Lone survivor

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.

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 gu

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.