It had been quite a while since Captain Quentin and I stood guard by the corner of the platform. Although I could still see my surroundings for a bit, indeed it was almost like I was all alone surrounded by complete darkness, if not it was not for the tapping sound of wood near me coming from none other than Captain Quentin's finger tapping his shotgun's butt stock with his finger.
I was also starting to think that at that point, it did not matter any longer if the both of us were to close our eyes or not since we could barely see anything anyways. As Captain Quentin kept on tapping his shotgun, probably to keep himself awake, I decided to take out my flashlight once again, and lighted it towards my watch. It showed the time 01.10 a.m., indicating that we had been almost there for an hour then.
"I take it that it is past one a.m.?" Captain Quentin asked me, as he suddenly stopped tapping.
"Yes, sir. It is." I said, not expecting that he could take a guess quite accurately.
"I would suggest you to turn off that flashlight and keep it again. The least you could do is to prolong its battery life." he responded, with a low voice.
He had his point there, I should have not used it just to see what time it was in the first place. Since I sensed that he was also in the mood for talks with a serious subject, I decided to ask him about his earliest days in the marines that he could recall. Again, it was as if he had guessed what I was about to do right from the start.
"Uh, sir…" I said, right before he cut me off what I was going to ask.
"Go ahead, son…" he responded, cutting off my sentences as he also chuckled.
There were actually so many questions that I wanted to ask to him, but the only thing that crossed my mind at that time was my curiosity about his first active days in the marines, especially in Gaza since he had mentioned it earlier. Then again, so far as I knew the conflict there did not involve any United States military personnel, at least not directly.
"Earlier today, you mentioned that you had been to Gaza during your first days in the marines." I said, before continuing on to my question.
"What were the things that happened there that had made them sent you to the front line?"
Just as I finished asking my question, Captain Quentin laughed openly. It might be caused by my rather blatant question to him, or he might be laughing at my poor attempt on asking questions that would follow after.
"Damn, son…" he said as he was still laughing, "This is one of the reason why I had forced them to have you instead of the other more superior officers to aid the training at the military base."
"I… am not sure I quite understand, sir…" I responded, in confusion as I tried to grasp the meaning behind his words.
Thankfully, it did not take him really long before his laugh began to subside. Although I sensed that he was attempting to hold his laughter as best as he could, he eventually began to explain to me that he admired my strong straightforwardness.
He told me that it could describe someone with that kind of personality to be most likely a person without any hidden bad intentions, unlike most commissioned officers that he had known so far. After he had explained it to me, he began to open up about his days back in Gaza.
"It was in January 2009." he said, before continuing again,
"I was one of the U.S. troops sent to Gaza by the United Nations to assist and guard the refugees headquarters there. Back then, I was still an Ensign, just like you are now."
Captain Quentin then said that on his second day there, the headquarters received a sudden attack from enemy forces by heavy weaponries, resulting in the decision to investigate on how they could receive such weapons in the first place. The investigation was conducted through an army investigation, and amongst the troops ended up tasked with the mission, was none other than himself.
"So, in a sense, if you are to ask if we were involved in the conflict, then the answer is a yes, but indirectly." he stated.
He mentioned that the investigation progress had first met many dead ends and debates, since it would be impossible for any other countries to supply so many weaponries and troops at so little time to the enemy forces. However, the whole team eventually came up with a faint clue that the weapons might be supplied from weapon smugglers and/or mercenaries.
Although the chances were very slim, the team did not directly dismiss the possibility, so they decided to send a small team to scout on few places with the highest possibilities of the smugglers' hideout. Again, he was one of the total six personnel on that small team.
The small team's objectives were three – to investigate if there were weapons smugglers and mercenaries in the first place, to cut off all of their supplying route if they did exist, and to eliminate their existence. Although the team was not given any deadline, they assumed that they had 36 hours before anything could happen for the worst.
The first 12 hours went by without any positive results, and so the team lowered its alerts on the rest of the possible places. However, just as the team thought they had finished scouting the last possible place, large numbers of transport trucks suddenly emerged, directing the team to a heavily destroyed housing complex, and therefore revealing that the place was indeed the main hideout for weapons smugglers and mercenaries.
The team's realization however, was met with a severe backfire to themselves as the smugglers had anticipated their arrival right from the start. In almost an instant, half of the team was wiped out, and Captain Quentin and the other two barely escaped from the smugglers' and mercenaries' ambush.
When they had arrived at a safer spot, one of them could no longer move due to the severe injuries he had received when escaping from the ambush. Realizing that Captain Quentin seemed to have no other choice, he told the other one to carry the severely injured soldier to another further and safer place, and he left them behind to sneak inside the hideout, equipped only with his assault rifle and combat knife, with hopes to at least be able to eliminate as many of them as he could while buying more time for the other two to escape.
To the least of his expectation, he managed to wipe out all guards outside the main hideout building unnoticed, even until he had arrived right in front of the building. One of the dead mercenary was equipped with a semi-automatic shotgun, and thus he swapped his assault rifle with it before storming into the building.
Perhaps that the enemy had not thought of any possibilities that one single man could storm in their place, as Captain Quentin mentioned that he could even cleared the first two floors of the four story building without getting noticed yet. When he had finally took down the last standing smuggler, he called the United Nation's backup team through the hideout's communications system before he dazed out to his injuries.
When he had regained his consciousness again, he was already inside the ICU room of a UN hospital there, guarded by several armed UN troops, and was expected to receive the consequences of his actions. He had thought that he would receive some sort of martial court due to him leaving his comrades behind.
Instead, he was expected to receive his Navy Cross award, and a promotion to Lieutenant Junior Grade by the military once he was fully recovered due to his actions that indirectly resulted in ending the conflict. As it turned out, the whole high ranking officers in the military, especially marines did congratulate him personally at the day he received his awards and promotion.
At first, I gave him a spontaneous praise for his awards, however he quickly brushed my praise aside. I asked him why in my confusion, to which he answered he was at first very thankful of them. That was, until he realized almost 16 years later that his involvement in the investigation team, the smaller team being nearly wiped out entirely, and him receiving his awards and promotion were all more or less already scripted right from the start by the military superiors of the United States.
I was in total lost for words, when he continued that the military superiors had been waiting for an opportunity when the country could show up as some form of a hero or savior to the conflict, and once they heard of the presence of a US soldier in the conflicting land, they had immediately formed various arrangements which led him got himself suggested to directly involved in wiping out the smugglers and the mercenaries.
To top it off, that was not the worst part that he had known. It was his realization that the rest of the team's personnel were assumed as collateral damages, and had he himself also killed there, he would also be considered as one. That, and the fact that he heard it himself from his former commanding officer, a Commodore at that time.
Once he had finished explaining all of that to me, I could no longer find any right words to say to react or let alone comment about it. However, he said again that it was in fact that kind of trait I had in me that made him quite sure I would not be one of those kinds of military leaders one day.
He also added, that he could somehow parallel his earliest days a little with the three of us, especially to me and Jonathan. When I asked him why and which, he paused for a while before saying that it was still too early for me to know and realize it. Again, I could only response in silence since I did not what else to say or react anymore.
As he no longer talked, he went back to tap his fingers on his shotgun butt stock, as if to imitate each second that passed on a clock. When I thought about it, perhaps he could have guessed the time earlier almost correctly because he had been tapping like that. The tapping sound however, slowly brought my consciousness adrift from me, until I could no longer feel if I had closed my eyelids or I was still staring at my dark surroundings.