A soldier – Ortega did not know his name – entered the command tent.
“It's over... They are retreating” he said.
At first, Ortega took a deep sigh of relief, but then, his face darkened again.
Rambo and Coletta had to return to the base yet, and only then would it be over for real.
They were on their own out there, and he knew it.
Ortega chased those thoughts.
They can watch out for themselves – he thought.
Or that's what he hoped.
Ortega turned to commander Martinez, who had his back to him.
Hearing about the Vietcong's retreat, Martinez became as stooped as a vulture, and put one hand over his face.
He made a deep, long whisper, and in the end he sobbed.
Ortega reached him and grabbed his shoulders.
“Let's go outside”
He took the commander out of the tent.
It was the second time already that Ortega was taking the commander away from his men to avoid them seeing him upset, but that was no heavy burden for Ortega.
Those kind of nights were no easy thing for anyone including Ortega, even though he had been trained to withstand that kind of stress in Fort Bragg (and even worse than that, as a matter of fact) Ortega felt a good part of that stress too, which was the reason he felt close to Martinez, while going outside the tent with him.
Outside, the sky was starting to turn blue.
It was dawn by then.
“It's all right, man – said Ortega -. I just wanted to avoid your men seeing you like this”
Martinez was now crying, yet his voice was not broken by his sobs.
“If you hadn't been here...”
“But we were, buddy. And when the time comes, do remember that Trautman was the one who sent us in here”
“Of course I will... I will remember it for my fucking lifetime. Had the Vietcong overrun us...”
“But they did not. And the war is not over yet, so calm down”
“If you hadn't known about the attack beforehand, if you hadn't been here, amongst us”
“But it went fine, okay? Everything went fine”
“No, you don't understand. I have full responsibility for all of these men. Getting them back alive to their homes and families is up to me, not you. Every single one of them”
“You did a good job”
“I didn't do a good job. How could I? I’ve been here for barely two months! There are kids in here that have been fighting for almost a year and know much more about this war than I do and they should be in charge, not me”
Ortega suddenly felt uneasy.
Martinez was right, but the Vietnam war just did not work like that, and everybody knew that.
Because after one year spent in there – when you were just starting to understand what the hell you were doing – the time had come to be sent back home, and no reason in the world would have made you wish to stay there.
Many think that the rule of the one-year-long tour of duties was the right one. Even a human one. But the truth was that the one-year-at-time rule had a completely different purpose.
Because its real deal, was its impact on the careers of the soldiers.
Its purpose was to give the combat infantryman badge to the highest possible number of soldiers... And not in order to win this war for sure.
The one-year-tour-of-duties procedure's real effect was to create soldiers whose only interest was surviving the war, not winning it.
In such an army, no one was interested in results for sure.
But that was just one of the many, stupid mistakes the US were making in Vietnam, and it wasn't one of the worst either, not by a long a shot.
“Then listen to your men, Martinez. Listen to the right ones. They respect you, they trust you. Ask for their advice and don't be afraid of taking it. This war is too complicated to let yourself be fooled by ranks and things like that. Listen to those who know what they are talking about. As a matter of fact, the SOG don't choose their team leaders by ranks. Did you know that?”
“No”
“The best in doing the team leader job is appointed team leader, and that's all. We don't appoint the strongest, fittest or best at shooting... But those that prove themselves the best in managing the team's work”
Martinez nodded and looked like he was starting to cheer up.
“And now just relax, man. It's over”
Ortega put a cigarette in his mouth.
Then he picked out another one for himself and lit them both.
He turned his gaze west, toward Rambo and Ortega's hill.
The sky was blue and red with sunrise, and yet still too dark at the time to let him see the top of the '202' hill clearly.
It was then that Ortega suddenly saw an enormous, yellow flash under the hill's vegetation and, after a few seconds, he heard some kind of faraway thunder, but so loud as to shake both him and Martinez.
That was a fucking real explosion – he thought.
Ortega took a puff of his cigarette, then calculated in his head the distance of that explosion based on the time lapse between the flash he had seen and the sound he had heard. Thanks to that calculation, he had a rough idea about the size of the explosion he had seen too.
It had been a big and loud thud for real.
Such a detonation wasn't made with Vietcong's stuff nor Rambo or Coletta's usual claymores.
But they could have used some C4, and this was something his two team mates had at their disposal
They had probably used some C4 combined with something else (like a grenade or a claymore) to cover their retreat.
Ortega stayed silent but inside his mind he prayed that that was the way things had gone for real.
“What was that?” asked Martinez.
“Nothing to concern us. None of ours' there”
Ortega lied for a good cause.
Martinez's nerves were shaken enough already just like that, and that was normal.
People usually break down much more after the action than during the action itself.
Everyone breaks down eventually, because that's the time when your tension starts to fade away and you suddenly start feeling everything you couldn't afford to feel before.
Ortega had been through all of that during his first tour of duty already, but while in Fort Bragg he had been taught to stop all of this inside himself... Together with a thousand other similar things.
And that was the reason Ortega was still perfectly functional at the time, unlike Martinez.
Besides, there could be a few Vietcong still out there. It was too soon to just turn it off.
And he wasn't tired either.
He had just spent a sleepless night
“Enjoy this dawn” said Ortega.
And then:
“Fuck... Thinking about it, Vietnam could be such a wonderful country...”
He then turned to Martinez:
“If it wasn't for this damn war, it would be a hell of a place to spend some holidays. Wouldn't it?”