As Rambo and Ortega walked out of their tent they saw all those small lights above them in the almost black sky.
That night Rambo and Ortega were wearing their usual olive-coloured uniform with 'baseball' caps. Rambo's arm didn’t hurt as much as it used to, so they were just like any other pair of regular soldiers on leave. Well, on leave and in an incredibly good mood that is.
They showed their IDs at the base exit post, where an officer of the military police glanced quickly at them, gave a salute and stepped aside for them pass.
The city of Dak To was full of lights and sounds, so much so that it reminded Rambo of an amusement park every single time they were out.
Rambo felt incredibly free that night. He had a target that night of course, but there was no guarantee that he was necessarily going to run into him. As far as he was concerned, it was not even the kind of target that needed worrying about. That probably explained why Rambo was in such a good mood that night because he essentially forgot about it as the night progressed.
The truth was that, fundamentally, he liked Vietnam.
There was no denying he’d gone through some nasty moments during 'Black Spot' of course, and he’d already been awarded an honourable mention despite his disaccord because of one of those moments.
How absurd - he thought.
He didn’t consider himself a hero at all, and in reality, truth be told, he believed the exact opposite.
He hadn’t really had much of a choice that day.
If he’d done anything differently, they’d all have died, him included.
That’s the real reason why giving him an honourable mention for a medal was so absurd.
A mention for a medal of honour for something I didn’t really have a choice about doing.
Rambo had barely anything to think about that night and it was nice not to think about anything for a change.
It was one of the advantages of being a soldier, in fact he hadn’t thought about his future since the first day he enrolled. Frankly, there wasn’t any need to, because when all is said and done, there wouldn’t have been any kind of tomorrow anyways.
On one occasion, purely by coincidence, Rambo got the chance to read the SOG stats without anyone being the wiser. Unwittingly, that day he discovered something Trautman had intentionally hidden from all of them, and for good reason. Since its creation, the MacVsog had had a one-hundred-percent death, wounded or missing in action rate.
In other words, everyone who had ever fought for the SOG until now had been either killed, gone missing in action or been wounded at least once.
Therefore, belonging to the SOG was like having a death sentence on your head, or worse even, like spending the rest of your life paralyzed. Regardless of everything Rambo had read however, he wasn’t really scared by it. Truthfully, he wasn’t even minimally bothered.
Essentially, at that point in his life, it was yet another excuse not to think about the future.
When all was said and done, South Vietnam, so basically an entire country, had managed to live well without ever seriously fretting about its own future for an eternity almost.
So in the end, that was the night that Rambo enjoyed the city of Dak To for what it actually was, a delightfully vibrant city. Essentially, it was an amusement park for adults, bursting with life.
For the past two years Rambo and his friends have led lives dominated by excruciating effort, hard battles and endless training. Now that it was all coming to end, that kind of pain was about to be replaced by hard combat and fear of death.
Rambo wanted to live that night as if it was his last, especially since oftentimes in Vietnam, every day could possibly be just that.
Rambo and Ortega walked all the way to the city centre.
They weren't dressed well enough to get into the high-end nightclubs so they kept strolling till they passed that part of the centre.
They entered a nightspot that was neither a dive nor one of so many high-end black-tie ones.
As luck would have it, they ended up finding the right place on their first try. A Rolling Stones song was playing on a jukebox situated in one of the corners of the room, and the only women there were all low budget Vietnamese hookers, who were just a notch above the street ones.
Rambo liked the Stones and so did Ortega.
The Stones were, in some way, the band which represented almost everybody on the team, which couldn’t be said for The Doors. Only Danforth and Messner liked The Doors.
No way.
As far as Rambo was concerned, Jim Morrison wasn’t anything but a drug-addicted freak.
Rambo and Ortega spent the whole night drinking, laughing and smoking. Rambo wasn’t really crazy about drinking but that night he did it nonetheless. All in all, it was a really nice night for the both of them.
When they walked into the place, their man was already there. He was a lone, American soldier, sitting by himself and drinking on his own. They both kept tabs on him out of the corner of their eye all night long, while they went on having a good time acting like everything was per usual.
They drank and smoked for a long time right in front of him, until naturally, the two of them ended up loaded too.
In order to get the job done, it was a lot better for them to be left alone, so Rambo and Ortega turned down at least three prostitutes who’d showed interest in hooking up. When they finally thought it timely, they buttonholed their man and started drinking again but this time with him. He was a soldier on his own, looking for some local company just like thousands of others.
His stare was distant, not really looking at anyone or anything just daydreaming.
His name was Alvarez, and he was more than happy to have a drink with Rambo and Ortega.
He had a look in his eyes, that look that something inside him was broken, the same look you could easily find among the troops in Vietnam.
Ortega and Rambo kept making him drink, initially with a Budweiser, then a no-name whisky and after that, another Budweiser.
They asked their man if he wanted some opium, AKA ’brown sugar' (heroin), or anything else for that matter.
Then they asked him if he wanted a hooker, but he replied that with all the booze he’d drunk there was no way he would get a hard on.
That said, Rambo and Ortega offered him another drink.
They went on to tell him about how their base had been attacked (during Black Spot) and about the three casualties, including Rambo himself, of course. Alvarez would never have even vaguely imagined that they were in the Special Forces unit.
It didn’t take long for their man to drop his guard and open up, talking completely of his own free will.
The conversation became the telling of his tale, a tale in which he began reminiscing a loud about what had happened in Lam Ho, a village somewhere in the hills above Pleiku.
They’d been ordered to stop, and they certainly had.
The old man must have been half-deaf but when the grenade with the blooper shot, well, he definitely heard that before he died.
The man told Rambo and Ortega that he’d actually seen the fear in his eyes just seconds before the grenade exploded right in his face.
Rambo and Ortega, with stone cold expressions, played dumb, acting as though they had never heard anything similar before. Pretending wasn’t hard, especially since that kind of story had no effect whatsoever on guys like them. They had heard it all before.
Thanks to their first tour of duty and the SOG training course, they knew better than Alvarez what that war was about, and that episodes just like that were an everyday affair in Vietnam.
At a certain point Alvarez raised his voice because the alcohol was really taking effect.
“Then we killed him – he said – and anybody else around him with the shrapnel, that fucking shrapnel. It was an accident”
Rambo and Ortega nodded.
Ortega then moved his head closer, looked Alvarez right in the eyes and said:
“The old man and his family were an accident, but Mac Daniel's death wasn’t. He wasn’t an accident at all”
Alvarez turned to look Ortega in the eyes, and then immediately did the same to Rambo.
Only then did he realize that the two guys who he’d been getting loaded with all night, had suddenly in the blink of an eye, completely sobered up.
Although the three of them exchanged glances for some time, it didn’t take Alvarez long at all to realize things weren’t looking too good for him.
Not very good at all actually.
“It was an accident,” he repeated stuttering this time as he said it.
“No, it wasn’t man. - Ortega replied -. You’re to come with us, now”
“Trautman sent you here, didn’t he?”
“Yes”
“I understand” Alvarez replied.
“Come on, let's go”
They brought him outside.
The alley was dark and empty, far from the busy streets.
“It was an accident.” Alvarez said again.
“No it wasn’t”
“Okay, it was no accident” he finally admitted.
Rambo went to corner of the street, as a lookout. As he watched Rambo walk away, Ortega took a fishing line from out of one of his pockets and began wrapping it around his hands.
When he finished, he tugged at it to make sure it was tight enough and to see just how it felt.
“Who are you guys?”
“I’m Scorpio and he’s Raven”
“No... I mean... It doesn't matter. I’m no different from you”
“No, you’re not”
“Mac Daniel wanted to court martial me but I’ve got two kids”
“That doesn't make any difference, now”
“You don't understand…my time was almost done. I had almost survived Vietnam and he was going to ruin everything. I couldn't let him do it. Killing him was a mistake, but I didn’t realize it until it was too late and there was no turning back”
Ortega couldn’t find anything to say, so Alvarez continued:
“What Mac Daniel didn’t get was that I was already paying. Man oh man was I paying, and God only knows how much I’m still paying now! You see... It's like having hell inside you and I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my life. Mac Daniel didn’t understand that though and he just wanted to get revenge. In the end, I think I did it for my family. I couldn't let him take away the money my sons would need to survive”
-
He may look like a good man... - Ortega thought.
They all look like good men before they die – Trautman had warned after assigning him that 'personal favour'. Nothing could be truer, so true in fact, that it made Ortega sick.
He tried to make the feeling go away by telling himself repeatedly precisely what this man had done.
Then Ortega said:
“Your family won't lose a thing. We’re not that cruel. The Vietcong strangled you while you were on leave, walking home from some bar. It's an honourable way to go”
After a long silence, Alvarez's eyes turned teary. He was now quietly sobbing, so Ortega took a few steps moving behind him, but Alvarez stopped him.
“Wait” he said.
“What now?”
“There's something you need to tell my wife. You have to...”
Ortega stopped for a second, getting a grip on what he’d just heard, still pulling the fishing line between both hands.
Something turned over painfully in his gut. This was going much further than he could handle. He had no intention whatsoever to talk to Alvarez's wife. That would have really been too much. He would never doanything like that, neither in a hypothetical tomorrow, nor ever.
Alvarez went on:
“Tell her I never cheated on her. Please, I’m begging you. Tell her you knew me and that I never cheated on her. You saw it with your very own eyes tonight, didn’t you? I’ve never...”
There was something in Ortega's eyes that didn’t convince Alvarez however. He realized that Ortega was nothing more than his murderer and would never have had the guts to phone or even write his wife.
Ortega got closer, wrapped the nylon line around Alvarez's neck and tightened.
Alvarez tried to say something, but the air couldn’t get past his throat.
He made an attempt to resist, but it was obvious that he didn’t know any counter-moves for that kind of hold. Knowing nothing about hand-to-hand combat he didn’t have a hope in hell against someone like Ortega.
Realizing there was little he could do, Alvarez shook a bit but it wasn’t any good.
He tried to scream over and over but was barely able to even whimper.
Sergeant Alvarez struggled to get away with all of his might but Ortega wasn’t merely taller but much stronger too, and in the end finally tightened the slipknot while pulling Alvarez to his feet almost breaking his neck bone doing it.
Alvarez turned pink and his eyes looked like they were going to pop out of their sockets.
His tongue slid out of his mouth and was swollen like a boiled pig’s.
He was now pitch red.
Rambo, who was obviously uncomfortable, continued checking the street and around the corner as he repeatedly shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
After a long, seemingly endless agony in Ortega’s arms, Alvarez's face finally became dark blue, and he quit kicking.
Manuel Ortega had actually felt the precise moment when the life in him was gone.
He was dead.
Ortega let him drop to the ground.
Rambo caught up with Ortega while he was looking at the corpse from above with a grim expression on his face.
“Are you gonna talk to his wife?” Rambo asked.
Ortega wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“No. Fuck no”
“Why not?”
“What the fuck do you think dickhead? Maybe because I knocked her fucking husband off, right?”
The two of them were stark silent for a second looking at the lifeless corpse.
Then Ortega said:
“You tell her, John, if you really care. If you do however, I think you should tell her everything. Tell her that her husband killed some civilians by mistake and, after that, that he knocked off one of his own so he wouldn’t get court martialled”
Ortega spit on the ground.
“And while you’re at it, tell her that he committed murder for nothing too, just because he didn’t know that our martial court never really punishes anyone for any fucking thing. Then tell her that he was consequently, in turn done in by Special Forces as a lesson, or as payback... The hell I know. I can't read Trautman's mind. Tell her everything Johnny if you seriously think you’ll be able to talk to her.”
Ortega threw the fishing line onto the ground. His eyes were teary.
“Tell that woman whatever the fuck you want, I don't give a shit anymore”
Rambo and Ortega left the alley.
Ortega paused under a street lamp, pulled a cigarette out first, then a lighter, and with a click of his zippo, he lit it
He took a drag, and then stopped to look at Rambo.
“What a shitty job”
“Trautman did everything he could to get that guy court martialled”
“That's not the point Rambo. What the fuck are they gonna ask us to do next time?”
Not knowing the answer to that however, Rambo just looked away towards the street.
“It shouldn't be like that,” said Ortega. smoking as he walked away.
“It shouldn't for sure,” he added, practically talking to himself.
Shortly thereafter, Rambo couldn't say why, but he got the impression that Ortega was on the verge of crying.
He had known him almost two years by then, and he knew him well.
Heading back to the base they passed right in front of one of the many brothels that, as of late, seemed to be popping up everywhere for American personnel. Rambo and Ortega looked at each other, and silently walked into yet another new place, one they’d have used as an alibi for the night.
The slow song “when a man loves a woman”, was sweetly playing in a corner.
Ortega sat down at a table and, without a moment’s hesitation a Vietnamese woman propped herself down on Ortega's lap.
Ortega hadn’t had enough to drink. Not nearly enough that night.
So he raised his arm and ordered.