dead and missing, whichever made the best story on the day, I guess. Didn’t help any in East Texas, I can say that.
Anyway, when I saw those helos, I charged outside. I took off my shirt and waved it over my head, yelling, “Here I am, guys! I’m right here. It’s me, Marcus! Right here, guys!”
But they just flew off, leaving me a somewhat forlorn figure standing outside the house, trying to put on my shirt, and wondering again whether anyone would ever come and rescue me.
In the fullness of time I understood the quandary for the American military. Four SEALs, fighting for their lives, had made one final communication that we were dying up here. Since then, there had been neither sight nor sound of the four of us.
Militarily, there were several possibilities, the first being we were all now dead. The second was we were all still alive. The third was there were survivors, or at least a survivor, and they were somewhere on the loose, possibly wounded, in steep country where there is almost no possibility of making a safe landing in any aircraft.
I guess the last possibility was that we had been taken prisoners and that in time there would be either a ransom note demanding an enormous cash payment or a television film showing us first as prisoners and then being executed.
The last option was unlikely when the missing were Navy SEALs. We don’t habitually get captured. Either we kill our enemy or our enemy kills us. SEALs don’t put their hands up or wave white flags. Period. The command post knew that back in Asadabad, or Bagram.
They would not have been expecting a communiqué from the Taliban saying SEALs had been captured. There’s an old SEAL motto: Never assume a frogman’s dead unless you find his body. Everyone knows that.
The most likely scenario, aside from all dead, was that one or more of the Redwings was hurt, out of communication, and unable to make contact. The problem was location. Where were we? How could we be found?
Plainly, the Taliban were not saying a thing; therefore, they had no prisoners. Equally, the missing SEALs weren’t saying anything. Dead? Probably. Wounded in action and still holding out in the mountains, out of contact? As the days went by, this must have seemed increasingly less likely.
By now Gulab had told me that his father had departed to walk to Asadabad alone. All my hopes rested in the soft tread of this powerful yet tiny old man.
11
Reports of My Death Greatly Exaggerated
He literally dragged me into a standing position, and then...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!
Gulab had now become the principal figure in my life. He called the security shots, made sure I had food and water, and was, in my mind, the link between us and his father as the old man toiled through the mountains to Asadabad.
The Afghani policeman betrayed no sign of stress, but he did reveal to me that a letter had been received earlier from the commander of the Taliban forces. It was a written demand that the villagers of Sabray hand over the American immediately.
The demand came from the rising officer of the Taliban army in the northeast, the firebrand “Commodore Abdul,” right-hand man to Sharmak and a character who plainly saw himself as some kind of Eastern Che Guevara. His reputation was apparently growing as an ambush leader and as an officer who was expert at bringing in new recruits through the passes.
I never knew, but it would not have surprised me to learn he had been in the front line of the army that confronted the team on the ridge, though I have no doubt the strategy was planned by the senior man, Sharmak, who had done so much damage already.
They did not, however, faze Gulab. He and his father had replied that it made no difference how bad the Taliban wanted the American, they were not going to get him. When Gulab told me, he made a very distinct, brave, dismissive gesture. And he spent some time trying to convey his personal position: They can’t frighten me. My village is well armed, and we have our own laws and rights. The Taliban need our support a lot more than we need theirs.
He was a gallant and confident man, at least on the surface. But I noticed he took no chances when there was any kind of suggestion the Taliban were coming in. I guess that’s why we ended up sleeping on the roof.
Also, he had not the slightest interest in a reward. I offered to give him my watch in return for his unending decency to me. I implored him to take my watch, because it was all I had to offer. But he always refused to accept it. As for money, what use could that have been to him? There was nothing to spend it on. No shops, the nearest town miles and miles away, a journey that had to be made on foot.
A couple of the sneering kids did ask for money, teenagers, maybe sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds. But they were planning to join the Taliban and leave Sabray, to fight for “freedom.” Gulab told me he had no intention of leaving here. And I understood that. He was part of the fabric of the village. One day he would be the village elder. His family would grow up here. It was all he had ever known, all he had ever wanted. This very beautiful corner of the Hindu Kush was where he belonged. What use was money to Mohammad Gulab of Sabray?
The last of the kids had left my room, and I was lying there contemplating the world, when there was a kick on the door that nearly took it off its hinges. No one kicks a door in quite like that except a Taliban raiding party. That was all I could imagine. But around here, where doors don’t fit, a good bang with your sandal is about the only way to get the sonofabitch open, short of a full-blooded shoulder charge.
But the sudden shock of a door being kicked in about five feet from your head is a nerve-racking experience. And I’m neurotic about it to this day. Because the sound of the crash on the door is the sound I heard before I was tortured. It sometimes dominates my dreams. I wake up sweating, a tremendous crash echoing in my mind. And no matter where I am, I need to che
ck the door lock before I can sleep again. It’s pretty goddamned inconvenient at times.
Anyway, this was not the Taliban. It was just my own guys opening the door, which must have been shut firmly by the kids. I restarted my heart, and my room stayed kind of quiet until midmorning, when the door catapulted open with a violent bang! that shook the goddamned mountain, never mind the room. And once more I almost jumped out of my Afghan jumpsuit. And this time they were shouting at me. I could not understand what, but something had broken out, things were on the move. Jesus Christ! I had to steady this group down. There were adults and kids, all mixed up, and they were all yelling the same thing — “Parachute! Parachute! Parachute! Dr. Marcus, come quick!”
I made my way outside, aching to high heaven all the way. I resolved to have another shot of that opium soon as I returned, but for now it was all eyes upward, straight at the clear blue, cloudless skies. What could we see? Nothing. Whatever had landed was down, and I stood there trying to make them understand I needed to know if there had been a man on the end of that parachute, and if so, how many parachutes there had been. Was this a drop zone for my buddies to come right in and get me?
The upshot of this was also nothing. The tribesmen simply could not understand me. The kids, who I detected were the ones who had actually spotted the parachute, or parachutes, were just as mystified. All the hours of study we had done together had come to nothing.
There was a sudden conference, and most of the adults upped and left. I went back in. They returned maybe fifteen minutes later and brought with them all my gear, which they had hidden away from the eyes of the Taliban. They gave me back my rifle and ammunition, my H-gear (that’s my harness), and in its pocket, my PRC-148 intersquad radio, the one for which I’d lost the little microphone earpiece. It still had its weakish battery and its still-operational emergency beacon.