Trautman returns to the dying Teasle and tells him that he has killed Rambo with his shotgun. Rambo dies satisfied that he has come to a fitting end. For a moment he reflects on how he had missed his chance of a decent death, because he is now too weak to light the dynamite, but then suddenly feels the explosion he had expected-but in the head, not the stomach where the dynamite was placed. Rambo fires at Teasle and, to his surprise and disappointment, hits him.

Rambo, having found a spot he feels comfortable in, prepares to commit suicide by detonating a stick of dynamite against his body however, he then sees Teasle following his trail and decides that it would be more honourable to continue fighting and be killed by Teasle's return fire.

Both men are essentially dying by this point, but are driven by pride and a desire to justify their actions. He then tries to pursue Rambo as he makes a final attempt to escape back out of the town. Teasle, using his local knowledge, manages to surprise Rambo and shoots him in the chest, but is himself wounded in the stomach by a return shot. In a climactic ending in the town where his conflict with Teasle began, Rambo is finally hunted down by special forces Colonel Sam Trautman and Teasle. He becomes the focus of a manhunt that results in the deaths of many police officers, civilians, and National Guardsmen. He flees, steals a motorcycle, and hides in the nearby mountains. Being trapped inside the cold, wet, small cells gives Rambo a flashback of his days as a prisoner of war in a Viet Cong prison camp, and he fights off the cops as they attempt to cut his hair and shave him without shaving cream, beating one man and slashing another with the straight razor. He is charged with vagrancy and resisting arrest and is sentenced to 35 days in jail. When Rambo repeatedly returns, Teasle finally arrests him and drives him to the station. He is picked up by Sheriff Teasle (himself a Korean War veteran) and dropped off at the city limits. The book begins with Rambo, a Vietnam war veteran, hitch hiking in Madison, Kentucky.

First blood by david morrell