Fort Bragg
Once Coletta was all set and dry inside his sleeping bag, Ortega and Jorgenson went to sleep.
That night, the wind and rain became stronger and stronger, slowly and relentlessly, until the usual bad weather became a real thunderstorm.
One hour later, Coletta was still groaning in his bed.
Two hours later a real hurricane was blowing, and it was then that Trautman came into the hut.
“Coletta, Ortega, Jorgenson, Rambo” he said.
The first to rise to his feet was Ortega. He rapidly went to Trautman.
He was almost naked.
“Sir” he said in a loud voice, just to introduce himself.
Then whispered:
“Four people patrol, sir?”
“Four at a time, private”
-
Trautman's eyes were traveling around the hut.
Some of the soldiers he had just called hadn't even woken up.
Trautman looked at the water coming in through the ceiling and the objects lying everywhere: blankets, field stoves, cutlery, clothes hanging to dry... As the days had passed by, order had become disorder, and the disorder was now becoming chaos.
The B team was starting to give up, at last.
To tell the truth, it was not so soon to do so – those that had held out until now were really good soldiers – but they were all starting to give up anyway.
Soon, Trautman would start to see them break, and only then he would he finally discover who those men really were, who they were inside, because 'only when you break someone do you finally find out who he really is'.
And - finally - it was just a matter of days before that happened. Maybe even hours, judging from those hut's poor conditions.
Or so Trautman thought at the time, while looking at the dripping ceiling.
And the fact that Ortega had come to him just like that, and whispering too, meant something was obviously out of place.
“What do you want, private Ortega?”
“Coletta has a fever”
Trautman didn't even turn his head to look at Ortega talking, nor did he reply. He just continued looking at the hut, always searching for some other interesting details.
“Listen, Trautman... I am not asking you anything. I understand that this is a selection process and that he shouldn't get any fever at all. I am just asking you that since we are going to go out four at the time, to put him in the last group”
The colonel didn't reply.
“Come on, Trautman... You have some recruits sleeping more than the others anyway... Let Coletta be one of them. I know the guy: he is a worthy one. The fever could have happened to anyone”
Trautman turned to Ortega and looked him in the eyes.
“He shouldn't be sick”
“Coletta knows, he knows that all too well! With his no-quit attitude, he risks getting his fingers burnt. I am only asking you to change a couple of teams. Give him one more chance. What does it cost you?”
Trautman looked at him.
He shouldn't let Ortega soften him. Being soft in Fort Bragg risked getting them killed in Vietnam, because war is one hundred, one thousand times worse than anything you can possibly do to your recruits during any selection process, and Trautman knew that better than anyone else.
And that was the reason why, had he been able to, he would have personally taken Coletta and thrown him naked outside the hut, in the wild, only because he had 'dared' to became fever sick.
But he didn't.
In the last few days he had carefully observed Coletta's performance.
The guy would have surely died before quitting and Trautman appreciated that.
If he was ready to die to join the special forces, he would surely do the same in Vietnam, to accomplish a mission.
So the colonel took a while to think about Ortega's suggestion.
All things considered, Coletta was ready.
Up to that moment, he had made it both physically and mentally.
He had surely made a bad mistake under-estimating the cold, but that was a technical mistake, mostly made because of his lack of experience, which was something that could easily be fixed with training.
He was the kind of soldier that asked questions, asked for confirmation, and didn't start executing an order until he had a complete picture of the situation.
And at the shooting range his performance was out of the ordinary.
Maybe the fever had just been an accident. Maybe... And it was that 'maybe' the doubt that gripped the colonel. Anyway, Coletta's skill considered, his fever had probably been an accident for real.
And this was the reason the colonel, in the end, decided to keep the recruit Ricardo Coletta, or at least for now.
“All right” he said.
Then he took a while to look at the young John Rambo.
He was the youngest of all of them, and yet he was still there, and he didn't even look so bad as many others did.
As the kid started putting his clothes on, Trautman watched him in silence.