The wait was very short.
The Hueys lowered down on the plain and the Baker team guys ran out from the hangar and got swiftly on board of the two Hueys.
An overall force of two Hueys were thought to be enough to visually explore the map sectors the Vietcong's battalion was probably hiding in.
On board of the first front-head Hueys, came Danforth, Krakauer, Messner and Coletta. That was the 'commanding' Huey of the formation.
In fact, there had been some squabble between Ortega and Danforth about his blind-folded wounded eye, but after insisting a little bit Ortega finally gave up.
The second Huey was a support, 'cover-fire' one.
Using two helicopters, spotting the Vietcong in the jungle below should have been quite easy.
Ortega was sitting beside a pilot that everyone used to call 'Shorty Jim', because of his height.
Barry, Jorgenson and Rambo were in the back of the helicopter, with Jorgenson at the M60.
Rambo, standing with an M16 at his hand, was holding onto a bar and stretching the safe-cord to its maximum length.
Rambo was feeling tired that morning, even if he did not know why.
Twenty four hours without sleeping weren't ideal for anyone, but he was feeling too tired considering that the previous night had not been a physically demanding one.
Then he remembered Trautman's teachings.
Everything's stress. The fact of having put yourself at risk is stressful too and on its own, and this fatigue you are going to feel will have nothing to do with the physical task you did, or did not do..
So, that was the exact feeling Trautman was talking about. That night's fighting had tired him with no physical effort at all, just like Trautman had said.
And he wasn't the only one feeling like that. He could see it in his team mates’ eyes.
It's nothing more than a feeling inside your head.
Ignore everything, and make yourself operative.
Get into operative state, because nothing is over.
***
After five minutes flying, the base had already vanished behind Ortega's chopper.
After ten, the paddy fields vanished behind them too, and the two Hueys started flying over the jungle.
They were almost there.
If the Vietcong were nearby, they would soon spot them... Or - on the contrary - the Vietcong would spot the Hueys..
Ortega looked at his team mates.
Jorgenson was incessantly tapping his foot on the steel floor, as if he was tapping the rhythm of an only-existing-inside-his-mind song.
On the other side Barry – in a very Special Forces style – was sleeping.
Eating whenever you can, sleeping whenever you can and so on – was one of the many Trautman's mottos.
Barry was not entirely wrong in sleeping in such a moment.
Ortega was quite lost in his thoughts when he felt a hand tapping on his shoulder.
It was Johnny.
Rambo pointed two fingers toward his own eyes, than he pointed down to the jungle below.
Ortega stretched himself out and immediately felt the safe-cord pulling his side. Yet, he did get to see the jungle flowing down below.
They a very high hill was next to them.
Ortega continued scanning the ground below, but there was nothing.
They were flying very low just in case some enemy had the idea to open fire against them... Maybe even too low.
The vegetation below them was flowing very, very fast.
Rambo made a gesture again.
At first, Ortega saw nothing.
They were about to pass over the top of a hill, they were almost over its top when a very young North Vietnamese rose from the leaves.
He was wearing the regular uniform of the North Vietnamese army, a clean and neat one, as if he was wearing it for the very first time. He was really elegant, almost beautiful at the top of that hill, in the sun and with the clear sky behind him.
He was holding an RPG over his shoulder and pointing it straight toward them, while taking his aim in a perfectly calm way.
Shit – thought Ortega.
“ARRPEEGEE!” screamed both Rambo and Ortega, together.
Rambo's scream was quite a plaintive one, very similar to a wolf's howl.
They had to go straight and as quickly as they could, in order to not give the shooter the time necessary to take aim.
That was their only hope.
“SPEED UP!” Ortega shout to Shorty Jim, the pilot.
“Evasive manoeuvring!” he yelled.
“NO! GO STRAIGHT TOWARD HIM!” .
“DO AS HE SAID” Barry yelled too.
With a little jump, Rambo stretched his head inside the cockpit and put one hand on the pilot's shoulder.
“GO STRIAGHT FUCKING FORWARD OR I SWEAR TO GOD THAT I AM GOING TO SNAP YOUR NECK WITH MY BARE HANDS”
Seeing that scene, Ortega had a flashback.
You must know about your mission more than your own colonels themselves.
You must know about flying more than your own pilots.
The helicopter tilted down and started flashing forward and straight toward the enemy.
Jorgenson started shooting with his M60 but against nothing for real, because the enemy was out of his angle of fire. Yet he got all of the enemy's attention just for a while, but enough to make him hesitate enough to give all of them some precious seconds more at disposal.
Then the helicopter straightened and accelerated, while the Vietcong's head was enveloped in a white cloud.
WOOOOOOSH!
The RPG flashed past right in front of them, and so close that it looked like it had passed right in front of them.
It skimmed over the left side of the helicopter, and Jorgenson saw it passing right in front of his face and so close that it looked like had he put one hand out, he could have touched it.
“FUCK!” He shouted while losing the grasp over his M60 for a little while.
“IT PASSED THROUGH! IT PASSED THROUGH!” Rambo screamed.
Ortega could now sense the rocket's trail of smoke stinging his nostrils, so close had the rocket passed by.
Jesus fucking Christ – he thought.
“IT'S GONE” Jorgenson shouted too, while grabbing his M60 back with shaking hands.
The helicopter passed by the hill flashing over it while the Vietcong was reloading in vain.
In front of them there was already another hill and in the gorge between the two hills another Vietcong appeared.
He was holding an RPG too.
“ANOTHER ONE, ONE O'CLOCK”
Everybody turned tn their right to look at the same time, but their luck was over.
This time Ortega barely whispered.
“Shit”
And before he could even end the word, the warhead was in the air already.
WOOOOOOOOSH!
A noise shook the whole helicopter, as if it was made of paper, then they felt some kind of bump, as if they had just been rammed by another aircraft.
“HOLD ON Jorgenson” Rambo screamed, but Jorgenson still had his hands on his M60.
He had the safety cord, but in order to shoot properly he had unfastened the seatbelt, and when Jorgenson reached out to take the spring clip, it flew away in front of him. The helicopter was starting its downward spiral, and while Barry, Ortega and all of the others already had their seatbelts fastened and were preparing for the crash, Jorgenson couldn't.
Rambo understood immediately what was going on.
“Hold on” he shouted in vain.
“Hold the fuck on, Jorgenson!”
“Jorgenson NOOOOOOOO!”
While moving towards the top of the next hill, the helicopter started whirling for real.
Rambo was ready for the crash and Barry too, but Jorgenson not yet, and now that the centrifugal force was far worse than before, he was being pushed out of the helicopter
Jorgenson stayed just like that, his legs out of the helicopter, one hand holding a bar and the other in the void, all stretched out trying to grab a seatbelt that was out of his reach.
He was going to smash his legs on impact.
The helicopter's blades were turning in one direction, the body of the vehicle in the other.
After some turns, it tilted all of itself on one side, and then it started its freefall toward the ground.
Barry, who was all crouched against his seat, closed his hands over his head, which was considered the safety position for the incoming crash.
Ortega, who was sat beside the pilot, started pushing against the window as hard as he could in order to hold himself against the centrifugal force.
The only one who could stretch one hand out and help Jorgenson was Rambo, but he was too far away from him and unlocking the seatbelt in that moment would have been suicide.
So he could do nothing but stretch towards him, hoping that Jorgenson could reach his hand on his own.
“Jorgenson!” he shouted.
His friend was going to die and right in front of him, just a span away from him.
“JORGENSOOOON!”
Then Rambo brought his hands back, in order to brace himself during the incoming crash and while looking into his friend's eyes at the same time.
“NO, NO, NOOOO” he shouted with all of the breath he could find inside his lungs and with such a desperation in his voice that his voice changed so much that it didn't sound like his anymore.
Jorgenson saved his legs from the impact, but he then crashed against the steel floor with no protection at all, crashing his head, his back, his shoulders, everything.
When the flickering stars finally vanished away from Rambo's field of view, the helicopter was lying on its side and on the outside, pieces of metal sheets were slowly falling over the surrounding jungle.
It was like Rambo had missed some frames of the previous scene: a while before they were falling to the ground and a while later everything was still, and his back was hurting him like hell.
I am still alive – he thought.
They had just crashed.
-
“Fuck, fuck, fuck” Krakauer shout from the hold door of the other Huey, which was still in the air.
During the impact on the ground, Ortega's Huey had some kind of jolt: it flexed itself and straightened again like a boxer's face hit by a hook. As if the helicopter had been a human being, not made of steel.
Its blades smashed against the ground then slowly stopped turning, like a wounded animal who finally stops breathing.
Seen from above, it had been a horrendous spectacle.
“Fuck” Krakauer shouted again, but this time the tone of his voice was quite lifeless.
Danforth, who was sat beside the pilot, was shaking his head while looking down with his only working eye at the same time.
But a while later, he could see that the Huey hadn't exploded.
It smoked but wasn't on fire and hadn't become a fireball either, so there could be some survivors.
“If I could just get down there and see if there are any survivors” Messner said from behind him.
After the crash there was a while of stasis, during which nothing moved.
-
Inside the crashed Huey Rambo shook his head in order to get rid of the stars that were blurring his vision.
Over him, Barry was already unfastening his seatbelt.
Ortega, who was sat in front of him – beside the pilot – felt his own forehead, as if to check that nothing was broken in there.
Jorgenson was lying still on his side.
Rambo unfastened his belt and dragged himself to his motionless, face-down friend.
“Can you hear me, Grizzly?”
But he gave no answer, not even a sign.
Rambo then checked his pulse on his neck.
He was still alive but unconscious, and losing blood from one of his ears.
Cranial fracture – he thought, and that though hit him like a knife stab.
He had probably hit his head against the steel floor during the crash. An unforgiving impact.
Damn it, Grizzly.
If he didn’t come round in a dozen minutes, he probably wasn't going to come round at all, and every single second passing by unconscious added more likelihood of suffering permanent brain damage.
Friend.... My friend.
But Rambo had no time to feel those feelings.
He couldn't afford to.
So he turned to the other side.
Barry was good. He was standing on his feet already..
He took a couple of steps, than started unscrewing the Huey's M60 from its bracket.
Rambo noted what he was doing with a sidelong glance, then turned again to Jorgenson.
After a long, almost never ending while, Jorgenson opened his eyes up.
Thank you God – Rambo thought.
But he was moving them only.
-
“Here they fucking are! Fucking Vietcong! ” shouedt Krakauer on board of the flying Huey, then he started shooting down with his M60.
The guy fired a never ending burst, as long as if there were no tomorrow.
“Vicious assholes”
Their mates had crashed into a plain near the top of the hill and Krakauer was shooting at the base of the hill, where the vegetation was thicker.
He had to take the Vietcong away from the wreck; if they climbed up to the edge of the plain, it would be over for Ortega and the others.
He was aiming at moving leaves, smoke clouds or trails of smoke of any kind in the middle of the jungle, but the truth was that he wasn't seeing almost anything and he was shifting his aim practically by pure instinct.
Coletta moved Messner with one hand and started looking down below using the scope of his precision rifle.
The enemies were very careful in staying where they were very well hidden by the jungle, and so invisible from above.
From the Vietcong point of view, attacking the wreck was like shooting birds inside a cage: they were going to sport shoot until they had taken down all of the Baker team members who survived the crash.
Shooting from the hold door, Krakauer was practically shooting at anything, and Coletta scanning the terrain down below with his rifle scope.
“Sniper! Stop spotting and start shooting - shouted Danforth -. Or rather, let's throw some serious bombs at those assholes”
Coletta put his sniper-rifle down, grabbed an M16 and started shooting in full auto, emptying his first magazine very fast.
Messner picked up a claymore, but they weren't in such a position as to toss it down. He was at risk of throwing it too near the wreckage.
-
Ortega was stuck inside the cockpit that was all deformed by the impact.
His breathing was difficult and he was feeling a strange sensation in the middle of his thorax.
He might have a broken rib.
He turned to look at Shorty: he was moving- so he was still alive -, but the dark visor of his helmet was full of blood. Ortega could not understand where his wound was, but it wasn't a very important issue at the moment, because he couldn't help him anyway in such conditions (what about him? How bad was he wounded? He had no idea) and he certainly couldn't do anything at all from the position he was at the moment, upside-down-almost.
“Can you breathe?” asked Ortega.
“Yes”
“Can you move?”
“No... I think I lost one leg”
Ortega looked down.
“Negative, soldier: both of your legs are still there”
He said, then smiled.
“Don't worry, you are going to feel them again very soon. Together with the pain...”
At the same time, Ortega heard the first bullet hissing over the wreck.
He heard the hisses only – no shots -, so the Vietcong had to be far away... For now.
He could even get a rough idea about their distance, thanks to his training.
Ziiip...
“You are gonna make it” said Ortega.
Ziiip... Ziiip...
He then examined the pilot better.
Shorty had broken both of his legs and one of the two fractures was an exposed one. The severed muscle was shining red over the white bone.
Jesus Christ.
Ortega drew his 1911 from his holster, pulled the slide back and passed it to Shorty Jim.
“Dont let 'em take you alive” he said.
Shorty nodded with difficulty and took the gun.
Ortega pulled out his knife, grasped it icepick-style and started hammering at the window, shattering it with the knife.
Shattered crystals rained over his face.
Then, with the sawback side of the blade, he started opening the window up, while new crystals started falling over him.
-
Rambo was trying to understand if Jorgenson's neck was broken.
It looked like it was not, yet Jorgenson was not speaking or talking yet.
While being very careful in keeping the neck 'in line', Rambo lifted his head from the steel floor and when he saw the side of his face that had been hidden so far, his blood froze inside his veins.
On the left side of Jorgenson's forehead, there was a depressed zone two centimetres deep at least.
His skull was fractured.
-
Jorgenson regained consciousness right in that moment, while Rambo was still examining him.
The first thing he saw was the glances of both Rambo and Barry – who had just joined - over him and staring at him in a very horrified way.
His vision was still blurred at the time, but their facial expressions were unquestionable.
“What?” he said.
“Stay calm - Rambo replied from above -. It's all right”
“Yeah” Barry whispered.
But Rambo was lying. They both were.
And if a guy like Rambo got to the point of lying, it could mean one thing, and one thing only.
“Johnny” he said.
Rambo nodded.
“What the fuck is happening, Johnny?”
At first, Rambo looked like he couldn't reply, but then he said:
“We crashed. You sustained a serious cranial fracture”
Only then did Jorgenson start hearing the surrounding sounds for real.
They were under attack.
“I feel sick, Johnny”
Barry vanished from his sight and he heard some metal sounds.
A while later Rambo was gone too, and if they were leaving him that way, the situation was probably very bad out there.
He had to do something.
But he couldn't move and he was feeling sicker and sicker.
He had strong nausea, too strong and so much that it seemed like it was going kill him. He was feeling like he had ingested some kind of poison, of a deadly kind.
Then everything blurred in front of him, becoming faded and far away. It was like falling inside a very deep and dark well, even if he was still there, inside the wreckage.
Reality was coming and going as he risked losing consciousness.
Don't faint – he thought.
He was dying for real, for Christ's sake. He could feel the death inside himself.
Any moment now, everything would vanish, and he would never wake up any more.
Ever.
“Jorgenson! Don't pass out, Jorgenson!” It was Rambo's voice.
He hadn't abandoned him.
Jorgenson clung to his friend's voice with an inhuman effort... But it wasn't enough anyway.
He could do nothing against the deadly darkness surrounding him, and a while later it enveloped him like a shroud, making everything else disappear.
-
It was then that Rambo heard the first bullets flying really close to the downed helicopter.
They were like vultures attracted by an animal’s dead corpse smell.
They were blood-thirsty.
“Barry” Rambo shouted.
“I know” replied the black guy.
Then they both heard the sound of a helicopter flying over them.
It was the second Huey, the one with the other half of the Baker team on board.
They were studying the situation from above, but the zone was too hot to get too close, and even more dangerous for landing.
Yet they were still there at least; they hadn't abandoned them to their fate.
Rambo studied the sounds surrounding him.
The Vietcong were many.
Light weapons were all around but far away (for now). They were probably even out of range, but scattered a little everywhere.
They were really facing a whole enemy battalion, as Trautman had said.
But the thing Rambo feared the most was not death but capture... And that was a capture situation for sure.
There were people in Vietnam that had been POW since '65, when the war began, and Rambo had no intention at all of ending up like that.
He would never let himself be taken alive.
“Raven” said Ortega.
Ortega got out from the cockpit through the broken wind shield, and was now asking him for a rifle stretching an empty hand in his direction.
Rambo stretched inside the cockpit rack and picked an M16 up when a bullet came through the helicopter, piercing its fuselage side to side right in front of his face, or thinking about it better, it pierced it side to side passing through Rambo's body.
No – he thought.
A white flash blinded his sight.
No, no, no...
Rambo lost his balance a little bit, while losing his grab on the M16 at the same time.
He didn't feel a sharp pain at first.
He just felt some kind of puff, like a gust of wind had just passed through his arm.
But then the burning immediately spread from the arm upward, toward the shoulder.
A while later, it was like someone had poured gasoline over his arm and set it on fire..
Before the pain could get any worse he quickly picked up the M16 and roughly threw it to Ortega, who in the meantime had vanished outside the helicopter, taking cover under the wreck.
His arm was still working, but the pain was taking his breath away, and had worsened even more, he would not be able to fight any more.
“You all right, Johnny?”
Rambo lowered his glance at his wound.
Where there once was his arm, he just saw an indissolubly red tangle squirting blood all over his ripped uniform.
And he couldn't breathe, so sharp was the pain.
He felt like suffocating.
Calm down. Breathe..
Calm down.
Forget what your arm looks like.
Don't let fear grow inside of you.
The bullet had opened the whole length of his arm, from the hand to the shoulder.
Rambo opened and closed his hand, noted again that everything was still working (as a matter of fact, it wasn't exactly working as before) then started asking himself how to deal with such a wound.
“Jesus Christ, John... Are you okay?” Ortega asked again.
Rambo crouched down, tilted on one side, searched inside a pocket with his good – yet shaking – hand, then picked out a bandage pack.
“I am fine” he finally said, barely breathing.
He had to ignore the pain. He had to do it.
The situation was too desperate for him to stop fighting right then.
They just couldn't afford it, period.
However, ignoring pain wasn't exactly the same thing as ignoring fatigue, which he was so trained for.
The principle was the same, but that... That was an entirely different matter, and much more dreadful.
While bandaging his arm Rambo swallowed and tried to breathe slower and deeper, to keep his shock status under control and calm down the pain.
All of that was useless.
I can still fight – he repeated to himself.
I have to do it.
While finishing bandaging his arm, he looked at the very long and bloody wound.
It's nothing – he thought.
It didn't hit the bone.
He didn't even have the time to wrap the bandage around before it filled with blood and began dripping on the ground.
The bullet couldn't have hit the bone, no, a thing like that just couldn't be.
If it hit the bone, I could die... And I am probably done with the SOG anyway.
It was then that Rambo saw Barry stand up with his M60 and move away from the wreck.
-
Barry ran out of the helicopter and started shooting while running.
Now that Rambo was wounded too, the only ones defending the wreckage were him and Ortega.
They desperately needed to gain some ground.
He stopped behind a rock big enough to give him good cover, then he positioned the M60 and started shooting.
The helicopter was at the top of a hill. One side was too steep to be climbed up by the Vietcong. But on the other side – the one where he was – there was a big plain.
If the Vietcong reached the edge of the plain, they could start shooting at the wreck using the vegetation as cover, and that would be the end for all of them.
Barry had to gain that terrain before them.
-
Once he’d finished bandaging his arm – the bandages were still dripping blood over him – Rambo looked in Jorgenson's direction one last time and – even if he didn't want to – he left him alone.
With the M16 in his good hand and the bandages still in the other, he finally got out from the wrecked helicopter and crouched behind it.
Then, with bloody hands, he finally grasped his M16 at the ready.
-
In the meantime, Barry was running forward from one cover to the other.
He had to keep the Vietcong away, but he couldn't see any enemy in front of him yet and his run was a blind one, through the jungle.
He couldn't see a thing in front of him but he could hear bullets whistling everywhere.
But he wasn't short of shelters: holes in the ground, rocks, fallen trees: a little at time but he was gaining ground.
The Vietcong was right there in front of him, even if far away at the moment, but despite all of the training in the darkness he had had in Fort Bragg, he couldn't judge their range exactly yet.
-
Rambo stood up and started running in Barry's direction.
His heart was beating like hell by then.
He soon reached and overtook his team mate, while the bullets never stopped whistling all around.
The plain ended and the trees started, but Rambo did not stop his run because he now had Barry covering him.
The trees were sliding by thick beside him while he ran.
It was then that he clearly heard Danforth's Huey disappear.
They were gone.
What? - he thought.
What the hell are they doing?
-
Orteg