Lone Survivor_ The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 ( PDFDrive )

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To Afghanistan...
in a Flying Warehouse
This was payback time for the World Trade Center. We were
coming after the guys who did it. If not the actual guys, then
their blood brothers, the lunatics who still wished us dead and
might try it again.
Good-byes tend to be curt among Navy SEALs. A quick backslap, a friendly
bear hug, no one uttering what we’re all thinking: Here we go again, guys, going
to war, to another trouble spot, another half-assed enemy willing to try their luck
against us...they must be out of their minds.
It’s a SEAL thing, our unspoken invincibility, the silent code of the elite
warriors of the U.S. Armed Forces. Big, fast, highly trained guys, armed to the
teeth, expert in unarmed combat, so stealthy no one ever hears us coming.
SEALs are masters of strategy, professional marksmen with rifles, artists with
machine guns, and, if necessary, pretty handy with knives. In general terms, we
believe there are very few of the world’s problems we could not solve with high
explosive or a well-aimed bullet.
We operate on sea, air, and land. That’s where we got our name. U.S. Navy
SEALs, underwater, on the water, or out of the water. Man, we can do it all. And
where we were going, it was likely to be strictly out of the water. Way out of the
water. Ten thousand feet up some treeless moonscape of a mountain range in one
of the loneliest and sometimes most lawless places in the world. Afghanistan.
“ ’Bye, Marcus.” “Good luck, Mikey.” “Take it easy, Matt.” “See you later,
guys.” I remember it like it was yesterday, someone pulling open the door to our
barracks room, the light spilling out into the warm, dark night of Bahrain, this
strange desert kingdom, which is joined to Saudi Arabia by the two-mile-long