John 'Raven' Rambo
Rambo did not sleep that night.
It felt like he could never get any sleep and, despite his injured foot, could never stay still either.
In spite of Messner’s suggestions therefore, he spent that night just like all the others, crawling around the jungle floor like a hunting tiger.
Rambo would stop somewhere in the darkness, listen, smell the air for a second and then move on.
It's okay here too – he thought to himself.
Now, all I have to check is the south and south-west.
He was setting sound-traps so if anybody tried to get close to them, they would have noticed in time.
That area was proving to be as safe as Ortega had said it would. There were no old tracks or other signs suggesting someone may have ventured off the path before them.
That place actually had been forgotten by all and yet, there was something which felt wrong just the same.
After the raid, focusing on the mission with the same concentration he used to, had become a problem, and, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why.
Maybe he thought it merciless to continue the fight as though nothing had happened. When, in all actuality, they’d just killed civilians.
Killing innocent bystanders instead of freeing them however, had been purely accidental and a side effect as there always were, in any fucking war.
Maybe that was the reason why, unlike the others, Rambo really couldn’t get to sleep.
That certainly did not help his foot heal either.
You’ve got your entire life to think about what you have done. You can't think about it now.
You have to rest, or you’ll end up making mistakes.
Rambo slowed his walk down.
Be a real soldier, and not think about it while on mission.
Under Trautman's orders however, he’d helped Ortega even kill an American.
Rambo staggered slightly in the dark.
He was tired, excruciatingly tired.
It was just the fatigue playing tricks on him.
Or was it.
It was just a question of time before he got his hands too bloodstained, and for ever.
Rambo chose one spot and started placing sharpened bamboos on the ground.
The darkness in front of him was moving, but again, just another hallucination brought on by fatigue, famine, cold and sleep deprivation. Mostly sleep deprivation though.
During the tryouts, he’d seen darkness move like that already, so it didn’t worry him. He could handle it, and since he’d marched up this gorge without a double load because of his injury, he’d work harder than the others to make it safer.
Rambo wiped the sweat off his forehead.
He didn’t want to get his hands dirty with blood like Jorgenson and Danforth had with those rockets.
It shouldn’t have happened and particularly not to him anyways.
He’d have gone insane if it had happened to him.
He’d have gone mad to the point of taking his own life.
You’ve already killed a woman, Johnny.
You did it in Dak To.
Although that may have been true, for him it had been an act of mercy.
For a while, he seemed to hear Trautman's voice in his head, which could only mean he was lot more tired than he would actually like to think.
The break Ortega had arranged on that gorge was turning out to be a true blessing in some aspects, but even so, his foot was still hurting and bleeding under the dirty bandages.
Just a few more traps and then I’ll rest too.
Honestly speaking, the idea of losing his foot didn’t worry him as much as it should have. In fact, there were times when he almost completely ignored it.
Rambo wiped the sweat off his forehead for a second time because his headband wasn’t doing the trick.
The idea of becoming a disabled person didn’t scare him either. On the contrary, to members of the SOG squad, losing a foot or whatnot, was practically the only way of getting out of that fucking war alive.
You killed a woman in Dak To, Johnny.
That was Trautman's voice again, which implied he seriously did need to get some sleep.
But why? Why did he hear 'the beast's’ voice in his head?
It had always been him – and him alone – sending them on those fucking missions.
Whether it was having to defend just a single fucking outpost in Black Storm, or was having to kill spies or even killing an American, they’d been his orders.
He’d made them do all that shit. That voice in his head sounded like Trautman even because despite all that had already happened, Rambo considered him a friend nonetheless.
Given the fact that he’d taught him more about life and living than his father ever had, he was definitely a friend, to say the least.
Suddenly, something truly horrible occurred to him.
He understood that Jorgenson and Danforth had actually 'pulled the trigger' on the Laotian civilians, but he and Coletta had done the most important surveying that day.
They were the ones who hadn’t noticed those slaves because of other POWs who were potentially American.
Once they’d seen the Americans, nothing else had mattered after that.
Essentially the mistake was there’s.
That was a bitter pill for Rambo to swallow, as he hammered the bamboo sticks into the ground harder than ever.
He continued to set his traps the rest of the night, right until dawn.