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

They never tell us, or anyone else, the precise route of U.S. Special Forces
into any country. But there’s a big American base in the Baluchistan coastal
town of Pasni. I guess we made our landfall somewhere along there, long before
first light, and then flew on over four mountain ranges for 250 miles up to
another U.S. military base near the city of Dalbandin.
We never stopped, but Dalbandin lies only fifty miles south of the Afghan
border, and the airspace is safe around there. At least, it’s as safe as anything can
be in this strange, wild country, which is kind of jammed into a triangle among
Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
Baluchistan, its endless mountains a safe haven for so many fleeing al Qaeda
recruits and exiled Taliban fighters, currently provides shelter for up to six
thousand of these potential terrorists. And even though Chief Healy, me, and the
guys were nine miles above this vast, underpopulated, and secretive land, it still
gave me the creeps, and I was pleased when the aircrew finally told us we were
in Afghanistan airspace, running north for another four hundred miles, up toward
Kabul.
I fell asleep somewhere over the Regestan Desert, east of one of
Afghanistan’s greatest waterways, the 750-mile-long Hel-mand River, which
flows and irrigates most of the southern farmlands.
I cannot remember my dreams, but I expect they were of home. They usually
are when I’m serving overseas. Home for us is a small ranch out in the piney
woods of East Texas, near Sam Houston National Forest. We live down a long,
red dirt road in a lonely part of the country, close by another two or three
ranches, one of which, our adjoining neighbor, is about four thousand times
bigger than ours and sometimes makes us seem a whole lot bigger than we are. I
have a similar effect on my identical twin brother, Morgan.
He’s about seven minutes older than I am, and around the same size (six feet
five inches, 230 pounds). Somehow I’ve always been regarded as the baby of the
family. You wouldn’t believe seven minutes could do that to a guy, would you?
Well, it did, and Morgan is unflagging in his status as senior man.
He’s a Navy SEAL as well, a little behind me in rank, because I joined first.
But he still assumes a loose command whenever we’re together. And that’s
pretty often, since we share a house in Coronado, California, hard by the SEAL
teams.
Anyway, there’s two or three houses on our Texas property, the main one
being a single-story stone ranch surrounded by a large country garden, which
contains one little plantation for corn and another couple for vegetables. All