As the night wore on, I began to hear the occasional U.S. military aircraft above the mountains, usually flying high. And when I heard one in time, I was out there whirling my buzz-saw lights, transmitting the beacon as well as I could, still a walking distress signal. But no one heard me. It occurred to me that no one believed I was alive. And that was a very grim thought. It would be pretty hard to find me up here, even if the entire Bagram base was searching for me in these endless mountains. But if no one believed I was still breathing, well, that was probably the end for me. I experienced an inevitable feeling of utter desolation. Worse yet, I was so weakened, and in such pain, I realized, once and for all, I was never going to make it to the top of the mountain. Actually, I might have made it, but my left leg, blasted by that RPG, was never going to stand the climb. I would just have to keep going sideways, struggling across the steep face of the mountain, sometimes down, sometimes up, and hope to get my chance.

I was still losing blood, and I still could not speak. But I could hear, and I could hear my pursuers, sometimes calling to each other. I remember thinking this was very strange because they normally moved around in total silence. Remember those goatherds? I never heard that first one coming until he was about four feet from me. That’s just the way they are, treading softly, lean, light men with no encumbrances — not even water.

When those Afghans travel, they carry their guns and ammunition and nothing else. One guy carries the water for everyone; another hauls the extra ammunition. And this leaves the main force free to move very fast, very softly. They are born trackers, able to pick up a trail across the roughest ground, and they can walk right up on you.

Of course, that assumes they are only after one of their own. Trying to follow a great 230-pound hulk like myself, slipping and sliding, crashing and breaking branches, causing minor avalanches on the loose ground — I must have been an Afghan tracker’s dream. Even I realized my chance of actually losing them was close to zero.

Maybe those calls I heard among them were not really commands. Maybe they were outbursts of suppressed laughter at my truly horrible rock-climbing abilities. Wait until it gets light, I thought. This playing field would even out real quick. That’s if they didn’t shoot me first, in the dark.

I kept skirting around the mountain. Way below I could see the lights from a couple of lanterns, and I thought I could see the flickering flame of a fire. That must have been the valley floor, and it gave me my first guidance as to the terrain, but not much. In fact, it gave me the impression the ground where I was standing was flat, which it really was not. I stopped for a minute to see if there was anything else down in that valley, any further sign of my enemy, but I could still see just about nothing except for the lanterns and the fire, all of them about a mile down.

I gathered myself and took a step forward. And in that split second I realized I had stepped into the void. I just fell clean off that mountain, straight down, falling through the air, not over the ground. I hit the side of the mountain with a terrific bang, knocked the breath right out of me. Then I rolled, crashing through a copse of trees, trying to grab something to slow me down.

But I was moving too fast, and gathering speed. I fell helplessly down a steep bit, which leveled out for a few yards and allowed me to slow down. Finally I stopped on the edge of yet another precipice, which I sensed rather than saw. And I just lay there gasping for breath for a good twenty minutes, scared to death I’d find myself paralyzed.

But I wasn’t. I could stand. I still had my rifle, although my strobe light had gone. And somehow I had to get back up to my highest point. The lower I was positioned down this mountain, the less my chance of getting rescued. I must go upward, and so I set off again.

I climbed, slipped, and scrambled for two more hours, until I thought I was more or less back to the point where I’d fallen off the mountain. It was 0200 now, and I’d been going for a long time, maybe six or seven hours. The pain was becoming diabolical, but in a way I was relieved I still had feeling in that left leg.

The Taliban army was still following me. I heard them, louder as I climbed higher, as if they’d been waiting for me. They were certainly a bigger force now than they had been two hours ago. I could hear them all around, more and more people searching for me, dogs barking, maybe a half mile back.

By now I could hear the river, which I knew was the same one I’d fallen in the previous afternoon. The same river on whose banks my three buddies lay dead. Thirsty as I was, I could not bring myself to go in search of its ice-cold flowing waters gushing down the mountainside. That was the only water on this earth I could not drink, water from the river which flowed right by the bodies of Mikey, Danny, and Axe. I had to find a different one.

With no compass, only my watch, I had to revert to navigation by the stars, which mercifully were now out, the thick high banks of clouds having passed over. I found the Big Dipper and followed the long curve of its stars all the way to the right angle at the end, where the shape angles upward, pointing directly at the polestar. That’s the North Star. We learned it in BUD/S.

If I turned directly toward it and held out my left arm at a right angle, that way was west, the way I was headed. I think at this point I may have been suffering from hallucinations, that very odd sensation when you cannot really tell reality from a dream.

Like most SEALs, I’d experienced it before, at the back end of Hell Week. But right now I was becoming very light-headed. I was a hunted animal all alone in wild country, and I tried to pretend my buddies were still alive. I invented some kind of a formation with Danny climbing out on my right flank, Axe up to the left, and Mikey calling the shots in the rear.

I pretended they were there, I just couldn’t see them. I think I was reaching the end of my tether. But I kept reminding myself of Hell Week. I kept telling myself this was just Hell Week all over again; I’d sucked it up then, and I could suck it up now. Whatever these bastards threw at me, I could take it. I’d come through. I might have been losing my marbles, but I was still a SEAL.

I could not, however, deny the fact I was also becoming disheartened. For the moment my pursuers were quiet, and I suddenly came upon a huge tree with a couple of big logs resting directly underneath it. I crawled under one of them and rested for a while, just lying there, feeling damned sorry for myself.

In my head I played over and over again one of the verses of Toby Keith’s country and western classic “American Soldier.” I remember lying there quietly singing the words to myself, the part that said I might have to die...“I’ll bear that cross with honor.”

I sang those words all night. I can’t tell you how much they meant to me. I can tell you, it’s little things like that, the words of a song, which can give you the strength to go on. Nonetheless, the fact was I had no idea what to do.

It occurred to me I could just settle in right here and make it my last stand. But I quickly dismissed this as a strategy. In my mind I was still committed to Axe’s last request: “You stay alive, Marcus. And tell Cindy I love her.” Helluva lot of good it would do Cindy Axelson if I ended up shot to pieces on the slopes of this godforsaken mountain. And who then would ever know what my buddies had done? And how hard and bravely they had fought? No. It was all up to me. I had to get out and tell our story.

I was comfortable and very, very tired, but thirst drove me on. Screw this, I decided, and I dragged myself up again and kept walking, hobbling, that is, making the most of this apparent expanse of flatter ground. It was just beginning to get light, around 0600. I knew that six hours from now, the sun would be in the south, but it was such a high sun out here, almost directly overhead, and it made navigation that much more difficult. I remember wondering where the hell I would be next time I saw the friendly polestar.