Trautman had spent the whole night inside the command bunker, right under the centre of the base.
A whole night spent at the radio, in front of maps and the toing and froing of messengers with terse messages and tense eyes.
After the night spent inside the bunker, when he finally came up to the surface, the sunlight was blinding.
For a long while he couldn't see a thing, but then, in the blinding sunlight, Trautman started seeing the craters on the airfield, the destroyed barbed wire, the G.I.s corpses still abandoned on the ground at the time, while some of the smoke left by the explosions was still floating in the air.
Only then did the base's losses suddenly become real and the weight of the whole world seemed to fall on his shoulders.
Ten men – he thought.
Ten men, and two of them belonging to Baker team 'A'.
And those were two men he knew personally and had trained for two very long years.
And even worse than that, Trautman knew full well about the betrayal he had just suffered.
He raised his eyes up to the sky, in desperation.
Two times... He had been cheated and betrayed two times that same night.
Cheated by his informer, who sold him inaccurate information that probably – or better, surely – was meant to satisfy both the colonel’s thirst for information and the Vietcong’s thirst for blood too.
All things considered, the colonel's informer never denied having connections with the Vietcong too, just like he had with the colonel.
But most of all, Trautman had been betrayed by his own generals – Loyd in particular – because they should have never sent soldiers like the Baker teams to fight such a defensive mission.
We can't send 'em over the fence (across the border) just like that. Not such an experimental unit like your Baker teams are – were Loyd's exact words.
But it was all bullshit... Over and over.
A Vietcong offensive had always been at risk of becoming a disaster, and that's exactly what Loyd hoped when he assigned that job to the two Baker teams.
He had assigned them to the defence mission hoping they would suffer some losses and the fact that Trautman's informer had given him some inaccurate information hadn’t helped for sure.
Loyd knew exactly how difficult Trautman's men were to replace, had he lost any that night.
And he probably hoped that too.
Not that Trautman lost too many of them – not evenr someone like Loyd was capable of pushing himself that far – But one or two, just like had then happened... In other words, just enough to cause the colonel some serious trouble.
Trautman passed a hand over his own face.
Cheated and betrayed...
“Sir?” said a far voice.
Two times...
“Sir?”
Trautman finally turned in that voice's direction.
“What, soldier?”
“Well, I... I've been told to inform you”
Trautman raised his eyes to the sky.
Betrayed... I have been betrayed.
“Talk soldier, just talk...”
It's about Mac Daniel, Sir. I've been told to inform you about his death. Last night, Sir.
Trautman turned to him.
“No – he said-, that has to be a mistake. Mac Daniel was in the bunker with me, he never fought”
“That's the reason I've been told to inform you”
“What does this mean, soldier?”
“He's been shot between the command bunker and the radio station”
“No” Trautman said, almost losing his balance.
No – he thought.
No... He was right here beside me, just a while ago.
Trautman looked at his wrist watch: an hour had passed since Mc Daniel had left. The fight was over, Trautman had relaxed and did not notice the passing of time.
No...
It can't be real.
But it was, and a fast look at the young, worried face carrying the news was enough to understand that he was not wrong and not lying either.
I knew it – thought the colonel.
I knew it would end just like that.
Friendly fire... That's what it was for real: a fucking friendly fire episode.
And all because of a single, damn criminal who caused his friend Mc Daniel to be dead by then.
“Are you all right, Sir?”
Trautman passed one hand over his mouth to stop himself retching.
A base shattered into pieces and my Special Forces program almost ruined by two losses in the A team...
Trautman reached a crate of ammunitions: he couldn't feel his legs any more.
He sat and waited for that feeling to be gone. All things considered, it was normal.
Even if he hadn't personally fought that night, he had commanded (and so risked his own life) anyway, and the adrenalin was now leaving his blood stream, leaving him with no energy left inside his body.
A while later, he started breathing again.
A while later, blood started pumping inside his chest again, but this time it was filled with rage, up to being poisoned almost, so much was the rage that was flowing inside him.
He would get his revenge.
At the cost of risking his whole career, or being court martialled too, but he would have his vendetta.
He had committed a murder already in the past... And seeing that day's situation, he was probably going to commit another one.
Maybe even two.
***
The sun was high by then, when the Baker Team B finally boarded their helicopter.
Ortega and the others hadn't eaten nor rested at all since the battle had ended.
On the contrary, after the mission they immediately had their debriefing.
They had then changed their olive drab uniforms for some clean tiger stripes, they all re-armed for with XM177s, reloaded and only then had they taken off for Dak To immediately.
The fact that Dak To's airspace had been opened again meant that the fight was over by then, but they couldn't be sure about it. So, during the flight, Ortega ordered everyone to eat something, and they obeyed even if they weren't hungry, because they couldn't know when they were going to have another chance to eat something.
***
An hour of travelling later, the men were finally in sight of the base that the Baker Team A had defended that night.
More than a battlefield – looking at it from above – the base looked like a dump in the open.
It was filled with rubble of every kind: destroyed vehicles, barbed wire, eradicated poles, disembowelled sand-bags scattered all around, like apples fallen from a too tall tree.
And then, obviously, there were many corpses scattered all around, even if most of the dead US soldiers had been put inside their body-bags already, all lined up in front of an hangar.
The airfield – punctuated with small craters and all kinds of rubble – was going to be unserviceable for a whole day at least.
Looking at it from above, you could clearly see the exact spot where the base's perimeter had been attacked by the Vietcong.
Everything all around and in front of the base was devastated.
The bunkers and buildings looked like they had been bitten by some gigantic tigers.
Ortega imagined that the Vietcong, to do that kind of damage, had probably used rockets, hand grenades and some suicide sappers filled with trinitrotoluene.
To have a better look, Ortega stretched his head out of the helicopter and looked right below.
Rambo then stretched together with him, but Ortega held onto him by his shoulders, in a paternal way.
“You released your spring-hook already”
Then he smiled and added:
“I don't want to find out if you can fly for real, Raven”
Rambo closed the spring hook then stretched out again.
Ortega could read the apprehension on Rambo's face while looking down at the base.
Most of the Vietcong bodies had been piled up to create some sort of dead bodies pyramid.
A dozen bare chested young soldiers, with a neckerchief tied over their mouths in a cowboy bandit style were throwing some other bodies onto the top of the pyramid as though they were throwing some bags of rubbish.
That was a hell of a battle... – Ortega thought.
And we missed it.
Not that he and the others had not fought the previous night; quite the contrary.
But there...
Last night had been a very different battle in there.
They had obviously risked being overrun and had suffered some casualties.
The Baker team's Huey did some manoeuvring before landing, so it showed the whole base to the passengers.
The east corner of the base hadn't been cleaned up yet, and the corpses were still lying here and there where they had been hit.
The helicopter slowed down, giving them another moment to see the scene from above.
Some Vietnamese were bent over the barbed wire; they had been hit while trying to pass below or through it.
In front of a machine gun's nest there was a large pool of blood, and right in the middle of it there were just a pair of legs and some intestines. There were no signs of the rest of the body.
Ortega had seen things like that already in the past.
Sometimes a large calibre simply pulled an enemy into pieces and it was then very difficult to find the rest of those pieces.
War is like a car accident: if haven't seen it happening, understanding what the hell has happened can be very difficult, sometimes.
As the helicopter touched the ground, Ortega realized that those severed legs’ pants were US ones.
The poor bastard was probably hit directly by an RPG warhead, or a hand grenade right in the middle of his chest.
The Baker team got out of the Huey.
Danforth went straight to the infirmary, together with Messner.
All of the others started unloading their team's equipment, most of which was the Russian weapons they had collected from the dead Vietcong.
Ortega went straight in search of Trautman.
He could feel some sort of anguish inside of him.
To get some info about the colonel’s whereabouts he had to ask to more than once.
Then an officer told him that the colonel was safe and sound, and pointed out a hangar to Ortega.
So, Trautman was safe.
Ortega was finally sure about it.
The vice-team leader got to the hangar passing in and out of a couple of buildings.
While doing so he passed by a huge hospital tent from which all sorts of screaming in pain was coming out.
It reminded him of a pig slaughterhouse he saw a long time ago, when he was still a kid, and that memory stayed with him for a while.
From outside the slaughterhouse the very young Ortega could not see a thing, yet those pigs’ cries were so filled with horror that they sounded like they were humans, not pigs.
In front of that tent-hospital, that day, Ortega felt the very same anguished feeling of that far away in time memory, but even stronger, because even if he was an adult, those screams were made by humans, not beasts.
It was a proper Dantesque chorus, like the whole of hell was hiding in there, and those were the screams of dying people, and many.
Ortega continued toward the hangar-morgue, trying to ignore those sounds.
While walking he passed beside a giant pile of ripped and dirty battle dress uniforms. A big, fat dark and malodorous mountain and he knew exactly what it was.
He had seen things like those already, during his first tour of duty.
Those were the uniforms of the wounded.
A whole mountain of clothes cut away, ripped apart, pierced and soaked with blood, grey matter, entrails, piss...
Ortega turned his uniform's collar up to cover his mouth with it, but the stench entered his nose anyway.
He tried to rid himself of that sickness as best he could, then he plucked up his courage and moved on.
In the end, he reached the hangar they had mentioned to him, and he entered it.
It was practically empty.
Beside its entrance, a man sat at a desk filling out some forms.
Far from him, on the other side of the hangar, some military trucks were parked.
Trautman was standing so straight, almost to attention, in front of some lined-up bodybags lying on the floor.
He looked a decade older.
Ortega had never seen 'the beast' Trautman in such a state.
He looked smaller.
“Sir” said Ortega.
Trautman had some difficulties in replying.
“Skorpio...”
He had said Ortega's field name like getting back to reality was a huge effort for him.
The colonel then looked about to say something, but didn't.
So Ortega waited a while, before breaking the silence.
“How did things go, Sir?” Ortega asked in the end.
Trautman inhaled deeply, then said:
“We lost two members of the Baker Team A. The base's count of losses is still going on. They are light losses anyway, considering the kind of attack we have suffered”
Two course mates.
Two people Ortega knew very well.
Two brothers.
Ortega closed his eyes and said:
“Who?”
“Mann and Garrett”
Of course Ortega knew them, and he knew them very well.
Only God knew how many times he had eaten together with them and chatted, laughed and suffered together, while at training. He shared silly things with them, barracks gossip, envies, ambitions and most of all drinking, during their nights of leave.
They weren't the kind of friends he would have stayed in touch with after the war but fuck, they weren't just names either, in Ortega's mind.
And it was unreal.
Two years spent being selected, trained and gruelling work outs...
A whole year eating shit to learn how to survive in the jungle and then you die during your first fire fight.
The worst of Trautman's fears had just happened: two of his men had died while supporting a conventional-warfare fight, the kind of fight where everything they struggled so hard to learn simply disappeared in the pile, like a drop in a sea of casualty numbers.
But all in all, that's the way the Vietnam war worked, and Ortega and Trautman knew it very well when they decided to get on board that roller coaster.
Ortega then thought about his brother, even if he didn't know why.
That older stepbrother who lost his mother when he was very young, who went to medical school and had always been better than him, or he had always used to be until Ortega was sent in Vietnam for the first time.
Since then their roles were exchanged, and Ortega had now become the 'favourite' of the two brothers.
Ortega used to think very often of his brother and the fact that he was studying medicine with no passion for it. Yet, since it had no sense at all for Ortega to think about his brother in that moment, he pushed away those thoughts he couldn't understand, because they had nothing to do with what had just happened.
“We could have avoided this” said Trautman.
Ortega turned to look at the colonel. Then he suddenly raised his head – taking the to attention posture – tapped his heels and shouted:
“IT CAN ALWAYS BE AVOIDED, SIR!”
Trautman looked at him for a while.
Then – even if very little convinced - he said using a very low voice:
“What do you do if they shoot at you?”
“WE STUDY THE NEXT MOVE, SIR!” yelled Ortega.
Trautman's voice was getting stronger again.
“What do you do if they hit you?”
“WE STUDY THE NEXT MOVE SIR!”
“WHAT DO YO DO IF THEY KILL YOU?” Trautman was yelling by then.
“WE STUDY THE NEXT MOVE SIR!”
Trautman and Ortega stayed still to attention, both silent, in front of the body bags lying in front of them.
The base all around was ignoring them.