Lone survivor

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 ru

“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 gri

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 Da

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 perso