He called over a kid who had a bottle. I think he went and filled it with fresh water from the stream. He brought it back to me and I kept chugging away, glugging down the water, two good-sized bottles of it.

“Hydrate,” said Sarawa.

“You got that right, pal,” I confirmed.

At which point we began to converse in that no-man’s-land of language, the one where no one knows hardly a word of the other’s native tongue.

“I’ve been shot,” I told him and showed him my wound, which had never really stopped bleeding.

He examined it and nodded sternly, as if he understood the clear truth that I badly needed medical attention. Heaven knows how severely my left leg would be infected. All the dirt, mud, and shale I’d inflicted on it couldn’t have done it much good.

I told him I was a doctor too, thinking it might help somehow. I knew there would likely be savage retribution for a non-Taliban village sheltering an American fugitive, and I was praying they would not just leave me here.

I wished to hell I still had some of my medical gear with me, but that was lost a lifetime ago on the mountain with Mikey, Axe, and Danny. Anyway, Sarawa seemed to believe I was a doctor, although he seemed equally certain he knew where I’d come from. With a succession of signals and a very few words, he conveyed to me he knew all about the firefight on the mountain. And he kept pointing directly at me, as if to confirm he absolutely knew I had been one of the combatants.

The tribal bush telegraph up here must be fantastic. They have no means of fast communications, no phones, cars, nothing. Just one another, goatherds wandering the mountainside, passing on the necessary information. And here was this Sarawa, who had presumably been miles away from the action, informing me about the battle which I had helped fight the previous day.

He patted me reassuringly on the shoulder and then retreated into a kind of conference with his fellow villagers while I talked to the kid.

He had only one question, and he had a lot of trouble asking it, trying to make an American understand. In the end I got his drift: Were you really the lunatic who fell down the mountain? Very far. Very fast. Very funny. All my village saw you do it. Very big joke. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Jesus Christ! I mean, Muhammad! Or Allah! Whoever’s in charge around here. This kid really was from a gingerbread village.

Sarawa returned. They gave me some more water. And again he checked over my wound. Didn’t look one bit happy. But there were more important things to discuss than the state of my backside.

I did not, of course, realize this. But the decision Sarawa and his friends were making carried huge responsibilities and, possibly, momentous consequences: They had to decide whether to take me in. Whether to help me, shelter me, and feed me. Most important, whether to defend me.

These people were Pashtuns. And the majority of the warriors who fought under the banner of the former rulers of Afghanistan, plus a vast number of bin Laden’s al Qaeda fighters, were members of this strict and ancient tribe, almost thirteen million of whom live right here in Afghanistan.

That steel core of the Taliban sect, that iron resolve and deadly hatred of the infidel, is unwaveringly Pashtun. The backbone of that vicious little tribal army is Pashtun. The Taliban moves around these mountains only by the unspoken approval and tacit permission of the Pashtuns, who grant them food and shelter. The two communities, the warriors and the general mountain populace, are irrevocably bound together. The mujahideen fighting the Russians were principally Pashtun.

Never mind “No Taliban.” I knew the background. These guys might be peace-loving villagers on the surface, but the tribal blood ties were wrought in iron. Faced with an angry Taliban army demanding the head of an armed American serviceman, you would essentially not give a secondhand billy goat for the American’s chances.

And yet there was something I did not know. We’re talking lokhay warkawal — an unbending section of historic Pashtun-walai tribal law as laid out in the hospitality section. The literal translation of lokhay warkawal is “giving of a pot.”

I did mention this briefly when I outlined the Pashtun tribal background much earlier. But this is the part where it really counts. This is where the ole lokhay warkawal gets shoved into context. Right here, while I’m lying on the ground bleeding to death, and the tribesmen are discussing my fate.

To an American, especially one in such terrible shape as I was, the concept of helping out a wounded, possibly dying man is pretty routine. You do what you can. For these guys, the concept carried many onerous responsibilities. Lokhay means not only providing care and shelter, it means an unbreakable commitment to defend that wounded man to the death. And not just the death of the principal tribesman or family who made the original commitment for the giving of a pot. It means the whole damned village.

Lokhay means the population of that village will fight to the last man, honor-bound to protect the individual they have invited in to share their hospitality. And this is not something to have a chitchat about when things get rough. It’s not a point of renegotiation. This is strictly nonnegotiable.

So while I was lying there thinking these cruel heartless bastards were just going to leave me out here and let me die, they were in fact discussing a much bigger, life-or-death issue. And the lives they were concerned with had nothing to do with mine. This was Lokhay, boy, spelled with a big L. No bullshit.

For all I knew, they were deciding whether to put a bullet through my head and save everyone a lot of trouble. But by now I was drifting off, half asleep, half alert, and the distinction was minimal. Sarawa was still talking. Of course it occurred to me that these men might be just like the goatherds, loyal spies for the Taliban. They could easily take me in and then send their fastest messengers to inform the local commanders they had me, and I could be picked up and executed anytime they wanted.

I wished fervently this was not the case. And though I thought I understood Sarawa was a nice guy, I couldn’t know the truth about him; no one could, not under those circumstances. Anyway, there was nothing much I could do about it, except maybe shoot them all, and a fat chance I would have had of getting away. I could hardly move.

So I just waited for the verdict. I kept thinking, What would Morgan do? Is there any way out of this? What’s the correct military decision? Do I have any options? Not so you’d notice. My best chance of living was to try and befriend Sarawa, try somehow to ingratiate myself with his friends.

Disjointed thoughts were blundering through my mind. What about all the death there had been in these mountains? What if these guys had lost sons, brothers, fathers, or cousins in the battle against the SEALs? How would they feel about me, an armed, uniformed member of the U.S. military, staging various gun battles, blowing Afghanis up on their very own tribal lands?

I obviously didn’t have any answers, nor could I know what they were thinking. But it couldn’t be good. I knew that.

Sarawa came back. He sharply ordered two men to raise me up, one of them under each of my arms to give me support, and lift me off the ground. He ordered another to lift my legs.

As they approached me, I took out my last grenade and carefully pulled the pin, which placed that little bastard right in firing mode. I held it in one hand, clasped across my chest. The tribesmen did not seem to notice. All I knew was, if they tried to execute me or tie me up or invite their murderous Taliban colleagues in, I would drop that thing right on the floor and take the whole fucking lot of them with me.