The minister was shocked for the longest time and he turned to look at John. “Is this true?”
John nodded wearily. “There were thirty or so of our brothers who could have retreated, but we wanted to know who was behind the attack, so we surrounded the ghost tank and found that there was no one in there at all. Then, when we went for one tank, another one would start attacking us for no reason, and I swear on my years of military glory that this was all true! We didn’t want to be deserters, and we tried to fight back, but when we knew that fighting back was just redundant, we chose to be sensible and come back home to tell the country all about it. We are willing to accept any punishment.”
The minister paced back and forth after listening to the story, and he asked the other subordinates of the Strategic Department.
“What do you think about this?”
A few strategic military experts pondered for a while and still didn’t quite believe what the eleven soldiers had said; it was too unbelievable, at least they hadn’t encountered such a bizarre thing in the five decades they had lived.
“Strategic deployment in the Land of Mercenaries is very important, we have to be firm on this. I won’t say whether or not this is true, but how about we give you another battalion of soldiers from the headquarters?”
John didn’t say anything, but the others were agitated when they heard that the military experts didn’t believe them at all. They stood up one by one and said, “Listen, officers, we’d rather be punished than go back to that damn place.”
The few military experts: “Well, you have to go and bring back the bodies of your own comrades, right? And the supplies. Do you know how much money was lost? Two fighter jets, five tanks, plus all kinds of guns and ammunition, a total loss of 30 million dollars. We haven’t gotten any of that money back, so you have to find oil or minerals, right? Do you think it’s acceptable to come back empty handed just like that?”
The eleven soldiers were speechless.
John looked up at this point and said. “I’m not done with it. I’m willing to go back in there again, because I don’t believe it’s the ghosts doing all that.”
The minister nodded. “Good, then you will be regrouped into another battalion ready to head back in. You will be going in for the second time, and now that you know the place better, it will be better if you lead the way.”
John nodded as he accepted the order.
The other eleven comrades who followed him after leaving the strategic department all cursed at him. “We had a hard time leaving from there and avoided bad luck. Now you’re going in?”
John sighed. “Don’t you want to find out the truth?”
His other comrades snickered. “The truth? You want to know the truth from the death reaper? Just like that night, it was you who wanted to know the truth, and half of the thirty other brothers died!”
John said to his group of comrades, “I’m helping you guys. This type of defeat gets us in a lot of trouble. We’ve broken a lot of military rules, and if we choose to back down at this point, we will only face jail time. We have to continue to create our value. Otherwise, even if you are a veteran and you retire to work for Blackwater security, they wouldn’t want you.”
