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

was pinned down.
I was trying to look backward, wondering if Mikey had seen me and might
try a rescue, when suddenly I saw the stark white smoke trail of an incoming
RPG against the mountain. The RPG smashed into the tree trunk right next to me
and exploded with a shattering blast as I tried frantically to turn away from it. I
can’t tell what happened next, but it blew the goddamned trunk clean in half and
shot me straight over the cliff.
I guess it was about fifteen feet down to where Axe was moving into firing
position, and I landed close. Considering I’d just been blown over the ledge like
a freakin’ human cannonball, I was pretty lucky to be still standing. And there
right next to me on the ground was my rifle, placed there by the Hand of God
Himself.
I reached down to pick it up and listened again for His voice. But this time
there was no noise, just one brief second of silence in my mind, amid all the
chaos and malevolence of this monstrous struggle for supremacy, apparently
being conducted on behalf of His Holy Prophet Muhammad.
I was not sure whether either of them would have approved. I don’t know
that much about Muhammad, but, by all that’s holy, I don’t think my own God
wished me to die. If He had been indifferent to my plight, He surely would not
have taken such good care of my gun, right? Because how on earth that was still
with me, I will never know.
That rifle had so far fought three separate battles in three different places,
been ripped out of my grasp twice, been blown over a cliff by a powerful
grenade, fallen almost nine hundred feet down a mountain, and was still
somehow right next to my outstretched hand. Fluke? Believe what you will. My
own faith will remain forever unshaken.
Anyhow, I picked it up and moved back into the rocks where Axe was now
picking up fire from the enemy. But he was well positioned and fighting back,
blazing away on the left, the flank for which he’d fought so desperately for so
long. Actually it had been about forty minutes, but it seemed like ten years, and
we were both still going.
So, for that matter, were Mikey and Danny, and somehow they had both
made the leap down here to the lower level, near the stream, where the Taliban
assault was not quite so bad. Yet. We looked, by the way, shocking, especially
Danny, who was covered head to toe in blood. Axe was okay but badly battered,
and Mikey was soaked in blood from that stomach wound; not as bad as Danny,
but not pretty.