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

mind. If a troop of wild tribesmen with camels and missiles came rolling into the
pass, I must instantly whistle up reinforcements on the radio. If it was a lesser
force, something we could deal with right here, we’d swoop and try to capture
the leaders and take care of the rest by whatever means were necessary.
Anyway, I continued my silent patrol, hunkered down behind a couple of
huge boulders, and again scanned the pass. Nothing. I stepped out once more,
into steep, barren, open country, and below me I suddenly saw three armed
Afghanistan tribesmen. My brain raced. There was seventy yards between me
and Shane. Do I open fire? How many more of them were there?
Too late. They opened fire first, shooting uphill, and a volley of bullets from
their AK-47s slammed into the rocks all around me. I hurled myself back behind
the rocks, knowing Shane must have heard something. Then I stepped out and let
’em have it. I saw them retreat into cover. At least I’d pinned them down.
But they came at me again, and again I returned fire. But right then, they
unleashed two rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and thank God I saw them
coming. I dived for cover, but they blew out one of the boulders which had given
me shelter. Now there were ricocheting bullets, dust, shrapnel, and flying rock
particles everywhere.
It felt like I was fighting a one-man war, and Christ knows how I avoided
being hit. But suddenly, the echoes of the blast died away, and I could hear
sporadic gunfire from these three maniacs. I waited quietly until I believed they
had broken cover, and then I stepped out and hit the trigger again. I don’t know
what or who I hit, but it suddenly went very quiet again. As if nothing had
happened. Welcome to Afghanistan, Marcus.
This was one type of patrol, standing guard up there over the passes and
trying to remain concealed. The other kind was a straight surveillance and
reconnaissance mission (SR), where we were tasked with observing and
photographing a village, looking for our target. It was always expected we would
locate him since our intel was excellent, often with good photographs. And we
were always in search of some sonofabitch in a turban who had for too long been
indulging in his favorite pastime of blowing up U.S. Marines.
On these sorties into the mountains, we were expected to pick out our quarry,
either with high-powered binoculars or the photo lens of one of our cameras, and
then swoop down into the village and take him. If he was alone, that was always
the primary plan of the SEALs: grab the target, get him back to base, and make
him talk, tell us where the Taliban were gathered, locate for us the huge
ammunition piles they had hidden in the mountains.