Unraveling the Lies: Henry and John's Quest for Truth

The first time I saw John, he was limping away from the burning wreckage of a helicopter. His left leg was badly twisted, and his face was covered in soot and grime. In his hands he carried a limp little girl by the arm, while behind him flames licked at the night sky and rocket-propelled grenades exploded on the ground.

The last time I saw John, he was lying dead on a slab in an autopsy room. They'd cut open his chest, and there were two neat holes punched clean through his sternum. After that, they'd sliced him open from neck to groin, and had pulled out his guts like a kid with a Christmas toy.

Between those two moments of my life, there was Nicaragua. The war. The helicopters. The gunshots. The pain and the death and the fear of it all made me wish for nothing more than to be back home with my family eating an ice cream cone on the front porch of our house. But those were just moments; fleeting images that flickered across my mind like light over water on a summer day. Between those moments there was Nicaragua, and Nicaragua put its foot down hard on my life.

I didn't know John's name then - I hadn't even heard what it was until we got back to the States - but I knew who he was: a soldier like me, a man who lived every day like it might be his last, and put everything he had into doing what needed to be done. That's the type of man John was. He never once stopped fighting against whatever odds were stacked against us; he never let up because someone told him something wasn't possible. If we wanted justice for all of our fallen brothers in arms and innocent civilians killed by crooked generals and their soldiers, then John would give us that justice if it meant spending every last breath within him on it.

But there were times when John's persistence was too much for me to bear, because there were times when I just wanted to lie down and die like everyone else around me did - or maybe just lay down for just a little while until the world didn't seem so bad after all, because sometimes you get to thinking about things and you can't stop until you hit rock bottom. Other times though... other times... ah hell, other times he picked me up off the ground when I fell flat on my face to keep going forward because otherwise I'd have been nothing but dead weight that dragged everyone else down with me. Sure as hell wouldn't have done anyone any good if that happened; we all had to carry our own weight if this thing was gonna work out right in the end. We were all fighting for different reasons - some for money, some for power, some for glory - but that didn't mean we couldn't do it like one big happy family from time to time: when one fell, we all fell together... even if it meant carrying them around like a sack of potatoes for the rest of your life afterwards!

It took us almost four years before we finally found ourselves standing outside Samuel White's office in Washington DC looking at each other with wide eyes as we realized that we'd actually found something worth more than all of our lives put together! It turned out that our old friend Mr White had been pocketing cash hand-over-fist as well as getting more people killed than most could count on two hands with both thumbs tied behind their backs! We knew what he had been doing - taking bribes from drug cartels south of the border while also arming rebel groups north of it - but we didn't know how far it went! We had no idea that he'd been doing this sort of stuff since he was stationed in Vietnam during the war! It looked like the whole thing might have started with him trying to make some side cash off supplying weapons to local fighters... then again it might have been even earlier than that! But either way it looked like Samuel White had been cheating both sides at once since day one... which meant that he probably wouldn't just go quietly into retirement now without making some kind of fuss about it now that we'd caught him red-handed! Not only that though... not only would Mr White not go quietly into retirement... but he wouldn't be alone!

*

"Alright boys," John said as he addressed our group after Mr White's office had been secure with guards posted around us at both ends of the hallway we were standing in while White himself sat at his desk opposite us looking more pissed off than anyone has ever seen before or since then (which is saying something). "Here's what we're gonna do..."