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On a June afternoon in 2005, Navy Lt. Michael P.Murphy lay in hiding on the side of a ridge in the lawlesseastern mountains of Afghanistan. He carried little withhim in the thin alpine air near Pakistan’s border. A rifle.

Clips of ammunition. Sophisticated communications and surveillanceequipment. Some high-energy food. And, sewn onto his uniform, a redshoulder patch honoring a New York City firehouse in East Harlem.

Three years, nine months, and 17 days had passed since Sept. 11, 2001.The region where Murphy ’98 Lib and his men waited was the hidingplace of those who masterminded the attacks. On this summer day, 29-year-old Murphy was far from the comfortable Patchogue, N.Y., homewhere he was raised to look out for others.

There were three U.S. commandos hiding with him on that mountain,all, like him, members of one of the most elite and secretive units in theU.S. military, the Navy SEALs. A tall Texan who was a karate expert,whose brother and father were SEALs. A scratch golfer from Californiaknown as “a perfect sniper.” And a communications expert from Col-orado who was so determined to be a SEAL he enlisted three weeks outof high school. They had only each other to rely on; help was miles away,if it could get there at all at elevations soaring to 10,000 feet.

The mission Murphy and his men were assigned was a daunting one.A high-ranking jihadist leader, Ahmad Shah, was thought to be in thearea, guarded by scores of heavily armed Taliban fighters. The moun-tain’s deep, rocky ravines and steep, forested sides gave the terror leaderperfect cover. Sending a noisy force of several hundred soldiers would bepointless. It would be too easy for the target to meld into the local popu-

BORNTO BY MARTIN C.EVANS

The bravery and selflessness thatNavy Lt. Michael Murphy showed in Afghanistan in June 2005 cost himhis life. Last October, those qualitiesalso earned him the United States’highest military commendation: theCongressional Medal of Honor.

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For the next several hours, he challenged her to goon the carnival rides her girlfriends rejected as tooscary. “To be honest, he rode my nerves the entirenight,” says Duggan ’00 H&HD. “But he brought thatcompetitive spirit out of me, so I was right there withhim. I wouldn’t back down.” Soon, they were insepara-ble friends, but nothing romantic. He called her thefirst day she arrived on campus, finding her numberbefore she even had a chance to give it to him. Heattended her gymnastics meets. She took him dancingin bars along College Avenue. She shared details of herspats with boyfriends, with Murphy often taking theside of her beaus. One night, with her on the back ofhis motorcycle, he zoomed along a Patchogue maindrag at more than 100 miles per hour. She never goton again.

Murphy enjoyed teasing her. A favorite joke was topull up in front of her house and offer her a ride in hiscar. When she reached for the door handle, Murphypulled away, stopping a few feet down the street.“Sometimes this would go on for half a block,” shesays. “He loved pushing my buttons.” But Murphy wasalso fiercely protective of her. Proof was the small scarnear one eye from a time when they were dancingtogether at a Port Jefferson, N.Y., bar. A manapproached Duggan, dancing closely and suggestively.Murphy asked the man to stop and when he didn’t,pushed him away. Duggan recalled that several of the

man’s friends rained blows on Murphy but nevermanaged to knock him down.

“My mom suggested while she was cleaning off the blood that he needed stitches,” Duggan says. “Helaughed and said he hadn’t lost enough blood to needstitches.”

As a college student, Murphy extended his weekendvisits home as long as possible, in part so he and hisfather could continue their lifelong habit of hangingout together. It was 295 miles from the Murphy homein Patchogue to Penn State—a five-hour drive whenfather and son could talk to each other without inter-ruption. Their habit was to climb into Daniel Mur-

phy’s green Buick an hour or two before midnight ona Sunday, point the car west toward Interstate 80 anddrive to State College. After dropping off his son,Daniel Murphy turned around and drove toward therising sun, arriving back in time to be at work Mon-day morning.

It was on one of those trips, in the darkness alongthe interstate, that Michael told his father he wantedto be a Navy SEAL. It wasn’t something Daniel Mur-phy wanted to hear.

DECADES EARLIER, THE FATHER HAD ALSO

risked everything to serve his country and had comeaway with a permanent physical wound and a deepdistaste for what soldiers are asked to do. Daniel Mur-phy enlisted in the Army in September 1968, while theU.S. was reeling from the Tet offensive throughoutSouth Vietnam. The attacks by the North Vietnameseand Viet Cong had deflated optimistic U.S. assess-ments of the war’s progress and began to turn Ameri-can public opinion against the war. Daniel Murphy,who had just graduated from the University of Ten-nessee and had law school in his sights, enlisted any-way, believing it was his patriotic duty to volunteer.

By January 1970, Murphy was at war and on amountaintop of his own, Nui Ba Den, a dormant vol-cano looming above a wide plain northwest of Saigon.Throughout years of intense fighting, American troops

held just a few acres at the mountain’s peak, with theViet Cong holding the rest. On Jan. 4, 1970, as theyhad every few months since 1965, U.S. forces hurledthemselves at the mountain, hoping finally to take it.Three days later, Murphy—firing his rifle from behinda rock—was lifted high into the air when a grenadeexploded. It fractured his ankle and pierced him withshrapnel from his hips to his feet. “I remember as clearas a bell floating down and saying, ‘I’m dead. What aremy parents going to think?’” recalls Murphy, who tothis day is prevented by pain from carrying his brief-case in his left hand.

A month after he was injured, Murphy’s best Army

lation, or to disappear along any of dozens ofunmapped trails that would take him back over thePakistan border. So it was up to Murphy and the threeother SEALS to secrete themselves on the mountain,quietly identify their target, then capture or kill him.They counted on stealth and skill to protect them,knowing that numbers would not.

In war, the most highly trained soldiers often findthemselves in impossible situations. As Murphy andhis men watched and waited on the mountain, anAfghan shepherd trailing a herd of goats chancedacross their path. No words were spoken as they staredat one another. Their cover blown, Murphy faced thehardest decision of his life.

What to do about the shepherd?

THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION MIGHT BE

found in Murphy’s upbringing on Long Island. A blue-eyed young man of Irish stock, Murphy’s friends andrelatives were public servants—cops and lifeguards,firemen, teachers, criminal court officers. His home-town of Patchogue is a working- and middle-classcommunity of third- and fourth-generation Irish, Ital-ian, and German immigrants.

While he grew up, Murphy watched as those closest tohim tried to right the world. “Our whole family is police,firemen, lawyers, people helping other people,” saysMichael’s mother, Maureen Murphy. “He realized that’sjust the way you grow up.”

His father, Daniel, says thateven as a young child,Michael “never liked seeingpeople getting taken advan-tage of or getting picked on.”While Michael was in middleschool, he jumped into a fightto help defend a classmatewho had been corneredbehind the building. Afterthat incident, Michael couldn’tshake the nickname “theprotector.”

In high school, Michaeltook a summer lifeguard job

in Lake Ronkonkoma—a job he returned to each sum-mer during college. While there, he began to demon-strate qualities that made people around him willing tofollow his lead, say former lifeguards who worked withhim. Friends from his high school and college yearsdescribe Murphy as someone whom others naturallygravitated to—who exuded loyalty and instilled loyaltyin those around him.

That day on the mountain in Afghanistan, Murphywore a large red sleeve emblem in honor of a formerlifeguard he worked with—Owen O’Callaghan—whobecame a fireman at Spanish Harlem’s Engine 53 Lad-der 43. O’Callaghan, now a Suffolk police officer, sayswhen Murphy set his sights on joining the SEALs, heset up a chin-up bar at the beach, and prodded his fel-low lifeguards to get stronger with him.

“I’d be, like, ‘I don’t want to do any more,’ and he’dsay, ‘You can do it,’ ” says O’Callaghan, 28, who creditsMurphy with preparing him to meet the physicalrequirements to become a fireman. “He wouldn’t letyou quit.”

MURPHY MET HEATHER DUGGAN THROUGH

mutual friends in 1996, at a summer carnival on LongIsland. Duggan had graduated from high school thatyear. She told Murphy, then a college sophomore, thatshe planned to attend Penn State in the fall.

“I’m already at Penn State,” said Murphy.

On a trip to Penn State, in the darkness along Interstate 80,Michael told his father he wanted to be a Navy SEAL. It wasn’tsomething Daniel Murphy wanted to hear.

A COMRADES: Murphy (right) and fellowSEALs—from left, Matthew Axelson,Daniel Healy, James Suh, Marcus Luttrell, and Eric Patton—formed aclose group. All but Luttrell were killedon June 28, 2005. PR

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stroke for 500 yards in under 12 minutes and 30 sec-onds, then run a mile and a half in just over 11 min-utes—while wearing long pants and combat boots.Candidates in Bisset’s program who failed in any oneexercise had to wait a month before completing theentire regimen again. Bisset routinely fails applicantsfor splashing too loudly during the swim.

Murphy began testing under Bisset on Jan. 16, 1999,completing the swim in nine minutes, the run in nineminutes, 22 seconds, and executing 90 push-ups, 58sit-ups, and 18 pull-ups in the allotted time.

“This is an intensely motivated individual who hasthe focus, determination and perseverance to carry himthrough the rigors of Basic Underwater DemolitionSEAL (BUDS) training,” Bisset wrote in his recom-mendation of Murphy. Bisset added, “I would be mosteager to have this individual serve in my wardroom.”

Murphy continued to participate in the monthlystrength-testing meetings even after winning Bis-set’s recommendation. He posted his last strengthtest on Sept. 11, 1999, gutting out 102 push-ups, 87sit-ups, and 22 pull-ups. He had cut his swim timeby 13 percent, to 7:47. He ran a mile and a half inboots in 8:55.

Murphy enlisted in the Navy’s Officer CandidateSchool at Pensacola, Fla., in September 1999. He wascommissioned as an ensign that December. Now,only BUDS stood between him and membership inthe Navy’s elite SEAL corps. Before he left for SEALschool in San Diego, Murphy told Heather Dugganthat he wanted her to move with him to California.His emotions had changed, and he knew he wantedher in his life. Her feelings had changed, too. At aparty she organized to celebrate his acceptance intoBUDS, she told him for the first time that she lovedhim. Still, she wasn’t ready to follow him. She hadbeen accepted in a graduate program in school coun-seling at Long Island University.

“This will sound horrible, but I didn’t want a mili-tary life,” Duggan recalls. “I wanted to get my master’sdegree and wasn’t prepared to live the kind of life hewas asking me to live.”

NAVY SEALS ARE INVOLVED IN THE MOST TREACH-

erous and secretive military operations. An assign-ment might require SEALs to surprise an enemy by swimming silently ashore from a submarine in darkness, or to rappel from a helicopter onto amountain peak.

The yearlong training program in Coronado, Calif.,is most intense during Hell Week, a cold, wet, grittystretch of almost constant exertion that is designed tomake candidates quit. The men are on the run aroundthe clock, getting less than five total hours of sleepover the course of five and a half days. The push-upsand sit-ups—sometimes 500 of each per day—aremere warm-up exercises. The men swim and train forhours in bone-chilling surf, haul 300-pound logs andboats heavy with sand, and run obstacle courses underrelentless prodding from drill instructors. The skin oftheir legs, feet, shoulders, and groin is often worn rawfrom the constant motion and the chafing of military

pants, boots, or life jackets.To steel himself, Murphy called home with a

request. He needed his father to send him a 1970photograph that showed Daniel Murphy recov-ering from his Vietnam wounds. “If you couldmake it through what you went through, I canmake it through Hell Week,” Michael Murphytold his father.

Midway through Hell Week, the highest-rank-ing trainee in Murphy’s group died of a heartattack during a swimming pool training exercise.He was 29. Three years earlier, a Navy airman

had died during training in the same pool. “You havethe feeling it’s never going to end,” says Navy Lt. JimQuattromani, 29, a SEAL who went through HellWeek with Murphy. “I saw on numerous occasionshim sort of pulling other guys along.”

“He really exuded a confidence and a maturity,” addedQuattromani. “And physically, he was such a good ath-lete that it seemd to come easier for him. To me, of allthe guys in the class, he was among the top few who it was obvious they were going to get through it.”

Becoming a SEAL isn’t all brawn and endurance.SEAL candidates must score well on the Armed Ser-vices Vocational Aptitude Battery, which gauge math-ematical reasoning and verbal skills. SEALs mustscore as well as the Navy’s nuclear propulsion candi-dates, who serve aboard submarines.

Murphy successfully completed his SEAL training,which also included a month of jumps at the army’sparachute school at Ft. Benning, Ga. In July 2002, itwas official. He was awarded the trident symbol of theNavy SEALs.

As Murphy emerged from SEAL training, war wasunder way in Afghanistan. Knowing full well he wouldplay a role somewhere, Murphy was assigned to SEALDelivery Team One, based at Pearl Harbor.

For Murphy and Duggan, parting had been hard.Each of them had thrown themselves into careers theyhad worked hard to achieve. They paid an emotionalprice. They stopped corresponding. “We both had a lotof growing up to do and there was a lot for each of usto experience,” Duggan says. “We were young when wedrifted apart. I was 22, he was 24.” But on LongIsland, Duggan’s mother learned from the Murphysthat Michael had begun taking on missions overseas.

Once, when he called from the country of Djibouti,his mother figured out he must have been in Africawhen he let slip that he had been chased by a pack ofM

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buddy was killed in combat. Also killed was the medicwho pulled Murphy to safety. U.S. forces never tookthe mountain.

“It wasn’t a matter of political belief, but Vietnamleft a bad taste in my mouth that soldiers were usedas cannon fodder,” says Murphy, the National JudgeAdvocate for the Military Order of the Purple Heart,an advocacy group for wounded veterans. The fatherhad rarely spoken of Vietnam while Michael wasgrowing up, not wanting to share the horror—orplant a career idea—with a young, impressionableson. But that night in the car, Murphy offered somewords of caution.

“I said, ‘Michael, you know my disenchantment withthe military after being in Vietnam,’” Murphy recalls.“‘I thought you wanted to go to law school?’”

But Michael was not to be dissuaded. In 1998, he

graduated with a pair of bachelor’s degrees from PennState—in political science and psychology. And exactlyas his father had done more than 30 years earlier, heput on hold his plans for law school. If there was anyconsolation to the senior Murphy, it was knowing thatthe odds against his son being accepted as a SEALwere enormous.

Of the nearly 1.4 million people serving in the U.S.military, only 2,270 men are SEALs. The SEAL train-ing program was so rigorous that more than three infour who won admission to BUDS—the Naval SpecialWarfare Command’s Basic Underwater Demo-lition/SEAL school—quit before they finished. But thelong odds didn’t deter Michael Murphy. While still aPenn State student, Murphy, who was slightly built at5-10, began attending SEAL mentoring sessions at theU.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point withthe goal of getting himself ready for BUDS. Drew Bis-set, a retired Navy captain and former SEAL, haddesigned the program. To earn Bisset’s recommenda-tion to the SEAL school in San Diego, his charges hadto far exceed the Navy’s requirement to complete setsof at least 42 push-ups and 50 sit-ups—each in twominutes—plus six untimed pull-ups. They also had toeclipse the Navy’s requirement to swim a silent side

Planning a wedding would be difficult while Murphy was on active duty. They picked a date anyway: Nov. 19, 2005.

A A DRIVEN MAN: Murphy brought intense determination to everythinghe did, whether a Navy SEAL mission (shown here with Matthew Axelson)or his courtship of fiancée Heather Duggan (top right).

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hyenas. Otherwise, his comings and goings were amystery to the people he loved. Duggan worried. Shebegan writing him again. “I was afraid that somethingwould happen to him, and I would never be able to tellhim how I really felt about him,” Duggan says. “I trulythink Mike and I both knew we were a couple as soonas the first e-mail correspondence began.”

In April 2003, Murphy flew Duggan to Hawaii andgreeted her at the airport. “It was a different hug fromthe hugs we gave each other as friends,” she recalls. “Assoon as I walked toward him at the airport, I knew I

was going to have a hard time leaving. I called my moma few days later and said I was moving to Hawaii.”

Murphy owned a house near Pearl Harbor. The cou-ple talked of starting a family. Heather dreamed oftwo children; Murphy, who organized street hockeygames for youngsters in the neighborhood, needledher about four or five.

On the day after Christmas 2003, during a trip hometo Long Island, Murphy walked Duggan through theholiday crowds to see the tree at Rockefeller Center inNew York City. Though temperatures were in the 30s,Murphy’s hands were sweating. For the first time sinceshe had known him, this confident man was anythingbut. Surrounded by tourists, Murphy dropped to aknee, dug a ring from his pocket, and proposed. Shemade him ask twice to tease him before saying yes.

Planning a wedding would be difficult while Mur-phy was on active duty as a SEAL. They picked a dateanyway—Nov. 19, 2005. They planned to move backEast when his Navy hitch ended. Thinking ahead,

Murphy visited an FBI office in New York toinquire about a career in counterterrorism. Butanother mission shelved talk of settling downand having babies. In April 2005, Murphykissed Duggan goodbye. Nothing of his nextdestination was known to his family.

With war now raging in Iraq, his parentsassumed that was where he would go. Half of hisHawaii-based platoon was sent to western Iraq.But at the last minute, Murphy and the other halffound themselves headed for the very region

where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding.

AS A LIEUTENANT WHO CAME THROUGH OFFI-

cers’ Training School, Murphy was the second-ranking member of his platoon, a unit of up to 44men. But you’d never know it from the way he dealtwith fellow SEALs. He shared his home with severalSEAL roommates in Hawaii; one recalled that Mur-phy would spend his free time alternating betweenpulling practical jokes on them and indulging readingtastes that ranged from the Greek historianHerodotus to Tolstoy’s War and Peace and the politi-cal writings of Michael Moore.

His home was where others would drop by after workon Friday nights, before carpooling for beers and laughsat Duke’s Waikiki, a popular bar. Some were the same

guys who were with Murphy now in the desolation ofAfghanistan. One was Petty Officer 1st Class MarcusLuttrell, 29, a karate expert from Texas. Another wasPetty Officer 2nd Class Danny P. Dietz, 25, a communi-cations specialist. The fourth man on the mountain,Petty Officer Matt Axelson, 29, a sniper from Cupertino,Calif., was known as quiet and cerebral.

The four men were secreted on the side of SawtaloSar, a steep mountain that cradles the Shuraik Valleyin Afghanistan’s Kunar Province. The valley is home to

Pashtun goat herders and woodcutters, who coaxwheat from the rocky soil and who sometimes takemoney from warlords to shoot at and disclose thewhereabouts of U.S. troops.

Axelson had trained as a sniper. Dietz was good withcommunications equipment. Luttrell was a fourth-degree black belt in karate. Because of his rank, butalso his warm personality, Murphy was the glue of thegroup. Other SEALs say his understated and unassum-ing nature made him accessible, but that when facedwith a decision, he took in suggestions, then made it.

The valley floor is 5,000 feet above sea level. Themountain above climbs almost a mile higher. At theplace where Murphy and his men waited, the slopesare steeper than a stairwell and heavily forested. Thefour men had been dropped in darkness the previousnight by a helicopter from the Army’s 160th SpecialOperations Aviation Regiment. Overhead surveil-lance detected that a large group of heavily armedguerrilla fighters had slipped into Afghanistan fromPakistan through a pass in the mountains. Thenumbers indicated that someone important wasbeing protected.

Ethnic Pashtun tribes are Sunni Muslims who con-trol both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.Fierce fighters who have stubbornly resisted outsidedomination for more than two millennia, they woredown and then ousted the Soviet Army in 1989. Out oftheir numbers came the Taliban, anti-modern, conser-vative interpreters of Islam, whose reign of terrorturned Afghanistan into both a fundamentaliststronghold and a haven for al-Qaida.

This region of Afghanistan lies close to the heart ofthe Islamic extremism that on Sept. 11, 2001, killed2,997 people in Pennsylvania, New York City, andWashington. Since the 1980s, Kunar’s mountains havebeen a stronghold for Arab militants who, underOsama bin Laden, formed al-Qaida. Many analystswho monitor bin Laden say Kunar and its adjacentAfghan and Pakistani regions are likely hiding placesfor him even now.

The four SEALs were scouting Ahmad Shah—a man

in his mid-30s who grew up in adjacent mountainsjust to the south. Under the assumed name Muham-mad Ismail, Shah leads a guerrilla group known as the“Mountain Tigers.” In September 2006, Pakistan’sPresident Pervez Musharraf told the Times of Londonthat he believed Osama bin Laden was hiding inAfghanistan’s Kunar Province, near where the fourAmericans were dropped.

And so, on that June day, as the four men waited,they were spotted by the goat herder working his flockthrough the valley.

SINCE A SEAL’S STRENGTH IS HIS ABILITY TO GET

in and out unseen, their cover was effectively blownand a decision had to be made. What should they doabout the goat herder?

As the team leader, Murphy was forced to make afateful decision. If the herder were allowed to leave, hemight tell insurgents about the SEALs. Taking himprisoner would slow their movements and could bringothers out to look for him. Aborting the mission wouldrisk the lives of those who would have to come extractthem and possibly allow an important insurgentleader to go free.

Murphy made clear to the others that killing theshepherd, a noncombatant, was not an option. “Youknow what, we are not murderers,” he told the threeother SEALs. “We’re not just going to kill someone.”They would spare the herder and take their chances.

While much of what transpired after the goat herderwas allowed to go his way is not known, at about 2:00p.m. the four SEALs found themselves all but sur-FR

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The four SEALS found themselves all but surrounded by heavilyarmed Taliban fighters. The Americans were trapped.

A FALLEN HERO: Murphy was buried at Calverton National Cem-tary, not far from his boyhood home. Last October, PresidentBush presented the Medal of Honor to Murphy’s parents in aWhite House ceremony.

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Afghanistan. The next day, a SEAL who had once beenMichael Murphy’s commanding officer flew from SanDiego to Long Island to wait with the family. He movedinto a nearby motel. Every day he would spend from

morning to midnight at the Patchogue house, callingback to San Diego each night to see if there was word.On July 4, at about 11 p.m., the officer went outside tomake his nightly call. This one was different—it lastedmuch longer than his earlier calls. Inside, Daniel Mur-phy sensed something was very wrong.

“I saw him coming toward me and I said, ‘Is every-thing OK?’” the father recalled. “He said, ‘Mr. Murphy,I’m sorry.’”

MURPHY’S MISSION, KNOWN AS OPERATION RED-

wing, was the worst loss of life for the SEALs since theprogram’s inception in 1962. In all, 11 SEALs—eight inthe helicopter, plus Axelson, Deitz, and Murphy—werekilled. The lone surviving SEAL, Luttrell, returned toactive duty. A book about his experiences, Lone Sur-vivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing

and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10, was publishedlast June by Little, Brown and Co. Luttrell received theNavy Cross, and Dietz and Axelson received the honorposthumously. Standing in for their son, Dan andMaureen Murphy attended, but Michael Murphy didnot receive the Navy Cross. The Navy awards individu-als only one honor per war episode, and Murphy’sactions on the mountain in Afghanistan would laterearn him the nation’s most prestigious combat award:the Medal of Honor.

Dan and Maureen Murphy, who were divorced in1999, remain close friends. Their other son, John, 20,is attending the New York Institute of Technology,with hopes for a career in criminal justice. “He’s goingto be the lawyer,” Dan Murphy says.

Nearly every day, Maureen Murphy visits Michael’sgrave at Calverton National Cemetery in eastern LongIsland, where she talks to him. Before her son wasburied, she tucked into his casket a key to the frontdoor of the family’s Patchogue home, where she andson John still live.

Heather Duggan lives near Wall Street in LowerManhattan and counsels middle school students atIS-220 in Brooklyn. These days, she says she laughsmore than she cries when she remembers Michael.“He’ll always be a part of me, but what I truly, trulymiss the most—and this might shock some people—is definitely his friendship,” Duggan says. “I thinkabout him hanging out with me back in 1997–98,with a backwards baseball hat on, out on the beach,cracking jokes and messing around. He was just sucha great friend.”

Several times a week, Dan Murphy drives to LakeRonkonkoma on Long Island, where his son served asa lifeguard and where he practiced chin-ups to pre-pare for SEAL training. The memory that his sonstood on this beach on hot summer days, looking outfor swimmers in trouble, is reassuring to a father whodesperately misses him.

He says, “It gives me a sense of peace walking on thesame ground he walked.”

This story originally appeared in Newsday on May 6, 2007, and is

excerpted here with permission. Murphy’s parents were presented

with the Congressional Medal of Honor on behalf of their late son

on Oct. 22, 2007. Only five people have received the award for

actions occurring since the Vietnam War. Two were honored for

heroism in the Battle of Mogadishu, and two for Iraq; Michael

Murphy is the only one honored for actions in Afghanistan.AN

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rounded by several dozen heavily armed Taliban fight-ers, whose familiarity with the rugged terrain hadallowed them to slip in unseen. The Taliban knew thepaths the SEALs could use to flee. The four Americanswere trapped.

Trying to reach safety, the four men began fleeingdown the mountain’s steep sides, making leaps of 20to 30 feet. Realizing they were trapped, Dietz, thecommunications guy, sought open air to place a dis-tress call back to the base. But before he could, he wasshot in the hand, the blast shattering his thumb.Murphy, desperate to make radio contact for help,then climbed out into the open, exposing himself

to enemy gunfire. While making the call, he was hitby at least one shot. But his words got through toBagram Air Base.

“Hornets’ nest,” Murphy yelled into the satellitephone. Then he ran back down to help his three men.

According to an account by a U.S. Marine captain,U.S. forces who received the distress call sent a Preda-tor drone mounted with an infrared camera to locatethe SEAL team. Images beamed back from the battle-field told commanders that the SEALs were now sur-rounded. Within minutes, an Army MH-47 helicoptercarrying eight SEALs and eight Army commandos wasaloft, flying toward the battle scene at 50 feet off theground and upward of 150 miles per hour. It wasflanked by two attack helicopters, whose job was toprotect the chopper from ground fire. But the attackhelicopters, burdened with the weight of armor andammunition, and laboring in the thin mountain air,fell behind the troop carrier, making it vulnerable toenemy fire.

As the troop carrier approached the trapped SEALs,a rocket-propelled explosive fired from the groundslammed into the side of the MH-47. All 16 aboardwere killed—including James Suh, 28, a SEAL fromFlorida who was Murphy’s closest friend.

At some point, Murphy’s comrade Marcus Luttrell

found himself trapped, only to be saved when Murphycame to his rescue. Luttrell has told the families of theother SEALs that an explosion blew him farther downthe mountain and away from the fighting. It was thelast time he saw the others alive.

In the fighting, an official investigation found, Axel-son, Dietz, and Murphy suffered multiple gunshotwounds, plus blunt-force injuries incurred as theyjumped and tumbled down the ravine. Dietz was shot16 times. Axelson had been hit with gunfire at least 22times. Murphy was hit at least seven times: Bulletspierced his arm, leg, abdomen, back, and face belowhis left eye.

As darkness fell, Luttrell, bleeding from severalwounds and unable to communicate with his com-mand, hid from his pursuers. When the sun came updays later, an Afghan shepherd heard a strangenoise in the woods. He found Luttrell, wounded andscared, and after persuading him that he meant no harm, took him to his home to protect him from his pursuers.

Luttrell had now been saved twice. And, if it wasthe first herder who betrayed them, it was now a sec-ond herder who saved the sole survivor. Armed gun-men—who videotaped themselves looting watches,weapons, boots, and electronic equipment that theysay were from the bodies of Axelson, Dietz, and Mur-phy in a scene that was posted on YouTube—came tothe village to demand custody of Luttrell. But follow-ing their own local code of ethics, which require vil-lagers to offer sanctuary to anyone in danger, whetherfriend or enemy or stranger, the villagers told thegunmen they’d have to kill all the men in the villagebefore they’d turn the American over. They latersmuggled a note written by Luttrell to U.S. troopsstationed at Asadabad across the mountain range.Luttrell was now safe.

Within a few days, a Navy chaplain phoned MaureenMurphy in Patchogue to say her son was missing in

Murphy’s former commanding officer flew to Long Island towait with the family. On July 4 he went outside to make hisnightly call. This one was different. “I said, ‘Is everything OK?’”Murphy’s father recalls. “He said, ‘Mr. Murphy, I’m sorry.’”