There were not enough of us to protect our flanks. We were too occupied defending our position against a head-on attack. I suppose the goatherds had told them we were only four, and Sharmak swiftly guessed we would be vulnerable on the wings.
I’m guessing a dozen SEALs could have held and then destroyed them, but that would have been odds of around ten or eleven to one. We were only four, and that was probably thirty-five to one. Which is known, in military vernacular, as a balls-to-the-wall situation. Especially as we now seemed incapable of calling up the cavalry from HQ.
Right here was a twenty-first-century version of General Custer’s last stand, Little Bighorn with turbans. But they hadn’t gotten us yet. And if I had my way, they were never going to. I know all four of us thought exactly that. Our only option, however, was to get to flatter ground. And there wasn’t any of that up here. There was only one way for us to go, backward and down, straight down.
Mike Murphy called it. “They’ll kill us all if we stay here! Jump, guys, for fuck’s sake, jump!”
And once more all four of us clutched our rifles, stood up, braved the flying bullets, and headed for the precipice. We leaped into the void, Mikey first, me next, then Axe, then Danny. The drop must have been about thirty or forty feet, down into a thicket of shrubs alongside a little stream.
We were by no means at the base of this little escarpment, but at least we were once more on a flat bit and not clinging to some cliff face. I landed directly on top of Mikey, then Axe and Danny landed on both of us. There wasn’t even time to let rip with a few curses.
We spread out and took up firing position again, preparing once more to blast the enemy away from our flanks, where they would be sure to begin their advance in the next stage of the battle. They were clambering down the rocks to our right, and I was trying to make sure none of them made it to the bottom. My rifle felt red-hot, and I just kept loading and shooting, aiming and firing, wishing to hell I still had my Texas helmet.
We were trying to move into a decent position, jumping between the rocks, working our way out into open ground. But we were picking up fire now. The Taliban had seen us and were raining bullets down, firing from a prime overhead spot. We moved back against the rocks, and Danny was shot again.
They hit him in his lower back, and the bullet blew out of his stomach. He was still firing, Christ knows how, but he was. Danny’s mouth was open, and there was blood trickling out. There was blood absolutely everywhere. It was hot, and the stench of it was unmistakable, the cordite was heavy in the air, and the noise, which had not abated since they first opened fire, was deafening. Our ears were ringing from the blasts like we were wearing headphones.
And then they opened up with the grenades again. We saw the white smoke streaking through the air. We saw them coming, winging down that canyon right onto us. And when they blew, the blast was overpowering, echoing from the granite rocks that surrounded us on three sides.
It was like the world was blowing up around us, with the flying rock splinters, some of them pretty large, clattering off the cliff walls; the ricocheting bullets; the swirling dust cloud enveloping the shrapnel and covering us, choking us, obscuring everything.
Murph was trying to reassess the situation, desperately trying to make the right decision despite our limited options. And let’s face it, the options had not changed very much since I first slammed a bullet between that guy’s eyes from behind the tree. Right now we were not hemmed in on our flanks; our enemy was dead ahead. That, and straight up. Overhead. And that’s bad.
I guess the oldest military strategy in the world is to gain the higher ground. In my experience, no Taliban commander had ever ordered his men to fight from anything other than the high ground. And did they ever have it now. If we’d been in a cornfield, it would have been nothing like so dangerous, because the bullets would have hit the earth and stayed there. But we were in a granite-walled corner, and everything bounced off at about a zillion miles per hour, which is more or less the definition of a ricochet. Everything, bullets, shrapnel, and fragments, came zinging off those rocks. It seemed to us like the Taliban were getting double value for every shot. If the bullet missed, watch the hell out for the ricochet.
And how much longer we could go on taking this kind of bombardment, without getting ourselves killed, was anyone’s guess. Murph and Danny had picked up the fight on the left and were still firing, still hitting them pretty good. I was firing upward, trying to pick them off between the rocks, and Axe had jammed himself into a good spot in the rocks and was blazing away at the oncoming turbans.
Both Murph and I were hoping for a lull in the fire, which would signify we had killed a significant number. But that never came. What came were reinforcements. Taliban reinforcements. Groups of guys moving up, replacing their dead, joining the front line of this wide-ranging, large force on their home ground, armed to the teeth, and still unable to kill even one of us.
We tried to take the fight to them, concentrating on their strongest positions, pushing them to reinforce their line of battle. No three guys ever fought with higher courage than my buddies up there in those mountains. And damn near surrounded as we were, we still believed we would ultimately defeat our enemy. We still had plenty of ammunition.
But then Danny was shot again. Right through the neck, and he went down beside me. He dropped his rifle and slumped to the ground. I reached down to grab him and drag him closer to the rock face, but he managed to clamber to his feet, trying to tell me he was okay even though he’d been shot four times.
Danny couldn’t speak now, but he wouldn’t give in. He propped himself up against a rock for cover and opened fire again at the Taliban, signaling he might need a new magazine as his very lifeblood poured out of him. I just stood there for a moment, helplessly, fighting back my tears, witnessing a brand of valor I had never before been privileged to see. What a guy. What a friend.
Murph called out to me, “The only way’s down, kid,” as if I didn’t know. I called back, “Roger that, sir.”
I knew he meant the village, and it was true. That was our chance. If we could grab one of those houses and make a stand, we would be hard to dislodge. Four SEALs firing from solid cover will usually get the job done. All we needed to do was coax the Taliban down there. Although if things didn’t get a whole lot better in the next few minutes, we might not make it ourselves.
8
The Final Battle for
Murphy’s Ridge
The ground shook. The very few trees swayed. The noise was worse than any blast all day...This was one gigantic Taliban effort to finish us. We hit the deck...to avoid the lethal flying debris, rock fragments and shrapnel.
Lieutenant Mike Murphy bellowed out the command, the third time he had done so in the battle. Same mountain. Same command. “Fall back! Axe and Marcus first!”
Again he really meant Fall off! And we were all getting real used to it. Axe and I sprinted for the edge, while Murph and Danny, tucked into the rocks, drew fire and covered our escape. I had no idea whether Danny could even move again, with all his wounds.
Lying right along the top of the cliff was a tree trunk with a kind of hollow underneath it, as if it had been washed out by the rains. Axe, who could think quicker on his feet than most people I’ve ever met, made straight for that hole because the tree trunk would give him cover as he plunged down to whatever the hell was over the goddamned cliff.