The Lion of Sabray Read online

  Anyone could see what this meant to them. The smiling soldier ran forward and took Marcus into his arms, and as he stepped into the clearing, tears streamed down Marcus’s face. Tears of laughter? Tears of joy? Tears of pure relief? Who knows? But it was a life-changing moment for the American.

  And rapidly, US troops came swarming out from the undergrowth—big, tough, heavily armed men, much bigger than Gulab’s own people. They were all laughing and moving forward to shake Marcus’s hand. He was absolutely unable to speak, and the black man who’d grabbed him first just kept saying over and over, “It’s okay, buddy. It’s okay now. We got you. You’re good.”

  This was an unimaginable scene for Gulab: all of them with several days’ stubble on their faces, covered in mud, completely disheveled and beat up. It was obvious that the men had been out for days crossing the mountain, since before the big thunderstorm. Gulab was frankly amazed they had not been attacked by Shah’s troops as soon as they came within striking distance.

  Someone explained that they were trying to get a message through to Texas: “Gotta tell your mom you’re okay!” It was pandemonium in that clearing. The incredible focus of the overnight mission, broken by the joyful reunion. But at first, not everyone was friendly. The Americans thought that Marcus had been kidnapped. But Gulab watched Marcus explaining what he’d done for him, and soon they understood that not only was he a friendly, he was a critical asset.

  After their quick burst of excitement upon finding Marcus, the Americans returned to their calm efficiency. The US medic ordered a stretcher party to move in and carry Marcus out of the forest and up to higher ground, where everyone could see.

  And there a US professional went to work. Gulab remembers him well. His name was Travis, and he cut away Marcus’s bandages, cleaned the wounds, applied new antiseptic cream, and produced spotless new dressings, which he applied expertly. Then he made Marcus take the first of a course of antibiotics. At Marcus’s insistence, they allowed Gulab to stay with him.

  The Afghani was filled with admiration. These men had been out there for five days, in shocking conditions, and yet somehow, in hundreds of square miles of rough, wild, mountainous country, they’d found him—walked right up to the very patch of ground where Gulab had led him.

  That could have been a fluke. But it really wasn’t. The US Special Forces had a mission to find Marcus, and they accomplished it, guessing correctly that if the enemy were on the mountain across from the village, Marcus would somehow be in a different part. They were following a track down while Gulab pushed his way forward. The moment of collision was an example of truly expert soldiering and navigation. The mujahideen commanders would have congratulated the men of the United States.

  While Marcus’s wounds were being attended to, the Americans made a makeshift headquarters up there by the high goat pens. Marcus was trying to inform them that they were virtually surrounded by a Taliban dragnet. Gulab had told them to expect Ahmad Shah’s maximum attack force to number maybe three hundred.

  There were more than a hundred US Special Forces, including the doctor, and the three-to-one odds did not seem to worry anyone in the slightest. They were very confident, probably based on reports of the terrible damage inflicted on Shah’s troops by Marcus’s small team of four. And Shah, having already experienced just how lethal and destructive American airpower could be, would never want another direct confrontation with US firepower.

  Eventually, after about an hour, the US forces decided to go down to the village and set up some type of headquarters. Gulab led them down the hillside and helped them settle into a few houses that might not have been the most comfortable situation they’d ever been in, but they were secure, and a guard was placed on duty at various points on the edge of Sabray, facing the mountains.

  There, behind those thick mud walls, the Americans worked on, listening to Marcus, drawing diagrams and maps, marking out where the Taliban were encamped. Gulab could see their planning was meticulous. And he spent a half hour talking to Marcus, who was very tired but still tried to explain to his weeklong host just who these fierce and efficient fighters from America actually were.

  By now, Marcus was aware of Gulab’s military background and his obvious field rank. And the Afghani was making endless attempts to find out about these scruffy-looking rescuers. It was obvious these men truly interested him. But how to explain the heritage of these historic US Special Forces to a man who barely understood one word of English? “Green Beret,” for instance, had him totally confused. Gulab started off from the premise that it was an unripe blackberry, because Marcus had told him the English word for the fruit he was eating when Ahmad Shah showed up. And “Rangers” was probably worse. He thought it was a variation on the word stranger or danger, which he thought he understood.

  Gulab and Marcus sat together and tried to communicate while the guys made their evacuation plans, and finally Gulab was convinced that the Green Berets had nothing to do with blackberries. All through the afternoon, they watched the US personnel opening up the communications, pinpointing the Taliban army, and plainly making plans for a dangerous exit from Sabray for both men and their rescuers.

  Marcus made it clear that Gulab was coming with him, because he could not possibly be left behind alone to face the Taliban’s hit men. They had sworn to kill him and his family, and Marcus was in no mood to test whether or not they meant it.

  He actually believed that Shah would have sent in many men just to make sure that the man who saved the infidel murderer died at the hands of an Islamic force. It would be a pure revenge killing for the dozens of turbaned warriors he and the other Redwings had wiped out on the mountain the previous week.

  Gulab was leaving simply because no one, with a clear conscience, could possibly have consigned him to his certain fate. Marcus made quite certain everyone understood that.

  Gulab noticed during this awkward exchange that one word kept coming up over and over: opium. Marcus said it several times, and the US commanders said it frequently. In turn, they passed it on to the young officer who was manning the communications, and he, in turn, passed it on to whomever was on the other end of the line.

  At first, Gulab thought they might be forming some kind of a drug cartel, and he wondered about informing them that they had just missed the harvest. However, Marcus took great trouble in explaining to him that they were discussing the Sabray opium field below the village, the only place sufficiently flat to possibly land a military helicopter and then take off again.

  However, even someone as unskilled in air warfare as Gulab could understand this was a dreadful idea. For a start, there was a granite mountain wall on one side of the field, and on the other, a sheer drop of probably two thousand feet to the valley floor. In front stood a couple of sizable trees. But there was nowhere else.

  The Americans would need a superhuman pilot to get them out. The slightest error coming in to land on that narrow field could be fatal to everyone. Plus, no one was absolutely thrilled about a big US military helicopter blowing itself up, against the wall, right on the perimeter of the village.

  Gulab had reached the point where he had no idea about his future, if he had any. Marcus had made it clear he was leaving with him, since he could not possibly stay in Sabray. But he did not want to go all the way to America, leaving behind his wife and family. He assumed that he would go to a US base and perhaps be given work there. And he knew his days guarding Marcus were drawing to a close. Soon the American would leave, and Gulab had no idea when he would see him again, if ever.

  Even with a vast succession of hand signals and demonstrations, Marcus had communicated very little about himself, except about where he came from: this hot, flat American state of Texas, where there was only one star in the sky and where a half-crazed American Communist had gunned down President John F. Kennedy from a sixth-floor window in the Texas School Book Depository. He also understood that Marcus’s parents had worked with horses, and they lived on a small ranch.
/>   Marcus had explained his brother, Morgan, was somehow the same as him and was also a member of the US Special Forces. Both Luttrells had been in military training since they were very young. But they were running and swimming and climbing while Gulab was gunning down Russians with his dushka-mounted machine gun.

  They’d both dodged a lot of bullets in their time, but how Marcus was not shot on the mountain during the battle remained a deep mystery. Gulab had heard from several sources that all three of the other SEALs had been shot many, many times, but not Marcus. No one hit him except for a sniper when he was trying to get away.

  Gulab wished at the time of the rescue that he knew him better— knew more about him personally. They really liked each other, even though they did not, after all, have an awful lot to go on besides their warrior bond.

  But now they stood together. And, their gods willing, they’d somehow soon be airlifted out—the American never to return. Gulab understood that he might not come back, either, and would have to move his entire family into whatever new residence he could establish.

  And that might be difficult, since his family and all of their ancestors had lived in Sabray for more than two thousand years—before even the Christian prophet, Jesus Christ, was born.

  • • •

  The afternoon wore on, and Gulab was more and more impressed with Captain Travis, the medical chief. He later learned that Ranger medics are nothing short of walking hospitals and probably the most respected medics in the US military.

  No platoon goes anywhere without one. Men like Travis are trained to treat battlefield injuries. They can swiftly establish a field clinic. They can prescribe medicine, vaccinate, and perform minor surgery. They can identify bacteria in contaminated water wells, and even deliver babies. Gulab watched him make Marcus feel better and better.

  Communications from this new Rangers–Navy SEAL HQ in Sabray never stopped. Gulab could not understand anything they said, and it was impossible to help them much, except with drawings of the entrenched Taliban positions on the mountain.

  All around the village, the American guards were in position, especially on the Taliban side. Like Marcus, they attracted the kids, who were always running up to them, and shouting “Hello, Dr. Marcus!” which they assumed was an all-purpose US greeting.

  The Americans were really nice to them, and it was hard for Gulab to accept that here were these big, genial people from across the world, guarding his village from a section of armed, thuggish Pashtuns, whom almost no one liked.

  No one ordered the children to return home, because their presence, standing and laughing alongside these US soldiers, was a major plus. The Taliban might be stupid enough to attack the American Rangers, but they surely understood that one stray bullet hitting one of the children would set everyone within a ten-mile radius against them forever.

  All afternoon, Shah’s army did not attack. But as the soft light of dusk set in, things began to change dramatically. A succession of US fighter-bombers flew over the region, screaming across the skies directly above at high speed and, at first, high altitude. The whole place shook when they split the sound barrier.

  It shook a great deal more in the ensuing couple of hours when the US air attack increased, and they began to batter the slopes opposite the village with bombs, rockets, and gunfire. It was as if the military had finally had enough of Ahmad Shah and decided to quiet him once and for all.

  It was the kind of onslaught you associate with a World War II urban destruction program over Germany or London. An outsider stumbling across this bombardment might think there would be no survivors. And the accuracy of the bombardment was outstanding. They hit the Taliban slopes and nothing else. No bombs or rockets hit the village.

  Families hastened to get inside undercover. And everyone realized that this was it. This was what that afternoon of endless communications had been for. The Rangers and the Green Berets had orchestrated this attack. Gulab had watched them sending messages, signals on their computers, probably GPS readings. These were plainly precision attacks, and the Taliban must have sustained heavy casualties again.

  Of course, any experienced combat commander understands that bombing a wild mountainous area does not inflict quite the 100 percent death toll you might think. Fighting men find places to take cover: behind rocks and trees, in gullies, away from the straight, low lines of the actual blast.

  Marcus was a prime example of that, somehow avoiding the Taliban onslaught of grenades while the Americans were pinned down and taking casualties. They slammed him in the leg. But they never killed him.

  As the explosions shook the mountain, Gulab returned to his constant thought about the Taliban and their Al Qaeda friends. As a group, they had caused all this; they alone had caused the world to go to war.

  When those hijacked aircrafts crashed into the World Trade Center, it very swiftly became clear that a president like George Bush was not going to just sit there and accept it. When he unleashed his gigantic military on Afghanistan, all the Taliban had to do was betray this crazed Saudi, bin Laden, and tell the Americans where he was hiding. They could have offered guidance and assistance to the world’s most powerful nation, which had been such a friend to Afghanistan.

  But they made the wrong decision. They would not betray bin Laden, this dangerous, reckless foreigner, cowering in the mountains with his ridiculous “army.” The Taliban caused havoc by their actions, and when they first asked Gulab to betray Marcus, he told Shah to his face, “You would not hand over bin Laden. And I will not hand over Marcus.”

  Everyone sat quietly in the village through that evening, but the Rangers were endlessly in communication with their base during the US attack on the mountain, perhaps speaking to the pilots. But at ten o’clock that night, they ordered everyone down to the opium field.

  The Rangers asked Gulab to lead the way, and they all walked the hundred yards down the steep hill and onto the flat, very dusty ground, dried out now after the harvest and the rainstorm. He and his nephew, Norzamund, who had been helping to guard Marcus from the start, assisted the Americans in carrying him over the roughest parts.

  When they finally arrived, they headed for the far wall and sat down with their backs against it. There were intermittent explosions, but the Taliban guns were silent, for the moment. It did occur to Marcus they might all be dead.

  The shapes of the high pinnacles stood black against the mountains under the dark sky. Gulab was sorrowful, wondering if he would ever pass this way again. It seemed incomprehensible that this place, beloved of his ancestors for centuries, would be lost to him—that he would not see it again.

  The personal threats against him were real. And the threats against his vulnerable family were worse. But Gulab had to go, and, subsequently, so did they. He sat thinking about everything he had always loved up there: the pure blue, cloudless skies in summer; the sight of the faraway peaks capped with snow; the solitude; the sense of belonging; the certainty of Pashtun survival.

  For him, there could never be anywhere else. And should this all be taken away, it would be as if a light from the center of the earth had somehow gone out. He was forever a mountain man in a landlocked country. The oceans and fertile lowlands would always be strange to him. He might admire them. He might even like them. But he could never be of them, as he was of the high peaks of the Hindu Kush.

  This harsh, rugged end of the Himalayas has always embraced everyone who lived there, protecting them from invasion and conquest. Since the beginning of time, these mighty walls, some more than twenty-three thousand feet high, have encircled the villages, guarded the families, and isolated the communities from a world they did not really understand. No one ever dominated the men of the Hindu Kush; no one ever won a lasting war up there. Not against the Pashtun tribes.

  But now, thanks to the Taliban, all might be lost for such people. As Gulab sat there with Marcus, he thought that his own back was against the wall more significantly than for any other of the brave warriors
who sat alongside him. He alone faced the loss of everything he had ever known.

  He sat there in a kind of daze, staring ahead at the mountain, watching the tracers from the passing US gunships, cursing the very ground upon which the Taliban walked.

  Instructions from the Rangers had been precise. It was obvious that the helicopter would arrive soon. And, for all of the above reasons, Gulab viewed that prospect with mixed feelings. To be taken away from here was nearly impossible for him to imagine. But to remain here without permanent US protection was out of the question.

  He badly wanted to talk to Marcus about how he felt, and to discuss with him what future there was for him and his family. But the endless problem was still there, of course. Great friends though they now were, they could not speak to each other. Especially on subjects as complex as this.

  - 7 -

  “NEGATIVE BURN! . . . NEGATIVE BURN!”

  Neither Gulab nor Marcus had the remotest idea of what was going on, except that they were sitting in the middle of a US bombardment of the mountain, like a couple of guys waiting for a bus. They were, however, both holding machine guns, ready to lash out at anything that threatened them.

  In fact, there was an enormous amount going on back at the base in preparation for one of the biggest and most dangerous mountain air rescues ever undertaken by the US military.

  This was a specialist operation. The 920th Rescue Squad shares its headquarters with the Forty-Fifth Space Wing at Patrick Air Force Base on the Banana River, on the east coast of central Florida. Its two-mile-long main runway stands twelve miles south of Cape Canaveral. The 920th has participated in many space adventures, frequently hooking returning astronauts and their space capsules out of the ocean.

  It is actually an official part of Air Force Space Command, and in recent years, the very name 920th has become a byword for hair-raising air–sea rescue heroism. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the 920th was credited with saving more than a thousand lives, flying low over windblown, dangerous waters, sending their men down the heavy lines from the helicopters, and hauling people to safety.