Manuel “Scorpio” Ortega
Ortega was on guard duty and positioned more or less at the bottom of the canyon.
He was balanced at the top of a tree facing the front of the plain.
From there, the night vision scope he’d mounted over Coletta's M14, gave him a line of sight of approximately two hundred yards, but he was primarily focused on the landscape.
Hewas thinking about way too much stuff, and all of it irrelevant.
An example to start with was water consumption. Their water consumption had gone down drastically since they’d stopped marching. Then, there was food consumption, the ammo situation, not to mention all the clicks they still had to march, possible alternative routes and last but not least, safe zones and the really fucking unsafe ones, where even only coming within a mile of them was suicidal.
They were going to break any and all previous records or ranges ever made on that fucking mission.
Ortega looked up from the riflescope’s green visual for the millionth time. He was starting to get a headache, which was a common side effect of prolonged use of night vision sights.
Ortega went on to consider spy-plane routes and to the theoretical time frames in which they may have been able to talk to using short-range radios.
The imaginary map in Ortega's head suddenly got all messed itself up beyond any and all recognition.
There was no way he could do that kind of calculating off the top of his head. He needed to trace some lines on that fucking map to say the very least.
He’d just have to wait for the next shift change to do it.
Ortega sniffed and then tightened his poncho, hoping to find some warmth in it.
One thing was for certain, if they had to cross the border on foot, they weren’t going to do it at the nearest or easiest point.
Nope, sorry, not us.
They were going to cross the border where it was easiest to communicate, not easiest to cross, because that’s what they had to do.
With that thought in mind, Ortega couldn’t help but swear under his breath because of how many uncertainties there actually were. Too many fucking variables to consider. The only thing Ortega was categorically sure about, was how long the prisoners could actually walk.
He glimpsed up at the sky but it was still dark.
The temperature had gone up a little that last hour but so had the humidity. There was a chance of rain the following day and this was bad news for both Rambo’s and Lowell's wounds. What’s more, it wouldn’t have been too good for the march either, because rain made everything a lot harder and much slower.
That damn rain could have complicated everything, even shooting at a distance if they’d had to.
God please, don't let it rain.
They were spending far too long in that Goddamn jungle for his likes.
They were destined to make mistakes sooner or later, he was sure of it.
It was inevitable.
The real question was which mistake they would actually end up making however.
Ortega didn’t have the answer and for all intent and purposes, it was probably for the better.
It was then that the plan really came to define itself in his head.
It wasn’t very different from the first one he had come up with some days earlier, back when they were still on that Goddamn unfinished base.
Yet, he didn’t really care too much for that one. In fact, he didn’t like it at all.
Nope.
Now, the only thing left to do was decide which friend would have to do it.
Ortega sighed and thought about his mother, his father and his stepbrother Richard. He loved each one of them and missed them all.
He wondered if he would ever see them again.
He suddenly felt so common for even asking a question like that.
He was obviously so uncommon that it wasn’t hard to shrug that thought away.
He was a fucking SOG team leader, for fuck's sake.
He was one of the best men Samuel 'The Best' Trautman had ever had.
Bloody right he was going to make it, for Christ's sake.
He was going to accomplish that mission.