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

Kush mountains. The most southerly peak, the one nearest the desert, is 11,000
feet high. After that it gets pretty steep, and it was to those mountains we were
headed.
Way below us was the important city of Kandahar, which a few weeks later,
on June 1, 2005, was the scene of one of the most terrible Taliban attacks of the
year. One of their suicide bombers killed twenty people in Kandahar’s principal
mosque. In that central-city disaster, they killed the security chief of Kabul, who
was attending the funeral of an anti-Taliban cleric who had been killed three
days earlier by a couple of guys on a motorbike.
I think that Chief Healy and myself, in particular, were well aware of the
dangers in this strife-torn country. And we realized the importance of our coming
missions, to halt the ever-burgeoning influx of Taliban recruits streaming in over
the high peaks of the Hindu Kush and to capture their leaders for interrogation.
The seven-hour journey from Bahrain seemed endless, and we were still an
hour or more south of Kabul, crawling north high above the treacherous border
that leads directly to the old Khyber Pass and then to the colossal peaks and
canyons of the northern Hindu Kush. After that, the mountains swerve into
Tajikstan and China, later becoming the western end of the Himalayas.
I was reading my guidebook, processing and digesting facts like an Agatha
Christie detective. Chaman, Zhob, key entry points for the Taliban and for bin
Laden’s al Qaeda as they fled the American bombs and ground troops. These
tribesmen drove their way over sixteen-thousand-foot mountains, seeking help
from the disgruntled Baluchistan chiefs, who were now bored sideways by
Pakistan and Afghanistan, Great Britain, Iran, the U.S.A., Russia, and anyone
else who tried to tell them what to do.
Our area of operations would be well north of there, and I spent the final
hours of the journey trying to glean some data. But it was hard to come by.
Trouble is, there’s not much happening in those mountains, not many small
towns and very few villages. Funny, really. Not much was happening, and yet, in
another way, every damn thing in the world was happening: plots, plans, villainy,
terrorism, countless schemes to attack the West, especially the United States.
There were cells of Taliban warriors just waiting for their chance to strike
against the government. There were bands of al Qaeda swarming around a leader
hardly anyone had seen for several years. The Taliban wanted power in
Afghanistan again; bin Laden’s mob wanted death and destruction of U.S.
citizens, uniformed or not. One way or another, they were all a goddamned
nightmare, and one that was growing progressively worse. Which was why they