At dawn, the jungle was cold and damp because the nights were still cold on the high planes.
Coletta was holding his M14 like a baby in his arms as he looked up at the sky that was barely visible through all that vegetation. Coletta was covered in sweat and had a painful expression on his face probably because of carrying two rucksacks.
“The weather is going to hold,” he said looking up at the red coloured sky.
“Yes it looks that way.” said Ortega sitting next to him. He looked tried as well.
“It had better” he added glancing over at the hostages and examining them as he did.
Despite hostage morale being astonishingly high – probably because, all things considered, they were free – it was obvious by then that the situation was precarious.
Their expressions, their movements and the way they spoke to each other made for a tense atmosphere. They could all feel it.
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In the prisoners' minds, there was something amiss.
All in all, there was something very odd in the way the soldiers who saved them, were behaving. They had attacked without airplane or helicopter support or any other support for that matter. Worst of all however, was the way they were marching, maintaining an absurd pace despite the double loads they were carrying.
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Ortega obviously couldn’t hide any of this from them.
Furthermore, no one on the Baker team talked much to the prisoners to avoid spreading panic.
The prisoners therefore were under the impression that the team was hiding something and became somewhat concerned.
Hence, it was on their second day of march that a sense of suspicion arose between the soldiers and the hostages.
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Near midday, after four long hours of carrying the prisoners, the overall morale level was quite low. Not only had water consumption doubled, but the Baker team itself was really on the brink of exhaustion. Distraction was always a side effect of fatigue, and eventually both caused mistakes.
By the third day not only was morale at an all-time low, but in the aftermath, Ortega fund out the prisoners believed they were being lied to about everything.
Despite not having actually met any VC up to now, Coletta continuously came across various clues like branch signals, tracks made by cycles carrying loads and occasionally even booby-traps.
For all intents and purposes, that place was a no man's land, where basically anything could happen at any given moment.
All the same, they went forward.