We did one early mission up there in the passes at checkpoint 6 that was worse than lethal. We’d just managed to get into position, about twenty of us, when these Afghan wild men hidden in the mountains unleashed a barrage of rockets at us, hundreds and hundreds of them, flying over our heads, slamming into the mountainside.

We couldn’t tell whether they were classified as armed combatants against the United States or unarmed civilians. It took us three days to subdue them, and even then we had to call in heavy air support to enable us to get out. Three days later, the satellite pictures showed us the Taliban had sent in twelve cutthroats by night, armed with Kalashnikovs and tribal knives, who crept through the darkness intent on murder, directly to our old position.

But you can’t prove their intentions! I hear the liberals squeal. No. Of course not. They were just headed up there for a cup of coffee.

Those Taliban night attacks were the very same tactics the mujahideen used against the Russians, sliding through the darkness and cutting the throats of guards and sentries until the Soviet military, and the parents of young soldiers, could stand it no more. The mujahideen has now emerged as the Taliban or al Qaeda. And their intentions against us are just as bloodthirsty as they were against the Russians.

The Navy SEALs can deal with that, as we can deal with any enemy. But not if someone wants to put us in jail for it back home in the U.S.A. And we sure as hell don’t want to hang around in the mountains waiting for someone to cut our throats, unable to fight back just in case he might be classified as an unarmed Afghan farmer.

But these are the problems of the modern U.S. combat soldier, the constant worry about overstepping the mark and an American media that delights in trying to knock us down. Which we have done nothing to deserve. Except, perhaps, love our country and everything it stands for.

In the early weeks of our duties in Afghanistan, the fight went on. Platoons of us went out night after night, trying to halt the insurgents creeping through the mountain passes. Every time there was a full moon, we launched operations, because that was really the only time we could get a sweep of light over the dark mountains.

Following this lunar cycle, we’d send the helicopters up there to watch these bearded fanatics squirting over the border into Afghanistan, and then we’d round them up, the helos driving them like sheepdogs, watching them run for their lives, straight toward us and the rest of the waiting U.S. troops for capture and interrogation.

I realize it might seem strange that underwater specialists from SDV Team 1 should be groping around nine thousand feet above sea level. It is generally accepted in the navy that the swimmer delivery vehicle (SDV), the minisubmarine that brings us into our ops area, is the stealthiest vehicle in the world. And it follows that the troops manning the world’s stealthiest vehicle are the world’s sneakiest guys. That’s us, operating deep behind enemy lines, observing and reporting, unnoticed, living on the edge of our nerves. And our principal task is always to find the target and then call in the direct action guys. That’s really what everyone wants to do, direct action, but it can’t be done without the deadly business we conduct up there in those lonely peaks of the Hindu Kush.

Lieutenant Commander Eric Kristensen was always aware of our value, and in fact was a very good friend of mine. He used to name the operations for me. I was a Texan, which, being as he was a Virginia gentleman, somehow amused the life out of him. He thought I was some kind of cross between Billy the Kid and Buffalo Bill, quick on the draw and Dang mah breeches! Never mind both those cowboys were from way north of me, Kansas or somewhere. So far as Eric was concerned, Texas and all points west and north of it represented the badlands, lawless frontiers, Colt .44s, cattlemen and Red Indians.

Thus we were always flying out on Operation Longhorn or Operation Lone Star. Naming the ops for his Texas boy really broke him up. The vast majority of our missions were very quiet and involved strict surveillance of mountain passes or villages. We were always trying to avoid gunfire as we photographed and then swooped on our target. Invariably we were looking for the misfit, the one man in the village who did not fit in, the hit man of the Taliban who was plainly not a farmer.

Sometimes we’d run across a group of these guys sitting around a campfire, bearded, sullen, drinking coffee, their AK-47s at the ready. Our first task was to identify them. Were they Pashtuns? Peaceable shepherds, goatherds? Or armed warriors of the Taliban, the ferocious mountain men who’d slit your throat as soon as look at you? It took only a few days to work out that Taliban fighters were nothing like so rough and dirty as Afghan mountain peasants. Many of them had been educated in America, and here they were, carefully cleaning their AK-47s, getting ready to kill us.

And it did not take us much longer to realize how impressive they could be in action up here on their home ground. I always thought they would turn and run for it when we discovered them. But they did nothing of the kind. If they held or could reach the high ground, they would stand and fight. If we came down on them they’d usually either give up or head right back to the border and into Pakistan, where we could not follow them. But close up you could always see the defiance in their eyes, that hatred of America, the fire of the revolutionary that burned in their souls.

It was pretty damn creepy for us, because this was the heartland of terror, the place where the destruction of the World Trade Center was born and nourished, perfected by men such as these. I’ll be honest, it seemed kind of unreal, not possible. But we all knew that it had happened. Right here in this remote dust bowl was the root of it all, the homeland of bin Laden’s fighters, the place where they still plot and scheme to smash the United States. The place where the loathing of Uncle Sam is so ingrained, a brand of evil flourishes that is beyond the understanding of most Westerners. Mostly because it belongs to a different, more barbaric century.

And here stood Mikey, Shane, Axe, me, and the rest, ready for a face-off anytime against these silent, sure-footed warriors, masters of the mountains, deadly with rifle and tribal knife.

To meet these guys in these remote Pashtun villages only made the conundrum more difficult. Because right here we’re talking Primitive with a big P. Adobe huts made out of sun-dried clay bricks with dirt floors and an awful smell of urine and mule dung. Downstairs they have goats and chickens living in the house. And yet here, in these caveman conditions, they planned and then carried out the most shocking atrocity on a twenty-first-century city.

Sanitation in the villages is as rudimentary as it gets. They have a communal head, a kind of a pit, out on the edge of the houses. And we are all warned to watch out for them, particularly on night patrols. I misjudged it one night, slipped, and got my foot in there. That caused huge laughter up there in the dead of night, everyone trying not to explode. Wasn’t funny to me, however.

The next week it was much worse. We were all in the pitch dark, creeping through this very rough ground, trying to set up a surveillance point above a very small cluster of huts and goats. We could not see a thing without NVGs (night-vision goggles), and suddenly I slipped into a gaping hole.

I dared not yell. But I knew I was on my way down, and I shuddered to think where I was going to land. I just rammed my right arm rigid straight up, holding on tight to the rifle, and crashed straight into the village head. I went right under, vaguely hearing my teammates hiss, “Look out! Luttrell just found the shitter again!”