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

man’s gotta do.
And so the days passed by, until on Monday morning, June 27, 2005, they
located Sharmak again. This time it looked really good. By noon the detailed
maps and photos of the terrain were spread out before us. The intel was
excellent, the maps weren’t bad, the photographs of the terrain passable. We still
didn’t have a decent picture of Sharmak, just the same old head and shoulders,
grainy, indistinct. But we’d located other killers up here with a lot less, and there
was no doubt this time. “Redwing is a go!”
Right after the briefing, Chief Dan Healy said to me, quietly, “This is it,
Marcus. We’re going. Go get the guys ready.”
I gave the crisp reply expected from a team leader to a SEAL CPO. “Okay,
Chief. We’re outta here.”
And I walked out of the briefing room and headed back to our quarters with
a lot on my mind. I can’t quite explain it, but I was assailed by doubts, and that
feeling of disquiet never left me.
I’d seen the maps, and they were clear. What I couldn’t see was a place to
hide. We did not have good intel on the vegetation. It was obviously bad and
barren way up there in the Hindu Kush, around ten thousand feet. You don’t
need to be a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Institute to know this is arid
country above the tree line, not much growing. Great for climbers, a goddamned
nightmare for us.
The village we were surveying had thirty-two houses. I counted them on the
satellite picture. But we did not know which one Sharmak was in. Neither did we
know if the houses were numbered in case we got better intel while we were up
there.
We had some pictures of the layout but very little on the surrounding
country. We had good GPS numbers, very accurate. And we had a short list of
possible landing zones, unnecessary for the insert, because we’d fast-rope in, but
critical for the extract.
I was certain we’d need to blow down a few trees on a lower level of the
mountain in order to have cover when we left and to bring the helicopters in with
the DA force if it was required. Barren, treeless mountainscapes are no place to
conduct secretive landings and takeoffs, not with Taliban rocket men all around.
Especially the highly trained group that surrounded Sharmak. He was
goddamned lethal, and he’d proved it, more than once, blowing up the Marines.
The one aspect of the mission that dominated my thoughts as I walked back
to meet the guys was that there was no place to hide, no place from which to