Chapter 19: 19 I'm Very Sober
Joe Ga looked at Karman, whose expression was hard to tell whether it was disappointment or shock. He sat on the ground with a wry smile, holding his shoulder, and said, "Are you a little disappointed that I'm not dead?"
"All that gold would have been enough for you and your son to live a good life in Ethiopia."
Karman hesitated, then shook his head and said, "No, you're a good boss, so I should be a good employee."
As he spoke, Karman handed over the gold from his backpack to Joe Ga, saying, "A third is plenty for me, and with my years of experience, those who betray a boss who is both an excellent shooter and generous tend to bring bad consequences upon themselves and their families."
Joe Ga took the gold and casually put it into his backpack. His left hand, which was reaching for his handgun, naturally supported him on the ground. Then, after a painful grunt, he said, "I need to find some bandages or something, my shoulder is killing me."
Upon hearing that, Karman leaned over to look at Joe Ga's shoulder, then stood up with a smile and said, "You're lucky, not only did you not get hit in a vital spot, but our adversaries were apparently well-equipped.
I saw a medical bag on one of the corpses below. Let's go down together, and I can give you a quick patch-up.
Don't worry, it's just a graze. You've lost a piece of skin, but there is not too much blood."
With Karman's help, Joe Ga stood up and as they walked, he said, "Why were there nine people? I killed one before, there should have been eleven of them left."
Karman nodded and said, "Two of them were bitten by Black Mamba; they're probably still where they were, waiting to die.
These guys are all White Ghost Mercenaries; it's rare to see so many White Ghost Mercenaries in South SD at once."
As the two talked, they arrived among several corpses, and among the four assault soldiers, there was actually one who was still alive.
A burly man with a big beard, even though his arm was broken and his belly had been hollowed out with a hole, this guy was stubbornly alive.
Joe Ga, noticing something was off, went over and lifted the corpses off the burly man, took his handgun away, and then found a palm-sized large bandage and a bottle of iodine in a medical bag and handed them to Karman, saying, "Do me a favor, rinse the wound and then stick it on."
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Without waiting for Karman to act, Joe Ga grimaced as he took two vials of morphine from the medical bag and shook them in front of the burly man, saying, "Who exactly are you? Tell me, and I'll make it easy for you."
The burly man looked at Joe Ga, his mouth moving laboriously as he said, "You, you're done for, we are, we are..."
"What are you?"
As Joe Ga pressed for an answer with urgency, the burly man's eyes quickly began to lose focus, as if regaining clarity for a brief moment, then he said in a fairly clear voice, "We are 'Sea Hound', someone will avenge us."
After he finished, the burly man seemed to sense Joe Ga's anxiety, his mouth actually curved into a slight smile, and then he swallowed his last breath with satisfaction.
Joe Ga was angered by the man's 'trick,' and with a frown said, "Still inexperienced, we need someone alive, otherwise we can't even be sure what has happened, who the enemy is, or where they are."
Karman wasn't as anxious as Joe Ga, the battle-hardened old African carefully finished bandaging Joe Ga, then as he picked through the spoils on the bodies, he said, "If you want a survivor, then we can go back and see, maybe those two bitten by Black Mamba aren't dead yet."
Upon hearing this, Joe Ga stood up and said, "Then let's hurry…"
Karman carried all the rifles on his back, then packed the seized handguns and magazines into his backpack, along with the radios and other small gadgets that seemed useful, and carried them on his back.
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Seeing the urging expression on Joe Ga's face, Karman shook his head and said, "Don't worry, if those two were going to die, they would have done so already. If they are alive, it means they managed to save themselves in time. But now they definitely don't have the ability to move and can only wait for death because their comrades are all dead."
Joe Ga looked at Karman, who was decked out with weapons, and said helplessly, "Why do you need so many guns?"
With a strange expression, Karman replied, "Boss, this is South SD. There are a lot of guns here, but I've never seen this kind before. They must be worth more than the AKs.
We should take them back. Even if we can't sell them off, we can't let the Kadin Clan pick them up."
Joe Ga, frowning at the several Beretta AR70s, shook his head as he walked towards the direction they'd come from and said, "These things are not even as accurate as the AK74 I gave you. You know these guns are uncommon in South SD. We just killed so many people, and by taking these with us, we might as well admit what we did..."
Karman clearly understood the logic, but as a thriftily domesticated old miser, he was loath to let go of these gains within his reach.
After searching the two dead machine gunners, Karman picked up two Russian-made PKMs and followed Joe Ga's footsteps.
The old guy watched Joe Ga walking briskly and hesitated for a moment before saying, "Boss, don't rush. You need to keep a clear head."
Upon hearing this, Joe Ga subconsciously replied, "I am very clear-headed right now..."
"No, you're not clear-headed. Your hands are shaking, and you're going the wrong way."
Joe Ga paused, then slowed his pace embarrassingly, signaling Karman to take the lead.
He indeed felt somewhat muddled. After the excessive excitement had passed, a sense of inexplicable fatigue washed over him.
When Karman pointed out his abnormal state, images of the corpses he had killed flashed through Joe Ga's mind.
Strangely enough, the traditional 'nauseated' sensation often found in novels didn't emerge, yet the images of mangled flesh lingered persistently in his mind.
As his attention wavered slightly, Joe Ga stumbled a few times...
Sensing Joe Ga's troubles, Karman looked back at him and said, "Boss, fighting is like this. Seeing dead people is very common.
You are the best marksman I've ever seen. Don't care about those guys. Just think of it as if you were out hunting.
When we hunt gazelles on the savannah, we gut them on the spot, then skin and break them down to take the juiciest parts with us.
Fighting and hunting are actually the same. It's just that the things you kill are different."
Joe Ga looked at Karman, whose expression was as calm as if nothing had happened, and he shook his head, saying, "This is the first time I've killed, and I killed so many people. I don't feel like throwing up, but my mind is full of images of those bodies. Is there something wrong with me?"
Karman paused, then shook his head and said, "I don't know. I've seen people who feel like vomiting after killing, but mostly they want to throw up because they're nervous.
But I don't know about the stuff in your head. I've never felt that way because when I was young, hunger was much scarier than any corpse!"
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