The next few days went by slowly.
Barry had gone back to the US on leave because of his wounded shoulder while Danforth, who was still in hospital, flirted regularly with Nurse Shelley.
Ortega's hand was healing fast and didn’t seem to have any permanent injuries.
In the meantime, Jorgenson, against all odds, was still alive.
He started gaining consciousness more and more often, and sooner or later they’d have sent him back to the U.S. on leave too, His leave would probably be forever though given that the chances of a complete recovery were practically impossible.
In no time at all, the recovered Baker Team members resumed their training and went back to working together with the ARVN.
Quite often as a group they went running on the base limits, did push ups or some other activity together and always as a team.
Sometimes they got a jeep and left the city, drove to the jungle and did some strange form of shooting practice using silencers or played those hide and seek games like the ones they did
in Fort Bragg.
Everybody except for Ortega of course, who generally just walked around the base with bandaged up hands and worked exclusively with the ARVN.
This was the case because when they weren't working out, the Baker team guys were training the ARVN men in counter insurgency warfare.
Given that they were all fluent in Vietnamese, the Baker team was a valuable asset and often used their connections to pass on to those South Vietnamese soldiers crazy enough to join the SOG in the first place.
Most SOG teams were a combination of American and South Vietnamese men so they all had mixed personnel. The two Baker teams were an exception to this rule since U.S. soldiers generally led other SOG teams but the rest of the personnel were Vietnamese.
Moreover, as time passed, the Baker team guys grew to like them more and more.
The Hmong, Khmer and many other ethnicities appeared to be the only real bulwark against the advance of communism in Vietnam.
It wasn’t long before Ortega and a few others came to be good friends.