Barry popped out so abruptly and right in front of Ortega that he and Jimmy didn't shoot him out of sheer luck.
“SHIIIIIT” screamed the black guy, then turned and started shooting at the plain with his 1911.
“SNAKE” shouted Ortega.
Barry continued shooting like he hadn’t heard a thing and looked like he was practically jumping on the spot while shooting with his handgun.
“WHERE'S RAVEN?” Ortega shouted, trying to overcome the roars of Barry's 1911.
“I DON'T KNOW... I LOST HIM – shouted Barry -... I DIDN'T -”
The noise that interrupted Barry's words was so loud and devastating that Ortega almost lost his balance.
There were two fighter jets low and in fighting formation. They passed over as fast as thunderbolts and so low over their heads that the noise took the breath away from Ortega's chest.
Two F4 Phantoms – Thought Ortega while breathing again.
They were shiny and huge while flying so low, and in many ways gorgeous even during such terrible moments.
But they were the wrong air-crafts.
The F4s were jets made to fly at high speed and Ortega and the others were too close to the enemy for that kind of aircraft.
They should have sent some Skyriders - he thought while turning his head to follow them with his gaze..
Ortega saw a bomb dropped toward the base of the cliff but was surprised by a deafening blast before they even touched the ground, when they were still in the air.
Too close, My God.
Too...
A blow overwhelmed him and almost pushed him to the ground.
While he closed his ears and crouched to the ground, he asked himself if he had had a hallucination.
He turned then toward Rambo's last position, but he had no time to see what happened, because the F4 bomb explosions behind his back were an entirely different matter.
The hillside below him trembled like it was turning upside down.
Ortega crouched under his cover again, trying to hold his cheek and eyelids as he had been taught to do in case of nearby explosion (to avoid his eyelids and cheeks being torn away by the blast).
A first shock wave – coming from the plain – hit him as he put his head near a jet turbine.
Too close.
But the real explosion would hit him soon too, the one caused by the F4s behind him.
Ortega then looked downhill.
He saw tree trunks uprooting up on their own, as the wave of an invisible tsunami was climbing up the hill sweeping away everything in its path.
Here it comes - he thought while assuming the safety position again.
Now I die.
This second explosion was so powerful and devastating that Ortega felt his lungs emptying, taking his breath away and almost tearing his face off his head.
Ortega was slammed against the helicopter and hit his head against it. He lost his balance and tried to protect himself in vain while being overwhelmed by that invisible ocean wave of air.
A while late, he was on the ground with his ears whistling and painfully trying to breathe again.
His eyes were hurting and he could barely see anything.
He struggled to his feet and looked downhill again.
A huge mountain of white smoke dominated the valley under his hill.
Sparks were still slowly falling to the ground and so slowly that they looked like they were in slow motion. They were leaving white trails behind them and were so many that overall it looked like a mountain-sized weeping willow made of white smoke.
God almighty .
A few seconds later some clods – as big as little apples – lazily started falling everywhere, and over his head too.
After that little rain of detritus, Ortega finally took his hands away from his face.
Then a long while of silence followed. It felt like time had just stopped, while the hill was surrounded by silence.
Ortega was alive.
Jorgenson was on the ground at his side, but he looked like he had no new wounds.
But he couldn't see Barry.
Ortega searched for him with his gaze and found him immediately and right there, in the grass in front of the wreckage.
Barry...- he thought.
-
Barry painfully turned on one side.
The enemies were gone.
Those downhill had been disintegrated by the Phantoms, those in front wiped out from the first explosions and those on the flank looked like they had left the scene.
Those two explosions had just silenced the whole battleground.
The lighter detritus was still in the air – like leaves and dust – and was now slowly falling back to the ground.
He couldn't even remember the moment when he had fallen to the ground.
His eyes were hurting because the air wave of the first explosion had squeezed his eyeballs.
The Phantom's bomb explosions, on the other hand, had struck him with a lesser violence because he – contrary to Ortega – had been sheltered by the helicopter wreck.
The first explosion had been the most dangerous to him.
Barry touched his face with his finger tips and it looked like everything was all right.
He then started touching his chest, and it looked like everything was all right there too.
Only then did he notice his shoulder.
There was flesh and blood there, between his shoulder and chest.
Inside the wound there was something shiny: a steel ball was stuck deep inside his wound. It was red-shining and covered with blood.
That was a claymore's steel ball, and probably belonging to Rambo.
How the hell had it reached him?
It probably got there by bouncing against something or by parable, because a direct hit would have probably got side to side through his body, thus killing him.
He had been lucky.
He looked at his bloody fingertips, then lowered his head.
Fuck – he said.
You let yourself get hit, black man..
You let yourself get taken down.
He turned on one side and stayed right there.
All around him everything was still, nor did he hear any sound (his ears were still whistling), but he felt a presence anyway.
Barry then went for his 1911 with his right hand, took it back from the grass and started dragging himself toward the wreck..
-
Ortega put one hand over his eyes to protect them from the sunlight, then heard a single M16 shot coming from the zone where Rambo had disappeared.
Then he heard another one.
Someone was very calmly shooting with an M16, and he was no Vietcong for sure.
No...
That was John finishing the wounded enemies off one by one.
A while later, even if far away and amongst the trees, Ortega could even see him.
It was Johnny for real.