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

mountain to the village of Monagee, which sounds Irish but is strictly Pashtun
and is cooperative with the U.S. military. The plan was to wait until long after
dark and then slip out into the high pastures around eleven o’clock, stealthily
passing right under the noses of the probably sleeping Taliban watchmen.
I could only hope my left leg would stand up to the journey. I’d lost a ton of
weight, but I was still a very big guy to be half carried by a couple of slender
Afghan tribesmen, most of whom were five foot eight and 110 pounds soaked to
the skin. But Gulab did not seem too worried, and we settled down to wait out
the long dark hours before eleven, when we would make our break.
Night fell, quite abruptly, as it does up here in the peaks when the sun finally
slips behind them. We lit no lanterns, offering no clue to the Taliban. We just sat
there in the dark, sipping tea and waiting for the right moment to leave.
Suddenly, from right out of the blue, there was the most colossal
thunderstorm. The rain came swiftly, lashing rain, driving sideways over the
mountain. It was rain like you rarely see, the kind of stuff usually identified with
those hurricanes they keep replaying on the Weather Channel.
It belted down on the village of Sabray. All windows and doors were
slammed tight shut, because this was monsoon rain, driving in, right across the
country from the southwest. No one would have set foot outside home because
that wind and rain would have swept anyone away, straight off the mountain.
Outside, great gushes of water cascaded down the steep main trail through
the village. It sounded like we were in the middle of a river, the water racing past
the front door. An area like this cannot, of course, flood, not up here, because the
gradient is far too steep to hold water. But it can sure as hell get wet.
We had a rock-and-mud roof that was sound, but I did wonder how some of
the households down below us were getting along. Everything here is
communal, including the cooking, so I guess everyone was just crowded in
together in the undamaged houses, out of the rain.
Up above us, the mountaintops were lit up by great bolts of forked lightning,
ice blue in color, jagged, electric neon in the sky. Thunder rolled across the
Hindu Kush. Gulab and I got down close to the thick rock wall at the back of the
room because our own house was by no means watertight. But the rain was not
driving through the gaps in the rocks and mud. Our spot was dry, but we were
still deafened and dazzled by this atrocity of nature raging outside.
That level of storm can be unnerving, but when it goes on for as long as this
one, you become accustomed to its fury. Every time I looked out the window, the
lightning flashed and crackled above the highest peaks. But occasionally it