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

7
An Avalanche of Gunfire
Down the mountain, from every angle. Axe flanked left, trying
to cut off the downward trail, firing nonstop. Mikey was blasting
away...shouting,...“Marcus, no options now, buddy, kill ’em all!”
We edged back the way we had come, into the shadows cast by the last of the
trees. It was not far back to waypoint 2, and we took a GPS reading right there.
Mikey handed over navigational duties to Axe, and I groaned. Moving up and
down these steep cliffs was really tough for me, but the streamlined, expert
mountaineer Matthew Axelson could hop around like a fucking antelope. I
reminded him of those two correlating facts, and all three of my teammates
started laughing.
For some reason best known to our resident king of Trivial Pursuit, he led us
off the high mountain ridge and down toward the valley which spread out from
the elbow of the dogleg. It was as if he had decided to eliminate the dogleg
entirely and take the straight line directly across to waypoint 3. Which was all
fine and dandy, except it meant a one-mile walk going steeply downward,
followed, inevitably, by a one-mile walk going steeply upward. That was the part
I was not built for.
Nonetheless that was our new route. After about fifty yards I was struggling.
I couldn’t keep up while going down, never mind up. They could hear me sliding
and cursing in the rear, and I could hear Axe and Mikey laughing up front. And
this was not a fitness problem. I was as fit as any of them, and I was not in any
way out of breath. I was just too big to track a couple of mountain goats. Laws
of nature, right?
Our path was inescapably zigzagged because Axe was always trying to find
cover, stay out of the moonlight, as we grappled our way back up the cliff to