Fort Bragg
The five recruit group were alone in the woods.
It never stopped raining.
They were Ortega, Coletta, Rambo, Jorgenson and a new guy, that they had met for the first time only that night. His name was Messner.
They were following a dirt road in the middle of pine woods, and they were all wearing a heavy rucksack.
They looked like five living scarecrows.
They had been running, doing push-ups, weightlifting, running obstacle courses and doing other group exercises – like carrying rocks or poles – daily for more than four weeks now, but the long march of that night was really giving them the coup de grace.
They had all lost from three to six pounds of bodyweight each already, and every single muscle in their body was hurting. That last march session had lasted from twenty hours by then, during which they had only had two breaks of forty five minutes just to eat, and with no sleep.
They were almost at 'the end' of themselves.
The sky above them was dark, black and full of big heavy clouds, and there was little light, as if it was evening already. The rain had been coming down for a month with almost no pauses, and yet the sky showed no signs of clearing in the near future.
It was as if they were in Vietnam already, during the rainy season.
Their gazes were weak, almost hallucinated, sometimes pointed up to the void, with empty eyes, as asking for help from something that wasn't listening to them because it didn't exist anymore, or at least not in that woods.
Coletta still had the fever and he was obviously not watching his steps.
Ortega was the only one that persisted in keeping the group together.
He walked clenching his teeth, almost hissing, sometimes with his eyes closed because of pain, and he was the only one still checking the map. But his shoulders were soon to fail.
One was hurting and the other was giving him sharp twinges of pain and that, together with fatigue, were taking away from him any ability of think straight.
It was just like Trautman told them: as the pain and fatigue rose he could also feel his own mind becoming less reliable.
He was in trouble doing even the easier tasks, such as checking how much water he had left, the map, or even just turning back, to check if anybody from the group was lost.
Soon he wouldn't be able to recognize his own mistakes, and that would be the end for him.
Because that's when you die in war: when you stop reasoning.
Ortega remembered when Trautman had explained all of these things and he understood that yes, he was absolutely right about everything, and that during that selection program he was living all of this on his own skin.
He turned to his mates.
They looked like walking dead, mostly because of those damn rucksacks full of useless rocks.
If they were any later, they would be forced to spend the night outdoors, bathed in sweat, drenched by rain and still in the cold, and Ortega was starting to think that there wasn't anything they could do to avoid it.
He thought that, maybe, everything was a set up from the beginning. But if that was the case, they would have had to send someone – with no rucksack and running in a hurry – to call for help to extract Coletta at least... And maybe himself too, because he had no idea how long he could stand still in that cold.
Then there was Johnny.
They were all class of '43 or '44 except Johnny, class of '47, the youngest of them all and Ortega was worried about him.
If Trautman was right – as he usually was about one thousand other things -, Johnny being the youngest of them all only meant that he lacked four full years of training inside his leg muscles compared to all of the others.
Ortega looked for him with a worried look, then he saw him in the middle of the second group, he too with a void up-looking stare, walking without watching his step, just like all of the others.
The team is shattered – he thought.
Trautman did, in the end....He broke us.
“Come on guys... We can do it” Ortega said, but he was thinking of something else.
He went with his fingers to search for his compass, on his chest.
His hands were shaking.
I can't do it... I can't.
He clenched his teeth, his face turned into a grimace.
All of my life...
All of my life I dreamt about joining the special forces - or so Ortega thought at the time, even if it wasn't exactly true. His desire of joining the special forces was fairly recent, but in that moment of suffering Ortega wrongly thought of having dreamt about it for all of his life.
All of my life I have dreamt joining the green berets but – maybe – I am not fit for this god damned SOG, or whatever kind of craziness Trautman has in mind for us.
Ortega had spent two years of blood, two whole years of his life spent suffering daily, running until spitting blood, doing push-ups until his arms started shaking and much more... Like Vietnam, just to mention another thing, and all of the deaths he had had to see over there.
The terror was something he thought he'd left in Southeast Asia and yet that selection process managed to scare him for good.
He was up to the point that had they told him 'do the tightrope walk over that ravine but don't take the heavy rucksack off', he would have done it... And he would have died while attempting it and without batting and eyelid. That was the point he had just reached.
And it was real, everything was real, because that's the way Special forces work... They were capable of making any fucking test turn real by the means of hunger, thirst, cold, lack of sleep and fatigue so bad that it made your body turn into a chorus of pains.
Jesus Christ.
And while he was lost in that state of quiet suffering, only thinking of correctly putting one foot in front of the other, Ortega's mind was taken away by memories.
In 1945, a little before he was born, many people used to die while training.
His father – who had never been a soldier – told him he had seen a tombstone (in his memories, Ortega remembered it as if he had seen it, even if his father only told him about it) a tombstone on which was engraved a name, surname and the phrase “he walked in front of his comrades line of fire”.
That Tombstone really existed, and it was in a UK military Cemetery.
Ortega brought with his mind back to the compass he was still trying to catch, because he hadn't yet. He again went with his fingers in search of it, but they were shaking too much.
He had to pay attention not to lose that fucking compass, because it was much important: they only had one for the entire group.
It was just another of Trautman's tricks to make everything even more difficult... Or it was just the paranoia that was finally driving him crazy.
Yes.
Maybe, he was going crazy.
He only had to open that damn breast pocket and yet such a simple act, in that moment, seemed impossible to him.
So, after a deep breath, he messed again with his fingers and finally got to take that damn compass.
So he stopped and his legs became soft.
“Fuck” he said.
“Fuck no, no, no...”
His heart started pumping inside his throat: he had taken the wrong road.
You haven't gone the wrong way: you have no map. You are going by trial and error.
So it had to happen sooner or later... Calm down.
And pay attention to what you are going to say... Think about your team's morale.
“We went the wrong way, guys” he said in the end.
Fuck, not like that... You shouldn't have said it just like that.
He turned to look to his mates.
The zombies stopped in the middle of the dirt road.
Rambo raised his eyes to the sky. He was the last one of the group, the youngest, almost as frail as if he still had to grow up... Or maybe he had just lost weight during the selection process.
Messner, not so far in front of him, doubled up with his hands on his knees. He breathed like a broken boiler.
“Shit – Messner said – shit, shit, shit”.
Jorgenson raised his eyes to Ortega, sick-red eyes full of hate.
He slowly removed his rucksack, barely keeping from groaning.
More than removing it, he literally unglued it from his skin.
The straps had started to lance his skin. You could easily see it from his uniform, because it had some dark spots of blood.
Ortega watched Jorgenson make that movement slowly, full of pain and hate... Hate against him.
“Jorgenson, don't...”
Only Coletta and Messner realized what was going to happen.
Messner said:
“Jorgenson, stop... We are all in the same boat”
“I'll smash your face in – said Jorgenson to Ortega -, I am going to break all of your bones”
Ortega swallowed. Even if a little shorter, Jorgenson was big, a lot bigger than Ortega and all of the others.
“Easy man – said Ortega -, easy... Do you think I am OK with that? That I like it? I didn't do that on purpose, what do you think? And we can't just stop here... It isn't a hidden place, they are going to invalidate our task”
“I'll give you a fucking task”
“Jorgenson!” shouted Messner without breathing.
But Jorgenson continued removing his rucksack as if he hadn't heard a word.
Once removed, he tried to take a step, but something rare happened to his muscles, something that usually happens when you abruptly enlighten your muscles after you've carried too much weight for too many hours.
Jorgenson completely lost his balance, fell to the ground with one knee and stopped just like that, lost in the pain the position gave him and unable to get up.
In the meantime, no one noticed Coletta.
Of all of the group, Coletta was the only one that hadn't rested on anything, not sitting or kneeling: he had just stopped in the middle of the dirt road, like a mannequin.
His head was hanging down on his chest like a hanged man's.
As the guys realized that Jorgenson couldn't get up and that he wasn't a danger anymore, they forgot about him and noticed Coletta.
He looked as if he had passed out while standing.
“Ricardo?” said Barry.
Ortega wiped the rain from his eyes and called him too.
“Ricardo?”
For no apparent reason, Ricardo Coletta slowly started falling backwards. The rucksack saved both his head and back, but he fell like a dead load, as if he was unconscious. Ortega and Messner reached him with some difficulties, because of their leg pain.
“Ricardo, can you hear me?”
He had passed out.
Coletta was unconscious and Jorgenson still on the ground, trying to fix the cramp that he had in his left calf.
At this point, Ortega was hit by desperation.
Fatigue had blocked his ability of think straight and now he was really scared.
He made a couple of shy steps in the middle of his mates, then he bent over Coletta and listened to his chest.
“Bronchial pneumonia – he said loud and clear, even if the truth was that he was talking to himself –, Bronchial pneumonia: this could kill him”
He should never have continued the selection program, for fuck's sake...
I thought drying him for good for one night would have been enough.
I thought I was helping him and protecting him, and instead I did everything wrong and if he dies now it's all my fault, and only mine.
Ortega was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't hear the voices.
“Ortega!” shouted Rambo.
“Ortega! Shouted Messner too, but again Ortega didn't hear a thing.
He's gonna die right now, god damn it... We are in trouble, but he is going to have his fingers burnt...”
“ORTEGA!”
Ortega finally turned.
Jorgenson gave him a hook on his jaw, a well-aimed hook, with all of the weight and power he could put into it and Ortega, who was tired, weak and absent-minded, received it very badly.
His neck bent violently and made an ugly noise.
Ortega saw the stars, the dark sky and the rain fading away above him, mixed up in a confused cloud.
Then he finally fell on the ground, pulled down by the weight of his own rucksack.
Rambo and Messner, one on each Jorgenson's arms, stopped him before he could hit again.
Ortega had just the time to feel his mouth filling with blood, and so understanding that he had probably just bitten a piece of his tongue away, then he fainted.