The Lion of Sabray Read online

  Marcus watched Gulab and Shah walk away, out of sight, into the mountain forest. He didn’t really know if he would ever see his new friend again. And he knew that if this should be so, he had, at most, minutes to live. Because if they shot Gulab, they’d surely execute their real target.

  The tribesman from Sabray left Marcus behind and walked alongside this self-appointed general, head of his own army, and flanked by his self-appointed “Commodore” deputy. They stepped several paces into the trees, leaving Marcus all alone, under the guns of the Taliban marksmen.

  They stepped into a small clearing, and Ahmad Shah handed Gulab a piece of paper on which were written these words, in Pashtun: “Either you hand over the American, or every member of your family will be killed.”

  Gulab read this carefully and placed the paper in his pocket. He stared at this so-called warrior-savior of Afghanistan, and he told himself, This character is not a recognized head of a national army; he’s not even approved by the government. He’s a usurper, a man seeking power for himself at whatever cost.

  So he glared straight into his eyes. “Ahmad Shah,” said Gulab, “neither I nor my people will ever give up the American. And we function under the ancient laws of our people, and I, under the direct command of Allah.

  “I am surprised you cannot understand that. But should you decide to defy those ancient laws or the commands of Allah, I must advise you that the consequences for you may be very serious and may last until the end of your days. I cannot stop you and all these troops you have from killing me and my family, and perhaps everyone else in Sabray.

  “And I am not suggesting you will face the fires of hell. Only Allah can do that. But I am His devout servant, and He has spoken to me, and I know that God is great, and there is but one God.

  “And I say to you, to hell with your threats. I will never be afraid of you. I am Gulab, the Lion of Sabray, and I stand alongside the one and only God in my belief that the American must be protected.”

  Gulab turned his back on him and began walking back through the trees to Marcus. Shah called out to him, reminding that he lived only because he, Shah, allowed that to be so. Gulab gripped his rifle and told the Taliban commander that he lived only because, he, Gulab, permitted it.

  Gulab walked back to Marcus. All around, he could see the men of Sabray, who had somehow heard of this confrontation and then swarmed down the hill, armed to the teeth, toward the American’s blackberry bush. These were trained warriors—mujahideen veterans and younger men—many of them taught by Gulab. They understood lines of battle and had positioned themselves in trees as well as behind bushes and rocks. This tight, practiced formation would be more than a match for Shah’s force.

  And they had the added advantage of knowing every inch of this ground. If someone moved a rock beside a trail by a matter of a few feet, they would know because they had probably seen it all of their lives.

  Gulab’s judgment was that Shah would order his men to hold their fire. Yes, there would be other opportunities for him to murder the village’s premier warrior and his family, but not today—not while Gulab had the mass protection of the Sabray fighters.

  The last thing the Taliban troops needed was another bloodbath. In Gulab’s view, Ahmad Shah was already playing with fire. In the past week, he had lost many, many men to American gunfire and a US air bombardment on the mountain.

  Troops can take only so much of a battering without their morale collapsing, and it would have been amazing if these hidden gunmen had decided to start shooting.

  Praise be to Allah, they did not. Gulab walked back to Marcus, who, unsurprisingly, was extremely anxious to know what had happened. He showed the Navy SEAL the piece of paper and in sign language explained to him what it said.

  Gazing around them, they could see the Taliban dispersing back to the encampment on the mountain overlooking the village—or, at least, what remained of that encampment, after the American bombers had finished with it.

  There was no doubt in Gulab’s mind that Shah and his men would be back and would never give up on their quest to kill Marcus. But that did not mean they would be successful. Nevertheless, Gulab elected not to return to the house where they had taken shelter.

  He leaned down, took Marcus by the hand, and helped haul him to his feet. It was very obvious that the American’s shattered left leg was giving him huge pain, and he’d left the opium in the house. But two more of Gulab’s men arrived to help lift him to higher ground in order to find a new place of safety. It was an arduous walk until they reached a dried-up riverbed and set the agonized Marcus down in a comfortable position. Someone produced water.

  They stayed there for forty-five minutes. All around them, keeping a fifty-yard distance, were Gulab’s friends—familiar faces to Marcus—every one of them armed. Some were positioned in the trees, some at ground level, all ready to open fire with a mass assault on the Taliban if the enemy threatened.

  For the moment, that threat was gone. They were safe temporarily. But Gulab remembers being a lot less confident than he appeared. And he racked his brain for a new plan; somewhere different to hide the wounded American warrior.

  Gulab was faced with a hard decision. He had to get Marcus away from Ahmad Shah and the Commodore; somewhere secret where they would not find him. For all anyone knew, they were being spied upon at this very moment as they trekked painfully uphill into the hidden woodlands of the Hindu Kush.

  They also could not stray very far from Sabray, because Marcus required food, medical supplies, and fresh water. The logical place was back in the cold, dark cave.

  The senior tribesman had a vague plan and a vague idea of the territory to which they were headed. But nothing definite.

  They just kept moving up the footpath, which was so slippery and muddy, it was a miracle Marcus did not keel over and collapse on the ground. Two friends were bearing much of his weight, but Marcus is a very big man, and the gradient was steep. They were virtually pushing 230 pounds uphill.

  Gulab’s hopes were now pinned on the Americans, but if they were going to thunder in out of the skies and save Marcus, they should have been there two nights ago. If Maluk had made it to Asadabad, where were they? By now, they must have had the letter Marcus wrote for the elder to carry with him, and surely the US military would have come instantly to gather up its injured hero.

  But no one had heard anything. The US bombardment of the mountainside had seemed so promising, but after that, only silence. Like four little lost goats, they inched their way up through the still-dripping trees, slipping, sliding, and heaving. Marcus endured the worst of it, but he battled upward without a word of complaint, although anyone could see he was in the most terrible pain.

  - 6 -

  “IT’S MARCUS, GUYS! WE GOT HIM!”

  It has remained forever a mystery to Gulab why Marcus’s rescuers took so long. But years later, he can now be informed. Backtracking several days, gaps can be filled because information has only now been declassified.

  When the message that a big Bagram-based Chinook was down in the mountains in a failed attempt to rescue a four-man SEAL team flashed through to the forward operating bases (FOB) in the Hindu Kush close to the border with Pakistan, it caused instant consternation. Everyone knew it included Marcus, Axe, and Danny. According to the last comms, at least two of the four were dead. It was assumed there were no survivors from the helo.

  This was a five-alarm uproar, shaping up as the worst day in US Special Forces history. And immediately, the US Army Rangers and the Green Berets began volunteering for a new rescue mission. People were demanding that a helo get fired up right away, since dozens of these professional hard men were preparing to ride in like the “friggin’ Seventh Cavalry.”

  This, however, was less than straightforward, since Sabray had no road and nothing even remotely resembling an airstrip. Militarily, it was unapproachable, except on foot. And this put the commanding officer of CJSOTF (Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force—e
ither Rangers or Green Berets, or a combination) into a major dilemma.

  The issue was knife-edged. And the question for the CO was fraught with tension: Do I risk my only air transport up here in the badlands for the possibility of rescuing perhaps one man, in the full knowledge that the Taliban are experts with Stinger missiles?

  The officer’s answer was a very reluctant no. But, not for the first time, the Green Berets had swarmed into action, anyway. While CJSOTF was wrestling with the problem, the Green Berets were already in a helicopter flying from Jalalabad to Asadabad, where they demanded major transport up to Sabray, with the sole objective of “kicking some serious Taliban ass and getting the SEALs home, quick.”

  There were already problems everywhere, not the least because of the shocking terrain. No vehicle was capable of crossing the steep mountain to get anywhere near Sabray. Plus, the weather was closing in, there were thunderstorms in the area, and the ground was already soaked, treacherous, and, in places, impassable.

  “Mission impossible” was the planners’ verdict. And no one was anxious to take another $35 million helicopter loss until they at least had a definite objective—for instance, an American had been confirmed alive and in need of rescue.

  They call it POSIDENT.

  The high command was not saying “no” unreasonably. Every shred of logic was telling them that it was a risk too far to order dozens of top men to try to walk and climb over the mountain range, probably under Taliban guns. To many people, this was an obvious nonstarter. And strictly on paper, it probably was.

  But a Green Beret major to whom Marcus will forever be grateful answered, “Sir, the guys are determined to go. If we have to walk, we’ll walk.”

  “It’s twenty miles to the village,” was the reply. “It’s across hostile Taliban country. Ground conditions are awful. You’ll have no vehicles; certainly no heavy weapons. And it’ll soon be dark. Those twenty miles over that terrain are gonna feel like five hundred.”

  “I’m not sure you quite understand, sir,” replied the major. “We’re not leaving them.”

  No one was ever told the blow-by-blow discussions that followed that declaration, but they virtually hijacked a dozen big trucks from the adjoining US Marine base, aided and abetted by a couple of sympathetic senior marine officers who also would not hear of the SEALs being abandoned.

  They made one stipulation: “Gas up the trucks, but you have to take one marine with each one. This is strictly against regulations, but it’ll be a darned sight worse if we don’t even have guys with the vehicles!” Semper fidelis, right?

  Also on the Asadabad base were a few other SEALs, from Team Ten, Team Six, and a separate squadron of Rangers. Every last one insisted on joining the rescue party. Then they heard that another platoon of Rangers had done the same thing at their base on the other side of the mountain and were treating the operation like it was the Normandy invasion in 1944. The Rangers were prepared to do anything to try to save Mikey, Danny, Axe, and Marcus.

  The result was that 120 members of the United States Special Forces—Green Berets and Army Rangers—clad in heavy-duty waterproofs, carrying climbing gear, compasses, medical supplies, food, and a ton of ammunition, set off that afternoon for Sabray. The Green Berets drove out of the base in convoy in the marine trucks; the Rangers, from the other start point, were on foot.

  They all had a highly dangerous journey ahead of them, and they headed into the mountains, up the first escarpments, under low cloud cover. The marine trucks made short work of the first few miles, lurching and growling their way up the gradients, but the two dozen Rangers had a tough time—especially when the night turned pitch-black. Nonetheless, they kept going with short rests, making only a snail’s pace across the rocky face of Afghanistan’s northeastern range.

  All too swiftly, of course, the Green Berets ran out of road. They came to a halt at the head of a valley and circled the wagons, making doubly sure that the Taliban could not follow them in there. The marines left a guard detail to protect the vehicles and seal off the entire valley.

  There followed several conferences in which the Green Beret leaders, who are apt to be even more headstrong than their counterparts in the SEALs, swore to God they were the mountain men of the US Army, deeply experienced, experts on the gradients, unstoppable in battle, and the best climbers this side of Mount Everest’s north face.

  Probably true—nearly as good as the SEALs. At this point, another of Marcus’s great buddies, Staff Sergeant Travis (twenty-seven then, and still serving now), was calling a lot of the shots. He instructed one of the native troops—the locals who usually accompany Special Forces in Afghanistan—to scout around a few local villages and see if he could round up some transport: horses, yaks, oxen, whatever.

  The kid came back with about fifty donkeys. Then he went back out and returned with another twenty. The guys spent hours loading them with all the equipment out of the trucks. There were piles of rucksacks, all their food and water, medical supplies, plus a few heavy machine guns, ammunition, mortar tubes, and God knows what else.

  Thus, when they finally set off, they looked like a mobile army trying to take over a country: 120 armed troops, seventy fully laden donkeys, trotting along the line astern, roped together, braying through the long, echoing mountain passes on their seven-mile journey to Sabray.

  High above, the Green Beret commanders had called in air cover: occasional Apache helicopters swooping in and then returning to base; A-10 Thunderbolt IIs riding shotgun; and a Lockheed AC-130 Spectre gunship, all ready to dive through the mountains and into the fray should the Taliban army become ambitious.

  As Travis said years later, “A lot of people said we looked just like Brigadier General Frank Merrill’s guys: a rough, unkempt, armed mule train, hacking our way across the face of the mountain, ready for anything.” One way or another, Staff Sergeant Travis and his boys looked like a twenty-first-century version of Merrill’s Marauders: the epic American special jungle warfare force that almost destroyed itself knocking out the Japanese in thirty-five different battles in Burma in World War II—five of them major. “We weren’t even a shadow of that legendary force,” added Travis, “but I liked the comparison. Frank Merrill’s immortals were awarded, to a man, the Bronze Star for unusual valor.”

  You have to love that Green Berets–SEALs rivalry, Army vs. Navy, and they’d all lay down their lives for each other, any time. But by anyone’s standards, the Green Berets and the Rangers made a fabulous effort that first day. They climbed five thousand feet up and over the peak of the mountain before leveling out and heading downward.

  But on the following night, at 2100, the thunderstorm broke, and the guys were out there on the mountain, trying to hunker down behind rocks, anywhere to find shelter from the driving rain.

  When the downpour eased slightly, they set off again, pushing on toward the far-distant uplands around Sabray, where they believed they would find the missing SEALs. Midnight found them on slightly flatter ground, still going, sliding, squelching, fighting for footholds, checking the waypoints as the pounding rain rose and fell in intensity.

  Gulab’s own little army made its slow, painful progress up through the woods until finally it came to a small flight of rough-hewn steps cut into the rock. He’d been this way before, but not very often. It was a wild area where even the herds of tribal goats do not pass. Gulab looked at those steps and thought to himself, This will not be my favorite part of the journey, trying to push Marcus up there.

  But there was no choice. No one wanted to go back. They had to keep pushing forward. And the two porters got behind him and let the American fall back slightly so that he was effectively sitting on their shoulders. Then they pushed, edging him upward.

  On the fourth step, however, Gulab received one of the biggest surprises of his life. An armed Afghani fighter, his AK-47 leveled straight at him, was staring him in the face. The man was dressed in combat gear, looked as if he’d had a very rough time, and was poised to op
en fire.

  This, Gulab felt, was one hell of a way to die: too late to grab his rifle because he was hanging onto the back of an infidel. Then, in just a fraction of a second, Gulab saw foreign words on the guy’s headgear, and the one he recognized was Bush—the name of the American president.

  In a moment of blind panic, he grasped for a word to stop anyone from opening fire, especially at Marcus, who was dressed in Afghan clothes and looked like a full-blown Taliban terrorist.

  Gulab dismissed the idea of shouting “Marcus!” because he did not even know if that was his real name. But he was staring at the warrior’s headgear badge, and it was screaming loudly that this guy was either an American or fighting with the Americans.

  Gulab’s mind went blank, and the only thing he could think of was that huge tattoo on Marcus’s back. And somehow he remembered those blue numbers engraved into the SEAL’s upper arm: 2-2-8.

  He thrust his empty hand into the air and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Two-two-eight! It’s two-two-eight!” Gulab had not the slightest idea what this signified. But it rang some distant bell with someone. The soldier with the helmet stopped dead in his tracks and lowered his rifle.

  “American? American?” he called out. And then two more really rough-looking characters came bursting through the trees, guns raised. Gulab just kept bellowing, “Two-two-eight! It’s two-two-eight!”

  The new man was big, black, and obviously American. For Gulab, the world stood still, and so did his heart, just with pure relief that no one opened fire. The American looked at Marcus and then his face split into an enormous smile.

  “Marcus?” he said. He whipped around and roared, “It’s Marcus, guys! We got him! We got him! Right here we got him!”

  Gulab never understood the English language with such fluency as he did at that moment. “And,” he says, “I have to say, I never have since!”