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

intel on him, from both satellites and the FBI. We did not, however, have
photographs.
I never knew where he was educated, but this young Taliban kid was a
scientist, a master of explosives. We call them IED guys (improvised explosive
devices), and in this part of the mountains, this kid was King IED. And he and
his men had been wreaking havoc on U.S. troops, blowing stuff up all over the
place. He’d recently blown up a couple of U.S. Marine convoys and killed a lot
of guys.
Foxtrot Platoon regrouped in the small hours of the morning after the trek
across the mountains and positioned ourselves high above the upper village. As
the sun came up, we moved swiftly down the hillside and charged into the
village, crashing down the doors to the houses, arresting anyone and everyone.
We were not shooting, but we were very intimidating, no doubt about that. And
no one resisted. But the kid wasn’t there.
Meanwhile the main force, SEAL Team 10, was in and playing hell in the
bigger, lower village. It took them a while, because this required interrogation, a
skill at which we were all very competent. In these circumstances, we were
grilling everyone, looking for the liar, the guy who changed his story, the guy
who was somehow different. We wanted the guy who was obviously not a
goatherd, as the rest of them were; a young guy who lacked the gnarled, rough
look of the native mountain farmer.
We got our man. It was my first close-up encounter with a fanatical Taliban
fighter. I’ll never forget him. He was only just old enough to have a decent
beard, but he had wild, crazy eyes, and he stared at me like I’d just rejected the
entire teachings of the Koran.
I knew in that instant that if he could have killed me, he would have. No one
had ever looked at me before, or has since, with that much hatred.
That second operation in Afghanistan, the snatch-and-grab of Abdul the
Bombmaker or whatever the hell his name was, brought home two aspects of
this conflict to us newly arrived SEALs. First, the rabid hatred these Muslim
extremists had for all of us; second, the awkwardness of complying with our
rules of engagement (ROE) in this type of warfare.
SEALs, by our nature, training, and education, are not very stupid. And
along with everyone else, we read the newspaper headlines from all over the
world about serving members of the armed forces who have been charged with
murder in civilian courts for doing what they thought was their duty, attacking