Lone Survivor

by Marcus Luttrell

  Then I found a piece of flinty rock on the floor of the cave, and, lying painfully on my left side, I spent two hours carving the words of the Count of Monte Cristo onto the wall of my prison: God will give me justice.

  I wasn’t sure I quite believed it anymore. He’d been out of touch for some time now. But I was still alive. Just. And maybe there was help on the way. He works in awful mysterious ways. Still, even my rifle was gone now, like most of my hope.

  I was just beginning to drift off again, maybe a little before 0800, when the place seemed to come alive. I could hear the little bells around the necks of the goddamned goats, and they seemed to be above me. When sand and rocks started raining down on me, I realized there was no roof to my cave. I was open to the sky, I could hear those goat hooves pounding away up there somewhere, and the sand kept pouring down on me.

  The good news was it buried the ants, but I was trying to stop it getting in my eyes, and so I turned facedown, shielding my eyes with my hands, my right wrist aching like hell from that Taliban gun butt. Suddenly, to my complete horror, I saw the barrel of an AK-47 easing round the corner of the rock which guarded my left side. I couldn’t hide, I couldn’t even take cover, and I sure as hell couldn’t fight back.

  The barrel kept coming, then the rest of the rifle, the hands, and the face — the face of one of my buddies from Sabray, grinning cheerfully. I was in such shock I could not even bring myself to call him a crazy prick, which he plainly was. But he brought me bread and that appalling goat’s milk and filled my water bottle. The one from the sewer.

  Half an hour later Sarawa came, five hours after he said he would. He looked at my bullet wound and gave me more water. Then he posted a guard at the entrance to my roofless cave. The guard was thirtyish and, like the rest of them, whip-thin and bearded. He sat on a rock a little way above my entrance, his AK-47 slung over his shoulder.

  I kept drifting off, lying there on the floor, and every time I came awake I leaned out to see if the guard was still there. His name was Norzamund, and he always smiled real friendly and gave me a wave. But we could not speak, no common words. He came down once to fill my water bottle and I tried to get him to share his with me. No dice.

  So I lifted the evil Pepsi bottle and splashed the water directly into my mouth. Then I chucked it to the back of the cave. Next time Norzamund brought water, he went back and found the goddamned thing and filled it yet again.

  I was alone in the late afternoon, and I saw the goatherds come by a couple of times. They never waved or made contact, but neither did they betray my position. If they had I do not believe I would be here. Even now I’m not sure whether lokhay works for a guy who’s left the village.

  Norzamund had left me some fresh bread, for which I was grateful. He went home shortly after dark, and for several hours I saw no one. I tried to stay calm and rational because it seemed Sarawa and his men were intent on saving me. Even the village elder was plainly on my side. That’s nothing to do with my charm, by the way. That’s strictly lokhay.

  I sat there by myself all through that long evening and into the night. June 30 became July 1; I checked my watch around midnight so I knew when that happened. I tried not to think of home and my mom and dad, tried not to give in to self-pity, but I knew it was around 3:00 p.m. back home in Texas, and I wondered if anyone had the slightest clue about how much trouble I was in and whether they realized how badly I needed help.

  What I definitely did not know was that there were now well over two hundred people gathered at the ranch. No one went home. It was as if they were willing a hopeless situation to become hopeful, as if their prayers for me could somehow be answered, as if their presence could somehow protect me from death, as if they believed that if they just stayed in place, no one would announce I had been killed in action.

  Mom says she was witnessing a miracle. She and Dad were serving three meals a day to every person on that ranch, and she never knew where the food came from. But it kept coming, big trucks from a couple of food distributors were arriving with steaks and chicken for everyone, maybe two hundred meals at a time. No charge. Local restaurants were trucking stuff in, seafood, pasta, hamburgers. There was Chinese food for fifty, then for sixty. Eggs came, sausage, ham, and bacon. Dad says the barbecues never went out.

  Everyone was there to help, including the Herzogg family, big local cattle ranchers, churchgoers, patriots, ready to step up for a friend in need. Mrs. Herzogg showed up with her daughters and without asking just went to work cleaning the place up. And they did it every day.

  The navy chaplains made everyone recite the Twenty-third Psalm, just like I was doing. During the open-air services, everyone would stand up and solemnly sing the navy hymn:

  Eternal Father, strong to save,

  Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

  Who bid’st the mighty ocean deep

  Its own appointed limits keep …

  And of course they always ended with the special verse exclusively for the Navy SEALs, the everlasting anthem for SPECWARCOM:

  Eternal Father, faithful friend,

  Be quick to answer those we send,

  In brotherhood and urgent trust,

  On hidden missions dangerous,

  O hear us when we cry to Thee,

  For SEALs in air, on land, and sea.

  People just slept whenever and wherever they could. We have a large wood guesthouse at the entrance to the property, and people just went in there. The SEALs came into the house and slept where they could, on beds, on sofas, in chairs, wherever. And every three hours, there was a telephone call, patched in directly from the battlefield in Afghanistan. It was always the same: “No news.” No one ever left Mom alone, but she was beside herself with worry.

  As June turned into July, many were beginning to lose faith and believe I was dead. Except for Morgan, who would not believe it and kept saying he’d been in communication, mentally. I was hurt but alive. Of that he was certain.

  The SEALs also would not even consider the possibility that I was dead. He’s missing in action, MIA. That was their belief. And until someone told them different, that’s all they would accept. Unlike the stupid television station, right? They thought they could say any damn thing they felt like, true or not, and cause my family emotional trauma on a scale only a community as close as we are could possibly understand.

  Meanwhile back in the cave, Norzamund came back with two other guys, again frightening the life out of me. It was about 0400 on Friday, July 1, and they had no lantern. They communicated with whispers and hissing signals for silence. Once more they lifted me up and carried me down the hill to the river. I tried to throw the foul-smelling water bottle away, but they found it and brought it right back. Guess there was a heavy shortage of water bottles in the Hindu Kush. Anyway, they looked after that bottle like it was a rare diamond.

  We crossed the river and turned up the escarpment, back to the village. It seemed to take a real long time, and at one point I flicked on the light on my watch, and they almost went wild with fury: No! No! No! Dr. Marcus. Taliban! Taliban!

  Of course I didn’t know what they were talking about. The light was tiny, but they kept pointing at it. I soon realized that light was an acute danger to all of us, that the village of Sabray was surrounded by the Taliban, waiting for their chance to capture or kill me. My armed bearers had the same Pashtun upbringing and knew the slightest flicker of a light, no matter how small, was unusual out here on the mountain and could easily attract the attention of an alert watchman.

  I switched that sucker off, real quick. And one of my guys, walking out in front with his AK, had some English. He came back to me and whispered: “Taliban see light, they shoot you, Dr. Marcus.”

  Finally we reached high ground, and I picked up the word helicopter. And right here I thought someone might be coming to rescue me. But it was just a false alarm. Nothing came. I stretched out on the concrete, and some time before dawn, Sarawa showed up with his medical bag and attended
to my leg. He removed the blood-soaked dressings, washed out the wounds, and applied antiseptic cream and fresh bandages. Then, to my astonishment, he produced some insulin for the diabetes I didn’t have.

  Guess I was a better liar than I thought. And I obviously had to take it. The stuff I do for my country. Unbelievable, right?

  They moved me into a house up there near the top of the village, and soon after I arrived I met my first real friend, Mohammad Gulab, the thirty-three-year-old son of the village elder, and the resident police chief. Everyone called him Gulab (pronounced Goo-larb), and his position in the community was very strong. He made it clear the Taliban were not going to take me while he had anything to do with it.

  He was an extremely nice guy, and we became good friends, or as close to good friends as it’s possible to be when the language barrier is almost insurmountable. Mostly we tried to communicate about families, and I understood he had a wife and six children and God knows how many cousins and uncles. Conveying news about my identical twin brother was a tough one, so we just settled for brother, mainly because Gulab unfailingly thought Morgan was me. Like a lot of other folk have done down the years.

  Gulab had a friend with him who was also a solid man, plainly an appointed relief guard. Between them they never left me alone. By this time I knew why. The village was entirely embarrassed when the Taliban had crept in here armed to the teeth and conducted an interrogation regardless of the wishes of the people. Those warriors had been on the verge of causing the ultimate retribution under the laws of lokhay, which would have obliged the village to go to war to the last man on my behalf.

  I did not yet comprehend the full implications of lokhay but I knew it was important and that I would not be surrendered. And now I had a full-time guard detail in my room. This did not prevent other visitors from coming in, and my first on that morning in my new house was a little boy, maybe eight or nine years old.

  He sat on the edge of my cot and tried to teach me a Muslim prayer: La La e La La — Muhammad del la su La La. I pretty soon got the hang of it and repeated it with him. He was thrilled, clapped his hands and laughed, and charged out through the door to round up a posse of other kids. Gulab tried to inform me that the repetition of that prayer meant that I was now a Muslim. And almost immediately the first little boy came racing back into the room with all his buddies, about twenty of them, all eager to pray with the new Texan convert.

  I tried to explain I was a doctor, and they understood this pretty quickly, started saying over and over, “Hello, Dr. Marcus,” laughing like hell and falling about like kids do. I could tell they really liked me, and I borrowed a marker pen one of them had and wrote each of their names in English on their arms. Then I let them write their names on mine.

  We exchanged words for ears, nose, and mouth. Then for water (uba) and for walk (ducari), both of which I found useful. In the end they left, but other local tribesmen came in to speak to Gulab, and I began, with his encouragement, to converse with the guys who walked the goats, the men who would understand distance. Slowly, during the course of the day, we established there was a small American base two miles away.

  They pointed out the window directly at a mountain which looked like a spare part from the Rockies. It towered above us, a great wall of granite that would have caused a mountain goat to back off. “Over there, Dr. Marcus, far side,” one of them managed to say. And since I probably could not have reached the window, never mind the mountain, I put that plan on the back burner for the moment.

  They had been referring to the village of Monagee, in the district of Manrogai, where I knew the U.S. military had some kind of an outpost. But it was out of the question right now. I couldn’t get there or anywhere else until my leg improved. Nonetheless, the goatherds had some good information about the terrain and the distances to various villages and U.S. bases. These guys walk around the mountains for a living. Local knowledge. That’s key to every serving SEAL, especially one who was planning a kind of soft jailbreak, like me.

  With the goatherds, I was able to work out that from the scene of the original battlefield where the others died, on that terrible night of June 28 I had traveled around seven miles, four walking, three crawling. Seven miles! Wow! I couldn’t believe that. But these herders knew their land. And they, like everyone else, knew all about the Battle for Murphy’s Ridge, where it had been fought and the very bad losses sustained by the Taliban…“You shoot, Dr. Marcus? You shoot?”

  Me? Shoot? Never. I’m just a wandering doctor trying to look after my patients. But I was real proud of traveling seven miles over the mountain in my beat-up condition after the battle.

  I took my ballpoint pen and marked distances, drew maps, made diagrams of the mountains on my right thigh. When that got a little crowded, I had to use my left. (Shit! That hurt. That really hurt!)

  At noon the kids came back for prayers, bringing with them several adults, clearly eager to meet the new American convert, no longer an infidel. We prayed together to Allah, kneeling — painfully, in my case — on the floor. After which we all shook hands, and I think they welcomed me to their prayers. Never told ’em, of course, I slipped in a quick one to my own God while I was at it, respectfully wondering, if it was all right with Him, whether I could get my rifle back anytime soon.

  They all came back for afternoon prayers at 1700, and again at sunset. The little kids, my first friends, had to leave for bed right after that, but I remember they all came and hugged me before they left, and, not having mastered “Good-bye” or “Good night” yet, they repeated their first American phrase again and again as they left the room: “Hello, Dr. Marcus.”

  The older kids, the young teenagers, were allowed to stay and talk with me for a while. Gulab helped them to communicate and we parted as friends. The trouble was, I was getting sick now, and I was beginning to feel pretty ropy, not just the pain of my wounds but kind of like flu, only a bit worse.

  When the kids had finally left, I received a visit from the village elder himself. He brought me bread, gave me fresh water, then sat down for maybe three hours while we discussed, as best we could, how I could get to an American base. It was clear I was a major problem to the village. Threats were already being received from the Taliban, informing the villagers how urgent it was for their cause that I be surrendered to them immediately.

  The old man imparted this to me but took the view I was in no shape to travel and that it would simplify matters for a member of his Pashtun tribe to make the journey, on foot, to the big U.S. base at Asadabad and inform them of my whereabouts. I had no clue at the time he was preparing to make the journey himself, some thirty to forty miles alone in the mountains.

  He asked me to write out a letter for him to take to Asadabad. I wrote, This man gave me shelter and food, and must be helped at all costs. At the time I was under the distinct impression that he and I were going to make the journey together, possibly with an escort and a few guys to help carry me. Departure time was set for 1930, right after evening prayers.

  But I had misunderstood. The old man had no intention of traveling with me, correctly reasoning I’d be a far greater nuisance on such a trek over the mountains than I would be lying here. Also, if the Taliban found out we’d gone, we would be highly susceptible to ambush. I never saw him again, to thank him for his kindness.

  I waited all afternoon and half the night for him to come and have me collected. But of course he never did. I remember being hugely disappointed, not for the first time, that more definite plans were not being formulated for my evacuation.

  At one point during the evening, the tribal leaders came and had a meeting in my room. They just sat on the floor and talked, but they brought me back the little silver cup I’d had in the first house. And they poured me several cups of that chai tea they drink and, I think, grow on a small scale up here. The ceremony included sweet candy, which you eat while you drink your tea. And that tasted great after my enforced diet of very, very dry baked flat bread.

/>   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.