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

killing mode, going for the leaders with my Pepsi bottle.
Then I found a piece of flinty rock on the floor of the cave, and, lying
painfully on my left side, I spent two hours carving the words of the Count of
Monte Cristo onto the wall of my prison: God will give me justice.
I wasn’t sure I quite believed it anymore. He’d been out of touch for some
time now. But I was still alive. Just. And maybe there was help on the way. He
works in awful mysterious ways. Still, even my rifle was gone now, like most of
my hope.
I was just beginning to drift off again, maybe a little before 0800, when the
place seemed to come alive. I could hear the little bells around the necks of the
goddamned goats, and they seemed to be above me. When sand and rocks
started raining down on me, I realized there was no roof to my cave. I was open
to the sky, I could hear those goat hooves pounding away up there somewhere,
and the sand kept pouring down on me.
The good news was it buried the ants, but I was trying to stop it getting in my
eyes, and so I turned facedown, shielding my eyes with my hands, my right wrist
aching like hell from that Taliban gun butt. Suddenly, to my complete horror, I
saw the barrel of an AK-47 easing round the corner of the rock which guarded
my left side. I couldn’t hide, I couldn’t even take cover, and I sure as hell
couldn’t fight back.
The barrel kept coming, then the rest of the rifle, the hands, and the face —
the face of one of my buddies from Sabray, grinning cheerfully. I was in such
shock I could not even bring myself to call him a crazy prick, which he plainly
was. But he brought me bread and that appalling goat’s milk and filled my water
bottle. The one from the sewer.
Half an hour later Sarawa came, five hours after he said he would. He looked
at my bullet wound and gave me more water. Then he posted a guard at the
entrance to my roofless cave. The guard was thirtyish and, like the rest of them,
whip-thin and bearded. He sat on a rock a little way above my entrance, his AK-
47 slung over his shoulder.
I kept drifting off, lying there on the floor, and every time I came awake I
leaned out to see if the guard was still there. His name was Norzamund, and he
always smiled real friendly and gave me a wave. But we could not speak, no
common words. He came down once to fill my water bottle and I tried to get him
to share his with me. No dice.
So I lifted the evil Pepsi bottle and splashed the water directly into my
mouth. Then I chucked it to the back of the cave. Next time Norzamund brought