The rain continued to fall from the dark sky.
Rambo was kneeling at the center of the muddy square, his hands tied in front of him.
He was trembling.
His head was bent over his tied hands, like a prayer.
Gates was standing behind him. Garner on the contrary was in front of him holding a night stick.
“We won't take you, Johnny”
Rambo lifted his gaze, as if he had just awoken from a dream.
“You are too young. Those who have passed the selection were all born in '43, you would be the only one born in '47. You are too young. Accepting you here was a mistake”
Rambo started moving his chest up and down, shaking a no with his head, like a Jew in front of the western wall.
To make him stop, Garner gave him a blow on his chest with his night stick.
The pain ran though Rambo's entire body like an electricity charge, then exploded inside his throat, taking his breath away.
When he could finally breathe again, Rambo screamed.
A nasal scream, and desperate.
Garner then came even closer to him, while Gates stayed behind, as a guard.
“You did good during this selection process, but you are simply too young. I don't know if you are really as good as the others, or if yours is just will power... But I have no room for mistakes. Because if I do wrong, someone in Vietnam could die because of you. You can understand that Rambo. Don't you?
“No”
Garner shook his head.
“You are rejected Rambo. Go away. And you can go away too, Gates. We don't need you anymore”
In the meantime, Trautman arrived unseen behind both.
He was wrapped up inside his poncho while the rain continued relentlessly.
“No” Rambo sobbed.
Then he tried to raise his hands in Garner's direction, but he just received a night stick blow on his fingers in return, and he went back down.
“Enough Rambo: you are rejected. You can come back next year”
“No, no, no...” Said Rambo kneeling, then he burst into tears, his belly shaking sith sobs, his head lying on his hands, as though praying.
Garner leaned down to him
“Why Rambo? Why are you doing all of this? You are too young. You are going to die in Vietnam, if you are sent back over there”
“No, no...”
“You don't know what the SOG really is... None of you really knows”
At that point it was Trautman – from behind both of them – that talked.
“Do you know what happens if we take the wrong people, Johnny?”
“Of course you know” Garner pressed him.
“Did you know that every time we choose someone we are probably sentencing him to death? Or worse”
“Sometimes, even worse”
“No, I beg you, no...”
“WHY, JOHNNY?” Trautman screamed, exhausted by then.
“TELL ME WHY! TELL MY WHY YOU WANT TO DIE IN VIETNAM! TELL ME! TELL ME WHO THE FUCK YOU REALLY ARE”
“I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM!”
Trautman backed away astounded, and Garner with him.
Then they both stayed still.
“Don't send me back home” Rambo was talking without looking him in the eyes, as if talking on his own.
“I don't want to go back home, please”
Then he closed his eyes and started shaking his head.
“I can't go back home. I really can't. You should kill me rather than that, but don't send me back home”
Rambo lowered his head to offer it to the night stick.
Garner rose his weapon to hit again, but stopped in mid air.
The boy was about to say more.
“I don't have another life; only this one. Go ahead and kill me Garner, but don't send me home”
Garner then slowly lowered his night stick, as if he was hypnotized.
The colonel was too.
They both looked at the kid and when he turned to them, they finally met his gaze.
Garner felt like he was falling into an abyss, because it was the truth...
Everything Rambo had just said was the truth.
In order to make the army become his whole life he was ready to die... And the Special Forces were probably the only way he had at disposal to do so.
Garner continued looking into those eyes, but felt unconformable.
There was something inside those eyes... Some kind of abyss.
He had seen many in such a bad state, but only in Vietnam, never during a selection process.
The boy was broken. Even more, he was momentarily crazy.
In Fort Bragg, all of his past recruits had quit long before reaching that kind of point-of-no-return that Rambo had just crossed and yet, he was still holding on.
It was the first time in his life Garner had ever seen anyone holding on for so long after that point.
Rambo would have never surrender, no matter what else was going to happen, or for how long.
And if he was ready to die for a selection program, God only knew what he could possibly do to accomplish a mission in Vietnam. Or to save himself, or his friends.
And there was something innocent too, in his gaze.
Rambo's acceptance of anything else they were about to do him was complete, almost heroic.
For a moment, Garner suspected that the kid really hadn't any home at all to return to, and that what Rambo had just said wasn't just a phrase.
At this point, Garner suddenly returned to reality.
He looked then in Trautman's direction, but inside the colonel's ice-cold eyes he found no answer
Trautman gave him the duty to decide about the boy, and a pact was a pact.
Garner then asked himself what his real duty was on that selection program, and his duty was to have no mercy, in order to be sure to send to Vietnam only men that were fit for the situation... Fit for everything.
So he raised the night stick again.
“All right, Rambo... you won't go back home” he said.
And he hit him again, and many times.