July 27, 1969, somewhere in the Quang Tri province
It was a sunny day and the Huey was flying high in the clear sky, with the Baker team B on board.
The guys were sitting on the edge of the hold doors, with their feet hanging over the void, the tiger-stripe uniforms caressed by the cool blowing wind.
It was good to be up there, hundreds of meters above the suffocating heat of the jungle.
-
Commanding officer Martinez was looking at the sky shading his eyes from the sun with his hand.
The incoming special forces Huey could mean one thing and one thing only: trouble on the way.
Martinez was perfectly positive about that.
He could feel it in his bones.
If there was something that damn East-Asian country was really good at, it was turning people into superstitious ones.
Before ending up in Vietnam he had never been a superstitious person, and yet he was very much by then, just like any other.
Because sooner or later, everyone became superstitious in Vietnam.
As the Huey came closer, Martinez saw those soldiers sat on the hold doors, their feet hanging out, their faces painted and the out-of-ordinance tiger stripes uniforms.
And as the helicopter came down, he could look closer and see more details of them.
They were all wearing jungle hats, their faces were painted two colours (black and green) and Who the fuck are these men? – he thought.
Where the fuck did they find those Aks? How are they going to use them without being killed by friendly fire?
The same old special forces motherfuckers, god damn it....
But the eyes of one these men made him think that maybe he was wrong about them.
They hadn’t set foot on the ground yet and those eyes were scanning the environment already, as if they belonged to a tiger inside a cage, not soldiers.
That was his first real feeling about the Baker team B.
The helicopter blew the air below, while it landed in the middle of the open space.
Their faces were very well painted, the commander admitted to himself.
Those weren't the usual messed up marks he was used to seeing on his men's faces. The colours did not mix up with each other but were very well defined, as if drawn by a painter.
And they didn't paint their faces only, but also their ears, necks, wrists... Everything.
The only light coloured parts of their bodies were their eyes, which in the middle of those dark faces looked somewhat disturbing.
Martinez lowered his head a little bit, to protect himself from the air moved by the blades, while he continued staring at them.
Once their feet were on the ground, they started walking towards the base without even noticing his presence.
Only one of them, instead of going forward, stopped right in front of him.
His height was average, his hair brown.
Because of the din made by the helicopter, he had to raise his voice:
“Martinez?”
“Yes, sir!”
“My name is Skorpio. You are going to talk with me directly, and with no one else”
“Yes sir!”
As he replied, Martinez turned to the rest of the Baker team headng inside one of the big tents of the base.
The fact that they were all armed with AK made him very uncomfortable.
The helicopter's blade started speeding up to take off again, and the air against his eyes got annoying again.
“Let's get away from here, sarg!” said Skorpio with a little smile over his face.
The two ran inside the command tent.
The rest of the Baker team was inside already.
They were putting down their AKs on the ground and taking some M16s from a rack.
“What are you doing? What's happening?”
“Everything's okay. Nothing's happening”
Messner went to the centre table of the command tent and un-rolled his surgical instruments medical kit on it.
“This is no surgery tent. Sir, right now I want your men...”
“Don't worry about my men or those weapons... We just need four of them. You have an armoury full of M16s in here don't you?”
“Yessir”
Replied the commander.
And then:
“Now please, would you tell me what's going on?”
“Of course, Sarg”
Manuel 'Skorpio' Ortega approached the big map hanging from one of the commanding tent's walls.