Marcus luttrell

 
 

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7
 
 
An Avalanche of Gunfire
 
Down the mountain, from every angle. Axe flanked left, trying to cut off the downward trail, 
firing nonstop. Mikey was blasting away...shouting,...“Marcus, no options now, buddy, 
kill ’em 
all!
” 
We edged back the way we had come, into the shadows cast by the last of the trees. It was not far 
back to waypoint 2, and we took a GPS reading right there. Mikey handed over navigational 
duties to Axe, and I groaned. Moving up and down these steep cliffs was really tough for me, but 
the streamlined, expert mountaineer Matthew Axelson could hop around like a fucking antelope. 
I reminded him of those two correlating facts, and all three of my teammates started laughing. 
For some reason best known to our resident king of Trivial Pursuit, he led us off the high 
mountain ridge and down toward the valley which spread out from the elbow of the dogleg. It 
was as if he had decided to eliminate the dogleg entirely and take the straight line directly across 
to waypoint 3. Which was all fine and dandy, except it meant a one-mile walk going steeply 
downward, followed, inevitably, by a one-mile walk going steeply upward. That was the part I 
was not built for. 
Nonetheless that was our new route. After about fifty yards I was struggling. I couldn’t keep up 
while going down, never mind up. They could hear me sliding and cursing in the rear, and I 
could hear Axe and Mikey laughing up front. And this was not a fitness problem. I was as fit as 
any of them, and I was not in any way out of breath. I was just too big to track a couple of 
mountain goats. Laws of nature, right? 
Our path was inescapably zigzagged because Axe was always trying to find cover, stay out of the 
moonlight, as we grappled our way back up the cliff to waypoint 3. We reached the top 
approximately one hour before daylight. Our GPS numbers were correct, as planned back at 
home base. And right up there on top of this finger of pure granite, Mikey picked a spot where 
we could lay up. 
He chose a position over the brow of the summit, maybe eighty feet down, right on the 
uppermost escarpment. There were trees, some of them close together, but directly beyond them 
was more barren land. We dropped our heavy loads, the four-mile journey complete, and tipped 
the grit and stones out of our boots. They always find a way in. 
Medically, we were all okay, no injuries. But we were exhausted after our grueling seven-hour 
hike up and down this freakin’ mountain. Especially Mikey and me, because we both suffered 
from insomnia, particularly prepping for an operation like this, and we hadn’t slept the night 

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before. Plus it was freezing cold, and we were still soaked to the skin even though the rain had 
stopped. So, for that matter, was everything we carried with us. 
Danny had the radio up and he informed HQ, and any patrolling aircraft, that we were in position 
and good to go. But this was a little hasty, because right after that communication, the moon 
came out once more, and we swept the area with our NODs and couldn’t see a damn thing. Not 
even the village we were supposed to be surveying in search of Sharmak. The trees were in the 
way. And we could not move out of the trees because that put us back on exposed barren ground, 
where there were a few very small tree stumps still in the ground but zero decent cover. Jesus 
Christ. 
This was plainly a logging area, maybe abandoned, but a place where a lot of trees had been cut 
down. Away to our right, the night sky above the highest peaks was brightening. Dawn was near. 
Danny and I sat on a rock in deep conversation, trying to work out how bad this really was and 
what to do. It was every frogman’s dread, an operation where the terrain was essentially 
unknown and turned out to be as bad as or worse than anyone had ever dreamed. Danny and I 
reached identical conclusions. This really sucked. 
Mikey came over to talk briefly. And we all stared at the brightness in the sky to the east. 
Lieutenant Murphy, as command controller, called the shot. “We’re moving in five.” And so we 
picked up our heavy loads once more and set off back the way we’d come. After a hundred yards 
we found a down trail on the other side of the ridge, walked below the waypoint, and selected a 
prime spot in the trees overlooking the village, which was more than a mile and a half away. 
We settled in, jamming ourselves against trees and rocks, trying to get into a position where we 
could rest on this almost sheer escarpment. I glugged from my water canteen and, to tell the 
truth, I felt like a plant on the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Danny was in his yoga position, 
sitting cross-legged like a goddamned snake charmer, his back against his tree. 
Axe, ever alert, stood guard, blending into the mountain to my left, his rifle primed despite the 
quiet. He was probably doing a