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

Sometimes we’d run across a group of these guys sitting around a campfire,
bearded, sullen, drinking coffee, their AK-47s at the ready. Our first task was to
identify them. Were they Pashtuns? Peaceable shepherds, goatherds? Or armed
warriors of the Taliban, the ferocious mountain men who’d slit your throat as
soon as look at you? It took only a few days to work out that Taliban fighters
were nothing like so rough and dirty as Afghan mountain peasants. Many of
them had been educated in America, and here they were, carefully cleaning their
AK-47s, getting ready to kill us.
And it did not take us much longer to realize how impressive they could be
in action up here on their home ground. I always thought they would turn and
run for it when we discovered them. But they did nothing of the kind. If they
held or could reach the high ground, they would stand and fight. If we came
down on them they’d usually either give up or head right back to the border and
into Pakistan, where we could not follow them. But close up you could always
see the defiance in their eyes, that hatred of America, the fire of the
revolutionary that burned in their souls.
It was pretty damn creepy for us, because this was the heartland of terror, the
place where the destruction of the World Trade Center was born and nourished,
perfected by men such as these. I’ll be honest, it seemed kind of unreal, not
possible. But we all knew that it had happened. Right here in this remote dust
bowl was the root of it all, the homeland of bin Laden’s fighters, the place where
they still plot and scheme to smash the United States. The place where the
loathing of Uncle Sam is so ingrained, a brand of evil flourishes that is beyond
the understanding of most Westerners. Mostly because it belongs to a different,
more barbaric century.
And here stood Mikey, Shane, Axe, me, and the rest, ready for a face-off
anytime against these silent, sure-footed warriors, masters of the mountains,
deadly with rifle and tribal knife.
To meet these guys in these remote Pashtun villages only made the
conundrum more difficult. Because right here we’re talking Primitive with a big
P. Adobe huts made out of sun-dried clay bricks with dirt floors and an awful
smell of urine and mule dung. Downstairs they have goats and chickens living in
the house. And yet here, in these caveman conditions, they planned and then
carried out the most shocking atrocity on a twenty-first-century city.
Sanitation in the villages is as rudimentary as it gets. They have a communal
head, a kind of a pit, out on the edge of the houses. And we are all warned to
watch out for them, particularly on night patrols. I misjudged it one night,