Marcus luttrell

“Fall back!”
Fall back! More like 
fall off
— the freakin’ mountain, that is; a nearly sheer drop, right behind 
us, God knows how far down. But an order’s an order. I grabbed my gear and took a sideways 
step, trying to zigzag down the gradient. But gravity made the decision for me, and I fell 
headlong down the mountain, completing a full forward flip and somehow landing on my back, 
still going fast, heels flailing for a foothold. 
At least I thought I was going fast, but Murphy was right behind me. I could tell it was him 
because of the bright red New York City fireman’s patch he’d worn since 9/11. That was 
actually all I saw. 
“See you at the bottom!” I yelled. But right then I hit a tree, and Mikey went past me like a 
bullet. I was going slower now, and I tried to take a step, but I fell again, and on I went, catching 
up to Mikey now, crashing, tumbling over the ground like we were both bouncing through a 
pinball machine. 
Ahead of us was a copse of trees on a slightly less steep gradient, and I knew this was our last 
hope before we plunged into the void. I had to grab something, anything. So did Mikey, and I 
could see him up ahead, grabbing at tree limbs, snapping them off, and still plummeting 
downward. 
In a split second I knew that nothing could save either of us, we’d surely break our backs or 
necks and then the Taliban would shoot us without mercy, as we would expect. But right now, 
entering the copse of trees at what felt like seventy miles an hour, my mind was in overdrive. 
Almost everything had been ripped away from me in the fall, everything except my ammunition 
and grenades — all my packs, the medical stuff, food, water, comms, phone. I’d even lost my 
helmet with the flag of Texas painted on it. I was damned if I wanted some fucking terrorist 
wearing that. 
I’d seen Mikey’s radio aerial ripped off as we crashed downward. And that was not good. My 
gun strap had been ripped off me and my rifle whipped away. The trouble was, the terrain 
beyond the tree copse was completely unknown to us, because we could not see it from above. If 

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we had, we might never have jumped; the ground just swept upward and then ducked away 
downward, inverted, like a goddamned ski jump. 
I rocketed up the lip of that back slope making about eighty knots, on my back, feetfirst. In the 
air I made two complete backflips and I landed again feet first, on my back, still coming down 
the cliff face like a howitzer shell. And at that moment I knew there was a God. 
First of all, I appeared not to be dead, which was right up there with Jesus walking on the water. 
But even more amazing was I could see my rifle not two feet from my right hand, as if God 
Himself had reached down to me and given me hope. 
Marcus,
I heard Him say, 
you’re gonna 
need this.
At least, I think I heard Him. In fact, I swear to God I heard Him. Because this was a 
miracle, no doubt in my mind. And I had not even had time to say my prayers. 
I didn’t know how far down we’d fallen, but it must have been two or three hundred yards. And 
we were both still going very fast. I could see Mikey up ahead, and I honestly did not know 
whether he was dead or alive. It was just a person crashing through the dirt and boulders. If he 
had not broken every bone in his body, that too was a miracle. 
Me? I was too battered to hurt, and I could still see my rifle tumbling down beside me. That rifle 
never strayed more than two feet from my hand throughout this death-defying fall. And I’ll 
always know it was guided by the hand of God. Because there is no other explanation. 
We hit the bottom, both of us landing with terrific impact, like we’d jumped off a goddamned 
skyscraper. It shook the wind out of me, and I gasped for breath, trying to work out how badly 
injured I was. My right shoulder hurt, my back hurt, and on one side of my face, the skin had 
been more or less scoured away. I was covered in blood and bruised to hell. 
But I could stand, which was actually a really bad idea, because then the RPGs began to arrive, 
landing close, and I went down again. They exploded more or less harmlessly but sent up clouds 
of dust, shale, and wood shards from the trees. Mikey was next to me, maybe fifteen feet away, 
and we picked ourselves up from the ground. 
He still had his rifle strapped on. Mine was resting at my feet. I grabbed it, and I heard Murphy 
shout through the din of explosions, “You good?” 
I turned to him, and his entire face was black with dust. Even his goddamned teeth were black. 
“You look like shit, man,” I told him. “Fix yourself up!” 
Despite everything, Mikey laughed, and then I noticed he’d been shot during the fall. There was 
blood pumping out of his stomach. But just then there was a thunderous explosion from one of 
the grenades, too close, much too close. We both wheeled around in the swirling dust and smoke, 
and there behind us were two large logs, actually felled trees. 
They were crossed over at the ends, like a pair of giant chopsticks, facing up the mountain, and 
we turned simultaneously and sprinted for cover. We cleared the logs and crashed down behind 
them, safe from gunfire attack for the moment. We were both still armed and ready to fight. I 
took the right-hand side, Mikey center left, guarding both the head-on approach and the flank. 

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We could see them plainly now, swarming down the flanks of the cliff we had just crashed 
down. They were moving very fast, though not nearly as fast as we had. Mikey had a pretty good 
line on them, and mine wasn’t bad. We opened fire straight at them, picking them off one by one 
as they moved in on us. Trouble was, there were so many, and it didn’t seem to matter how many 
we killed, they just kept coming. I remember thinking that the two hundred estimate was a lot 
closer than the eighty minimum we had been advised. 
And this must have been Sharmak’s work. Because these guys were not really marksmen, were 
using marginal rifles pretty recklessly, but nonetheless followed the military rules for this type of 
assault. They advanced down the side of the battlefield, trying to outflank their enemy, always 
attempting to get a 360-degree cover on their target. We were surely slowing their progress 
down, but we weren’t stopping them. 
The fire never slackened for five minutes. They had sustained, nonstop, that opening volley, the 
one fired way back up the mountain when they could not see their target. They had blasted away 
at us all the way down to these logs, and they had augmented their fire with aimed rocket-
propelled grenades. These guys were not being led by some mad-eyed hysteric, they were being 
led by someone who understood the rudiments of what he was doing. Understood them well. Too 
well. The fucker. And now they had us pinned down behind the logs, and, as ever, the bullets 
were flying, but we were somehow getting the better of the exchanges. 
Mikey was ignoring his wound and fighting like a SEAL officer should, uncompromising, 
steady, hard-eyed, and professional. I could see the guys on that left flank dropping down in their 
tracks as they raced toward us. On my side, over on the right, the ground was just a little flatter, 
with trees, and there did not seem to be so many of them. Every time they moved, I shot ’em. 
It was probably clear to them that Mikey and I could not be dislodged as long as the big logs 
covered us. And that’s when they went to their biggest barrage of RPGs yet. These damn things, 
trailing that familiar white smoke, were unleashed at us from farther up the mountain. They 
landed to the front and the side but not behind, and they caused a tidal wave of dirt, rocks, and 
smoke, showering us with the stuff, robbing us of our vision. 
Our heads went down, and I asked Mikey where the hell were Axe and Danny, and of course 
neither of us knew. All we knew was they were up the mountain, not yet having jumped, as we 
had. 
“Guess Axe must have dug in and kept fighting out on the left,” he said. “Danny’s got a better 
chance of radio contact high up than he would down here.” 
We risked a look up through the gloom, and we saw a figure plummeting down the mountain, 
just to the left of where we had fallen. Axe, no doubt, but could he survive that fall? He was on 
the first slope before the trees, and a second later he hurtled over the ski jump, flipped, and 
crashed on down the almost sheer cliff face. The gradient saved him, as it had saved Mikey and 
me, the way the steep mountain saves a ski jumper, enabling him to continue down at high speed 
without a terminal collision with flat ground. 

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Axe arrived in one piece, stunned and disoriented. But the Taliban could see him now, and they 
opened fire on him as he lay on the ground.