You’re probably not going to believe this, but my rifle was again right beside me, and once more it was the thirst that saved me. Instead of just lying there, a bloodstained heap in the hot afternoon sun, I thought of that water, now right above me. At least it had been when I’d flashed past it a few moments ago.

I knew I had to climb back up there or die. So I grabbed my rifle and began the long crawl to the drink that should restore my life. I scrambled and slipped over the loose ground, and I am certain by now you have comprehended what a truly horrible mountaineer I am. I can only plead the gradient. It was unbelievably steep, not quite sheer but almost. A great rock climber would probably have taken full gear in order to scale it.

Personally I’m not sure which I was worse at, going up or falling down. But it was two hundred feet to that water. It took me two more hours. I blacked out twice, and when I reached it, I plunged my head in, just to free up my tongue and throat. Then I washed my burning face, cleaned the gash just below my hairline, and tried to get the blood to wash off the back of my leg. I couldn’t tell whether the sniper’s bullet was still lodged in there or not.

All I knew was I needed to drink a lot of water and then try to attract attention and get to a hospital. Otherwise I did not think I would survive. I decided to move up a few yards to where the water was lapping off a rock and splashing into a small pool. I lowered my head and drank. It was the sweetest water I had ever tasted.

And I was just getting into this real luxury when I noticed there were three guys standing right above me, two of them with AKs. For a moment I thought I was hallucinating. I stopped drinking. And I remember I was talking to myself, just mumbling really, flicking between reality and dream.

Then I realized one of them was yelling at me, shouting something I was supposed to understand, but in my befuddled state I just couldn’t get it. I was like a badly wounded animal, ready to fight to the end. I understood nothing, not the hand of friendship, not the possibility of human decency. The only sensation I could react to was threat. And everything was a threat. Cornered. Scared. Suddenly afraid of dying. Ready to lash out at anything. That was me.

The only thought I had was I’ll kill these guys...just give me my chance. I rolled away from the pool and held my rifle in my get-ready position. Then I began to crawl away over the rocks, braced all the time for a volley of AK bullets to rip into me and finally finish me off.

But I “reasoned” I had no choice. I would have to risk getting killed by these guys before I could hit back. Dimly I recall that first character was still yelling his head off, literally screaming at me. Whatever the hell he was saying seemed irrelevant. But he sounded like the outraged father of one of the many Afghani tribesmen who’d been removed from the battlefield by the men seconded to SEAL Team 10. Probably by me.

As I made my way, slowly, painfully, almost blindly to the bigger rocks up ahead, it did cross my mind that if these guys really wanted to shoot me they could have done it by now. In fact, they could have done it any time they wanted. But the Taliban had been hunting me down for too long. All I wanted was cover and a fair position from which to strike back.

I flicked off the safety catch on my rifle and kept crawling, straight into a dead end surrounded by huge boulders on all sides. This was it. Marcus’s last stand. And, slowly, I half rolled, half turned around to face my enemy once again. The problem was, right here my enemy had kind of fanned out. The three guys somehow had gotten above me and yet surrounded me, one to the left, one to the right, and one dead ahead. Christ, I thought. I’ve only one hand grenade left. This is trouble. Big trouble.

Then I noticed there was even bigger trouble out in the clearing. There were three more guys moving up on me, all armed with AKs slung over their backs. And they too fanned out and somehow climbed higher, but they positioned themselves behind me. No one fired. I raised my rifle and drew down on the one who was doing the screaming. I tried to draw a bead on him, but he just moved swiftly behind a huge tree, which meant I was aiming at nothing.

I swung around and tried to locate the others, but the blood from my forehead was still trickling down my face, obscuring my vision. My leg was turning the shale beneath me to a dark red. I no longer knew what the hell was happening except that I was in some kind of a fight, which I was very obviously about to lose. The second three guys were moving down the rocks in rear of me, quickly, easily, right on top of me.

The guy behind the tree was now back out in the open and still yelling at me, standing there with his rifle lowered, I guessed demanding my surrender. But I couldn’t even do that. I just knew that I desperately needed help or I was going to bleed to death. Then I did what I never thought I would do in the whole of my career. I lowered my rifle. Defeated. My whole world was spinning out of control in more ways than one. I was fighting to avoid blacking out again.

I just lay there in the dirt, blood seeping out, still clutching my rifle, still, in a sense, defiant, but unable to fight. I had no more strength, I was on the edge of consciousness, and I was struggling to understand what the screaming tribesman was trying to communicate.

“American! Okay! Okay!”

Finally I got it. These guys meant me no harm. They’d just stumbled on to me. They weren’t chasing me and had no intention of killing me. It was a situation I was relatively unused to this past couple of days. But the vision of yesterday’s goatherds was still stark in my mind.

“Taliban?” I asked. “You Taliban?”

“No Taliban!” shouted the man who I assumed was the leader. And he ran the edge of his hand across his throat, saying once more, “No Taliban!”

From where I was lying, this looked like a signal that meant “Death to the Taliban.” Certainly he was not indicating that he was one of them or even liked them. I tried to remember whether the goatherds had said, “No Taliban.” And I was nearly certain they had not. This was plainly different.

But I was still confused and dizzy, uncertain, and I kept on asking, “Taliban? Taliban?”

“No! No! No Taliban!”

I guess if I’d been at my peak, I’d have accepted this several minutes ago, before Marcus’s Last Stand and all that. But I was losing it now. I saw the leader walk up to me. He smiled and said his name was Sarawa. He was the village doctor, he somehow communicated in rough English. He was thirtyish, bearded, tall for an Afghan, with an intellectual’s high forehead. I recall thinking he didn’t look much like a doctor to me, not wandering around on the edge of this mountain like a native tracker.

But there was something about him. He didn’t look like a member of al Qaeda either. By now I’d seen a whole lot of Taliban warriors, and he looked nothing like any of them. There was no arrogance, no hatred in his eyes. If he hadn’t been dressed like a leading man from Murder up the Khyber Pass, he could have been an American college professor on his way to a peace rally.

He lifted up his loose white shirt to show me he had no concealed gun or knife. Then he spread his arms wide in front of him, I guess the international sign for “I am here in friendship.”

I had no choice but to trust him. “I need help,” I said, uttering a phrase which must have shed an especially glaring light on the obvious. “Hospital — water.”

“Hah?” said Sarawa.

“Water,” I repeated. “I must have water.”

“Hah?” said Sarawa.

“Water,” I yelled, pointing back toward the pool.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Hydrate!”

I could not help laughing, weakly. Hydrate! Who the hell was this crazy-assed tribesman who knew only long words?