1323. Each Gets What They Need
Thanks to Li Bai's expertise, they could tell where the Americans' real bottom line lay. That supposed five-million-dollar deployment fee was something Luan Zhengwei had just tossed out there.
The Chinese peacekeeping force was in Somalia to serve the local people. They weren't about to risk their lives for some foreign businessman.
And whether to deploy troops involved all sorts of considerations. It wasn't just about money.
So Luan Zhengwei smiled and said, "I can put in a request for you!"
How naive. There was an old hand right here!
"But you already agreed!"
Schulman was thinking like a businessman. He'd accepted the other side's outrageous terms, yet they still hadn't reached an agreement.
It was infuriating.
With that kind of money, he might as well go to the mercenaries. Add the five-million-dollar deployment fee to a share of the postwar spoils, and someone would probably be willing to take a chance.
Li Bai wasn't even needed for Luan Zhengwei to see the anger on the other man's face. Calmly cradling his teacup, he said at an unhurried pace, "Young man, we're a regular army, not mercenaries!"
The other man was oversimplifying things.
With a job like this, he really ought to have just walked five hundred meters down the road, turned left, then right, and he'd have found a noisy tavern called Li Bai's Tavern. Then he could pick up a piece of chalk and write his requirements on the inside of the big blackboard by the entrance.
It wasn't that Schulman hadn't considered it. The tavern's true power behind the scenes was still Li Bai, so there was no getting around the man. Besides, in the previous battle, the mercenary coalition had been routed by the furious Armored Nightmare, leaving weapons and