Ortega, Danforth, Berry and Krakauer had, without giving any prior notice, shown up unannounced that morning. The only exceptions were Messner and Coletta, who were still on leave in the US at the time. They had all showed up with the intent of wanting to talk to someone, so they needed to be fit into someone’s schedule and get an appointment with Trautman, a chance to meet like the one people always scheduled in. They wanted to schedule the kind of meeting you book when you need to talk to someone but for the sort of chat, the sort you have without an appointment. Ok?
It didn’t take Trautman long to figure out there was something wrong.
The guys were there to give the Colonel a hard time about calling off the search for their missing team members. There was a bitter-sweet surprise coming up for Trautman too... It took a really long time for them to get to point.
Finally, after a 20-minute “run of the mill” discussion about how unproductive the search had been, Ortega finally made his move.
“This decision is just something we can't accept, Colonel,” he eventually blurted out. Determined to make his point, Ortega added:
“It's impossible. It's unacceptable.”
“So what? What do you want me to do about it?”
No one said anything.
“What are all of you doing here anyways?”
Ortega looked at his team one last time, and from the look on their faces, he knew he'd their support so, at long last, Ortega was about to say what he had gone there to say.
“We're going back, Sir. “
You could cut the tension in the air with a knife.
“What?”
Trautman looked over at Ortega and realized he was serious. What quickly became more evident however, was that perhaps he was being informed of a decision they had already made.
“We still have dozens of choppers searching the border,” Trautman objected.
“There's no...”
This time it was Danforth however, to interrupt the Colonel.
"If they were captured over enemy lines, we'll never find them, Colonel, not that way. We have to go back there and find out what happened.”
Trautman couldn't believe his ears. His glare shifted past each one of them but still couldn't bring himself to believe it.
“What the fuck is going on soldier?” he roared.
“We’re going back there, Colonel,” Ortega answered back.
“And we’re going with or without you.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” he bellowed again.
“Just come out and say it.”
“You know exactly what it means.”
“No, I don't think I do Soldier,” he rebutted.
Trautman glared at each of them again, but unlike before, this time they stared right back at him, in resilience.
So it was true. He’d heard right. It was fucking true.
All of it.
Just as Trautman had sent them out to do unauthorized black ops in the past, this time they were planning on launching an op, all on their own.
That’s when Trautman completely lost it.
“NO!” he said, as his fist came banging down on his desk.
“You’re not authorized to do it! You can't!”
Danforth approached the Colonel and then, with a look of defiance, he said:
“We can't? You mean, the same way we couldn't go to Laos either?”
If that wasn't enough, Ortega joined in as well.
“You were the one who started this game in the first place, Trautman. Now we’re just taking it to the next level.”
“YOU DON'T HAVE MY ORDERS!”
“Oh really? And what orders would we be talking about, Colonel?” Ortega answered back.
“Like the same orders that didn’t exist when two of ours went MIA.? The same orders we were free to refuse at any given moment specifically because they didn’t exist in first place?”
“Don't push me, Ortega.”
“We went to Laos without orders, and we’ll go back exactly the same way we did then.”
“Don't you dare challenge me. Don't you even think about fucking trying it, any of you.”
Ortega said nothing.
The reason being he didn't like going against Trautman this way.
After about a minute, Delmore intervened.
Look, Colonel, we're here to ask. We're not challenging anyone. We're planning a mission. We're gonna’ go get Rambo and Jorghenson back, and we're gonna’ do it with or without you, but we'd rather you were one of us.”
-
This time Trautman didn’t say a word
He moved his hands up and down his face trying to wake up from what had to be a nightmare.
He was going to lose them.
It had happened in the past with other teams that had fought without orders, sometimes even across enemy lines, on their own initiative, without anyone granting them the permission to do so..
They went out there on their own, for personal reasons, with no help at all – not that SOG had any help anyways when they were fighting out there. When they did to go there on their own however, they had even less help than usual.
The few times something like that had happened in the past, the consequences had been strategically devastating, and often deadly. In those cases, the army ended up having to lie about the whereabouts or consequences.
They couldn't understand the true consequences of something because they were only soldiers, of course. They didn’t get the big picture. Even if they certainly had a better understanding of what the big picture was, compared to what most other soldiers would. That was due to Trautman's teachings. Nevertheless, they would have to put their personal matters aside anyway. .Trautman was going to lose trust in Baker Team B, and that’s what hurt the most...
Most of all however, he couldn’t afford this sort of thing, especially not now when the Baker programme was in the spotlight more than ever before. Ultimately, that put him at a disadvantage. The fact that they’d already come to a decision, a unanimous one at that. He knew exactly how it would all end There was very little the Colonel could do to prevent an SOG team, set on doing a mission “under no one’s orders'. Nothing could stop them nor would anyone have asked for any kind of authorization. Moreover, with the kind of resilience Ortega had, remedying a lift on some chopper for the lot of them wouldn’t have proved to be so difficult at all.
When and if they eventually made it back, the Colonel would have had no other choice but to kick their sorry asses out of the SOG for good.
Consequently, whatever choice Trautman believed to have at that moment, it was, in all respects a no win situation for him anyway.
That’s why he knew, he had to accept it, despite being completely against his will.
He picked up a notebook, and began to write.
-
“You leave in forty-eight hours, Russian weapons and sterilized gear. Before going wherever the fuck you’re going want to, you’ll have to recon some coordinates from my intelligence.”
Trautman kept on writing as he spoke.
“You can go and fucking kill yourselves, for all I care.”
When he was through writing, he handed the paper to Ortega and then with little care, went on to dismiss them.
“Now, get the fuck out of my office, all of you.”