That night, the Baker team finally had a chance to rest.
The following day they continued their walk towards the border as best they could, but no one had responded to their short-range radios as of yet. What’s more, the Ho Chi Minh trail stood between them and South Vietnam like an invisible wall they couldn’t get across.
Every time Coletta, Barry or anyone else for that matter tried to get in close enough to spy on the 'trail', they almost immediately had to retreat or risked being seen.
Generally, whoever surveyed the area returned only minutes later because their cover was at risk.
At the end of that thirteenth day, the team was virtually on the brink of exhaustion.
In about forty-eight hours, the prisoners wouldn’t have any MREs left to eat either, and that meant the beginning of the end for them all.
Bearing that heavy burden in mind, daybreak marked day fifteen of a mission that didn’t show any signs of coming to an end.