“...one of the soldiers accidentally called out the missing soldier’s number. “
Or maybe intentional.
That is what I was thinking, maybe to cover for his buddy?
Which means he or one of the other soldiers also had to call out his own number otherwise the unit would have still been one short. Someone has some explaining to do.
Someone has some explaining to do because unless the author left something out of the story, a variety of charges could be brought up to attempted murder.