Marcus luttrell

Bring ’em on, we’re ready!
No SEAL would ever admit to being scared of anything. Even if we were, we would never say it. 
We open the door and go outside to face the enemy, whoever the hell he might be. Whatever we 
all felt that night, it was not fear of the enemy, although I recognize it might have been fear of 
the unknown, because we really were unsure about what we would encounter in the way of 
terrain. 
When we reached the ops area, the helicopter made three false inserts, several miles apart, 
coming in very low and hovering over places we had no intention of going anywhere near. If the 
Afghans were watching, they must have been very confused — even we were confused! Going 
in, pulling out, going back in again, hovering, leaving. I’m damn sure, if Sharmak’s guys were 
out there, they could not have had the slightest clue where we were, if we were, or how to locate 

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us. 
Finally, we were on the way into our real landing zone. The final call came — “Redwing is a 
go!” The landing controller was calling the shots: “Ten minutes out...Three minutes out...One 
minute...Thirty seconds!...
Let’s go!
” 
The ramp was down, we were open at the rear, the gunner was ready with the M60 machine gun 
in case of ambush. It was pitch black outside, no moon, and the rotor blades were making that 
familiar 
bom-bom-bom-bom
on the wind. So far no one had fired anything at us. 
The rope snaked from the rear of the aircraft to the ground, positioned expertly so our guns could 
not get caught as we left. Right now no one spoke. Loaded with our weapons and gear, we lined 
up. Danny went first, out into the dark, I followed him, then Mikey, then Axe. Each one of us 
grabbed the rope and slid down fast, wearing gloves to avoid the burn. It was a drop of about 
twenty feet, and there was a stiff, biting wind. 
We hit the deck and spread, moving twenty yards away from one another. It was really cold up 
there, and the downward gale from the rotors, beating on us, whisking up the dust, made it much 
worse. We did not know if we were being watched by unseen tribesmen, but it was plainly a 
possibility, out here in this lawless rebel-held territory. We heard the howl of the helicopter’s 
engines increase as it lifted off. And then it clattered away into the darkness, gaining speed and 
height rapidly as it left this godforsaken escarpment. 
We froze into the landscape for fifteen minutes of total silence. There was not a movement, not a 
single communication among us. And there was not a sound on the mountain. This was beyond 
silence, a stillness beyond the concept of silence, like being in outer space. Way down below us 
we could see two fires, or perhaps lanterns, burning, probably about a mile away, goatherds, I 
hoped. 
The fifteen minutes passed. To my left was the mountain, a great looming mass sweeping 
skyward. To my right was a group of huge, thick trees. All around us were low tree stumps and 
thick foliage. 
We were way below the place where we would ultimately operate, and it was very unnerving, 
because right here anyone could hide out. We couldn’t see a damn thing and had no idea if there 
was anyone around. Sixteen years ago, not too far away from here, I guess those Russian 
conscripts sensed something very similar before someone slashed their throats. 
Finally, we climbed to our feet. I walked over to Danny and told him to get the comms up and let 
the controllers know we were down. Then I walked up the hill to where Mikey and Axe had the 

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big rope which had, absurdly, been cut down and dropped from the helicopter. 
This was definitely a mistake. That helo crew was supposed to have taken the rope away with 
them. God knows what they thought we were going to do with it, and I was just glad Mikey 
found it. If he hadn’t and we’d left it lying on the ground, it might easily have been found by a 
wandering tribesman or farmer, especially if they had heard the helicopter come in. That rope 
might have rung our death knell, signifying, as it surely must, that the American eagle had 
landed. 
We did not have a shovel, and Mikey and Axe had to cover the rope with trees, weeds, and 
foliage. While they were completing this, I opened up comms to the AC-130 Spectre gunship, 
which I knew was way up there somewhere monitoring us. I passed my message succinctly: 
“Sniper Two One, this is Glimmer Three — preparing to move.” 
“Roger that.” 
It was the last time I spoke to them. And now we were assembled for our journey — about four 
miles. Our route was preplanned, along a mountain ridge that stretched out into a long right-hand 
dogleg. Our waypoints were marked on our map, and the GPS numbers, detailing the precise 
position from the satellite, were clear, numbered 1, 2, and 3. 
That was just about the only thing that was straightforward. Because the terrain was absolutely 
horrible, the moonless night was still pitch black, and our route was along a mountain face so 
steep, it was a goddamned miracle we didn’t all fall off and break our necks. Also, it was raining 
like a bastard and freezing cold. Within about ten minutes we were absolutely soaked, like Hell 
Week. 
It was really slow going, clambering and slipping, stumbling and looking for footholds, 
handholds, anything. All of us fell down the mountain in the first half hour. But it was worse for 
me, because the other three were all expert mountain climbers and much smaller and lighter than 
I was. I was slower over the ground because of my size, and I kept falling behind. They had a 
rest while I was catching up, and then when I got there, Mikey signaled to go straight on. No rest 
for Marcus. “Fuck you, Murphy,” I said without even a pretense of good nature. 
In fact, conditions were so bad it was a lousy idea to rest up. You could freeze up here, soaked to 
the skin as we were, in about five minutes. So we kept going, always upward, keeping our body 
heat as high as possible. But it was still miserable. We never stopped ducking down under the 
trees and hanging limbs, holding on if we could, trying not to fall off the mountain again. 

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In the end we reached the top of the cliff face and found a freshly used trail. It was obvious the 
Taliban had been through here recently in substantial numbers, and this was good news for us. It 
meant Sharmak and his men could not be far away, and right now we were hunting them. 
At the top, we suddenly walked out into an enormous flat field of very high grass, and the moon 
came out briefly. The pasture stretched away in front of us like some kind of paradise lit up in 
the pale light. We all stopped in our tracks because it looked amazingly beautiful. 
But an enemy could easily have been lurking in that grass, and an instant later we ducked down, 
staying silent. Axe tried to find a path through it, then tried to make his own path. But he simply 
could not. The pasture was too thick, and it nearly covered him. Before long he returned and told 
us, poetically, there in the southeast Asian moonlight, in these ancient storied lands right up near 
the roof of the world, “Guys, that was totally fucking hopeless.” 
To our right was the deep valley, somewhere down which our target village was located. We’d 
already hit waypoint 1, and our only option was to find another trail and keep moving along the 
flank of the escarpment. And then, very suddenly, a great fog bank rolled in and drifted off the 
mountaintop beneath us and across the valley. 
I remember looking down at it, moonlit clouds, so white, so pure, it looked as if we could have 
walked right across it to another mountain. Through the NODS (night optic device) it was a 
spectacular sight, a vision perhaps of heaven, set in a land of hellish undercurrents and flaming 
hatreds. 
While we stood up there, transfixed by our surroundings, Mikey worked out that we were just 
beyond waypoint 1, and we still somehow had to proceed on our northerly course, though not 
through the high grass. We fanned out and Danny found a trail that led around the mountain, 
more or less where we wanted to go. But it was not easy, because by now the moon had 
disappeared and it was again raining like hell. 
We must have gone about another half mile across terrain that was just as bad as anything we 
had encountered all night. Then, unexpectedly, I could smell a house and goat manure, even 
through the rain; an Afghan farmhouse. We had nearly walked straight into the front yard. And 
now we had to be very careful. We ducked down, crawling on our hands and knees through thick 
undergrowth, staying out of sight, right on the escarpment. 
Miserable as all this was, conditions were really perfect for a SEAL operation behind enemy 
lines. Without night-vision goggles like ours, people couldn’t possibly see us. The rain and wind 
had certainly driven everyone else under cover, and anyone still awake probably thought only a 
raving lunatic could be out there in such weather. And they were right. All four of us had taken 

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quite heavy falls, probably one in every five hundred yards we traveled. We were covered in 
mud and as wet as BUD/S phase two trainees. It was true. Only a lunatic, or a SEAL, could 
willingly walk around like this. 
We could not see that much ourselves. Nothing except that farmhouse, really. And then, quite 
suddenly, the moon came out again, very bright, and we had to move swiftly into the shadows, 
our cover stolen by that pale, luminous light in the sky. 
We kept going, moving away from the farm, still moving upward on the mountainside, through 
quite reasonable vegetation. But then all of my own personal dreads came out and whacked us. 
We walked straight out of the trees into a barren, harsh, sloping hillside, the main escarpment set 
steeply on a northern rise. 
There was not a tree. Not a bush. Just wet shale, mud, small rocks, and boulders. The moon was 
directly in front of us, casting our long shadows onto the slope. 
This was my nightmare, ever since I first stared at those plans back in the briefing room: the four 
of us starkly silhouetted against a treeless mountain above a Taliban-occupied village. We were 
an Afghan lookout’s finest moment, unmissable. We were Webb and Davis’s worst dream, 
snipers uncovered, out in the open, trapped in nature’s spotlight with nowhere to hide. 
“Holy shit,” said Mikey.