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

bullets; the swirling dust cloud enveloping the shrapnel and covering us, choking
us, obscuring everything.
Murph was trying to reassess the situation, desperately trying to make the
right decision despite our limited options. And let’s face it, the options had not
changed very much since I first slammed a bullet between that guy’s eyes from
behind the tree. Right now we were not hemmed in on our flanks; our enemy
was dead ahead. That, and straight up. Overhead. And that’s bad.
I guess the oldest military strategy in the world is to gain the higher ground.
In my experience, no Taliban commander had ever ordered his men to fight from
anything other than the high ground. And did they ever have it now. If we’d been
in a cornfield, it would have been nothing like so dangerous, because the bullets
would have hit the earth and stayed there. But we were in a granite-walled
corner, and everything bounced off at about a zillion miles per hour, which is
more or less the definition of a ricochet. Everything, bullets, shrapnel, and
fragments, came zinging off those rocks. It seemed to us like the Taliban were
getting double value for every shot. If the bullet missed, watch the hell out for
the ricochet.
And how much longer we could go on taking this kind of bombardment,
without getting ourselves killed, was anyone’s guess. Murph and Danny had
picked up the fight on the left and were still firing, still hitting them pretty good.
I was firing upward, trying to pick them off between the rocks, and Axe had
jammed himself into a good spot in the rocks and was blazing away at the
oncoming turbans.
Both Murph and I were hoping for a lull in the fire, which would signify we
had killed a significant number. But that never came. What came were
reinforcements. Taliban reinforcements. Groups of guys moving up, replacing
their dead, joining the front line of this wide-ranging, large force on their home
ground, armed to the teeth, and still unable to kill even one of us.
We tried to take the fight to them, concentrating on their strongest positions,
pushing them to reinforce their line of battle. No three guys ever fought with
higher courage than my buddies up there in those mountains. And damn near
surrounded as we were, we still believed we would ultimately defeat our enemy.
We still had plenty of ammunition.
But then Danny was shot again. Right through the neck, and he went down
beside me. He dropped his rifle and slumped to the ground. I reached down to
grab him and drag him closer to the rock face, but he managed to clamber to his
feet, trying to tell me he was okay even though he’d been shot four times.