If we thought he might be preparing an immediate evacuation of the village in which he resided, then we would take him out forthwith. That would be me or Axe. The chances were I’d get only one shot at Sharmak, just one time when I could trap him in the crosshairs and squeeze that trigger, probably from hundreds of yards away. I knew only one thing: I better not miss, because the apparitions of Webb and Davis, not to mention every other serving SEAL, would surely rise up and tear my ass off. This was, after all, precisely what they had trained me for.

And in case anyone’s wondering, I had absolutely no qualms about putting a bullet straight through this bastard’s head. He was a fanatical sworn enemy of the United States of America who had already murdered many of my colleagues in the U.S. Marines. He was also the kind of terrorist who would like nothing better than to mastermind a new attack on the U.S. mainland. If I got a shot, he’d get no mercy from me. I knew what was expected of me. I knew the team boss wanted this character eliminated, and when I thought about it, I was damned proud they considered me and my buddies the men for the job. As ever, we would do everything possible not to let anyone down.

Every day we checked the intel office to see what further data there was on Sharmak. Chief Healy was right on the case, working with the ops officer and our skipper, Commander Pero. The problem was always the same: where was our target? He was worse than Saddam Hussein, disappearing, evading the prying eye of the satellites, keeping his identity and location secret even from the many CIA informers who were close to him.

There was of course no point in charging into the mountains armed to the teeth with weapons and cameras unless we were absolutely sure of his whereabouts. The Taliban were a serious threat to low-flying military aircraft, and the helo pilots knew they were in constant danger of being fired upon, even on night ops. These mountain men were as handy with missile launchers as they were with AK-47s.

There is a huge amount of backup required for any such operation: transportation, communications, available air support, not to mention ammunition, food, water, medical supplies, hand grenades, and weapons, all of which we would carry with us.

At one point, quite early on, we had a very definite “Redwing is a go.” And preparations were well under way when the entire thing was suddenly called off. “Turn one!” They’d lost him again. They had data, and they had reason to believe they knew where he was. But nothing hard. The guys in intel studied the maps and the terrain, ringed probability areas, made estimates and guesstimates. They thought they had him pinned down but not sufficiently narrowly to place him in an actual village or a camp, never mind with the accuracy required for a sniper to get off a shot.

Intel was just waiting for a break, and meanwhile, me and the guys were out on other SR missions, probably Operation Goat Rope or something. We’d just come back from one of these when we heard there’d been a break in the hunt for Ben Sharmak. It was very sudden, and we guessed one of our sources had come up with something. Chief Healy had maps and studies of the terrain under way, and it looked like we were going straight out again.

We were called into a briefing: Lieutenant Mike Murphy, Petty Officer Matthew Axelson, Petty Officer Shane Patton, and I. We listened to the data and the requirements and still regarded it as just another op. But at the last minute there was a big change. They decided that Shane should be replaced by Petty Officer Danny Dietz, a thirty-four-year-old I had known well for years.

Danny was a short (well, compared with me), very muscular guy from Colorado, but he lived with his spectacularly beautiful wife, Maria, known to all of us as Patsy, just outside the base in Virginia Beach. They had no children but two dogs, both of them damn near as tough as he was, an English bulldog and a bullmastiff.

Danny was with me at the SDV school in Panama City, Florida. We were both there on 9/11. He was heavily into yoga and martial arts and was a very close friend of Shane’s. Guess those beach gods and the mystic iron men have stuff in common. I was glad to have Danny on the team. He was a little reserved, but underneath he could be very funny and was a sweet-natured person. It was not a great plan to upset him, though. Danny Dietz was a caged tiger and a great Navy SEAL.

Now it seemed Redwing was again given the green light. The four-man team was nailed down. The two snipers would be Axe and me; the two spotters, Mikey and Danny. Command control, Mikey. Communications, Danny and me. The final shoot-on-target, me or Axe, either one of us spotting, whichever way it fell on the terrain.

The plan was to sit up there and hide above the place we believed Sharmak was resident, if necessary for four days, probably not able to move more than a foot, remaining deadly still in a deadly place — high in the hills.

At no time would we be anything but carefully concealed, watching these heavily armed mountain men, who were lifelong experts on the local terrain, awaiting our chance to gun down their leader. It doesn’t get a whole lot more dangerous than that.

We were actually in the helicopter, dressed and organized, ready to leave, “Redwing is a go,” when the mission was called off again. “Turn two!” It was not so much that we’d lost track of Sharmak as the fact that the slippery little son of a gun had turned up somewhere else.

We disembarked and wandered back to our quarters. We shed our heavy packs and weapons, changed out of our combat gear, cleaned the camouflage cream off our faces, and rejoined the human race. The break lasted for two weeks, during which time we did a couple of minor missions up in the passes and nearly got our heads blown off at least twice.

I surpassed myself once by nailing down one of the most dangerous terrorists in northeast Afghanistan. I had POSIDENT, and I actually saw him make a break for it on his own, riding a freakin’ bicycle along the track. I didn’t shoot him because I did not wish to betray our position by opening fire or even moving. We were expecting his complete camel train of high explosive to move along this route anytime, and we wanted both him and his munitions. At least I didn’t emulate the actions of a former colleague, who, according to SEAL folklore, fired up the direct link and advised a cruising U.S. fighter/bomber of the GPS position. Then he watched a five-hundred-pound bomb demolish the terrorist, his camel, and everything within fifty yards of him. On this mission, we halted the camel train and managed to capture the terrorist and unload the explosive without resorting to such wild-and-woolly action.

Sorry, lefties. But, like we say back home in Texas, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

And so the days passed by, until on Monday morning, June 27, 2005, they located Sharmak again. This time it looked really good. By noon the detailed maps and photos of the terrain were spread out before us. The intel was excellent, the maps weren’t bad, the photographs of the terrain passable. We still didn’t have a decent picture of Sharmak, just the same old head and shoulders, grainy, indistinct. But we’d located other killers up here with a lot less, and there was no doubt this time. “Redwing is a go!”

Right after the briefing, Chief Dan Healy said to me, quietly, “This is it, Marcus. We’re going. Go get the guys ready.”

I gave the crisp reply expected from a team leader to a SEAL CPO. “Okay, Chief. We’re outta here.”

And I walked out of the briefing room and headed back to our quarters with a lot on my mind. I can’t quite explain it, but I was assailed by doubts, and that feeling of disquiet never left me.

I’d seen the maps, and they were clear. What I couldn’t see was a place to hide. We did not have good intel on the vegetation. It was obviously bad and barren way up there in the Hindu Kush, around ten thousand feet. You don’t need to be a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Institute to know this is arid country above the tree line, not much growing. Great for climbers, a goddamned nightmare for us.