Jorgenson didn't let up and went on shooting as a good soldier would for some time, as though nothing had happened. In the meantime, he surveyed the situation.
The green flashes he’d seen at the outset, somewhere behind the bushes the branches were long gone.
Then he surveyed a little further out, past the paddy looking for Danforth, but he was nowhere to be found.
Then he scanned the area in search of Coletta as well, but he was nowhere to be seen either.
All of them had disappeared, for fuck’s sake.
The black paddy, dark sky and infinite moving shadows blurred in front of him and his heart missed a beat.
They’d abandoned him.
Jesus fucking Christ...
They’d actually abandoned him.
Danforth had kept the VCs busy for quite some time. In the meantime however, they’d all turned their attention on him and were moving towards him, like some God damn robots.
Oh Christ.
Oh m-my fucking God!
Jorgenson turned slightly, shooting sporadically in all directions and made a run for it.
Besides, it's all my fault – he thought while running through the dark jungle.
He lost the second rucksack containing the flamethrower, and they had more than righteously left him.
In a desperate attempt to get away, it was so dark that Jorghenson banged his head on a branch so hard he cut his forehead open.
Almost instantly he heard the bullets cutting through the vegetation and speeding past him once more.
It took the Vietcong some time to figure out in which direction he’d gone,
Nevertheless, Jorgenson didn't stop to take cover, but continued running instead.
He was going back to where Messner had initially treated Krakauer, hoping to find them there despite there not being any red lights to indicate they were.
In fact, as expected, he found the place empty and abandoned.
Baker Team soldier turned on his red coloured flash light for a split-second and kept it as low as possible to have a better look. Spilt blood was the only indication that he was in the same place.
Once he was sure that was the place, and they weren’t actually there, he immediately took to running through the jungle again.
He was on his own now. He found himself running without being careful about where he was stepping since he couldn't turn any lights on. What was worse still was he didn't even know where he was actually heading for.
He couldn't think clearly.
He had to put some distance between the Vietcong and himself at the very least and for as long as he could.
As a result Jorgenson ran like that for some time, or at least until he heard the shots behind of him become more distant.
A voice in his head told him that from then on, it was in his interest to shoot as little as possible or at all of possible. That way he could make sure the Vietcong lost his tracks. More importantly however, it guaranteed he didn't end up in direct contact with them.
He knew he’d never have survived a situation like that fighting his way through it.
Not a chance.
Trautman had taught him that.
if it was Jorgenson's choice, he would have turned right around and gone back and tried to kill all those motherfucking Vietcong. After two long years of training however, he’d learnt a lot in Fort Bragg. One of the most important things however, was how to sneak out and get your ass back home in one piece.
Provided you could, that is.
Jorgenson stopped and stood for a second in the dark.
The Vietcong behind him had definitely stop shooting and probably believed that the Baker Team was long gone and therefore decided to stay where they were, yammering their incomprehensible fucking iaiaiai-lai-iai somewhere in the middle of that fucking paddy.
What a shitty language – said Jorgenson to himself as he set his rucksack on the ground and pulled out one of the two claymore mines he still had with him.
As it came out of the bag, a map and some other paper fell out with it.
The map...
Fuck that’s right, he had a map.
He had completely forgotten about it.
Having it made finding his way and reaching the rally point simple even if he did so at night and in a jungle as thick as that one.
I just need to calculate the azimuth – he thought.
Jorgenson coughed and then unexpectedly he gagged putting one hand over his mouth.
Something was wrong with him.
He’d somehow lost the flamethrower, literally lost it in the dark, forgotten about the map and even temporarily forgotten where he was and all. He continued making the kind of mistakes rookies made forgetting things and he especially hated his companions the more time passed. All of them.
He hated them for no reason.
He hated everyone.
He even hated his daughter, at times.
Then Jorgenson hesitated briefly while unrolling the claymore's primer wire, because for the first time in a long time, soldier Carl Jorgenson had an excruciating doubt.
The horrible doubt that there was something in him had just snapped.
Something just didn't work the way it used to.
The sudden movement of something behind him brought him back to reality with a jolt. It wouldn’t be long before the Vietcong would leave the paddy and start their manhunt for him in the jungle.
He needed to set up that Goddamn claymore mine fast.
In fact, since it was very probable that all of the Vietcong would end up chasing him and him alone, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to hook up two claymores rather than one.
Once he'd finished hooking them both up. Jorghenson picked up the map along with all those other papers he'd unintentially scattered earlier.
The very idea that he was there, picking up papers, at a time like this and in the situation he was in, almost seemed surreal. The trouble was however that he absolutely couldn't leave coordinates, mission orders or anything of that kind for the enemy to find by accident.
Once there wasn’t anything left on the ground and both mines were in place (how could one ever be enough?) Jorgenson dove back into the jungle and resumed his blind get away.
He managed to hit his head for the second time, in the exact same place he’d banged it before. The difference this time was that his forehead started bleeding. Stumbling from the growing level of pain he was feeling.
For Christ’s sake…
Then, afterwards, he'd even gotten stuck in dense, overgrown vegetation, but in a moment of rage, he managed to cut through it, free himself, and get away.
After running for not more than a few minutes when he heard, what must have been a Vietcong screaming in agony, resembling a pig about to be butchered.
How could that be?
Fuck it – he said firmly to himself.
The only thing that matters now is getting the fuck away from here.
In fact, it so happened that while he was running he smashed his shoulder up against some kind of wall and fell backwards to the ground.
It wasn’t a wall of course, but a giant tree that, despite its enormity, Jorgenson hadn't noticed in the least. He may actually have hit it harder than Wile E. Coyote generally did.
He just didn't see it.
For Christ’s sake.
He almost broke his nose.
Jorgenson asked himself how much longer he could last before finally doing himself in.
As that thought drifted away, he took note of his surroundings, and how loud all the chaos was. He wondered what could have brought him there, or where he was heading for that matter.
In the midst of such a chaos he’d forgotten so he looked to his tritium Cammenga wrist compass for a clue.
West.
I guess the rally point must have been west.
He had just checked that damn map however, so how the hell could he not be sure?
What’s more, why were those Goddamn Vietcong behind him screaming like pigs in a slaughterhouse?