Jorgenson was taken by the collar and lifted from the floor.
His jailer – he only wore a black T-shirt, despite the cold – held him around his neck as if he wanted to strangle him.
While lifting him from the floor, his arms were swollen and all of his muscles tense, with the veins in relief, as if going to explode any moment.
Jorgenson tried to put up resistance, but the brute – bigger and taller than him – had no problem in doing with Jorgenson what he pleased.
The strength of his adversary was so unreal that Jorgenson couldn't believe it.
The man carried Jorgenson into the interrogation room painfully holding him by his neck and without ever letting his feet touch the ground.
The lights passed over him like the street lights of a highway
Then he was thrown onto the floor of the room and he could finally really breathe.
Under the powerful light of those lamps he couldn't even keep his eyes open.
It was the fifth consecutive day without sleep for him, but he only really realized it under those lights.
The man lifted him again from the floor, slammed him onto a chair and tied his hands behind his back of the chair.
Every single muscle of Jorgenson's body was ached because of the exaggerated efforts made during that fucking selection.
Outside it was raining – fuck! - and never stopped.
The windows of the room had just bars – no glass – and the room temperature was the same as outside: it was evilly, cold and humid too.
The wind howled along the corridors of the empty building.
Stop, now stop.
He really couldn't stand it anymore.
Suddenly Trautman appeared in front of him, but with those lights in his eyes he couldn't see his face.
“Do you know who I am?” he said.
Jorgenson immediately recognized his voice, but at first he couldn't reply, because he could barely breathe. He didn't even have enough strength to speak.
Trautman then grabbed his hair, tipped his head and looked from above.
“Answer me, when I speak to you”
Again, Jorgenson couldn't reply and Trautman let him go.
The boy tilted his head with his eyes half closed because of the strong lights and almost passed out.
He went into some kind of half-sleep, somewhere between dream and reality.
Trautman made a gesture to Gates and he passed him a riding crop.
If there was something that could really hurt Jorgenson at the time it was surely his scalves and his stomach muscles, because they are the ones that, after an exaggerated workout, hurt more.
Trautman dealt him a blow on his undefended belly, and using as much strength he could.
The scream was sharp and shrill, and seemed never ending.
Jorgenson used all the breath he had in his chest, and it sounded as if that scream was pain itself trying to exit from his body.
After caught his took breath, he finally said:
“You are Trautman”
“Negative. I am 'the beast', soldier. And you are my enemy”
He gave him another blow and the scream started with re-found, horrible energy.
“NAME AND RANK” Trautman cried.
“Private Carl Jorgenson, 18744121”
“Very good, dickhead. Very good”
Another blow, and again against his legs.
Then the instructor gave him a kick that made him jump up from the ground and fall on his back.
The din was tremendous and the young man was so dazed by lack of sleep and fatigue that he didn't lift his head while falling, thus partly blowing it on the floor.
Trautman then started kicking him.
He was killing him.
After a while Jorgenson was sure of it, and absolutely: his selectors had become crazy.
He was going to die.
It was impossible they were really doing this to him.
It was impossible that Ortega hadn't been transported to hospital yet, or Coletta, with his pneumonia.
They were like possessed and somebody was going to die because of that.
Maybe him.
More blows: a kick to his stomach, then one to his face.
Then Trautman vanished.
Two men untied his legs and lifted him from the floor, while Gates took Trautman's place.
“Here, dickhead” they said.
They put him in front of the window, then pulled his hair in order to force him to look outside.
“You don't want to talk? Very well. Watch this”
Then they shut the lights down.
Everything became dark.
The freezing cold air coming from outside started blowing against his face, awaking him with pain.
Jorgenson peered into the darkness, but in the beginning he couldn't see a thing, because his sight was clouded by pain. Then he started seeing something.
A pole. Someone was tied to a pole.
They had tied him in the middle of the square, in the rain, wind and cold.
Jorgenson didn't immediately understand his identity.
The first thing he noticed was the iron wire holding his neck. It was so tight that had he tried to move, he would have strangled himself.
Then he recognized him: it was Coletta.
“No! - Jorgenson cried – NO, NO, NO!”
“Quit, dickhead. You wounded one of yours: quit. Do it and we will take away the pneumonia-sick idiot from the rain. An hurricane is coming, did you know that?”
Jorgenson lowered his gaze, then started crying: sobs, tears and everything else. The last time he had cried had probably been ten years ago - at least - when he was still a child, and that knowledge shocked him even more.
“We don't want you in SOG: quit. Quit and we guarantee that you won't face the court martial for what you have done to private Ortega. Quit...”
“No”
“Quit!”
“No”
They started kicking him.
Gates and someone else continued kicking and punching him, and on his face too, while Gates screamed:
“QUIT, DICKHEAD! PEOPLE ARE DYING OUT THERE!
OUR LADS ARE DYING, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?
THEY DIE BECAUSE THEY ATTACK WITH THE SUN IN THEIR EYES
THEY DIE BECAUSE THEY FORGET THE CORRECT RADIO CODES
BECAUSE THEY SHOOT EACH OTHER BY MISTAKE
BECAUSE THEIR LACES BECOME LOOSE AT THE WRONG TIME
BECAUSE THEY ARE WORRIED ABOUT KILLING CIVILIANS...
And you, dickhead... While all of this is going on out there, you...
YOU CRUSH THE MOUTH OF ONE OF YOURS”
“NOOO”
“YOU SMASHED ONE OF YOURS' FACE BECAUSE YOU WERE TIRED!”
He kicked Jorgenson in his testicles.
“Aaaaaargh!”
“YOU, TONIGHT, YOU KILLED ONE OF YOURS!”
“NO!”
Gates gave him a punch on his mouth, making him fall to the ground again.
When Jorgenson managed to look up, Gates had a club in his hand.
“You ruined Ortega's test and you are killing Coletta. This is the last time I tell you: quit”
At this point, Jorgenson really wanted to quit, but he couldn't.
He thought of Mary and his father's sawmill – where he had worked for years, since he was a child - and how much he needed that military career to live with her.
Mary's image never faded away from him.
Jorgenson wanted a house, marriage, some kids.
He wanted to marry his girlfriend, but with no need for the approval of that shit-head general her father was.
And the only way he could do it, was going abroad, for the pay.
Because he would never have had any career at all in the marines, not with such a powerful enemy as Mary's father was amongst the bigwigs, an enemy who was always doing anything in his power to prevent the affair between him and his daughter.
No...
He needed the SOG.
He had no other choice.
It was in that exact moment that Jorgenson made his decision.
And that decision was that he was ready to die, if it was necessary to pass that selection.
To die now.
“Quit” Gates repeated.
“No”
Jorgenson took a moment to breathe.
“Never” he added.
Gates then hit him again and continued hitting him with his club until Jorgenson finally fainted.