arms around each other, sobbing uncontrollably. Everyone thought they knew the military. There
could be only one reason for the early call. They’d found my body on the mountain.
Chief Gothro walked my mom to the phone and informed her that whatever it was, she had to
face it. A voice came down the line and demanded, “Chief, is the family assembled?”
“Yessir.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Luttrell?”
“Yes,” whispered Mom.
“We got him, ma’am. We got Marcus. And he’s stable.”
Mom started to collapse right there on the bedroom floor. Scottie moved swiftly to save her from
hitting it. Lieutenant JJ Jones bolted for the door, stood on the porch, and called for quiet. Then
he shouted,
“They got him, guys! Marcus has been rescued.”
They tell me the roar which erupted over those lonely pastures way down there in the back
country of East Texas could have been heard in Houston, fifty-five miles away. Morgan says it
wasn’t just your average roar. It was spontaneous. Deafening. Everyone together,
top of their
lungs, a pure outpouring of relief and joy for Mom and Dad and my family.
It signaled the conclusion of a five-day vigil in which a zillion prayers had been offered by God-
fearing folk; they understood in that split second after the announcement that those prayers had
been asked and answered. For them, it was a confirmation of faith, of the unbreakable hope and
belief, of the SEAL chaplain Trey Vaughn and all the others.
Immediately, they raised the flag, and the Stars and Stripes fluttered in the hot breeze. And then
the SEALs linked arms with my family and my friends and my neighbors, people who they
might never see again but to whom they were now irrevocably joined for all the days of their
lives. Because no one, according to Mom, could ever forget that one brief moment they shared,
that long-awaited moment of release, when fears and dreads were laid to rest.
I was alive. I guess that’s all it took. And all these amazing guys, with hearts as wide as the
Texas prairies, burst suddenly into song: “God bless America, land that I love . . .”
That’s Mrs. Herzogg and her daughters;
Billy Shelton; Chief Gothro; Mom and Dad; Morgan
and Scottie; Lieutenant Andy Haffele and his wife, Kristina; Eric Rooney; Commander Jeff
Bender; Daniel, the master sergeant; Lieutenant JJ Jones; and all the others I already mentioned.
Five days and five nights, they’d waited for this. And here I was, safe in a hospital bed eight
thousand miles away, thinking of them, as they were thinking of me.
Matter of fact, at the time I was just thinking of a smart-ass remark to make to Morgan, because
they’d told me I was about to be patched through to my family, on the phone. I guessed Morgan
would be there, and if I could come up with something sufficiently slick and nonchalant, he’d
know for sure I was good. Of course, it wasn’t as important to talk to
him as it was to speak to
Mom. Morgan and I had been in touch all along, the way identical twins usually are.
Right around this time, I was assigned a minder, Petty Officer First Class Jeff Delapenta (SEAL
Team 10), who would never leave my side. And remember, damn near everyone on the base
wanted to come and have a chat. At least that’s how it seemed to me. But Jeff was having none
of it. He stood guard over my room like a German shepherd, taking the view that I was very sick
and needed peace and rest, and he, PO1 Jeff, was going to make good and sure I got it.
Doctors and nurses, fine. High-ranking SEAL commanders, well...okay, but only just. Anyone
else, forget it. Jeff Delapenta turned away generals! Told ’em I was resting, could not be
disturbed under any circumstances whatsoever. “Strict orders from his doctors...Sir, it would be
more than my career’s worth to allow you to enter that room.”
I spoke privately to my family on the phone and refrained from mentioning to Mom that I had
now contracted some kind of Afghan mountain bacteria that attacked my stomach like
Montezuma’s revenge gets you in Mexico. I swear to God, it came from that fucking Pepsi
bottle. That sucker could have poisoned the population of the Hindu Kush.
Didn’t stop me loving that first cheeseburger, though.
And as soon as I was rested, the real
intensive debriefing began. It was right here that I learned, for the first time, of the full
ramifications of
lokhay,
that the people of Sabray were indeed prepared to fight for me until no
one was left alive. One of the intel guys told me those details, which I had suspected but never
knew for sure.
These debriefing meetings revealed sufficient data to pinpoint precisely where the bodies of my
guys were lying. And I found it really difficult. Just staring down at the photographs, reliving, as
no one could ever understand, the place where my best buddy fell, torturing myself, wondering
again if I could have saved him. Could I have done more? That night, for the first time, I heard
Mikey scream.
On my third day in the hospital, the bodies of Mikey and Danny were brought down from the
mountains. They were unable to find Axe. I was told this,
and later that day I dressed, just in
shirt and jeans, so Dr. Dickens could drive me out for the Ramp Ceremony, one of the most
sacred SEAL traditions, in which we say a formal good-bye to a lost brother.
It was the first time anyone had seen me outside of my immediate entourage, and they probably
received a major shock. I was scrubbed and neat, but not much like the Marcus they knew. And I
was ill from my brutal encounter with that goddamned Pepsi bottle.
The C-130 was parked on the runway, ramp down. There were around two hundred military
personnel in attendance when the Humvees arrived bearing the two coffins, each draped with the
American flag. And all of them snapped to attention, instantly, no commands, as the SEALs
stepped forward to claim their brothers.
Very slowly, with immense dignity, they lifted the coffins high, and
then carried the bodies of
Mikey and Danny the fifty yards to the ramp of the aircraft.
I positioned myself right at the back and watched as the guys carefully bore my buddies on their
first steps back to the United States. A thousand memories stood before me, as I guess they
would have done to anyone who’d been at Murphy’s Ridge.
Danny, crashing down the mountain, his right thumb blown off, still firing, shot again and again
and again, rising up as I dragged him away, rising up to aim his rifle at the enemy once more,
still firing, still defiant, a warrior to his last breath. And here he comes in that polished wood
coffin.
Out in front was the coffin that carried Mikey Murphy, our officer, who had walked out into the
firestorm to make that last call on his cell phone, the one that placed him in mortal danger, the
one chance, he believed, to save us.
Gunned down by the Taliban, right through the back,
blood pouring out of his chest, his phone in
the dust, and he still picked it up. “Roger that, sir. Thank you.” Was anyone ever braver than
that? I remember being awestruck at the way he somehow stood up and walked toward me, tall
and erect, and carried right on firing until they finally blew half his head away. “Marcus, this
really sucks.”
He was right then. And he was still right at this moment. It did suck. As they carried Mikey to
the plane, I tried to think of an epitaph for my greatest buddy, and I could only come up with
some poem written by the Australian Banjo Paterson, I guess for one of his heroes, as Mikey was
mine:
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