Intrude N313, Target Designate: TX-55

by MaskedSongbird

Summary:

Plucked from the sands of a settling battlefield in the middle east, a young Green Beret is selected to prove himself in training for an elite force, only to find himself in over his head on his first mission to avert catastrophe from a weapon of mass destruction. A novelization of the original MSX Metal Gear and origin story for Solid Snake.

Chapter 1: The Selection

Summary:

In which a young soldier is plucked from the sands of a settling battlefield and introduced to a world beyond his understanding.

MARCH 1, 1991

A BOMBED-OUT HOTEL OFF THE IRAQI-KUWAITI BORDER

0700 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

 

"Rise and shine, Lieutenant."

Second Lieutenant David Williams was rudely forced from his reverie by the familiar silhouette of his commanding officer, Captain Shawn Willard, looking none-too-pleased by the sorry state of his subordinate. The room stank of week-old stale arak, tea, and cigarette smoke. Half-empty glass bottles of gray, clear, and amber fluid carrying blackened cigarette butts stood on every available flat surface. The sheets of the bed that David was sleeping on were stained with sweat, piss, and bile. Someone had thrown up nearby, judging from the smell, and David had the sneaking suspicion that it was him. His head was pounding, and Willard's stomping around the room as he surveyed the scene wasn't helping.

"Had a party last night, did you? Celebrating the cease-fire?"

Willard's voice pummeled into David's head with the force of a jackhammer. David mumbled something slurred and unclear in response. Willard's mouth twisted up in a wry grin—or maybe it was a grimace? He forcefully grabbed David by the arm and dragged him out of bed. David was in a white undershirt and boxers. Where were his pants?

"You're no use to me like this, Williams," grunted Willard as he guided David to the bathroom, shoving him bodily into the shower. David fell over with a yelp, grabbing for purchase and yanking the shower curtain off of its rod down onto himself. Willard cranked the faucets and David yelled in shock as the freezing droplets pummeled his skin. How could water be so cold? In this heat?

Now fully awake, David's senses were coming back to him, though the headache was no less painful. He pulled himself up out of the tub, trying and failing to keep from slipping on the porcelain. Willard caught him to make sure he wouldn't fall over and crack his head open on the tile. David awkwardly stood up at attention in an attempt to greet his CO properly.

"Good morning, sir!" David grunted.

Willard shook his head. "Get up and get dressed, Williams. You've got new orders. You're going stateside."

David looked at Willard quizzically. "Sir?"

The two men walked back into the luxury suite that David had staked out for his own the previous night as he started to remember. His squad, Lima Company, had found a stash of booze in the hotel lobby and after they'd heard word of the announced cease-fire from President Bush, they had decided to celebrate the end of a successful campaign. At some point, someone must have guided him into this hotel room so he could sleep. Willard gestured to the pile of clothes where David's BDU lay, and David quickly started to dress himself as Willard explained.

"War's over, Williams. You're getting reassigned somewhere back home. There's a chopper waiting outside to take you to the airfield, where you'll be picked up to fly back to Virginia."

"What about the others? Are they going home too, sir?"

Willard shook his head. "Our work's not done here, yet."

"Then why me?"

David hiked his pack onto his shoulder as Willard led him to the door. "Information's on a need-to-know basis, Lieutenant, and whoever it is that wants to see you is higher up the chain than me. Maybe you impressed somebody."

David frowned. He was a nobody. There had to have been plenty of others more deserving of going home than him. What made him so special? Willard saw the look on David's face and lightly punched him in the arm. "'Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die,' kid. You know that. Go on. The chopper leaves at 0730."

Not even really enough time to say goodbye to more than a few people on the way out then, David thought to himself. 

Great…

 

---

 

24 HOURS LATER

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

 

It was like something out of an episode of Twin Peaks. Not five minutes after Lt. David Williams stepped off onto the tarmac of the Ronald Reagan/Washington International Airport, was he met by two men in suits and black shades: one with red hair and the other with black. "Good morning, Lt. Williams. Did you have a nice flight?"

"It was alright," David replied as he rotated his head to stretch his neck, still stiff from the long flight.

The red-headed government spook spoke first. "We're here to escort you to a meeting with the brass in the Pentagon. If you'll please follow us right this way, sir?"

David's raised his eyebrows in surprise. The Pentagon? Top brass? Whatever this was, it was big—frighteningly so. Whatever he'd done, right or wrong, had gotten the attention of some powerful people. If only he could ask these G-Men, but he had an inkling that he wasn't in the position to be asking any questions, and these men would not take 'no' for an answer. David shook his head and followed the agents' beckoning into the back seat of a black sedan.

The drive was short, but quiet. The air felt heavy. David wanted to crack open the tinted window of the door he sat at but thought better of it. The sedan glided smoothly on the road leading up to the military checkpoint, where the MPs checked the agents' IDs. When they eventually parked, David stepped out and looked on in awe at the entrance of one of the most well-defended buildings on Earth.

He was led through winding hallways of varying elevation. The building seemed to be constructed in such a way as to be intentionally confusing to navigate. David supposed that made sense. What better way to buy time for capturing any potential intruders? After what felt like hours of walking, the agents stopped at a nondescript door, leading David through what was by all appearances an ordinary office with cubicles throughout. On their way through, they passed by a wall covered in what David could only assume was some of the most expensive and powerful computer equipment that money can buy.

The agents stopped David outside of a wooden door labeled "Conference Room." The blinds to the window were open, and David could see his audience: Secretary of State Richard Cheney, General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, General and Joint Chief of Staff for the Army Gordon R. Sullivan, and a fourth man with an eyepatch whom David didn't recognize.

"Alright, Lt. Williams. They're waiting for you. Go on inside. We'll be waiting out here," said the dark-haired agent. David gave a shaky nod in return and walked through the door, closing it behind him.

"Good morning, gentlemen," David greeted the group with a salute.

"Good morning, Lt. Williams," answered Gen. Powell, answering the salute in kind. "Please, sit down."

As David complied with the general's order, the fourth man with an eyepatch stood up and walked over to the window to the hall, closing the blinds before sitting back down. The man with the eyepatch looked to David to be in his mid-fifties or sixties with graying hair and a well-trimmed beard. He was wearing a long brown coat over what looked to be an Army dress uniform, with a pair of black gloves covering both his hands. His posture made David think he'd had a rod of steel in his spine. As he sat, he was completely still, eyeing David with an intensity that made him uneasy.

General Colin Powell had two manila folders in front of him, one closed, the other open. Based on some of the photographs in the pile littering the table, the open folder must be a copy of David's file: he recognized locations from his previous mission with Lima Company. Powell caught him looking.

"Do you know why you're here, Lieutenant?" he asked.

David shook his head. "No, sir."

Powell glanced over the documents in front of him, then passed copies around to the other members of the table on his side. It was a show—there was no way everyone at that table hadn't already been briefed on its contents. The whole thing was expressly for David's benefit, and he knew it.

He clenched his sweaty fists. What he wouldn't give for a cigarette right now.

"Second Lieutenant David Richard Williams," Powell read. "Born August 5, 1972. Orphan. Bounced around in the foster care system most of your life. Joined the United States Army in early 1990, made O-1 later that year as a Green Beret, after which you were sent with Company L-325 to Kuwait as part of Operation Desert Sabre. That about right?" Powell looked to David, waiting for an answer.

"Yes sir, that is correct."

"You're pretty young for a Green Beret, aren't you?" said Gen. Sullivan. "The average age of even low-ranking Green Berets is thirty-one. Even the younger boys don't tend to be younger than twenty. So, how'd you get selected?"

"Says here your most recent foster family, the Williamses, were former military," said Cheney. "You get your daddy to pull some strings? You a butter bar?"

David gritted his teeth before taking a breath and forcing himself to relax. "No, sir. I earned my way in, just like everybody else."

Sullivan looked over some of the photos. "Your company was involved in the destruction of Anti-Air radar installations in the rear of the Iraqi tank lines. Do you remember?"

"Yes, sir."

"At around the same time, there were rumors of a stealth operation involving the assassination of some high-ranking members in the Iraqi military—these men were part of Saddam Hussein's personal guard. Do you happen to know anything about that?"

A test. This is a test. 

David replied, "No, sir. I cannot claim to have any knowledge of such an operation."

"So, you're saying you were not involved on the attempts on these men's lives, which helped to ensure the Air Force's surprise attack on the enemy flank in Kuwait? That you were not involved in any way?" Powell asked.

"Sir, I can claim no involvement or knowledge of any such events."

"And if I were to say the name, 'Operation Desert Snake,' that wouldn't ring any bells for you?"

There was a noticeably short moment of silence as David allowed himself to take a breath before lying to four of the most powerful men he had ever met.

"Sir, I cannot claim knowledge of any such operation, nor would I be disposed to discuss it if, indeed, such an operation was to exist."

Powell exchanged looks with the two men on either side of him, before glancing at the man in the eyepatch. The eyepatch man nodded to Powell, before pulling a cigar from his coat pocket. "Do you know who I am, kid?" he asked as he struck a match.

David shook his head slightly. "No, sir."

The old man nodded and puffed, shaking the flame from the match before throwing it into a nearby wastebasket. "No, I don't suppose you would. Technically speaking, I don't exist. There are maybe four people on the entire planet who know my real name, if they're still alive. I'm mostly known in certain parts of the world by my title. They call me Big Boss."

David couldn't help but smirk. It sounded like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon. He looked at the other three men. None of them were smiling.

"Don't laugh," said Powell seriously. "In the parts of the world where his title is known, he's known as the greatest soldier to ever live."

Big Boss waved his hand. "It's alright. Can't blame the kid for finding it a little silly." He turned to David. "It's a codename, a relic of the '60's. I was awarded it in recognition of my services in a mission I undertook for the CIA. Of course, no such title or rank exists in the military or the government—it's mainly set dressing. It does have its perks, though. Within the Army, the title confers on me the same status as a Colonel—lets me cut through red tape now and again. It got me the resources and the funds needed to start a little side project of my own, which has since blossomed into something much greater. It's the reason why you're here."

Powell slid the closed folder across the table to David. When he opened it, he was greeted with an image of a fox clutching a Bowie knife in its teeth glaring back at him. Underneath the logo, the words 'HIGH TECH SPECIAL FORCES UNIT FOXHOUND' in big block letters. David thumbed through the pages, most of which were almost completely blacked out with redactions.

He looked up at Powell. "Sir, what is this?"

"It's a special unit in the U.S. Army, at least on paper. While the Army has official jurisdiction over FOXHOUND, in practice it's more of an extra-legal paramilitary setup. As far as the public is concerned, this unit does not exist. It's the personal brainchild of Big Boss: it's a multi-ethnic and multinational group with members recruited from all over the world, not just the U.S. military; every member of its staff is a war veteran, coming from either a formal military or from a mercenary background. They specialize in solo or squad-based infiltration of combat zones in theatres of war that are too politically sensitive for the United States to be seen intervening in.

"Rhodesia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Zaire, the Congo, Vietnam, Zanzibar, Cambodia, Columbia, the Korean DMZ—you name the region, FOXHOUND's had a footprint in it. Everything from reconnaissance to logistical advisory to assassination and guerrilla campaigns. If it's important to the strategic interests of the United States and her allies, FOXHOUND gets it done; and you've been selected as a new potential candidate."

"You're asking me to join an illegal top-secret military assassination outfit?" David said, bewildered.

"Actually, no. We're not asking," Cheney replied, "You've been selected for training because we need someone like you. Your skills and experience are valuable, you already have top secret security clearance, and your youth means the U.S. government will be able to get a lot of mileage out of you. This meeting is a courtesy, nothing more."

"Don't worry too much about it, kid," Big Boss said, waving his arm dismissively with cigar in hand. "You're not being asked to join; you're being asked to train with us. Whether you actually become a member of FOXHOUND will depend on how you do in the final exam. To be honest, I've got my own reservations about you. I only accept the best, and this—," he motions to the file on the table, "isn't enough to tell me that you're it."

David looked to each man in turn. "Gentlemen, may I ask a question?"

"Ask it, Lieutenant," said Powell.

"If you're not sure I'll meet your standards," he nodded to Big Boss, "then why bring me here? Why tell me all this?"

"Because I'm sure," Powell replied, "and that's reason enough for why you're here. Now, there's a car waiting for you outside the building to take you to the transport to the training facility. Do you have any questions, before you go?"

So, it wasn't a choice. David was going, whether he wanted to or not. But next to the anxiety, there was also something else: a thrill, an excitement.

He'd been selected—over however many others—to serve his country in a manner that very few people knew existed, in an elite group with a fearsome reputation. To a young man like him, it was like asking a little boy if he wanted to join the G.I. Joes. Immediately, David was struck by the intense desire to prove himself, to show these men that their faith in him was not misplaced.

"About this training. What does it involve, and how long will it take?"

"The specifics will be covered in orientation, but the training itself lasts over the course of a little over three and a half years," Big Boss explained. "First, there's the standard selection courses for physical, mental and psychological fortitude with their respective exams, then several months of technical, medical, and survival training in various disciplines, including land navigation and HALO jumping. You'll also receive numerous courses in guerilla warfare, foreign languages, foreign history and politics, FOXHOUND-specific hand-to-hand combat techniques, and infiltration methods, including stealth, sabotage, and demolition.

"Your final exams consist of a training exercise that will be a simulation of a mission you might undertake, set up at a stateside United States military base of our choosing, after which you'll be granted your official codename, assigned to a team within the FOXHOUND unit, and you'll be given a minimum three days of R&R before being activated for service."

"What was that about code names?"

"Like the general said, as an extra-legal paramilitary operation, we send operatives all over the world into conflict zones that the United States can't be seen intervening in. While we specialize in solo and squad-based infiltration, operatives will often have a support team to call via radio. Therefore, to prevent information leaks that would clue in people outside the need-to-know of FOXHOUND's existence and the US's involvement, this support team must refer to each operative by a codename. It consists of the name of an animal, preceded by a personal identifier unique to each operative. You'll learn more when you get to our training facilities."

Big Boss puffed on his cigar, letting the silence drag out for a few more minutes. "Any more questions?"

"Where are the training facilities?"

"That's classified. You'll be transported there using various means, but you'll be blindfolded and stripped of your sense of direction. If you make it into the program, then you'll be cleared to know the location."

"When do I start?"

Big Boss pointed at the closed door of the conference room. "As soon as you walk out that door, those two gentlemen in suits will escort you back to the airport, where you will board a C-130 that will take you to the first of many destinations."

David and the other men stood up from their seats. David saluted the ranking officers, who saluted him in return. Big Boss walked around the table to stand in front of David, looking him in the eye. "The next time we see each other will be if you succeed in the training, at your induction ceremony. Other than that, we likely won't meet again," said the older man.

"I won't let you down, sir," David said firmly.

"That remains to be seen." Big Boss turned to the Secretary and Joint Chiefs. "If there's not anything else…?"

"No, Boss. That will be all," replied General Powell.

"Then we're done here," Big Boss said curtly as he left the room.

David wanted to ask Powell why he was chosen. Why him, and no one else from Lima Company, or anyone else outside of it, for that matter? Even though he had performed well in Operation Desert Snake, he didn't believe his skills were any greater than any other soldier. The truth was, they weren't—David's place could have been taken by any other Special Forces member; there was nothing unique about David in terms of his skill. David himself never got the chance to ask, because as soon as the meeting was over, he was escorted back to Reagan to board his flight on the C130, but he wasn't the only one curious. Once Cheney asked General Powell and General Sullivan the same question—why David, above all else?

General Powell only had this to say: "There are forces at work in the United States federal government that are far above even all our pay grades. These forces are not to be questioned or trifled with, and when the order is given, the only correct response is to obey."

As military men, he and Sullivan knew that better than just about anyone else. These forces have demanded that David join FOXHOUND. For what purpose is a mystery, but as the saying goes: "ours is not to question why."

 

---

 

MARCH 5, 1991

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

GREAT LAKES TERRITORY

 

The trip, besides being spent mostly blindfolded, was largely uneventful. After landing in Michigan, David and his handlers were loaded onto a Jeep. David was robbed of his sense of direction, so he would have no idea in what direction he was traveling. They traded vehicles often, with David hearing new voices indicating a change in the personnel escorting him. At one point, they stopped to sleep for the night. Then, they boarded a boat—a ferry? Once they reached their destination, the blindfold was removed, and David was able to survey his new surroundings outside of the vehicle.

It looked like any other military training complex. There was a large grassy concourse with an obstacle course and a track and field pitch at the center, where groups of men and women could be seen marching and performing PT exercises; on the other side were rows of short flat-topped brick buildings which David identified as the barracks.

At the far end of the concourse were a few larger buildings with triangular green roofs, which he supposed were probably where the admin building and some or most of the classrooms were located. If there was more to the complex, David couldn't see it from where he was standing.

One of the G-Men in his company handed him a sheaf of papers and gestured to one of the far side buildings with a triangular roof. "You're to report to the front desk of Administration, give them these documents, and await further instruction."

No farewells, no further conversation, no opportunity given to ask follow-up questions. The government agents got back into their car and drove off, disappearing into the nearby woods.

David walked to the admin building, wondering what made this place so special. When he entered to the reception area, he found two men at the front desk. Both men were in uniform and engaged in what seemed to be light conversation. The one manning the desk looked to be a little older than David, clean cut with a shaved head, likely another recruit.

The man talking to him was a middle-aged Japanese man with dark sunglasses. The Japanese man had a gruff demeanor, face hardened and tough. He had bright blonde hair—a rarity for a Japanese person, even in the States. The most striking feature about him, however, was his injury—the man had only one arm, with the right sleeve of his dress uniform pinned to his side with a safety pin, and in his other arm he gripped a crutch. As David approached, the conversation stopped briefly as he turned to appraise the new arrival.

"You must be the newest recruit," said the Japanese man, leaning his crutch against himself as he extended his one hand. "The name is Kazuhira McDonnel Miller. I'll be your survival and logistics instructor. Everyone here calls me 'Master Miller.' You will, too."

David shook the extended hand, which was a little awkward since he was forced to use his non-dominant hand due to Miller's injury. "Yes, sir. Lt. David Williams, sir."

David noted a lack of medals, rank patches, or any other status identifiers on either man's uniform, which struck him as odd. Choosing to play it safe, he moved to salute the elder Miller, but Miller waved him off. "We don't do that here," Miller said. "We try to mimic battlefield conditions as much as possible throughout most of your training. In the real world, saluting a CO is a good way to get him shot, so we don't do salutes here, either."

"Is that also why the lack of rank patches?" David ventured.

"You noticed? That's right. While there's no rule against wearing them here on base, it's standard practice for FOXHOUNDers to go on missions in either civilian attire or in specialized uniforms that have the unit patches removed for the duration of the mission. Our methods are a little unorthodox, which has led to the letting go of certain…unnecessary formalities which you may be otherwise used to. But make no mistake—we're still a disciplined force with a strict code of conduct, and you will be expected to act like it. Are we clear?"

A very strange way to open a conversation, but David was not going to break rank. "Yes sir, perfectly clear."

Miller turned to the man at the desk. "I'll leave you to it," he said, before hobbling out of the lobby.

The other man turned to David with a neutral expression. "He's a hard man to approach, but you'll get used to it. Name's Alligator. I'm guessing you're the new guy. You got your papers handy?"

David nodded and handed them over. "May I ask a question, uh, Alligator?"

The man called Alligator looked up briefly from the file he was perusing to acknowledge David. "Ask away."

David silently noted that Alligator's speech was oddly informal given that David was a new recruit. Did that mean that they were the same rank? The lack of formal ranks on any of the uniforms or modes of address here made things confusing on that front. 

"I get the practice of not wearing unit patches while deployed," David said, thinking of the times he'd had to wear 'sterile' uniforms during deployment, "but even the Berets wear standard uniforms in garrison. If FOXHOUND is officially under Army jurisdiction, why do they get special treatment? And why the lack of rank patches?"

"Didn't you hear Master Miller? The conditions of this place are supposed to simulate real battlefields. So, all our fatigues are 'sterile,' just like any other SF unit on deployment. As for rank patches, all graduated FOXHOUNDers are the same, there are no higher and lower ranks here—everyone answers to the Boss and the brass but are otherwise of equal status; it's meant to be a reflection of the fact that all FOXHOUNDers are supposed to be capable of being solo operators. You can request a unit patch if and when you graduate—a lot of people do, as a badge of honor. But it's not required, and you'd have to remove it while on mission, anyway."

Alligator pulled out a few sheets of paper once he'd finished reading, and set them aside, bending down to reach a filing cabinet. "They'll start you out with team training in your first year, just like any other unit. Put you in familiar conditions that'll help you acclimate to the culture here. You make it to your second year though, and you'll be assigned a personal dorm; maybe you'll have a roommate, maybe you won't. As time goes on, you'll be expected to do more and more on your own, without help. Where is it…? Ah, here we are."

He slapped a form on the desk. "Read through, fill out, and sign these. We need to make sure your next of kin and medical information is up to date. I'll enter in what I've got here while you fill it out and have your designation and team assignment shortly."

As David dutifully followed his instructions, Alligator continued, "You were asking why we get special treatment on regs even though the Army owns us. Two reasons: one, we don't technically exist. Gives us a lot of leeway in terms of how we run things. Two, our relationship with the Army is more of a lineage thing than anything else—the Boss was originally a Green Beret himself before he joined the CIA, and he used his contacts in the Army to get the resources required for him to found this unit." Alligator lifted up his hand, extending a finger to illustrate each point.

"Army might be in operational control," he continued, "but make no mistake, this is and always was Big Boss's baby, and he runs the show here. Aside from a gap in the late 70's and early 80's when another couple of officers he picked filled in for him, it pretty much just always was that way."

"A gap? What do you mean?"

Alligator shrugged. "Before my time. Apparently, Big Boss had a brief retirement from FOXHOUND for almost a decade. Maybe another paramilitary mission. I've never looked too far into it myself, but scuttlebutt says he spent some time in Central America training guerilla forces and cultivating intelligence assets. Other people say he assisted in training the Hamid in Afghanistan. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. I'm not cleared to know, so I never asked. You know how it is. Doesn't really matter. I don't put much stock in rumors, anyway—the Boss doesn't seem like the sort of person you'd saddle with a simple training op to me, but what do I know?"

David handed back the forms while Alligator typed on his computer. A few minutes pass in silence before a nearby dot matrix printer began spitting out multiple sheets of paper. Alligator grabbed these, putting most of them into David's file and holding up one last one, from which he tore off a strip and handed to David. David looked at it: on this short strip of paper were block letters, stating the following:

 

'DAVID RICHARD WILLIAMS

DOB: 08/05/72

LOCATION OF BIRTH: ARLINGTON, VA

SEX: MALE

BLOOD TYPE: O NEGATIVE

KNOWN AFFILIATIONS:

UNITED STATES ARMY SPECIAL FORCES GREEN BERET, (RANK: 2ND LIEUTENANT)

KNOWN ALIAS(ES): N/A

ASSIGNED TEAM: SIGMA

ASSIGNED CODE: CRICKET'

 

David looked up from the sheet. "What is this?"

Alligator reached out, taking it from him. "Is the information correct?"

"Yes, but what are Sigma and Cricket?"

Alligator tore off the personal information from the sheet, leaving only the assigned team and code sections, which he handed back to David. "Sigma is the callsign of the team you've been assigned to. They'll be your squad for the first year of your training here. Cricket is the code name you've been randomly assigned by our database. You'll get a new one if you graduate, but for now, that's the only name you go by from this moment forward. Until you either fail out of training or retire from FOXHOUND, the individual known as 2nd Lt. David Richard Williams no longer exists. Indicate to me whether you understand what I've just told you."

Mystified, David could only nod, while Alligator placed his file into the filing cabinet and locked it away. The click of the locking mechanism had a ring of finality to it. Everything that David Williams was on paper was now seemingly out of reach. Cricket gulped a little as Alligator picked up the phone at his desk from the receiver and dialed a few numbers.

"Good morning, Wallaby. This is Alligator," Alligator said. "I've got a new arrival here I need to escort to his squad for orientation. I need you to send someone to take over the desk while I'm gone. I'm leaving now. Thanks."

Big Boss, alligator, cricket, wallaby—it all felt so surreal, like he'd stepped into a Looney Tunes short. Any minute now, Cricket expected to hear Daffy and Bugs arguing over whether it was Duck Season or Wabbit Season, but there was no hunter with a speech impediment, no stuttering pig to signal the end of the show. But the fever dream he'd entered since leaving Kuwait refused to let him wake up, and he found that he had no other recourse than to just keep rolling with it in the hopes that eventually it would all make sense.

Notes:

Been a long time since I last showed any interest in writing fanfics. Figured it was time to try again, as long as my attention span will allow. I think this one shows some promise, even though it's a little heavy on exposition and dialogue for my own tastes. It was originally going to be even longer, until I realized that the last paragraph made an ideal stopping place for pacing purposes. I hope you all like it, and hopefully I should have more for you in the future!

Chapter 2: The First Year

Summary:

In which the newly christened Cricket is introduced to his new team and the unit of FOXHOUND as he begins his training.

MARCH 5, 1991

FOXHOUND COVERT TRAINING FACILITY

SIGMA SQUAD BARRACKS

 

Through the double doors and around the corner, Alligator led Cricket into the garrison. Inside the barracks were two sets of bunk beds on either side. A few of the beds had occupants: a red-haired man with a scar on his eye was perusing a Playboy magazine, a tanned and stout brunette woman was sitting in her bed and appeared to be in the process of disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling what Cricket assumed was her personally issued M16A2 rifle. She was muttering something in frustration in a language Cricket didn't recognize.

Cricket felt a pang of sympathy—he didn't know of anyone back home who was fond of the M16A2 platform due to its default sighting arrangement, long length of pull and the imbalanced barrel profile; and if this woman was from Europe like he suspected from her mutterings, then she probably preferred the FAMAS as far as NATO rifles went.

A third man with silver hair was sleeping in one of the far beds. Sitting at a desk on Cricket's left next to one of the closer bunk beds, a shy-looking man with freckles was hard at work tinkering with some kind of electronic device. Finally, there was a man with jet black hair chewing on a match as he leaned against the closer beds on the right, reading a book whose title was turned away so Cricket couldn't see.

"Room, attention!" called the black-haired cadet upon their entry, and the four other occupants dropped what they were doing and lined up on either side of the hall along the bunk beds. The black-haired man put his match in his pocket.

"At ease," Alligator intoned, and the cadets stood at parade rest. He turned to the man with black hair. "Salamander. I've got a new arrival for your team. Code name is Cricket, Green Beret. I understand you have an empty bunk needs filling?"

The man called Salamander nodded. "Understood. I'll show him the ropes."

Alligator replied, "Alright. Orders are to proceed with orientation and get him settled in. I've gotta get back to admin."

"Copy that," Salamander said with a sigh as Alligator turned and walked out. The team fell out of parade rest and resumed the activities they were working on before Cricket showed up.

Salamander clapped a hand on Cricket's shoulder. "So, you're the FNG, huh? Well, welcome to Sigma Squad—your home for the next year of your life. I'm Salamander, like you heard. You can call me Sal if you want, brevity's good. That's Fruit Bat over at the desk; he's our resident tech specialist. The lady over there is Honey Badger."

Bat looked up and gave a nervous wave. Honey Badger didn't acknowledge the two of them except with a wave of her fingers, preferring not to look away from her work. Sal motioned to the scarred redhead, who nodded up at them from his magazine.

"The guy with the girly mag is Vole, expert at traps and concealment; and last but not least, we have Tortoise."

"Guten Morgen," Vole said cheerfully in a thick accent. Tortoise simply made a motion to wave them away, trying to not be bothered as he returned to his nap.

"You're German?" Cricket asked Vole, who nodded.

"Ja. Ich bin in Ramstein geboren. I was born near the American Ramstein Airbase back in '71, to Deutsch parents. I was selected for the program due to mein service in the Grenzschutzgruppe Neun as a counter-terror policeman und sniper."

"Oh, that's right," Cricket remembered. "FOXHOUND recruits internationally."

Vole nodded. "You have heard of the GSG9?"

Cricket replied, "Yeah, I know West Germany set it up after that Black September incident in '72. But I thought you were a police agency, not a military one. Kind of like SWAT?"

"Ja, genau! There were a lot of German politicians who objected to the formation, worried that it would bring up memories of the SS. The idea of Deutsch paramilitaries understandably can put some people on edge. Legally speaking, GSG9 officers strictly act as noncombatants by international law und can only act outside of the Bundesrepublik's borders with the consent of the host nation. Though we have been utilized before, Deutschland is proud to say that there have been very few instances in which we needed to discharge our weapons while on mission."

"So, what brought you here?" asked Cricket.

"Honestly? I was bored, und underutilized. The reunification of Deutschland last year didn't help. We'd reached an unprecedented time of peace, und it was making me restless. All those drills, all those skills, und I had nothing to show for it. I was top of my class, but I was left to waste away. I made my misgivings known, und someone must have heard me, because I was tapped for the FOXHOUND program soon after."

"How does that work, exactly? FOXHOUND is officially under US Army jurisdiction, right?"

"I believe the official excuse is that it is an inter-service joint operation between NATO und NATO-allied countries. If you are a member of a NATO country's military force or if you have prior military experience und are not currently affiliated with the government or military of an opposition nation such as for example the People's Republic of China or any member of the Warsaw Pact, then you may be eligible to train with us, assuming you can make the cut."

"That second part about not being affiliated with opposition nations is how we get people like Tortoise," Salamander interjected, pointing to the sleeping man. "He used to serve in the Red Army before he got turned by the British Secret Intelligence Service. After he renounced his ties to the Soviets, he was tagged as a possible recruit not long after."

"Is everybody here but me a foreign national?" Cricket asked.

"Nope. I'm home-grown USA, just like you. Arizona, born and raised."

"And the others?"

"Fruit Bat's Canadian—came from 427 Squadron," Sal pointed to the techie at his desk. "His specialty was aviation and electronics. Pretty sure he was a pilot. Honey's from the French Foreign Legion, but I think she's originally from Chechnya, because I've overheard her muttering to herself in Chechen sometimes. She's fluent in French and Russian, speaks a little English, and is an expert in guerilla tactics and weapons systems."

"She's Chechen?"

"Yeah, apparently, she left shortly after Chechnya started talking about declaring independence from the Soviets. I don't really know the details about the circumstances she was dealing with that pushed her to leave though, or why she decided to sign on with the French." Sal began to look very uncomfortable. "She doesn't like to talk about it."

"Why not?"

Sal raised an eyebrow. "You ask a lot of questions, don't you? I can see why they went with Noisy Cricket."

Cricket rubbed the back of his head, feeling self-conscious. "Uh…sorry."

Sal shrugged. "You can ask her if you're feeling brave, but don't say I didn't warn you."

"Fair enough."

Sal pointed at an empty bottom bunk at the far end of the room, underneath the sleeping Tortoise. "That one's yours," he explained. "There's a desk next to the beds; you'll have to share with your bunk mate. PT starts at 0400 every day, mess time is at noon. We march to and from classes and exercises together."

"Basic training all over again…" Cricket muttered.

"Pretty much." Sal shrugged with a chuckle. "Hey, don't sweat it. It's only for a year. After that, you either wash out or you get your own room. It's win-win for the rest of us, either way."

"What do you mean?" Cricket asked.

Suddenly, Sal became much more serious, and a darker edge creeped into his voice. "For the first year, we're a team, and we'll be graded accordingly. But this year is very much a transition period to help you get out of the mindset of traditional armed forces; after it's over, they move you into working on your own. That's what they told you, right?"

Cricket nodded.

"Well, what they didn't tell you is there's only so many openings in the unit for graduating cadets; and you know they only accept the best of the best. Everyone in this room, and in all the other barracks: they aren't just your classmates. They're your competition. Today, this year, we're a team—we're comrades. Next year, we'll be rivals."

Cricket gulped. "Wait, so how are we supposed to trust each other and work together?"

"Because that's what's necessary to move to the next stage. Because that's the mission, and the mission is the one thing we can believe in with absolute certainty, absolute confidence. So, you won't have to worry about betrayal or hazing or anything like that here. You'll be tested, sure. But if you work with us and you aren't deadweight, we'll make sure you get through this with us. I'll make sure of it, as your TL."

"But after that," he continued, "you'll be on your own. This isn't whatever unit you came from before. You either climb or you fall of your own accord—don't ever assume or expect someone else will be there to save your ass."

Sal took two steps towards his bunk before looking back. "Sorry for being so intense about it. I ain't trying to spook you, kid. You seem alright. Just figured it'd be better for you to understand your situation sooner rather than later."

"You sound like you've seen it from experience."

Sal laughs. "This isn't my first attempt at getting into FOXHOUND. I've washed out before." He shrugged. "It happens. There's no shame in it—just getting this far is something that's considered worthy of respect around here. Anyway, rest up while you can: this is the last day of R&R before Hell Week starts. Got a big day tomorrow."

"Do you know what the curriculum is going to be like the first month?"

"Nothing you haven't seen before training with the Berets. They'll probably seem more like practice drills and refresher courses to you. Field medical training, deep water diving, range time, and so on. Should all be familiar to you already. Don't worry, it'll be like riding a bike. You might start learning some technical stuff outside your wheelhouse if you haven't already been trained in them, though. Curricula details change from year to year as tech and tactics get updated, so you'll just have to see."

Cricket nodded. "Got it."

With the introduction finished, Sal picked up his book and settled onto his previous position of leaning against his bunk bed. Cricket moved over to his bunk and dropped off his rucksack, looking over his bed, top sheet and blanket neatly tucked, pillow unwrinkled. He pushed down on the firm mattress.

Just like Basic all over again, he once again mused to himself as he laid down.

Thinking about how tired he felt, he decided to follow his bunkmate's example and get some shuteye. He closed his eyes and let sleep take him.

 

---

 

The first few weeks of training went by in a blur, just like Sal had said. The days started with PT exercises in the wee hours of the morning, where Sigma ran and marched as a unit for over four miles over the rugged terrain of the surrounding countryside outside of the base, occasionally stopping to perform whatever exercises had been selected by Salamander for that given morning. When they returned, they'd immediately wash up and go to the mess hall for a quick breakfast, followed by marching to classes.

Mondays were medical drills for trauma and triage in the early afternoon, followed by lectures on both foreign and domestic NATO and Warsaw Pact weapons platforms. Cricket was exposed to, it seemed like, every model of every type of small-arms imaginable over the course of the year. Just when he thought the education was complete, there was a new weapon to go over as well as their strengths, weaknesses, and assembly.

On the first Monday of training, he asked Master Miller, who led the class: "I understand the need to familiarize ourselves with weapon systems to be used against us in terms of their relative effectiveness against the arms we carry into battle, but why do we need to learn how to assemble and maintain each and every one?"

In response, Miller faced the rest of the class. "Who here knows the answer to Cricket's question?"

Another cadet stood up. "Sir!"

Miller nodded in acknowledgement for the cadet to continue. "Speak, Rabbit."

The cadet called Rabbit answered, "Because of the nature of the missions that FOXHOUND undertakes, operatives are expected to procure all weapons and tools on-site in the AO, to prevent the host country from being able to identify the presence of US involvement."

"Correct," Miller said, letting Rabbit sit back down. "On-Site Procurement (OSP) is a standard operating procedure for FOXHOUND. If the enemy can deduce your country of origin based on the tools you employ, then the mission is a failure before it's even started. Since most FOXHOUND missions take place both in and out of zones of conflict in countries outside of US jurisdiction, having an American operative present is effectively an act of war. Our job is to win wars before they break out, not after."

Miller pauses for emphasis. "If you're doing your job correctly, the enemy will never even know you were there and even if they do find you, there will be no witnesses to tell the tale. Therefore, the only weapons that will be available to you will be the same armaments that are available to the enemy. It's imperative that you are familiar with as many different weapon systems as possible, as they will most likely end up being what you use to defend yourself. So, we will train with every military and civilian weapon that is available worldwide. When we go to the gun ranges, you will be expected to practice with all of them. Both NATO and Soviet ammunition is held in our armories here on-site."

True to Miller's word, the afternoons after classes three times a week were spent at the ranges at the far end of the base. Here, cadets practiced with full and semi-automatic rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, sidearms, and grenades in various stances and positions. The sounds of the range were filled with the cacophony of gunfire and small explosions. Every weapon introduced in Monday lectures was used that same week, and the assembly and firing drills would occur multiple times throughout.

On Tuesdays, the classes were foreign languages, politics, and history, as well as SIGINT communications. Cricket himself was already decently fluent in Arabic, which enabled him to test out of the classes for it, so instead he was made to begin learning French, Turkish, and Russian to start with. He wondered if these languages were chosen specifically to help him with communicating with the members of Sigma Squad for whom English was not their native tongue. If so, then why not include German as well?

Perhaps it was so he would not be overloaded with more coursework than he could handle. Although thankfully, German had many loanwords derived from English and French, so he was able to pick it up some just by talking to Vole naturally. Eventually he would be given to learn Mandarin, Japanese, and Afrikaans as well over the course of the year.

Regarding SIGINT radio transmissions, Cricket found Fruit Bat to be an invaluable ally in studying as he leveraged Bat's experience with radar and radio systems. "A friend of mine from the navy showed me how some of the naval helicopters would mount radar detection systems in the radome in the nose of the 'copter for weather detection or along the side for ocean search-and-rescue operations," Bat had explained.

"They make for good detection for knowing how far the nearest storm is you might fly into, or whether you might be flying over a submarine that's close enough to the surface if you're flying low enough. I've recommended to my superiors before to have such a system mounted on my bird as well, but alas—le boss des bécosses—they told me there wasn't enough of a need to justify it." Bat smirked ruefully. "Leave it to the bean counters to ignore a potential battlefield advantage, eh?"

Cricket chuckled, thinking of how many operations he'd heard of that had gone awry from bad intel or from troops being poorly equipped. Although now that he thought of it, the latter is probably going to be an ongoing occurrence for him from now on—in fact, based on what Miller had told him, it was kind of the point.

Together, Bat and Cricket studied from the various codebooks that FOXHOUND had compiled for deciphering electronic transmissions, although their instructor was quick to remind them that a savvy enemy would be constantly changing and modifying their codes daily so they shouldn't be reliant purely on what's already been recorded.

On Wednesdays, Sigma conducted demolitions drills out in the fields on the side of the concourse opposite the shooting range, where they were instructed in the proper planting, detonation, disarming, and retrieval of claymore land mines and plastic explosives, as well as how to properly handle and fire anti-armor weapons like the RPG and the Carl Gustav.

Much like the shooting range, these lessons were fairly straightforward for Cricket. He and Honey Badger would often take bets on who could disarm their dummy explosives the fastest, who could land their shots more on target. When Cricket would win, Honey would swear loudly and roughly in Russian, but when she won she'd spend the rest of the day walking around triumphantly with a smug, shit-eating grin.

Cricket liked Honey; she wore her heart on her sleeve, didn't mess around and always let you know where you stood.

On Thursdays, Sigma would run several miles from the base to a beach on the lake, where they'd conduct swimming and diving drills. They also practiced piloting Zodiacs, rowboats, sailboats, and speedboats of various types and sizes around the lake. The waters were always cold, even in the springtime. When they returned to land, they would take an alternate route back to the base, with a different cadet leading the way each time with a map and compass, to test their land navigation skills.

On Fridays, Sigma would be transported via truck with bags over their heads to a designated airfield where they would board a small aircraft from which they'd perform parachute drills. Having been certified for Airborne, Cricket was no stranger to jumping out of airplanes. Tortoise and Honey Badger had some trouble, though. The first time they ran the drill, they simply stood at the ramp leading out of the plane, nervously staring at the yawning chasm of the sky after the other members of the team. Cricket stepped behind them and pushed them both out of the aircraft, screaming in terror as Cricket dove after them.

When they had landed safely on the target set on the ground, Honey slugged Cricket hard in the face, cursing him out in an incoherent stream of French and Russian. Tortoise, for his part, looked stiff with fear, having been shaken by the experience. Once his wits returned to him, his face went white with barely contained rage as he hissed through his teeth in heavily accented English, "You would do well not to try anything like that again, Cricket."

Cricket shrugged, rubbing his cheek where Honey had struck him. "We needed to get you out of that plane somehow and flying back to base wasn't an option. Besides, you guys were blocking the way."

Honey marched off in a huff while Tortoise glared daggers at him for the rest of the day.

On Saturdays, Sigma joined the other cadet squads for CQC training. Master Miller also attended to advise while the instructor ran them through the motions.

"Many of you should already be familiar with Close-Quarters Combat training from your original units," Miller had said. "However, some of the techniques used in this martial self-defense system may be a little different to the CQC and CQB tactics you've been taught. Don't get cocky just because you think you already know the moves.

"Our system was personally developed by our very own Big Boss and has been in use since the early days of the Cold War. It is from this system that many other CQC fighting systems in the West are derived, and the Boss and FOXHOUND have been independently perfecting it ever since."

Miller stepped forward. He was wearing a bionic prosthetic arm that moved with a dexterity that Cricket had never seen before in a prosthetic limb—as the fingers flexed and folded, they moved with a quickness and accuracy that appeared uncanny as the hand rotated once 180 degrees to test its function. Miller looked about as comfortable with it as he did his own hand, and Cricket wondered to himself why he didn't wear this machine all the time. Similarly, Miller's crutch was gone, and he walked forward with the strength and confidence of a much younger man as he raised his arms to beckon to the recruits.

"Who would like to volunteer for a demonstration?"

Salamander stepped forward. "I will, sir!"

Miller cracked a smile, though the way he bared his teeth it was more like a grimace resembling how a beast bares its fangs. Cricket remembered seeing that look on drill instructors back in Basic. That level of eagerness never meant anything good for the recruit.

"Salamander, our returning cadet! This is the third year in a row you've challenged me on the first day. Trying to show off for the newbies, are we?"

If Salamander was bothered by the mention of his previous washouts, he didn't show it. "No, sir," he answered.

"Why not? Are you worried about being beaten by a one-armed old man?"

"No, sir!"

"Oh? Then maybe you're telling me that in three years straight of training, you haven't learned a damn thing?"

"No, sir!"

"Then get in here. Time to show your fellow recruits what you've learned!"

Miller tossed Salamander a piece of plastic, which Cricket realized was a fake knife. A handicap? He looked over to Salamander, who showed no trace of insult or irritation, but simply raised his hands as he got into a combat stance, his dominant hand gripping the plastic knife's handle. He took two steps forward onto the mat but otherwise waited for Miller to make the first move.

Both men stood very still for a few seconds, which felt like hours. The tension in the air was thick as the class watched with rapt attention. Miller took a step to the side and, seeming to sense an opening, Sal rushed forward with a thrust of his knife. Miller moved like water as he grabbed Sal's wrist and flowed around him, flipping the knife out of Sal's grip and sending it flying with his bionic hand's palm pushing against the flat of the blade before pushing Sal down to the ground with his other hand.

Not to be dissuaded, Sal lowered his center of gravity to pull Miller down with him as he turned over onto his back and swept at Miller's legs with a kick, forcing Miller to let go and step back. Sal rolled back to his feet while Miller positioned himself between Sal and the fallen knife. Miller threw a punch and Salamander tried to duck beneath it, realizing too late that it was a feint as Miller grabbed Salamander's shoulder and used his own momentum to spin him around so Miller could grab him in a headlock, kicking Sal in the back of the knee to put him off balance so Miller could keep Sal in his hold while Sal struggled.

"Evade, disarm, strike, and hold," Miller grunted out with a little effort. "These four movements are the cornerstones of any effective CQC engagement. Once the enemy is in your hold, they are at your mercy. Interrogate, disable, capture, or kill; what you do with them is up to you."

Miller swept Sal's weak footing out from under him and pushed him onto the ground on his stomach before wrapping his arms and legs around Sal's right arm in an arm bar, pulling it back while sitting on Sal's back so that he couldn't move. "But whatever you do, do it quick," Miller continued in a much more relaxed tone of voice, "so you don't give him time to react."

Salamander tapped out with his free arm and Miller let go and stood up to extend a hand to help Sal to his feet. "You've been practicing," Miller said approvingly. "Good."

Sal moved back to the squad with some satisfaction on his face. Miller turned to the rest of the class.

"Now. Who's next?"

From that point forward, every Saturday was spent learning and honing FOXHOUND's various CQC techniques. Based on the emphasis on throws and using the opponent's momentum against him, Cricket believed that the base of the system must have involved some Jiu Jitsu, Judo, and Tae Kwon Do, with some Krav Maga for the weapon disarms, but there was something about the root of the system that Cricket couldn't put his finger on that made it unique that fascinated him.

Finally, at the end of the full week, there were Sundays, which were by far Cricket's favorite. On these days, Sigma Squad would run various obstacle courses, combat simulations and various other team-based exercises that gave them all a chance to practically apply the skills and knowledge that they were being taught in the classrooms and on the range. They were survival and combat sims that mostly consisted of various war games where they would be pitted against the other first-year teams in the compound: Capture the Flag, Hostage Rescue, and so on.

It was around the six-month mark of training where these games would get truly interesting, as he began to see that some members of the FOXHOUND selection process were more than what they seemed.

 

---

 

SEPTEMBER 22, 1991

FOXHOUND COVERT TRAINING FACILITY (BACKWOODS)

SIMULATION GAME: CAPTURE THE FLAG

 

"Alright, listen up, Sigma!"

Sigma Squad gathered around Salamander as he led them into a clearing. "Today's game is going to be Capture the Flag, Asymmetry Variant. We're playing offense today, which means our mission is to capture and hold the objective held by our opponent for today, Gamma Squad. We can accomplish this mission in one of two ways: either we capture the objective and carry it back to the clearing outside of the forest, or we eliminate every OPFOR protecting the objective and win by default."

Salamander laid a topographical map of the forest on the ground and gestured Sigma to come closer so all members could see. "Enemy intel is as follows," Sal began, pointing at a red box that he circled with a magic marker. "OPFOR's command post is here. They've had five hours to dig in and get settled. They'll be using the usual weapons loaded with simunition, but they've also been given flashbangs, tear gas, and smoke grenades. Now, we've never gone up against Gamma before, but I've been made to understand that they're pretty good with traps, so keep on the lookout for tripwires as we make our approach. They've also got a couple of Irregulars on their team."

Sigma's breathing collectively strained as they took in this information. "Irregular" was the term for FOXHOUND candidates and members who possessed abilities and special skills that were considered to be highly unusual, bordering on the supernatural. Cricket had never heard of such a person or seen one in action before, but based on the way that some candidates talked about Irregulars when he was in earshot, he knew it was something which shouldn't be taken lightly.

He tentatively raised a hand and said, "Irregulars, sir?"

Sal nodded grimly. "Specifically, we've got two: Black Mamba and Chameleon. Mamba's acrobatic skill and proficiency with CQC is unreal. She's especially good with blades. Remember, these exercises are classified as 'live fire;' she may not be allowed to intentionally kill you, but she sure has hell can cut you, and accidents can happen if you're not careful. Don't let her get near you, whatever you do.

"As for Chameleon, I actually think she'll be the bigger threat; she's cold-blooded, like her namesake—can internally regulate her body temperature to match the ambient environment. Thermals won't pick up her heat signature. Also, she's extremely good with camouflage; I've heard she can even change the color of her skin at will. This makes her a serious threat both at long range and in close quarters. Keep your head on a swivel."

More G.I. Joe cartoon logic. Cricket kept waiting for someone to tell him that the whole thing was a joke, but nobody ever laughed when talking about Irregulars, and he'd seen enough strange things out on the battlefield that he knew better than to underestimate what was possible. Rather than call out the inherent absurdity of what they were dealing with, he followed the rest of Sigma's lead and let the information pass through to him as they took everything they heard with the utmost seriousness.

"What's the time limit?" asked Fruit Bat.

"Same as usual, we have a maximum of four hours to capture the target before automatic failure."

Vole said, "Und the terrain?"

"It's been rainy this month. Expect a lot of mud and uneven footing. Good news is, it's been foggy all morning—that might give us some good cover as we move in, but it'll make any traps or potential ambushes hard to see, as well."

Honey and Tortoise briefly shared a few words in Russian. "What are we going to be equipped with?" Tortoise asked. "What are our armaments?"

Sal placed a rucksack at the feet of each of his teammates. "Same small-arms weaponry: Beretta and M16 loaded with simunition cartridges. Two flashbangs and two smoke grenades each. No tear gas for us, though. Maps, compasses, flares, and first-aid kits in case an emergency happens, and somebody gets injured during the exercise. I also got permission to include gas masks to help combat the tear gas, but it's up to you to put it on in time when the grenades start getting thrown. Finally, we've also got hand mirrors—should be handy for peeking under doors and around corners. Just be careful about reflected light so you don't give away your position."

Sal pointed to their current location on the map and traced a line with his finger to the OPFOR's CP. "Here's the plan. We'll approach from the south along this creek bed to the bottom of this hill here, try to get in from underneath. When we reach the outer wall of their base, we'll split into two groups and try to enter via a pincer attack—team Alpha will enter from the south side and team Bravo will circle around and hit the base from the north. Honey, Vole, and Cricket, you're on B. Cricket will lead as 2-1, Honey and Vole are 2-2 and 2-3, respectively. On A, I'll lead as 1-1, and Bat and Tortoise'll be 1-2 and 1-3."

Vole nodded, Cricket and Honey fist-bumped each other.

"What's the rules of engagement for the approach?" asked Cricket.

"Our weapons aren't suppressed, so avoid engaging as much as possible until we enter OPFOR's base or until the enemy fires on us. ROE will be weapons free once we're inside, but again, be careful. If you get the opportunity to take the flag without being noticed, do it."

Sal looked at each member of Sigma in turn. "Any other questions?" he asked.

When no one responded, he put away the map and compass, hiked on his rucksack and shouldered his rifle. "Alright, Sigma. Let's get moving."

 

---

 

Sal wasn't kidding about the mud. It was slow, plodding work marching through the woods with their gear. Cricket's breath fogged in the cold September air as they trudged along. No one said a word to each other while they walked in case they ran into any traps or Chameleon lying in wait while they walked near the creek. They moved as a single fire team in a diamond formation, with Cricket providing rear security.

Cricket was getting antsy. Much like on the real battlefield, it wasn't so much the panicked and stressful moments of fighting that got to him, but those long stretches of boredom coupled with the anxiety of knowing that anything could happen at any moment that made him wish that someone actually would just take a shot at them. In a way, having a clear enemy to fight and a target to shoot at was almost calming in the certainty it provided. These moments of quiet marching were unbearable. But they needed to move slowly to keep clear of traps and unexpected surprises. As the saying went, "slow is smooth, and smooth is fast."

As they turned with the bend in the creek, the elevation started to rise slightly, the air getting just a little drier. The fog was lifting. They needed to pick up the pace before they lost their sight advantage. Sal waved the team forward and they started moving at a jog. The boxy shape of OPFOR's fort came into view. It was a couple of two-story abandoned buildings with a 10-foot makeshift scrap metal fence running all around the perimeter, with chain-link gates on each side in each cardinal direction. Cricket wondered if the concrete buildings were specifically constructed by FOXHOUND or if they were here before the training facility was built and simply repurposed.

Sal raised his fist and brought the team to a stop at the bottom of the hill, and they grouped up in the shadow of a small outcropping sheltered by a nearby tree's low-hanging branches.

"We'll split up here," Sal instructed. "Bravo, loop around and form up on the northern entrance. We go radio silent for all verbal communication from here on in—don't call in unless absolutely necessary. This here will be our rally point."

He clicked the button on his radio to make it squawk. "One button press to signal that teams are in position. I'll give two button presses to give the order to move in. Wait for my mark. If three minutes pass without the order being given, assume that the other team is compromised and fall back to the rally point to regroup."

He looked over the edge of the outcropping towards the fort. No tangoes were present.

"Okay," Sal breathed. "Go!"

The team exploded into movement. Cricket took point for Team B as they slid down the hill and gave the fort a wide berth with the hill on their left side as they moved northward. Each Sigma member scanned their sectors as they moved around to the north side. The elevation leveled out as they turned left back toward the fort with their left side facing south and they moved up to the northern gate, stacking up against the wall next to it.

Cricket motioned to Vole, and Vole stepped forward to check the gate for trip wires. Finding nothing, he pulled out a lockpick and went to work. Once finished, he stepped back out of view of the gate. Cricket clicked his radio once to let Alpha Team know that they were in position.

After a moment of quiet tension, he heard the radio click twice.

Bravo Team sprung through the gate, immediately turning to point their weapons in each direction. They were in an alleyway behind one of the two buildings, no targets on either side. Once clear, they moved up to the back door of the building. Cricket slid his mirror underneath and spotted a trip wire linked to a flashbang grenade. He made a throat-cutting gesture with his hand and Bravo team followed the exterior wall along the length of the building.

One end of the alleyway led into the central courtyard of the fort, where one member of Gamma Squad could be seen patrolling. Rather than head out into the courtyard, they doubled back and followed the exterior wall of the building around the opposite corner, where they found another door. Vole used his mirror, and confirmed that the doorway was clear of traps, but that there was another member of Gamma Squad inside, facing the opposite direction. Vole experimentally gave the door handle a very slight turn to determine if it was locked. When he found it was not, he opened the door slowly and quietly.

Honey Badger drew her knife and snuck in, grabbing the guard around his neck, and holding her blade to his throat. "Dead," she whispered.

The guard nodded, laid his weapon on the ground, and proceeded to turn off his radio and sit in the corner. The rest of Team Bravo followed her inside and cleared the room, which appeared to have once been a kitchen. They swept the entire area, and once they found that there was no one hiding in the pantry or under the table and that the objective wasn't present, they moved on to one of the other two doors.

Through the door was a hallway, with a stairway on the immediate right-hand side and two doors further on the right, with an exterior door at the end on the left. Two windows facing the other building across the courtyard were on the left. Cricket looked out, being careful not to put himself in view. He could see Alpha Team moving through the building on the other side. He looked to Honey and Vole. "Watch the windows," he whispered in a hushed tone. "We'll clear the rest of this floor first before we go upstairs."

The other two nodded and they systematically checked and cleared the two rooms in the hallway, which were empty. Cricket pointed up towards the ceiling. "You two check the upstairs landing, I'll check the other door in the kitchen and then meet you."

Vole and Honey moved carefully up the stairs. Cricket didn't like the idea of having to clear a room by himself, but he knew the rest of the first floor was clear and he would be checking the door with the mirror first before proceeding, so he was fairly confident that as long as he didn't rush in he would be fine. He turned back and reentered the kitchen, and just as he was about to approach the other door it opened, revealing a young thirty-something blonde woman with blue eyes staring back at him.

They looked at each other for a couple of heartbeats, but it felt like a lifetime. Cricket's breath was caught in his throat before he realized what was happening and raised his rifle.

He was too slow. The blonde woman grabbed the barrel shroud of the rifle with one hand and Cricket's trigger hand with the other, yanking the rifle towards her and then shoving it into his chest parallel to his torso. She grabbed a nearby bottle off a wall shelf and slammed it against his temple before he could try pointing it at her again. Seeing stars, Cricket lost his grip on the rifle, and she yanked, sending it flying out of his hands to the other side of the room.

The blonde woman pulled a knife from the sheath strapped to her shoulder and lunged at Cricket, who only had just enough mind to dodge as he was still disoriented. He realized that while she was using cutting and slashing movements, it wasn't wild swinging—it was purposeful, precise. She wasn't aiming for anything vital. He realized in that moment that if she wanted to kill him, she absolutely could. This must be Black Mamba.

Alertness returning to his senses, Cricket dodged Mamba's thrust and tried to grab at the wrist of her knife hand, but he was too slow, and ended up getting his forearm cut for his trouble. He gasped in pain but didn't falter. Dodging under a cut, he rolled over the table, scattering its contents on the floor as he positioned himself to have the table between the two of them to give himself room to breathe. But before he could draw his sidearm, Mamba leapt over the table, planting her feet into his chest, sending him reeling into the stove. He knocked his elbow against a pan and thinking quickly, grabbed it and swung at Mamba, who ducked and grabbed his shoulder for leverage as she sent her knee into his solar plexus. All the air left Cricket's lungs and he doubled over, letting Mamba kick the side of his face, sending him tumbling to the ground.

"Stay down," Mamba commanded.

Cricket considered it. If he gave up and conceded, he would be considered dead for the purposes of the simulation. But Mamba hadn't technically landed a killing blow. As long as Cricket was physically capable of fighting back and didn't have paint on his body or a knife to his throat, he didn't have to concede. And Honey and Vole were still upstairs.

He grabbed the table and started pulling himself up.

Mamba tsked and lowered herself to climb on his back and tried to put the knife to his neck to force a concession, and it was then that Cricket moved. Grabbing her left arm, he backed up and slammed her against the stove to loosen her grip on him and then, pulling her knife arm, he tossed her over his shoulder over the table and into the opposite wall. She cried in pain as her shoulder connected to the shelf on the wall before landing on the floor and becoming too winded to vocalize. Seizing the moment, Cricket drew his Beretta and ran over to put the barrel to her head.

"Bang. You're dead, Mamba," Cricket intoned.

Black Mamba looked up at Cricket with exhaustion, chuckled a little, and nodded. "Yup. Good game." Coughing, she flopped onto her back and began nursing her shoulder. Cricket put away the Beretta and grabbed his rifle. He looked out the door into a sitting room with a couch and quickly cleared it. Three doors, one leading out to the courtyard, one was the booby-trapped door that led into the back alleyway, and the third was a bathroom.

Honey and Vole entered the kitchen. The fight with Black Mamba had lasted only a few minutes, but it was loud enough to have them come rushing down. "You alright?" Vole asked. Cricket nodded. Honey looked over the beaten Black Mamba and whistled with approval.

Team Bravo couldn't stop to celebrate, however. That fight wasn't quiet, and it was bound to attract attention. Indeed, they could already hear a yell of alarm from outside as he saw the guard from the courtyard start running in the direction of the front door. With Vole's help, Cricket picked up and moved the couch over to the door to barricade it and buy some time.

Honey pointed up. "Clear upstairs."

Cricket nodded. "And the flag?"

"Negative."

Cricket clicked his radio. "Bravo 2-1 to Alpha. How copy?"

Sal's voice answered. "This is Alpha 1-1. Send it, Bravo."

"North building is clear, no sign of the objective. Had a run-in with Black Mamba, had to take her down. It wasn't quiet. Expecting increased level of alertness and force from Gamma. You guys have any better luck in there?"

"Affirmative, 2-1. Building is clear. No tangoes inside, but we did hit paydirt. We've got the flag in our possession. Be advised, I've seen no sign of any other guards besides the one outside. Which means the other three are somewhere outside the fort and unaccounted for."

Banging against the door. Bravo Team stayed as far as they could away from the main window as they egressed back into the kitchen.

"Let's link up at the rally point. We can start making our way back to the starting position from there," Sal said.

"Understood," Cricket replied.

Bravo team moved towards the back door from which they entered and checked outside. Not seeing the patrol guard that was banging on the front door, they moved around back towards the booby-trapped door around the corner. When they reached the corner, gunshots cracked near their heads, and they were repelled back into cover. Honey grabbed a flashbang and tossed it around the corner. Once it popped, she and Cricket moved around and pushed to the other end of the alleyway where they caught the guard stumbling. Honey shot him twice in the chest, and paint splattered against his vest as he fell backward.

The fort now clear, they made their way to the southern gate where they saw Alpha already halfway to the rally point. Just as they started making their way down the hill, simunition bullets impacted against Vole's chest plate and arms.

"CONTACT!" Cricket shouted, and he and Honey threw themselves to the ground. Looking up, he saw Sal and Tortoise moving towards cover. Fruit Bat was laying on the ground—OPFOR must have gotten him. Vole followed Bat's example and laid down on the grass.

Cricket crawled behind a large rock while Honey took up position behind a tree. Gunshots were being exchanged between Alpha Team and the remains of Gamma Squad. Cricket looked out into the tree line, but he couldn't see where the enemy was. Honey Badger was laying down fire in the general direction that she thought they were coming from.

Cricket clicked his radio. "1-1, this is 2-1. I saw 1-2 got hit. 2-3's also down. Where are you at? Can you tell where they're shooting from?"

"1-3's hit, too. It's just me. I think they're firing from the southeast. Can you see anything from your vantage point up there?"

Cricket peeked over the rock. Brown and green as far as the eye can see. He tried to search without straining his eyes. There! Movement!

"I see someone! Bearing 220 from our position!"

Honey nodded and looked around the tree to spot one of the shooters, carefully lining up a shot before squeezing off a few rounds. "Got them!" she cried triumphantly. She reloaded her rifle. "Two mags left," she said.

Cricket nodded, and hailed Sal again. "Do you have the flag, 1-1?"

"Got it right here."

"Okay. We're going to try and make our way to you. Stay where you are if you can."

Cricket peeked over the rock, and seeing movement from the southeast, ducked back down. "Honey," he said, "let's pop some smoke. I'll lay down some suppressing fire, and you head down first."

Honey nodded, grabbing a smoke grenade from her belt, pulling the pin and tossing it down the hill. Cricket followed suit, and when smoke started filling the clearing, Cricket emptied half a magazine downrange before looking back at Honey. "Okay, go now!"

Honey scrambled down the hill to Sal's position, and then started putting down suppressing fire of her own so that Cricket could join them. Together, they made their way deeper back into the woods towards the creek bed before Gamma Squad could get too close.

"They know our objective is east, and the creek is too obvious a landmark," Sal said. "Let's divert downhill further south where the woods are denser. Should give us some better cover."

"What about Chameleon?" Honey asked.

"We'll just have to chance it and keep a close eye on our surroundings. Come on."

The remains of Sigma moved quickly through the woods, the downward sloping elevation giving them a bit of speed to help them put distance between themselves and Gamma, at the expense of caution. This proved to be an error in judgment: when they finally decided it was safe enough to continue moving eastward, Honey caught herself on a tripwire, releasing the pin on a tear gas grenade.

"Masks, now!" Sal yelled.

While they were donning their masks, two simunition bullets caught Honey in her legs, making her stumble and fall to the ground. Getting hit with the full brunt of the tear gas, and she started coughing and sneezing, covering her face as she tried desperately to protect herself from the worst of the effects.

Cricket and Salamander turned in the direction the fire had come from and quickly spotted the head of one of Gamma Squad's members as it moved back into cover behind a tree. Sal gave a hand signal for him and Cricket to move forward in a pincer attack to keep the OPFOR from running, and together they moved forward and quickly subdued him.

Returning to Honey, Sal picked her up and slung her over his shoulders in a fireman's carry, and together Sigma ran as far from the spot as they could. When they were safely away from the tear gas, Sal set Honey down and pulled out a bottle of water. Facing her against the wind, he held her hair out of her face and began pouring water into her eyes and over her face.

Honey Badger made blubbering noises as her sinuses inflamed, muttering some extremely colorful curses in Russian. Sal said, "I think it's safe to say that Honey's out of commission." He handed her two more plastic water bottles. "Keep your face against the wind and keep rinsing out your eyes, Honey. You'll be okay."

Sal shouldered his rifle. "We're not far. Just a little more to the northeast. But first," he grabbed a flare gun out of her backpack and put it in Honey's hands, "when you're able to see again, fire this into the air so the medics know where to find you."

Honey nodded.

Now down to two, Sal and Cricket moved northward towards the finish line. It was almost 1300 hours. The trees were beginning to thin out. The clearing was in sight. Sal had them take a short break to catch their breath.

This was their second big mistake. As soon as they stopped to rest, a pair of eyes suddenly appeared on one of the nearby trees and a woman melted into view, tossing a flashbang into their midst. Cricket only had just enough time to shut his eyes and fling himself to the ground, rolling away as the grenade went off. Deaf but not blind, he continued to roll away even as Chameleon took down Salamander.

He came to a stop at the bottom of a ditch, hidden underneath some bushes. He'd lost his rifle in the confusion; he'd have to make do with his sidearm. He looked through the leaves. Sal was lying on the ground, not moving. Standing above him was Chameleon.

Standing at around 5'4" and surprisingly lightly equipped, Chameleon wore only a camo-patterned tank top and cargo pants, with no other weapon besides her knife and pistol. Her hair was the same color and texture as moss, and her dry, scaly skin was a mottled mixture of grey, green, and brown to match the color of her surroundings. When she squinted, her eyes moved independently of each other. It was the strangest and most terrifying thing that Cricket had ever witnessed in a human being. He stared, mesmerized.

Chameleon made as if to search Sal's person—presumably for the flag so that she could take possession of it—before stopping and looking around. "He's still here," she muttered.

Suddenly, she changed color and disappeared. Cricket didn't move an inch. Chances were, she was still in the area, just waiting for him to go and get the flag. Problem was, she wasn't wrong to wait for him to make the first move.

He checked his watch. Two hours left on the timer. Either he went and got the flag, risking getting shot by Chameleon, or he did nothing except wait, in which case Gamma would win anyway with the timer running out.

Two hours. The exfil point was only about 200 meters away. He had time to think about his next move. Very, very slowly, he tugged his Beretta from its holster. He tried to keep calm and quiet his breathing so that he could hear only the sounds of the forest around him. He cursed inwardly at himself. He was never very good at wilderness tracking. He dimly recalled that one of his foster fathers once offered to take him hunting as a kid. He was beginning to regret not taking that man up on his offer.

Minutes ticked by. Every ten minutes or so, he checked his watch. After about forty-five minutes with still no sign of Chameleon, he slowly started to crawl forward.

He didn't have an infinite amount of time. At some point, he needed to get that flag.

Slowly, inch by aching inch he moved towards the prone body of Salamander. Cricket desperately hoped his camouflage could keep him as well-hidden as Chameleon, knowing full well that it wouldn't. To try to at least keep his gun hidden while he moved, he had covered his hand in a tiny pile of leaves that moved with him as he inch-wormed his way forward.

After what seemed like an eternity, he was within arm's reach of Sal. Being "dead," Sal wasn't allowed to speak or communicate with Cricket in any way, verbally or non-verbally, which meant that Cricket had to find where Sal had put the flag himself. After eyeing Sal's body, he saw it—a piece of navy-blue fabric sticking slightly out of Salamander's pocket. Slowly, with very careful deliberation, Cricket reached up with his free hand and tugged at the fabric with his fingertips before gingerly pulling it out and wrapping it around his hand. Wasn't really much of a flag. It was more like a bandana.

Cricket slowly started pushing away from Sal's "corpse," when he noticed a couple of leaves falling gently in front of him.

"I see you."

The whisper came from above him, in a threatening, almost inhuman hiss. Cricket spun around onto his back just in time to see another flashbang fall from the branches above. Screwing his eyes shut, he rolled as the grenade once again went off right next to him, filling his ears with the high-pitched whine of tinnitus. He pushed himself to his feet and opened his eyes to see Chameleon rushing at him with her knife. He dodged, and she ran past him straight into the tree line, dropping another flashbang after her.

This time he was prepared for it and booked it straight into the trees before the flashbang could permanently damage his hearing.

A tree branch reached out to hit him in the face. He grabbed and tore at it and the "tree" rolled over his shoulder and fell to the ground. He darted in the direction of the clearing 200 meters away. Something pulled at his ankle, making him fall over. He kicked in the direction the pull came from and felt its grip loosen along with a cry of pain. Running straight out of the woods and into the clearing, he could see the finish line up ahead. He only needed to cross it.

A round whizzed by his head. With nowhere to hide, Chameleon had opted for the direct approach. He rolled to the side and took aim with his pistol, plugging two rounds into her chest. He ran and crossed the finish line before collapsing onto the grass, out of breath.

He looked up to see Master Miller standing over him, offering his only hand while leaning on his crutch.

"Good work, Cricket. Looks like Sigma wins this one."

 

---

 

FEBRUARY 12, 1992

FOXHOUND COVERT TRAINING FACILITY

LOCATION CLASSIFIED

 

"So, how has our subject been keeping?"

The dark room was hazy with cigar smoke. Salamander tried his hardest to keep from coughing out of politeness, though he found it difficult. Despite having grown up with smokers for parents, he never really was able to tolerate the stench.

"He's an excellent soldier, no doubt about it," Sal answered. "He takes to pretty much every subject his class instructors can throw at him, regardless of familiarity. No matter what exercises I run him through, he comes out on top. No specialty skills, no Irregular abilities of his own, and yet…"

Sal gestured vaguely. "He's a regular jack of all trades. 'Master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.'"

"But do you think he has what it takes?"

Sal responded, "I think he's got potential. Although he's not quite as observant as I'd like. He got lucky with Chameleon and Mamba back in September, but he still hasn't figured out that I'm an instructor and not actually a cadet. That lack of inquisitiveness and lack of suspicion could be dangerous."

"Is that enough to wash him out?"

Sal thought hard before answering. "No, not yet. But I think you'll need to turn up the heat. This stuff is child's play. We need to put him in real danger if we want to see what he's made of. But that's exactly what we excel at, isn't it?"

"So, I take it that you give your recommendation, then?"

Sal nodded. "Yes. Move him forward in the program. He's ready to move on to his second year. He's solid."

"Very well. We'll move him forward. Thank you for your time and assistance on this, Salamander."

Notes:

Much like the previous chapter, I originally had a different ending in mind in which I would show Snake's graduation from his first year of training to the second year, but this was getting pretty long as it was and honestly the short vignette of Sal talking to the powers that be just flowed a lot better, in my opinion. Next chapter will probably focus less on the instructional part of his training, as I plan to have it basically be one or two (or maybe a series of; haven't decided yet) dangerous training simulations for Snake to endure. I wanted to flesh out Snake's induction into FOXHOUND, but I originally didn't want to spend more than one or two more chapters on it before I get into the meat and potatoes of adapting Metal Gear proper--unfortunately, with how the pacing of the third chapter turned out (as you will see), I think I probably won't get into the mission briefing for Operation Intrude until at least Chapter 5. Look forward to the next one, as that's when I plan on introducing Gray Fox into the story.

Chapter 3: Mongoose and Armadillo

Summary:

In which the newest candidate is tested in mind and body. A friend asks a difficult question, and a previous year's rival becomes a worthy ally...

APRIL 30, 1992

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

 

Cricket felt lightheaded, groggy. His head was pounding. It reminded him of that day in Kuwait when Cpt. Willard told him he'd be going back to the states. His joints and muscles were sore. His wrists were bound. He realized too late that he couldn't see—blindfolded, judging by the tight pressure wrapped around his head.

He was in a sitting position—a chair? No wonder he felt sore if he'd been left in this state while unconscious. Where was he? How long had he been here? How did he get here, wherever 'here' was? The only other sensations he could make out were the whirring of air conditioning, the faint buzz of fluorescent lighting, and the heady scent of burning tobacco mixed with too much aftershave.

So, he wasn't alone. He lifted his head slightly and groaned. He heard a tapping sound and shifting feet.

"Look. He's awake." A man's voice. Youthful, lilting. Like a choir boy.

"I see that." Another man. Older, and raspy like sandpaper. "Finally with us, I see?"

He was addressing Cricket. Cricket said nothing. Best not to talk until he had more information to go on.

"I bet you're wondering where you are. Why you're here. As any man would, I'm sure," said Sandpaper. "Well, all I can say is that this is a sort of test. A game, if you will. The rules are simple: I will ask you a series of questions, and you will answer them honestly. If you refuse to answer them or give me an answer that I do not find satisfactory, I will inflict pain upon you. On the other hand, if you tell me what I want to know promptly, I will inform you of the reason why you were taken and then I will set you free. Seems like a fair trade to me, don't you think?"

Silence. The room—if it even was a proper room—was thick with tension.

"He asked you a question, maggot," spat the Choir Boy.

More silence.

"I see a demonstration is in order," said Sandpaper. Cricket could hear his voice shift direction. "Show him."

A chair squeaks. Heavy footsteps—boots. Cricket's hair tightened and pulled painfully; his scalp felt like it was on fire as he was lifted from his seat. An impact hit him in his diaphragm hard enough to make him retch while pain exploded in his midsection. Cricket felt a momentary loss of equilibrium as he was thrown down, coughing and gasping for breath. The floor felt cold and smooth against his cheek. Not wood. Too smooth and cold for concrete. Linoleum tile?

Cricket is picked up and shoved bodily back onto the chair. He could feel from the air that Choir Boy had bent down to look him in the face. The smell of aftershave got much stronger. "The more you fight, the worse it gets," Cricket could hear Choir Boy saying. "Indicate to me whether you understand."

Normally, a POW would only be obliged to give his captors his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth per the Geneva Conventions. But Cricket didn't exist—even if he was willing, he couldn't give them anything about his identity, lest it led them to FOXHOUND. But he understood how interrogation worked, knew that it was just a mind game; and if he played his cards right, he might be able to learn more from them than they would from him. 

That's it, he thought to himself, hearing Master Miller's words in his head. Don't give away anything more than necessary. Listen and feel around—absorb everything your senses can gather.

Knowing it wouldn't gain him anything else but unnecessary pain to be too uncooperative at this time, Cricket nodded his head.

"Good."

The footsteps moved away, and the chair squeaked again. Choir Boy had sat back down.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Sandpaper asked.

"Is this the test?" Cricket asked, coughing up blood and phlegm and spitting it onto the floor in a wad.

"Don't be a smartass," Choir Boy said.

Cricket chuckled. Choir Boy had no patience. If Cricket were a betting man, he'd say that he'd probably be easier to get information from, though he couldn't say for sure. Sandpaper, by contrast, was patient. That made him dangerous. Sandpaper wouldn't let Cricket be killed, no matter what his motives were. But that also meant he had an end goal in mind. Cricket would need to be careful not to speak too much.

But he didn't have enough to go off of, not yet. So, he chose to answer the question honestly—it was harmless enough, anyway.

"Was celebrating a new milestone with my training at work. Went to a bar with some coworkers and a new roommate of mine for some drinks. My drink must have been drugged, because I remember feeling woozy; that's the last thing I remember before waking up here." It was the base lounge, not a civilian bar, but Cricket figured that was close enough to the truth.

"What was this milestone?"

"Job training. I had just gotten promoted."

"Promoted, you say? To what position?"

"A position with more responsibility than my old one."

"And who is your employer?"

Prolonged silence, then footsteps. Another hit in the solar plexus, then a knee to the gut, followed shortly afterward by the burning razor sensation of metal cutting into his flesh all over his chest and arms. Nothing that would kill him or risk too serious an injury—the cuts were too shallow. But they were enough to hurt. Cricket gritted his teeth and dug his nails into his palms.

Sandpaper chuckled with some amusement. "My associate isn't a very patient man, as you can see. But he is adept at delivering pain, and he very much relishes his job. I think it's important to enjoy what you do, wouldn't you say?"

Cricket hissed a breath through his teeth before giving his best sardonic smile. "Hey, everyone needs a hobby, right?"

Sandpaper lightly chuckled. "Quite. We'll come back to this question later. You mentioned a new roommate. Tell me about him."

Cricket sighed. "What exactly do you want to know?"

"How long have you known each other?"

"We just met a few weeks ago." A small lie to test the waters. His roommate was Vole, one of the members of Sigma Squad who'd made it to the second year of the program along with him.

No threats or assaults followed this statement. If Cricket's interrogators knew or suspected that he was lying, they didn't give any indication of it.

"And what did you think of him?"

This was a strange line of questioning. Was this information that his interrogator actually desired, or was it just a means of throwing him off-balance? Were these people tracking his movements? If so, then for how long? Was FOXHOUND compromised?

Cricket gave a non-committal shrug, wincing at the pain the motion brought. "He seemed alright. Haven't known him long enough to have much of an opinion."

Another lie.

"Describe your first impressions of him."

"If you wanted to know about him, why are you asking me? Why don't you ask him?"

"I'm asking you," Sandpaper said, keeping his voice even.

"Don't make him ask a second time," Choir Boy growled the warning into Cricket's ear.

Cricket laughed. "I like your voice, sounds like a choir boy from a church. Why don't you sing me a song, Choir Boy?"

"The fuck you just call me?"

Cricket gritted his teeth before feeling a sharp impact against his jaw. He tasted blood on his lips. Cricket smirked: Choir Boy was getting sloppy, striking him in the head like that. If he had hit hard enough, it could've knocked Cricket unconscious, or go numb, or even killed him. They'd have lost whatever intel they could have gotten. 

That's right, Choir Boy, he thought to himself, smirking. Get mad.

"Since you asked so nicely," Cricket grunted, sucking the blood off his lips. "He seemed like a decent enough guy. A little quiet, clearly been around the block a few times. A little older than me, clearly pretty smart. There. You happy?"

"Did he have any abilities?"

Cricket furrowed his brow. "Abilities?"

"Yes. Did you observe anything about him that made him seem…different to you, somehow? Things that might have set him apart from his peers? Like, maybe a skill that no one else can do?"

So, they believed that his roommate was an Irregular, then. That explains the interest. But Irregulars were supposed to be uncommon outside of FOXHOUND, to the point of being downright rare. How would these interrogators know about them and their presence within FOXHOUND?

Maybe Vole really was an Irregular, and these people knew his roommate somehow? Maybe he was a clandestine German asset that got lost and made it into FOXHOUND's training program, and these people wanted him back, or they were enemy players who wanted to recruit or kill him. If that was the case, then he probably had good reason not to be found. Either that, or Cricket's reading of Sandpaper's questions was way off.

Deciding to play it safe, Cricket played dumb. "Well, I mean, everybody has their talents, right? Everybody's good at something. Some people can play guitar really well, some people are good at sports. Some people are good at singing, like Choir Boy here." He nodded in the direction of the aftershave smell.

"Indeed," Sandpaper replied, not sounding too irritated by Cricket's evasiveness. "And what would you say your talents are, Mr. Cricket?"

Cricket smirked outwardly, but inside he began to panic. They called him by his codename. Meaning they knew of FOXHOUND's existence. His worries that FOXHOUND may be compromised were looking more accurate by the second. The only good thing he learned was that if they were referring to his codename then that meant that they didn't know his real name, which meant that the information they already had on the unit most likely didn't extend to the identities of its trainees.

That was more than he had before, but unfortunately it still didn't tell him much.

He turned in the direction that he last heard Choir Boy's voice. Time to try provoking him a bit more. "Why don't you ask Choir Boy's mother? I'm sure she'd be able to tell you all about my 'talents.'"

Choir Boy kept his composure better than Cricket predicted. No harm followed this, just the sound of cracking knuckles. Instead, it was Sandpaper who ordered him to move, saying, "Apply more pressure."

Cricket heard more footsteps. A mechanical whining noise as something revved up, followed by an accompanying buzz. Two metal prongs pressed into his chest and all his muscles spasmed and seized at once; he narrowly avoided biting his own tongue off. A few minutes passed as he jerked and writhed in agony. When the prongs were removed from his chest, Cricket was shaking, his breathing erratic.

"Why do you insist on being so obstinate?" Sandpaper responded.

"Fuck… you…" Cricket breathed. It was useless bravado, but it made him feel a little better.

Sandpaper chuckled. "I'm going to let you in on a little secret, Cricket."

There was the use of his code name again. Slow, deliberate—like Sandpaper was specifically trying to draw his attention to it. There was a clue there. If Cricket could just get his head in order, he'd be able to find out what it was.

"When it comes to…let's call them 'enhanced interrogation techniques,' it's not a matter of if a person breaks, only a matter of when. Everyone has a breaking point, a line that they cannot cross with themselves, and when they do, they will tell whatever it is their interrogator wants to know. Make no mistake, you will eventually answer whatever I ask you. How much pain you must endure before you do, is entirely up to you."

Cricket chuckled weakly. "Maybe you're right," he said in between ragged breaths, "but then, if a person is telling you whatever will convince you to make the pain stop, how can you tell if what they're saying is the truth?"

"I think Orwell had it right: everyone has the thing that is most important to them, whether it be an ideal or a person they love more than anything. If you can get them to betray that, you will break them utterly, and whatever they tell you from that point forward will be the truth. And all you must do to make it happen is to show them the worst thing in the world."

A squeak from a second chair, with more footsteps. The tobacco smell approaches closer, and Sandpaper says, "I think we can dispense with the foreplay, don't you? Tell me about FOXHOUND. Tell me about the Irregulars. Talk about Big Boss and Gray Fox. Tell me everything you know."

That confirmed it. The interrogator knew of the existence of FOXHOUND and the Irregulars, and they even knew Big Boss by name. The mention of Gray Fox was particularly interesting. He had heard Salamander mention that name before when they were running PT drills.

It was about a week before Salamander had given Cricket notice that he had passed the first year when it had happened. While running past the concourse, Cricket had spotted Big Boss, Master Miller, and a third man talking amongst each other near the administrative building. Big Boss had put a hand on the third man's shoulder, smiling slightly—he clearly respected the stranger.

The stranger was gaunt in the face with narrow shoulders, well-built if the muscles of his exposed arms were anything to go by, and he had shaggy bleach blond hair that came close to covering his eyes. His eyes seemed dull and lifeless, but his smile at Big Boss held a slight warmth to it. When he caught Cricket looking, his eyes widened and stared at him with a burning and uncomfortable intensity, like a predator that had caught sight of its prey. Big Boss and Master Miller followed the man's stare towards his direction and Cricket had quickly averted his gaze, knowing that somehow, he had fucked up. Lo and behold, Sigma Squad got assigned latrine cleaning duty later that day.

When he asked Salamander who the stranger was while cleaning, Sal replied, "That's who you were staring at? Shit, rookie, no wonder we're getting punished—you should've just minded your own damn business."

Sal sullenly pushed with his mop into a nearby stall. "That was Gray Fox," he answered. "He's a FOXHOUNDer—the very best, next to Big Boss himself. He's the only operative in the whole unit who ever earned the codename 'Fox'—it's a reference to his specialty in completing sneaking missions without ever getting caught. He's been conducting black ops for FOXHOUND since the Boss first founded the unit, and in all that time he's never failed a single mission. My advice, rookie? Steer well clear of him if you can help it. The guy's a legend around here—and legends are usually bad news."

Cricket disagreed with Salamander's assessment. If Gray Fox is the best there is, then he's precisely the type of person Cricket should be learning from. Ever since that day, Cricket made it his mission to try to reach the same heights, to be the second person to be awarded the 'Fox' moniker. His first year of training had been mixed, so he would need to throw himself into his endeavor with twice as much effort.

But these interrogators knew who Gray Fox was. If Fox's reputation was accurate, and he was a stealth operative who never failed a mission, then he'd never been compromised. No one outside of FOXHOUND should know who he is. He also remembered what his interrogator said about this being a test. They already knew his codename.

Everything clicked into place.

"Tell me everything," Sandpaper repeated.

Cricket raised his head up to the source of the voice. "I think you probably know as much as I do, if not more," he said, his rough voice forming a growling whisper from the strain. "Isn't that right, Drill Instructor?"

The silence was deafening, stretching before him like a yawning chasm. No response was uttered to bridge the gap. The pause was almost too long. Cricket became worried. Was he mistaken in his assessment? He was beginning to regret being so flippant—if he was wrong, then he just outed himself as a FOXHOUND trainee, which would have confirmed the enemy's suspicions.

Then:

"End the simulation."

The ropes around his hands were untied. Cricket rubbed his aching wrists before pulling the blindfold off. He was in a small interview room. There was what looked like a mini wind-up car battery on the table in front of him, along with a bloody scalpel and a knuckle duster. Sitting beside these tools unused was a small glass vial labeled "sodium pentathol," a syringe, and a saltshaker. He guessed that the salt would have been used for rubbing into his cuts. He shivered involuntarily at the thought of it.

The two men in the room with him was a pale man about his age with the rough physique of a bodybuilder wearing camo pants and a form fitting undershirt, and an older man in the Army dress uniform, whose nametape read "Jacobs." His chest was decorated with ribbons, and his rank patch pegged him as a Major. Cricket stood up slowly, his legs wobbly, and clumsily gave the best salute he could physically muster. "Sir," he said.

"At ease, cadet," Maj. Jacobs intoned. "Please, sit down. You should rest a bit. Take a moment to recover your strength."

Cricket nodded and sat back down. The younger man helped steady him. "So," Cricket said, "how did I do? Did I pass?"

Jacobs looked up to the right and Cricket followed his gaze to an observation window, where Master Miller was watching, along with some other Army officers. Miller nodded down to Jacobs, and he said to Cricket, "You passed. Congratulations, son."

"If you don't mind my asking, sir, what exactly was I being tested on?"

Jacobs took a seat on the other side of the table with the other soldier. "We wanted to see how you would conduct yourself in the event of being captured by the enemy and interrogated. The objective of the exercise was for you to collect as much information from your captives as possible while revealing little to nothing in return, with no other information to go on except your present circumstances. To facilitate this, you were drugged and brought to this room so that you wouldn't know how you got here or why you were being held, much less who was holding you."

"You did well," the soldier next to Jacobs said, "though we should warn you that in a real field mission, you'll probably be subjected to much worse than what you encountered here today, so you should still make sure you don't get caught in the first place."

"I wasn't planning to," Cricket groaned, rubbing his cheek. "So, that was you going easy on me, huh?"

Jacobs nodded. "The battery is from a go kart—"

"Golf cart," the younger soldier corrected.

"—and is weaker than what other interrogators have been known to use." Jacobs glared at the soldier for correcting him. Cricket cringed internally—that soldier was definitely going to get disciplined later. "And the scalpel was used to inflict only superficial wounds."

"I did notice that they weren't as painful as they could've been," Cricket admitted, "but I had just figured that was because you were more interested in getting information out of me than in having me be killed. After all, dead men don't talk."

Jacobs nodded approvingly. "And as you pointed out earlier, men broken by torture rarely have anything useful to say, either. That was another thing we were testing for—how high your resistance would last until you broke. You have a very high pain tolerance. That will be useful for you in the future."

Cricket nodded. "Yes, sir."

Jacobs' face hardened. "It's only going to get harder from here, son. You made it past your first year, but the rest of your training will be a whole different ball game. There'll be no more team training outside of PT, no more formal classes. From now on, your training will consist mainly of practical field exercises. You will not be told in advance—will not be warned of their contents. They will be dangerous, and they will test your mind, body, and spirit. From now on, death will be a very real threat for as long as you remain here. Do you still want to continue forward?"

Cricket thought back to his brief introduction to Gray Fox, how he had resolved to be the best at what he did, to rival Fox himself. Cricket steeled himself. He would not waver from his goal.

"Sir. Yes, sir!"

 

---

 

JUNE 14, 1992

FOXHOUND GARRISON DORMITORIES

 

"Why do you fight?"

Cricket leaned up in his crowded single bed to look over and stare his companion in the eyes as he scrutinized her question. Vole was out on patrol duty for the night, which gave them both some privacy. It was just the two of them, huddled together in the cramped single bed of the small dorm room whose sturdy aluminum frame and springs only gave the smallest of squeaking protests to the presence of the visitor.

Cricket and Honey Badger had worked well together over the past year, both in Sigma Squad and outside of it. Together with Vole, Salamander, and Tortoise, who had all passed the first year with flying colors, the group had become a close-knit group of friends and comrades who confided in each other even as they each faced their own tests and classes alone with the various FOXHOUND instructors. To relieve stress, Cricket and Honey would occasionally meet up for private dalliances in their off time, breaking several rules regarding trainee fraternization in the process.

There was no real romantic attachment to it; just two friends with compatible orientations able to help each other blow off steam when times called for it. Their friends knew about it, but since it didn't interfere with any of their training and there was no likelihood of drama due to their willingness to drop it at a moment's notice, everyone just turned a blind eye. All the same, Cricket was grateful for her company on the nights in between grueling training sessions; having someone he could be physically close to who also understood the trials that came with being a soldier in wartime was something of a comfort.

On this particular night, Cricket impulsively asked Honey why she had chosen to leave Chechnya for France. He'd always been curious, but Sal's warning from the first day they had met had been in the back of his mind and he figured it would be a bad idea. But with their relative closeness these past few weeks and with the trust they'd built up as teammates, now seemed as good a time as any to satisfy that curiosity.

Honey looked taken aback and was uncomfortable with the sudden question. She stayed silent for a while, and Cricket began to regret opening his mouth and ruining the post-coital mood. He was about to tell her to just forget he asked when she responded with her own question. Then it was his own turn to be confused and uncomfortable. When he didn't answer immediately, Honey Badger repeated: "Why do you fight, Cricket?"

Cricket responded, "What do you mean?"

Honey Badger looked at her fidgeting hands. In stilted Russian, she slowly began, "When I left Chechnya, we were on rocky terms with the Soviet Union. You know how last year, when the USSR fell, my country declared its independence? After that, I realized that war with Russia would be inevitable. It doesn't matter if it will be today or tomorrow, but I know it is coming, just as I knew it then. I sought escape. I knew France offers citizenship to foreigners in exchange for service to the state, so I took my chance. But I left a family behind: my parents, my sister, two brothers…and a daughter. I wished to have them come to France with me, but I didn't have the means. So, I sent them portions of my pay, in the hopes of getting them out before war came. I still have hope for that.

"When I proved myself useful, America came and gave me an offer: safe harbor, citizenship, and more importantly, more money than France was willing to give me—enough to move my whole family to the country of my choice sooner rather than later. But to get this, I must pass the test—I must make it into FOXHOUND. In the Foreign Legion, I have killed and hurt many to get here. In FOXHOUND I will kill, maim, and hurt many more."

Honey's voice was chill and even as her words escaped her lips in a thin, razor-sharp whisper. However, even as she spoke, her hands shook as she contemplated her fingernails, unable to meet Cricket's gaze. "I am no stranger to war and death, nor is my family. My father was a child of the diaspora, when Stalin falsely accused my people of collusion with the Nazis, rounding them up and deporting them thousands of miles away from home. I've overheard stories he and his friends shared over vodka, of men, women, and children dying of starvation and disease on the train cars. The mass graves he saw as a child…when I announced my intention of joining the Legion, there was so much pain in my father's eyes. I know he hoped to spare his children of the horror. Now that I have served on the battlefields myself, I know how he must have felt. I wish to spare my siblings and my daughter of the same."

Suddenly, Honey's breath hitched slightly, but her eyes maintained the same frozen stare with not a tear in sight. Her speech became hurried, and Cricket had to focus to make sure he got every word of her Russian as she continued, "Ever since my payments home stopped after leaving the FFL, they probably believe that I am dead. With the secrecy of this place and its missions, I will never be able to see or talk to my family again. But if I do this, then they will be safe and secure. To me, that is worth my blood and the blood of my comrades—I would die a thousand times and endure a thousand tortures to ensure it."

Cricket turned her words over in his brain. Her conviction was not in question—she meant and believed every word she said. He didn't really know what to say, so he said nothing. Part of him considered putting a steadying hand on hers. To comfort her, maybe? But he couldn't make himself do it. Something was stopping him, but he couldn't put his finger on what. There was something about the strength of her will that told him that she'd probably see it as an unwelcome pitying gesture. Or maybe he just felt unworthy of trying to connect with her, given the relative lack of purpose to his own motivations.

He regretted asking her about her past, and wished he'd never said anything.

Honey took a moment to breathe before turning to Cricket and pointing the interrogation back to him. "Now you know, Cricket: I fight for my family. That is why I'm here, and not back in Chechnya. So, tell me: why are you here? What do you fight for?"

It was Cricket's turn to avoid her gaze as he took a drag from his cigarette. The truth was, was that he didn't really know. He had no family to support like she did. He was indoctrinated into the patriotic mindset of the US military in Basic Training like his fellow soldiers, but while he was able, ready, and willing to fight and die for America like the rest of them, he'd never really thought to question his own reasons for doing so. There was no conviction to his actions like Honey had, no overarching goal—and he knew it. And knowing that fact made him disgusted with himself. He did everything he could not to let it show on his face.

Knowing it wasn't fair to let Honey bare her soul to him without an answer of his own, Cricket said the first thing he could think of. "I never knew my parents," he said. "I grew up as an orphan. Bounced around a lot in the foster care system as a kid, never staying with a single family or in a single school for long enough to form more than surface-level attachments. I've had a lot of different home environments—some of them showed me kindness, others…not so much."

Cricket didn't feel like expounding on the subject of the continually underfunded foster care and education systems in America or talking about any of the foster families that sometimes showed a more abusive side to them, so instead he quickly moved on to something approaching the present day. "The Army was my way out. There, I was given skills and taught how to use them. I was given a purpose, and direction. What's more, is I was good at it—I must be, if they saw fit to move me here. There was satisfaction and pride. The men I served with were the closest thing I had to a family for the first time in my life. Lima Company, they were my comrades, my brothers. The United States government gave me everything I have: a purpose, a family, skills, and knowledge. I owe everything I have, everything I am, to America. I am—can only be—nothing but grateful for that.

"Since then, they've told me that the best way I can repay that kindness is to come here for a chance to serve in what is supposed to be the most elite fighting force in the world. How could I say no?"

Honey's brow knitted together as she processed Cricket's words. She looked about as satisfied with Cricket's answer as he felt. "So, you fight to repay the masters that showed you kindness? You fight for country? For your comrades?"

Cricket shook his head. "Not exactly. It's more like, I fight because I don't really know how to do anything else. It's the one thing I'm good at, the one thing I have that's useful, and it's something I enjoy." Cricket went quiet for a moment as he considered that last part—did he really enjoy the violence? He shrugged and continued, "It's the only thing I have. I fight and I survive because it's the only thing I know." Cricket kept his eyes on the foot of the bed they shared, face flushing with embarrassment. "My reason's not noble like yours. I don't have anyone to protect."

Cricket felt like there was something more he could have said, but the words simply weren't coming to him. All he could feel was disappointment, embarrassment, and a twinge of shame. Whatever Honey thought of what Cricket had told her, she didn't say; and her face was equally impassive. They continued laying together in silence, Honey's hand resting on Cricket's chest as they stared at the ceiling waiting for sleep to take them.

 

---

 

AUGUST 10, 1992

THE MIDDLE OF THE WILDERNESS

 

Cricket was kidnapped in the middle of the night, stolen from his bed. He had attempted to fight back but was quickly subdued and bound with a bag over his head. His captors put him in the back of what he assumed was some kind of vehicle, as he felt rumbling beneath his feet and the sensation of movement. He wasn't alone. He felt someone sitting beside him, possibly bound like he was. A familiar voice sounded over a set of tinny speakers; it was Master Miller.

"Good, you're finally awake. In five minutes, you will be removed from this vehicle and set loose. You two have been charged with a simple training mission. The objective is simple: get to the rally point without being captured. You will have to work together to achieve this objective. One of you has a fragment of a map, the other has another fragment and a knife. I expect you will make good use of these tools and of the skills given to you from my survival classes in the previous year to get to your objective.

"There will be others looking for you as you make the journey. This opposing force is staffed not just by FOXHOUND instructors, but also by your fellow trainees. Make use of your wits and whatever is at hand as you make your way to your objective. If you have any questions, ask them now; you won't get another chance."

The two cadets said nothing as the vehicle they were in came to a rolling stop and the bench they sat on stopped vibrating underneath them. Doors were heard opening, and the two cadets were forcibly pulled from their seats and thrown onto a hard ground of dirt and gravel. The masks were pulled from their faces, and Cricket had just enough time to process the presence of Tortoise standing above him with Fruit Bat, their grim faces illuminated by the red taillights as they climbed into the back of the armored van and closed the doors behind them. After watching them drive away and out of sight, Cricket looked to his companion, who was already hard at work cutting her bonds.

"Black Mamba?" he said aloud, with surprise.

"Nice to see you, too," Mamba grunted as she sawed away at the strands tying her wrists together. "Hang on, let me get this cut, then I'll do you."

After several minutes of awkward sawing, Mamba was able to get herself and Cricket free of their bonds, and they ran off the road into a wooded area just off the path. They needed to get out of the open. Once they were a good ways into the wood, they stopped to catch their breath. As his eyes adjusted better to the natural darkness, Cricket looked up at the sky, still dark gray and dim above the trees. "Sun hasn't risen yet," he pointed out. "It'd be a bad idea to try navigating at night without at least a compass, even if we have a map."

Mamba nodded. "Agreed. And a fire would give away our position."

Cricket leaned against a tree. "So, nothing we can do for now but wait."

Mamba looked around, expecting human figures to come darting out of the woods. She said, "I don't think I'll be able to get back to sleep anytime soon. I'll take first shift if you want to rest."

Cricket rubbed the back of his neck, realizing that he did feel exhausted and gratefully took her up on this offer. He sighed and slid down the bark of the tree to sit. "Wake me in an hour or when the sun rises, whichever comes first."

Black Mamba agreed and posted first watch as Cricket's eyelids grew heavy.

 

---

 

When Cricket woke up, the sky had brightened into a much lighter shade of gray, the woods now perfectly visible. Mamba was crouched nearby, staring out in the direction of where they had entered the forest. "How long was I out?" Cricket grunted.

"Hard to tell. Skies are cloudy. Sun just rose a little while ago. Was going to wake you about an hour ago, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to sleep, so I let you sleep in."

Cricket was annoyed. "Should've woken me up anyway. We both need our strength."

Mamba didn't respond.

Whatever. What's done was done. No point in getting angry about it.

Black Mamba pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. "Check your pockets," she said. "Master Miller said he'd left us map fragments. We might not have a compass, but if there's a landmark we can find as a reference point, that would help us."

Cricket patted the pockets of his cargo pants, realizing only now that his captors must have dressed him, since he was dragged out of bed in his skivvies. Something about that irritated him, but he didn't comment on it. In short order, he had retrieved a folded piece of paper. When they both unfolded their papers and placed them next to each other, what they had was a topographical map of what looked to be a small valley, a mountain range on the north side (he was thankful that his map fragment had a compass rose for reference), and a series of large hills to the south and west. At the eastern edge of their incomplete map was a river. The whole area was wooded, and there were arterial dirt roads crisscrossing the woods in every direction, dividing them into sections. A big red arrow was drawn on the map pointing eastward in the general direction of the river.

"Is that where we're meant to go?" Cricket asked, pointing at the arrow.

"It's all we have to go on," Black Mamba said. "Whole area is nothing but woods. Only way to get a good look around is to either climb a tree and risk getting spotted, or go onto the roadways out into the open…and risk getting spotted."

"This map is incomplete," said Cricket. "We don't even know if we're in the area that this map covers."

"You really think that they would give us a map that doesn't cover ground that we can see?" Mamba asked.

"Well, they didn't give us a destination," Cricket replied, "and at this point, I don't think we should assume anything."

"Point taken. One of the objectives is to not be captured, so we should assume that there are other cadets acting as OPFOR, maybe even FOXHOUND instructors and staff. If we have actual FOXHOUNDers waiting for us, we'll need to be extra careful," said Black Mamba.

Cricket nodded. He looked around: bushes, trees, moss, brown earth, gray rocks. He knelt and dug his fingers into the ground, which was surprisingly springy and soft, he noted to his satisfaction. With a tug, he pulled up handfuls of dirt and began rubbing it onto his arms and face and smearing it onto his olive drab shirt. His fingernails were caked in dirt and grime.

"No face paint," he said in answer to Black Mamba's questioning look, "so this'll have to do."

He then grabbed a fistful of pine needles from a branch and leaves from a bush and crumpled them in his hands and pushed them into his thick, shaggy brown hair that he'd been letting grow out over the past few months. Realizing what Cricket was doing, Mamba followed his example.

He looked over to Mamba. "You still have those cords they tied us up with?"

Mamba fished into her pockets and dug out the cords, handing Cricket a couple of long strips of rope, keeping the other two strips for herself. "Can I borrow your knife?" Cricket asked. She handed it off to him, and he cut the rope strips into more pieces of equal length before handing it back to her. He then picked up bush leaves and twigs and set about tying them to his arms and ankles, with Mamba following suit. When they were finished, they looked each other over, they agreed they were about as well camouflaged as they could manage.

"So, what's the plan?" Cricket asked Mamba.

"You're asking me?"

"We need to work together to finish this exercise. Figured you'd have some ideas."

Black Mamba brushed a dirty blonde strand of hair caked with mud out of her face as she looked up a thick, sturdy tree. "I'd rather not chance the open road. One of us should climb to the treetops and see if they can't spot the mountain from where we are. That'll be our reference point."

"Are we assuming that we're south of the mountain?" Cricket asked.

"Seems as reasonable an assumption as we can make, with the portions of the map we have. Even if we're not, we can always try going around it." Mamba shrugged. "Unless you have any better idea?"

Cricket shook his head. "No, that works. You want to climb up, or should I?"

"You do it. I'll keep watch and let you know if I see anyone coming our way."

"Got it."

With a grunt, Cricket grabbed one of the thicker lower branches and hefted himself up, planting his foot in the crook of the branch. Step by step, he made his way up the tree even as the branches got thinner and thinner. A couple of times he would feel a branch creak under his weight, and he would have to quickly pull himself along before it broke. When he got as high up as he could before there were no more usable branches to climb with, he wrapped his legs around the thinner trunk and looked around.

They were indeed inside a valley. The trees spread out in an ocean of verdant green, still going strong in the late summer as they gently crested upward far ahead of him and into the horizon where he could see the far-off hills, which aside from being pockmarked by trees was mostly bare grass. On his right, he saw the mountain range, which while small as mountains go, had their peaks triumphantly thrusting skyward and imposing over the valley in their shadow. Cricket nodded in satisfaction as he started making his way back down the tree. When he got back to the bottom, he pointed in the direction that he'd seen the mountain range. "Unless there's another set of hills on the other side of the mountain range, that way is north."

"Great," Mamba smiled. "Then the road we came from runs east to west. If we stay just behind the tree line and follow it eastward, we should have no problems getting to the river and figuring out what to do next."

Cricket nodded. "We can't let our guard down, though. OPFOR could be anywhere."

Having voiced their agreement, the duo started making their way east. The ground was uneven, with plenty of hidden footfalls and snake holes to trip the unwary traveler. The sky stayed stubbornly gray, as if the weather itself was determined to deny them even the most basic of navigational advantages. During the hours they trekked, the two cadets said very little to each other, neither having much to say to the other.

At around noon, the sky started to clear up, and the sun could be seen at its highest point. It was then that the two soldiers saw fit to start looking for food. With only the one knife between them, tracking down prey for protein was going to be a difficult job. They set up snares in their area, but they only caught one rabbit, which wasn't much meat for one person, let alone two.

Every so often, they would stop so Cricket could climb another tree to get a lay of the land so they could compare their current location against the map they had. By about two in the afternoon, they heard the far-off sound of rushing water.

"The river must be close," said Black Mamba.

They moved more towards the sound, when they heard the sound of footsteps in the distance, which prompted them to immediately go prone. Cricket crawled slowly away from Mamba to put some distance between them in case they got ambushed. Slowly strolling into view were two men in fatigues carrying rifles. Cricket didn't recognize either of them—they must have been members of one of the other cadet squads. One was pale, short, and stout with a stocky, muscular frame and burning orange hair and goatee. The other man was black, thin, and wiry. Both men were sweating fiercely in the humid summer air.

"Hey, Armadillo," said the skinny man, "got any smokes?"

"Yep," said the stout ginger man, apparently named Armadillo. He pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes and grabbed one in his mouth before pulling out a lighter for it.

Silence passed for a moment, and Armadillo's companion stopped walking. "Well?" he said, impatiently.

"Well, what?" asked Armadillo.

"You going to give me one?"

Armadillo puffed a few times and blew out a smoke ring to really emphasize the pause he took before answering with a blunt, "No."

"Man, fuck you," the thinner man growled.

"Hey, it's not my fault you forgot to grab yours before we came out," Armadillo said with an amused shrug.

"Whatever. So, what's the deal with our targets, these new trainees?"

"What, didn't you listen to the briefings?"

"Will you quit being a tight-ass and just answer?"

Armadillo sighed with exasperation. "Jesus, Mongoose…" He took a long drag from his cigarette and rubbed his temple in an 'it's too early in the week for this shit' kind of way.

"Hey, it's not like they don't drag us out of bed for this shit with no warning, too. I didn't have time to grab coffee before we were out of the briefing room," Mongoose complained.

"Alright, alright," Armadillo waved his hand in a 'calm down' gesture. "Today, we're just supposed to be hunting down a couple of strays: a pair of trainees they dug up from Boot that they dumped a few clicks west of here. We're supposed to keep them from getting across the river. There, happy?"

"No, I get that. But who'd they grab? Any Irregulars?"

"One of 'em, yeah. Some chick who's good with knives. Apparently, she even has skills with swordplay. Trained with samurai and kung fu masters; some real David Carradine, Jet Li stuff."

"No shit? Where'd they pick her up from?"

"Used to work as an assassin, but word is she retired after she got knocked up. FOXHOUND reached out to her some years later when her kid had grown up a bit and offered her some work."

"How big we talking?"

"Big enough to get the attention of some mean people. The Yakuza hate her, and there are some Mexican cartels that know her on a first-name basis."

"Damn…think they might come this way?"

"For my sake, Mongoose, I sure hope so. Give me a break from your constant nagging in my ear."

"Go to hell, Arma."

"Already there, Mongoose. This headache is killing me."

Mongoose chuckled. "You been hitting the bar at the lounge?"

Armadillo gave Mongoose a wry smirk. "Yeah, something like that."

"Keep saying you should lay off."

"Yeah, I know you do," Armadillo replied.

The two men continued moving slowly into the woods as they continued to banter back and forth, oblivious to the two cadets lying in wait on either side of them. Black Mamba caught Cricket's eye and motioned with her hand for Cricket to take Armadillo while she takes Mongoose. Cricket nodded and slowly crept forward to take a position behind the shorter man, hoping that Armadillo's girth would help to conceal him from the thinner counterpart.

When he got up close, Cricket drove a kick into the back of Armadillo's right knee to stagger him, after which he grabbed his left arm with one arm and put him in a headlock with the other. Mongoose turned to point his rifle at Cricket's head and Cricket swung Armadillo around to put his body in the line of Mongoose's shot. Mamba jabbed into the nerve cluster in Mongoose's neck and kicked him the groin, after which she quickly grabbed the rifle and its slide to prevent an accidental discharge while she got in front of him and used her hips and lower leverage to hoist him up and over her shoulder and onto the ground, taking the rifle out of his hands in the process and pointing it at Mongoose.

"I suggest you don't move," she told him.

Before Cricket could instruct Armadillo to cooperate, the short barrel-chested man dropped his rifle from his free hand and grabbed the arm around his neck, lifting his legs up into the air as he curled himself into a ball. Cricket was unable to cope with the shift in their center of gravity and began to fall forward with Armadillo pulling them both down and using the momentum to pull Cricket over his head and slamming him onto his back into the dirt.

Cricket raised his foot up in a kick, but it was easily knocked away by Armadillo's meaty hands, which started raining down blows on Cricket's head. Only having just enough time to cover his face with his arms, Cricket was getting pummeled by Armadillo's fists, which felt like getting smashed by solid granite. Hearing a cry from Armadillo's throat, Cricket lowered his arms to see the pocketknife Mamba was carrying was now lodged in his bicep. Getting a better look at Armadillo's fists, Cricket realized that the feeling of being pummeled by stone wasn't metaphor—his hands had hardened and taken on the texture of rock.

Yanking the knife from his arm with a grunt and tossing it aside, Armadillo's face was frozen with pure fury as the skin of his whole body changed texture to match his fists. He closed the distance between himself and Black Mamba surprisingly quickly, and she only had just enough room to dodge his swings and use his knee as a springboard to vault over him, leaving Mongoose prone on the ground.

"Run!" she yelled to Cricket as she started sprinting eastward.

Cricket quickly grabbed the fallen knife and followed suit, running as fast as his legs could carry him. Soon after he heard the crack of gunfire behind him and rounds whizzing past.

As the distant sound of rushing water got louder and louder, Mamba and Cricket both found hiding places while they watched for their pursuers, Mamba hidden in a ditch under an outcropping of tree root, and Cricket wrapping himself around a particularly thick tree branch up above. It wasn't long before Armadillo and Mongoose appeared from the underbrush, with Mongoose carrying a pistol and Bowie knife and Armadillo shouldering his rifle, still fielding his natural armor.

"They disappeared!" said Mongoose.

"They can't have gotten far," Armadillo growled.

"Think they made it as far as the river?"

"It's a possibility."

Mongoose fished a large protein bar from his bag and tossed it to Armadillo. "Here. You'll need the calories for that armor of yours."

Armadillo nodded in thanks, shoving half of the bar into his mouth. When he finally swallowed, he said, "Let's hurry and get to the river. Maybe we'll catch them. Even if we don't, we might be able to cut them off."

The duo rushing away, Cricket and Mamba waited until the sound of their heavy footsteps disappeared before they both simultaneously let out a breath that neither realized they were holding. Once certain of their safety, Cricket slid down the tree and met up with Mamba.

"You good?" Cricket asked.

"Yeah," Mamba whispered. "You?"

"I'll be alright." Cricket looked to where the two soldiers ran off to. "Another Irregular, I'm guessing?"

Black Mamba nodded. "Heavy Armadillo. He's not a cadet, he's a FOXHOUNDer. The other guy with him is Explosive Mongoose. Armadillo has a strange genetic condition that lets him harden the outer layer of his skin. I've heard he can even no-sell armor-piercing sniper rounds. Mongoose, as his name implies, is an explosives expert. A genius chemist, but kind of useless in this training scenario. I wonder why they got paired together…"

"Doesn't matter," Cricket said. "What matters is they know where we're going, and they're going to be waiting for us. Do you remember what that Mongoose guy was saying, about Armadillo 'needing the calories?' What was that about?"

Black Mamba shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe maintaining that armor skin takes a lot of energy? Wonder how long he can keep it up…"

"That was some fancy acrobatics. The knife throwing was helpful, too. Thanks."

"Had a lot of practice."

"You think you might be able to dodge his hits, tire him out maybe?"

Mamba thought for a moment. "Probably. Why? What are you thinking?"

Cricket looked eastward again. "Nothing, yet. We should follow in their wake. I have an idea that might be worth trying, but I need to see what the river looks like first."

The two cadets carefully moved through the forest toward the sound of rushing water. As they neared the edge of the woods, they crawled along the ground so they could peer from the tree line without exposing themselves. In front of them was a clearing with a large river bisecting the field in a line perpendicular to them. The water didn't look too deep from what they could see, but the river itself was very wide and looks could be deceiving. There were piles of rocks, boulders, and loose stones in various parts that looked like they would make for convenient footpaths for crossing. Looking further to the south, a bridge could be seen in the distance further downstream, with a couple of small buildings and a guard tower on the far eastern side.

Standing by the near shore of the river right in front of them were the waiting figures of Armadillo and Mongoose, staring blankly in their direction, but making no indication that they could see them. Cricket slowly turned his head to Mamba and whispered, "That natural armor of Arma's, do you think it makes him any heavier?"

Mamba shook her head slightly. "I don't think so; it's literally just his skin. I think it just seems like he's denser and hits harder because he was already muscle-bound and top-heavy to begin with. He's just that strong."

"Hmm, that shore is just dirt and rock, and the grass gets thinner the further out from the tree line you go. I don't think our camouflage is going to help us sneak around them, even if we went further up or down stream. There's also that guard post south of us. That's probably where we should go next, come to think of it."

"So, how do you want to tackle it?" Mamba asked.

"See if you can't get Armadillo into the water closer to where the current is more rapid. Between the energy he exerts with his armor and wading in the water, that should give you an advantage."

"What about me? I'm going to have to tread water too. And the drag on our clothing will make it hard to move for both of us."

"Maybe you can lure him on to the rocks where it's relatively safe to fight and then force him into the water when you get an opportunity?"

Mamba considered the idea. "That might work. What about Mongoose?"

"I can take Mongoose. His only specialty is explosives, right? So, he'll be no stronger, faster, or agile than any other combatant. I can deal with that."

"Don't underestimate him," Mamba warned. "Remember, he's still a FOXHOUNDer."

"Got it. On your mark."

Mamba counted to three, and on three they both rushed forward from the tree, Mamba firing her rifle at the FOXHOUNDers in their way. Mongoose quickly ducked behind the stout frame of Armadillo, who armored up to take the fire. As Armadillo raised his rifle to return fire, Cricket and Mamba split up from each other in a wide arc so that he couldn't shoot both of them at once. He aimed at Mamba, and Cricket quickly grabbed a rock and threw it at Armadillo's head to distract him as Mamba lunged in close and repeated her earlier movement to jump from Arma's thigh and flip over him, giving him a solid whack to the forehead with the butt of her rifle to get his attention.

Cricket, meanwhile, slid underneath between both Armadillo's and Mongoose's legs, grabbing Mongoose's ankle on the way, and yanking him off his feet. Before Mongoose could react, Cricket scrambled up, dragged Mongoose by the leg by about a foot as Mongoose started to fight back, and then pulled him up by his vest to throw him further away. Having successfully separated the two, Mamba was now free to focus solely on Armadillo while he and Mongoose fought.

Landing behind Armadillo, Mamba continued taking potshots at his armored head. While Armadillo's armor protected against bullet penetration, he could still feel the impact of blunt force trauma, and he began to feel mildly concussed. Not wanting to accidentally kill him, Mamba laid off and started retreating over the rocks into the river, hoping that Armadillo would be angry enough to follow her instead of continuing to shoot.

Her gambit worked: when Armadillo finished shaking off his dizziness, he looked up at her with wrath in his eyes and lumbered after her, his rifle dropping from his shaking hands as he pulled out a knife. Mamba was in her element, ducking, dodging, and weaving under his knife strikes with the grace of a ballet dancer. As she dodged, she kept backing up further and further into the river. She was quickly running out of stones with which to place her feet, and the water was getting deeper, now up to Armadillo's thighs. With a feint, she smirked as Armadillo took the bait and stabbed at a blonde head that was no longer there, overextending his arm, which Mamba was able to grab and pull to send him flying into the water, which swept him away as he kept losing his footing.

Between the concussion from the gunshots, the stress of fighting, and now having to fight against the swift current as he kept gaining and losing his footing, Armadillo could no longer maintain his armor and his skin resumed its normal peach color. Letting the current carry him, he focused on staying upright with his head above the water as he was swept down the light rapids onto a boulder that he barely clawed himself onto, gasping and weak.

As Mamba was fighting with Armadillo, Cricket was locked in a struggle with Mongoose. First Mongoose tried to point his pistol at Cricket's center-mass, but Cricket grabbed the barrel and pushed the slide back, wedging his hand in the chamber to prevent Mongoose from being able to fire. As he gripped as hard as he could, Cricket hooked his other hand and put the knife in its reverse grip around Mongoose's neck to try and push him down.

But Mongoose had firm footing, and he pushed back against Cricket with his free hand while struggling to maneuver the pistol into pointing at Cricket again. Cricket doubled his effort to push Mongoose, and Mongoose was forced to let go of the pistol to successfully push Cricket off of him. Cricket lost his grip on the pistol in surprise, and the firearm went flying away from both of them.

Mongoose didn't give Cricket a chance to recover, quickly moving in to strike at Cricket's midsection, then grabbing Cricket's arm and spinning him so that Mongoose was positioned behind him. With Cricket's head positioned forward, his body could do nothing but follow. He wasn't at a good enough angle to strike back with his free hand and his locked arm twisted behind him.

Not sure what else to do, Cricket did the first thing he could think of, turning in the direction of his arm, jumping up to curl his legs inward, and letting gravity pull them both downward, similar to how Armadillo had escaped from his grip earlier. Though Mongoose did stumble slightly, he didn't fall like his partner did, and Cricket ended up swinging in a pendulum motion toward the ground, though as he did, he spun just enough in Mongoose's loosening grip that he was now facing his enemy, giving him a free shot to knee the taller man in the groin hard.

That got him free, and Cricket used the opportunity to keep wailing on Mongoose, striking him in the face until he fell over. Cricket looked around, spotted the discarded pistol, and rolled to it as he picked it up, aimed at Mongoose as he got up and fired in one fluid motion.

Mongoose fell over and didn't get up. Cricket expected to see paint splotches on Mongoose's torso where his rounds had hit them. When Cricket didn't see any blue paint, he began to panic. He thought back to what Major Jacobs had said to him back in April. From now on, death will be a very real threat for as long as you remain here…

Was Cricket's first kill since coming to the FOXHOUND training camp a FOXHOUNDer? Had he just murdered a fellow comrade? Shaking, he stepped over to Mongoose, frantically patting him down to search for the injury. Maybe it wasn't too late to treat it. If he could just stop the bleeding he could get Mongoose to the guard post and report it so they could get Mongoose to a hospital.

"Cricket, what are you doing?" Black Mamba had walked up behind him.

"Gotta stop—stop the bleeding. I have to, I have to," Cricket was mumbling, not making sense.

"Cricket, stop. Stop! Look." Mamba pointed. Cricket followed her gesture. There was no blood, no sign of any injury. Stuck inside Mongoose's shirt were what appeared to be several darts. Mongoose himself was unconscious, softly snoring.

"He's okay?" Cricket asked in mild confusion. It took a moment to hit him. Of course—tranquilizer rounds. It was still a training exercise, and OPFOR was given orders to capture, not kill them. He looked at the pistol. A converted Mk22 "Hush Puppy." He'd seen it before in the previous year's classes.

"What about the rifle?"

Mamba shouldered her rifle and handed Armadillo's to Cricket. "Rubber bullets. They'll hurt like hell, but as long as you don't take a wrong hit in the head, you should be okay. I only shot Armadillo in the head because I knew he could take it." She looked out at Armadillo, who had passed out from exhaustion, before turning back to Cricket. "Come on. We need to get a move on before these guys wake up and before that guard post sends people this way."

Cricket nodded numbly, pulled back the slide on his pistol to chamber another tranquilizer round, and checked Mongoose's pockets, where he found a compass, another protein bar, and another map fragment. He then tucked the pistol in his waistband while shouldering the spare rifle Mamba gave him, nodding. "I'm ready. Let's go."

Together, they made their way across the river and across the field sloping downhill into another wooded glade.

 

---

 

Later that evening, as the sky turned to orange dusk, Mamba and Cricket took some time during their last bit of daylight to examine the third map fragment they found. The lower left corner was a little northeast of their position, given its view relative to the mountain range. According to the topographic lines, the general path they were on through the woods led to a series of cliffs, at the top of which was a clearing. This clearing was circled in red. The rally point? With nothing else to go on, it was unclear what the circle was meant to signify.

Based on the distances shown on the map and their current progress, it would take another couple of days to reach it, and that was assuming there would be no further delay from OPFOR, which was unlikely. Cricket stretched and popped his neck, feeling exhausted from the thought.

One other feature of note on the way there was a small gathering of buildings to the southwest of the red circle. Another guard post? A staging area? It was impossible to be sure. The two cadets agreed that it would be a good idea to recon the place before moving further northward in case there were any resources or clues that might help them.

As the sky got darker, clouds began to form and there came a rumbling to warn the coming of rain. Quickly, the two cadets wordlessly set about the work to gathering heavy wood and leaves to make two makeshift lean-tos positioned at the bottom of two trees to try and keep themselves dry as much as they possibly could.

Once their labor was finished, they both hunkered down and let the rain lull them to sleep, both lacking the energy for further conversation after the excitement of the day's climactic events. After all, they both knew, it was going to be important to conserve as much energy as possible for the rest of the exercise to come…

Notes:

I originally wanted to fit the whole training exercise in one chapter, but this was getting pretty long, so I decided to split it up into two parts. The next chapter will show the events of the remainder of this exercise with Snake and Black Mamba, another shorter exercise on the more secret agent side of espionage, as well as a time skip summarizing the general events leading up to the final exam, which I hope I'll be able to use as the capstone for the end of next chapter. I'm getting kind of impatient to get to the actual Metal Gear story, and while this training arc is a lot of fun to write, I'm really excited to get to the meat of the story. With this third chapter, the AO3 version is now up to date and in tandem with the version I posted on FF.net, so I'll now be updating on both websites with the new chapters as I finish them (as of this writing, I'm about 548 words into Chapter Four, and I hope to be finished with it inside of the next few weeks).

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I look forward to writing many more as we move forward into this origin story for Snake's first adventure. Please don't hesitate to review and let me know what you think!

Chapter 4: Cloak & Dagger

Summary:

In which Cricket gets a reality check on the nature of the new outfit he's joining, the naive student continues to be tested...

AUGUST 12, 1992

WILDERNESS – SIDE OF CLIFF

 

"You ever do much mountaineering, Cricket?" Black Mamba asked right before she leapt up to grab a higher handhold. The grace she showed moving and jumping from point to point up the wall reminded Cricket of a mountain goat.

Meanwhile, Cricket was having a much slower go of it, steadily pushing up with his legs as he used his hands to hold him in place, wedging his palms into any crack he could find. Unfortunately, the higher up the wall they got the less handholds he was able to find, which made climbing harder. After making his own leap to a handhold just out of reach, he scrambled for a place to put his foot and once he found one, he pulled himself closer to the wall so that he could give his arms a break.

"Not really," he grunted as he shook his hand to relieve the lactic acid in his finger muscles. "I fought in the Iraqi-Kuwait border region, which is mostly desert. If you want mountains, you'd have to go further north across the Euphrates, towards Iran. We had climbing drills in training, of course, but I didn't make much use of it in the field except for getting over walls in urban areas."

Cricket looked at his hand, which was scratched, bloody, and covered with dirt and dust. He was glad the stinging had turned to numbness, but he knew it was going to hurt like hell to treat them later when this was all done with.

"No better time to learn then, I suppose," Mamba quipped, pushing off with her legs and reaching out to grab a hanging root, which she used to pull herself up and over the cliff wall. Cricket followed close behind to replicate the move, but when he grabbed the root, his weight pulled it out of the wall, and he swung his arms. As his brain caught up with the fact that he was about to fall, he only had just enough time to utter an "oh, shi—"

Mamba grabbed his arm. "Gotcha!" she shouted as he swung back towards the wall, shoving his hand into a lucky crack for purchase, although with the overhang he clung to, there was no place to put his feet. Mamba pulled with both arms, straining as she dug in her heels. Unfortunately, her frame was too small to pull up Cricket on her own, and she could feel her feet sliding towards the edge.

"C'mon, Cricket, pull up!" she yelled. "Help me out before I drop you!"

Cricket swung his leg up to the wall and kicked it at an angle, giving him some air and a little bit of leverage as he pulled both on the handhold and Mamba's hand so that he could get his free arm up and over the cliff and grab onto the grass. Pulling himself over the edge, both he and Mamba took a moment to catch their breath. "Thanks," Cricket said.

"Uh-huh," Mamba said, waving off his gratitude.

After checking their pockets to make sure they hadn't lost what little loose equipment they had in the climb, they both swung around the rifles that were slung across their torsos and shouldered them as they made their way forward.

Through the dense wood thicket downhill from them several hundred yards away from the cliffside was a cluster of small buildings, each no larger than probably 700 square feet in total area. Positioned around these buildings were three pairs of men and women patrolling the perimeter. On the roof of the central building was a radio antenna. Cricket and Mamba positioned themselves at the top of a small knoll just inside the surrounding forest.

Mamba pointed to the antenna. "Think there might be another map fragment in there, so we can figure out whether that circle on the map actually is the rally point? Or maybe they've got some supplies we can use?"

"I'm more interested in the radio equipment," Cricket replied. "If we can disable their comms, or even just get a hold of some radios ourselves to monitor them with, we'll be able to avoid running into anymore patrols all the way to the rally point."

"That's only if we can get the radios without getting caught," Mamba pointed out. "We would need to make sure they never knew we were in there."

Cricket went quiet. It was a valid point. Even so, a single man or a two or three-man team could manage it. The problem was, the comms building is likely to be the most well-defended due to its importance. They needed a way to give an infiltrator some better odds. "What about a distraction?" Cricket asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there's two of us. Say one of us picks a fight on the other side of that small base to draw OPFOR away from the building, while the other person goes in and collects radios and intel, and maybe sabotages equipment if they can get a shot at it. Even if the distraction doesn't completely empty the building, even some is better than nothing."

"But the person performing the distraction is going to be bringing a lot of heat down onto themselves," Mamba said. "That's a lot for even a small team to take on, never mind a single soldier. We can't even try for a psyops mission to convince them that there's more of us than there really is—it's a training exercise, so they already know there's only two of us. Even if we could draw forces away, it probably wouldn't last very long before they figure out that someone's moved in on the real prize."

"So, there wouldn't be a lot of time to work with. How much time do you think a proper distraction could buy us, with the equipment we have?" Cricket asked.

"Between us both, we've got two rifles and two pistols…I have a flashbang from Armadillo. Assuming they don't figure it out right away, I'd say…five minutes? Ten, tops. Not a lot of time. We want to sabotage their comm station, confiscate radio equipment and other supplies, and look for intel. In that amount of time, we'd probably only get away with one of those, maybe two if we're lucky."

Cricket nodded in agreement. "I think you're right. We can also just say, 'screw it,' and keep going to that circle on the map that we think is the rally point. We don't have to take the risk." He patted his pockets and shrugged. "I'd ask if you want to flip a coin, but…"

Mamba thought for a moment and shook her head. "I think the advantage we could get is worth the risk. Let's do it."

"Alright. You're the better CQC combatant," Cricket said, "so I'll handle the distraction while you infiltrate. Sound good?"

"Agreed. How do we prioritize potential objectives?"

"The only thing we know for sure about that building is they have comms equipment. So, I'd say prioritize sabotaging the comm center and the collection of radios. If you find intel or supplies in there while you're doing it, then grab it, otherwise just focus on the radios.

As for my end, I want to take some time to set up some tree traps and a tripwire with the flashbang. We're only going to get one shot at this, so let's set the environment up to give me as much of an advantage as I can get. If I'm lucky, maybe I can convince them that we're both performing a single assault, which'll give them more reason to commit more men and draw away more forces you'd otherwise have to deal with."

"Okay. I'll help you get set up. Where should I go in from?"

Together, the two trainees laid out their map and began to plan.

 

---

 

One fifty-one-one thousand, one fifty-two-one thousand…

Cricket crouched low in the bushes while he silently counted to himself, his weapon trained on a pair of guards standing at the northern gate in the fence. From his vantage point up the hill, he counted at least five guards that he could see—two at the gate, another two across the courtyard at the opposite gate, and a fifth smoking near a steel shed at the nearest corner. If there were any others, he couldn't see them.

The plan, such as it was, was that Mamba would circle around and enter the small base from the opposite side while Cricket opened fire and got their attention. He would then turn around and lead them into the forest where he'd hopefully be able to get them to fall for the traps he and Mamba had set up. He just hoped that the guards would take the bait and follow him in.

When they had finished planning and Mamba had set out, Cricket started to count out the seconds, knowing it would take her a few minutes to get into position.

Unfortunately, with the lack of radios, he was just going to have to operate by feel and hope that Mamba will be able to succeed. They both agreed that if she didn't get back and help him lose his pursuers after fifteen minutes once the shots started firing, that he was to assume that she was taken out and that he should make for the rally point anyway. Cricket began to sweat, his nose itching something fierce, but he didn't dare scratch, didn't dare make a move that the guards could pick up on from where they stood.

Two hundred-one thousand, two-oh-one-one thousand…

Meanwhile, Mamba moved steadily around the encampment, taking care to stay inside the tree line as she edged closer toward the fence. Giving the guards on her side a wide berth, she saw a side of fencing behind a building that looked relatively unguarded. What was even better was that there was a hole at the foot of the fence just big enough to crawl through. Laying down in a prone position, she lay still in the shadow of the trees. She was ready—it was all up to Cricket now.

Two thirty-nine one thousand, two forty one thousand!

Four minutes. It was time. Whether Mamba was ready or not, Cricket needed to get started now. Shouldering his rifle, he aimed down the sights at the nearest guard, who was unlucky enough to be standing in clear view. Taking a breath, Cricket rested his finger on the trigger, and exhaled as he squeezed.

The shots rang loud in the quiet of the forest as the rubber bullets impacted into the guard's torso, knocking him off-balance and onto the ground.

"Contact!" yelled the other gate guard, who tried to dive out of the way only to similarly get pelted for his trouble. He loudly yelled in pain and wrapped his arms around his knee and torso as he fell to the ground. The guards on the other side of the courtyard ran up and took cover behind low concrete walls while the smoking guard dropped his cigarette and opened fire on Cricket's position.

Cricket moved away from where he was squatting, keeping low to stay camouflaged. He flipped the firing mode switch to full-auto and laid down fire on the outpost's position as he slowly retreated further into the trees.

Come on, come on, take the bait, Cricket urged silently as he crouch-walked back. An alarm sounded, three more guards were seen rushing out of the radio building, and another two from the building on the opposite side. Cricket had kicked the hornet's nest. The guards behind the low walls started moving forward, with the formerly smoking guard taking point. A squad of five soldiers started moving into the forest to follow Cricket while the rest stayed behind to watch the gate.

Better than nothing, I guess, thought Cricket. Mamba, it's all up to you now.

Mamba had wasted no time rushing forward and diving for the hole in the fence as soon as the shooting started, crawling underneath, and then getting up to press her back against the wall. She saw the three guards exit the radio building when she peeked around the corner, and the other two guards burst out of a door right next to it, causing her to jump back so that she wouldn't be seen. She drew her pistol as she leaned around. The guards in the courtyard were pointing towards the southern gate. To get to the radio building she'd need to cross the courtyard on her side, but there was a guard in her way and there was no way she could cross without him spotting her, and her unsuppressed pistol would make too much noise.

Spotting a small rock near her foot, she grabbed it and tossed it out from the corner, taking care to keep her frame concealed behind the wall.

"Huh? What was that?" came a male voice from nearby. "I heard something. I'm going to check it out."

Mamba counted her breaths as she waited for the footsteps. The guard very nearly turned the corner, but stopped just short so that Mamba could see the end of his rifle's barrel. She counted her breaths.

"Clear! No sign of hostiles. Likely just some small wildlife." The guard turned around, and Mamba took her chance to round the corner and grab the man by his shirt, spinning him around behind the building out of view and slamming his head into the wall, concussing him. She then ejected a dart from the pistol by hand and jabbed it into the man's neck. In seconds, he was incapacitated by the tranquilizer, and she was free to carefully scurry across the courtyard to the radio building behind the backs of the squad at the southern gate, though not before grabbing the man's walkie-talkie and clipping it onto her waistband.

Back in the forest, Cricket ran into the thicket, his pursuers close behind. When he got well within the zone of where the traps were, he dove behind a tree and blindly fired around the trunk to pin down his pursuers.

"There he is!" shouted one guard.

"I'm pinned!" answered another.

Mamba had left him one of the magazines from her rifle, plus one extra as she took only the pistol into the base, saying something about how at the range she'll be dealing with combined with her need to keep a low profile, a rifle would be more of a hindrance than a help. Cricket ejected his mag and quickly checked his ammo count, before loading it back and switching his rifle to burst fire. His current magazine was almost dry, and he would need to reload soon. He hoped he'd be able to get an opportunity with the squad at his heels.

Keeping low, Cricket leaned around the tree and fired a three-round burst shot at one of the guards, nailing him in the shoulder and sending him reeling back. Click. The rifle was empty, Cricket would need to reload. Drawing his pistol in his other hand, he fired three more shots to get the guards to duck their heads and quickly reloaded the rifle's magazine as he ran up the hill towards the first snare trap.

Careful to vault over it, he led the guards behind him and just as he hoped, one got caught and was sent zipping up the tree. Cricket fired a tranq dart into the helpless soldier, and smirked as he ran, knowing that would keep his pursuers busy.

Two of the squad members crouched and set up defensive positions while the third worked to cut their friend down. By the time he was on the ground though, he was already unconscious. Cricket heard one of the guards activating their radio. "Outpost 2, this is Alpha 1-1. I've got two men down. OPFOR has laid traps up ahead. How copy?"

"Roger, 1-1," came a voice on the other line. "We'll send another team as backup. Exercise extra caution. Did you get a read on the number of attackers?"

"Negative, O-2. I've seen only one, but this forest is thick; it's a good place for an ambush. It's possible that it's just one tango and the traps are to keep us pinned in the forest. Recommend you call for reinforcements on the outpost in case his partner tries to get inside."

"Acknowledged, 1-1. Maintain your position until Bravo Team links up with you."

"Understood."

Cursing under his breath, Cricket moved in the direction of another trap. Mamba needs to move her ass, he thought to himself. It's about to get really hot down there.

 

---

 

Back at the base, Mamba carefully opened the door to the radio building, snuck down the hall and placed her back against the wall next to a doorway on her left. Peeking around, she saw one guard manning the radio station with his back to her. On the right-hand side of the room was another guard standing in the corner and observing an open doorway leading outside.

On the left-hand side of the room a cork board hung on the wall with a map of the local area, with various points of interest marked and labeled in marker, as well as some photos of specific locations. The points appeared to be the locations of other guard stations with drawn lines denoting various patrol routes.

Pay dirt.

Very slowly, she crept into the room, pistol at the ready in case one or both guards turned around and noticed her. Moving up to the corkboard, she tried to gingerly pull out the thumbtacks wedged into the bottom corners of the map. As she did so, the map fluttered slightly in the wind of the overhead ceiling fan, and the door guard looked over.

"Intruder!" he shouted, turning his weapon on her.

Acting quickly, she rushed to the side and grabbed the radio man around the neck and placed the barrel of her gun against his temple and the edge of her knife against his throat before he could grab the gun from his desk. Guiding his steps, Black Mamba gently pulled him back to the cork board. "I'd recommend not calling the radio," she said, pointing the pistol at the door guard.

"Y-you're crazy," complained the guard in her grip as she tapped the knife on his collarbone. "It's just a training exercise."

"Is it?" Mamba asked. "Then I suppose you'd better put in a convincing performance, huh?"

"Just shoot her!" said the captive guard. The door guard took aim, and Mamba held her captive as a human shield as she shot two tranq rounds into the door guard's head. He pivoted as the darts made impact into his skull, and then promptly fell over unconscious. Mamba used her gun hand to push her captive's head forward and dug her forearm into the side of his neck to cut off circulation. Within moments, he had lost consciousness as well.

There was no way that the guards outside hadn't heard her shots. Acting quickly, she grabbed the radioman's walkie-talkie and headset from his desk, and then picked up the transceiver box and yanked the cables out of the wall before hurtling it over her head at the nearest wall. Electronic parts flew all over the room as the box shattered into many pieces. Taped to the windowsill behind the desk was a list of radio frequencies—likely the other guard posts and the frequencies used by the patrols. She snatched the note and stuffed it into her pocket.

As she ran out the door, she was immediately met by a group of soldiers, forcing her to wheel around and sprint back the way she came.

"She's over here!" she heard a man shout behind her as she pushed the radio man's desk in front of the door she slammed shut before moving into the hallway. Another guard had burst in through the door she had first entered. Not having time to run, she sprinted forward, jumped and springboarded off of one wall and used the momentum to swing her leg and kick the guard in the head as she fell forward over his falling body and rolled through the doorway onto the ground outside.

Gunshots followed her from around the corner as she ran through the open gate. Without looking, she blindly fired her pistol behind her to try and deter any shooters and buy her a few seconds to run back into the forest.

 

---

 

Cricket laid down next to the log as he caught his breath, inserting his last magazine of rubber bullets into his rifle's mag well and ratcheting back the charging handle to insert a round into the receiver. A moment afterward, a loud bang was heard, and a burst of light flared in his peripheral vision. One of his pursuers had activated the flashbang tripwire.

Peeking around the end of the log, he saw two guards disoriented while a third looked around wildly trying to find out where the grenade may have been thrown from, not realizing that the grenade was already in their midst when they walked on it.

Taking advantage of the confusion, Cricket hurriedly crawled away, keeping the log between them, and hoping that his camouflage would help to enable his escape. As the elevation of the ground started to recede, he found himself rolling into a ditch, from which he was able to crawl under a low overhang of rock and dirt in the side of the hill.

Now relatively safe, he pressed his shoulder into the rifle's stock, and waited. He heard the stomping footsteps of the other squad nearby. Cricket held his breath as one set of footsteps came dangerously close to his position. He rested his finger on the trigger. They were right on top of him when a crackle of static burst on one of their radios.

"2-1 Actual, this is Command Post O-2. Respond."

"Roger, O-2. What's your status?"

"We've been hit by enemy forces! Communications with other CPs have been disabled. Full extent of damage unknown. Your rabbit isn't acting alone. We believe that OPFOR is still in the area. We have multiple friendlies down and are in need of reinforcements. Return to base to assist."

"What about the scout we're tracking?"

"We believe that he's meant to be a diversion to lead you away and thin our numbers. Ignore him for now, he's wasted enough of your time. We need reinforcements now before our hitter gets too far away!"

"Understood, O-2. RTB." The boots outside the overhang stepped as the unseen body they're attached to turns around. "You heard the man. Let's get moving. We'll grab what's left of Team 1 on the way back."

"Roger, TL," came the reply.

The boots walked away. Cricket waited until they were too far away to hear, and then counted another twenty breaths before he crawled out from under the rock. He started moving northward, bearing east towards the command post. If Black Mamba looked to be in trouble, he wanted to assess the situation and find out whether it would be possible to assist before moving to the rally point.

Fortunately, he didn't have to wait long, as she found him soon after. Before he could ask any questions, she shook her head. "Not here. I've still got guys on my ass. We need to start heading north now before they catch up." She handed him a radio and headset. "Tune to 145.73; that's the frequency that the locals are using—we can monitor their communication with it. In case we get separated, we can use frequency 141.80 to talk to each other."

Cricket nodded, donning the headset, and tuning the radio to the frequency specified. Together they moved from tree to tree with their heads on a swivel, waiting for OPFOR to come rushing at them at any moment.

After about an hour of trekking, they both decided to chance stopping so they could go over the map that Black Mamba had recovered. "Here's the rally point," Mamba pointed to a green 'X' on the map, which was in the same place as the circled area on their map fragments. The 'X' was labeled as "Objective."

Mamba pointed out the lines and points. "These are other CPs in this region, and these lines are patrol routes. I have a list of frequencies that I recovered from the one we were just at. With their comms down, it's going to take them time to warn the other bases that their radios and frequencies have been stolen, so that should buy us just long enough to get to the rally point if we monitor them while we move north."

"Which means we can dodge their patrols on the way there," Cricket finished the thought, nodding. "Good idea."

Black Mamba folded the map with the frequency list and put both in her pocket. "How are we on ammo?" she asked.

Cricket glanced at his rifle. "Last mag, so thirty more rounds for the rifle. I've got…" he ejected the magazine from his Mk22 pistol. "…about ten tranquilizer rounds left, plus one in the chamber."

Mamba checked her pistol. "I've got seven rounds left, myself. And one mag with 25 rounds for my rifle. We'll have to make it count."

"Rally point's not too far away," Cricket said reassuringly, "Just a little bit further."

Mamba agreed, with the caveat that they should still be ready for anything.

Their plan set; the duo moved northward uphill along the edges of the cliffs to get to the objective. By the time they reached the clearing at the top, it was almost sunset. In the middle of the clearing was a box whose lid had a sticky note reading, 'OPEN ME.' Inside was a flare gun.

"Must be the signal for exfil," Cricket suggested, grabbing the gun.

"Or it could be another test," Mamba retorted. "Just…be careful, alright?"

"Don't worry," Cricket replied. "If something else comes to surprise us, we'll be ready."

Cricket pointed the flare gun into the sky and shot the round. A bright pink burning light ascended into the heavens. When nothing happened, the two trainees shrugged to each other and took prone positions on the ground, aiming their weapons in opposite directions to await any approaching enemies. There was nothing left to do but wait.

After a few hours, they heard the familiar fluttering of propellers in the distance, accompanied by the loud buzzing of an engine that steadily turned into a roar as a V-22 Osprey zoomed into view. The VTOL aircraft's rotors tilted as it stabilized its trajectory overhead and the clearing was blown about with great gusts of wind as it landed gently at the center. The rear hatch opened and lowered, revealing Salamander and a second member of FOXHOUND staff that Cricket hadn't met before.

Salamander slowly clapped as Cricket and Black Mamba approached, shouting loudly over the engine, "Good to see you two make it this far! Well done!"

Cricket moved forward to step on the ramp, but Salamander held up his hand and shook his head, leaving him confused. "Not yet. There's one more test," he said. He passed them, waving over his shoulder. "C'mon, my voice is gonna get hoarse from all the shouting. Let's get away from these engines so I can hear myself think."

Black Mamba and Cricket followed Sal away from the Osprey a considerable distance to the opposite end of the clearing. The engines were still running loudly, but they no longer had to shout to make themselves heard. Salamander brushed a few errant strands of hair from his forehead.

"Here's the deal," he began, "We've only got a seat on the bird for one trainee. We'll have to send a second one over to pick up the other. But these two birds are going different places, and only one of those places is FOXHOUND."

He gave a meaningful look to both of them. Mamba's eyes widened, but Cricket just shook his head. "I don't understand."

"What I'm getting at, Cricket, is that only one of you is completing this mission and moving on to the next step in your training. Which one, is a decision I leave up to the two of you."

"You're telling me to leave a fellow soldier behind?" Cricket demanded. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Remember what I told you day one, rookie: every other cadet on base is your competition. If you don't like it, you're more than welcome to wait for the next ride." Sal looked to Mamba, whose fists were clenched, and brow was furrowed in understanding, like she'd been waiting for this. "You can talk it over with each other if you want, but I'm guessing you both have fought too hard to get where you are now to give up willingly—if neither of you are willing to give it up, only way to solve it is with what you've got on hand. You won't be penalized for accidents, but all the same; try not to kill each other."

Sal started to walk away back to the bird, turning his head back to briefly say, "Make it fast, would you? I'd rather not wait all night."

Cricket turned to Mamba. "Mamba, look, I—"

Cricket didn't get to finish his sentence as Mamba was already drawing her pistol. Thinking fast, Cricket grabbed the gun and pushed the slide back so he could wedge his hand into the chamber like he did when he fought Mongoose. He tried hooking his leg inside of Mamba's left knee to try and sweep her feet out from under her, but she stepped away, throwing him off balance. Sensing an opening, Mamba turned her hips and grabbed Cricket's shirt to throw him head over heels into the ground, though she lost her grip on her gun while doing so, sending it flying.

Utilizing her forward momentum, Black Mamba swung horizontally around Cricket's head and wrapped her legs around his right arm, leaving him immobilized as she started to reel back. Cricket knew instinctually that he needed to act quickly to get out of the armbar before his shoulder got dislocated, and pushed his feet against the ground to lift his hips and he leaned over with his free hand clutching the knife he pulled from his pocket.

As Mamba reeled away from the blade, Cricket kicked her off and slid up to his knees in the opposite direction, getting back to his feet. He pulled his own Mk22 pistol from his waistband and fired a round, but Mamba was already rolling away, and he found he didn't have time to pull back the slide and prepare another tranquilizer dart before she leveled her rifle at him. He was already running into the tree line and taking cover behind a trunk.

His rifle magazine still held 30 rounds. Her rifle should have 20 or 25 in the magazine she had. Seven tranqs in her pistol if she picked it up. She was the better CQC specialist, but he had the numerical advantage in terms of ammunition and was the better shot if their range scores were anything to go by. If she ran out before he did, then the fight would be over right then and there. If not…Cricket preferred not to contemplate the alternative. He took a short breath and steeled himself as he wheeled around the trunk.

She was gone. She must have run into the trees nearby, but she hadn't run past him, so she hadn't gone the same direction. Cricket spun wildly as he watched the woods in the distance. He couldn't afford to move too far away from the clearing, and neither could she—lest one of them make a mad dash for the Osprey without the other knowing. The dusk was deepening as the sun hung lower into the horizon. There wasn't a lot of time.

Crack! A shot rang out and a dart imbedded itself into the tree bark right next to his head. Cricket swung in the direction of the shot and sent a five-round burst into the trees. He just barely caught Mamba's dirty blonde hair as she moved out of sight. He gave chase for a few paces before she disappeared entirely, and then fell back to reposition back at the edge of the tree line. He switched his rifle to single shot.

"You know, I've been waiting for a rematch," Mamba's voice called out. "Ever since that Capture the Flag game last year."

Cricket smirked, despite himself. "Trying to salvage your bruised ego?"

He saw a blonde head poking out from distant bushes and fired. Mamba dodged and returned fire with her rifle on semi-auto, he ducked away, but grunted in pain as he caught a glancing blow on his bicep that started to bleed. That was close—a more direct hit and she might have broken his arm.

"Something like that," came her answer. "It's been a while since I ever had any real competition. Not used to being beaten."

"When was the last time?" Cricket called out.

Keep the banter going, he thought. Bait her into giving away her position. Of course, that was assuming she didn't find him first.

Crack! Crack! Two more tranq shots. Mamba was really quick with resetting the slide on her pistol. Cricket barely managed to dodge them, flicked back to semi-auto on the rifle and rolled to his feet to return fire in two more bursts. He heard a yell and smiled. Managed to nail her with that one. He started to move in towards the source of her yell.

She had taken cover behind a tree and started laying down suppressing fire from around the trunk, forcing him back into cover. He knew she had to be low on rubber bullets now. Soon she'd switch exclusively to the pistol or be forced to try and get closer. He checked his magazine: 14 rounds left. He hadn't even really used most of his remaining tranquilizer rounds in his pistol. He took a crouching position and tried to minimize his profile peeking around the tree. He waited for her to make a move.

Leaves fell from overhead, and he looked up to see Black Mamba pointing her pistol right at him. She had climbed the tree from before and jumped from branch to branch to get close. How had he not heard her coming? He rolled out of the way just as she took a shot, flicked to full auto, and swung around to let loose on her. She jumped and kicked away from the trunk to somersault over him, moving too fast for him to get a bead on her as she took her own shot with her rifle to hit him in the leg. Cricket yelled in pain as one of the projectiles slammed full force into his right foot.

He had just the presence of mind to point his rifle at her, just as she did the same to him.

Click. Click. Click.

They'd both run dry. Tossing their rifles away at the same time, they each pulled out their pistols. With his injured foot, Cricket was going to make for a much easier target. He took the first two shots, limping away as he tried to put some distance between them. Mamba only fired one shot, that tore through a loose part of his pants and just barely missed grazing his leg.

Too close.

Cricket drew his knife with his left hand and fired another shot behind him to discourage Mamba from following. He needed to get out of sight. Spotting a ditch, he dove and rolled underneath some particularly thick underbrush and crawled away. He hoped what was left of his camouflage would keep him concealed long enough to reposition to a better point of attack.

When he felt sufficiently safe, he sidled around and faced in the direction from which he ran. He tried not to think of his aching foot. He hoped the boot was thick enough to prevent any broken bones. He wouldn't be able to know the full extent of the damage until he saw a medic. He shook his head. He didn't need to be distracted by this right now.

A rustling in the nearby tall grass brought him back to attention. He readied his Mk22, hoping to take Mamba by surprise. Instead, a snake with banded markings slithered into view in front of him. Cricket froze, as the snake looked a lot like a rattlesnake. However, he noticed that the tail possessed no rattle. Maybe a related subspecies? The snake didn't take any notice of him as it went along, so Cricket surmised that he was in no danger.

Suddenly, his nostrils were filled with a foul musky stench that he'd never encountered before that made his whole face recoil. He had to fight to keep from moving his arm to cover his face. The snake, almost as if in response, coiled up and started shaking its rattle-less tail as it stared daggers to Cricket's left. Cricket turned his head and saw the tiniest patch of yellow in the treetops away from him. Very slowly, he turned onto his side and aimed down the sights of his pistol.

He rested his finger on the trigger and waited. He didn't want to upset the snake and provoke it into biting him. The tension of the moment hung like a thick curtain between them. Eventually, when the snake realized there was no threat, it uncoiled and slithered away, taking the stench away with it. Cricket counted silently to himself after the snake was gone: one, two, three.

He squeezed the trigger and heard a shout as something moved amidst the trees. Quickly resetting the slide, he took another shot, and another. With no further shouts, he assumed that the other two must have missed. He scrambled to his feet and awkwardly ran back towards the end of the tree line towards the clearing.

He was pretty certain that at least one shot had hit her, but it was going to take more than one dart to put her down. Tranquilizer darts were tricky—it takes a very precise dose to put a human down, depending on many factors like their body weight, age, sex, blood-alcohol content, and so on. Depending on where in the body the target was hit and how many darts they were hit with, it could be several seconds or several minutes before they went down, assuming there was enough tranquilizer in their system to take effect at all. He couldn't count on one successful shot being enough to finish the fight. He checked his magazine. Four shots left.

He had kept count of Mamba's tranq shots. She had fired five in total since the fighting had begun. She'd be down to two now. She had to know two darts were unlikely to take him down unless she nailed him in the head or neck. Which means her goal was going to be to close the distance before he could get any more darts in her. He moved out of the forest and into the clearing, crouching behind a tree on the outskirts for cover. She'd have no choice but to move to his preferred terrain now, and he didn't want to be taken by surprise. The Osprey's engines roared in the background as he waited.

She saw him first, taking aim as she ran forward. Crack! Crack! The first shot missed, but while Cricket leaned away, the second dart struck him in the shoulder. He returned fire as she ran wide around him. One miss, one tagged her in the calf, two more misses. They both tossed aside their pistols as Cricket raised his knife in his right hand.

It was like an elaborate dance. He'd lunge forward, she'd dodge back and sweep his legs, only for him to roll out of the way. He lunged again and she grabbed his arm for leverage as she tried to knee him in the groin; he turned his hips and responded with an elbow jab to the forehead before hooking his free hand around the back of her head and throwing her down.

He tried to straddle on top of her, but she was too quick and too flexible—she grabbed his forearm with both hands and wrapped her legs around his bicep, putting one foot against his head as she tried to use her legs and core muscles to force Cricket onto the ground with her. Cricket lost his balance and reflexively grabbed a clump of grass and dirt with his free hand as he was brought down, which he threw into her face to blind her. As she started sputtering, she loosened her grip a bit.

Unfortunately, as Cricket got back up, Black Mamba had managed to come away with the knife, and she immediately began putting it to good use. It wasn't like the first time they'd met; she was actively going for thrusts that could seriously injure him, maybe even kill him if they landed. He belatedly recalled that her specialty was blades.

A couple of times she got a few slashes on his chest and arms, but thankfully he moved quick enough that they were shallow and hit no arteries. It was all he could do to keep her from getting close enough to get a killing shot in. They were both breathing hard, getting tired. Neither of them could keep it up forever—it was just a matter of who made the first mistake. As it was, there wasn't much he could do aside from dodge the blade and wait for an opportunity.

Thankfully, it came: Black Mamba went in for a thrust but overextended herself. Cricket grabbed the wrist of the arm wielding the knife with his right hand and used his other hand as leverage as he grabbed her bicep and twisted his hips to mimic her earlier judo throw. As soon as her back was on the ground, he swung his leg around her arm in the same armbar she'd had him in earlier. He had to move quickly: he'd only get one shot at this, and he didn't want her to escape like he did last time when the roles were reversed. Using his size advantage to pin her free arm with his feet, he yanked back hard as he rotated her knife arm.

A sickening, crunchy POP was heard, and Black Mamba screamed in pain as her hand reflexively dropped the knife. Cricket rolled off of her and took multiple steps back while Mamba clutched at her shoulder, her arm dangling limply from its socket. Cricket didn't even spare her a second glance as he marched over to the Osprey and walked up the ramp.

Salamander pushed the button to close the hatch while the other FOXHOUND agent relayed instructions into his radio to have a medical team sent with the next pickup. The Osprey was already lifting off before the ramp was completely raised. Once the hatch was closed, Salamander turned to face Cricket.

"Congratulations, cade—"

Salamander couldn't finish the sentence as Cricket struck him hard enough to recoil.

"Stand down, cadet!" protested the other nameless FOXHOUNDer, but Cricket wasn't listening. All he could see and hear was the object of his rage.

The FOXHOUNDer must have been about to make a move on Cricket, because Cricket saw Sal motioning him to stop. Salamander's next words were deadly calm, barely audible over the hum of the engines.

"You get one free one, rookie. One. And that was it."

Silence, save for the engines. The two men glared intensely for two long, uncomfortable minutes as they stared each other down. It was Cricket who broke the silence first.

"What the fuck was that?" he demanded.

"A test. And you passed. Congratulations," Salamander responded, in a tone that was anything but congratulatory.

"What was that supposed to be a test for?"

"Commitment. You were given a mission, and you completed it with flying colors."

Cricket didn't respond.

"Aw, what's wrong, Cricket? This not turning out like you expected? Well, news flash, rookie: this is what we do. We work in the shadows, we fight dirty, and we finish the job no matter what it takes. What exactly did you think this was, a Saturday morning cartoon? An episode of G.I. Joes? No, this is real life, and if you don't get with the program, you're going to wind up a dead man, and you'll be of no use to us.

"The lesson, rookie, is this: trust no one. Not your friends, not your allies, not strangers. It's us vs. them—anyone who isn't a member of FOXHOUND is a potential enemy. What did I say, day one? Every cadet you meet is competition; there's only so many open spots for new recruits and if you don't take yours, someone else will. The only thing, the only thing that you can trust is the mission. You want to quit? You want to give your spot up to Mamba? Say the word, I'll turn this bird right back around."

Cricket clenched his fists and said nothing. He turned his gaze to the floor.

"That's what I thought," Salamander grunted as he wiped blood from his lips. He pointed to the seats. "Sit your ass down, strap in, and shut up. We'll be back at base in 30."

Cricket did as he was told. Not another word was spoken the whole flight back. In the weeks after the exercise, Cricket would break things off with Honey Badger. From now on, no more distractions, no more camaraderie. He took Salamander's lesson to heart. From that point forward, he trusted no one on that base but himself, and the rest of his second year was spent with a heightened sense of paranoia.

As his training moved into his third year, Cricket would become more reserved, more professional in his mannerisms, at the expense of his earlier friendly demeanor. It would serve him well in the days leading up to his last few months of training.

 

---

 

DECEMBER 19, 1993

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

 

Cricket pulled his jacket tighter around him as he walked on the sidewalk along Pleasant Street. The local businesses and cafes were abuzz with families and tourists going about their last-minute Christmas shopping for the year. It had been over four years since Cricket had been anywhere near anything resembling a civilian setting. The whole thing felt so surreal to him. The way these people moved, without a care in the world. The idea that the whole thing that kept their relatively peaceful existence in motion was the waging of bloodshed, cruelty, and misery half a world away didn't even seem to register with them. In a way, Cricket envied them. To live in such ignorance…it must be so calming.

As he moved closer to the Milwaukee River, the crowds started to make way for construction equipment and renovation. A couple of years ago, the city had started to undergo some kind of infrastructure project. "RiverWalk," the locals called it. The way it was explained to Cricket, the idea was to beautify the district along the river to give local businesses a boost and give the tourists something to look at. They got the permits in 1990, and it was expected that they'd finish sometime in the next several years before the decade was out. It sounded like a good idea, Cricket supposed. Not being from the area, he didn't really have any opinion one way or the other. But the gas station attendant who had chatted him up while he bought his cigarettes seemed really excited about it.

After another twenty to thirty minutes of walking, Cricket found himself at a public park. There were some kids playing under the watchful eye of their parents, teenage lovers sat next to each other on wooden benches as they huddled together to share their warmth in the cold December weather. Cricket looked around, trying not to draw too much attention to himself.

Turning the corner, he moved down Cass Street past an elementary school to what seemed to be some sort of marketplace with various restaurants. He paused in front of one, making a show of looking at the restaurant's name on the building as if trying to decide whether he wanted to go inside. In reality, he was checking the reflection in the window.

For this exercise, he was placed in a public setting for the purpose of locating two FOXHOUND observers. It was a test of his observational skills: could he spot a tail in a crowded area? Could he successfully tail a target with them being none the wiser?

He'd undergone plenty of combat stealth training on the FOXHOUND base up north (or at least, he assumed it was further north, given the cold and the fact that water trainings took place on one of the actual Great Lakes)—hiding in shadows, making good use of wilderness camouflage, etc. However, some missions may require insertion into a populated area, and he would need to be able to blend in effectively to complete his given objective.

Cricket rubbed his face, to give the impression that he was checking his own reflection for whether he needed to shave, to buy himself time before he'd have to move again. They'd dropped him off in some random alleyway. He only knew he was in Milwaukee because he stepped into a pay phone and saw the phone book. Thankfully, FOXHOUND had left him with some cash in his pocket—they must be working under the assumption that the exercise could take some time.

Nodding to himself, Cricket stepped into the restaurant. Hell, if they were going to give him lunch money, he might as well use it. If nothing else, it gave him an excuse to get out of the cold. It must have been a slow day at the restaurant—there were only a few other patrons besides him, which suited Cricket just fine as that would make people watching a little easier. A pretty waitress sat him down at a corner booth in the smoking section, and he ordered a coffee as he removed his jacket.

The waitress kindly offered him a menu with his coffee and as he sipped on it thoughtfully, he pulled out one of his Lucky Strikes and lit the end with a sigh. Alternating between sipping his coffee and taking a drag, Cricket leaned back contentedly against the soft cushion of the booth seat as he allowed himself to relax for what felt like the first time since Basic Training.

He lazily rolled his eyes to look out the window. No familiar faces, nobody looking suspicious or trying too hard not to look suspicious. Just families, lovers, and tourists enjoying their holidays. Cricket couldn't help but smile a little. He couldn't exactly claim to know what a normal, happy family home life was like, but from the smiles on the faces of all these strangers, he couldn't help but feel a little warm at the prospect. He blew out of plume of smoke and rubbed his eye.

"Long day?"

Cricket looked up. The waitress had returned with the pot of coffee and started to refill his cup. Cricket chuckled. "You could say that" he said. "Technically, I'm still on the clock. Just figured I'd stop for a bite, since the job is paying for it."

"Oh, yeah? Are you doing some business travel?"

Cricket nodded. Not too far from the truth. "Sure am."

The waitress gave a very charming smile as she continued making small talk. "I thought so. You don't look like you're from around here. This your first time in Milwaukee?"

Cricket blew on his hot fresh coffee to keep from scalding his tongue before answering, "First time in Wisconsin period, I'm pretty sure."

"Makes sense," the waitress nodded. "The accent was a dead giveaway. You don't sound like a cheesehead."

"Cheesehead?"

"Yeah. Surprised you haven't heard of it before! Wisconsin is the dairy capital of America. The Green Bay Packers have a big rivalry with Illinois, and their baseball and football fans call us 'cheeseheads' to make fun of us for it, like an insult. Joke's on them though—we take pride in our dairy around here. Heck, I think there was a guy a few years ago who even started making novelty cheese-shaped hats!"

"Oh, yeah?" The concept sounded strange to Cricket, and more than a little ridiculous. What would that even look like?

"For sure, mister! I'm surprised you haven't seen them around yet. I take it you're not much of a football fan?"

Cricket shrugged. "Can't say I am. To be fair though, I've been overseas most of the past few years. Maybe I just missed the boat on the whole 'cheesehead' thing."

"Overseas?" the waitress asked before her eyes lit up. "Oh, are you a veteran?"

Cricket chuckled. "You're pretty perceptive."

"Well, our restaurant gives discounts to veterans! You wouldn't happen to have your VA card on you?"

Cricket shrugged. "Left it at home. Sorry."

The waitress shook her head. "It's no worry. I'll apply the discount to your bill anyway. I won't tell anyone if you don't," she said with a wink.

Cricket smirked and held a finger to his lips, winking back. "Mum's the word."

After he ordered his food, the waitress moved away, and Cricket returned to the task of observing his surroundings. An old man sat at the bar, smoking, and nursing a beer as he watched the Packers play the Minnesota Vikings with a dejected look on his face. Two booths down from Cricket, a young couple were enjoying what looked to be a lively Christmas date. At the opposite corner was an elderly couple enjoying an early dinner with their toddler-aged grandchild.

Cricket looked out the window again, trying to place more focus on the people outside. A man in a dark coat, smoking at the bus stop. A family with two rowdy children in tow. A businesswoman arguing with someone over a large expensive-looking cellular phone. Cars going either direction, the occasional yellow cab. In the window of a café across the street, a man reading a newspaper. A barista was busy behind the counter. A dance studio next door.

Cricket sighed. None of these people looked like the probable target. He'd been wandering around Milwaukee for something like two hours before he had reached this restaurant and even now, he was still coming up squat. The whole thing was enough to put him in a sour mood, though he perked up slightly when the waitress came out with his food.

"Anything else I can get for you, honey?"

Cricket glanced at his coffee and saw it was still mostly full, so he shook his head with a smile. "No thanks, I'm good on my end, uh…"

"It's Penny," the waitress replied with a nod. "Don't be afraid to holler if you need anything."

Cricket raised his coffee cup with a nod, and she went back to work tending to the other guests. As he ate, Cricket nonchalantly let his eyes wander around the restaurant again. The old man at the bar wore khakis and a button-down shirt blotchy with oil stains—probably a mechanic—and a pair of old glasses were sitting on the tip of his nose. The teen couple wore jeans and tennis shoes, the girl wore a blouse and letter jacket, the guy a plaid flannel shirt over a Nirvana T-shirt. The elderly man and his wife wore similarly plain clothes. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

The man with the newspaper across the street wore a polo—business casual wear. Maybe he was on his lunch break? The barista wore a skirt and a denim jacket with an apron over the front. Cricket was starting to get frustrated. The more he tried to look for anything unusual or noteworthy the more he started to worry about drawing attention to himself and tipping off any observers into performing a disappearing act.

Sighing, he tried to relax again and focus on just enjoying what was left of his meal and cigarette before going on the move again. When he'd finished, Penny came again to hand him the bill.

"How was your meal?" she asked.

"It was good, thank you," Cricket smiled politely.

"I'm glad you liked it. Be sure to come back again sometime hon, I'll have something extra special made just for you," she replied with a wink as she put the bill on the table. As she walked away with the 'clack, clack, clack' of her heels, Cricket picked up the receipt and realized that she had also left him her phone number. Chuckling to himself, he laid out the cash for the meal plus an extra $20 for a tip, which almost emptied his pocket. Grabbing his smokes and the number, Cricket pulled his jacket back on and climbed out of the booth to walk out of the restaurant when he noticed something.

The old man at the bar was wearing steel toe boots. Not especially strange if he's a blue-collar worker, especially a mechanic—however, the boots were polished to a mirror sheen. Most civilians below a certain age wouldn't bother polishing their shoes and even when someone goes to the trouble to have them polished, they're usually dress shoes. And if he were a blue-collar worker, it'd be unlikely he'd go to the trouble of polishing his boots as they'd just end up scuffed and dirty from the next workday anyway.

Maybe he's a military man, or a veteran, still keeping up the old dress regulations? But that couldn't be right, as this old man had a beard and between his stubble, rough-hewn hands, and oil marks on his button-down, he seemed far too relaxed to fit that description, like he was compensating for his appearance in some way.

It wasn't enough to peg him as a potential spy, but it was something that Cricket took as worth noting as he kept walking to head out the door and into the fog outside. Taking a bus, he travelled further east on Brady St for a few stops and stopped at a newsstand to purchase a newspaper before walking into an alleyway next to a barber shop and circling around the building, taking care not to walk too fast.

When he emerged from the alley on the opposite side of the building's front, he turned into the barber shop and sat down in the waiting area, opening his newspaper while he waited to be called by the proprietor as the chairs were all already full of customers. Holding his newspaper in front of him, he peeked over the top out at the other customers in the waiting area. A bearded thirty-something man with a scarf and overcoat pulled off his hat to reveal a shaved head. A stressed single mother in a skirt and leggings tried in vain to shush her hyperactive and impatient children. An older man with an arm cast, dark aviator sunglasses, and a trilby hat with the brim pulled down low leaned against the window, lazily looking out into the crowd.

When two of the seated customers got up to pay for their haircuts, the mother and her kids got up for their turn and the man with the cast and shades glanced over to regard the newcomer. "Anything interesting in the news today?"

Cricket shrugged. "Not really. Some music news, I guess. Carey's song 'Hero' made the charts. Michael Clarke didn't make it—liver failure."

"That's a shame," the man commented. "I liked his drumming in Firefall."

"I'll take your word for it," said Cricket as he glanced out the window.

"Hey, if you're done with that, you mind if I take it?"

Not wanting to prolong the conversation, Cricket handed the newspaper over. "Knock yourself out," he said.

The man gratefully accepted the newspaper with his good hand with a nod as he flipped through the pages. "Hmm, Russia and Abkhazia taking Sukhumi from Georgia…Serbian and Croatian secessionists in Bosnia. Looks like the fall of the USSR hasn't caused the Eastern Europeans to lose their taste for regional conflicts and empire building. And then there's that new European Union in the west."

"You go in for the whole geopolitics thing?" Cricket asked curiously.

The man shrugged. "It's a pastime of mine. I used to be a lecturer of International Affairs at the University of Wisconsin."

"What's your take?"

"That the Air Force hospital in Landstuhl better get ready for an influx of new patients."

"You think America would intervene? Last I heard our involvement was strictly diplomatic."

"I think it's only a matter of time. Clinton was very public about his intentions to expand NATO further across the Atlantic, and if the old hatreds against Muslim ethnic groups in Yugoslavia, Croatia, and Bosnia are anything to go by, it would be a prime opportunity to gain some goodwill by rushing to their aid and resolving the matter," the man sighed. "The Eastern nations aren't the only ones with a history of empire building."

"What about the UN?"

"What about them?" the man asked. "The combined military forces of the United Nations are mostly composed of or heavily bolstered by the American military anyway. They're in no position to say anything one way or the other, and they know it. Twenty-five hundred years of human history, and to this day the only rule that matters is who has the bigger stick."

The man shook his head. "No sir, war is coming. I'm sure of it."

Cricket leaned back. Could that be the next move for FOXHOUND, he wondered? Deployment into Bosnia? Into Kosovo? For a moment he forgot why he was even there in that barbershop as he contemplated the question before the staff called him up for his turn.

Wordlessly he walked over to his chair and sat down, looking into the mirror at the wild, long, and shaggy mullet that had grown like a mop on his head in the time he'd spent at the FOXHOUND training facility. He instructed the barber to take about an inch and a half off the back, and a little off the front and top.

As the barber got to work, he saw the man with the arm cast sit down next to him in his peripheral vision. There was something about the man which unsettled him, so he did his best not to acknowledge him as the old man took off his shades with a sigh before he nodded to his barber.

"How old are you, kid?"

What a weird, out of nowhere question. Cricket couldn't figure out why, but there was something about the man next to him that set him on edge—alarm bells blared in his head telling him to avoid interacting with him as much as possible. Unfortunately, they were both confined to their chairs and there was no way for Cricket to extricate himself without making a scene and drawing attention, and he couldn't stay silent without coming off as rude.

"…I'm twenty-one," Cricket replied.

"Ah, you're still young. Old enough to serve, though. Something about the way you carry yourself tells me you already have. Am I right?" the man chuckled dryly.

Cricket didn't respond, just letting the air hang in uncomfortable silence.

"Tell me something," the man went on, as if Cricket didn't just no-sell the conversation. "If America does intervene, what's your plan? Will you go to Bosnia?"

Cricket shrugged. Why does this stranger care so much about his future plans, he wondered? "If I'm serving, then I'd have to go wherever my orders take me. Isn't that how it works?" Cricket hedged.

"True, true," the man said. "Once you sign on the dotted lines, you become property of the United States government until your term's up. They'd have to offer quite a bit to make it worth your freedom, I imagine. So, why'd you do it? If you don't mind my asking, of course."

Cricket did mind him asking, but he felt it would be rude to say so. He'd been raised—such as it were—to respect his elders, so rather than saying the obvious thing, he furrowed his brow and made a big show of being lost in thought. "Because I'm loyal," he said.

"Loyal, huh? Loyal to whom?"

Cricket went silent. Something about the question had an edge to it that made it sound less than innocent. He was about to tell the man to mind his own damn business when the man stood up, his barber having finished his work. Cricket looked over just as the man was putting his hat back on, his forearm obstructing his face.

"Never mind," the man said. "I'm sure you'll figure it out soon enough. Be seeing you, kid."

With a tip of the hat, the man pushed his aviators up the bridge of his nose and walked over to the register to pay and leave. As the man was walking out the door, Cricket got up to hurriedly pay for his haircut and walked out the door, looking around before spotting the man in the distance halfway down the block. Cricket flipped up the collar of his jacket against the wind, waited for the man to walk further by about thirty more paces and began his tail.

He tried to stick to walking behind throngs of people to make his following less obvious. As the man walked back towards the RiverWalk construction and the crowds began to disperse, Cricket crossed the street to stay with the people, using the man's reflection in the windows of the shops and businesses he passed to mask his observation.

Something was off about the man; Cricket just knew it. While it was possible that he was just an overly chatty old university professor who's well-versed on current events, something about the air the man exuded just screamed into Cricket's head that he was more than he let on. The hat, shades, and cast felt like a distraction or a disguise, and Cricket had learnt in his time with both FOXHOUND and the Green Berets to trust his instincts.

Suddenly, the man turned into an alleyway. Cricket glanced down the alley after the man, who just kept walking and saw that the alley ended and turned left with a dead end on the right-hand side. Rather than follow the man down, Cricket kept walking to the corner and turned right around the building and walked into an electronics store next to the alleyway to pretend to browse their merchandise while looking out the window to wait for the man to emerge from the other side of the alley.

However, the man from the barbershop didn't reappear. Instead, Cricket recognized the old man from the restaurant from earlier, accompanied by one half of the teenage couple who had apparently left her boyfriend behind at the restaurant, both heading straight for the mouth of the alleyway ahead. A meeting?

It was too many coincidences. Looking around the store, Cricket saw an employee service entrance in the back that led to a stairway and moved to position himself nearby. When an employee came out of the door carelessly swinging it open wide, Cricket caught it before it closed and slipped through, taking the stairs two at a time until he found the exit to the rooftop.

Emerging into the cold fog on the flat rooftop of the one-story building, Cricket moved toward the top of a nearby fire escape and peered down into the alleyway to see the three individuals standing together. Back by the service door was a cardboard box filled with assorted electronics. Struck with an idea, Cricket quickly picked up and put aside the electronic devices as he grabbed and folded the box under his arm.

As slowly and quietly as he could he descended the rungs of the ladder to the metal platform below and crouched behind the railing and pulled the box over his head. Staring through the handle slit, he watched the trio and listened as they conducted their meeting.

"Were you seen?" asked the man with the cast and aviators.

"I think he suspected something when he walked by me," said the old man with the stained shirt and polished boots, "but if he did, I haven't seen him following me here."

"He looked right at me," said the girl, "but I didn't see any recognition in his eyes. Pretty sure I wasn't made."

The man with sunglasses nodded. "I just encountered him, myself. Didn't get a good look at me, but I could tell that he knew. I slipped out before he could follow. If he didn't follow either of you here, then that's the results of our test right there. It's a shame. The kid was starting to show some promise."

"It's not over yet," the old man responded. "The exercise doesn't conclude until he reaches exfil."

"But the only way he can get there is if he follows us," the girl pointed out. "If he couldn't find his way here, he's not going to know where to go for extraction."

"Exactly. So, either we'll see him there, or we won't," the man with shades replied. "Either way, we'll know enough to get conclusive test results. Let's move out. We'll rendezvous at Point Charlie."

The three individuals nodded to each other. The old man and the girl left first, and then after several moments, the man with the aviators turned to leave. Once Cricket saw him get to the end of the alleyway and turn the corner, Cricket pushed the box off him and jumped the railing to land and roll safely on the ground, jogging up to the alleyway to peek around the corner, spotting his target just as he began to cross the street.

Cricket had to jog to keep up, as the man was moving much faster now. The pacing was erratic, directions constantly shifting. Cricket was worried that he had been caught a couple of times as the man moved into less and less populated areas. At one point, the man turned around quickly, and Cricket only just barely managed to duck into an alcove before he could be seen.

After about an hour of the silent chase, the man climbed into a car waiting for him on the street. Cricket had let the man get a substantial lead on him to avoid being seen, even at the risk of losing him entirely. When he saw the man enter the vehicle, he hailed a cab and handed the driver what was left of his cash wadded together and instructed them to follow the man's car as discreetly as he could.

"What are you, a private eye?" the driver asked.

"Just follow the damn car," Cricket responded, whose rudeness didn't win him any points with the grumbling driver.

After a solid thirty minutes of driving, the cabbie asked if he had any more money for the meter, and when Cricket admitted that he didn't, the driver pulled over curbside and told him this was where he got off. Rather than make a stink of it, Cricket complied. He ran to the end of a nearby bridge and watched his target's car drive away. By some miracle, rather than the car driving out of sight like he expected, it pulled out into a small industrial area toward a large warehouse. Cricket started running while he watched the man get out in the distance and walk inside.

After about a fifteen-minute jog, Cricket reached the warehouse and took a minute to catch his breath before walking up to the entrance door and knocking three times before opening it. Inside he was greeted by the three strangers he had encountered over the course of that day, standing next to a grey windowless van.

"So, you made it here," said the man with aviators. "How'd you find us?"

"Just followed you," Cricket answered. "Though you didn't make it easy."

"That's the idea," said the old man.

The man with aviators took off his hat and shades, revealing his eyepatch. "That box on the fire escape," Big Boss started, waving his hat in his hand for emphasis. "Was that you?"

Cricket's eyes widened. He didn't think he'd been seen there. "How'd you—"

"You think you're the only one who had the idea to use a box for stealth?" Big Boss smiled ruefully. "Kid, I invented the trick."

The younger girl looked over at the other two. "So, what do you think, Boss? Did he pass?"

The Boss looked Cricket up and down, sizing him up. With a grunt of approval, he nodded and tore the fake cast off his left arm before approaching. "You passed. Congrats, kid. You get to keep going." He looked over to the old man. "Bag him and let's go home."

Moments later, Cricket's elation was stifled by the black cloth bag being pulled over his head as he was led into the back of the van and driven back to the pickup to be delivered back to the FOXHOUND training facility, another exercise completed and one more step closer to the end of his training.

Notes:

Sorry that this took longer than I thought, it's been kind of a long month. To be honest, while this chapter was a joy to write, I'm not as big of a fan of how the tailing exercise ended. I realized I spent so much time focusing on the more combat-oriented aspects of Snake's training I didn't show much of his espionage work which is ironic considering that's kind of the whole point of FOXHOUND. So, I looked to the tailing mission from MGS4 and scenes from John le Carré's books for inspiration.

I liked the idea of having Big Boss being one of the instructors because I wanted to start developing a bit of his relationship with Snake prior to Intrude N313 and his short conversation in the barbershop gives me the chance to have them have a sort of introduction to each other in a less formal setting compared to when they technically first met at the Pentagon. That, and Big Boss's questions about Snake's sense of loyalty lets me follow up on Snake's conversation with Honey Badger in the previous chapter and will give me a through line for where I want to take his and Big Boss's interactions in future work. My only gripe with this chapter is that I didn't really know how to end it, and I think it kind of shows when they get to the warehouse that it was kind of running out of steam.

In any event, next chapter will have the final exam and Snake's official induction into the FOXHOUND unit, as well as when he'll get his official codename assigned to him, so I hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am! This has been a lot of fun to write, so thank you for reading and for your continued support as it gives me the motivation to keep at it!

Chapter 5: The Final Exam

Summary:

The Final Exam has reared its head. A warrior earns his name.

AUGUST 1994

FORT POLK, LOUISIANA

PROVING GROUNDS

 

It was an absurd proposition, to choose this place for the test.

To start with, there was the venue: muddy and unpleasantly humid swampland approaching the tail end of summer, swarming with the buzzing of mosquitoes and cicadas and crawling with all manner of unpleasant creatures like centipedes, earwigs, and spiders. The air was so thick with humidity that walking through it felt like you were two steps away from swimming. It was enough to make any man go crazy.

It was one of many reasons that made Fort Polk such an unpopular posting. There was also the fact that the fort was also known for hosting a hostile environment towards day-to-day work whether it be the unfortunate reputation for incompetence among its staff, the routine lack of funding for adequate resources or the emotional tensions that frequently flare into anger which is no doubt exacerbated by the aforementioned unpleasant biome in which the place resided.

On top of all of that was the nature of the scenario that marked the absurdity of the test with its contradiction: on the outskirts of Fort Polk, near where Special Forces personnel would routinely piss off soldiers on station by acting as OPFOR in training exercises and taking pot shots at lower enlisted folk while they went about their already unpleasant days, was the location of today's simulation: a mockup of an Afghani village. Never mind the fact that Afghanistan is a combination of woodland forests, mountains, meadows, and deserts without much in the way of swampland. There was nothing about the choice of location which made any logical sense in relation to the scenario, save for the fact that the environment could still be dangerous to the health of the unprepared.

Inside of this "village" were a combination of FOXHOUND personnel and volunteers from the local detachment of Green Berets, acting as Taliban militants. The Berets were told that this was a training exercise to prepare Special Forces for potential intervention in Afghanistan following the news of the ultraconservative organization's capture of Kandahar which broke that month. To play as OPFOR, they were instructed to construct and maintain defenses suitable for such a village, and to converse solely in Dari and Pashto for the sake of authenticity. As the exercise was taking place on their turf, they were left in charge of working out the details.

Their objective: to guard and prevent the rescue of a group of three foreign news correspondents that they had captured and taken hostage for ransom. The role of the news crew was played by FOXHOUND, who would be evaluating the success or failure of the applicant. The Berets turned the village into an impregnable compound, expecting a squad of four to eight operators to attack.

They were not informed that the test was for a single infiltrator.

Cricket wiped the thick sweat that was forming on his forehead as he crawled through the tall grass of a hill overlooking the village to observe. His hands were still shaking from the flight to Leesville earlier that week. He'd been a bundle of nerves ever since he was first told six months prior that he had passed the grade and was scheduled to take the final exam. Even now he had to focus to keep his hands from trembling as he clicked the switch of the small two-way radio clipped to his chest.

"This is Cricket," he whispered softly, "do you read me? Over."

Major Jacobs's sandpaper voice sounded on the other end into his earpiece. "This is Major Jacobs. We read you, Cricket. Have you reached the settlement yet?"

"I've reached the village," Cricket replied. "Based on the position of the sun, I appear to be on the southeast side. I see multiple enemy sentries on the outskirts, all spread out. I count…six, no, seven buildings, with tougher security further in."

When they started the exercise, Cricket was released about a half a click east of Whisky Chitto Creek. He was given two hours to brief on his mission and the general location of his target, but it still took him a couple of hours to find and get within visual range of the village itself.

They told him he would have thirteen hours from the start of the exercise to locate and rescue the news crew. After that time limit passed, the Afghan fighters would execute all three of the correspondents and the mission would be over. Just like a real mission, he was given no weapons or equipment, just a general sense of where to go. He would receive no help, and no backup except for whatever intel the mission control team provided over the radio.

"We have received intel that the insurgents are keeping the hostages separate, and that the enemy has access to explosives," Maj. Jacobs intoned.

Cricket slowly raised his torso onto his elbows to try and get a better look at the sentries over the obstructing grass. "Looks like they're armed with Kalashnikovs."

"The AKs are likely a holdover from when the Soviets occupied the country several years ago," Jacobs replied. "As you know, they're both fully and semi-automatic. So, don't get careless."

"Affirmative. They'll probably be a huge help if I can get my hands on one, though."

"Indeed," Jacobs agreed. "But they're not likely to be suppressed. Remember that while you have been granted full operational freedom to achieve the objective, this is still primarily a stealth mission. If the enemy catches you, they could retaliate and endanger the hostages. Take care that you avoid raising any alarms. If you're caught, quickly subdue the enemy before he can call out to his friends. First, you should find out where exactly the hostages are being held."

Cricket nodded, momentarily forgetting that he was talking over the radio. "Understood. Commencing operation now. Will maintain radio silence barring further developments."

"Acknowledged. We will keep you apprised of any changes to mission parameters," Major Jacobs said back.

The quiet conversation now over, Cricket inched forward on his belly as he made the slow approach towards two sentries that walked on patrol together. He stayed about fifty paces behind while crawling underneath the underbrush as he shadowed their patrol path. He knew he couldn't just attack them—even if he was able to take them out unarmed without them raising an alarm, the other soldiers in the village would come looking for them and call for a search, maybe even place the hostages under greater security. No, he was better off looking for an "off-duty" militiaman hanging around inside the village by himself.

What Cricket was actually hoping for in following these two sentries was that the guards' patrol would lead him on a relatively safe path into the village proper. One of the guards looked over his shoulder suddenly, and Cricket laid his head down, not wanting to be caught moving. The guard said something to his partner in Pashto. Pashto wasn't one of the languages which Cricket had learned in his time at the training facility, but his radio was transmitting to Mission Control, who had an active translator on hand to recite for him.

The guards were making idle conversation, talking about their plans for the week, what they had for breakfast that day, wondering how long until their OPFOR was going to attack their position. Nothing particularly interesting or anything that could give him information on the hostages, and nothing to indicate that the guard had seen him.

The guards made a lazy turn back toward the village, and Cricket followed until they approached the first building. As the guards moved along the street past the building, Cricket broke off and crawled to the edge of where the grass could hide him until the guards were out of sight and he got up and crouch-walked to the wall underneath the sill of an open window.

Voices could be heard inside, discussing weapon emplacements and shift rotations for the hostages. Cricket heard the click of a lighter and smelled cigarette smoke wafting from the window, and he slowly crept back away from the window while keeping pressed against the wall.

Footsteps. The voices inside were walking away, sounding from the slight echo like they were going down a hallway before they disappeared entirely. There was just the sound of the smoker puffing on his cigarette. The smoker leaned out the window, his head poking out as he stared into the sky. He hadn't seen Cricket below him and off to the side.

Cricket could grab him if he was quick, but if the man wasn't alone in the room, it could raise an alarm. Deciding to play it safe, Cricket backed away a little further, turned around and walked to the end of the wall before turning the corner, his left now facing away from the building toward the outskirts of the village.

He came up to a door on his right that was in front of him, which opened as he approached. Thankfully, the door blocked the person's view of Cricket as one of the building's occupants stepped outside, lazily pushing the door behind him without looking. Cricket spotted a knife on the guard's hip and moved forward, expecting the guard to turn to face him. Instead, the guard turned away, his back to him. Cricket took his chance and rushed up to grab the guard in a headlock from behind and pull the knife from its sheathe on the guard's hip to hold up to his captive's throat.

Acting quickly, Cricket pulled a PMM-variant Makarov pistol from its holster on the guard's right thigh and held it near his head, pushing him away from the building and pulling him down behind some bushes. He whispered into his radio, "Mission Control, I have an enemy captive. Require assistance with questioning."

"Stand by for the translator," responded Maj. Jacobs.

A moment of silence, followed by a woman's response: "Ready," she said.

He looked down at the guard, whose eyes were solely on the knife Cricket held. "The hostages. Where are they?" Cricket demanded.

The guard was combative, muttering curses at him and being generally unhelpful. Made sense—not every enemy captured in the real world was going to be cooperative at the slightest bit of questioning. The guard looked like he was about to yell for help before Cricket cut him off, pointing the knife at his eye. It may have been a training exercise, but he still needed to give the impression that he was a threat. The guard visibly calmed down.

"Talk," Cricket said.

The guard confessed that one of the hostages was wearing a bomb vest and that another one of them was in the very building that he had just left. When pressed on where the other two hostages were, the guard was silent. Realizing that was as good as he was going to get, Cricket pressed the flat of the blade against the guard's neck and said, "You're dead," before laying the guard down onto the ground under the bushes. The guard himself went limp and made no effort to move, having been removed from the exercise. Now, the only role he would play is if the enemy discovered the "body."

Cricket relieved the guard of his pistol holster and strapped it to his own thigh and clipped the knife sheath to his belt. He checked the guard's vest for magazines and slipped a couple into his pockets. He considered taking the AK too but decided against it—if he was in a position to use the AK-47 then stealth would have already failed, and he'd probably fail the simulation along with it if he hadn't already rescued any of the hostages by then.

So instead, Cricket ejected the magazine from the rifle and threw it into the bayou and ejected the bullet from the chamber and threw that into the water as well. He then buried the rifle in mud so the enemy wouldn't be able to recover it and use it against him.

Retrieving his new begotten loot, Cricket moved back to the building and positioned himself next to the door, which he opened a slight crack. A hallway. No enemy movement. He opened the door a little wider, poking his head in to look down on either side. Empty.

There was a doorway at the end of the hall to his right, which led to the room with the window, which was of a decent size. The smoker was still leaning out the window, standing behind a table in the middle of the room. Was it a meeting room? Dining room? The table had papers strewn all about it from where Cricket could see. There were AKs leaning against the wall near the door.

Halfway down the hall, just across from where Cricket was and to the left, was a closed wooden door, and at the other end, the hall turned a corner, with another open window just visible around the corner.

Cricket slipped in through the door, quietly closing it behind him, and moved right into the room at the end, and briefly looked to his left as he entered to get a good look at the rest of the room while keeping his gun trained on the smoker. On his left against the wall were a couple of lockers and a doorway leading to another part of the building, opposite from where the smoker was standing with his back turned.

Moving quickly, Cricket moved up behind the smoking guard and grabbed him, pressing his blade against the struggling guard's collar bone to keep it from digging into the flesh of his neck. "Dead," he whispered. Immediately the guard stopped struggling and just went limp, forcing Cricket to drag him over to the lockers, one of which he opened and pushed the "body" inside.

Cricket sheathed the knife and leaned around the corner to point his pistol through the door. Another, longer hallway that ended in a set of double doors, which looked like they were made of iron, with a small, barred window in each one. Was this the holding cell? There were no other doors in this hallway. Cricket didn't have the time or the manpower to clear the whole building, so he pushed into the hall to the doors and peeked through the bars.

Inside were two guards, overlooking a prisoner inside a spacious nondescript room. The prisoner was dressed in a filthy white button-down shirt and tie and brown khakis, forced to his knees, and facing the corner while one guard looked him over and the other faced another iron single door on the opposite end of the room. The guards were making light conversation with each other in Pashto while the prisoner kneeled in silence.

There was no way to get inside without being heard or seen, Cricket noted with some frustration. It might be safer to check the rest of the building first to make sure he wouldn't attract any unwanted guests when he went in for the rescue.

Turning around, he crept back through the meeting room and back to the initial hallway to check the doorway down the hall. Checking the door handle and finding it unlocked, he moved in while pressed against the door as it swung open, pointing his pistol in each direction. It was a bedroom with a single cot and a closet. He checked under the bed and in the closet, finding no threats. Without a word, he stepped out of the room and moved further down the hall and looked out the window to make sure no guards were in sight of him before he crossed the window and turned the corner.

The hallway continued a little further, ending in a door before turning left and extending some more—it was likely the hall circled another room before ending in the holding cell. Cricket moved up to the door, tried the handle, and found it to be locked. A voice came out in Pashto, and his translator on the radio stated that they were requesting for him to wait one moment. Most likely a bathroom. So, that was three combatants in the building still active. Cricket moved back behind the corner so that he couldn't be seen by any guards leaving the holding cell and waited.

After a few minutes, the flush of a toilet and some running water could be heard. The door opened, and the guard stepped out to find Cricket with his gun pointed at his face. "Freeze!" Cricket uttered in a harsh whisper. The guard put his hands up.

"Turn around, stand and stare at the wall."

The guard slowly turned his back at Cricket's command, and Cricket walked up behind and pulled the pistol from the guard's holster, tucking it into his waistband with his offhand as he started patting the guard down. Satisfied that the guard was no longer armed, Cricket forced the guard to his knees as he grabbed two hand towels from the rack by the sink and wrapped one around the guard's wrists behind his back and another around the guard's head with the towel digging into his mouth. Cricket then clicked the door handle lock on the inside before closing the door.

Knowing that there was a guard watching the cell door on his side, Cricket turned around and moved back to the iron doors on the other side of the building, grabbing some discarded paper clips from the meeting room on the way. Looking through the bars to check that they were still facing the opposite direction, Cricket got on one knee and started picking the lock. In a few moments, the door was unlocked, and he lightly pulled one of the double doors, hoping they wouldn't creak as they swung open.

Unfortunately, one of the guards heard the hinges squeak and cried out, swinging to point his rifle at Cricket while the one standing near the hostage moved to level his pistol at the hostage's head. Thinking fast, Cricket picked up a nearby metal bucket from the ground and flung it at the guard next to the hostage, beaning him in the forehead. While the pistol guard recoiled and cursed, Cricket moved into close range with the rifleman and grabbed the barrel shroud before pressing the barrel of his handgun into the guard's forehead, proclaiming "dead," and pushing the guard to the ground.

The guard he'd hit with the bucket tried to respond in kind by tossing the bucket at Cricket, only for Cricket to duck and fire two simunition rounds into the guard's chest, splattering him in paint. Not sure if it counted as a kill shot since the guard was wearing an armor vest, Cricket ran forward and yanked the guard to the ground, concussing him. When the guard didn't move, he checked the man's pulse to make sure he was still alive before moving to secure the hostage.

After cutting the hostage's bonds and removing the bag from his head, Cricket realized that he recognized the face of the young soldier from his interrogation training two years ago, the guy who sounded like a choir boy.

"Are you injured?" Cricket asked, and Choir Boy shook his head as he got to his feet.

"Intel says there are two other hostages. Do you know where they are?"

"Last I saw they were together," Choir Boy said in his lilting voice. "I overheard a guard telling them to put on something. Maybe a vest?"

Bomb vests? Is that how they plan on executing them? Cricket thought to himself. He performed a quick brass check and ammo count while Choir Boy looked around, looking every bit the panicked news correspondent that he was supposed to be portraying.

"Please, you have to get me out of here! These people are crazy!"

Wow, the guy is really laying it on thick. Did he do drama in high school or something?

Cricket grunted, "Follow me, I'll get you out of the village. Stick close and keep your head down, understand?"

"G-got it."

Cricket led Choir Boy through the cleared building and back to the door he had entered it from. Peeking out the door to make sure it was clear of sentries, Cricket led Choir Boy into the dense trees and tall grass of the swamp, moving over creek beds, gnarled logs and through thick mud until they were about 3 kilometers from Cricket's extraction point.

Cricket clicked his radio. "Control, do you read me? This is Cricket, over."

"Control here. Send it, Cricket," came Jacobs's reply.

"I've successfully freed one of the three hostages. I've brought him within three clicks of the exfil. I'm going to have him wait while I go back for the other two."

"Wait, what?" the Choir Boy responded. "No, you can't leave me! What if they find us?"

Cricket ignored him as he listened to Major Jacobs. "Understood," Jacobs replied. "Be advised, we've picked up on our satellites increased enemy activity. They may have discovered that the hostage is gone. Expect increased security. They may put out a search for the hostage you freed as well."

"Should I send him to exfil alone, have him wait for someone to bring him in?"

"Negative, Cricket. We cannot guarantee the survival of multiple flights, the zone is too hot. We'll need you to safeguard the hostages when the QRF moves in for your extraction—you will only get one shot at this."

"What do you advise?" Cricket asked.

Choir Boy pointed at the extra pistol tucked in Cricket's waistband. "Why don't you give me that one? If you're going to go in anyway, you're not going to need two handguns. At least let me defend myself."

Cricket took a moment to consider the idea. Ordinarily, letting an Unknown get control of a weapon in a hot zone is insanely dangerous. They could be a threat to themselves, the enemy, or to any friendlies in the area of operations.

"Control, are you listening? What do you advise?"

Silence at first. Then: "You are on your own in the hot zone, Cricket. I know you can't be in two places at once. Under the circumstances, you are authorized to decide the best course of action for yourself. Exercise extreme caution if you do choose to arm him, however."

"Understood." Cricket turned off his radio and placed the spare pistol into Choir Boy's hands before leading him to a well-covered thicket in the swampy woods.

"Stay here until I get back. You can have this weapon to protect yourself, but don't use it unless you're sure that the enemy has seen you. I won't be long."

"How will I know that it's you?" Choir Boy asked.

"I'll whistle on my approach. When you hear me whistle, say the password, 'thunder.' The countersign will be 'flash.' If you say thunder and don't get the right response, assume the person approaching is a threat."

Choir Boy nodded as he huddled under the tree. "Okay."

It was a strange thing, Cricket noted as he started making his way back to the village, to be giving instructions and comforting direction to a soldier who was twice his size and likely more experienced than him. He wondered why Choir Boy was selected to play as a hostage for this exercise.

When he got back to the village, he saw that the guards were now out in force. Enemy sentries moved quickly from building to building as they patrolled, and the staff was more heavily concentrated around a square building with a dome in its roof situated near the center. Cricket got onto his stomach and crawled to one of the outer buildings where there wasn't a guard directly nearby and hopped onto a dumpster so he could pull himself up onto the roof to observe the building of interest a bit more directly.

Five guards were covering the large double doors at the southern entrance, with a large window next to the doors closer to the corner that Cricket was observing from. Another two were positioned by a single door around the corner on the east side, which Cricket was facing. He couldn't see the other side of the building, but he noted that he could see a guard tower position on the other side, poking up over the roof. The building was well-defended: this was most definitely where he would find the other two hostages.

Stealth insertion would be difficult, and a one-man assault inadvisable. Maybe there was an approach on the northern side that could be taken, Cricket thought to himself as he crawled away from his position and lowered himself off the roof and back onto the dumpster. He'll have to circle around, he decided. Spotting a mostly dry irrigation ditch just past the building, he went prone and crawled down into the puddles at the bottom, following the ditch's path around the building he just performed his recon at and silently moved under a small wooden footbridge that was built over the ditch for guards to walk over.

Hearing approaching footsteps, Cricket stopped just short of crawling out from the other side while he heard more guards trampling the bridge overhead. He tugged the pistol from his thigh holster and waited for them to pass before crawling forward.

He was now at the northwestern side of the building he had scoped out. He could see the guard tower near the closest corner, next to a gate which led into a small courtyard inside the building grounds, and a pair of patrolling guards with radio antennae walking along the northern wall. He waited for the radiomen to get to the tower, counting the seconds.

When they reached the tower, they called up to the sentry up top to ask if he'd seen anything. With the guards distracted, Cricket scrambled in a very fast crawl up to the bottom of the tower on the other side, hidden by the wood from the radiomen and outside of the man in the tower's peripheral vision.

The short conversation between the guards completed, Cricket heard the footsteps of the radiomen walking away, so he got up to his feet and lightly stepped to the open gate, peeking through it before slipping inside the walls.

He very nearly walked right into a guard that had his back to him, and Cricket dove behind a stack of wooden pallets, and crawled behind a nearby port-a-john before getting back up to his knees. Luckily, either the guard hadn't heard him or didn't care because he hadn't turned around. Doing an about-face, Cricket moved up to a small set of wooden steps, which ended in another metal door—the building inside the outer walls was on a raised foundation, probably due to the marshy soil not being able to support anything heavier on its own. This made for a sort of crawlspace under the floorboards which Cricket was able to access thanks to a small hole in the fencing underneath.

He crawled under the building just as the door opened and another guard stepped out to go talk to the one Cricket had bypassed just inside the gate. The crawlspace was filled with spiderwebs and bugs. Cricket prayed that he didn't encounter any wasp nests as he moved further into the interior. A millipede crawled onto his leg, and Cricket had to hold his breath and bite his lip to keep from smacking it away and just letting it crawl off to parts unknown.

He stopped crawling when he heard muffled voices through the floorboards overhead. Someone was berating someone else in Dari. That wasn't the interesting part, though—he heard another separate voice saying in English, "I understand. We won't move, I promise."

Footsteps walking away. Cricket clicked on his radio. "Cricket to Mission Control. I'm underneath one of the village's central buildings. I believe I have located the other two hostages," he whispered softly.

"Repeat your last, Cricket. Did you say you were underneath the building?" Major Jacobs asked.

"Affirmative. I am attempting to locate a safe point of entry into the building, but it's difficult-just like you said, there is increased security, all around this place. I'm guessing this is their base of operations. I'm under the floorboards. Looks like the foundations are raised. It's not exactly comfortable, but it's safe."

"Is there anything else down there with you?"

Cricket looked around. "Besides bugs, I don't think so—not that I can see, anyway. It's dark down here."

Cricket squinted as his eyes adjusted. "Wait...," he said. "I see some boxes up ahead. Don't know what's in them. Beyond that, the crawlspace ends at a wall."

"Sounds like the enemy is using that crawlspace for storage," Jacobs guessed. "There's probably a trap door somewhere they use to access it."

"That's my way in, then," Cricket said. "Inserting into building now. I'm going to commence the rescue attempt. Will maintain radio silence until I've escorted the hostages away from the village."

Cricket turned off his radio and slithered over to the boxes, looking upward. He found a square cut of wood he believed to be the trapdoor. Experimentally, he gave a slight push. When it didn't move, he shoved harder. The door lifted slightly but wouldn't open. He guessed that it was probably locked. Cricket swore under his breath.

He looked over to the boxes. One of them was a large toolbox. He unclicked and lifted the lid and was surprised to find a 15-inch prybar, which was just short enough for him to work with inside the 44-inch-tall crawlspace. Grabbing the bar, he wedged the flat end into the crack between the trap door and the rest of the floor on the side where he saw it open. He then maneuvered around it so that he could kick it hard, wrenching the trap door lock loose and lifting up the trapdoor itself.

The crunch of the wood was loudly audible, so Cricket knew he didn't have much time to celebrate his victory over the trap as he pushed it up and climbed into the room, his weapon drawn as he took in his new surroundings.

He found himself in a storage room. Crates were stacked in the small walk-in closet space, one of which was open. Cricket looked inside and saw that buried in the packing straw were AK-47s. These must have been where the Green Berets stored the shipment of rifles that they got for this exercise.

Cricket briefly wondered where exactly these imports came from—certainly not the Soviets. Maybe an arms dealer from Afghanistan or somewhere in Africa? He knew the alphabet agencies—particularly the CIA—had shady dealings and contacts all over the world; presumably those contacts extended to arms dealers as well. Then again, Kalashnikovs weren't exactly hard to find. They were all over the Middle East when Cricket was stationed in Kuwait and southern Iraq. Damn things are probably cheaper than dirt, and Cricket was definitely used to being shot at with them.

He grabbed a rifle and slung it over his shoulders; this place was heavily defended, and he might have to fight his way out to escort the VIPs. No magazines, but Cricket didn't have time to search every crate; he'll just have to acquire some ammunition from any guards he might encounter. He moved the rifle such that it lay against his back and approached the door, opening it slightly, and then opening it wider to check the opposite direction when he saw the corridor was clear.

To his right was a doorway into some kind of lounge, and to his left was a hallway. Both were empty, so Cricket turned left and moved down the corridor to the far corner, holding his pistol close to his chest. He peeked around the corner: two large windows on the left-hand side, spaced far apart, with a door at the far end. Moving to the opposite wall, Cricket sidled up to the first window. From his limited sight line, he could see three guards positioned outside, facing away from the building. This must have been part of the southern side of the building that Cricket wasn't able to see from his rooftop viewing earlier. He guessed that the double-doors must be in the adjoining room at the end of the hall.

Cricket crawled underneath the windowsills to the other end of the hallway and got up to press his back to the wall once more. Reaching out, he gently turned the handle and pushed the door open, pieing the room with his pistol following the arc of the door as he entered what he believed to be the main hall, which was thankfully empty as he closed the door behind him.

In the corner opposite him was a wooden stairway leading up to the second story. Directly across from him was another hallway. The room was bare of any distinguishing features save for a single throw rug in the middle. Next to the doors was the large window Cricket had seen earlier. From his position, Cricket saw that the hallway in front of him ended a short way in before turning left. Cricket moved forward, crouching under the window, and moved into the hallway.

He didn't know what was on the second floor, but he had heard the hostage's voices from under the building, so he knew that his objective didn't lie there. Just as he approached the corner, he heard a door open, and he pressed himself against the wall as he listened to footsteps approaching from the left. He saw the barrel of the enemy's gun pop out from behind the corner, and Cricket rushed forth to grab it and point it into a safe direction before cold cocking the unfortunate Beret in the mouth before he could scream.

The guard returned with a knee directed at Cricket's groin, which Cricket hit with his pistol hand while driving his shoulder into the guard's sternum, pushing him back as he yanked the rifle from the guard's hands before pointing his pistol at his head. The guard raised his hands while Cricket took a step back to put some distance between them.

"Lie down," Cricket commanded with a harsh whisper. As slowly as he could manage, the guard got onto his knees and leaned to put his forehead on the floor. Cricket put his pistol back into its holster and pointed the rifle at the guard. Cricket turned on his radio. "Cricket to Control. Got another live one. I'm about to query."

"Ready," came the translator's response.

"Which room has the hostages? Answer quietly," Cricket demanded from the Beret. The Green Beret answered in Dari.

"He said it's just a little further ahead, past the camera room."

"Camera room? What are you talking about?"

The guard explained that the commander of the militants was intent on televising the execution of the news crew and that they were in the process of getting things ready when they'd received word that one of the hostages had escaped and that two "dead bodies" were found, a live guard was locked in the bathroom and another was missing and unaccounted for, so the commander had ordered them to mobilize.

"I heard that one of the hostages is wearing a bomb vest. For what purpose?"

In case the perpetrator attempted to rescue the prisoners, the commander had ordered that they be placed together and wired to explode to deny the intruder their prize, the guard answered. Cricket turned off his radio—he'd heard enough. He drew his knife and lightly touched the guard's neck as he held his opponent's head up by the hair. "Dead," he intoned, and the guard obediently went limp as he was removed from play.

Cricket ejected the magazine from the guard's rifle, inserted it into the one he was carrying, and took the extra two magazines the guard had on his vest before quietly moving up to the door on his right. The guard had come from outside, and he knew there was another one covering this door—he needed to get rid of him before moving on to the camera room.

Peeking through the door, he saw the guard right in front of him, facing away. He slipped through the door outside and grabbed the guard in a headlock, putting a knife to his throat and declaring him dead before dragging his limp body back through the doorway and into the hall to join his friend.

Cricket stood at the door to the camera room, breathed in slowly, and then burst through to the other side, taking by surprise two guards who were setting up camera equipment and plugging two rounds into the chest of one while the other quickly dove to the side and started wrestling with his rifle to get it pointed at the intruder.

Cricket didn't give him a chance to get a shot off and was already running around the room to get a better angle on the enemy soldier taking potshots as he went to discourage him from returning fire. The third shot caught the enemy in the shoulder, and the Beret reflexively dropped his rifle before grabbing for his sidearm, at which point Cricket was able to get another round in his chest. The chaos lasted for about twelve seconds, but it felt like minutes.

Not waiting for the enemy to respond to those shots, Cricket rushed to the cell door on the opposite end of the room, unlocked it and threw it open. Inside next to a mattress on a steel bed frame were two kneeling figures: a man and a woman, neither of which were faces he knew. The man was wearing a vest with wires and blocks of what looked like C4, connected to a small LED light bulb that glowed green.

"Oh, thank God!" cried the man at his approach. "Get this thing offa me!"

Cricket shut the cell door behind him, grabbed the bed and leaned it against the door to buy them some time before kneeling next to the man with the vest. He turned on his radio. "Control, this is Cricket. I've found the prisoners. One of them is wearing a bomb vest that I have reason to believe is active. Need immediate advisement for removal."

"Control here," came Jacobs's reply. "Patching you to EOD now."

"This is EOD," came an irritated, thick Irish brogue. "Describe the appearance of the vest to me and be quick about it."

Cricket proceeded to describe the vest in detail. In addition to the C4 and wires was some kind of serial number on the electronic component with the LED light, and a simple padlock to hold the thing in place.

"Good news is, since the explosive is C4, it is stable and won't explode without the detonator," the Irish EOD man said. "I recognize the serial number of the detonator you described. Let me grab my manual. Stand by."

Banging was heard against the door. "We don't have a lot of time here," Cricket said as he heard the Irishman turn pages over his radio earpiece.

"Cut the red and yellow wires, in that order," came the reply. Cricket pulled out his knife and did as he was asked. The LED light turned yellow.

"The light's yellow now. What does that mean?"

"The vest is safe to remove without setting it off, but it seems that the detonator is still active. It must be using an internal battery."

"Meaning that the terrorists might still be able to activate the detonator remotely," Cricket said, finishing the thought.

"Get that vest off now, Cricket!" came Jacobs's sharp command. "Before the guards get their commander to activate it!"

Cricket sliced down the vest with his knife and pulled it off the struggling POW before throwing it at the door. Seeing some wet and rotting wood in the floorboards, Cricket stomped hard until he kicked through into the crawlspace below. "Quick! Get under!" he ordered.

The two prisoners jumped down into the space, crawling as far away as they could. Cricket looked back at the vest on the floor, and saw the LED flashing between yellow and red. He dove down and crawled after the prisoners to the courtyard. By the time Cricket and the two prisoners made it out from under the building, the LED on the vest turned a solid bright red, and a voice was heard over intercom speakers throughout the mock village:

"The bomb vest has been detonated by the cell door. Staff Sergeant Perez, Sergeant Tolleson, Lieutenant Branagh, and Warrant Officer Briggs, you are all dead. Please lay down your arms and assume the position for the remainder of the exercise. The two cellmates and the intruder are still alive and at large. The exercise is still ongoing."

Cricket reloaded and holstered his pistol and shouldered the AK slung around his shoulders. No point in being subtle now—the prisoners were now safe from execution, but the danger wasn't gone yet. He looked up and saw a guard on the tower look around wildly. Waving for the POWs to take cover behind the stack of pallets, Cricket aimed and fired on the tower, forcing the guard to duck.

The lone courtyard guard leveled his rifle at Cricket and Cricket joined his charges behind cover to avoid the simunition flying overhead. He blind fired over the concealment and when the firing stopped, he dove out from behind the stack to see the guard as he was crouching behind a low wall and nailed him in the helmet, forcing him to go down. He then adjusted his aim at the guard in the tower and laid down a few more rounds, this time nailing him in the torso.

Scrambling to his feet, Cricket waved to the news crew to move up. Cricket turned to briefly cover the door into the building as he moved along the wall to the gate before looking outside for any more guards. The buildings across from them had no sign of activity. Cricket covered left and right before crouching behind a low barrier. Cricket looked behind him at the prisoners.

"When I tell you, run straight for the alley between those two buildings and lie down in that irrigation ditch on the other side. Don't stop for anything."

"Okay," said the woman. The man just nodded.

Cricket pointed his rifle left in case of a flanking maneuver, then looked over the barrier on his right.

"Go, now!"

The couple ran forth, keeping their head down. Shouting was heard from behind Cricket, and he spun around to start laying down fire in the direction of the OPFOR's voices. He continued firing as he moved across the street to join his charges in the alleyway, not letting up lest the militants try to follow. By the time he reached the alley, his weapon was dry, and he had to reload. He kept running to the ditch as he changed mags and threw himself to the ground when he reached it.

"Move into the trees," Cricket commanded the hostages. "And keep your heads down!"

The POWs did as they were told, and half-ran, half-crawled in their scramble into the tree line into the swamp while Cricket continued firing on pursuing Berets, who stayed behind the buildings for cover. When he got the Berets to duck their heads, Cricket sprinted into the swamp himself.

He quickly caught up to the prisoners as he reloaded to his last AK magazine and started guiding them eastward away from the village and into the marshlands. Every few seconds, he'd turn and level his rifle back where they came, waiting for any pursuers. When they got to about 2 km from the clearing that was the exfil point, Cricket thought they were in the clear.

When they got near where he'd left Choir Boy, he instructed the duo to get low to the ground to avoid being seen before he blew out a loud, long, and sharp whistle. A moment passed, with no response. Cricket waited several seconds. Was Choir Boy still here?

It was risky to give away their position, but Cricket decided to chance whistling again. Still nothing for another thirty seconds, and then:

"Thunder!"

Cricket yelled back, "Flash!"

He motioned for the duo to stand up with him as he walked confidently forward to meet an approaching Choir Boy. Cricket raised his rifle, pointing at him. Choir Boy jumped.

"Hey, what gives?"

"Your sidearm," Cricket replied bluntly. "Hand it over."

"Jeez, alright. Here, take it." Choir Boy obediently handed Cricket the spare Makarov.

Cricket nodded in approval as he stuck it into his waistband behind his back. "Thanks. Sorry about the scare; can't be too careful." He pointed ahead to the clearing. "All of you, go ahead to the middle of that clearing and wait for me there."

The three news crew members jogged up to the clearing while Cricket clicked on his radio. "Cricket to Control. We've successfully reached the exfiltration point and are ready for pickup. All three prisoners are present and accounted for."

"Good to hear, Cricket," said Major Jacobs. "We are dispatching a Quick Response Force now. They will arrive in thirty minutes. You are to defend the hostages until their arrival."

"Understood, Control. Cricket out."

Major Jacobs hadn't declared the exercise complete, meaning the mission was still on. Cricket was determined to put in a perfect performance and pass his test. He joined the three hostages in the clearing and instructed them to lie low on the ground so that they would be obscured by the grass. Cricket for his part crouched low and leveled his rifle in the direction of the trees in case their pursuers had tracked them this far.

Now came the boring part. "Hurry up and wait," as the saying went. The thirty minutes felt like hours as Cricket tried to stay focused as he felt the adrenaline wearing off. He could feel the impatience that the hostages showed as the "news crew" squirmed.

After thirty minutes had passed, a small squad of uniformed Green Berets not wearing the costume of the militiamen from the village emerged from the trees.

Cricket leveled his rifle, calling out the challenge he was given when he started the exercise: "Crab Battle!"

The Beret in the front shouted, "Tasty!"

Cricket thought that the challenge and password both sounded ridiculous and had no idea what it meant, but he didn't question it when it was brought up in the briefing. He and the journalists stood to greet the QRF as they approached, and everybody lowered their weapons.

"Nice to meet you," said the man in front as he reached out for a handshake. His nametape read, 'A. SIMMONS.' "Cricket, was it?" he asked.

Cricket shook Simmons's hand. "Yeah. Though this'll probably be the last day I go by that name." He nodded over to the news crew. "But I guess that's up to them."

Choir Boy looked over at the other two FOXHOUND members who were accompanying them. "Eagle? Otter? What do you think?"

"He's able to respond swiftly and decisively to changing battlefield conditions, he's good at instantaneous threat-level assessment. He was able to rescue us without putting us in danger from the 'explosion.' He is competent with foreign weapon platforms and crisis management," said the woman named Otter.

The man who Choir Boy acknowledged as Eagle nodded. "He was a bit clumsy with how he handled the EOD but based on the circumstances provided and what I've observed, I'd say he's ready, Mouse."

Choir Boy—or rather, Mouse—nodded. "I got to see his CQC up close," he said, "And he was smart enough to clear the obstacles from inside the building before going for the rescue. Rookie knows what he's doing. I'm comfortable passing on my recommendation."

"I agree," said Eagle. Otter nodded.

"That just leaves the assessment of Major Jacobs and his team," Mouse said, clapping his hand on Cricket's shoulder with a smirk. "But I think I know what he'll say. Congratulations, rookie: you're in. Welcome to the team."

 

---

 

SEPTEMBER 23, 1994

FOXHOUND TRAINING FACILITY

THE INDUCTION CEREMONY

 

Thirty men and women stood at parade rest in the grassy concourse before a stage with a podium and a microphone. Speakers lined each side of the stage. In the middle of the stage was a set of bleachers, upon which were seated various FOXHOUND personnel, mainly instructors who had watched over these thirty men and women for over three and a half years. Standing at the podium was Big Boss, looking solemn as he gripped the podium's edges. Standing next to him were the stern figures of Gray Fox and Master Miller.

Big Boss scanned the graduating class with his good eye, staring intensely over the crowd. His gaze stopped momentarily at a man with brown hair in the third row, whose face looked like it was etched in stone and who stood like he was built with steel in his spine. Big Boss felt a warm familiarity and pride as he looked at the man, though he stifled the feeling just as quickly as he remembered just what brought the man here in the first place. The man glanced up at him for a split second and then quickly returned to staring straight ahead when he accidentally met the Boss's gaze.

Big Boss looked away and focused on the task at hand: welcoming his new crop to the blood harvest. He turned on the microphone, waited for the squeak of the feedback to subside, and began to speak:

"Every year, starting in March, approximately 500 candidates from all over the world enter the doors of the FOXHOUND training facility's barracks to undergo a harsh and unforgiving training regimen. They are soldiers, combat medics and surgeons, pilots, marines, sailors, and mercenaries, and Special Forces personnel from every participating military force and mercenary company on the planet.

Every year in September, four hundred and seventy people leave: washouts, those who couldn't handle the academic requirements or the extreme training simulations. These people leave, but not in disgrace: simply being selected as a possible candidate is considered a great honor, and every member of FOXHOUND knows that anyone who is willing to put themselves through the kind of hell that molds and shapes every warrior in the field of battle is a person who is deserving of respect.

Every year, 500 enter. Every year, 470 leave. Every year, 30 remain.

These thirty men and women have together taken up a higher duty: to enter into the black and shadowy hell from which there is no escape or comfort. Here, they will know an existence of everlasting battle and death. And when the day comes for them to lay down their lives for the mission, they will do so knowing that no one will ever know of their existence, or the effect they had on the world. Indeed, it will be as though they never existed at all."

Big Boss let the silence drag on, to punctuate his point. He leaned forward, the words dripping heavy from his lips.

"This is your burden. This is your curse. From this day forward, from now until you retire or until the day you die, you will renounce your old names, and your old lives. You will pledge yourselves to FOXHOUND and place yourselves in service to the United States of America. You fight her enemies in the shadows, you will soak yourselves in blood so that others may rest safe. You will renounce your old name, your old life, your very existence as anything other than a tool, a shield that stands as the bulwark of your country. You will fight, so that your fellow soldiers in the conflict may live to fight another day.

But we are not fodder, we are not fuel for the meat grinder, nor are we common. You are truly the most valuable of your kind to exist: a higher breed of warrior. This is what we were meant for, what we were born for. We know our fate and accept it gladly with honor and pride in our hearts, for this is what we were made to do. It is our purpose, and it is for that reason that you will not go quietly into the night.

In your darkest moments, always remember: never give up. Fight until the end. Always believe that you will succeed, even when the odds are against you. That hope, that strength of will—it is what will keep you alive. It is proof of your purpose and of your humanity. Be loyal to your purpose, and to your true nature.

You are FOXHOUND. You are warriors. Welcome to the fires of hell, my brothers. Come up to the stage and claim your new name for your own."

One by one, each cadet lined up for their turn on the stage. One by one, each cadet ascended the steps, shook hands with Master Miller and Big Boss, and received their code name. Big Boss received each of them like a stern father greeting his children.

The steely blue-eyed cadet with the stony face that the Boss observed earlier came up for his turn. A man who was a jack of all trades and a master of none, solidly skilled in just about every facet of infantry warfare and espionage in which he was taught. In some ways, the man reminded Big Boss of himself when he was younger, though he cringed internally at the thought of comparing himself to him.

The Boss wasn't the only one who saw the similarity, either: while the first half of the code name assigned to the man was an appropriate descriptor for his skillset, the second half of the code name was far more specific: it was a reminder of a time long past, that the Boss had considered dead and buried. It was Miller who chose the name, and the Boss had to wonder if it wasn't out of an attempt to spite him. He knew there was no love lost between him and Miller—it was something that Miller had made abundantly clear when Big Boss had FOXHOUND approach him years ago, and he hasn't stopped reminding him of it since.

Still, while he was initially against the idea, Big Boss couldn't deny that there was something appropriate about the choice; a sort of passing of the torch. And while he denied the connection that existed, Big Boss had to admit that with the way this rookie had performed he would be hard pressed to think of anyone else who would be worthy of the name. So, in the end, he relented and approved the designation, seeing it as a gift—the one single acknowledgement he would allow for what he considered to be an otherwise unspeakable fact that he would forever deny.

The younger man approached, pride shining in his eyes. He had been waiting for this day. Longing for it. Big Boss could see the fire in his eyes. The man was ready.

Big Boss shook his hand and said, "Welcome to FOXHOUND, Solid Snake."

Notes:

And we're finally here! A lot of work to get to this moment, but we've finally arrived and completed the origin story. The words for Big Boss's speech at the end have been rattling around in my head for weeks, with some variation, and I'm really proud of the result. I also wanted to say that the bits about Fort Polk's reputation at the beginning are sourced from a combination of stories I've heard from a couple of former Army service members I either know personally or know of, one of which actually was stationed there; they are not reflective of my actual opinion or experiences, having never served myself.

As a little preview of things to come, next chapter is going to be an interlude with a few different POVs covering the months leading up to Operation Intrude N313. Basically just a few short vignettes to set the stage for things to come, followed by Chapter 7, which will be the mission briefing, after which I'll have Snake on a plane (but with no Sam Jackson) to South Africa ready to hit the ground running on Chapter 8. I hope to have Chapter 6 done by the middle of May, but no promises.

Thank you so much to those of you who have stuck with the story so far, and I look forward to bringing you more as I come up with it.

Chapter 6: Interlude

DECEMBER 26, 1994

PRAGUE, THE CZECH REPUBLIC

THE STATE OPERA THEATRE

 

The dancers gracefully leapt and sailed through the air as the opening bars of Swan Lake boomed and swelled to fill the theatre. The orchestra was masterful tonight—not a single note out of place. But for one member of the audience, none of the performers held a candle to one singular woman whose grace was unmatched on the stage.

With impressive muscular control and lightness of feet, Ellen Madnar captured her father's rapt attention as she led the show with a glowing intensity that if you were to ask him would make the sun itself hide its head in shame for being inadequate in comparison. Oh, if only her mother could be here to witness it!

Drago was often tired and overworked. His obligations to the state and to the greater scientific community worldwide often made it difficult for him to be there for his family. There was many a time when the USSR's Presidium would come calling for his services and he would be forced to miss time with his daughter as she was growing up, a matter for which he was very regretful. While he is still busy even after the fall of the Soviet Union when he stopped working for the government and took up a new profession as a university professor, he at least now has a chance to make up for lost time.

When he found out the Bolshoi Ballet was coming to Prague to perform, he made sure he was part of the audience so that he could surprise her after the show. What a lucky coincidence that he happened to be in the same city this month for his lecture at the symposium!

He was enchanted by her athleticism as she moved with a vibrant and youthful energy that he had missed while being at the laboratories so far away from home. It brought a tear to his eye to see such a love and zeal for life in her body language. Though he had spent so many years apart from her, he was happy to see that none of those years had hardened her or stolen the happiness from her shining face.

"She's quite good, isn't she?"

Drago glanced over at the man sitting next to him in the balcony. He was a younger gentleman with jet black hair, looking to be in his thirties, wearing a nice suit and holding a folded brown overcoat in his lap and had a good-natured smile on his face. He spoke with a foreign accent that Drago couldn't place, but he didn't give it too much thought—likely the man was a rich tourist.

Drago nodded, grinning wistfully. "She is breathtaking. Just like her mother."

"Are you her father?"

Drago folded his hands in his lap. "I am. She doesn't know I am here tonight. I wanted to surprise her. I've never been able to come to one of her shows before."

The music shifted to something softer and sweeter as they spoke, the dancers taking on a slower cadence in their movements.

"You must be so proud," the stranger said.

Drago nodded again, happy to see that others could see the vitality and vibrancy his daughter held as well as he did.

Well, of course, he thought proudly, how could they not? The idea of his daughter being anything less than perfect being unthinkably offensive to him.

"I only wish I could have come to see her sooner," he said.

"I'm sure she would be happy just knowing that you were here tonight, Dr. Madnar."

Drago stopped short. How did the stranger know his name? He shook his head. The stranger came to the ballet, after all—he probably saw his Ellen's name on the program and deduced who he was based on the fact that he mentioned she was his daughter, as Drago himself was a public figure in his own right. Still, he didn't much care for the stranger's overly familiar tone.

Drago asked curtly in formal Russian, "Are you a student at the university?"

The stranger shook his head. "Not as such, no. But I know who you are, Dr. Madnar. I've been following your work. I suppose you could say I'm a fan, and well, I wanted to meet with you."

Now Drago was annoyed. The stranger was beginning to distract him from his daughter's performance. "Well, I appreciate your interest, Mr.-?"

"Call me Smythe," said the man.

"Mr. Smythe," Drago continued, "I am here to watch my daughter perform, and would prefer not to be distracted. Perhaps, if you would like, you could find me at the symposium tomorrow if you wish to engage in discussions with me then?"

"I would love that, Dr. Madnar, thank you for the offer."

Drago looked gratefully at the man before turning his attention to the ballet, when the man continued.

"But—" said Smythe.

Drago cringed. He hadn't expected the stranger to keep talking.

"—I'm afraid this isn't something that can wait. Especially since I know you won't be able to make it to the symposium."

Drago felt a twinge of fear. Was this stranger threatening him?

"What do you mean?" he asked. "What makes you think I wouldn't be there?"

"Because the Father of Soviet Robotics has a more pertinent engagement. One more befitting his stature and skillset."

A cold chill ran up Drago's spine. He hadn't heard that particular sobriquet in several years. His whole body went stiff, and he didn't dare turn his head farther to look at the stranger properly as his eyes moved sideways to stare at him.

"Are you FSB?" Drago's question fumbled out of his mouth in a frightened whisper.

The stranger's smile grew wider, showing more teeth as he leaned forward. It reminded Drago of a ravenous beast.

"Oh no, of course not, Doctor. Whatever gave you that idea?" The man made a tsk-tsk sound with his tongue. "We're much worse."

"W-what d-do y-you want?" asked Drago. Though in retrospect he knew that he should have, he had never considered the possibility of foreign agents coming for him before.

"I represent an organization that has need of certain…services. Of the kind that only THE Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar can provide. Don't worry, my friend: you will be well compensated for your efforts."

When the USSR dissolved, Dr. Madnar had sworn that he would never again work on weapons of war. For three years, he had kept that promise.

"And if I refuse?"

The stranger didn't answer at first, simply pointing to the stage, where Ellen continued to dance. Dr. Madnar understood the man's meaning immediately.

"N-no!" he whispered forcefully.

"You can relax, Dr. Madnar," Smythe said. "I have no intention of harming your daughter. Just think of it as—a source of motivation."

"Please, I'll do anything-!"

The stranger leaned back smugly in his seat. "I know you will, Doctor. That was never in any doubt. Now, calm down and enjoy the show, will you? It's not every day you get to see your daughter dance, after all."

Drago looked on, the blood draining from his face. Together he and the stranger sat and watched the whole rest of the performance, but Drago was no longer thinking of his daughter's happiness, but of her safety.

When the show ended, Drago didn't go to visit his daughter as he originally planned, instead heading straight for the exit, with Smythe following closely behind. Unfortunately, Ellen had caught his eye and smiled brightly.

Oh, God, no. Please stay away, my sweet Ellen.

Drago shook his head at her, and she was able to immediately tell that something was wrong. Before she could run up to him, Drago and Smythe started walking quickly in the opposite direction. Eventually Smythe grabbed Drago's arm to direct him to an alleyway a block away, where a black car was waiting for him with its rear passenger door open.

The symposium the next day would note Drago's absence, though since he had disappeared without violence and without a trace, a search bulletin wouldn't be put out until the day after.

 

---

 

JANUARY 29, 1995

SOMEWHERE IN THE GREAT LAKES TERRITORY

FOXHOUND COMMAND

 

Two knocks sounded on the door to Big Boss's small office, taking his attention off his reports of troop movements in Central Asia.

"Enter," he commanded.

Salamander admitted himself into the office. He was carrying a large manila envelope under his arm, which he presented to his commanding officer immediately upon entry without a word. Big Boss took it and opened it wordlessly, pulling out photographs, newspaper clippings, and a typed-up report. It was a threat assessment of private forces operating in Africa.

Big Boss looked up at Salamander. "What is this? Why are you bringing it to me?"

Salamander said, "Master Miller said you'd want to see it. He wanted me to point out page three, paragraph two as a particular note of interest for you."

Big Boss flipped through the pages as he scanned through the document while Salamander talked. His speed reading stopped short when he got to the paragraph Salamander had indicated. He read the lines slower, more carefully. He reread them to be sure of what he was seeing. He quickly looked over the photographs and still images of aerial satellite camera footage and maps.

"He's certain of this report's accuracy? The material is authentic?"

Salamander nodded. "All I know is what Master Miller told me, but he seemed sure."

Big Boss was silent for a moment while he considered. He took a breath. "Leave me be. I need to think about this."

Salamander bowed his head and started to walk out.

"And Salamander?"

Sal stopped just before he reached the door, looking back.

"Yes, sir?"

Big Boss looked up briefly at Salamander again before returning his gaze to the document. "Have Gray Fox sent up here, would you?"

Sal's eyes widened slightly as he nodded and said, "Right away, sir," and left Big Boss alone in the room.

Gray Fox entered about a half hour later. "You wanted to see me, Boss?"

Big Boss gestured at the chair on the other side of the desk. "Yes, thank you for coming, Frank. Please, sit down."

Fox stopped himself from smiling a little. Big Boss was the only one in FOXHOUND who ever called him by his real name—it was a small thing, but the gesture meant a great deal. He took the offered seat and waited for Big Boss to tell him what he needed to say.

"Frank, I have a mission for you. You may remember my South African connection?"

Fox nodded. The Boss had mentioned his asset to him in confidence on a couple of occasions, though he was never very specific on the details, as usually the Boss kept such things pretty close to the chest; the only ones who knew of the asset's relation to him as far as Fox knew were Big Boss, Master Miller, and Gray Fox himself.

"I have reason to believe that he may be planning something big, something which could be a threat both to America and to my own designs. Here, take a look." Big Boss slid the report over to Fox, who obediently began to read through it.

"More corporate merges and land acquisitions, weapons purchases…nothing that looks too unusual to me, Boss. I'm not sure I understand. What is the concern?"

"Check page three. The diamond mines in northern Angola, and the R&D personnel acquisition," Big Boss said.

Fox flipped the pages over and read the indicated page. His eyebrows raised in surprise. "You really think he'd be so bold?" Fox asked.

"Why not?" Big Boss asked. "It's not like it hasn't been tried before. And you know what kind of attention that brings, the kind of scrutiny, and the consequences that come with flouting it. South Africa has been a useful distraction, but if this report is accurate, then this will be more heat than can be effectively contained and controlled."

Gray Fox put the report down on the desk, his baggy eyes once more taking on the wide-eyed stare of the hungry predator. His voice cut like sharp steel as he asked, "What do you need me to do?"

Big Boss nodded. Out of all the FOXHOUNDers under his command, Fox was one of his favorites—no-nonsense, pragmatic, and always ready to get things done.

"I need you to go and investigate my contact in South Africa. You'll be inserted as a new recruit. Your objective is to find out whether he is in fact mustering the capabilities necessary to pursue his little war. The mission is solely reconnaissance—I'll expect regular reports directly from you, understand?"

"Yes, sir," Fox replied. "What should I do if the conclusions drawn from this report are accurate?"

"If we're right about his plans and the weapons he's constructing, you are authorized to conduct covert sabotage of his operation. However, you are only to do so if you are presented with the opportunity. This is still mainly a recon operation, so don't take any unnecessary risks, understand?" Big Boss stared hard into Fox's eyes. "Remember Naomi."

Naomi was Fox's adopted little sister whom he had sole guardianship over. One of the many reasons Fox was so loyal was because Big Boss had always made it a point to make sure that Fox's only family was well taken care of. Fox nodded seriously. "Always, sir."

Gray Fox stood up to leave. "I'll call you when I've landed in Cape Town, Boss. I won't let you down."

"You never do, Frank," Big Boss replied as he watched Fox leave the room.

 

---

 

FEBRUARY 25, 1995

FOXHOUND COMMAND

CONFERENCE ROOM

 

Master Miller finished listening to the tape that Big Boss had given to him containing Fox's most recent transmission and looked up the images projected on the screen in front of him from the microfiche Fox sent back.

"So, it's real, then?" Miller asked.

"So, it would seem," Big Boss replied. He added under his breath, "He's started developing some ambition of his own…it's impressive, really. Almost makes me proud. Like the son I never had."

Miller scoffed. "How ironic."

Big Boss turned and gave Master Miller a side-eye glare. "Kaz, did you know about this?"

Miller bristled at the use of his old nickname. "No," he hissed through his teeth. "But is it really that surprising to you, of all people? That the pawn would go to such lengths to become a player?"

Big Boss grunted as he folded his arms behind his back and stared out the conference room window at the FOXHOUND training grounds. "No, I suppose it doesn't."

A tense, uncomfortable silence stretched on for a few minutes as the two men stood there, one staring out into space as he thought of the future, while the other stared at his superior in hatred while he remembered the past.

It was Big Boss who broke the silence first. "I know you hate me, Kaz. I know you feel used and betrayed. I'm not expecting you to understand nor am I asking you for your forgiveness."

Big Boss turned around to face Master Miller and look him in the eye. "I am, however, going to ask you for one final favor. Two, actually. It'll be the last thing you ever have to do for me, your final role to play in this whole thing. After that, you'll be free."

Master Miller growled, clenching his cane so tightly his knuckles turned white. The audacity, the arrogance of this man, commanding him like some kind of underling, playing around with his life like a toy. It was enough to make him want to puke. And the worst part of it all was, was that Miller knew that he would do it anyway.

"When?" Miller asked. "When did you become the thing you hated most? When did you get so manipulative? When did the used become the user?"

Big Boss smirked. "You of all people should know the answer to that. After all, you were there, twenty years ago. Besides, were you ever really any different? When we started that venture together—before it was torn down and ended, you were just as manipulative and had no problem using me and our enemies to suit your own purposes. You're just angry that someone beat you at your own game."

The Boss's smile dropped, and he returned to his usual stony glare. "But this is no trick, Kaz. You do this thing for me, and our business is finished. I'll never ask anything of you again, and you'll never have to see or hear from me for the rest of your days if you don't want to. This, I promise."

Master Miller sighed angrily. He was quiet for a few seconds, but then asked reluctantly, "What do you want me to do?"

Big Boss nodded. "The DIA, CIA, and Washington are going to want a response to this, and we'll need to conduct an operation. I want you to give me a list of candidates to send. Make it short, give me your top ten."

Miller raised an eyebrow. "Is that all?"

Big Boss walked over to the end of the table and picked up a manila envelope. There was no address written on it, just the words "From the Man Who Sold the World." He handed it to Miller.

"The second thing I want you to do is have this delivered to our mutual contact in South Africa. It contains a message that I'll need him to hear before we send our man."

"What's in the message?" Miller asked with some curiosity.

"The truth," said Big Boss. Blunt, direct, no further explanation. Miller understood the significance and didn't pry further.

"And after this, that's it?"

"That's it," said Big Boss. "Once the message is delivered, you'll go on leave. You can stay with FOXHOUND or do something else with your life, but either way, you'll be a free agent after that."

"How do you know I won't come after you?" Miller asked venomously.

Big Boss shook his head with a sad smile. "I don't. You could try to kill me, could even try to interfere with my plans. But I think you know that I've taken that possibility into account. Nevertheless, you're welcome to try. I'll be waiting for you."

Big Boss turned back to the window and stepped away, indicating Miller's quiet dismissal. Master Miller took the hint and left to go about his task.

 

---

 

FEBRUARY 27, 1995

FOXHOUND COMMAND

 

Big Boss sat in his office poring over the list that was delivered to him. As promised, it wasn't very long, but there was one single candidate that caught his eye: a new addition to FOXHOUND that only a few months ago was just a trainee himself. A rookie without any special talents, save for that unspoken connection.

Was this meant to be Kaz's revenge on Big Boss, to try and send the trainee into the meat grinder for his first mission? Did he truly think that the Boss was that sentimental? Or was it an insistence from his enemies in Washington, to test the boy's skills so they could weaponize him against Big Boss himself? If that was the case, Big Boss believed that they had severely overestimated what the kid was capable of. If they send him, he will likely get himself killed. Perhaps that was their plan all along—to let his South African contact get so strong that he'd be impossible to ignore and then use it as manufactured consent for a pre-emptive strike against Big Boss himself? Big Boss shook his head. It's not paranoia If they really are out to get you.

There was a large number of variables. Usually, when a FOXHOUNDer is inducted, they get a minimum of about two weeks of R&R before being sent on their first mission, but Solid Snake was an anomaly—ever since September, he'd been spending his days training on base waiting for a mission to be sent on. The Boss knew that Snake was getting impatient, and so, it seems, has Washington. Maybe that was all it was?

It seemed like Washington was trying to put Big Boss between a rock and a hard place. If he didn't send Snake, he'd be accused of being too soft and be stripped of his position before he was ready to leave. If he did send Snake…

Big Boss stopped to think about it. If he sent Snake, he'd get one of four outcomes. If Snake went in and was killed immediately from his lack of experience, it would show the Pentagon how much of a failure their pet project was and make them think twice before testing Big Boss again, which would help him buy some time. Of course, that still left the ambitions of his contact in South Africa becoming too big and too public sooner than he or the asset can handle, but that could be dealt with at a later date; and in the meantime, South Africa could continue serving as the useful distraction it's been operating as.

Outcome number two: Snake still fails, but not without a prolonged struggle. This would buy Big Boss some more time to finish getting his affairs in order before enacting his exit strategy, while still putting up a cautionary barrier between him and his rivals in the Pentagon.

Outcome number three: Snake succeeds without any trouble. This is highly unlikely, almost not even worth considering. The asset in South Africa is simply too strong, too well-trained, too heavily funded. But on the off chance it did occur, Big Boss would have to massively accelerate his plans. A headache, for sure, but there was one plus: it would remove his South African asset as a player from the board and help to tie up loose ends.

Outcome number four: Snake succeeds far enough to remove the contact after a struggle, or better yet, succeeds in killing the asset but fails in destroying the asset's war making capabilities. This would have the benefit of outcome number three, while also leaving the weaponry and personnel intact for Big Boss to recover for his own purposes. And if Snake dies in the process, while it would be regrettable, at the very least his rivals in the Pentagon would lose another one of their bargaining chips.

Big Boss smiled in grim satisfaction, though on his face it looked more like a grimace. No matter which outcome you pick, he would still come out the victor in the end…

His course now set, Big Boss selected Solid Snake from the list of recommendations and set to work drafting the operation outline and making calls to his counterparts in the DIA and CIA to put together a plan for the new mission.

 

---

 

MARCH 10, 1995

FOXHOUND TRAINING FACILITY

GYMNASIUM

 

Vibrations ran up his arms as his fists collided against the bag with explosive force. Vole—a former cadet who now goes by Sniper Rat—was having trouble keeping the bag steady as Solid Snake vented his frustrations. The pounding of his heart filled his ears as he expended his anger. He'd been at this for hours: workouts, CQC drills with Rat and Salamander, hitting the bag; he said before it was to keep his body sharp for when his first assignment rolled in.

But the truth was that he needed a distraction. It'd been almost six months since he graduated from the training program and received his code name, and he still hadn't received any word yet beyond "stand by and await new orders."

Snake was getting restless. What was the point of all of that training and getting beaten half to death if they were just going to leave him languishing somewhere?

It's not like there had been any shortage of conflict to invite FOXHOUND's involvement. Bosnia and Herzegovina had been mired in ethnic cleansing, death, and rape since 1992, and news was getting around that President Clinton would send people any day now.

On top of that, it's not like the Taliban had stopped their activities after taking Kandahar back in September. Their militancy with enforcing their radically conservative interpretation of Islam on the territories they controlled made plenty of military and intelligence analysts nervous, with some speculating that Omar might turn his eye to the higher ambition of taking over all of Kabul.

The African continent was as hardened by war as ever with many a dictator or warlord looking to seize power within their respective spheres of influence with the help of paid mercenaries and radicalized locals. Just last spring and summer, an ethnic genocide had been perpetrated in Rwanda against the Tutsi ethnic minorities by Hutu militias.

Any number of these could present economic or diplomatic opportunities or threats to the United States's interests. If the purpose of FOXHOUND was to serve as the invisible knife carving footholds of strategic importance and winning wars before they can start, there should be no shortage of work to do. So, why has Snake been sitting on his ass doing nothing for six months? Every time he thought about it, he got angrier.

Was it his lack of specialization? He knew that the "Solid" part of his moniker referred to his versatility, but maybe they needed more specific tasks to be carried out, therefore making him useless. It was that idea of being useless that he couldn't stand, the idea of him lacking in worth to the government who had invested so much in him and saved him from his unfortunate childhood.

Rat stood on the other side of the bag, grunting as he felt the impacts rippling through the sand inside. He had to quickly step back out of the way when Snake surprised him with a roundhouse kick, knocking its chain off the hook keeping it tethered to the ceiling. The silence in the empty gym was thick, punctuated by the sound of Snake's heavy breathing.

"Maybe we should take a break," Rat ventured. "No sense in letting the brass see you tired when they bring you in for your mission."

This was exactly the wrong thing to say to Snake at that moment. In one fell motion, he picked up a nearby kettle bell and shotput it an impressive distance, crashing it into a stack of equipment and narrowly avoiding putting a hole into the wall. Snake's effort spent, he marched over to the bench, sat down, and started wiping his face with a towel. He flushed slightly, embarrassed that he let someone else see him lose it.

Rat came over and sat down next to him. "Something on your mind, mein Freund?"

Snake chuckled sardonically. "You could say that." He looked around, gesturing at their surroundings. "This place picks me up from the battlefield, away from the only brothers I've ever known. They beat the hell out of me, train me, hone me into the 'perfect tool'. Their words, not mine. And when the time comes, what do they do with me? They leave me in the toolbox, collecting dust."

Rat nodded. He'd heard Snake's diatribe before, but he knew it was better to let his friend just vent and get it all out. "Ich weiß genau, was du meinst. I know exactly what you mean. I've been there. There's not a whole lot you can do except wait, leider."

Snake was feeling even more embarrassed. Not only had he said all of this before, but he was complaining to the one person who had dealt with his problem more than he had. He remembered what Rat had said when they first met about his restlessness before being tagged as a recruit for FOXHOUND.

"Yeah," Snake said, "but when you were on ice, you were a Fed in the middle of peacetime. Now, circumstances are different. There's no shortage of work for highly trained government spooks like us. There should be no reason to be stuck here."

Snake looked at the ground, thinking. "Rat…you know why they call me 'Solid,' right?"

Rat nodded. "Jack of all trades, ja? Good at a little bit of everything. It's a good trait to have for a soldier."

"Yeah, 'jack of all trades, master of none,'" Snake finished. "Good for a soldier, but we're not regular soldiers anymore. What if that's why they haven't given me an assignment yet? There's no shortage of specialists in FOXHOUND. They have all the talent they could ever need. What's one middle-of-the-road guy going to accomplish? Am I just fated for mediocrity?"

"Schlange, mein Freund," Rat began as he put a hand on Snake's shoulder. "Just the fact that du bist hier is an achievement unto itself. Why are you so concerned about 'achievement,' anyway? It's not like you to care about such things. Usually, your first thought has always been duty to country."

"That's the thing," Snake replied, shaking his head. "I'm here to return the favor that America's done for me: my life, training, skills. How can I do that if they don't use me? If my worth is measured as a tool, well, a tool's only as good as its utility, right?"

Rat sighed. "You can't let yourself get so inside your own head, Schlange. The mission will come, whether you're ready for it or not. Best not to greet death too warmly, ja?"

Rat stood up, extending an arm to pull up Snake. "Kommen sie mit mich. I'm famished. Let's go get breakfast before the mess hall closes."

Not really having anything else to say, Snake helped his friend clean up the mess he'd made in the gym before heading to the mess hall, where they met up with Salamander.

"How was the workout, gentlemen?" Salamander asked.

Snake sat down at the table with his tray wordlessly.

"Oof, that bad, eh?"

"Nah, it's fine," Snake replied. "Just…"

Snake trailed off, not finishing his thought. Salamander nodded sympathetically as he and Rat sat down.

"I get you," Sal said. "Sometimes this stuff can take longer than you think. If it makes you feel any better, I didn't get my first mission right after I got the code name either. When they want you, they'll come get you. So, don't be so glum—enjoy the R&R while you can, rookie."

Snake looked up curiously. "How long did they make you wait?"

"It was about a couple of months before they shipped me off to Siberia to go investigate some old missile silos."

Snake snickered. "An Arizonan salamander in Siberia?"

Sal chuckled. "Yeah, I think the brass might've been having a joke at my expense with that one. Coldest I've ever been in my life, and I spent my college years in Flagstaff."

"Where's Flagstaff?"

"Northern Arizona, up in the mountains. Y'know, a lot of people when they think of the state, they picture desert and canyons. But up north, south of the Grand Canyon, there's mountains with tons of pine trees, rain, and snow. It's actually really pretty, especially in the summertime. You should consider checking it out sometime, between missions."

"Between missions?" Snake asked. "Aren't we supposed to stay on base?"

Salamander shrugged and shook his head. "You're on leave for R&R, you can go or live wherever you like. When FOXHOUND wants to call on you for service, they'll come for you, don't worry." He glowered into the coffee as he took a sip. "Learned that the hard way," he muttered.

Snake and Rat glanced at each other. "Dare I ask what happened?" Rat said.

Sal rubbed the back of his head, grinning sheepishly. "I was in Oceanview, California. Hanging out with this pretty tourist from Amsterdam. We were having a good time, walking the boardwalk, visited this Greek restaurant for gyros, went out on a whale watch. The whole time, she couldn't keep her hands off me. So, we decided to find ourselves a hotel to shack up for the night. Well, turns out, FOXHOUND missions wait for no man—they make no respect for time or convenience."

"Oh, no…" Snake tried and failed to keep the laughter out of his voice as he realized what was coming.

"So, there we are getting busy, when we hear a knock at the door. Figured it was a noise complaint, so we ignored it. Then they knock again, this time a little louder. Then they start banging, real violent. The lady wasn't taking it too well, starts yelling something in Dutch I don't understand, getting ready to go give a piece of her mind. She sure was a fiery one." Salamander stopped to smile wistfully as he reminisced.

"Then they kicked the door open. I thought we were being attacked. I grabbed my gun from the bedside table, only to be met by my instructor. He asked me why I wasn't answering my calls or my pager, and why I didn't open the door. As if he couldn't see for himself what it was that we were up to. We were covering ourselves. I was pissed off, embarrassed—like having your parents walk in on you on prom night.

He didn't say much else, just that they had a job for me, and that I needed to report to the nearest military base right away. Right before he left, he said, 'sorry for interrupting your night,' and 'give my regards to your lady friend.' Since it's FOXHOUND business I couldn't really do much explaining to my date. She was pissed." Sal chuckled, before looking a little morose. "That was the last time I saw her. Never did get her number."

"Point is," he continued, "There's no way to know in advance when FOXHOUND will need you. Could be today, tomorrow, or months or even years from now. Doesn't matter. Hell, with FOXHOUND's specialized nature and the heavy physical and psychological demands required, it's not uncommon for the average operative to only go on a few missions in their entire career with the unit. So, just enjoy the R&R while you've got it, keep up with your training in the meantime, and don't sweat the small stuff, rookie."

Snake chuckled, admittedly feeling a little better. "Point taken," he said.

Just then, Mongoose strode up to the table. "Good morning, gentlemen," he said jovially, before turning to Snake. "Solid Snake?"

Snake stood up. "Yes?"

Mongoose nodded to him. "You're to report to Conference Room 2B in the Administration Building. You've been assigned."

Snake's eyes lit up. He went to grab his tray, but Mongoose put out a hand. "Leave that there. Just follow me," he said.

Snake looked to Salamander and Rat. Sal said with a smirk, "We'll take care of it, you go. Congratulations, rookie."

The walk to the admin building was uneventful. Snake passed by a lot of familiar faces on the way, as well as many classes of first-year squads. As they walked up the stairs to the second floor, Mongoose asked, "So, Snake, you excited for your first mission?"

"Like you wouldn't believe," Snake replied.

"That's good, kid. You should hang on to that energy. You know what they say about your first time; you're never gonna forget it."

They reached the conference room door. The blinds to the windows were closed. Mongoose knocked on the door once and a familiar voice responded, "Enter."

Mongoose turned to Snake. "Wait here," he said, before going through the door. Snake could just barely hear Mongoose announce, "Sir, I've brought Solid Snake for the briefing."

A muffled response, much quieter. Mongoose emerged from the door and said, "He's ready for you. Good luck, kid."

Snake swung the door open and standing at the head of the table was none other than Big Boss himself.

"Good morning, Snake," the Boss said. "Please, close the door behind you and take a seat. Anywhere's fine."

Snake complied and took a seat at the side of the table. It was just the two of them. Big Boss walked over to a coffee pot in the corner. "Would you like some coffee? It's a Costa Rican blend. A personal favorite of mine."

Snake, not wanting to be rude, accepted gratefully. As he took a sip, he noted that it was definitely better tasting than the stuff they got in the mess hall.

"Sir," Snake started, wiping his mouth as Big Boss sat down across from him. "May I ask a question?"

"Ask it, Snake. And call me Big Boss. Or Boss is fine."

"Yes sir—er, Boss," Snake said, taking another sip of his coffee. "Do you usually sit in on mission briefings? I would've figured that that would be handled by lower-level staff."

Big Boss chuckled, pulling a cigar from inside his brown coat. "You're not wrong," he said.

Following the Boss's lead, Snake pulled out a pack of Lucky Strikes and pulled one out with his teeth before flicking his lighter.

"So then, what brings you here, sir?" he asked.

Big Boss clipped the end off of his cigar and walked over to the window to throw it into the garbage. "The mission you're about to be sent on is an unusual one, and very sensitive even by FOXHOUND's standards. I couldn't trust anyone else to spearhead it, so I'm going to be taking over operational command myself."

Snake stopped with his coffee cup halfway to his lips before putting it back down. "Yourself?" he asked. "It's something that important?"

"It is."

It was stupid—Snake had spent the past six months just praying, practically begging for a new mission. Why was he looking a gift horse in the mouth now? But he couldn't help himself. He just had to ask:

"Why am I here then, and not somebody with more experience, like Gray Fox?"

Big Boss tilted his head forward slightly, his one eye burning as it stared directly into Snake's gaze, making him uncomfortable. "Do you doubt my selection?"

"No sir, not at all," Snake replied hastily. "It's just…surprising, I guess. To be trusted with something so important."

"Why do you find it surprising?"

"I guess…" Snake trailed off. "I don't know," he admitted as he looked down at the table to avoid the Boss's stare.

"Hmph," Big Boss grunted. "You're young. So, you feel like you have a lot to prove. And in some ways, you do. You're new, untested. But that's exactly why you're here."

Big Boss finally took the match to his cigar and started puffing on it as it burned. He breathed out, expelling a plume of heavy smoke. "Do you know why you are called 'Solid Snake'?" he asked.

"Solid as in 'generally good,' right?" Snake said.

Big Boss nodded. "That's right. Specialization is useful, and in some situations, even optimal. But when you overspecialize, you run the risk of being useless at everything else. Not everyone is useful for every role, and when you need to accomplish a diversity of tasks in a chaotic environment, it's versatility and adaptability that will save you.

You're here because that trait you have—versatility—is the one we need most right now."

Big Boss puffed again. "It's funny you mention Fox," he said. "He's actually the reason for this mission."

"Really?" Snake asked curiously. He forgot about his coffee as he leaned forward, absent-mindedly chewing on his cigarette.

Big Boss nodded. "The details can wait until everyone else gets here, but suffice to say, you're going to be helping him with something."

This was it. He was finally going to get the chance to work with and under Gray Fox directly. Snake smirked to himself at the thought.

"What's funny?"

Snake shook his head. "Nothing, it's just…I'm happy, I guess. When I was training, I was working really hard. I wanted to become the next Fox."

"That's quite ambitious," Big Boss said in approval.

"Yeah. So, when I got my code name, I was little disappointed," Snake confessed. "Thought maybe I'd lost the chance to prove myself. Now I get to learn from the man directly."

The air in the room changed, felt a little colder. Big Boss's face hardened. There was a quick flash in his eye of something that was hard to place. Sadness? Disappointment? Guilt? Whatever it was, it was gone as quickly as it showed. All Snake saw was the roughness in Big Boss's face, and with it came the feeling that he had just said something wrong.

"I'm sure you've wondered," Big Boss began, "Why I'm called Big Boss." 

Snake gulped but said nothing. He had wondered that very thing many times since he first met the man, but he knew better than to ask.

Big Boss spoke slowly, as if to choose his words carefully.

"The details, are, of course, classified. Even if they weren't, many of them are just too…personal, to mention. To put it simply, the day I got that code name was the most difficult in my entire life. Like you, I did not choose my name for myself, and like you, I resented it. It was a badge of shame in my eyes."

Big Boss sucked another mouthful of smoke from his cigar before he continued.

"Over time, however, as I pushed forward, as I continued to fight…I made it my own. I proved myself, in my eyes and in the eyes of others. I've done things I'm proud of, and things that…" he trailed off.

"You've heard plenty of rumors and stories about me in your time here. Some of them might even be true. But reputation is just that—talk and rumors. It doesn't define you; what does define you are your actions. Those who talk, rarely act.

"Your name was assigned to you, but it has no true meaning until you earn it, with your actions and your blood. My name—my true name—is Big Boss. I did not choose my name, but by the end, I have come to realize that for better or worse, I have earned it with the price I've paid, and it is now who I am. To the point where there are some days, I'm not even sure I remember the name I was given at birth…"

Big Boss drained his coffee before speaking again. "You are Solid Snake. Right now, that name bears very little meaning for you beyond the reasons behind your designation. But in the coming days, you will earn it with your actions, and the name 'Solid Snake' will come to be a reflection of who you are."

Snake took all this in as he looked down into his coffee cup before finishing it. He nodded.

"Just never forget," Big Boss said as Snake looked up into his eye again, "you are a warrior, a soldier. It's in your eyes; it's in your blood. Be loyal to that, to your purpose. Be true to it, and you will survive."

Big Boss's eye softened as he took in the sight of this wet-behind-the-ears rookie.

The kid has no idea what's in store for him, he thought to himself.

Snake, for his part, put out his cigarette stub just as the door behind him opened and a parade of men entered the room; two men in suits, two Army officers, and one Air Force officer. Among the officers, one wore the silver clover of a Lieutenant Colonel and the other two the three stars of a Lieutenant General. Snake and Big Boss both stood up to receive them.

"Good, everyone's here," Big Boss said as he snapped a quick salute to the Lt. Generals, who returned it in kind.

"Introductions first: Snake, this is Lt. Gen. Paul Blackwell, and Lt. Col. Roy Campbell. They will be our Army liaisons for this mission and our points of contact for Army chain of command, reporting directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The third officer is Lt. Gen. James Clapper, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The two men in suits are Secretary of State William Perry and incoming CIA Director John Deutch.

Gentlemen, this is Solid Snake. He'll be the FOXHOUND agent on the ground for this mission."

"Pleasure to meet you, gentlemen," Snake said as he saluted the officers and shook the hand of each man in turn.

Everyone took their places at the conference table, except Director Deutch and Big Boss, who remained standing. "Does anyone have any questions before we get started?" Big Boss asked.

When no one said anything, Big Boss turned to the Director. "Good, then we can begin. Mr. Director, after you."

Notes:

Got through this chapter quicker than I thought I would. Just a short interlude to kind of set the scene as we explore the events surrounding Big Boss leading up to the operation in South Africa. Sorry if the name change for Vole was confusing; hopefully it was clear enough that he had passed the trials, too. We also have the introduction of Roy Campbell—not a lot of fanfare, but he's not really a major character in the original Metal Gear (or a character at all, really), so it's mostly just a fun little cameo.

It's a really easy trap to want to get up in your face with lore references and what-not, but I'm trying to remember that this is an origin story told primarily from Snake's point of view and since it's the first story in the series, it wouldn't make for good storytelling to kind of blow that shot too early. Big Boss's speech to Snake about the nature of his name was another piece of dialogue I'd had sitting in my brain for the past couple of weeks, and I think it turned out pretty good.

Next chapter will be the mission briefing. It'll be pretty dialogue-heavy and probably short just like this one. Chapter 8 will cover Snake's entry into Africa and journey to Outer Heaven as the operation commences. It's been kind of a slow burn so far with the training arc and Snake's first days in FOXHOUND, but things should pick up when we get to the actual mission. Thank you for bearing with me so far, and I hope you continue to enjoy this work moving forward!

Chapter 7: Briefing and Insertion

Summary:

Snake receives his mission briefing and is introduced to his contact in South Africa. The mission has begun.

MARCH 10, 1995

FOXHOUND COMMAND, CONFERENCE ROOM

MISSION BRIEFING

 

"First, some background."

Director Deutch turned on an overhead light projector at the front of the room and placed down documents and pictures as he talked. The first photo was of an abandoned ocean rig and a logo of a skull mixed with some kind of landmass, with the words 'Militaires Sans Frontieres' emblazoned underneath.

"The year is 1974. A band of pirates in the Caribbean Sea decide that they want to put the talents honed from their illegal activities towards a more legitimate enterprise by incorporating as a private mercenary company—one of the first of its kind. While mercenaries have always existed, this was one of the first times anyone thought to create an LLC out of it—and it was the first one to be successful enough to be noteworthy, for the purposes of this discussion.

"They set up shop in a rig that was provided to them by clandestine Soviet forces operating in Costa Rica who were disguised as a local university. They called themselves Militaires Sans Frontieres—Soldiers Without Borders—and they made a name for themselves contracting logistics and military power to Socialist governments and guerilla movements in Central and South America as muscle.

"They were on our radar, and while they presented a concern from a threat assessment perspective, they were ultimately deemed to be of a low-to-moderate concern; not harmless, but also not something that merited a military response from the U.S. Instead, we chose to exercise soft power by hiring them ourselves for some occasional grunt work to supplement military concerns that our external postings need not be bothered with. The idea was that by controlling some aspects of how this company is funded and utilized, we could sway them away from Communist influence and put them to work for Western interests.

"Then, one night in March of 1975, this company disappeared without a trace. Explosions and fire could be seen from the coastline. Conspiracy theorists in Nicaragua reported seeing black military helicopters leaving the area. There are many theories as to what happened. Nicaragua, Colombia, and Honduras blamed the U.S. of course; however, we have no standing operation on the books that line up with the incident. Another theory is accidental detonation of an explosive on the site by the pirates themselves—simply done in by their own incompetence. Something else that's been suggested is that they were attacked by a competitor, another pirate gang or maybe one of the Mexican cartels, or even Cuban authorities who didn't like how close to their shores this mercenary company was operating. Whatever the case, the company had disappeared off the face of the earth, but their influence—now, that had only just begun to take root. In the intervening years, other mercenary groups followed MSF's example and started making private military companies of their own; PFs—also known as Private Forces—started to dominate in the parts of the world which lacked stability but had enough money to afford their services. War as a business—and business was good."

Deutch removed the pictures and replaced them with new images: Soviet soldiers in red berets, desert fighters on horseback in long, dark clothing, tanks in the desert set against tall cliffs. Another logo, this one of a black Doberman inside of a diamond design and the words 'DIAMOND DOGS' inside a yellow ribbon.

Someone is a David Bowie fan, Snake noted with amusement.

"As the PFs get more strength and notoriety, one in particular stands out: in 1984, in yet another offshore rig situated in the Seychelles waters off of East Africa, a little over a thousand kilometers north of Madagascar, is the home base of Diamond Dogs, the newest PF to enter the scene. They were small-time, basically got the rig in return for lending their muscle to the local governments in Madagascar and Mogadishu, and as far as bigger contracts were concerned, they got their first big break training Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviets' 40th Army. They were a known quantity—matter of fact, we were the ones who hired them to perform the training—but by themselves, they were no one special. Until one day, when they experienced a change in leadership that same year."

Another photo was added to the presentation, a gray cartoon outline of a person with a white question mark on its head. Underneath were written the words, 'AHAB' and 'VENOM.'

"Sometime in 1984, Diamond Dogs came under new management under a CEO who's only known name is Ahab, alias 'Venom.' Precious little is known about this individual, but from the information we've been able to gather, we've picked up a few things. First, he's a survivor of the incident that led to MSF's destruction. It's possible he may have been involved in orchestrating the incident himself, but nothing is confirmed at this time. The second thing we know is that he is a very talented individual on the battlefield, and very charismatic. His employees are fanatically loyal to him, to the point that the company more resembles a cult than a business. Even his enemies have shown a great deal of respect for him; in many places in which Diamond Dogs has operated, he's been compared favorably to Big Boss himself."

That got Snake's attention. He'd been told when he first met the man that in the places where Big Boss was known outside of the US, Big Boss was known as one of the best and most dangerous soldiers to have ever lived, and from the reputation he had at FOXHOUND, Snake didn't doubt it for a second. For someone to be compared to him, this Ahab or Venom or whatever he called himself must be a real force of nature on the battlefield.

"After Ahab took the reins on the company," the Director continued, "their local and international contracts skyrocketed, and they started deploying not just in Afghanistan and the Seychelles, but in West Africa and Central Asia as well."

More photos. Three more logos, as well as pictures of African savannah, truck convoys, weapon emplacements, an airfield and a dark-skinned man with glasses wearing a blue suit and a leopard-print cover hat. The name underneath the photo of the man read 'MOBUTU SESE SEKO.'

"In Mobutu's conflict against Angola, there were multiple PFs operating in the Angola-Zaire border region: Zero Risk Security, Rogue Coyote, and the Contract Forces of Africa, among others. These were supplied by Western munitions through our Company and through Britain's SIS. You see, Mobutu was on our payroll—we offered him the Congo in exchange for keeping the Communists out of West Africa, and he was more than happy to take us up on it. Diamond Dogs, by contrast, had elected to take contracts from anti-government guerilla forces in northern Angola.

"Much like MSF, Diamond Dogs didn't seem to care at all about ideology or nationality; they weren't particularly loyal to any given side, just to the side that pays them the most. The fact that on one continent they fought Soviet forces and on the other they fought pro-Capitalists only seemed to further this notion. We understood that and accounted for it—they were a thorn in our side for a while in Angola, but it obviously wasn't personal, and our old strategy of buying out as many of their contracts as they were willing to sell us served us well. They've been utilized by us in campaigns against Colombian drug cartels and in UN peacekeeping missions in Rwanda. As they expanded, they started buying up other mercenary companies in a series of mergers, acquisitions, and hostile takeovers. By 1987, they had reincorporated as Outer Heaven International, and by then they became the single biggest and most well-equipped unified military force on the African continent. They had forward operating bases all over the Indian Ocean between Africa, Asia, and the Philippines. As they expanded though, they realized they needed a more permanent foundation from which to command as their headquarters."

The photos were all removed, to be replaced by two more: satellite aerial photos of a massive and sprawling industrial complex and a logo of a winged skull with a bullet hole in the forehead in a circle with a banner above reading 'OUTER HEAVEN.'

"In 1990, the government of South Africa is running into a bit of a problem. The citizenry is demanding an end to apartheid by referendum and for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. The protesters are starting to become very spirited, and the official posture of the United States and the United Nations is to denounce South Africa's anti-humanitarian apartheid policy. The government has its back against a wall with no help and nowhere to turn as the moral center of the world around them is shifting.

Enter Outer Heaven, who comes in to strike a deal: they act as government-sponsored enforcers to help quell the protests, and in return, they're given a land grant from which to build their new headquarters. South Africa complies, and Outer Heaven proceeds with constructing a large sprawling complex about 300 km north of the region of Galzburg. Before they can even finish construction, the South African government calls on them for help—Outer Heaven sends some token forces to assist in Cape Town and Johannesburg, but ultimately, it's too little, too late. Mandela is released in February, and apartheid ends a year later.

"Exactly how sincere Outer Heaven was about propping up the government forces at the time is up for debate. What isn't up for debate is that they had no intention of vacating the area once they had finished setting up. After the change in leadership in South Africa, the new government tried to get Outer Heaven to leave—and when diplomacy failed, they threatened to use force if Outer Heaven didn't comply. Ahab only had this to say: 'I'd like to see you try.'

"Since both government and private institutions across the continent and overseas had made use of Outer Heaven and found them too useful to get rid of, there wasn't anything South Africa could do about it—they were stuck with this foreign military presence on their soil."

The Director stopped for a moment, and Snake leaned back. That was quite the history lesson, he thought to himself.

"How did the average citizen take this?" Snake asked.

"About as well as you would think," the Director said. "There are a lot of people in South Africa who are calling it an invasion, likening Outer Heaven to an occupation force. They're not entirely wrong, either: the Outer Heaven headquarters is a fortress with the size and population of a small city, and they've got enough force worldwide to overthrow multiple small governments if they wanted to, and we believe that South Africans are concerned that Outer Heaven is planning to do exactly that. The company hasn't been observed making any moves to that effect as of yet, but it doesn't matter, their very existence represents a major destabilizing force for the whole region. There's a civilian resistance movement in the country that's actively using force to fight against Outer Heaven's occupation. The South African government is trying to suppress this fact, which is why it's not international news. It's for these reasons that the CIA's threat assessment climbed from moderate to high. The only thing keeping them in check from a threat assessment perspective is our purchasing of their contracts."

"So, what changed?" asked Lt. Col. Campbell.

"In 1993, they stopped contracting out to us entirely. Not just us, either—nearly every country on their client list got the cold shoulder. But the observable incoming weapon and supply shipments haven't stopped; they just keep rolling in like clockwork, every day. In addition to this, last year they purchased a diamond mine in northern Angola, near their old stomping grounds—the Kungenga Mine. There's also been a massive increase in the number of R&D personnel on their payroll."

"So, what?" Snake asked. "That doesn't sound so ominous by itself. Maybe they're getting ready for a new FOB construction or something. Or maybe they had a bad fiscal year last year and they needed to do some reshuffling of their resources…or they're just hunkering down to defend against guerilla attacks."

"Those were our first thoughts," the Director replied. "However, since their purchase of the mine, convoys of trucks have been moving to and from the mine nonstop to make deliveries to the HQ. They had no shortage of material wealth from their business dealings and resource acquisitions before, but they were especially interested in the resources from this mine specifically, to the point that both the mine and the convoys had heavily armed personnel protecting them. In addition, many of the new hires in the HQ were scientists with previous experience either in weapons development or in nuclear physics.

"We had one of the trucks intercepted. In addition to weapons caches and crates of diamonds, there was also trace amounts of yellowcake—uranium powder from leech solutions after the ore's been mined, but before enrichment and fabrication."

A silence befell the room. The generals gripped the arms of their chairs tighter. Snake's eyes went wide. The idea that a mercenary outfit with enough firepower to overthrow a small government might have access to fissile materials and the manpower necessary to develop nuclear weapons was alarming.

It was the Secretary of Defense that spoke first. "You had come to my office and the Joint Chiefs with this back in January. You say that these developments occurred last year. How long have we known?" Defense Secretary Perry asked.

"Not long," the Director replied. "This information was compiled, and the report was completed in late December. However, this isn't the only development of interest in regard to Outer Heaven's activities."

The Director removed the photos and documents again, this time placing two photos on the projector: one was a pale old man with a large white moustache and the other a thin, dark-haired woman with blue eyes. Beneath both photos are the names 'DRAGO PETTROVICH MADNAR' and 'ELLEN MADNAR.'

"Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar, educated in Prague and known in Russia as the Father of Robotics, is a former weapons research scientist for the Soviet Union," the Director explained. "His main claim to fame is the development of the Powered Gear bipedal locomotion system, which was used as a design improvement on the Soviets' original Walker Gear technology developed in Afghanistan in the '80's."

Snake had heard stories of the Walker Gear machines, though he'd never seen them in action; large bipedal weapons platforms with walking legs and wheels capable of small-arms fire in the form of gatling guns and robotic arms that could hold pistols and rifles. Not as durable as a tank, but it was fast and the projected armor in the front protecting the single pilot made it a nightmare of an anti-personnel vehicle. He was thankful that these weapons never made it into the hands of the Iraqi militants he'd encountered in Kuwait.

"When the Soviet Union fell and these Walker Gears fell out of use, Dr. Madnar went back to his old university in the Czech Republic as a professor, retiring from government service altogether. He was supposed to give a lecture on electrical and mechanical engineering at a symposium in Prague after Christmas, but he never made it. The last place he'd been seen was at the Opera Theatre on December 26, watching the Bolshoi Ballet perform Swan Lake live. His daughter Ellen, a ballerina with the troupe, disappeared not long after he did. The local police departments found her apartment turned over with signs of a struggle. Considering the two disappearances might be connected, a missing persons report was filed, and an All-Points Bulletin was put out over international channels through INTERPOL later that same week."

"Wait, sorry," Snake said, raising a hand. "What does this have to do with Outer Heaven and Ahab?"

"One of the known members of Outer Heaven's R&D team is a bionics specialist—a former Soviet engineer who tried to defect to the West, who instead joined Diamond Dogs in the 1980s after being rescued from a POW facility," said Director Deutch. "This engineer and Dr. Madnar both attended the same university in Prague together; they're known associates. We believe that in light of the discovered yellowcake and personnel expansion, this is no coincidence. The timing is too suspect."

"You mean to say that you think Outer Heaven kidnapped this Dr. Madnar and his daughter? What for?" Snake asked.

"We believe he may be participating in some kind of weapons development project for Outer Heaven under duress, with his daughter being used as leverage," Deutch replied.

Snake turned to the generals, lieutenant colonel, and Secretary. "Do we know any of this for sure?"

Secretary Perry nodded. "This report was delivered to my desk in January. I sent it Big Boss's way not long after. A squad of Special Forces personnel would draw too much attention, and having armed US military personnel in South Africa would be an act of war if they were discovered. We needed a discreet way to confirm Outer Heaven's capabilities and intentions. I brought it to the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and together we authorized FOXHOUND to investigate."

Director Deutch nodded and turned to Big Boss. "I believe that's your cue, Boss. You have the floor."

"Thank you, John," Big Boss said as the Director sat back down at the table. Big Boss turned to face his audience.

"As the Secretary said, we needed a discreet method of observing Outer Heaven's activities from the inside without drawing undue suspicion or placing the United States in any danger of liability in the event that the probe was discovered. After receiving the authorization, I chose to send in FOXHOUND agent Gray Fox for reconnaissance."

Big Boss placed Gray Fox's picture onto the projector. His wide-eyed predator's stare bore into Snake.

"We inserted him as a new recruit. His resume was spotless, containing just the characteristics that Outer Heaven was looking for. For one month, Gray Fox moved throughout the compound, sending us regular updates about their materials, fortifications, and troop movements. By week two, he had confirmed the presence of Dr. Madnar and his daughter on site inside the R&D labs. By week three, we had received these images via microfiche film."

Big Boss placed some grainy photos onto the projector screen, showing sets of schematics for some kind of vehicle. Like the Walker Gears, this vehicle appeared to utilize bipedal locomotion. It had two huge, trunk-like legs supported by hydraulics with two-toed feet. The hydraulics and transmission were protected by thick plate armor of 11-gauge steel, similar to tank armor. The "head," for lack of a better word, was a rounded bulbous armored cockpit that stood off-center on the legs towards its left-hand side with antennae at the top, a metal stabilizer hanging off the head and a set of three camera "eyes" at the top toward the middle of the machine.

On the right side of the machine, attached to the head below the cameras, was some kind of gun emplacement with a 20mm Vulcan cannon and two 15-mm machine gun barrels. Sitting atop this gun module was a large armored mounted artillery piece on the right "shoulder," with a missile delivery system capable of carrying two missiles as well as an air nozzle for exhaust. The machine was like nothing Snake had ever seen before. He looked to the others in attendance. Only Lt. Col. Roy Campbell looked surprised. Snake supposed that made sense. The higher officers had likely already been briefed on the situation before they came to attend.

"What the hell is that thing…?" asked Lt. Col. Campbell. Snake shared in his sentiments.

"That," Big Boss began, "Is designated officially on the blueprints that Fox recovered as 'Tango X-Ray Fifty-five.'" He pointed out the "TX-55" at the top-right corner of the blueprint. "It's an advanced mobile weapons and artillery platform designed for small-arms and long-range engagements. It's equipped with an anti-air radar and is capable of launching up to two missiles at a time. But these missiles aren't simply for anti-aircraft and anti-armor warfare."

Big Boss pulled out a SONY tape player, which he connected to some small speakers. "This is Gray Fox's last audio transmission to us. It was received by us on February 25, almost two weeks ago."

Big Boss pressed Play, and a hushed voice filled the room.

"This is Gray Fox, Day 25 of Operation: Intrude November 312. This may be my last transmission. I've been discovered. Outer Heaven is aware of my presence. It's only a matter of time before I am found. I have made contact with VIP, confirmed name of Target Designate: Tango X-Ray Five-Five. VIP calls the weapon 'Metal Gear.' Purpose of weapon: to carry and deliver payload of nuclear warheads."

The room listened in growing horror. Snake wasn't the only one holding his breath as they all considered the implications.

"The weapon can walk into enemy territory undetected by radar—armor has some kind of shielding to prevent this detection. R&D labs must possess an NRL arch for materials testing to develop EM radiation-reflecting armor. Metal Gear can walk behind enemy lines and deliver payload to great effect. It's the ultimate weapon."

The sounds of Fox moving around could be heard, as well as shouting in the distance.

"I lost contact with the VIP some time ago. I won't be able to rescue him. Soon I'll be captured, too. For the sake of everyone back home, for the sake of the whole world, it must be destroyed. Metal Gear—"

Gunshots, shouting, sounds of a struggle. Then—silence. The tape stopped running with a click.

"Metal Gear…" Snake whispered to himself as he considered Fox's last words.

"That was Gray Fox's final transmission," said Big Boss, removing the tape. "He has not sent any follow-up since. He is presumed to be dead or captured. After receiving this transmission, I called Director Deutch and General Clapper, and requested authorization from Perry and the Joint Chiefs for a new mission into Outer Heaven. I asked Miller to give me a list of recommended FOXHOUND agents to send, which brings us to today."

All eyes in the room turned on Snake, who straightened up in his seat at attention. Big Boss stared down at Snake with burning intensity, and Snake couldn't help but feel stifled by the pressure. He thought of that day in the Pentagon where he was first introduced to FOXHOUND four years ago.

"Snake," said Big Boss. "Your mission is to infiltrate the enemy's fortress, Outer Heaven, and destroy this 'ultimate weapon,' Metal Gear."

"Because of the sensitive nature of this mission," Secretary Perry explained, "this will be a top-secret black op. You will receive no official support of any kind while you are there. If you are captured, the United States will disavow you and deny any knowledge of your existence. You will be entirely on your own, without support, weapons and equipment will be OSP. If you do not succeed, the chances of death will be extremely high. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Snake replied.

"And knowing this, you still agree to take on this mission?"

"Sir," Snake answered, "I've been ready, willing, and able since I first set foot at FOXHOUND."

The Secretary nodded in approval.

Snake turned to Big Boss. "How will I be inserted into the Hot Zone?"

Big Boss looked to Deutch. "Director?"

The CIA Director got up and walked back up to the projector and placed a photo of a blonde man with a thin face and downcast expression. "We have a contact within the South African Resistance movement's leadership. The man's name is Kyle Schneider. He used to work for Outer Heaven as an architect, until his wife and child were killed by mercenaries last year. He joined the underground movement and rose up the ranks ever since. He has an extensive knowledge of the fortress's layout and has agreed to get you inside and also serve as a navigator for the Mission Control support team over the radio.

Tomorrow, we'll fly you into South Africa and land you in Cape Town. From there, you'll head into the village of St. Gregor in southern Galzburg, where you'll meet up with our contact in a bar called the Blue Star Club. From there he'll escort you north by river boat as close as he can to Outer Heaven's docks before dropping you off. You'll have to make the rest of the way to the docks on your own."

"Understood," said Snake.

Big Boss said, "As I told you before, I'll be leading your support for Mission Control. I'll receive and pass along your reports to the higher-ups, and I'll be able to give general advisement when needed. You have three main mission objectives: first, determine whether Gray Fox and Dr. Madnar are still alive. If they are, get whatever intel on Metal Gear you can before releasing and extracting them. If they're dead, move on to your second objective.

Your second objective is to locate this Metal Gear weapon and determine its capabilities. Is it sufficiently combat-ready? Does it possess the ability to launch a nuclear weapon? After you report its state of readiness, you are to sabotage or destroy the weapon.

Your third objective is to locate and terminate this Venom character. Ahab is the main source of direction for Outer Heaven—the entire organization is a cult of personality. They say if you cut off the head of the snake, then the body dies with it. Kill this CEO, and the whole organization will crumble."

"One more note," the CIA Director chimed in, "we had to make some promises to Schneider to induce his cooperation. He will likely reiterate these same requests to you when he meets you. Say whatever you need to make sure he continues to cooperate, but under no circumstances are you to give him any reason to believe that his terms will not be met, regardless of your actual ability to meet them."

"Why, what did he ask for?" Snake asked.

"Irrelevant. What he wants is outside the scope of your mission."

Something about the Director's answer didn't sit well with Snake, but he chose not to comment on it. Instead, he turned back to the Boss. "Once I locate Metal Gear, how will I dispose of it?"

"If possible, you can use whatever explosive ordnance that the enemy keeps on site," Big Boss said, "Dr. Madnar should know of any structural weaknesses you can take advantage of. If you're unable to obtain credible intel regarding these weaknesses or if conventional firepower and explosives prove to be insufficient, then Mission Control will organize a bombing run as a last resort. There are NATO warships just off the coast several hundred kilometers west from Cape Town that are loaded with A-6's and F/A-18 Hornets."

"Bombers?" Snake responded. "So, your plan is to wipe Outer Heaven off the map?"

"If you find you are unable to destroy the weapon or if they are provoked into all-out war, yes," General Clapper said, speaking up for the first time. "It is ideal that you do not let it get to that point, but should the unthinkable happen, we will do what is necessary to prevent this threat from being unleashed onto the world."

Snake nodded. "I understand, sir." Snake turned to Big Boss one final time. "Is there anything else I need to know?"

"I'll be flying out with you to South Africa," Big Boss said. "Unfortunately, I'm a known quantity in that country, so I won't be able to accompany you to Galzburg. It would draw too much attention. So, we'll be going our separate ways when we get to Cape Town. There's a safe house I have in the boonies north of Cape Town. I'll be maintaining radio contact from there."

Snake voiced his understanding. Big Boss looked from one side of the table to the other. "Well, gentlemen, if there isn't anything else…?"

When no response was forthcoming, Big Boss said, "Very well. Snake, you and I will convene tomorrow first thing in the morning at 0400 hours. FOXHOUND will issue us our work passports and identification and we'll fly from the airfield to Detroit to switch over to a civilian international flight."

He looked to the others. "Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. I'll have my first report for you as soon as it is ready."

The Lt. Generals, Secretary of Defense, and CIA Director stood up to leave. Lt. Col. Campbell walked up to Snake to shake his hand before walking out. "Good luck, Snake," he said.

"Thanks, Colonel," Snake replied. "It's much appreciated."

Campbell nodded with a smile before following his superiors out of the room. It was now just Snake and Big Boss.

"After this, there's no turning back, you know," Big Boss said.

"I know."

"You're going to be walking into certain hell. There's still time to reconsider if you've got cold feet. I can arrange for another FOXHOUNDer to take the mission if you are unable, so if you have any reservations whatsoever, now's the time to say so."

"No," said Snake. "I've come too far to quit now." He looked up to return Big Boss's steely glare. "I'm ready, Boss. Born ready."

Big Boss sized him up and down and searched with his penetrative gaze into Snake's eyes for any sign of weakness, any single crack in Snake's mental armor. Looking satisfied with what he saw, Big Boss nodded in agreement.

"I know you are," he said with a grim smile.

 

---

 

MARCH 13, 1995

ST. GREGOR CITY, GALZBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

BLUE STAR CLUB – EVENING

 

As far as watering holes go, the Blue Star wasn't bad. A little dingy, a little dim from the old lightbulbs. But Snake liked it that way: it felt lived-in. The wood from the counter and floorboards had a kind of musty smell, from sitting in the day's heat. This far below the equator, this place will be reaching the end of its summer soon. It wasn't the most popular bar in the world, but there were a good few patrons sitting around the place, talking about work and home life. Music was playing softly over the speakers overhead.

The people around here were polite enough, though one wouldn't necessarily call them friendly, especially not to outsiders. Understandable, given the grief that outsiders and colonials have given this country so far. Probably didn't help that Snake passed as a white man; even though apartheid had been ended for about four years now, that didn't mean that all of a sudden pale-skinned people were now seen as trustworthy in these more rural parts of the country.

Snake didn't mind the occasional look of fear and suspicion in public, and he certainly didn't begrudge them their caution given the generational trauma inflicted. He was just happy enough to be served his drink and be left alone—the bartender didn't seem up to starting any kind of conversation, and that suited Snake just fine.

A man approached Snake and sat down on the stool next to him, asking him something in Zulu, which Snake had never been taught.

"Excuse me," he replied in Afrikaans, "I apologize. I don't understand you. Do you speak Afrikaans or English?"

The man switched to Afrikaans and said, "I said, 'How's the hunting been? The season is coming up, and I was hoping to catch a fox.'"

Snake nodded. It was the challenge he was given by Big Boss before he made his way out here from Cape Town. He said, "Sorry, man. I wouldn't know. The only fox I've seen around this place is this one right here."

Snake flashed the little silver zippo lighter in his left hand. On the lighter was a little cartoon of a fox with a pistol in one hand and grenade in the other. The pistol was firing, and the bullet spun around behind and in front of the fox in a circle, with a mean little smile on its face. It was a design that had appeared on some clothing merchandise on the FOXHOUND base. It was a cute little design and didn't make it obvious where exactly it came from since it was so outside the popular conception of what a tough-as-nails special ops group would have, so FOXHOUNDers could and sometimes would wear them off-base in public as fashion accessories. It was a useful means of identifying each other out in the world.

The man looked down at the lighter and nodded, looking forward. "Your accent is strange," the man said, "Not local. Are you a tourist?"

Snake smirked, switching to English. "Something like that," he said. "American tourist. Name is, uh…"

Snake had to be careful. They were in public, and his code name might draw attention if the wrong people were listening in. He did some word association in his brain and cast around for the first name he could think of.

"Pliskin. The name is Pliskin. What do I call you?"

"Pliskin? Like in that movie?" the man asked. He leaned forward and whispered, "A bit on the nose, don't you think?"

Snake chuckled and said in a more audible tone, "Yeah…"

The man extended his hand. "My name's Kyle, Kyle Schneider," he said. He cleared his throat. "Well, Pliskin, since you're new around here, how about I give you a bit of a tour? South Africa can be a dangerous place for a tourist if you don't know where you're going. We can go on a pub crawl, see the sights, and you can tell me more about America. I've always wanted to visit."

"Sure, sounds like fun," Snake said, adding, "I don't have much better to do, anyway."

"Meet me outside when you've finished your drink," Kyle replied before standing up and walking out, slapping a bill on the counter for the bartender.

Ten minutes later, Snake and Kyle were driving in a Jeep on the dirt highway as the sun finished setting on the horizon. The road was red like clay, and they were surrounded by rolling hills with grassy plains. Mountains could be seen in the distance before the sun finished setting and all they could see in front of them was the path illuminated by their headlights.

"So, Snake," Kyle began as they drove. "What did they tell you before you came out here?"

"That you were an architect, and that you can get me into Outer Heaven."

"That's right," Kyle said. "But not for free."

"Yeah, they mentioned that. What's the cost?" Snake asked.

"We've been watching the fortress for months before your man got caught. Some of my Resistance fighters have been taken prisoner in the process. I want you to free them."

"How many are there?"

"A little over half a dozen, assuming they all live. That's not counting your man, by the way."

Snake shook his head. "What you're asking for would normally be done by an extraction team of six or more. I'm one guy."

"Yes, I can see that," Kyle noted with some distaste. "You Americans have a habit of making promises you cannot keep, no?"

"Sounds like you've got no love for Americans."

"Of course not. You're two-faced. You go into other countries dictating their affairs and leaving messes that take generations of people to clean, and then have the balls to go around talking like you're the heroes." Kyle's voice had an edge to it.

"Hey," Snake said. "Let's focus on the actual enemy, here."

"What, the mercenaries?" Kyle scoffed. "Do you truly think you're any different than them?"

"Aren't we?" Snake asked. "When your government tried to keep your racial segregation laws in place in defiance of public will, it was us that denounced them."

"Only because it was politically convenient," Kyle responded. "Your country never chooses to use their power to help anyone unless they can get something out of it, and even then, usually the people they're helping are just as bloodthirsty as Outer Heaven's kind."

"I don't believe that for a second," Snake spat. He was starting to get angry at Kyle's accusations.

"Oh, no? In the sixties, your CIA helped now-president Mobutu assassinate his political competition and assisted the radicals in taking over the Congo in a bloody coup, because he was more friendly to your country's business interests. When Zaire fought with Angola in the 1980s, your government supplied mercenary forces to fight on his behalf.

"Also in the sixties, your government got involved in persuading the nations of the world--particularly the UAE--to adopt the petrodollar, intrinsically tying the economic strength of every country in the world to a single currency, one which Western powers controlled, most notably America. America then used this power to defend British Petroleum's interests in Iran, which is a direct lead-in to the Middle Eastern conflicts you find yourselves in today.

"In the 1970s, your CIA, in addition to toppling democratically elected governments in Central and South America to prop up fascist dictatorships that are friendly to American business interests, have also actively participated in the supply and smuggling of the drug trade, bringing in cocaine and heroin to your shores, turning your own children into junkies. American corporations in South America and even here in Africa are actively enslaving people to work their factories because it is cheaper than employing American workers.

"Need I go on?" Kyle emphasized the last four words.

"How do you even know any of this? Why do you believe America was involved?" Snake demanded.

Kyle replied, "I'm from Angola, originally. I fought in the war with Zaire. Do not tell me to deny the evidence of my eyes and ears, American. It will not end well for you." His voice dropped low, and Snake began to feel cornered.

"If we're so evil," Snake snapped. "Then why are you fighting with Outer Heaven in the first place? They fought on your side in Angola, right?"

"Mercenaries. They fight for whoever pays them," Kyle breathed through his teeth. "Not unlike you Americans. My wife and child were in Rwanda visiting family last year. My wife is a Tutsi. Do the math."

"I—wait…but I thought Outer Heaven was assisting the UN peacekeeping force to defend refugees. That's what America was paying them for."

Kyle swerved the Jeep off the road. Snake was afraid they were going to roll the vehicle with the sharpness of the turn. "Jesus Christ!" Snake shouted.

They sped through a rocky and bumpy path before coming to a stop. Snake couldn't see anything but darkness. Kyle was next to him, murder in his eyes as he gripped the steering wheel tightly. He spun around to face Snake.

"Did you really think that Americans and the UN were the only ones with Outer Heaven contracts during that time? Are you really that naïve?! My wife and daughter were murdered by the Hutu militias and the Outer Heaven mercenaries they hired!"

Snake didn't have any words, just stared into Kyle's furious eyes that were starting to fill with tears. He realized just how much he had fucked up by not keeping his mouth shut. Was Kyle going to refuse to help him, or God forbid, maybe even try to kill him right then and there? Snake's body tensed as he prepared to defend himself.

He wasn't worried about Kyle harming him, but if he lost Kyle's cooperation or accidentally killed him, then he'd be stuck without his navigator, and he would have to try to get into Outer Heaven on his own with no help. Snake raised his open hands in a calming gesture, trying to indicate that he meant no harm.

"Look, I'm sorry," he said lamely. "I didn't mean to open that wound."

Kyle seemed to realize just how much he was losing it and wrenched open the car door to walk a few paces away and take several breaths to calm himself down. Snake just waited patiently in the passenger seat, too afraid to move for fear of doing or saying something that might set him off.

After a few minutes had passed, Kyle walked back up to the car and opened the hatch back to start digging around in a duffel bag. Snake's senses sharpened as he slowly opened the car door and stepped out. Was Kyle retrieving a weapon?

But his fears were unfounded. Kyle had gripped in his fist a flashlight, which he turned on to check the battery. He tossed Snake's backpack into his arms.

"Grab your stuff and follow me to the boat," he said tersely before turning off the Jeep and grabbing the keys to lock the doors.

Snake pulled out of the backpack his combat fatigues and started changing into them and out of his civilian clothes from behind the car and then pulled out his waterproof radio and headset that he strapped to his hip and donned on his head, respectively. He turned it on to test the signal and tuned it to Big Boss's frequency before turning it off. Best that he didn't have to worry about fiddling with the radio as soon as he arrived at the fortress, he thought.

Kyle led him down the rocky path into a riverbed, and used his flashlight to help them locate the boat which was hidden by what looked like a pile of driftwood. Snake helped push the boat into the river before climbing in while Kyle started the engine.

As they rumbled northward up the river, Snake got the courage to talk again. "So, that's the idea, huh? 'Enemy of my enemy is my friend,' is that it?"

Kyle breathed in and sighed heavily before responding. "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. Nothing more, nothing less. Personally, I'm hoping you American agents and Outer Heaven destroy each other. I just wanted to secure my people's safety before that happens."

Snake looked guiltily down at his feet. He realized now why the CIA Director had told him not to give Kyle any indication that his requests wouldn't be met. Snake's fists tightened. Snake may be a government tool, but at least he agreed to being used. This man before him never had any choice in the matter.

Snake looked up. To hell with the CIA.

"Kyle, listen," he said.

Kyle looked at him, still pissed off and clearly already done with Snake's shit. "What?" he demanded.

"You said that you hate Americans because they make promises they can't keep."

"That's not the only reason," he interrupted, "but go on."

"So, in light of that, I won't promise you that I'll get your people out, or that I even could if I wanted to. To put it bluntly, I'm not their extraction; they aren't my mission. My guy inside is. So instead, I'm going to make you a promise that I can keep."

"And that is?"

"If I can find your men being held prisoner, and if I get an opportunity to do it, I'll do what I can to set them free from where they're being held. This doesn't mean I'll be able to get them out. But maybe my friend can. And if he can't, I'll at least be able to arm your men so they can have a fighting chance. I know it's not much, but it's the best I can offer you without lying to you," said Snake.

Kyle said nothing at first. Then he smirked and then broke out into laughter. It started small and then built up to a raucous full-belly laugh. Snake panicked and leaned forward to shush him. When Kyle's laughter finally died down, he rubbed his face to get the tears from his eyes.

"You are very interesting, American," Kyle said. "Definitely nothing like your superiors."

Snake wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult, so he said nothing.

"Ha ha ha…" Kyle chuckled again and said with a smile, "Alright, Snake. Alright. I'll take you up on that offer. It's more than fair: I'll help you navigate Outer Heaven over radio, and in return, you keep an eye out for my men, as much as you can spare it." Kyle offered an outstretched hand.

Snake smirked as he shook it. "Deal."

Kyle looked up as a low-hanging fog started to roll in over the water. He turned off the motor. "It's another thirty minutes by foot," Kyle said. "This is where you get off. My frequency is 120.79. Can you remember that?"

"No problem," Snake said, putting one foot on the edge of the boat.

"Wait," Kyle called out. "Where's your gun?"

"I'll get one when I get there," Snake said, shrugging. "Part of the job."

"Well, here, at least take this," Kyle said as he started digging into a small emergency kit at the bottom of the boat. He pulled out a small orange bottle with a white cap and tossed it to Snake.

"What is this?" Snake asked as he caught the bottle.

"Anti-malarial pills. It's nighttime now, but this is a river, and when the sun rises again in several hours, the mosquitoes are going to come out. Take one pill in the morning, and then one more if you start to feel any symptoms. Malaria is no joke out here."

"Thanks. Be seeing you," Snake said. He hopped over the side of the boat and began to swim northward, keeping to the shallow east side of the river and taking care to avoid any wildlife that might be hostile.

As promised, thirty minutes later, he found the beginnings of the fortress. The fog was still very thick, so he heard the place before he saw it: the sound of engines, the buzzing of electrical wires, shouting voices, marching. He heard gunshots farther out into the distance, but no screaming or explosions. A shooting range, maybe?

Massive, thick walls of concrete became visible as he continued making his way north. Spotlights moved along the surface of the water. Snake clung close to the walls to avoid them. The heavy cloth of his garments dragged in the water; he could only move a few feet at a time to keep from tiring out. Eventually, after about another hour of swimming, he came upon a wooden pier jutting out into the river. As he moved in closer, he saw a guard smoking as he stood out enjoying the late-night air. Snake waited patiently underneath, watching through the floorboards as he waited for the guard to finish his smoke break. This gave Snake a chance to rest his muscles from the swim as he held onto one of the wooden beams.

After several minutes, the guard flicked what was left of his cigarette into the river and shouldered his rifle as he turned around and walked back inside the gate to head back to his patrol. Snake waited a few more minutes for the sound of footsteps and when he didn't hear any, he climbed up the beams and hauled himself onto the dock, his clothes dripping on the wood. He looked upwards as the fog started to slowly roll away and saw three large buildings rising up into the sky like monoliths; one was just ahead of him past a series of warehouse, and the other two were far out into the distance.

One was sitting to the north, the flat top of its roof just rising high enough to be seen over the northern wall, and the other sitting atop a cliff far into the east, just barely visible above the one in front of him. He looked in front of him and found himself standing in front of a huge chain link gate that was left open. He quickly rushed inside before the automatic motors could close it and crouched in front of a corner to the side of the driveway.

He turned on the radio, which he had already pre-set to frequency 120.85, and whispered, "This is Solid Snake. Do you read me, Mission Control? Over."

Some high-pitched electronic whining was heard over the earphones before a voice returned. "This is Big Boss. I read you."

"I have arrived at Outer Heaven. Our contact was able to get me in without a problem, and he has given me his frequency for navigation."

"Excellent, Snake. Tell me, what do you see?"

Snake looked around. "I've entered through a dock on the east side of the river, west side of the fortress. I've already seen at least one guard. Didn't get a good look at what he was carrying before he left, though. I see three large buildings that look to be of some importance for this complex. One of them is close by. I remember from the briefing how large this place is. I'm going to make for higher ground first, try to get my bearings. Maybe I'll be able to arm myself on the way there."

"Understood. You said you're outside: see if you can't find any transport," Big Boss said. "We know they receive regular weapon shipments by convoy. Maybe you'll be able to find something in one of the trucks."

"Got it. I'm going to maintain radio silence for now until or unless further developments occur."

"Acknowledged. I'm going to summarize your main mission objectives one more time. Infiltrate the enemy fortress, Outer Heaven. Locate Gray Fox and Dr. Madnar. Destroy the 'ultimate weapon,' Metal Gear. Terminate Venom."

"Affirmative," Snake replied, standing up. "Commencing Operation: Intrude N313 now."

He turned off his radio and got moving.

Notes:

Alrighty folks, we're finally here: the mission has begun! I'm very excited to be moving forward on this journey with y'all. I'm going to take a break from writing next week, after which I'll get started on Chapter 8, probably around the 17th. Don't know when it'll be finished, but at the rate I'm going so far, I have high hopes.

So, as I'm sure you've noticed, I'm having Venom acting independently of Big Boss while the rest of the games imply that the Outer Heaven Uprising was orchestrated by him directly. There's a couple reasons for this: as any Metal Gear fan knows, half the story of the whole series is made up of retcons built on top of each other, and the end result is there are a lot of little story details that don't make a whole lot of sense when you look at them critically. For me, the big one was: how is Venom able to spread the legend of Big Boss and act as a distraction away from Boss's activities with setting up Zanzibar Land at the same time that Big Boss is leading FOXHOUND and training Snake in 1995? My answer to this question basically shows up in this chapter and the one before it: BB was actively using Venom as a convenient distraction until Venom starts getting ambitions worthy of the real Big Boss. BB approves of this, but the problem is that it's too much too soon and might get in the way of his Zanzibar Land preparations by outing him to the world as the real threat that he is before he's ready. That's why I outlined the four possible outcomes of sending Snake and their associated costs and benefits in the previous chapter. It's not so much that BB sees Venom as rival or an active threat, moreso that Venom's a little too good at his job for his own good.

Is it canon? Well, it's fanfiction, so by definition none of it's really canon. This is more my attempt at fitting a couple of loose ends in the canon together in a way that makes more logical sense. The one thing about this briefing chapter and Kyle's introduction I was really excited to touch on was what exactly Outer Heaven had been up to on the world stage from a geopolitical standpoint and how that relates to actual history and what little I know about the United States' foreign policy posture at the time. Knowing what kind of shady stuff, the CIA has historically gotten up to throughout the decades made for a really interesting Metal Gear Solid-style critique on American interventionism, especially if you directly compare my country's government to the private mercenary companies and private corporate enslavement that were getting big in Africa at the time. Hell, I stopped just short of having Kyle reference CIA case officer lingo where they're referred to as "Company Men," and referencing Apocalypse Now by referring to the US military as "the Corporation." I hope to do more stuff like this throughout the rest of the story, as it's definitely in keeping with the Metal Gear series' approach to military fiction and I want to keep that spirit intact here.

Hope you continue to enjoy reading this story as much as I'm enjoying writing it, and I look forward to sharing more with you in the future!

Chapter 8: Three Deaths and a Rescue

Summary:

Snake makes his way into the compound but doesn't get far before his mettle is tested. Three men die, so that a fourth may live.

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY ONE

THE RIVERDOCKS AND SUPPLY WAREHOUSE FACILITY

 

Rows of tanks on either side of the concrete pathways greeted Snake as he moved further into the docks. They looked similar to Soviet models from the '80's, in that they were smaller than the Abrams and looked more built for maneuverability than damage absorption. Although the front end of these tanks looked bulkier, making Snake wonder if maybe these had thicker armor in the front. The rear was slightly larger, too. Engine modification, maybe?

Snake used the tanks for cover to avoid being seen by the enemy patrols. There was chain-link fencing and barbed wire separating different lots for tanks, steel shipping containers and wooden crates. Spotlights roamed the yards from guard towers around the perimeter. About 300 meters further in were warehouse buildings. To Snake's right next to one of the warehouses was a small grassy lot, from which he could see three parked transport trucks with canvas canopies over the truck beds. Keeping his head low, Snake scurried across the yard between the tanks, taking care to avoid the spotlights.

When he reached the first truck, he peeked over the tailgate to peer into the bed. There were crates marked 'FOOD' inside, one of which was open. Looking both ways, he carefully lifted himself into the truck bed and crept around and behind the open crate in case a wandering patrol might look in. He stole a glance inside the crate: MREs and ration tins marked with labels for various kinds of instant dinners. He grabbed a couple of tuna fish tins and slipped them into his pockets. He didn't know how long this mission was going to take, so it seemed to be a good idea to be able to feed himself. He would have to find something to open the rations with later. Being careful to look out of the bed before climbing out, he crouched over to the second truck, and lifted the canvas covering the entrance to the bed.

There was a guard with his back to him, looking through one of the crates inside. The guard turned his head to acknowledge him but didn't quite look back far enough to see.

"Oh hey, good timing," the guard said. "You mind helping me unload this stuff? It'll be faster with two people."

Without a word, Snake climbed into the truck and closed the canvas behind them so that no one outside could look in and see the two of them.

"What're you-?"

The guard turned around, and Snake grabbed his shoulder and pulled him down into his rising knee, knocking the wind out of him. The guard found himself unable to speak as he threw his fists towards Snake's face, Snake backing away from the flailing blows before grabbing the guard's arm and pushing the head into his free arm so that it rested in the crook of his elbow.

Flattening his hand into a blade-like cutting gesture and grabbing it with the other hand, Snake rotated his shoulder and lifted his hips, pushing his torso upward so that the side of the thumb of his flat hand would dig into the guard's neck below the jawline, cutting off circulation.

The guard struggled, not making it easy for him, but within thirty seconds he blacked out. Snake dropped the body onto the truck bed and immediately set to the task of checking the guard's pockets and relieving him of any equipment or valuables he might be carrying. Unfortunately, the guard was unarmed, but he did have a pair of binoculars and some kind of keycard.

Snake put the card into his pocket and hung the string of the binoculars around his neck. He then pulled the guard's sleeves over his hands so that he could tie them behind his back, and then peeled off one of the merc's boots and socks to stuff the sock into the mouth in case he woke up. With his work now finished, Snake then dragged the body behind the crates.

One of the crates had a loose nail in the corner of one lid. Digging his fingers into the wedge, he pulled violently upward, yanking the corner up and loosening up the adjacent corner. He slid his fingers around and pulled that corner open as well, allowing him to yank open the lid of the crate. Sitting in a rack amidst the packing straw were pistols arranged in a line. Snake tugged one loose and examined it. It looked to be a Beretta M92FS; it's Italian-made, but it's been used as the standard service pistol for the US Armed Forces for about ten years now. It didn't look like a civilian knockoff model either, but the actual military one—and it was brand new. How did Outer Heaven get these?

Snake looked at the crate again and noted that there was a demarcation on the side that read 'INCOMING' in big block letters. Was Outer Heaven purchasing American arms from some third party? Arms dealer, maybe? But the briefing said that shipments were constantly coming in and had been for months—the idea that a single independent arms dealer or even a group of them could get their hands on that much American hardware seemed unlikely.

Snake shook his head. It didn't matter. He ejected the magazine and pulled back the slide. Empty—of course. It's not like brand new firearms that got shipped came pre-loaded. He tugged on the slide a few times to make sure it was well-oiled. Everything looked to be in working order. He inserted the empty magazine and placed the weapon into his thigh holster. He'll have to find ammo as he goes, but it was a good start, all the same.

The guard stirred, and when he realized what had happened to him, he started to panic. He shook left and right and started yelling through the sock. Snake knew if the guard kept flailing it would attract attention. He grabbed the pistol from his holster and slammed the butt of the handle into the guard's forehead. The guard didn't stop moving, so Snake kept hammering down with the firearm. Still, the guard struggled. After a few good whacks, the guard finally went still, and so did Snake when he saw his handiwork.

The guard's nose was broken, the skin of his forehead cracked open, the skull having caved in on itself. Blood rained in streams from the cracked skin where he'd been struck, carrying tiny pieces of bone and flesh with it. A disturbing choking sound came from the back of his throat as the sock wormed its way into his airway. His eyes rolled back into his head. His mouth kept trying to close, chewing mindlessly on the cloth forcing it open. Within seconds, the guard stopped moving, the life having left his eyes and body, leaving behind nothing more than an inanimate object. Snake involuntarily dropped his gun as his hands started to shake. He tried not to be sick.

Snake had taken life before, in the Green Berets. But it was always at a distance, using a loaded firearm. It was impersonal, clean, and professional. This felt different: more brutal, more…personal, somehow. Snake started to gag. He grabbed the gun and hurriedly wiped the blood off onto the guard's uniform as he stumbled and tripped over the tailgate and fell painfully out onto the concrete.

"What was that?"

That was the voice of another guard. Wincing from the pain brought on by the fall, Snake quickly crawled backwards underneath the truck as he heard the approaching footsteps. The guard stopped at the tailgate. Snake could see his feet. He instinctually held the Beretta aloft, forgetting in his moment of anxiety that it wasn't loaded. Though all he could see was the guard's feet, he could feel the mercenary peering inside. He hoped that the one he'd killed was hidden enough behind the crates. A few minutes pass.

"Huh. Guess it was nothing…"

The sentry walked away, and Snake breathed out a slow sigh of relief. His heart was still hammering with the weight of what he'd just done a few minutes ago. Snake closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe slowly, counting the seconds between each breath. When he got to five, he felt much calmer.

Don't think about it, he thought to himself. You still have a job to do.

Having successfully compartmentalized his stress for the meantime, Snake crawled out from underneath the front of the truck's cab, leaving the lot when the nearby guard had his back turned. He passed by two more patrolling sentries as he moved between a couple of shipping containers and hooked a right into an alleyway between a warehouse and a concrete wall. At the corner of the wall was a door marked 'LV 1.' Next to the door was a small console with a slot in it. Snake fished out the keycard from his pocket and examined it, seeing the same LV 1 marking. He experimentally inserted the card into the slot and was rewarded with a beep as the LED on the console turned green and he heard the door unlock.

Slipping inside, Snake found himself across from a desk where another guard sat, leaning back in his chair. Snake's muscles tensed as he prepared to defend himself, until he heard a rhythmic and raspy breathing from the guard. He was fast asleep. On the desk was a gas mask. Snake didn't know if it would be useful at all, but it would be better to have it and not need it than the other way around. He moved forward with light steps, practically on tiptoes as he got closer and closer to the desk and gingerly picked up the mask before creeping back to the door. When he opened the door, the guard snorted.

Snake froze. Had the guard woken up? He slowly turned his head back to the desk to see the guard's head nodding. Then the snoring resumed.

Letting out a breath he didn't realize he was holding; Snake opened the door wider and closed it softly behind him. He saw a loop on the mask and used a C-clip to attach it to one of the suspender straps on his uniform before moving on.

As he approached the end of the alleyway, Snake saw another row of tanks on his right. Behind these tanks was the first tower of the facility. He darted forward and looked around the end of the tank line to see a door guarded by two patrolmen.

No other way forward from here, Snake thought to himself. I'll have to find another way in.

He moved back towards the warehouse he passed, finding a door as he approached. Letting himself inside, he found himself surrounded by rows and rows of crates, stacked up at least 15 feet high. At the far end of the warehouse was a loft office with a steel stairway leading up to it. Through the window, he could see a guard and one other person. Thinking that maybe the office had roof access, Snake darted between the lines of crates.

Just as he got to the final stretch to the stairway, he heard footsteps and stopped to put his back against the final stack of crates and peek around the corner. They weren't mercenaries, or at least they didn't wear the same uniform: a couple of bulky men in orange jumpsuits with leather gloves were pushing dollies carrying more crates for the warehouse.

Of course. Outer Heaven was known to have support staff in the form of their R&D team. After all, it couldn't possibly be just soldiers and mercenaries on the staff; someone had to handle logistical work and basic things like janitorial duties—even if they had mercenaries trained in that kind of thing, it would be impractical to assume everyone in the compound would have a military background. There'd probably be a civilian staff too.

Both dockworkers had orange jumpsuits, leather gloves, a hardhat, and goggles, but the older one had a blue badge pinned to his lapel and a white band around his sleeves. A supervisor? The younger man looked to the other and started speaking. Snake focused on the conversation.

"Ugh, this is the seventh shipment this week," he said.

The supervisor nodded. "Yup. We keep this up, we're going to start running out of room for storage."

"Why do they need so much stuff, anyway? What do you think they're going to use it for?"

"It's a mercenary company, Greg. What do you think?"

"Well, yeah, but…with this much in supplies and hardware, these guys have got to have enough to keep them going for the next decade. Hell, just this warehouse alone probably costs several fortunes," Greg said. "They can't possibly use all this in the time it takes to maintain it, to say nothing of the food they're having us bring in. Don't these people care about how much money they're throwing away?"

"Hey, who cares about their spending habits?" the older guy said. "If the higher-ups want to waste their money on expensive boondoggles like this, I say let 'em. Long as the paycheck clears, what's the problem? Here, help me with this."

They had moved around the corner where Snake couldn't see them. Snake could hear the sounds of both men grunting, and he started moving to and up the steel staircase while they worked. He was already at the top of the stairway hiding behind a metal panel in the railing when they had finished moving whatever it was that they were moving.

Snake had found himself on a steel platform overlooking the warehouse. Just ahead of him was the door to the main office that he'd observed before. He tiptoed over to it and gently turned the knob and when he found it wasn't locked, he slowly pushed it open just enough that he could look into the room.

There were four desks, separated by partitions, Snake assumed for privacy. There were two doors in the back, one with a sign indicating an employee restroom, and the other marked 'ROOF ACCESS.' Sitting at two of the desks, at opposite corners facing opposite directions were a couple of accountants dressed in polos and slacks, one of them wearing one of those green plastic visors, like you see in the movies. Snake tilted his head as he looked at the man with the visor. People really wear those? Huh.

Facing out the window leaning back in a chair dressed in combat fatigues with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows was a large, cigar-chomping man with a bushy mustache and a bowl cut. Snake guessed that he must be the manager of the warehouse. He certainly had the air of a man who believed himself to be in charge.

How was he going to get to the roof access ladder? Snake wondered. Before he could think too hard about it, the manager looked over to the door Snake was standing behind and looked him right in the eyes.

Shit!

Snake tensed up, figuring he would need to fight his way out. He worried that the man would immediately sound the alarm. Instead, the manager just looked at him with the sort of bored condescension one could only get from a middle-manager.

"You coming in or out?" he said.

Snake was bewildered. He certainly didn't expect that response.

"Uh…in, I guess. Sorry," was all he could think of saying as he stepped in and closed the door behind him.

"You that technician they were supposed to send to fix the fuse box, right?"

"Yeah, that's right," Snake nodded. Whatever this guy wanted to hear seemed to be the best way to move forward.

The manager looked him up and down, sizing him up. His brow furrowed into a scowl. Whatever it was he was looking for, he didn't seem very impressed by what he saw. "Where's your tools?" he demanded.

"Sorry?"

"Your tools." He gestured vaguely to Snake. "What, do they not give you techies proper tools anymore? Who the hell is running your operation over there?"

"Oh, right, sorry. No, I'm just here to perform an inspection. They're going to send another guy for the repair when I get back," Snake lied, thinking quick on his feet. Hopefully by the time a real tech does show up, he'll be long gone.

"Another inspection…?" the manager said. "Why do those folks keep wasting time? So much for corporate efficiency."

"Hey," Snake said, trying to sound a little indignant as he shrugged. "I just go where they tell me. You've got a problem with it, take it up with my supervisor."

The manager rolled his eyes as he walked back over to his desk. "Whatever. Guess you get what you pay for."

"I'm going to need to access the roof. That alright?"

"Whatever you need to do, man. Get the key from the hook over there." The manager waved vaguely to a corkboard near the bathroom door.

"Idiots, I tell you," he muttered, before centering his focus back out the window, having lost interest both in Snake and in the conversation.

Snake walked over to the cork board, doing his best to look annoyed before snatching the key with the fob marked 'ROOF' and marching to the roof access door. He unlocked the knob and exited onto a small metal platform on the wall next to a ladder, which he climbed up to the roof. He laid down prone and pulled out his binoculars and tuned his radio to Kyle's frequency. He turned on the radio and began to mutter into his earpiece microphone as he surveyed the area leading up to the first tower.

"This is Snake," he said. "Are you reading me, Architect?"

"Here," said Kyle. "What do you need?"

"I've moved up to the last warehouse in the shipping area. I'm looking at one of three big buildings I spotted on my way in. The one closest to me is about three stories high. What can you tell me about what I'm looking at?"

"That building you're looking at right now is the one I designed," Kyle replied. "They only finished constructing it four months ago. The third floor is where the armory is located and is also where arms manufacturing takes place. Second floor is used for personnel and general storage. Any material too sensitive or too dangerous to keep in the warehouses is kept in the second and third floors away from the general civilian staff. The first floor is a hangar for the tank fleet and trucks—the ones you saw in the stockyard are either about to be sent out or are just arriving from deployment. They also have interrogation rooms and holding cells in the basement. If my comrades are being held anywhere, it's going to be there."

"Makes sense," Snake said. That's also probably where I'll find Gray Fox if he's still alive.

"Fair warning, they've got all sorts of security devices near the more sensitive areas to deter intruders. Not just guards and security cameras, but some hallways have traps that can be activated by the staff, like electrified floors and gas chamber passageways."

Snake whistled. "Jeez, Architect. That your handiwork, too?"

"Nope. I only designed the layout of the building. Outer Heaven installed the security systems themselves," Kyle answered.

"Sounds like they really don't want me in there," Snake mused. "Which means that's exactly where I want to go."

"Good call," Kyle said.

Snake scanned the horizon to examine the other two buildings. His initial impressions of them being "towers" was something of a misnomer because one building had its height extended by a radio tower on its roof, and the other one was simply just a very large blocky building that could be seen from far into the distance.

"So that's big building number one," Snake said. "What about two and three?"

"The one with the radio tower 15 kilometers away is the R&D labs," Kyle explained. "That's where the science team develops new weaponry and equipment for Outer Heaven. The other big building is some kind of bunker. I've never been there, myself. I didn't design these other two buildings, so there's not much I can tell you about their layout, I'm afraid. If you rescue my men, perhaps they can tell you more."

"That's fine," Snake said. "What can you tell me about the rest of the base?"

"Between the arms storage building and the R&D labs is a large desert-like area. Outer Heaven uses it for combat drills and training operations. Past the R&D lab, but before the bunker, is the industrial complex and the SIGINT listening post. Staff living quarters are on the far eastern side of the R&D labs. There's more to the complex, but those are the main areas you will most likely have a reason to visit."

"Where's the CEO's office?"

"I don't know. I've never met him in person or had any opportunity to study his movements. My guess would be the staff living quarters. Failing that, you'll probably catch him somewhere around the bunker or the R&D labs. Last I had heard before I left, he was spending a lot of time in both places," Kyle said.

"Got it," said Snake. "How many entrances are there to the arms storage building? I only see the one, and it's got a couple guards attached to it."

"There are a few entrances and exits around the perimeter," Kyle said. "But doubtless those doors will be guarded, as well."

"So, what do I do, then? I can't take on two guys by myself. Not without being noticed, anyway," Snake replied.

"You'll just have to think of something. Wait," Kyle stopped for a moment, having an idea.

"It'll be morning in a couple of hours," Kyle pointed out. "Shift change happens just before first light. The guards will have to leave their post to let the new guards come in to cover the next shift. It's a small window, but maybe you could use that to slip in?"

"I like the way you think, Architect. Snake out," Snake signed off and tuned his radio to Big Boss's frequency.

"This is Solid Snake. Come in, Control," Snake whispered.

"This is Control," came Big Boss's voice. "Send it, Snake."

"I've successfully entered the warehouse area of the compound. I've located what I believe may be the building where one of the VIPs are being held, as well as an opportunity to procure supplies. Contact has recommended waiting until shift change before making my approach. I'm going to take his advice."

"Acknowledged," Big Boss responded. "Has the security given you any trouble so far?"

Snake's thoughts flashed to the man in the truck. Images of the gagged and bloodied corpse came unbidden to his mind. He closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to make the picture leave. "I had to eliminate one guard when I was searching the transport trucks, but the body is hidden. By the time someone finds him—assuming they ever do, I'll be long gone," Snake said.

"Did you manage to secure any weapons?"

"Yes, but no ammunition. I'm hoping to find some when I get inside the storage building before I get to the detention centers."

"Your logic is sound," Big Boss said with approval in his voice. Snake felt a small flicker of pride.

"You ever have to scrounge like this when you were in my shoes?" Snake muttered, staring down the two guards at the door.

"Heh. When I was your age, I not only had to pilfer my own equipment, but I had to hunt my own food, too. You ever eaten jungle food, kid?"

Snake snickered as the guards turned to talk to each other. "Can't say I have, Control," he breathed.

"Too bad," Big Boss chuckled. "You haven't lived until you've eaten python. Those things are bigger around than your biceps. Good meat, enough to last you a solid day. More, if we're talking the whole snake and you ration it properly."

"Think that might make me a cannibal, Control," Snake joked.

Big Boss chuckled again; it was a strange sound coming from him. For some reason, Big Boss's voice reminded Snake of warm, smooth whiskey. Then the Boss said with more seriousness, "Well, you're not likely to be doing much hunting here, so be on the lookout for any provisions while you're running around."

"Way ahead of you, boss," Snake said, patting his pocket with the tuna tins for emphasis before remembering that he was conversing over the radio.

"Good to hear," Big Boss replied. "I'll leave you to it, then. Be sure to send me more updates as and when you're able. Control out."

Snake lowered his binoculars and climbed back down the ladder and moved back through the door, hanging the key back on its hook. When he got halfway through the office, the grumpy manager sent him another bored glance. "Well?" he said. "How did it look?"

Snake gave what he thought was a confident nod. "There's an old fuse that'll need replacing before it burns out, but otherwise things look good," he lied. "I'll have a guy sent back before the day's out."

Snake had no way of knowing how soon a repair technician would actually come to this place, but based on the manager's complaining earlier, they probably wouldn't bat an eye if Snake's empty promise turned out to be false. Either way, it was unlikely to become Snake's problem once he got out of the building. The manager nodded, accepting his explanation. Snake made his way out of the office and down the stairs before ducking out of the nearest door.

He rushed back to the final line of tanks and moved to the far end before diving underneath between the treads and crawling forward so that he could observe the guards at the door through the other side while he waited. Remembering what Kyle had told him about the coming morning, Snake fished out the anti-malarial medication bottle from one of the pockets of his cargo pants and popped a pill into his mouth. That should help him stay safe from disease while he waited.

After a couple of hours, one of the guards, a burly red-haired white South African man, turned to his colleague, saying something in Zulu. The other guard, a tanned Kiwi replied in English in his light New Zealand accent, "Yeah, I heard rumors. So, you think the boss in corporate's gonna go through with it? Seems like a lot of heat for not much gain."

The South African sounded agitated in his response. Snake saw the Kiwi's feet move as he turned to face his coworker. "Nah, sorry, man, I didn't mean to offend you," the Kiwi said. "I'm sure there's plenty worthwhile that this country would have to offer. I'm just talking in a strategic sense, here. Like, say we fight the government; hell, say we even win—knock over the leadership, take power for ourselves. Okay. So, what then? What exactly would we get out of that that we don't have already, besides tanking our reputation with the clientele and getting the attention of some bigger world powers who've got bigger sticks to wave around?"

The Zulu speaker asked a question. The Kiwi turned away. "Nah, it's not that I don't have faith in this place, or in the guys here. If I didn't, I wouldn't have signed on. But our boss is the best around—and that's exactly why I don't put much stock in the rumors. I think he's smarter than that; he wouldn't waste all our lives on something that trivial unless there was a major gain from it, or he had a trick up his sleeve."

Laughter from his conversation partner, followed by more speaking, which progressively got more animated as he talked. Snake had half a mind to turn on his radio and ask Mission Control for translation, but he was too close by, and he didn't want to make any noise. The Kiwi swayed slightly, and Snake heard his clothes as he moved something with his torso. A shrug?

"Yeah, I suppose it could be worth seizing control of the South African ports, I guess. It'd be a good way to police ship traffic in the region, give us control over maritime trade in the southern hemisphere. But we're a mercenary company, not a government or a standing army. Even if that were worth our time, that still doesn't really answer how we'd seize and retain control of—"

The Zulu speaker said more. There was a pause.

"You don't mean—the bunker…?" The Kiwi was quiet for a moment, only following up with a short grunt, "Huh."

A few minutes later, an electronic alarm was heard emanating from the guards. The Kiwi shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out a pager.

"It's time for shift change," he said. "Come on, let's go meet them halfway."

The two guards started walking to Snake's right, and once they were sufficiently far away, he crawled out from underneath the tank and quickly inserted his keycard to get into the building, slipping through the door into a short brick hallway that led to an elevator.

So, there were rumors even onsite among the staff of a possible coup in South Africa. With the sheer volume of the munitions that they were hoarding, Snake believed it possible that they might be able to pull it off; and with the Metal Gear weapon, they'd have a useful deterrent in preventing outside interference from other members of the UN. But was that what Venom was actually planning, or were the rumors among the staff just that? The guards looked to be low-level staff; rumors among the small fries wasn't really going to tell Snake much, he mused as he stepped into the elevator. Best to just mentally file that information away for later.

The elevator only moved between two floors; the one he was on and the third floor. He recalled what Kyle said about the second-floor storage facility and the third-floor armory. Maybe he could swipe some more supplies before investigating the basement. Hopefully he would find something useful, he thought optimistically.

When he stepped out of the elevator, he was greeted by the whirring sound of mounted surveillance cameras turning. The elevator let out into a branching concrete hallway, stretching away in front of him and to his left. On the wall to his right, he could see a camera turning away, just as he heard a camera moving to his left. Thinking fast, Snake rushed forward to get underneath the camera in front of him to stand in its blind spot.

He couldn't rest for long, however, as he heard footsteps from further down the hall. So as soon as the camera started pointing back toward the elevator, Snake ran forward and around a slight corner to his left to move further down the hall. Standing against the wall on his right were crates, and on the wall to his left was a door marked 'LV2'. The sound of footsteps continued from the end of the hall around a corner bearing right.

Putting his back to the crates, Snake peeked around the corner, and saw a man walk into view, turning to look down the hallway. Snake moved back from the corner to keep from being seen and waited to hear the sound of approaching footsteps. When he heard nothing of the sort, Snake realized that he'd need to either find another way past the cameras or find some way to get the guard out of his way. So, he knocked on the crates with his knuckles.

"Huh? What was that noise?" came the voice at the end of the hall. The sound of footsteps approached. When the guard came up on the corner, he found himself suddenly face to face with Snake, the barrel of his Beretta pointing directly at his head.

"Freeze! Don't make a sound!" Snake hissed through his teeth. Instinctively, the guard put his hands up. Snake stepped back a few paces to put some distance between them.

"Put your weapon on the ground. Slowly," he commanded. The guard carefully complied.

"Kick it towards me with your foot." The guard nodded, doing as he was told. Snake kicked the pistol hurriedly behind him. He looked at the guard's vest to examine the kit he carried with him.

"I'm going to approach you for a pat-down. Make any sudden movements, and you will be dead," Snake threatened quietly. The guard nodded.

Snake stepped forward and relieved the guard of a Bowie knife and scabbard that was hanging from his shoulder, tucking it into his own belt. He also pulled two pistol magazines and a walkie-talkie from his vest pocket. He then carefully stepped around behind the guard's back to check his belt for anything else he could use to fight with. Satisfied that the guard was unarmed, Snake stepped back in front of him, never pointing the gun away from the patrolman.

"Now, very slowly and carefully, lie face-down on the ground and put your hands on your head," he said. The guard nodded and got down onto his hands and knees. Snake walked over to the discarded pistol he'd taken from the guard and tucked the empty pistol he was carrying into his belt before pointing the guard's pistol at him.

"You got any handcuffs, or zip ties?" Snake asked.

The guard shook his head.

"Alright, hold still. Don't move a muscle."

Just like from the truck lot outside, Snake pulled the guard's sleeves over his hands and tied them together, and then dragged the guard to a sitting position behind the crates, leaning his back against them.

"Attempt to call for help or move from this spot," Snake whispered in Afrikaans, "and you will be dead. Do you understand what I've just told you?"

The guard nodded.

"And do you believe me?"

The guard nodded again.

"Good. Now, what's behind that door? Answer quietly."

The guard said in a strained whisper, "One of our interrogation rooms. A rebel fighter we captured. I was supposed to guard him until Shotmaker comes around later today."

"Who's Shotmaker?"

"Warden of the detention facility. After he caught the foreigner, he started moving the prisoners to the other floors to keep him separate from them."

"Why?"

The guard glared into his eyes, saying nothing. Snake jabbed his gun into the guard's forehead, but he still stayed silent.

"Where is this foreigner being held?"

The merc gave no reply.

"Fine," Snake said, not having the time to play twenty questions with a stubborn guard. "That door says Level 2, so I'm guessing it needs a Level 2 keycard. Where can I find one?"

When the guard still didn't answer, Snake lowered his weapon and covered the guard's mouth with one hand while digging the thumb of his other into a nerve cluster inside of the guard's collar bone as hard as he could, which Snake knew from experience would hurt like hell. After a few minutes of the guard's grunting, Snake drew his new knife and set the blade against the guard's inner thigh.

"You feel this?" Snake asked. "One wrong movement, and I slice your femoral artery. You will bleed out and die in seconds. If you don't want that to happen, you will answer my questions."

The guard was breathing hard, and he nodded shakily. "Far side of this floor. There's a level 2 keycard on this floor, near where we store the MREs. Down the hall and through the other interrogation room is a hallway. Follow it to the opposite corner of the building."

"And the foreigner?"

"B-basement," the guard sputtered. "He's in the basement."

Snake patted the guard's cheek. "Not so hard, was it?" Snake asked.

"F-fook you…" the guard whimpered.

"That's the spirit," Snake said as he pulled the balaclava from the guard's face and shoved it into his mouth before standing up. The guard's eyes were puffy and red with tears of frustration and humiliation as he looked up at Snake.

"Previous threat still stands," Snake said. "Don't move or make a noise. You don't want me coming back here again."

Snake moved further down the hall and around the corner just in time to see another guard disappear around the next corner. Snake moved quickly behind the guard around another stack of crates and slipped into another door into a new room where he found a table with a box of 9x19mm Parabellum rounds. Snake grabbed the box and walked to the other side of the room where he found an LV1 door. Using his keycard, he let himself in and found himself face to face with a prisoner in a chair with his hands tied behind his back.

The prisoner was badly bruised around the eyes and his arms, and he had cuts on his cheeks, but he seemed conscious and decently fed. When Snake closed the door behind him, the prisoner looked up to see him and almost yelled in relief before Snake put a finger to his lips in a silencing gesture. The prisoner nodded and Snake moved behind him to cut his bonds.

"Did Kyle send you?" the prisoner asked in English.

Snake nodded. "More or less," he said as he started pulling half of the 9mm bullets from the box he found and putting them into his pockets. He then ejected the empty magazine from the Beretta in his belt and started loading it with the rest of the bullets.

"Are you here to get me out?" the prisoner asked.

"Not exactly," Snake said. "I'm not your extraction. I'm just here to turn you loose. I'm looking for another prisoner. A foreigner, not a member of your resistance cell. I hear they locked him up in the basement."

The POW nodded. "That's right. There's a maze down there which leads to the detention facility. They used to hold us down there, but ever since the foreigner got himself caught, they moved us to different floors. I think they were worried that the foreigner might escape and cause a mass breakout."

"That's not a bad idea," Snake mused. When he finished loading the magazine, he inserted it back into the spare pistol and pulled back the slide to chamber a round before handing it to the prisoner. "Here," he said. "It's all I can spare. Try not to raise too much of a ruckus with it."

The prisoner took the offered firearm thankfully. "Will you be breaking out my Rebel brothers, too?" he asked.

Snake shrugged. "If the opportunity arises, sure. But I make no guarantees."

"Fair enough," the POW said. "Which way are you heading?"

Snake pointed at the unopened door to the right of the prisoner. "I was thinking that way."

"That room is a gas room," the POW warned. "I overheard the guards outside my cell talking about it. It's supposed to be a trap preventing my escape if I were to ever break out. I don't think they expected me to leave out the front door, though."

Snake nodded. "Makes sense. Good thing I picked up a gas mask on the way in, then."

He unclipped the mask from his suspenders and set it on top of his head. "Before we part ways, I have a question," Snake said. "I heard the guards mention a warden by the name of Shotmaker. You ever hear that name before?"

The POW nodded gravely. "The Russian," he said. "Said to be of good aim and proficient with a shotgun, hence the name. Used to be a Spetsnaz soldier, or so I've heard. A former interrogator from the gulags. What he's doing in South Africa is anyone's guess. He hasn't been here for very long, though. Unfortunately, that's all I know. Sorry I couldn't be of more help."

Snake shrugged. "It's fine," he said. "It's more than I knew five seconds ago. Listen: there's a guard patrolling just outside the door I came in. There's another guard I took out further down the hall, and there are two cameras near the elevator. At the bottom of the elevator there are two guards outside. It's going to be hard for you to move around right now. I recommend finding someplace to hide for the time being since I'm not going be able to look after you. Do you think you can do that?"

The POW nodded. "No worries, mystery man. I am in no rush to start trouble. At least not until I can get some kind of reinforcement."

"Alright," said Snake. He handed the walkie talkie he took from the guard earlier to the prisoner. "Your leader is on band 120.79. Use it to coordinate, but only call when it's absolutely necessary. Wait near the elevator. If I find any more of your friends, I'll send them your way."

"Of course. Thank you, mystery man," the POW said.

"Call me Snake."

"And I'm Trevor," the prisoner replied. "Thank you, Snake."

Snake nodded and pulled the gas mask over his face, checking the filter. "Alright, Trevor. Get moving!"

Snake moved through the door at the same time as the prisoner left through the LV1 door to get out. Just like the prisoner said, Snake could hear gas hissing in the vents as he entered the room. Thankfully, the filters on the mask were in good shape and he was able to pass through with no trouble.

When Snake emerged from the other side, he lifted his mask and tuned his radio to Kyle.

"Come in, Architect. You read me?"

"I read you, Snake. Over."

"I just ran into one of your buddies. He's free and armed. I've given him a radio and your frequency, so he should be in contact with you. Best I can do for now. I've told him to find somewhere to hide—if I find more guys, I'll send him reinforcements."

"I see. Much appreciated, Snake. Seems you're a man of your word, after all."

"My pleasure, Architect. Snake out."

A guard appeared from around the corner ahead of him, and Snake ducked behind some more crates to let him pass. In front of him further down were two more doors, an LV2 door and an LV1 door further down the hall. Snake moved around the corner of the crates and let himself into the LV1 door.

It was a storage room. Ammo boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling. One opened crate had more pistols. There were boxes of ammo scattered and tucked away on shelves. Snake grabbed one of the pistols and started loading it—best to be able to arm any more prisoners he might come across, he thought.

He looked around amidst the supplies for anything else that might be useful. No other weapons, but he did find a metallic case with a small padlock that he was easily able to bust open, surprised to find a suppressor. He went to work screwing it onto the barrel of his Beretta right away. It wouldn't completely silence him (suppressors don't actually work that way), but it would obscure the shot enough that if he had to use the pistol to defend himself, that the sound wouldn't penetrate the brick walls and attract any guards from outside the room. Plus, it would help to keep his hearing intact. Snake cursed himself for not thinking to buy ear protection when he first landed in Cape Town. He'll have to remember that for the next mission.

Heading out the door, Snake found himself face to face with the guard that was patrolling the corridor. Recovering from the surprise first, Snake raised his newly suppressed pistol and plugged two rounds into the guard's chest and one more between the eyes. The guard fell in a crumpled heap as the back of his head exploded and blood sprayed out of the exit wounds, and a puddle formed underneath him.

Snake threw the pistol out of the guard's hands, grabbed another magazine from his vest and snatched the guard's radio, which he clipped to his belt. He then dragged the guard into the ammo room before moving to the end of the hall and through an open doorway.

Snake was immediately set upon by one of the more bizarre traps that he'd ever encountered: rolling in a groove set into the walls on either side of the room ahead was a cylindrical rod about a foot and a half in diameter, which had spinning blades affixed to the sides jutting outward. It rolled from one end of the room to the other in an uneven pace. There was another doorway on the right-hand side, and a small nook with more crates on the left. If Snake went for the nook when the rod went right, he'd be trapped. If he went right as the rod went left, he'd have to make sure he got through the door in time before the rod came back and sliced him to ribbons.

"What the hell kind of Looney Tunes bullshit is this?" Snake said aloud, looking all around as if expecting to be menaced by Wile E. Coyote himself.

Taking a deep breath, he waited for the rod to move past, and then sprinted in a mad dash for the door. Just as he reached the doorway, he felt the spinning blades get within a hair's breadth of him, and he dove and rolled forward.

"Hey, I just heard something! I'm going to go check it out!"

No time to lose, Snake scrambled to his feet and ran around the concrete barrier in front of him to avoid the jogging footsteps of the approaching guard, who moved past the other end to check out the space Snake had just vacated. Snake kept moving, not waiting for the guard to turn around to head back and dodged another couple of wandering guards as he moved past several more rows of crates. At the very end of the hall, he ducked into another LV1 door and found himself inside of a small office. A guard who'd had his back to the door turned around to see Snake rush in and yelled out a call that was cut short as Snake slugged him in the gut and elbowed him in the face.

The guard struggled, trying to keep his hips and torso out of Snake's reach and grabbing Snake's arm so that he couldn't point his pistol at him. Snake still had his left arm free however, and he used it to quickly draw his knife and dig it deep into the merc's chest. The man gasped and his grip on Snake's right arm loosened, giving him an opening to press the suppressor against his liver and squeeze the trigger, after which he followed up by pressing it into the guard's forehead and letting off one final round. Motivational posters hanging on the wall behind the guard were drenched in blood and brain matter. The guard's body slumped to the floor.

Snake breathed hard as he swung around to point his pistol at the door through which he entered, painfully aware that he had backed himself into a dead-end if any of the guards up the hall had heard the scuffle. He waited. And waited.

Minutes passed, and no one came. Snake breathed a sigh of relief. He looked down at the pink and grey mess that used to be a human being's thoughts messily strewn about underneath yet another inanimate object of hair and flesh that he had been responsible for creating. A person had stood in this room before he arrived. Now, it was just him. He stared at the mess for about ten minutes, still breathing hard.

At some point, Snake came to his senses, and he shook his head.

Need to stay in the game, he told himself as he walked over to the guard's desk. After rifling through the drawers, he found what he was looking for: a keycard, emblazoned with the number '2.'

Snake stepped outside, looking for any more guards. Finding none, he walked around the nearest stack of crates into a LV2 door he had passed on the way to the office. Inside were more crates, this one carrying 'pineapple' fragmentation grenades, and a device he hadn't seen before—it looked like a rocket launcher with some kind of electronic guidance system kind of like a miniaturized Stinger missile launcher, but the launcher itself and the warhead it loaded was much smaller than normal. An anti-personnel weapon? It was too much equipment to carry, so Snake contented himself with just grabbing a few grenades and stashing them in the last empty pocket his pants had on the side of his leg.

He hoped while he was raiding the enemy supplies that eventually he would find a kit bag—as happy as Snake was about the weapons and ammo he'd been finding, he was beginning to worry that he wouldn't have the space to carry anything else in the event he needed some higher ordnance.

Snake sighed. He'd been on the move nonstop since he had arrived in Outer Heaven. He had lost track of the time since he entered the storage building and he didn't know quite how long he'd been onsite overall, but he was beginning to feel exhausted as the adrenaline started to wear off. The stress of staying under the radar coupled with the close calls he'd had, and the violence of those encounters was starting to get to him. He knew it had been at least more than fourteen hours since he'd last had any sleep. He was going to run out of energy soon if he kept this up.

But he couldn't rest yet. Not now, and not here—it was too dangerous. So, instead Snake decided to content himself with some lunch in the hopes that the calories would keep him going at least long enough to get to Gray Fox. He pulled out the tuna fish cans and his knife. It wasn't much, but maybe he'd be able to find more food in the second-floor storage wing? He jabbed his knife into the lid and worked his way around the can. Once he got it open, he got to work on the other tin.

His treasure opened, Snake sat down between the shelves and started eating. As he ate, he tuned the frequency on his radio to Big Boss.

"Solid Snake to Mission Control, over."

"This is Control," said Big Boss. "What's your status?"

"I've located and freed one of our contact's friends. Even had some extra munition to arm him with. If I happen to run into any more prisoners while making my way through the building, I intend to do the same for them."

"Understood. That's a good idea," Big Boss said.

"You don't disapprove? Of my deviating from my objective?"

"If you're only freeing prisoners that happen to be on your way, then it's not a deviation. Especially if they're able to offer information that furthers your objective. Besides, if you free enough of them, they might serve as an effective distraction to keep you from being detected by the enemy."

"…Right," Snake said. He didn't think Kyle would like the idea of his people being used as human shields, but Snake didn't want to argue.

"Speaking of your objective, were you able to locate any of the VIPs during your infiltration?"

"Affirmative," Snake said, picking up a piece of tuna on the end of his knife and slipping it between his teeth. "Our Fox is definitely here. He's being kept in a pen separate from the Resistance POWs. I'm still working out on how I'm going to get him out. I've been supplying myself with enemy munitions. I can take them on now. I've already had to eliminate some more sentries since I've gotten inside."

"Has the enemy discovered their casualties?"

"No," Snake replied. "But it's only a matter of time. It's a finite area, this place. Those casualties won't remain hidden forever. Ditto for the guy I freed."

"Then you'll need to get moving again, soon," said Big Boss.

Snake nodded, more for his own reassurance than anything. He didn't want to admit to Big Boss that he was shaken. "Yes, sir," he said. "Solid Snake out."

When Snake finished off his ration tins, he continued sitting and resting his head against the wall for a few minutes, psyching himself up to go back outside. He took another few deep breaths. When he was ready, he stood up, drew his suppressed pistol, and headed back out the door.

Notes:

And that's Chapter Eight, Snake's first few hours inside the complex. I had the maps from the MSX game open in front of me while writing this chapter, so while a couple of things have been moved around, the third floor of Building 1 is pretty much 1-to-1 in terms of layout.

I wanted to focus more on the action of the mission for this chapter since the previous two chapters were mostly dialogue. However, I don't want to basically just write exactly the actions of Snake moving through video game levels with no characterization or dialogue since that would get pretty repetitive and also wouldn't make for a very good story from a writing standpoint, so you might see some changes in the coming chapters to the events of the gameplay to keep things interesting—new named characters and longer dialogue where there previously was none, some streamlining of the actual building navigation so it doesn't get too drawn out, stuff like that.

Next chapter will probably be primarily action also, but you can probably expect to see more obvious changes for adaptation purposes starting around the time we get to meeting Gray Fox, although I do plan to have at least one POW conversation where the POW tells Snake some more about Venom to kind of build up our antagonist a little bit more. Hopefully I'll be able to pull it off and make it suspenseful, but we'll just have to see I suppose.

I plan on having the next chapter written and uploaded sometime in early-to-mid June; I'm thinking June 11th at the latest. I said I would give myself a break and not work on Chapter 8 until yesterday, but I ended up being so excited to get the words out that I still wrote last week during the time I was supposed to be relaxing. Oops. Goes to show how much fun I'm having with writing these, though, which is a good sign, I think. I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am, and I look forward to giving you even more in the near future!

Chapter 9: Capturing Territory

Summary:

With Snake's help, Resistance members are freed and gain a foothold within Outer Heaven's base.

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY ONE – 1130 HOURS

SUPPLY STORAGE FACILITY, THIRD FLOOR ARMORY

 

Not thirty steps after exiting the southeastern storage room and turning the corner, Snake was once again finding his progress stymied by a new obstacle: a room of unknown size due to a series of turns around multiple walls—more of a snaky hallway, really—and a metallic floor that was so electrified as to be practically glowing. A low hum rumbled throughout the halls as Snake approached, and a sign posted on a nearby wall just in front of the metal flooring stated the following in multiple languages, including English:

"WARNING: ELECTRIFIED FLOORS ARE TO REMAIN ON AT ALL TIMES. IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY EVACUATION WHERE SOUTHERN AND WESTERN EXITS ARE UNAVAILABLE, CONTACT PATROLS ON SHIFT ON THE NORTHERN SIDE OF THE WALKWAY TO TURN OFF THE ELECTRIC GENERATOR."

Snake was stuck. With no other obvious way forward, he tuned his radio to 120.79 and hailed Kyle.

"Architect, this is Snake. I've encountered that electric flooring you mentioned. The elevator that took me to this 3rd floor only connects to this place and a hallway to the ground floor, so this is the only way forward. Between this and the gas room I passed earlier; I think Outer Heaven is repurposing the security devices its used to defend the armory storage as a secondary means of preventing escaping prisoners."

"That would make sense," Kyle replied. "With as large as this building is and with all the precious cargo being stored there, it would be ideal from Outer Heaven's perspective to have a means of limiting and controlling the movement of any potential intruders."

"You said you designed this place," Snake said. "So, you know where the electrified hallway on the 3rd floor is, right?"

"One moment, let me grab the blueprints."

The sound of multiple voices, footsteps, and the rustling of papers could be heard over the radio. Snake kept his back pressed against the wall and backed into the corner behind him facing the archway, pistol drawn in case of any guards that might approach and get curious.

"Alright, I'm here," Kyle said after a moment. "I see the hallway in question. Go ahead."

"Is there any other path along the eastern side of the building that will take me north; some way of bypassing the hallway?"

"No, the hallway is the only way. And the generator with the fuse box is on the opposite side, so you won't be able to turn it off from your end, either. You'd need to destroy it from where you are."

Snake looked ahead at the large hallway, which turned around a blind corner. "I can't see it from where I am."

"Well, this is the armory," Kyle said in reply. "I've heard that Outer Heaven has started developing miniaturized remote-control missiles since early last year. Should be out of the prototype stage too, given I've been hearing reports of some of my men encountering them in skirmishes."

"Remote-controlled missiles?" Snake repeated.

"It's a hand-held mortar launcher with a guidance system attached. It's similar to the Stinger missile launcher, but the missiles are smaller with cameras mounted on their warheads so that the guidance system can utilize manual control with a camera feed," Kyle explained.

"It was originally visualized as a more precise anti-tank weapon to compete with the Stinger, but since the guidance system takes up so much room that they had to decrease the quantity of explosives in the missile to compensate, Outer Heaven has mainly been using it as an anti-personnel weapon instead.

"From what my fighters' recon reports have told me, the weapons were wreaking havoc on my men for some time several months ago but ultimately they were apparently deemed too expensive and too bulky to be practical in comparison to RPGs and fragmentation grenades, and so got mothballed into storage for a rainy day."

Snake thought back to the launcher weapon he encountered in the storage room where he had eaten. "I think I might've encountered that weapon you're talking about," Snake said.

"Maybe if you fire a rocket down the hallway, you can pilot it to the generator and destroy it," Kyle suggested.

"Does that thing come with a manual?" Snake asked.

"I don't know," Kyle admitted. "But from the sound of your situation, it seems like your best shot at moving forward, unless you want to go all the way back and leave the building from where you came to find another entrance."

Snake nodded to himself. "Got it. Thanks, Architect."

"Any time," came the response. "Signing off now."

Snake retraced his steps back to the storage room, carefully watching his path ahead to stay clear of any sentries, and quietly closed the door behind him so that he could inspect the weapon he'd found more closely without fear of interruption.

He opened a folding panel mounted on the side of the launching tube underneath the sight. The panel had a screen which turned on with a blank green glow, displaying the words, 'NO CAMERA FEED AVAILABLE. TUBE EMPTY. PLEASE LOAD MUNITION.' Underneath the screen were three directional buttons and a red button labeled 'PMD.'

Premature detonation? Snake guessed to himself. In case you missed the target and wanted to hit while you were still in the area of effect? Snake wondered what the effective radius of the small rockets' explosive force was, then shook his head. It didn't matter. The thing was too large to be practical to carry all around the compound while still keeping his hands free for other small arms and items. Besides, what were the chances he would need this weapon outside of this one specific instance, anyway?

He grabbed a small rocket and loaded it into the back of the tube, making sure that the equipment mounted on it lined up with the grooves. He heard a thunk followed by a mechanical whirring as the launcher armed. The message on the screen changed: 'MUNITION LOADED. READY TO LAUNCH. CAMERA CONNECTED.'

Realizing that he might fail the first shot, Snake grabbed a second and third rocket just in case and carried them under his left arm while lugging the launcher on his shoulder. Nudging the door open slightly with his toe and looking both ways, he trudged back to the electrified hallway, doing his best to conceal himself behind the wall as he aimed the launcher vaguely down the hall. He turned so that the rear of the tube faced through the doorway behind him, which put him at an awkward angle, but it was the best he could do to minimize the danger of the backblast in this relatively enclosed space.

He gritted his teeth and braced himself as he pressed the trigger. The rocket shot forward and the camera feed showed the wall getting closer. Snake fumbled with the launcher to get his fingers on the screen buttons and the missile turned slightly just barely missing the wall to go around the corner.

"What the hell was that!?" came a yell from way further down the halls from which Snake came.

The missile careened around the corners of the snaky passageway in wide arcs as Snake tried desperately to have the missile fight against its forward momentum and keep it on track. When it got to the end of the hall, Snake saw the electric panel too late to turn towards it. The missile flew right past it into the wall, sending shockwaves along the wall.

"Damn," Snake cursed.

More shouting could be heard from the other end of the hall while Snake hurriedly loaded another missile. Footsteps could be heard from the direction he had originated. Snake quickly fired off another round. When it reached the other end, he saw a group of four approaching soldiers. Getting an idea, he changed the missile's heading at the last second, this time missing the breaker on purpose to land right in the middle of the group. His camera feed cut off just in time for him to hear screams of fear, followed by silence. The footsteps were coming faster.

Snake loaded his last missile, feeling more confident as he piloted the projectile down the passage and directly into the breaker. Immediately, the hum of the hallway gave way to silence and all he could hear were the rushing of approaching soldiers. Snake dropped the launcher on the ground with a thud and grabbed a grenade from his pocket and pulled the pin before peeking into the doorway. When he saw the toe of a soldier's boot, he tossed the grenade and started running down the hall.

Snake smirked when he heard a satisfying boom, followed by nothing. His smile dropped when he got to the other side of the formerly electrified hallway.

It was a grisly scene. The walls were painted with blood and gore. A few limbs were scattered and discarded, with no sign of the bodies they were meant to be attached to save for one, who looked like he was torn in half. Bits of skull and bone fragments were mixed in with the flesh and blood and the air in the hall carried the horrible scent of burning hair. As Snake waded through the grisly tableau, he heard grunting and crying from around the corner to his right as the hallway branched off in two directions.

When he turned the corner, he saw the body of another mercenary, this one still alive. He eyes wide open, tears streaming down his face and mixing with the soot, dirt, and blood that spackled his youthful face. His visage was contorted into a terrible grimace, his mouth opening and closing as if trying to express some kind of verbal reaction, but all that came out was a halting grunt of "uh, uh, uh." His right arm was blown off at the elbow, exposing bone, muscle, and torn nerve endings, and his legs were mangled by shrapnel. He looked up into Snake's eyes, pleading.

"My arm….my legs…why can't I feel them?" The mercenary said in stilted Afrikaans. "What happened to my limbs?"

He looked through Snake, not even really seeing him. "Father?" he said. "Is that you?"

Snake was frozen. Try as he might, he couldn't get himself to move. He wasn't used to being close enough to the enemy in their dying moments to hear their last words.

"Father…what's happened to me, Father? Please, help me, Father! Mama…Mama, where are you? I want to go home; I want to go home…" The mercenary's words came out in a pitiful whimper, as he grunted through the pain, his face still twisted in frozen horror. He started to shake, as if shivering from cold.

Snake couldn't take it anymore. Without thinking, he drew his pistol and pointed at the mercenary. He fired, and the guard's voice withered in a soft sigh of relief. The frozen look of horror and fear, however, still remained.

This time, Snake's hands didn't shake. He didn't feel the familiar sickness. Instead, his face was impassive and cold.

He reminded himself that these men were the enemy—that if he didn't take them down first, they would most definitely end his life at the first opportunity. And besides, they're terrorists; looking to plunge the world in nuclear fire. Not exactly redeemable.

He told himself that killing the soldier was a mercy. That with his injuries, the mercenary was living a hell, and Snake set him free by sparing him a slow, agonizing death. That Snake himself should be so lucky if the enemy did the same for him. A professional courtesy.

All of these rationalizations were true, and Snake knew it. So, why didn't it make him feel any better?

Snake shook his head. There was no time. Act now, live to think and regret it later. He moved on down the hall, and after a couple of minutes of walking, reached another level two door. He let himself inside, finding another prisoner laying on a mat on the floor, who looked up suspiciously at Snake's approach.

"Who are you? You're not one of the guards," he said in English.

"I'm Santa Claus," Snake replied glibly, drawing his extra unsuppressed pistol, and holding it out to the POW handle-first. "And I come bearing gifts."

The prisoner gratefully took the offered weapon. "Did Kyle send you?"

Snake nodded. "Sort of. It's mutual gain. He said if I let you out, you could help me."

"What did you have in mind?"

Snake leaned up against the wall. "For now," he said, "I'm going to get you to another friend of yours I freed. Once we regroup with the other prisoners on this floor, we'll be able to buy ourselves some breathing room. What's your name?"

"Loyiso," the man replied. "Loyiso van der Merwe."

"Okay, hold on." Snake raised a finger as he turned on his radio, positioning himself by the door. "Architect," he said.

"I read you," came the reply.

"Made it past the electric hallway. Found another one of your guys. You know a Loyiso?"

"One of my runners. A scout and a messenger. You got him out?"

"He's right here. I'm going to try and get him to Trevor. This floor has been shaped like a horseshoe so far. If I follow this northern hallway, is there a path that'll take me back to the northwest elevator, so that I won't have to go through the gas room again?"

"Yes. At the far northern end is another elevator and stairway from which you should be able to access all the other floors. If you head west from there, you'll find a level two security door that will take you past another series of storerooms and a workshop, past which is the elevator you came in on. Trevor tells me he's taken care of one of the guards in that area and hidden the corpse, and he'll be waiting for you in one of the storage rooms where the cameras can't see."

"Got it," Snake acknowledged.

"There isn't much else to this floor. If you can successfully take out the remaining guards between you and Trevor without raising an alarm, you'll be able to capture the third-floor munitions wing—it'll be an effective staging ground to start mounting an active resistance," Kyle said eagerly.

"Yeah, that's great and all," Snake said, "but that's not really why I'm here. Besides, there's only a few of us, so I wouldn't get too excited yet if I were you."

"Right, right…of course," Kyle said, not sounding completely convinced.

"Alright, we're moving out. I'll call again once the third floor's clear," Snake said. "Snake out."

Snake turned to Loyiso. "Okay, listen up: stay close to me, and do what I tell you, and I'll get you to your friend. We don't have control of this floor and your weapon's not suppressed, so if we see any guards, don't go guns blazing. Only fire if the enemy returns fire on me or if they fire on us first. You'll be rear security, so watch our six for any surprises. Got it?"

Loyiso nodded. "Understood."

"Alright, come on."

Snake moved forward, with Loyiso close behind. Every few seconds, Loyiso would turn around to point his weapon behind them to look for any incoming threats. They stopped at a corner next to some metal shelving, and Snake peeked around the corner to see a couple of guards with weapons drawn, covering a new elevator and a stairway entrance. Snake waved behind him to have Loyiso step back, and then Snake led him back the way they came past the cell where Loyiso was held to the gore-filled fork in the hallway to loop back into the second hallway heading north. Looking around the corner, Snake saw the barrel of a third guard's rifle ever so slightly poking through a doorway on the left, and Snake noted that the guards at the elevator and stairwell would be within this third guard's view.

Snake crouched down, Loyiso following suit, and Snake pointed out the barrel he saw. "There's a guard through that doorway, but we can't get him from here. He's covering two others who are watching the exits," Snake whispered. "I want you to wait here. I'm going to go back around and go after the other two. That'll get this guy's attention. As soon as he comes through that door, I want you to pop him. Got it?"

Loyiso nodded and took up Snake's position at the corner while Snake headed back around, trying not to focus on the smell of the bile and guts that permeated the halls as he passed. When he got back to the shelving at the opposite end, Snake took aim at the merc closest to him near the stairwell. At this range, it would be difficult to miss. He lined up the guard's head in the iron sights of his pistol and took the shot. The guard's neck exploded, a splash of blood and arterial spray coated the wall next to the stairwell exit. The sounds of the gunshot and the blood gurgling in his friend's throat caught the other mercenary's attention just in time to see the victim fall to the floor in a crumpled heat.

"Shit!" the merc yelled, whirling to face the corner that Snake was hiding behind and firing from the hip.

Snake stepped back from the bullets whizzing in front of him and blind-fired around the corner a few times. The firing stopped as a yell was heard—Snake must have scored a lucky hit. Another couple of gunshots were heard from the other side of the room. Snake smirked. Loyiso must have nailed his target.

Not wasting time, Snake extended his arm around the corner and looked at the limping elevator guard who was turning towards his new threat, not seeing Snake as he plugged three more rounds into his chest.

Snake rushed forward past the two fresh corpses, seeing the third man attempting to crawl toward him in the hall. Snake put one last bullet into his face as Loyiso ran up to him. Snake took up a position at the doorway and instructed Loyiso to check the exit to the stairwell. Loyiso rushed to the door and pointed his gun down the stairs.

After ten seconds had passed, Loyiso called, "Clear!"

"Clear," Snake responded. He waved Loyiso up and they moved through the doorway. Once again, the hallway branched in two directions. On the right-hand side was a hall lined with doors on the right: more storerooms. On the left was a single door with a sign next to it indicating a fab shop, presumably for gunsmithing.

"Let's check the storage first," Snake said, and he led Loyiso to stack up on the first door. Carefully turning the handle, he pushed the door in and together he and Loyiso cleared the small room of crates, whose markings indicated that they were filled with grenades, Claymore mines, and Composition 4 plastic explosives with detonators packaged separately. The room was otherwise empty, save for a dead body stashed behind the crates—Trevor's victim.

"Clear!" Snake whispered.

"Clear," Loyiso acknowledged.

They checked the next storeroom: rifles and submachine guns, more pistols, couple of crates each with a box-fed machine gun. Still no Trevor. They cleared the room and moved on.

Through the third door, which looked to be a small office with a desk, they found him sitting in the corner by the wall adjacent to the door, weapon raised. When Snake pointed his weapon at him, he immediately put his hands up.

"Blue, blue!" Trevor cried.

Snake lowered his gun, and Loyiso stepped inside. The two former prisoners embraced each other as Snake examined the desk, where he saw a tactical backpack just sitting there. It must have belonged to the guy who has this office, Snake mused to himself. He checked the pockets. Not much inside: a first-aid trauma kit, a compass, another gas mask, and a poncho liner. Snake grabbed the bag and added his grenades and two of his magazines to the bag, making his pants pockets feel much lighter as he slung it onto his back.

He stepped up to Trevor and Loyiso. "This floor's still not clear," he said. "And I know of at least one more POW on this floor who still needs to be released, plus another locked door at the southwest corner that I wasn't able to check. There's two cameras back by that northwestern elevator down the hall. We haven't heard any alarms yet, so it's possible they don't know about their dead guys up here, but they'll probably send someone to investigate soon when they don't report in, and I want us to keep the element of surprise for as long as we have it. So, here's what we're going to do:

"Trevor, I want you to grab some mines from the storage room next door and set up a Claymore at the end of this hall, facing towards the elevator and just out of view of the camera. Loyiso and I are going to check the door to the fab shop on the other side. Once it's clear, you'll set up another couple of Claymores at the opening to that room with the cameras. If anybody comes in from the northwest, they'll be hemmed in by the mines and forced to go through the gas chamber to go south.

After we've cleared out the fab shop and set up the traps, I want you two to cover the northeast elevator and stairwell while I go spring the other guy and check out that extra door. Once this floor is cleared, we'll start setting up traps and barricades around any other exits so that the only way in or out of this floor are entrances that we control. Are we all clear on the plan?"

"Sounds good," Loyiso said.

"I'll get started right away," Trevor said as he stepped out.

Snake nodded to Loyiso. "Let's move."

The duo moved to the door to the fab and when they reached it, Snake cursed internally as he saw from the hinges that this door swings outward, and it had a small window, though he couldn't get a good look inside without facing it, which would expose him to any potential enemies that may be lying in wait. Snake put up a hand to have Loyiso halt behind him as he sidled up to the door and put a hand on the handle. He turned and pulled it open slightly, only to be met with gunfire. Snake just barely backed up quickly enough to avoid losing an arm while the metal door got pelted with bullets, a few of which penetrated and hit the wall on the opposite side.

Snake dug into his backpack and handed a grenade to Loyiso and rolled to the other side of the door so that his shadow wouldn't be seen through the bullet holes. Loyiso pulled the pin as Snake grabbed the handle and nodded three times in a silent count before swinging the door open and letting his partner throw in their surprise.

A shout could be heard, followed by a boom. The light inside started swinging erratically as the place filled with dust. Snake and Loyiso pushed inward amidst the confusion. There were four hostiles; one who had just lost a leg and was being dragged behind the CNC in front of them, two others on the right scrambling behind a workbench and a lathe. Snake plugged a few rounds through the wooden workbench, hearing a yell, and took cover behind another shop tool as he checked his magazine. He had two more rounds left, so he performed a quick reload to make sure he wouldn't go dry.

Loyiso saw the guard behind the CNC reach for a big red button on the wall, and fired two rounds, one of which punctured the man's arm, shattering the bones in his forearm and sending him tumbling to the ground. The third guard behind the lathe aimed at Loyiso, which gave Snake an opening to plug him full of holes.

The room was still heavy with dust from the ambush's resulting firefight. Snake and Loyiso investigated the men they both put down and put bullets into the dying survivors before checking a doorway on the eastern side which led further into the shop.

"Clear!" they both shouted to each other once they had thoroughly checked the place.

Inside the smaller western room, they found a table carrying a rifle. It was a weapon that Snake hadn't seen before; it looked similar to the new M4 that the US had put into service last year, but there were parts that looked different. The carrying handle was mounted to a Picatinny rail rather than being part of the frame, and Snake found when he picked it up that the frame itself was lighter. The barrel was slightly shorter too, and the fire selector included an automatic fire setting in addition to the three-round burst. The rifle was fitted with an underbarrel grenade launcher. There was no serial number on any of the pieces; it was as if the rifle was machined and constructed right here in the shop.

Snake recalled what Kyle had said about Outer Heaven possessing R&D facilities, and how this floor was used for manufacturing as well as storage. Is this why Outer Heaven was purchasing or stealing weapons from the battlefield, so they could modify and reverse-engineer them? How extensive was their development capabilities? With how big this complex was, it was like they were trying to match the output of an entire developed nation's military.

Snake holstered his pistol as he checked the magazine next to the rifle. Looks like it was built to carry 5.56x45mm NATO rounds. Should have no trouble finding more of those around here. He figured he could probably find grenade rounds in the room where he had found the launcher.

He grabbed a nylon strap off the rifles of one of the mercenaries they'd killed and attached it to the rifle so that he could sling it around his shoulder. He checked their magazines and found that they do in fact carry NATO rounds, so he grabbed one to load into his rifle as well as a couple of spares. Loyiso picked up a converted 9mm Uzi submachinegun from another body and after checking the magazine, unfolded the stock and shouldered the weapon.

They moved out of the room and met up with Trevor, who'd finished wiring the Claymore on the north side, reporting to him that the room was clear, and it was safe for him to set up the southern Claymores now. Loyiso took up a position covering the northeastern exits and gave Snake a thumbs-up. Snake nodded in acknowledgement before heading back through the gore hallway, past the formerly electrified area to the room where he'd found the MREs and the launcher. As he predicted, he was able to find some shells for the grenade launcher, which he stuffed into his backpack along with a couple of MREs.

His pack now fully loaded, Snake headed back to the southeast corner, taking note of a couple of stairwell emergency exits along the way. When he reached the southwest corner, he found the LV2 door that he had initially passed and let himself in.

Inside was another POW strapped to a chair, much like Trevor had been. Snake cut him loose, and after the prisoner introduced himself as Luke, Snake instructed him to make his way to Loyiso and Trevor and await further instructions. He then donned his gas mask and moved through the gas chamber, past Trevor's cell and into the initial hallway with the other LV2 door he hadn't yet opened, revealing the final prisoner on this floor, a woman named Mbali who only spoke Zulu.

Wordlessly, Snake handed her his spare gas mask and led her back around south, east, and north to where Luke, Loyiso, and Trevor were waiting. Loyiso and Luke got to work mining and barricading the southern emergency exits while Snake assisted Trevor and Mbali with gathering armaments and provisions near the western doorway that connected the fab shop and storerooms with the northwestern corner.

Once finished, Snake distributed radios to each of them, all of which he had tuned to Kyle's frequency.

Snake hailed Kyle. "Architect, come in."

"I read you, Snake."

"I've successfully freed four of your people held prisoner, and together we've taken control of the third-floor arms storage facility."

"That's great news, Snake!" Kyle exclaimed. His voice showed relief and betrayed a hint of disbelief. It was clear that Kyle had never truly thought that one man would be able to get this far.

"Don't celebrate just yet," Snake said. "They're going to be stuck on this floor with nowhere to go for the time being. This place is fortified and well-supplied for when the enemy finds out and inevitably tries to take it back, but it won't hold out forever, so we still need to act quick. I've given your guys the frequency you gave me so they can communicate with you. Let's change to our emergency frequency so we can keep my correspondence with you separate and maintain security."

"Understood. Switching now."

Snake switched his radio to 120.26.

"I know where my guy is, now," Snake told Kyle. "He's in the basement. I'm going to move back to the first floor and clear some of the opposition if I can so that I won't have anybody creeping up behind me when I head to the basement. If I find any more of your guys, I'll send them up the elevator to the third floor before I head down below."

"What about the second floor?" Kyle asked.

"If any of your guys are on the second floor, my guy will assist in freeing the prisoners. If he can, he'll escort them offsite. If he can't, then they'll hole up here until you mount a rescue operation for them. Either way, I can't stick around for too long—have to stay on mission."

"I see. That's still better than I expected from you. Thank you, Snake."

Snake accepted the thanks while ignoring the back-handed compliment. It's not like the CIA would've given him much better or even anything at all, after all. Doesn't matter. Need to focus. Snake turned to the others and started relaying his plans to the freed POWs. Loyiso translated for Mbali, since Snake couldn't speak Zulu.

"Keep covering these exits," Snake said, "If I find anyone else to send your way, I'll have Kyle radio you, so you know to expect them."

Once the POWs indicated their comprehension, Snake stepped into the elevator and pressed the 1F button. The doors closed and the lurching movement beneath his feet and in his stomach indicated a shift in gravity as he was lowered.

When the doors opened again, Snake heard the sound of cameras once more. Peeking out, he saw one directly above him and another mounted to a pillar over ten yards away to his right. Immediately, Snake stepped out of the elevator while the nearest camera was pointed away and stepped underneath its blind spot. Quickly, he looked around to take stock of his new surroundings.

He had found himself in a large hangar. More tanks and trucks like the ones he'd seen outside were lined up in lots throughout the area. Chain link fencing and low concrete partitions separated certain blocks where crates were unloaded and awaiting transport into storage. From his vantage point, Snake could see at least two Outer Heaven mercenaries patrolling among the vehicles, and another two guards on a steel catwalk high above.

Snake cursed. He'd need to be careful getting through here. He looked straight on to his right: there was a LV4 door at the far end, leading into a hallway that he could tell from the long window ended in another door which led into the fenced-in enclosure. No luck there.

Past the tanks straight ahead, there were what looked like a few steel shipping containers fabricated to serve as makeshift rooms. Were they armories? Communications centers? More holding cells for POWs? Difficult to tell from this far away.

Snake looked up at the camera above, biding his time until the camera swung back into the direction of the elevator. Once his window was achieved, he sprinted forward and dove to the ground, quickly crawling underneath the tank in front of him just as a pair of boots walked past his sight line. Looking to the right and seeing the boots continue further down the line, Snake crawled out from underneath and moved further up until he reached the first prefab structure's door.

The door was rigged with an electronic keycard reader, the door emblazoned with 'LV2' in big white letters. Scarcely believing his good luck, Snake quickly unlocked the door and let himself inside, closing it softly behind him before the patrolman outside could have a chance at seeing him enter. Inside was another prisoner, who was handcuffed to a pipe in the corner. The prisoner's face was caked with blood on his left side, and he looked like he'd taken a serious beating. Dark shadows underscored his eyes, and his skin was blotchy with bruises. He also appeared extremely malnourished, his prisoners' jumpsuit looking two sizes too big for him.

The prisoner looked up to Snake, who held a finger to his lips in a silencing gesture. A small moan escaped his red lips as he regarded his savior. Snake further examined the room, and saw a table with a toolbox on it, and a stained brown cloth that clearly used to be white. He started digging through the toolbox, looking for anything he could use to break or cut the chain on the prisoner's cuffs.

"Who did this to you?" Snake whispered in Afrikaans as he pulled out a 6 ¼" mini handheld chain cutter.

The prisoner shook his head, barely coherent as he spoke. "Russian…" he mumbled.

"Shotmaker? Why?"

"Kept asking…about Resistance cell…in Galzburg…"

"Are you a Resistance member?" Snake asked as he stepped up to the prisoner. Snake would have preferred to act under complete silence just in case the enemy could somehow hear them even at a low volume, but it was important to keep the POW talking so that he didn't lose consciousness. Snake wasn't sure that the prisoner would wake up again otherwise—he looked pretty bad.

The prisoner lightly shook his head as Snake cut the chain on his handcuffs. "No. I am nobody. I told him…didn't know anything. He didn't believe me…and when he couldn't get what he wanted, he brought…him."

"Him? Who's 'him?'" Snake asked.

The prisoner suddenly seemed very alert. His eyes went wide with unrestrained terror as he gripped the lapels of Snake's shirt. "The Demon," he said in a strained whisper.

"Demon?" Snake was confused. What did they do to this guy, he wondered? He clearly wasn't all there.

"I saw him, when they attacked my village," the small man said. "A demon, face covered in blood. His head had a horn, shiny and black like stone. There was an evil in his eye, a cloudy sky that would swallow you if looked too deeply within it. I saw him as he slaughtered my neighbors, my family…there was no mercy in his stare, and his face and hands are stained with the blood of his victims. It was he that brought me here, and it was he that brought my tormentor to me."

The prisoner spoke feverishly in hushed tones. His hands gripped Snake's shirt so tightly that his knuckles went white. His pupils tightened, and it was as though he didn't even see Snake, like he was looking through him. It reminded Snake of the bloodied mercenary upstairs calling for his parents, and it disturbed him. Reflexively, Snake pulled the prisoner's hands off of him and stepped back.

"I tell you; he is real! His heart is black with hatred, and his face was hard as stone, and steeped in blood! He killed everyone, everyone!" The prisoner's voice raised to a fever pitch as he crawled towards Snake. "Please, get me out of here! You can't let him get me again! Please, stranger, save me! Save me!"

A shout was heard from outside the walls. "What's going on in there?"

Alarm bells started ringing in Snake's head. This POW was going to get both of them killed. He grabbed a roll of duct tape from the table and tore off a strip, slapping it over the POW's mouth and tore another strip to bind the prisoner's hands together for good measure. He then forcefully grabbed the prisoner's head by the chin and forced him to look in his eyes.

"Shut. The. Fuck. Up." Snake hissed. He dropped the prisoner's head on the floor with a thunk and took a position by the door opposite the doorknob, drawing his suppressed pistol.

The door opened wide, and a guard stepped in, completely missing Snake as he turned toward the prisoner. He saw the state that the prisoner was in and was about to utter some phrase—perhaps a curse or some other exclamation—only to get cut off when Snake grabbed him round the neck with his off-hand and forcefully threw him onto his back, concussing him. The stars left the guard's vision just in time to see Snake's weapon pointed at his eye socket.

"Don't move," Snake whispered.

The guard nodded. Snake pulled a pistol from the guard's holster and tucked it into his waistband, then grabbed his rifle and tossed it out of reach to the other end of the cell.

"How many more people are there outside?" Snake demanded.

"Two more, plus another three on the upper catwalks," the soldier breathed.

The mercenary's radio started buzzing. "I heard a yell, Nyiko. Is everything alright?"

Both men looked at the radio on the mercenary's hip. Snake said, "Tell him everything's fine. You tripped and fell."

At first, nothing happened. "Nyiko? Report in. What's going on, man?"

Snake cocked the hammer on his Beretta. "Do it," he commanded.

Very slowly, Nyiko pulled his walkie-talkie from his waistband and pressed the button. "I'm here, Charlie," he said.

"Everything alright?"

Nyiko stared down the barrel of Snake's weapon for a few seconds.

"Nyiko?"

Nyiko pressed the button on his radio.

"We have an intruder! Get somebody over—"

Nyiko didn't get to finish his sentence before a bullet spilled his brains onto the floor. Snake rushed over to the prisoner and snatched him up in a fireman's carry over his shoulders. He yanked open the door just in time to see another merc running towards him and fired his weapon into the guard's chest, sending him tumbling down. Above, Snake could see men rushing on the catwalks trying to get the angle on him. Snake retreated towards one of the other containers, and slapped his keycard into the card reader, only to find himself in another cell. A second POW was in there, hog tied on the ground. Snake put down the civilian and cut the other prisoner free.

"Please tell me you're Resistance," Snake said to the prisoner.

The woman nodded. "Imke," she said. "Did Kyle send you?"

"Not now," Snake said. He handed her the extra pistol he took off the guard. "There's a rifle next door if we can get to it. You and the civvie need to get to the third floor. Your people are holed up there."

Shouts and footsteps were heard outside. An alarm started blaring.

"Seems I've kicked the hornet's nest," Snake said. "Shit."

He looked to Imke. "We've got about four or five guys between us and the elevator. It's going to be a fight. You up for it?"

"Do I have a choice?" she asked.

"Not really," Snake said. "I'll carry the civvie. Cover me."

Snake hoisted the civilian on his shoulders, securing his leg with his left hand while he drew the Beretta with his right. He nodded to Imke, who nodded in return. Snake opened the door and Imke fired downrange three times.

"Clear!" she called.

Snake ran out and forward to the other cell and opened the door, dumping the civvie inside next to Nyiko's body and switching quickly to his rifle. One of the three guards from the catwalk had now joined his friend on the ground behind a metal crate near the tank line. Another guard from above was descending a nearby ladder while the last one took up a high position to aim at Snake.

Snake aimed and fired at the merc on the ladder, sending him plummeting to the ground. The merc on the catwalk returned fire, sending him back into cover behind the metal armored walls of the prefab cell. Snake quickly pulled his last grenade from his pack and tossed it down the line. After it exploded, he swung out to fire on the catwalk.

Imke brought up the rear, firing on the lower two guards to keep them in cover as she moved forward. While Snake fired, Imke moved into the cell and scooped up Nyiko's discarded rifle.

"Switch!" she said.

Snake gratefully switched places with Imke so that he could reload both his weapons. He let his rifle hang from its strap and once again picked up the civvie before drawing his Beretta.

"Ready!"

Imke fired half her magazine to keep the enemy suppressed, then moved back inside. "Go!" she cried.

Snake ran out of the cell, pushed forward, and then immediately turned at an angle to put the tanks between him and the two mercs. The alarms and the gunfire covered his footsteps. He looked up as he came upon the familiar pillar. He raised his pistol to shoot out the camera and followed up by taking aim and destroying the other one by the elevator. He ran up to the end of the tank line and dumped the civvie (who grunted painfully in protest) so that he could switch to his rifle. Now the two guards were receiving fire from both sides, and it wasn't long before they were both put down.

"Come on!" Snake shouted.

Imke rushed forward and ran past her rescuer and fellow prisoner, punching the button to call the lift. From the distance, they could hear the shouting of more men, plus the barking of dogs. The elevator dinged as the doors opened.

"The enemy doesn't know we have the third floor yet," Snake said. "Get inside. I'll lead them away from the elevator."

"But what about you?" Imke asked.

"Don't worry about me. Just go," he said.

Imke dragged the civilian into the elevator and pushed the button, with just enough time to say, "Thank you," before the door closed. Snake hailed Kyle with his radio.

"Architect," he said.

"I read you, Snake. My men are saying there are alarms. What's going on?"

"They found me, Architect. I've released two more prisoners; another one of yours and a civilian. I've sent them to the 3rd floor. Radio your guys, tell them they're coming. And tell them to sabotage the elevators when they arrive."

"Done. What about the alarms?"

"Bad guys haven't found them yet. I'm going to get them off the scent by luring them away. Should at least buy them some time. You want your people out, I'd recommend mounting a rescue sooner than later. You're not going to get a better opportunity."

"Understood. Go with God, Snake," Kyle replied solemnly.

"Yeah, yeah. Just do it. Snake out."

Snake ran away from the tanks toward the chain link fencing, through which he could see a crowd of mercs and attack dogs entering through the hangar doors. He then did a U-turn and sprinted to the ladder, climbing up to the catwalk. Taking aim with his rifle, he fired at the guards, getting their attention.

The guards started taking cover and then began to return fire as Snake dashed down the catwalk bridge to the other side, tumbling over the railing to fall three feet and land on a tall crate and rolling off to fall another five feet and land painfully on his side on the ground.

Snake scrambled to his feet and took up a position behind a nearby cargo truck as two Dobermans snarled their way towards him. Snake fired a three-round burst and sent one careening into the concrete, but missed the other one as it rushed up leapt onto him, painfully grabbing his left forearm in its jaws.

Snake yelled in pain, dropping his rifle, and pulling the dog behind the cover of the truck so that he could safely punch in the dog's skull. When it still wouldn't let go, he drew his knife and stabbed the dog several times in the neck until he felt the pressure relieved from his arm, his shirt now stained with blood from the bite.

Silently praying that the dogs didn't carry any diseases, Snake picked up his rifle and supported it on the wheel well of the truck to take a few more potshots in the direction of the incoming guards, only to wildly miss the mark since he couldn't properly hold the rifle, so he dropped it and drew his Beretta instead.

He took another two shots and killed another guard, but they still kept coming, so he turned and ran further into the hangar, dodging between trucks and just trying to find a safe place. He then turned a blind corner, only to be met with a solid concrete wall.

"Oh no…" Snake muttered as he heard the stomping of rushing boots coming up behind him. He spun around to face at least a half dozen gun barrels pointed in his direction. Immediately he dropped his Beretta and put his hands up. There was nowhere to run now.

"Get on your fucking knees!" cried one of the guards in Afrikaans. "Put your hands on your head!"

Snake complied.

"Search him," the guard said to the others.

Two mercs rushed forward to yank his backpack off of him and relieve him of his knife. Once disarmed, they yanked Snake's arms behind his back to handcuff him. Snake grunted with pain as he felt the bite on his arm bleed onto his back.

"Get him up," said a thick accented voice. Snake was pulled to his feet to face a large stocky man with a striped shirt and a red beret. The man was pale and heavily muscled and had a gnarled scar across his cheek.

"Who is he? Another member of the Resistance?" asked one of the guards.

The man with the beret scoffed. "Since when have you ever seen one of those rebels acting alone?"

His eyes scanned Snake's body up and down, sizing him up. "No," he said, "this is someone new..."

The man muttered to himself in Russian, "Could he be related to-? He must be!"

The man leaned forward so that his face made up the entirety of Snake's view. The heady scent of vodka was on his breath, like rubbing alcohol. "I am called 'Shotmaker,' intruder," he said, switching to Afrikaans. "I alone am entrusted by our great leader who you call 'Venom,' for interrogation and upkeep of prisoner scum like yourself. Before this, I work for Spetsnaz. No man alive has ever escaped my grasp once captured. You know this?"

Snake said nothing, just glaring into the man's eyes, staring him down. Shotmaker smirked and nodded, as if in approval of the defiance.

"You have choice, intruder. You tell me now who sent you and what you are after, and, ah…you get quick and painless death, da? Refuse, and well…I show you what Spetsnaz has taught me."

Now it was Snake's turn to smirk. He switched to Russian as he taunted, "Must have made for a poor Spetsnaz if the FSB wouldn't take you…a washed-up has-been fallen in with two-bit mercenaries…" Snake clicked his tongue in a 'tsk-tsk' sound.

Shotmaker didn't seem put off by the insult, rather he let out a short bark of laughter as his teeth shone in an eager wolfish grin. "Your Russian is quite good," he praised. "I was hoping you say something like this, intruder. You and I will have much fun together."

Shotmaker turned to the guard holding Snake. "Take him to empty cell in basement. Next to you-know-who."

The guard nodded, and Snake had his headset and radio removed and a black bag pulled over his head as he was led away.

 

---

 

SEVERAL HOURS LATER...

 

A knock on the office door. A command to enter.

Shotmaker arrives to give his report. A breakout has occurred among the prisoners in the Arms Storage Building. The third-floor armory has been taken. A skirmish ensued as men have been committed to try and retake the building, but the escaped prisoners are dug in deep. Both elevators have been sabotaged and rendered inoperable, and all but one of the entrances has been barricaded and mined, with the one remaining stairway covered by the escaped prisoners.

The bad news is that with the armory under their control they are well-supplied enough to repel the mercenaries almost indefinitely. With the supplies and vehicles on the other floors at risk, not to mention the structural and financial damage that would ensue, it is inadvisable to attempt to level the building with explosive ordnance.

A facial twitch and a tapping finger signals irritation at the suggestion.

Shotmaker's voice catches in his throat. He wonders if he should mention the name of the mercenary who even hinted at such a ludicrous idea, but decides it isn't necessary. His palms are sweaty, and his voice betrays a slight tremor.

Shotmaker had encountered true horror and depravity in the gulags. His mentor in Spetsnaz had shown him the worst and most vile depths to which humanity could sink before he arranged for his recruitment at Outer Heaven. In his service to the outfit, Shotmaker had stared down cultists, terrorists, and warlords of every disposition imaginable. He thought he had seen the bottom of the well of what men were capable of, and yet none of those he had encountered before frightened him as much as the man who stood before him now.

Shotmaker clears his throat and continues his report.

The good news is that the prisoners have nowhere to go. As long as Outer Heaven keeps sending forces at them, their morale is likely to break. We can even wait them out and give them breaks as false hope even as we send men at irregular intervals to wear them down. Rest assured, we will retake the third floor soon, and return to normal operations with minimal interruption to our normal efficiency.

Silence, except for the sound of burning paper and tobacco. An inhalation of smoke fills charcoal lungs. Heat is expelled from a demon's mouth as it eyes Shotmaker with intensity. A question is asked: how many casualties?

Shotmaker nods solemnly. The exact count is uncertain, but conservative estimates set the number at about at least fifteen lives lost. Only the bodies on the first floor have been recovered; it is assumed that all third-floor staff are dead or otherwise incapacitated but until control is regained over the third floor, it is impossible to be certain.

Another question rumbles from the demon's chest. Shotmaker is compelled to answer.

It is believed that the breakout was orchestrated by a single man. An intruder; but not a Resistance member. Origin unknown—believed to be sent from a third party.

A growl of interest. A glint in the eye.

Shotmaker elaborates: his men have questioned him for several hours, but he has said very little. All they have been able to ascertain is that he speaks Afrikaans and Russian. But he speaks Afrikaans with a Xhosa accent, and Russian with a Chechen accent. But when spoken to in Xhosa or Chechen, the subject does not respond or give any indication of understanding; it is thus unlikely that either Afrikaans or Russian is his native tongue.

A new question: what about English?

The subject has not responded to any English queries or given any indication of understanding said queries.

Silence.

Shotmaker thinks of the implication behind the question, thinking of a familiar language-based bioweapon spoken of in whispers during his time in Spetsnaz. He asks with horror whether it's possible that the prisoner is infected.

A negative answer. An assurance. That weapon was eradicated long ago. The demon saw to that personally.

More silence. A new command: Shotmaker is to question the prisoner personally first thing in the morning.

Shotmaker nods and salutes, promises that it will be done.

Shotmaker is dismissed. Shotmaker leaves.

Smoke billows from the nostrils. A glare stares back from the reflection in the window which overlooks the whole complex. The demon ponders: the promised one has arrived. A final test in the fires of hell before the demon takes his rightful place. He focuses on his reflection, and with a dead expression, notes that he sees a face which offers nothing but lies and false promises leading countless men to their deaths. In the light of the setting sun, he whispers to himself:

"'Come unto me, my brother kin,

Whose bravery be set among the stars.'

So saith the old hanged man,

To the empty graveyard stalls…"

Notes:

And thus, we've reached the end of another chapter. Definitely the bloodiest, most violent chapter so far. I think it's likely only going to get darker from here.

Shotmaker is properly introduced as a character as the one to personally capture Solid Snake in addition to being the first boss fight from the game, and we even get a little tease of Venom at the end as well. For anyone who might be curious, the four lines at the end that Venom recites is part of a poem I wrote specifically for this story, with the idea that Venom wrote it himself. I intend to have it come up again later at varying levels of completion; the inspiration behind the poem's existence is a combination of mythology and one of my favorite aspects of both Conrad and Kurtz's characters from Spec Ops: The Line, and Apocalypse Now, respectively (namely, that they were artistic and well-read warrior poets; in my mind it's a trait that pretty much all three of the protagonist Snakes share, given Solid's penchant for philosophizing and Big Boss's grand speeches in Peace Walker).

I'll be honest and say I don't know when the next chapter will be written and ready for upload. Hopefully it'll be soon, though, like the end of the month or by middle of next month. I look forward to sharing it with you, either way. Until then, thank you for your continued support—it really does make a world of difference in giving the motivation to keep going.

Chapter 10: In the Hole

Summary:

Having been captured by the enemy, Snake successfully makes contact with Gray Fox, and together they must find a way to escape the hell that Shotmaker has waiting for them.

Notes:

CONTENT WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CHAPTER MAINLY CONSISTS OF DEPICTIONS OF TORTURE. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY TWO, TIME UNKNOWN

SUPPLY STORAGE FACILITY BASEMENT DETENTION CENTER

 

The hinges of the iron door squealed in protest as it was pushed open to admit the Russian operative. Two other mercs followed him inside and posted on either side of the door to stand guard. Shotmaker strode forward to the middle of the large room, empty save for a ratty blanket in one corner, an empty bucket in the opposite corner, and the cell's current inmate, who sat in the middle engulfed in the glow of small halogen floodlights which were placed just ahead of him.

Well, "sit" wasn't quite the right word: it was closer to kneeling, except his arms were strung up by wires forcing him into an uncomfortable upright position so that he could neither stand, sit, or kneel. The man was stripped down to his boxers, his arms, legs, and torso covered in bruises and shallow cuts, though the Doberman bite on his left arm was treated with antiseptic and bandaged.

He was wearing headphones wired to a stereo that rested on the floor next to him. The stereo played a looping set of sound bites of horrible screaming, loud and cacophonous music with violent lyrics, and recordings of cattle slaughterhouses interspersed with interruptions of silence at random intervals. After his guards had finished torturing and questioning him, the inmate was injected with hallucinogens and left with the headphones on his head hanging in front of the lamps all night.

There were no windows in the basement cell, no way to measure the passage of time. It had been roughly somewhere between eighteen and twenty-six hours since he was imprisoned, but as far as Snake's perception of events was concerned, he could have been down there for hours, days, or even weeks for all he knew.

When the drugs were in his system and even after they had worn off, he was assaulted with visions of the kid he'd mercy killed and the faces of the two mercs he'd gotten close to as their eyes were emptied of life and their faces consumed by maggots and fire while their flesh rotted from within. Their wails for mercy mixed in with the audio that played in his ears, so that he couldn't tell fact from fiction. The only thing that was certain was the hunger that gnawed at his stomach, for the guards had given him nothing to eat.

Between the lights and the sounds playing in his ears, he couldn't be sure whether he ever truly slept. That didn't stop him from dreaming, though: all through the night, dreams had infected his mind with the image of a horned blood-spattered demon stalking him through narrow corridors of shadow and flame, with a single bloodshot eye searching for him as he ran.

When Shotmaker approached, he turned off the stereo on the floor and gently lifted the headphones from Snake's head. Snake flinched at the sudden physical touch, blinking furiously as the shadow before him took on the more defined shape of a man. Shotmaker was carrying a stool in his left hand, which he set in front of Snake before taking a seat.

"Strasvutsiya, my friend. Did you have a pleasant sleep?" Shotmaker asked cheerfully in Russian. He looked over Snake's body and searched his eyes with a penetrating stare. "You don't look so good."

Snake took a shuddering breath. His eyelids fluttered. He felt nothing but hunger, pain, exhaustion, and fear. He tried to form a coherent response, but it only came out in a mumble while dribble slowly flowed over his lips onto the dirty floor.

Shotmaker made a tsk-tsk sound with his tongue. "I will need to advise the guards to let up on you for a little while; it's too early for you to be breaking, friend. We have much to discuss, you and I."

Shotmaker nodded to one of the guards at the door, who walked to the pulley mechanism holding up the wires to which Snake's wrists were tied. In a short moment, Snake was let down gently onto the floor, where he collapsed. The guard then walked behind the lights back into the shadows where Snake couldn't see, opened the cell door, and returned with a chair, which he lifted Snake into. The chair had a little desk table attachment. The guard handed a bag to Shotmaker before returning to his post.

Shotmaker pulled out a can of food from the bag along with a bottle of water and a spoon. He drew his knife and opened the can, and then put the spoon inside before setting it in front of Snake.

"You are likely hungry. Here, eat. It will do neither of us any good for you to starve."

Snake eyed the tin and the Russian warily. He trusted nothing about his surroundings. At the thought of the food being poison, it suddenly turned to worms and larvae before his eyes. He closed his eyes tight and shook his head. 

Don't think about it, he urged to himself.

Images of the dead men and of the dog he'd cut open burst in his mind, and his eyes snapped open again, and the food before him had returned to normal. Slowly and cautiously, he gathered his courage and scooped some brown foodstuff into his mouth. He tasted meat and carrots. Beef stew? It was lukewarm; unheated, but not unpleasant. Greedily, Snake began lapping it up before coughing.

Shotmaker rubbed Snake's back. "Careful," he said. "Eat slowly. You don't want to choke."

Even as the food entered Snake's stomach, he could feel himself regaining some small sense of awareness. He nodded to Shotmaker with a grateful look in his eyes before he continued to eat.

"So, you know my name, stranger," Shotmaker said. "But I do not know yours. What do I call you?"

Snake chewed slowly and swallowed. Once his mouth was empty, he replied, "Zmeya."

"Ah, a snake? I see," Shotmaker nodded with appreciation. "It is good name, Zmeya. Very fierce. I like it. So, Zmeya, what brings you to Outer Heaven? I already know you are no Resistance fighter, however much help you may have been to our prisoners. That was very good job, by the way."

Snake continued to eat, saying nothing.

"So, if you are not Resistance, how did you know of our prisoners? Did you come for them, or were they merely distraction?"

Snake scraped the last bits from the can into his mouth, chewing even slower. He then slurped the broth from the bottom of the can before turning it over to show nothing more than a couple of drops falling out. He deliberately placed the can and the spoon down in front of him before looking Shotmaker directly in the eyes.

"What happened to the prisoners?" Snake asked, now feeling just a little bit better.

Shotmaker cleared his throat. "We have rounded them up," he answered. "Whatever purpose they were meant to distract us from, I am afraid that you have missed your chance."

Snake stared hard into Shotmaker's eyes as he talked. The Russian's face betrayed no hint of falsehood. But he was also former Spetsnaz—can't trust anything the man says. Snake was physically and mentally compromised and was dealing with someone trained in both torture and deception. This was going to be much more difficult than what Major Jacobs and Mouse had put him through in training.

"How long have I been here? Wherever 'here' is?" Snake asked.

"One week," Shotmaker said. "More than enough time to recapture lost assets. Unfortunately, some of them resisted and did not make it. You are cold man, Zmeya, to put others in harm's way like that. Man after my own heart. You would have done well in Spetsnaz."

A week. Has it really been that long? Snake thought of his recently empty stomach. He had difficulty getting his mind in order. Something about that answer felt off—his hunger was the first clue. More likely he had only been down there for a couple of days at most, he thought to himself. The claim that the Resistance fighters had been taken down was also suspect, if only by association. It's possible that Shotmaker was telling the truth, but there was something about the confidence in his voice that made Snake doubtful.

At the comment about Snake in Spetsnaz, he chuckled humorlessly. The dry air caught in his throat, starting a light coughing fit. When he caught his breath, he looked up pitifully at the Russian. "You think so?" he asked.

Shotmaker nodded. "I do. Is too bad you are so young—born in the wrong decade, da? Missed your chance when the old Union fell to make way for the new government. Now, my mentor, he was old guard: Spetsnaz, and KGB. The stories he used to tell me...enough to freeze blood like ice. He taught me, in the Siberian gulags; he showed me all the ways to get men to spill their deepest secrets and betray their dearest loves. He showed me the true depths of pain, suffering, and even hope and virtue. It was he who arranged my recruitment here in this place. He was a mercenary too, you see."

"'Dmitri,' he said, 'our old Motherland is sick and dying. Our leaders have failed us, and this world has grown soft. We no longer have a place here. But I know of new place, one which will appreciate your talents. I'd like you to come with me.' That's what he said before bringing me here. That was when I met our leader. Our Ahab." Shotmaker's eyes glistened with pride and wistfulness as he recounted his story.

"You've met him?" Snake asked. "What's he like?"

Shotmaker chuckled as he leaned forward conspiratorially, as if sharing a secret with an old friend. "Oh, he is a man unlike any other, my friend. Ahab, the man the world knows and rightly fears as 'Venom,' is a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. He once took on an entire tank and artillery line in Afghanistan with no one else to aid him but a single sniper and a lucky sandstorm. With strength, skill, and guile, he was able to buy enough time for reinforcements to arrive. By the end of it, half the armor column was gone, and Ahab himself came out without a scratch, save for an unlucky encounter with a desert snake."

Snake was enraptured by the story, in spite of himself. "He sounds like quite a guy," he said.

"You have no idea, Zmeya. The United States likes to take credit for the insurgency's victory against us in the war, but the truth is that the Hamid would never have defeated our 40th Army without Ahab's assistance. He made a habit of capturing enemy forces and recruiting them to his cause. He's turned entire divisions against his enemies. The people here in Outer Heaven have seen what he is capable of, and we believe in him. Many days, he reminds me of my old mentor in Spetsnaz."

"What happened to the sniper? The one who helped him fight off the tank column?" Snake asked.

"Disappeared with the sandstorm. Assumed to be KIA. They were never seen again."

"Huh," Snake grunted with a slight nod. "You say he's good at recruitment. How often does he lose people? What's the turnover rate around here?"

Shotmaker shrugged. "People come and go. Some people die. It is unavoidable fact of life in this business; call it an occupational hazard. But here, our dead are honored. Here, their sacrifices are not forgotten. They are not buried in the dustbin of history like in our home nations. We carry them with us."

Shotmaker turned to show Snake his shoulder, where he saw the unit patch of Outer Heaven, a winged skull with a bullet wound in the forehead. Along the edges of the wings studded diamonds sparkled in the inlay of the patchwork.

"These are made from the ashes of our comrades," Shotmaker explained. "Even now, they join us as we go into battle, guiding us on our way to victory."

"For what cause?" Snake asked.

"No cause," Shotmaker said bluntly, shaking his head. "There is no greater cause, that would miss the point. We are the warriors that the old Norsemen foretold, and this place is our Valhalla. The cause is the fight itself—the joy and fullness of life is inherent in the defiance of death. The struggle is eternal, and it is what gives our life meaning. You would understand this, as well as I do. You are a warrior too, Zmeya. I have seen the way you fight. Perhaps there is a place for you here among us."

"You'd ask me to join you?" Snake asked. "Even after I killed your men?"

Shotmaker shrugged. "Why not? Many who serve here were once enemies. It would be no different from them. But if you would desire a place here, you would have to first prove your loyalty. Thus, we must regretfully return to business at hand."

Shotmaker leaned back into his chair. "There are questions you must answer. Who sent you, and for what purpose? I know you are not South African, and I know from your accent that you are not Russian. You speak like a Chechen, but when questioned by our Chechen personnel, you did not understand them."

Suddenly, Shotmaker switched to English as he asked in a low growl, "So, if you are not Resistance fighter, and you are not from the Motherland, then who sent you?"

Snake's eyes took on a dull look as he regarded his captor in silence. It didn't surprise him that these people were able to figure him as a foreigner. Luckily, they hadn't figured out who would have sent him. With English being one of the most spoken languages in the world, it wouldn't have betrayed anything if they realized he understood the tongue, but he still tried his best to pretend that he didn't. More than anything though, he didn't dare speak it, lest his natural accent gave him away: with Shotmaker being a former intelligence operative, it wouldn't be a shock if he was able to identify that it was one of the many American dialects.

Unfortunately, Snake's silence told Shotmaker much more than simply answering the question would have.

Shotmaker smirked. "You are trying too hard, Zmeya. The fact that you try to conceal understanding of English implies it is native tongue. Narrows down possibilities. Would have been better had you tried to answer my question, regardless of what language you'd use."

Shotmaker looked Snake over again with a more critical eye. "Pale face, blue eyes. Not Indian, clearly. Western nation, then. Most likely western Europe—probably United Kingdom, or perhaps even American. Canadian is possibility, but they don't usually send assets directly into combat zones. South American nation even less likely; they are too concerned with domestic matters to bother with foreign ones, and they lack the funding and assets that the US and UK would have access to.

You have acuity of intelligence operative, but physical stature of a soldier, and you fulfill the role of a foreign asset acting as an intelligence agent, rather than a case officer.

You don't fit the MO of the usual suspects of the American CIA or British SIS. So, a third party, then—perhaps a private contractor like us, meaning your zealous protection of your identity is likely to protect your employer, as opposed to the client. So, if we are to narrow down the enemy Outer Heaven faces, then the question is not so much who your direct employer is, but rather, what client hired you?"

Shotmaker tapped his chin thoughtfully as he smiled, a strange excitement in his wolfish grin. "You are an interesting puzzle, Zmeya, and a formidable adversary. But you are still young, and you have much to learn in this shadow game we play. Assuming, of course, it does not kill you first."

Snake was spared of the indignity of his face betraying his emotions as he was too exhausted to move his facial muscles even if he were so inclined. If he was capable of more than his current dull expression, his eyes would have widened, and his mouth would have contorted into involuntary panic. This Russian was much more astute and observant than Snake had expected.

Suddenly, the iron door swung open to allow the entrance of another mercenary, who jogged up and saluted to Shotmaker. "Sir!" he said.

Shotmaker stood up. "What is it?"

The merc led Shotmaker away from Snake as he related news to his superior in a low voice. Snake strained to listen but couldn't make out the words. Shotmaker nodded as the merc spoke and pointed to the door as he gave a reply. The mercenary nodded and moved out the door.

Shotmaker turned to Snake. "Uvy, I'm afraid I will have to cut today's session short, Zmeya. I have something I must attend to. You have done well today and deserve a little reward. We will not string you up tonight, and we will give your ears a rest. Enjoy your break, my friend; you have earned it."

He picked up the stool and walked out. The guards roughly pushed Snake out his chair, sending him collapsing onto the floor. He landed on the discarded spoon, which he surreptitiously shoved into his boxers as they grabbed the chair, the bag, and empty can of food before unplugging and removing the floodlights and walking out after the Russian. They mercifully left the water bottle for him as they left. Snake crawled over to it and unscrewed the cap to take a drink.

Footsteps echoed down the hall through the barred open slit of the iron door, until Snake was left with nothing but silence as he sat in the light of the overhead fluorescent bulb. He lay on the blanket, rubbing his sore limbs as he tried to take his mind off the pain.

Across from him, he heard shuffling through the metal grate of a small air vent near the floor. It didn't share a wall with the cell door. Could it be the neighboring cell? Snake crawled over to the vent and said softly in Afrikaans, "Is there anyone else there?"

To his surprise, a gravelly voice responded in English. "Another prisoner? I thought they moved the other prisoners out of here."

"Fox?" Snake guessed. "Is that you?"

"…What did you call me?" the voice demanded, cracking a little.

"You're Gray Fox, right?"

A moment of silence passed. "So," the voice said, "they sent another one. What do I call you?"

"Snake. Solid Snake," Snake said. "It's good to hear your voice, Fox."

"Likewise," Fox said. "Though I was hoping to meet you in better circumstances. If they've captured you, too…"

"Yeah," Snake said. "I was planning to get you out, but I ran into a bit of a snag."

"Clearly," Fox replied, unamused. "Would've figured you'd be able to learn from my mistake. What, is this your first run out, or something?"

Snake didn't answer.

"Oh shit," Fox breathed. "It is your first mission isn't it? Are you fucking kidding me? They sent a rookie after me?!"

On any other day, Snake might have been offended at the insinuation of his being incapable, but under the circumstances, Fox's dismay was a perfectly reasonable reaction. "Look," said Snake, "there's two of us, now. That should increase our odds, right?"

The vent went cold for a few seconds before replying, "Yes, you're right. Between the two of us, we should be able to secure an escape. Alright, rookie. Tell me about your cell."

Snake looked around. "Not much to it. Big room, metal door, no windows, no bed. A blanket, a bucket, and this vent. That's about it."

"Same here," Fox said. "Do you have anything useful?"

Snake pulled the spoon from his boxer shorts. "I've got a metal spoon."

"How'd you manage that?"

"The guards missed it when they left."

"What about the vent cover? What's securing it in place?"

Snake looked at the corners of the vent cover in the wall. "There are metal screws here."

"How big are they?"

"Pretty decent size."

"Flathead or Philips?

"Flat."

"Okay…okay, rookie. Here's what I want you to do. Break off the round end of the spoon."

Snake didn't have the strength in his arms to do it with his bare hands, so he pressed it against the floor at an angle and pushed down with his knee using his arm to torque the handle into a bend, and then flipped the spoon over to bend it the other way. After a few times of doing this the metal of the spoon got weaker and weaker until the shear stress overcame the strength of its cross section, and he was able to pull the handle off with a yank. He examined the handle and was satisfied to see it end in a flat edge without any metal burrs.

"Okay, done," he reported.

The voice switched to German. "Now, use it to unscrew the vent cover from the wall. Quietly, now."

Snake got to work on the screws, which were rusted into place in the wall. Every few minutes, he'd spot a shadow moving through the slot in the iron door, and he'd have to stop. It was slow and methodical work, but eventually all four brown and grey screws were freed. Snake gingerly moved the grate aside and leaned it against the wall before crawling into the vent.

It was a straight shot to the other side, ending in another grating. The room inside was much like his own, except the light bulb overhead was much dimmer. A figure in the shadows could be seen huddled in the corner against the opposite wall.

"I'm here," Snake whispered in Arabic.

The figure stirred and crawled over. Snake recognized the predator's eyes of Gray Fox, although he appeared much thinner than when he saw him last back at FOXHOUND HQ. The dark shadows under his eyes were somehow even deeper, and his cheeks shallow. His body was also similarly bruised and battered like Snake's, his fingernails were cracked, and his hair coated in dirt and dust. His usual wide-eyed stare made him look crazed and delirious.

"Give it," Fox said hurriedly. "Give it here."

Snake fed the metal handle through the grating and Fox went to work on the screws of the grate on his end. Much like in Snake's own cell, it was slow work, made even slower as Fox kept stopping to look over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't being observed. His movements were twitchy, erratic, and his hands were shaking a little.

After about twenty minutes, Fox had loosened the grate enough to pull it off and grabbed onto Snake's arms to pull him through. Fox looked him over. "A little worse for wear, huh? I overheard them working you over. You're not broken, are you? Still have all your bits and pieces?"

Snake nodded. "I'm good. Still ready for duty. What about you? You look like shit."

Fox shrugged. "I'll live."

Together they walked around the cell, examining the walls while they stretched their legs. The walls were made with brick and mortar, though it was hard to tell how thick. The only way in or out was the vent and the door, same as in Snake's cell. They said little, talking in hushed voices when they talked at all, switching the language every few sentences. On the wall opposite Fox's cell door, they found what they were looking for: a small crack in the mortar between two bricks. Fox got down on his knees and used the spoon handle to start scratching and digging around inside of it, dust falling out every time he removed the handle with a tug. He raised his forearm to wipe the sweat beading on his forehead.

Every few minutes, they'd take turns digging, until eventually they both had to stop, having run out of stamina. It felt like for all their work, they were no closer to getting out, but closer inspection of the point they'd dug at had shown that the crack in the mortar had gotten bigger, and just a little bit wider. Both of them feeling tired, they agreed to stop for the day and Snake crawled back through the vent, both of them screwing the vent covers back into place where they were.

Snake placed the spoon handle and spoon head inside the vent just inside of Fox's end within reach of his fingers so that he could quietly work on digging the mortar himself during the day when Snake was being questioned—Fox had said that it had been so long since his last interrogation he believed that the enemy may have lost interest in him when Snake showed up—chances were that the only reason Fox wasn't dead yet was so that he could be used as a hostage for leverage.

When Snake got back to his cell he screwed on the vent cover by hand; when he was finished, it wasn't tight enough to keep the vent cover from being loose enough to pull off, but it was good enough for appearance's sake and since he screwed them in by hand, it meant he'd be able to remove it by hand too.

Snake pulled the blanket over next to the vent. It was good to hear another human voice, and a FOXHOUNDer at that. It would help to keep him sane.

"I heard you get questioned by the Russian, Snake. What did they learn?"

Not asking whether Snake had succumbed to the questioning at all. Of course. Fox knew that everyone broke eventually, sooner or later—the question was what, if anything, got revealed during each interrogation.

"They know I'm a foreigner. They don't know what I'm after."

"Did you tell them who sent you?"

Snake shook his head. "No."

"Did they figure out that you and I are connected?"

"They didn't even ask about you," Snake said. "They might already suspect, but if they know about your connection to me, it wasn't from my telling them."

Fox sighed, nodding. "Good, that's good to hear. You did well, rookie. Not bad for your first time."

Snake smiled. A genuine compliment of his progress. It meant a lot to hear it from Gray Fox. "It's been…rough," he admitted.

"But you're still here," Fox said.

"Yeah. I'm still here." Snake leaned his head back against the wall, hugging his knees. "Fox?"

"Yeah?"

"Are all missions like this?"

"What do you mean?"

Snake furrowed his brow, trying to figure out exactly what it was he wanted to ask. "I've fought before, in my old outfit, before I joined up with this one. I've killed people before. Hurt people. But this time was…different, somehow. Closer. More…personal."

"It feels different up close, doesn't it?"

Snake nodded. "Yeah."

"It's a side effect of modern warfare," Gray Fox said. "Research and advancement of modern technology for the sake of making war more 'humane,' to make a 'cleaner' battlefield. Of course, it's all bullshit—it doesn't lessen the death and suffering any, but it does put a little bit of distance between you and the muck, and it makes the public and the politicians feel better. In older times, you didn't have a choice when it came to watching the light leave your enemies' eyes, rubbing your face in blood and dirt. Our ancestors were more connected to the violence—it was a part of them, in their blood.

In joining, you've taken on a role that was historically reserved for them. Death and violence has always been a fact of life for every soldier, every warrior on the battlefield even now, but you—you get to see it up close. It's left a mark on you—it's part of you, now. It'll never be easy—these kinds of things never are, and everybody gets sick the first time. But it will get easier over time, the more you do it. Eventually, you'll get used to it. When you walk into hell willingly, you'll make yourself into a monster to survive. You'll have to—only way to beat the monsters is to make yourself worse than they are. It's who you are, now."

Snake looked down at his rough and callused palms. "Who I am…" he muttered. He remembered what Big Boss had told him prior to the briefing, about being true to himself, to that warrior's spirit. His hands curled into fists.

"Yeah," Fox said. "Welcome to the club, Snake."

The overhead light flickered off. Light's out. Snake felt exhausted, ready to pass out.

Snake sighed. "I think I'm going to sleep now," he said as he crawled over to the blanket on the other end of the room.

"No worries," Fox said. "I'll be here. Sweet dreams, rookie."

Snake sighed as he curled up on the unwashed blanket, dreading the coming darkness. He hoped he didn't dream at all, but knew that with his luck so far, the night (if it even was nighttime) would be filled with nothing but nightmares.

 

---

 

"Rise and shine, Lieutenant."

Lt. David Matthews blearily opened his eyes in the light of the trashed hotel room. His CO, Cpt. Willard was standing before him, facing out the window. His back was to the Lieutenant. David looked around the room, observing the full ashtrays and empty bottles of liquor. That's right, there was a celebration last night—the cease-fire had just been announced, signaling the end of the war. Everyone was drunkenly singing, partying, and talking about what they were going to do once they got home. David wandered into the hotel room to crash.

David held his head in his hand, groaning at the headache. That was some party, he thought to himself.

He sat up in bed, standing up so he could greet the Captain properly. The room was bathed in the orange-yellow glow of early morning. "Good morning, sir," David said cheerfully.

The Captain didn't respond and didn't turn around. The light of the room got a little darker, the orange turning to dark red, the yellow accented against black. David stiffened. Something felt wrong.

"Sir?" he asked.

"You're no use to us like this, Williams."

David was puzzled at the response. A little hangover wasn't enough to break him out of fighting shape. Except…he realized that his body felt exhausted and broken, and sore all over. Just how hard did he party last night, he wondered? Why did he feel so tired?

"I don't understand, Captain," he said, shrugging. The shrug made his shoulder feel like it was being stabbed by needles.

"You left the unit, left your brothers," Cpt. Willard accused. "You abandoned them. Used us as a steppingstone for your own ambition."

David couldn't believe what he'd been hearing. Something about the accusation hit deep. Why was Cpt. Willard saying these things?

"What do you mean?" David demanded.

"Your brothers in Lima. Black Mamba. The prisoners in Africa. Everyone who helps you, you abandon. And the people you killed and abandoned are left to bleed out in the dust. And in the end, you couldn't even act as a useful tool; you still got captured. What was it all for? A useless instrument, good only for death and suffering."

"Mamba? Africa? What are you talking about, sir? You're not making sense," Snake protested.

David shook his head. Who is Snake? He thought to himself. Why did I call myself that?

Still, Cpt. Willard wouldn't turn to face him. All of a sudden, Snake was filled with the intense urge to grab the Captain's shoulders and spin him around. For reasons he didn't understand, he was filled with intense panic. Why won't you look at me? He wanted to scream. He hyperventilated. It was hard to breathe. He coughed as the room filled up with smoke.

David looked around. The walls were bubbling and cracking, an unbearable heat permeating the room. Cpt. Willard nodded and shifted his body, slowly turning. David was filled with fear. He realized he now wanted desperately for Willard to do literally anything other than turn around. A banging was heard from the doors and walls. David looked down to see that the floor he was standing on had turned to sand, swallowing him up to his thighs.

David waded away from Cpt. Willard, grabbing a bottle from the nightstand. The room was under attack. Hands caked with sand and grime, covered in open weeping sores erupted from the sand below to clutch at him; attached to these arms were the men from his unit, faces rotting and ridden with pustules and maggots. Their mouths were open as they groaned in a desperate murmur, "You left us!"

Snake crawled away, climbing onto the safety of the solid bed. When he looked back down, the faces had changed to that of black and white South Africans, faces covered in blood, bodies riddled with holes and open wounds that soaked their yellow prison attire. They screeched, "You left us to fend for ourselves! You sent us to die!"

The door burst open, a blonde woman wrapped in barbed wire with her arm left dangling, flesh sloughing off, her good hand coated in red. She snarled, "You betrayed me for your own ambition!"

Snake gripped the bottle in his hand and swung down, shattering it. The shards of glass floated in the air as they spun, catching the reflections of the living corpses as the room melted around them. David brandished the broken bottle to threaten his foes, only to find that the broken bottle was now a pistol, and he was no longer standing in the hotel room, but in a burning atrium.

Lined up against the wall were four men, blindfolded to await the firing squad. One was missing an arm and had shrapnel in his legs, forcing him to lean against a crutch. Another had a face that was stitched together with what looked like staples and fishing line. The third was bleeding from a hole in the face, and the fourth was bleeding from his liver and had half his head missing, brains exposed.

Written messily on the wall above the men's heads in blood were the words, "YOU KILLED US."

Smoke was rising from the barrel of Snake's gun. The wounds on the men were fresh. David dropped it in horror as he stared at his palms, covered with scars and bloodstains.

"W-what…?" he whispered.

Behind and around him and the dead soldiers was flame and darkness. A harsh whisper hissed from deep within the black. "Yes, Snake. Do you see, now? This is what you are." The growling whisper was mixed with the voice of Captain Willard, which sounded like it was being heard from underwater.

A bloodied face appeared, and though the form was inconsistent amidst the shadows and smoke, Snake recognized it immediately: the rough, draconic, skull-like face with a shiny obsidian horn, bleeding from a bullet wound in the forehead, wreathed in sparklingly wet leathery black wings. A single, red eye with a stormy grey hurricane as its iris. No doubt about it: it was the Devil incarnate.

"Time to wake up and smell the corpses, Snake. Rise and shine."

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY THREE, TIME UNKNOWN

 

"Rise and shine, Zmeya."

Snake opened his eyes. He found himself tied to a chair. Shotmaker was looming over him, looking amused.

Snake tried to get his bearings. He felt delirious. He looked behind Shotmaker, expecting to see the demon lurking in the shadows. Instead, he only saw the two attendant guards that Shotmaker had with him last time. Or was that four guards? He felt so light-headed.

Shotmaker raised his hand. He was holding something. Snake squinted to get the double images in his vision to resolve into a single picture so that he could figure out what it was. Eventually, he was able to make it out: a syringe. Empty.

"Wha-?"

"We've given you a little cocktail. One dose of psychedelics to soften you up, and then a dose of sodium pentathol to induce a mild hypnosis. It makes the subject very suggestible. Not guaranteed as a truth serum, but it does make it more difficult to lie. You seemed to be having very nice sleep, and I didn't want to bother you with the waking, so I had my men inject you while unconscious. Hope you don't mind. Psychedelics should make for pleasant dreaming, I should think."

Shotmaker placed the syringe into a paper bag. Snake heard the clinking of glass as it bounced against the vials inside.

"Now, we are ready for conversating, da? Should be most pleasant. You know, you talk in your sleep? Bad habit for intelligence agent. Never know what sort of information those lips would let loose without an alert and conscious mind to guard it."

Snake had the feeling that he should be panicking, but he couldn't figure out why. He barely registered what Shotmaker was saying, but his voice sounded pleasant to the ears, so he just kept right on listening.

"Tell me, Zmeya, who is this, 'Captain Willard?'

Something inside Snake told him not to answer any of the Russian's questions. Nothing good would come from it. But the command fell on deaf ears; the voice sounded so nice; Snake wanted to tell it anything it wanted to know.

"Mentor…friend…" Snake muttered.

"This is good, Zmeya. Friends are very good to have. It is a luxury men like you and me tend to lack. Friends keep us sane, and in good spirits. Where do you know this friend from?"

"Old unit…" Snake replied, his eyes downcast. For some reason, Shotmaker's boots looked so fascinating to him. As did the roach scurrying along the floor.

"So, you're not with them anymore? I heard you saying, 'I didn't want to leave you,'" Shotmaker said with keen interest.

Snake slowly shook his head. "Not anymore…" he whispered.

Stop it. That's enough! Don't say anything else!

Again, that tiny inner voice. So demanding, so...rude. It was distracting. Couldn't it see that Snake was trying to have a conversation here? Then again, he was being pretty rude himself by not looking the Russian in the eye. But it was so hard to lift his head up, it was too heavy, so he settled for looking at the Russian's legs. Snake was so tired, he felt sluggish.

"Why did you leave your old unit, Zmeya? You called them, 'brothers.' Why would you wish to leave your comrades like this?"

"I had to…I was called to serve…I'm a tool. I go where I'm needed," Snake muttered.

"What were you needed for?" the Russian asked.

Snake shook his head. Dumb question, he thought. It was so obvious, not even worth asking.

"Zmeya?" Shotmaker prompted.

"Do you think we might have used too much?" asked one of the guards attending. His friend shushed him.

"I had to…they needed me…for the new mission."

Stop! Shut your fucking mouth, the inner voice screamed. Snake's brow furrowed, teeth clenching.

"Who needed you? What was the mission, Zmeya? You can tell me," Shotmaker said kindly.

Snake wanted to answer, he really did. But something was stopping him. He felt his lips purse, ready to shape the words, but he couldn't get it out. He clenched his fists. Why couldn't he speak?

"He's resisting," said the guard who spoke before. "Should I give him another dose?"

Shotmaker raised a hand. "The mission, Zmeya. What was it?"

"Inf-filtrate…enemy f-fortress…O-Outer Heaven…" Snake stuttered.

"Yes. And?" Shotmaker urged.

"D-d-des…tr…"

"Destroy?" Shotmaker asked. "Destroy what?"

"D…destroy…"

A boom was heard overhead. The hanging lamp swung from the ceiling as dust fell loosely from the walls.

"Chyort!" Shotmaker cursed. He turned to his guards, waving them over. They appeared to know what he wanted, because one of them handed him a walkie-talkie. "What is going on? Give me a status update," he demanded as he stepped out of the iron door. His attendants kept a watchful eye on Snake while they waited for him to return.

Something inside Snake sighed with relief, and he relaxed his fingers.

When Shotmaker returned, he was red in the face. He shoved the radio back into his guard's hands and strode up to Snake.

"Change of plans, Zmeya," Shotmaker said, grabbing Snake by the hair. "It seems your Resistance friends have a direct line with their commander. I'm going to guess that was your doing. Tell me, who did you put them in contact with?"

Wait a minute. Didn't the Russian say that they had already rounded up the Resistance fighters days ago? Snake could feel the inner voice nodding in agreement.

There was something there, it was saying. Latch onto it.

The fog started to lift from Snake's mind ever so slightly.

Snake grunted, rolling his eyes lazily until he could see Shotmaker's face properly. Snake didn't know what happened, but the Russian looked pissed. For some reason, Snake thought of Kyle's face when he told them that Outer Heaven had murdered his family.

"You…you killed…" Snake said accusingly.

The scowl turned into a terrible grin. Snake thought of the demon's draconic skull. "That's right," the Russian said triumphantly. "I have killed a great many men. More than you can scarcely imagine. And if you don't want to be one of them, Zmeya, you will tell me what I want to know. Now…"

Shotmaker yanked Snake up by the head, his fingers gripping tightly through Snake's hair.

"Who sent you? Why are you here?" the Russian demanded, low on patience. Snake hissed in pain.

With great ferocity, Shotmaker started striking Snake in the gut, each blow punctuated by a single word: "Who. Have. You. Been. Talking. To?"

Snake started retching. Shotmaker cut his bonds loose and threw him to the ground so Snake could empty the contents of his stomach on the floor without fear of choking on his own vomit. His throat burned. Tears flooded his eyes involuntarily. The acidic smell of the bile was terrible. But with that smell came a sudden clarity. Snake was beginning to feel more alert, more like himself. He coughed in between words:

"Fuck…you…"

A kick to the solar plexus sent him tumbling into the wall as the former Spetsnaz yelled in frustration before kicking him square in the groin and in the chest. Spots swarmed in Snake's eyes. Shotmaker stepped away, breathing heavily.

After a moment, Shotmaker calmed down. He turned to look at Snake. "Your Resistance friends are not long for this world, Zmeya. If you keep being stubborn, I will not be able to guarantee their safety. Perhaps you should think about that next time you are asked a question."

Snake simply groaned in pain as he curled up in the corner. Seeing that Snake wasn't in a state to speak coherently anymore, Shotmaker turned to his subordinates. "Let's go," he ordered as he and the men left the room.

During the whole session, Gray Fox had been whittling away at the mortar between the bricks, but it was slow work, and he'd had to take many breaks to conserve his strength. He needed Snake's help, but he knew Snake wasn't in a state to be helpful right now.

Hours passed as Snake writhed on the floor like his namesake. At some point, some food was pushed through a trap at the bottom of the door, and Snake crawled achingly across the cell to reach it and carefully put the morsels into his mouth. Eventually, he started feeling well enough to sit up and when he did, he looked over to the vent.

"Hey," he said weakly. "You there?"

Gray Fox stopped digging, happy for the excuse to take a break. "Yeah, Snake. I'm here. How are you holding up?"

"I've been better," Snake admitted. "But I'm still alive. Should count for something."

"It counts for a lot," Fox said encouragingly. "It means you can still fight."

"Don't know if you can call what I'm doing 'fighting,'" Snake chuckled humorlessly. His breath hitched in his throat. "But I'm trying, Fox. I'm trying."

"Hang in there. We'll get out of here, soon. You have to believe that. Remember what the Boss said: never give up, even when the odds are against you. We will make it out of here," Fox promised.

Big Boss. Snake hadn't thought of him once since he'd been taken prisoner. Those words he'd heard on the day of his induction felt like a lifetime ago. Something awoke in Snake like a kindling fire. Somehow, the idea of disappointing the Boss became unthinkable. Snake thought of his loyalties to America, who had given him life and to Big Boss, who had given him a future. In his mind, the two became inextricably linked.

The Boss believed in him, enough to send him on this mission when even Gray Fox himself got captured. Snake may be uncertain of his usefulness, but Big Boss wasn't, and Snake was not about to betray the faith that the Boss had placed in him.

Nodding, Snake crawled over to the vent, and with great effort set to the task of removing the grating to crawl through. Together, he and Fox continued working on the wall. The crack that had shown the night before had spread, and much of the mortar was dug out between three bricks. Another day or two, and they might be able to push them out with enough force.

When light's-out came, Snake returned to his cell. His thoughts returned to the facility he now called home. Whatever happens, I will make it out of here, he decided. I will make Big Boss proud, and I'll prove that he was right to trust me.

 

---

 

ELSEWHERE, MUCH LATER...

 

A knock on the door. A command to enter. Shotmaker arrives to give his report:

In response to another attack by Shotmaker's men, the escapees have detonated explosives on the northeastern stairway, rendering it impassable. The good news: the POWs no longer have any means of escape unless they disarm the traps and remove the barricades for the other stairways. Our men are currently working on clearing those barricades as we speak, he says, but it will take time.

The bad news: part of the stairway still exists, giving the escaped prisoners access to the roof, where they have continued to fight the staff. The men stationed on the roof have all been killed, and the POWs have obtained control. Final casualty count: eight men total lost today, not counting the deaths from the initial breakout the day before.

Shotmaker makes a recommendation: send a helicopter with a strike team to attack the prisoners from above while Shotmaker's men tackle the barricades from below. The POWs will have nowhere to run.

The demon nods its assent, breathing in smoky fumes. Shotmaker will have his bird.

A question: how goes the interrogation?

Shotmaker is visibly uncomfortable. His fingertips tap and drum against his thigh; a minor nervous tic that spoke volumes to the demon. Sweat glistened on Shotmaker's forehead.

The subject was subjected to drug treatment to make him more suggestible. It seemed to work at first, but the subject started to resist the procedure. Not much useful was gleaned from him: an old unit, whose captain had an English-sounding name. Based on this and the subject's accent, it's safe to say that the subject is American.

Subject is unlikely to be employed by the American government directly, though—likely a contractor, possibly a competitor. But as to who the client is, or the contracting company for that matter, is anyone's guess.

The demon stalked around the office, pacing like an animal that had cornered its prey. Its eye roamed over the face and body of the Russian as he stood unnerved in the demon's gaze.

With dry amusement, the demon observed him; the Russian was not telling the demon anything that it didn't already know. The identity of the man wasn't a mystery, even less so now that he was confirmed to be an American. Indeed, the man's identity was never in question for the demon, though Shotmaker had no way of knowing that. The point of the interrogation was less to do with learning about the origins of the man himself, and more to do with buying time. The demon didn't want the man to face him until the man was ready to be received.

That's not to say there wasn't any value in the questioning, however. There was still one final thing to confirm, after all.

So, the question burns forth amidst the roiling smoke: what of the man's motives?

A nervous reply is given: could not get a complete answer from the subject. Only the words: 'Infiltrate the enemy fortress, Outer Heaven,' and 'Destroy…' The rest was cut off by the stairway explosion and by then the subject had successfully resisted the drug treatment, bringing a premature end to the session.

'Destroy the ultimate weapon, Metal Gear,' the demon's thoughts finished the sentence, remembering the familiar words.

The demon lifts its head from its reverie, thinking on Shotmaker's explanation of how the POWs took the roof of the building. They may be expecting the bird. They did appear to be moving with an unexpected level of coordination, even without the American's involvement.

A command is given: the insects in the Resistance are planning something. Someone is guiding their hand, and they are likely to plot some kind of counter to their efforts to retake the building. The subject may know who it is that guides them. The Russian is to find out the identity of this guiding hand before they make their next move, and with a hardened stare the demon shows that no delay will be tolerated.

The Russian gives his assent and scurries away with the realization that he is running out of time.

The demon stares out the window into the rolling fog of the morning, before his idle musings are once again interrupted, this time by the light and sound of distant explosions on the far side of the complex followed by sirens. It would appear that the Resistance is already making their next play.

The demon looked on grimly.

 

---

 

RESISTANCE OPERATION

MORNING OF DAY FOUR

OUTER HEAVEN WEST – RIVERSIDE

 

When Kyle had lost contact with Snake upon his capture, he at once took Snake's advice and immediately set about on the task of organizing a rescue for his people, and possibly Snake as well.

Via coordination with the team of released prisoners over radio, they set to work eliminating staff on the roof and setting C4 charges on the struts of one of the two helipads which hung off the side of the building. The idea was to prevent reinforcements by air—given the value of the material held in the building, it was unlikely that Outer Heaven would attempt to bomb or mortar the rooftop, but they may try to deliver fireteams via fast-rope descent.

So, together, the POW team and Kyle hatched a plan: Kyle would send forces up the river for an assault of the west side of the base, and when the attack began in earnest the POW team would blow the charges on the helipad, leaving the other one open so they could attempt to capture a chopper should one attempt to land (the POW team having already blown up and destroyed the stairway they were guarding during the previous day's fighting). Meanwhile, the POW team would set up mortar teams on the roof facing westward to support the ground team while they moved into the base.

The only problem was the vehicles in the first-floor hangar and the lots outside—an entire fleet of tanks stood at the ready. The mortar team could suppress any tank crews outdoors, but how could they prevent the tanks from deploying from the building itself? They'd have to shut the sheet metal doors from the inside, and they only had control of the third floor and the roof.

Luckily, thanks to the third-floor armory, they had access to Stinger launchers and RPGs. They couldn't prevent tanks from leaving the building, but they could destroy any that did before they reached the heart of the fighting. That was the hope, anyway. Kyle just had to hope that the ground team didn't get caught up in the blasts of the mortars and launchers by mistake. Once the plan was set and all the teams were in place, Kyle personally led his ground team to the compound.

They came in the morning, under cover of fog, just as Snake and Kyle had done a few days before. They waited till the break of sunrise when they would be turning off their searchlights but before the fog lifted. The weather was on their side.

Not wanting to lose the element of surprise, Kyle killed the engines before they reached the perimeter walls and the Resistance fighters started slowly paddling up the river with the hand oars they'd brought along. When they reached the docks, the rebels disembarked and stacked up against the wall on either side of the gate, taking care to avoid the gaze of the closest watchtower.

Moving through the gate, they dodged enemy patrols as they made a beeline towards the lot with the transport trucks. Four men split off from the trucks to head toward the lot with parked tanks, where they planted IEDs in the tanks' treads for remote detonation. Kyle and his squad, meanwhile, silently killed the patrolmen in and near the trucks and set to work removing the gas caps and stuffing wine-soaked rags into the tanks. Once finished, Kyle and his men pulled out their lighters and set the rags on fire before moving up towards the first of the warehouses.

Kyle was handed a cell phone for the IEDs. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the trucks to go off. He rested his thumb on the CALL button, waiting for the explosive signal. One by one, the trucks lit up, small fireballs lighting up against the early morning sky. Kyle nodded as each explosion sounded. He looked down at the phone and pressed the button. Explosive force knocked off the armored vehicles' treads, putting a dent in their exterior tank column. Not all of the tanks were disabled, but enough to buy the rebels time as they navigate the confusion.

Alarms sounded. Screaming could be heard. Kyle and his team heard the pounding of approaching footsteps. The battle had begun. Kyle's thoughts silently formed a prayer: Hang on, everyone. The cavalry is coming.

Kyle and his men shouldered their rifles to meet the coming tide.

 

---

 

MEANWHILE, IN THE DETENTION FACILITY...

 

Gray Fox continued to work through the night while Snake slept, and after hours and days of continuous digging, he had weakened the mortar between three of the bricks. He looked down at his hands, bloody and covered with filth from the effort, before admiring his and Snake's combined work. He could see a little bit of light leaking through from the other side. With enough force, they may be able to push out the bricks and make a hole big enough to squeeze through. But in his weakened state, Fox wouldn't be able to do it on his own; he'd need Snake's assistance.

Nevertheless, the task was complete. Fox nodded in grim satisfaction as he looked over to the vent. Tonight, he and the rookie would make their escape.

For the first time in the three weeks since Fox had been captured, the door to his cell opened. Instinctively, Fox turned to face the door and placed his back against the wall as a couple of mercenaries strode in toward him. Was this the day they finally decided to kill him?

No, no, no—they were so close!

But death didn't come for Fox in that moment. Instead, the mercs struck him in the gut to make him keel over before grabbing him by the arms to drag him out of his cell and into the cell next door. Shotmaker was waiting for them there, with Snake bound and sat up in the far corner, forced to face them. Fox was forced to his knees in the middle of the room, facing Snake. The Russian grabbed Fox's face by the chin and forced his gaze forward so that Snake could look him in the eyes.

"Today, we're going to do something different, Zmeya. Today, you are going to be spared your torment, and instead, that torment will be transferred to another. If you do not wish for this to happen, you will answer my questions honestly."

"F…Fox…" Snake said.

Shit, Fox cursed inwardly to himself.

"Ah, so you know each other!" Shotmaker said with faux surprise, clapping his hands together. "Good. That will make this very simple then, da?" Shotmaker crouched down low to get up into Snake's face, speaking low. "The questions are simple: who is your client? Why did they send you? Who is your contact in the Resistance forces? Answer now and spare your friend the pain."

"Don't you tell them a fucking thing, rookie," Fox growled.

Snake looked up to Fox, and Fox was quietly astonished. Rather than the crumbling face of a broken man that he expected to see, the look he saw was of hardened, steely resolve. Snake nodded to Fox, and in that nod, Fox found hope.

Snake looked over to the Russian and spat on his face.

"Go fuck yourself," he growled.

Shotmaker wiped his face off, looked at the saliva in his hand with no expression. Calmly, he wiped it on Snake's shoulder before striking him hard across the mouth, drawing blood. He turned over to his subordinates holding Fox.

"Begin," he commanded.

The mercs wrapped a piece of cloth around Fox's mouth. Shotmaker produced a canteen, opened it, and handed it to the men, who poured it into the cloth. Fox was grunting muffled screaming and choking, and his body started thrashing and going into convulsions as he struggled to breathe.

"What are you doing!? Stop!" Snake yelled.

Shotmaker looked to Snake. "You alone can stop this, Zmeya. Simply tell me what I want to know."

Snake stayed silent. Fox continued to shake. His eyes started rolling up into his head. This went on for several more seconds before Shotmaker motioned for them to stop and the cloth was removed.

Gray Fox coughed hoarsely, sucking in every huge breath for all it was worth. His lungs felt like they were on fire.

The Russian stooped to Snake's level once more. "Are we going to keep playing games, or will you be answering my questions?"

Fox coughed again and glared up to Snake with bloodshot eyes. "Snake. Say nothing."

Snake glanced to Fox again. The resolve had not left his eyes, but he couldn't hide his concern for Fox. Still, he said nothing. Shotmaker once more motioned for his men to continue waterboarding him. Once more the torture continued. Snake wanted to look away, wanted to shut his eyes. But he knew, deep down, that if he was going to fight this thing before him, he needed to confront it, needed to see it himself.

Torture and mistreatment of POWs is of course forbidden by the Geneva Conventions as a war crime, for both legal combatants and civilians alike. But Fox and Snake weren't legal combatants, and they certainly weren't civilians. It likely didn't matter anyway. International law doesn't really exist, at least, not in practice—in order for something to be a law worth the paper that it's written on, it requires a body capable of enforcing it, and having a set of rules and laws being international makes it impossible to enforce by definition because there is no higher government to enforce against the atrocities that Snake witnessed.

It was just like the Secretary of Defense had said before they'd sent him out here: there would be no help. No one was coming to save them. The only way they were getting out of here was on their own, but with every second the Russian continued to inflict his torture on Fox, Snake began to feel just a little more powerless at not being able to stop it.

But he couldn't break. That would mean betraying Big Boss, betraying America. It would mean betraying Gray Fox, and likely would get both of them killed. So, Snake maintained his silence, and he used the wrath he felt towards his captors as motivation. The moment the opportunity arose, he was going to get himself and Gray Fox out of this hellhole they were in. And he silently promised himself: when they do get out, he was going to tear Shotmaker apart.

After the third round, Gray Fox looked about ready to pass out, so Shotmaker stopped his men so that Fox could collect himself. "This will go on for as long as it needs to, until you give us the answers we seek," he spoke simply.

"I have all day today to spend with you both. There will be no interruptions this time," he said. Just like yesterday, the room shook again, the walls rumbling. The mercs must be fighting with the rebels again. Shotmaker ignored it.

"I will say this for you," Shotmaker said. "You both have a very impressive resilience. It is commendable. I meant what I said before, you know. You would make very good additions to Outer Heaven's army. But if you would not join us, then the only choice left to you is to answer our questions and put an end to your torment now or extend it. Either way, you will not die until I give you permission. So, which is it, my friends? Die now, or die later?"

Silence occurred as the two prisoners were permitted to contemplate their options. Suddenly, the door sprung open as a Moroccan mercenary addressed the Russian. "Commander," said the merc, "We're under attack!"

"The escapees again?" said the Russian.

"Negative, commander! The Resistance is assaulting the base. Our men out in the warehouses are getting hammered on all sides. They need reinforcements!"

Shotmaker glared at the prisoners. "They must be making a rescue attempt," he growled. "Very well. We will go to arrange reinforcements from the basement personnel. You and you, come with me," he motioned to the Moroccan and to one of the mercs holding Fox. He pointed to the third man. "You, stay here and watch them. I will return shortly."

"Yes, sir!"

Three of the men left, leaving only the one guard, who let Fox fall to the floor in a crumpled heap. The guard walked closer to Snake and squatted to get a better look at him. "You killed a few of my friends when you showed up, you bastard," the guard said. "Don't think for one second you're getting out of here alive. We're going to make sure you get everything that's coming to you."

Behind the guard, Snake could see Fox slowly stand up, clutching the rag the guards had used to waterboard him with. Acting quickly, Snake wrapped his legs around one of the guard's, dug his foot into the guard's groin and used the strength of his legs and abdominal muscles to make the guard wobble and teeter over, making it easier for Fox to wrap the cloth around the guard's neck and pull him up over his back to strangle him. Horrific gurgling noises erupted from the man's throat as Fox pulled. After fifteen seconds of hard work, Fox and Snake were rewarded with silence as the guard's body went limp.

Fox grabbed a knife from the guard's belt and used it to cut Snake's bonds before grabbing the guard's pistol. There was no card or keyring that Fox could find, but it didn't matter. "The cell doors lock from outside," Fox explained. "But that's fine. We have a way out." Together, he and Snake yanked the loose vent cover from the wall and then Fox crawled through feet-first to kick out the other side. Once they reached Fox's cell, Fox pointed out the weakened wall.

"On the count of three!" Fox commanded. "One, two, three!"

Together they rushed the wall with their shoulders. The bricks shifted slightly, but otherwise all they got for their trouble was more scratches and bruises. Not to be deterred, they stood up and got ready to rush it again.

"Again!" Fox shouted. "One, two, three!"

Again, they bum-rushed the wall. This time, the bricks shifted outward, and the cracks in the mortar spread wide into a hole of light and they could make out some details of the hallway beyond. They reared back, hands forward, and pushed hard, shoving the bricks out into the hallway, where they landed with a series of thuds, leaving behind a hole just big enough for each man to squeeze through.

"I'll go first," Fox said. "Help push me through."

Fox wormed his way into the hole, getting about halfway through before his frame got stuck. Snake lifted Fox's legs for leverage and forced the older man the rest of the way, sending Fox tumbling onto the floor. Taking a moment to catch his breath, Snake watched as Fox pulled himself back up with a wince before waving Snake to follow after him.

Snake mimicked Fox's maneuver, this time with the other man pulling on his arms while Snake kicked his legs. In moments, both men were lying on the floor, exhausted. Fox climbed up to his feet, gripping the stolen Beretta and the knife in his hands. Snake joined his new friend in standing, feeling a little worse for wear as he leaned against the wall, wincing, and clutching at his ribs.

What a fine pair we make, Snake thought with exasperation: two broken and battered men limping through the hallways with nothing more than a single gun and knife between them. They were going to need to secure something more in the way of supplies if they were going to get out of there alive.

The lights in the brick hallway flickered and loose dirt fell from the ceiling as more explosions were heard overhead. "What's going on?" Fox asked in wonder.

"If I had to guess," Snake said, "That'd be the rebels, coming to take back their guys."

"Friends of yours?" Fox asked, eyebrow raised.

"You could say that," Snake answered. He pointed forward. "Let's go. I don't want to stay here any longer than I have to."

Fox nodded. "Agreed. Stay behind me and watch our six for any incoming."

Snake nodded, breathing hard. "R-roger."

Fox led them down the hall and around a corner, before ducking into an open door to narrowly avoid a guard down the hall running back in the direction of the cells. Inside the door, they found themselves in what looked to be a small office with two desks at opposite corners with computer towers underneath, one of the monitors showing camera footage of the outside of the cells and a few of the exterior hallways.

"Look," Snake pointed.

One of the feeds shown was of the exterior of the first-floor hangar, where two tanks were driving out of the shutter doors, only to be bombarded with RPG strikes from above once they reached a certain distance from the building.

"They're really giving them hell," Snake said. "Those rocket strikes must be coming from the roof. Do you think the rebels might actually be able to take the building?"

Fox's eyes widened as he observed with grim contemplation. "Maybe," he said. "But they're outmanned and outgunned by Outer Heaven, so it's a toss-up. If they do take the building, they're not likely to hold it for very long. Several hours, a day, tops."

A picture frame on the other desktop showed Shotmaker smiling proudly. The desk and picture probably belonged to him. Snake picked it up to examine it. "And the mercenaries have more combined experience than the militia between them all…" he said.

"And there's still the matter of Metal Gear," Fox pointed out.

"Metal Gear…" Snake murmured. He looked up to Gray Fox. "Fox, where is Dr. Madnar right now? Is he still alive?"

Fox gave a slight shrug of the shoulder. "He was when I last saw him. Metal Gear still hadn't been completed yet, so I imagine they'll let him keep breathing at least as long as it takes to finish it."

"Do you think they would have finished it by now?" Snake asked with concern.

Fox shook his head. "Somehow, I don't think so. When I last talked to Drago, he'd said that when he first arrived here, they'd given him design specs for an old prototype Soviet weapon to start with, and that it had problems with its original functions. He said they'd demanded several drastic redesigns and improvements on the original idea. Meaning that the brand-new version of the weapon would involve new and novel innovations that the old specs couldn't possibly have prepped him for."

"An old prototype with new specs? You mean they modified an old weapon to make Metal Gear?"

"More like started over from scratch altogether. You'd have to ask Drago," Fox said as he started digging through the drawers of the desks. In the desk opposite Shotmaker's, Fox found another pistol sitting in the drawer, which he silently handed to Snake before walking over to a couple of metal wall lockers in the corner opposite the door. Thankfully, they didn't have locks on them. He found two spare uniforms with armor vests, tossing one set to Snake while he donned the other.

"And where can I find him?" Snake asked, wincing while gingerly pulling on the clothes to try to avoid as much stress on his injuries as possible.

"He'll be in the R&D building to the east," Fox replied as he put on the armor vest with a grunt.

"Not in Metal Gear's hangar?"

"No, they wouldn't want to risk Dr. Madnar sabotaging Metal Gear somehow. Dr. Madnar drafts the designs and passes them on to Outer Heaven, while staff performs the actual construction under Ahab's supervision."

"I see," Snake replied, checking his magazine, and pulling back the slide for a brass check. "I know where I need to go next, then. But first, there's one thing we need to take care of."

"What do you mean?" Fox asked.

"Those rebels are the only reason I was able to make contact with you in that cell," Snake explained. "They're the reason we were able to get you out. We need to return the favor. I want to help Kyle get his people back. Or at the very least, give them an edge in taking the building. I don't know that they're going to manage it without our help."

"That's not the mission," Fox objected.

"You're right. It's not my mission," Snake said. "It's yours."

"Excuse me?"

"My mission is to rescue Madnar, destroy Metal Gear, and kill Venom. That's going to be a lot easier if I can move about the base without a target on my back. Plus, I promised Kyle I'd help get his people out. With you assisting them, I'll be able to kill two birds with one stone."

Comprehension dawned in Gray Fox's eyes. "We're to be your distraction?"

"Only if the Resistance can take this building. Otherwise, it's a moot point. I'm going to try to help them, regardless. Are you in, or out?"

Gray Fox regarded the rookie, who still managed to stare him down and challenge him, broken as he was. Suddenly, he didn't appear so weak and helpless. The elder vet was impressed by the younger man's courage and determination. 

He might just be able to make it through this after all, Fox thought.

Fox held his pistol at the ready and took up a position near the door. "Fine, then," he said. "Let's get this over with."

Snake exhaled. He wasn't sure whether he'd have to try and convince Fox, or even that Fox would listen if he did. "Thanks, Fox," he said with a lopsided grin.

"Save it for after we get out of here," Fox replied, deadpan.

Snake nodded, and stacked up on the door behind Fox, putting his hand on his shoulder. Once ready, the duo burst through the door, making their way down the hall through two large double doors, finding themselves in a large room with rows of shelves and crates from one end to the other.

At the other end of the aisle, they saw the Russian waiting for them, holding a SPAS-12 shotgun and wearing two bandoliers around his large torso, one with extra shells and the other with four "pineapple" hand grenades. Shotmaker was sporting a deadly grin, wrath glinting in his eyes.

"Hello, boys," he said, raising the shotgun to bear on the two men. "Did you miss me?"

Notes:

And here we have Gray Fox's introduction into the story as well as the lead-in to the first boss fight! Since Fox doesn't really have much of a character in the original Metal Gear game (since it was before the story of the series became more than just an afterthought), I figured this would be a good opportunity to expand on him a little bit, to make the idea that the two men had bonded over the course of Metal Gear 1 and 2 a bit more believable.

I also figured touching on Snake's perception of Big Boss and giving him a little bit of hero worship would help to make the eventual confrontation a bit more dramatic as well as give a thematic tie-in for how he might eventually become the more cynical and disillusioned figure we see in the beginning of Metal Gear Solid.

Tying the image of Big Boss together with Snake's idea of America as a whole being a stand-in for a parental figure in his life seemed like a good way to drive that point home (I'm really glad in retrospect that I established him as having a somewhat idealistic view of America in Chapter 3—it was a spur of the moment decision at the time, as was tying it together with the pedestal Snake is putting BB on, but I think it works out pretty well). This was a bit of a longer chapter, as I'm going to be busy/on vacation for the next few weeks, so I'm hoping this will help to tide people over as I won't be spending as much time writing for a while. Next chapter, we'll have the first boss fight with Shotmaker, followed by the battle for Building One! I hope everyone looks forward to it. As usual, thank you to everyone who has continued to read and follow along so far!

Chapter 11: The Battle for Building One

Summary:

Having been freed of their captivity, Snake and Fox assist the resistance in capturing the supply storage facility.

Notes:

Fun fact: While writing this story, I often have Google maps open to get a physical sense of the geography of a place and I use the maps of the actual levels in Metal Gear for inspiration. In the early parts of the story during Snake's training, I even drew maps of the bases and buildings Snake infiltrated so that I could keep his movements across the locations consistent. For Outer Heaven, I decided to place Outer Heaven on the banks of a river somewhere northeast of Tankwa Karoo National Park.

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY FOUR – NOON

SUPPLY STORAGE FACILITY BASEMENT

 

Snake and Fox ducked behind steel shelving and wooden crates as tiny pieces of concrete splintered from the wall and shrapnel from the buckshot pellets ricocheted down the aisles. Being on the far side of the aisle from their attacker, there was little chance of being hit by the brunt of the blast at this range, but even having a couple of pellets lodged in the limbs and shredding muscle could cause problems.

Why didn’t Shotmaker use slugs, Snake wondered? It would increase his effective range and potential for damage; it’s more accurate too. It was then that he realized that the buckshot was intentional—Shotmaker wasn’t going for kills, but for incidental injuries that would slow them down, little by little, until he could get closer.

He’s toying with us, Snake realized.

Gray Fox stuck his arm around the corner and blind-fired his pistol down the aisle, which stopped the Russian’s assault. He looked over to Snake. “Split up: you break left, I’ll go right!”

Snake nodded, and the duo split in opposite directions on their respective side of the room. When Snake got to the corner of the room and turned down the aisle at the end, he made it about halfway down before two fragmentation grenades were lobbed his way, forcing him to turn around and start running back. Seeing a space in the shelving, he dove through it into the next aisle behind the large crates before the pineapples exploded, sending shrapnel in every direction in the enclosed space.

The shelving in front of Snake teetered and fell into the heavier shelf across from it, which thankfully held up the weight. Snake rolled out of the way as boxes and crates fell just inches away from him, some bursting open and spilling their heavy (and in some cases, very sharp) contents onto the floor. Loose dirt fell from the ceiling while the lights flickered. Snake coughed as some fell onto his face.

Gray Fox moved swiftly down his aisle on the opposite side of the room and spotted Shotmaker through the shelving at the same time that the Russian turned to face him. Fox quickly aimed and took a couple of potshots while Shotmaker ducked, hitting nothing but the wall behind his target. Fox moved back as Shotmaker returned fire, blowing holes through the crates and showering Fox in wood splinters and packing peanuts.

While Fox was engaged in a firefight with Shotmaker, Snake crawled underneath the fallen shelving and grabbed one of the spools of barbed wire that had fallen beneath it, careful to only grab the spool on its sides to avoid shredding his hands.

The room they were in was about 60 yards long, with five metal shelves loaded with crates and boxes spanning its length, making for six aisles total, not counting the one that Shotmaker had closed off by toppling the shelving. Seeing the barbed wire gave Snake an idea for giving him and Fox more control over the battlefield.

Quickly and carefully, Snake grabbed the end of one wire and wrapped it around a vertical strut of one of the shelves and tossed the spool into the next aisle. He then shoved some boxes aside so that he could crawl through and pick up the spool and wrap it around the next shelf, feeding it back and forth until the new aisle he was in was crisscrossed with barbed wire at about shin and thigh-height.

Shotmaker turned into Snake’s aisle just in time to see Snake throw the spool into the next aisle over, and Snake had to scramble to crawl back the opposite way to take cover behind the fallen shelf.

“What are you up to, Zmeya…?” Shotmaker demanded, blasting his SPAS-12 to try and catch Snake’s legs as he crawled between the crates.

Fox kept his handgun raised as he turned the corner and fired on Shotmaker, forcing the Russian to curse and take cover. Fox rushed forward to the next shelf and peeked around the corner to see the spool on the floor, its wire feeding between the boxes of the shelf. Seeing that the aisle was clear, Fox moved to the next shelf just in time to see a flash grenade bounce on the ground in front of him, forcing him to dive back into the aisle he’d just left, narrowly avoiding being blinded and “only” getting struck with tinnitus.

Shotmaker attempted to put some space between him and Fox, only to skid to a stop when he noticed the barbed wire. Any more steps, and he would have tripped and fell into a trap that would have left him torn up.

“Chyort!” Shotmaker cursed, turning back to the end of the aisle, and raising his shotgun. These spies were craftier than he thought, he noted. He couldn’t afford to get careless.

Snake crawled under the fallen shelf to the other side and raised his Beretta to point toward the end of the walkway, his back to the standing shelf on his right as he slowly crept up to the corner, listening for Shotmaker’s footsteps.

As he turned the corner, he came face to face with the Russian, and used his off hand to grab the shotgun by the pump action to push it towards his enemy to point the barrel away from him. Shotmaker pushed back, attempting to shove Snake off while Snake tried to maintain his grip on his Beretta in the struggle.

Snake tried to ram his knee into Shotmaker’s groin, but the Russian torturer stepped back just out of reach. Snake lost some of the leverage he had to the taller man, and Shotmaker used the shoulder of his trigger arm to body check Snake into the ground. As Snake landed hard onto the dusty concrete floor, he rolled to the side without skipping a beat, raising his weapon to take a quick shot at Shotmaker before the Russian could bring his shotgun to bear.

Snake squeezed the trigger and heard a cry of pain from the Russian—unfortunately however, while Snake had the quick reflexes to hit the former Spetsnaz, he didn’t have the time or presence of mind to be careful with his aim, and only tore a flesh wound into the Russian’s bicep. This was enough to make Shotmaker drop the front of the weapon though, giving Snake time to scramble away before the booming hammers of the shotgun could be heard following him from around the corner again. He dove underneath the fallen shelf to beat a hasty retreat.

Shotmaker had run out of patience—when Snake disappeared from his sight, he clumsily thumbed slug rounds into the chamber with the hand of his injured arm.

He was finished playing with these Americans.

While Snake and Shotmaker were fighting, Fox realized what Snake had been trying to do with the discarded barbed wire spool and picked it up to start blocking off another one of the aisles. If he could just block off another two such that only the aisles at either end of the room were open, he and Snake could corner the Russian and get at him from both sides.

He was just about to toss it over the shelves to the next aisle when he saw Shotmaker stumbling into view, leaning against the wall to prop up his arm so that he could properly aim his shotgun in Fox’s direction. Shotmaker’s eyes were wide and bloodshot with unrestrained fury, blood pouring down his side.

“There you are, Cyka!” Shotmaker growled, taking aim.

Fox rolled to the side as Shotmaker fired, narrowly avoiding a new hole in his chest. Shotmaker lost his balance as he found himself unable to properly brace for the kick with only one good arm. Fox’s eyes widened into his predator’s stare as he saw this and took aim with his Beretta, squeezing the trigger four times.

Two of the 9mm rounds tore new holes in Shotmaker’s body, one straight through muscle in his abdominal wall and back, and one through his shoulder, narrowly avoiding his heart and ventricles. The other two rounds found purchase in the concrete right behind where his head used to be before Shotmaker threw himself to the side.

Fox would have stormed forward to give the coup de grace, were he not on the wrong side of the barbed wire. Shotmaker crawled away to the next aisle clutching his side while Snake crawled back under the fallen shelf and moved back to the other side of the room and turning towards the wall side aisle where the shelf had fallen from.

As Snake rushed forward, Fox repositioned himself to his adjacent aisle so that when he exited it, he and Snake were both on either side of the Russian mercenary, who was reaching with his good arm to pull the pin from a grenade his weak hand had tugged from his bandolier. Snake kicked it out of his hand before he could touch the pin, knocking Shotmaker onto his back to face the duo as they loomed above him.

“Ah…” Shotmaker sighed, lying back with his hands up. “You got me, Americans. It was a good fight, no? Boss Venom would be proud, don’t you think? Ha, ha, ha…” Shotmaker’s light laughter trailed off into coughing. Warm blood spurted from between chapped and dust-caked lips. Shotmaker wiped his face, looking at the blood on his smudged fingers with a wan smile.

Shotmaker let his hand flop limply onto the ground. “I am sorry, Comrade Adamska,” he muttered. “You chose me…trusted me…and I failed you. I failed Ahab… I can only hope that I trained my men well enough to put down our enemies. Glory…to Outer Heaven…”

Shotmaker’s eyes met Snake’s. “Do it…” he whispered. “Finish it.”

Snake didn’t hesitate. He squeezed the trigger. The back of Shotmaker’s head exploded onto the dusty concrete. Snake lowered his weapon, and Fox came over to lightly squeeze Snake’s shoulder.

“You good, rookie?”

Snake nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then, let’s go. Your Resistance friends need help.”

 

---

 

RESISTANCE RESCUE OPERATION

DAY FOUR – AFTERNOON

SUPPLY STORAGE FACILITY – EXTERIOR WAREHOUSES

 

It was like they had entered hell. Smoke choked the life out of the pinkish-orange skies as the fires rose from the motor pool outside, giving the sky an angry blood-red hue. The smell of burning meat and hair tangled with the stench of oil fires and shit expelled from the dead at the time of expiration. This, coupled with the chemical cocktail of polyester and asbestos fumes, ensured that the compound would never smell the same again, and the southerly winds made it so that the fires could be seen from as far away as Prince Albert. The fumes would likely poison the local communities for generations, to say nothing of the wildlife which fed them.

But none of this was forefront on the mind of Kyle Schneider as he led his team along the exterior eastern wall of the very same warehouse that Snake had infiltrated just days ago.

The rooftop mortar teams had been invaluable, as the prisoners that Snake had freed had pummeled the APC and tank units leaving the warehouse in addition to those that had survived the firebombing in the motor pool. Now they were raining fire behind Kyle’s advancing line, to prevent Outer Heaven’s eastern forces from mobilizing and surrounding them while the Resistance pushed forward.

Kyle gritted his teeth as his 24-man team split into four squads of six to clear the warehouses one by one. Each team stacked up on a door alongside two of the four warehouses and moved in to breach and clear each entrance. With the tall shelves and stacked crates everywhere, they were stuck in close quarters, knowing full well that the enemy could get the jump on them from any direction. It didn’t help that all the warehouses had metal catwalks high up either, so they had to constantly be on the lookout for attacks from above as well.

Kyle used hand signals to direct the men in his squad while calling out over the radio to the rest of the team. It unnerved him how easy it was to push the mercenaries into a defensive retreat. Not forty-five minutes into the assault, and Kyle found that they had suffered not a single casualty while they were mowing down enemy combatants left and right. It was too easy. Something wasn’t right.

It didn’t take long for his fears to be proven correct.

When Kyle’s Squad A and Squad B climbed up to take the office, there was a short shootout as office workers and mercenary guards took up arms to defend themselves. Once the opposition was put down and they checked all the closets, toilets, and cubicles for anyone hiding, the leader of Squad B called out, “Clear!”

“Clear,” Kyle replied into his radio after his squad finished checking the aisles on the bottom floor. “Don’t forget to check the roof, in case there are snipers.”

“Understood,” Squad B acknowledged.

Suddenly, there was a crackle of static as Loyiso’s voice burst out of the speaker. “Mortar teams are under attack! We’re being suppressed by chopper fire! They’ve sent in a Blackfoot!”

Kyle swallowed the curse that was forming in his throat. The UTH-66 Blackfoot was a helicopter of Outer Heaven’s original design, based on a modified version of the UH-60/S-70A Black Hawk to expand beyond its use as a utility and maritime search-and-rescue vehicle by loading it to the gills in advanced aerial weaponry.

The Blackfoot was a terror of the skies, and all African PMCs feared it as it usually meant a rain of rockets from its rack and 7.62x51mm bullets from its twin miniguns, to say nothing of the complement of highly trained Outer Heaven spec-ops units that they tended to carry into battle.

“Do you have the means to combat it?” Kyle asked, despite already knowing what the answer will be.

“Negative! Trevor had the RPG, but he’s been hit and separated from it—”

The sounds of explosions and gunfire interrupted Loyiso. “Trevor, hold on! We’re gonna get you out of here! Mbali, cover me! Imke, grab his legs and help me carry him!”

Kyle looked out the window, seeing the chopper swing around the corner of the storage building outside. He turned to his team and barked, “Get some fire on that chopper! We need to give some support to the mortar team!”

Obediently, Squads A and B laid down suppressing fire through the windows, forcing the helicopter to begin evasive maneuvers before turning to address the new threat. Kyle wasted no time in shouting to his radio, “Loyiso, I’ve just bought you a few seconds! Fall back to Arms Storage on Floor Three!”

“Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!”

There was no further room for conversation as the windows exploded, raining bullets and shattered glass into the office.

“Get away from the windows!” shouted one of the Resistance members before he was shredded into a thousand bloody pieces.

Squad B moved back out of the office and further into the warehouse before the rooftop caved in above them, taking out another two guerilla fighters before the rest descended the staircase and joining Kyle and Squad A. They sheltered behind the crates towards the center of the warehouse as the Blackfoot rained down fiery hell through the windows and the new hole in the ceiling.

“Squads C and D,” Kyle yelled into his radio. “There’s a new aerial threat at bearing approximately 140 from your position. We’re trying to keep it from harassing our mortar teams so they can retreat to safety, but it’s pinning us down now. We cannot regroup on you. Where are you on taking the other warehouse?”

“Acknowledged, Commander! Warehouse 2 is clear! Do you want us to take the heat off of you?”

“Negative! Hunker down and remain where you are. Anyone walking around outside is going to get shredded! Confirm my last!”

“Confirmed, sir! We'll stay put!”

Kyle leaned out from behind cover and fired his AK at the tail rotor of the chopper before it could swing back to facing the roof. He and his men moved back to the eastern side of the warehouse before the chopper could return fire with its miniguns.

Loyiso crackled over the radio again. “Sir! We’ve made it back inside!”

Kyle nodded, motioning for his men to hold fire and stay back. “Good show, Mortar Team! We’ll try to keep the Blackfoot occupied but be ready for any fireteams they may land. You may be in for some company soon.”

“Understood, sir.”

Before Kyle could switch bands to Squads C and D in the other warehouse, another voice joined the noise.

“This is Solid Snake, trying to contact any and all Resistance forces. Is anyone reading me on this channel?”

The American made it out? Kyle pressed his radio button. “This is Team Leader Architect. It’s good to hear your voice, Snake.”

“Likewise, Architect,” Snake replied. “I’m with my friend now. We got a radio off a couple of the mercs down in the basement prison complex. We’re green for a counteroffensive.”

“That’s excellent news, Snake. We could use the help.” Kyle smirked despite himself.

“Anything for a friend. What do you need, Architect?”

“The men you freed were supporting us from the roof, but they’ve been suppressed by enemy air support. We believe they’re going to have company shortly, but their bird is keeping us pinned. Maybe you can get to them before the enemy does.”

Silence for a moment, save for the spinning rotors and rumbling engine of the Blackfoot outside. Kyle moved up to put his back against the exterior wall and chanced a look out the window to see the bird swinging towards the southeastern corner of the building before descending just out of view behind the roof.

“Might want to get a move on, Snake. Looks like that enemy fireteam is coming sooner than later.”

“We’re on our way,” Snake promised.

 

---

 

SUPPLY STORAGE FACILITY

PRISON BASEMENT

 

Snake and Fox moved through the halls with surgical precision, laying down fire on the Outer Heaven guards as they moved through. With Shotmaker dead though, they didn’t have to put in much effort as the enemy’s morale started to crumble without their leader. As they moved steadily northward however, the resistance became much fiercer: units of German Shepherds and Belgian Malinois were brought forth alongside their handlers to stymie their progress.

“Agh!” Snake grimaced as he ran to climb a stack of crates to take shots at the approaching canines, putting down two attackers.

Fox ducked as a dog leaped to lunge at him, just barely keeping his arm out of its jaws only for it get purchase on his sleeve instead. In response, Fox wrestled the dog to the ground with his legs before matter-of-factly grabbing the dog’s skull by the jaws and behind the ears to savagely wrench it around and break its neck. Once free, Fox rolled up to his knees to shoot another dog in the head and put down a third that was still some paces away.

The Outer Heaven handlers screamed in rage before pulling out their MP5s and spraying bullets in their direction, forcing the two-man team to take cover to wait for a break in the fire.

“Seems like they’re not very happy with us,” Fox joked dryly.

“Well, we did just kill their dogs,” Snake replied. “That’s not the sort of thing one takes well.” He peeked over the crate when the enemy stopped to reload and took aim with his pistol. “Cover!” he called as he put down fire.

Fox took the opportunity to reload and reposition. “Switch!” he called. Snake crouched to reload while Fox aimed his rifle down range and put down the last of the resistance from the Outer Heaven attack teams.

Once the bullets were no longer flying and things had quieted down, the duo made their way down to the other end of the hallway. “I take it you’re a dog lover, Rookie?” Fox asked.

“You could say that,” Snake answered. “I’ve served with a canine soldier once before. They’re good teammates. Loyal, dependable. Can’t say I like fighting them.”

Fox shrugged. “That’s fair enough. Doesn’t mean you can take it easy, though. These guys will still kill you if you let them.”

Snake nodded. “I know.”

The duo moved further north, passing by two other cells, whose locks they busted open to arm and set free another two Resistance POWs, Anathi and Katlego, who followed them at the FOXHOUND agents’ instruction. “Your comrades need help,” Fox told them.

When they reached the last room with the service stairwell, they had to quickly take cover as the room was filled with a sudden burst of flames. When Snake looked out from the concrete pillar he’d put himself behind, he found a fearsome trooper clad in white with a red tank on his back and a black gas mask connected to a breather apparatus. On the left shoulder of the trooper’s shirt was the Outer Heaven diamond-studded unit patch, but on the right shoulder was a patch bearing the golden eagle of the German Bundesrepublik with the letters “GSG 9” over the top.

The trooper’s mask’s yellow reflective eyes glowed with a menacing glare as the trooper spread flames from the nozzle he carried, filling the room with an intense heat that made everyone sweat and flooding the space above them with black, acrid smoke that impaired visibility and made it difficult to breathe.

Snake dove onto the ground to stay beneath the smoke and crawled under a nearby table and behind low concrete barriers to try and get the angle on the fire trooper, who started slowly advancing on the POWs. Fox moved to intercept to keep the trooper from descending on the prisoners they just took the time to free. As Fox returned fire, the fire trooper turned to try at burning the FOXHOUND agent to a crisp, turning his back to face Snake.

Snake took the opportunity to plug the tank on the trooper’s back with bullets, causing it to spark and explode. The blast knocked the trooper forward onto the ground, where he rolled desperately to try and put out the chemical fire that was growing on his body. Snake waved to the rest of the team to head to the stairs, and the others gratefully coughed out their thanks as they rushed up the steps. Snake began to follow behind, before feeling the grip of gloved hands around his calf, tripping him up the stairs. Snake turned to point his Beretta at the attacker, only to stop as he saw the trooper, who had pulled off his mask to breathe better.

The trooper was coughing, face covered in third-degree burns, scars, and tears. The cracked lips parted to silently plead for help, only to be interrupted as the man’s eye was exploded by a bullet, leaving a single bloody tear down his face. A thin trail of smoke rose from Snake’s Beretta, but Snake was more focused on the visage he had just destroyed.

The face that looked at him now belonged to his friend Sniper Rat. But how? Rat was back at FOXHOUND when Snake last saw him; and that was only about a week ago! He shook his head—it didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be real. But the GSG9 patch on his shoulder definitely wasn’t fake. So how could it be?

“Rat?” Snake whispered, his voice sounding millions of miles away. His hands were shaking. He hadn’t hesitated, not having seen the face clearly until he’d already pulled the trigger.

But the remaining eye of the face that looked at him showed no recognition, only confusion and desperation as the man’s lungs tried desperately to cling to oxygen as what was left of his brain realized that it and his body was dead.

“What the hell?” Snake whispered in shock. “What the hell, what the hell?”

A pair of strong hands hauled Snake to his feet before smacking some sense into him. Snake was forced to regard Fox’s grim face and predator’s eyes as he came to his senses.

“You good?” Fox demanded.

Snake nodded, joining his team as they moved up the stairwell. He looked back behind him at the body they abandoned to the smoke, unnerved by the pleading one-eyed stare of Rat looking back at him.

 

---

 

SUPPLY STORAGE FACILITY – SECOND FLOOR

PERSONNEL AND STORAGE FACILITIES

 

The stairs leading up to the third floor had collapsed, forcing Snake and Fox’s team to get off at the second floor into a pitched battle. The four POWs that were held on the second floor had already broken out and together with another two Resistance members, they were taking positions on the eastern side of the building near the storage rooms trying to keep Outer Heaven from approaching from the west side to get to the elevator and stairwell on the northwest.

The Outer Heaven troops didn’t expect to find Snake, Fox, Katlego and Anathi to surprise them from the rear, putting pressure on them from both sides. With overwhelming force, the Resistance was able to quickly put down the Outer Heaven ground troops.

“Who’s in charge here?” Fox demanded.

A woman raised her hand. “Imke,” she said, shaking Fox’s hand. “I’ve taken command of the operation to release the Floor 2 troops and we’re defending the stairwell from attacks from below.”

“Impressive,” Fox praised. “But your people up top are in need of aid.”

Imke nodded. “I know. We need to keep the lower approaches covered until Kyle and his team gets here, though.”

“That’s where we come in,” said Snake. “Were you able to obtain any anti-air ordinance upstairs?”

Imke nodded. “There are some RPGs. A couple of Stingers. If you’re taking on that helicopter, I’d recommend the Stingers.”

“Got it,” Snake nodded. “We’re going to need you to hunker down here. We’ll take care of the mosquito, but if we get hit from behind, we’re going to be toast.”

“I can do that,” Imke replied confidently. “Do what you need to.”

Snake looked to Fox. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Snake,” Imke said, causing the FOXHOUND agents to stop momentarily. “Glad to see you made it out. Thanks for helping us.”

“Save your thanks for after we win,” Snake said with a smirk as he and Fox strode up the stairs two at a time. Snake hefted the SPAS-12 that he’d lifted from Shotmaker and took point as they slowly approached the door into the third floor.

When they reached the third-floor doorway, they almost ran straight into two Outer Heaven mercs dressed in olive drab fatigues making their way from upstairs. Snake blasted the first one point-blank with slugs from his shotgun, while the other rushed forward to grab the barrel shroud and force Snake to point it away.

Rather than fight for control of the shotgun, Snake let go of the trigger to shove the merc off-balance before grabbing his shirt with both hands and twisting his hips to throw the man over his shoulders and down the stairs before drawing his Beretta to quickly put two shots in the man’s chest and one in his head.

Behind him, Fox leaned over the crouching form of Snake to put rounds up the stairway, forcing the strike team to retreat back onto the roof. Fox handed the shotgun back to Snake. “I’ll get you your Stinger,” Fox said. “Get up there!”

Snake nodded and pushed up the stairs while Fox rushed into the third-floor arms storage. When Snake’s feet hit the reinforced BUR roof, he immediately put slugs downrange to buy himself room to move, taking down a third merc as he did so.

The spec-ops mercenaries responded by putting down a hail of gunfire as he exited onto the roof, forcing him to find cover. The winds were high, and Snake gripped the low brick barrier he hid behind, hoping that the gusts wouldn’t throw him off-balance while he thumbed more slugs into the shotgun’s internal tube magazine. Snake cursed. He only had 8 rounds left, not counting the one in the chamber. He’d have to make them count.

He quickly glanced at his ammo for the Beretta; two spare 15-round magazines left, plus another ten rounds loaded and an eleventh in the chamber. He peeked over the barrier he was using for cover: the remainder of the strike team was composed of six heavily armed Outer Heaven troopers, three of whom were armed with that strange, modified rifle he had seen when he’d raided the machine shop on the third floor a few days ago. Two of them had the underbarrel grenade launcher attachment that his had had.

Two others were armed with shotguns, and the last man, a large burly individual who appeared to be the team leader based on his hand gestures to the rest of the team, carried what looked to be an M249 SAW with a box magazine, and a FN P90 submachine gun hung from a strap around his shoulders. On the man’s chest was a patch which Snake could read even at this distance, containing the letters “MGK” in big, bold, white letters.

The MGK man got down on one knee behind another barrier and propped the tripod of his SAW onto it to start raining down suppressing fire on Snake’s position, forcing his head down while the strike team started moving on him. Snake blind-fired his Beretta around the corner closest to him until he’d expended the magazine, then used the break in the fire to lean around and put a couple of slugs into a shotgunner and another three into one of the riflemen with the grenade launchers.

Then he saw the other one switch his trigger finger to the launcher and point up his weapon at a slight angle. Snake dove away from the corner and crawled quickly away just in time for the bricks at the place he was at just moments before to blow apart behind him.

When Snake reached the other end of the barrier and got to his knees, the other shotgunner was just swinging around to face him, only to get two slugs at point-blank range for his trouble, causing him to fly back. Snake quickly followed up by swinging the barrel of his shotgun around the corner and firing his last slug at the other grenadier, who ducked behind an air conditioning unit.

Snake threw away his empty shotgun and quickly reloaded his Beretta, yanking back the slide to load a round. He reached out to the leg of the shot gunner he’d killed, yanking his arm back when more bullets pelted the ground where his arm had just been.

Blind-firing five times around the corner, he reached out again to grab the shotgunner’s ankle and yanked the body to him behind the barrier. On the shotgunner’s belt were two pineapple frag grenades and two smoke grenades. Snake grinned at his luck—a toothy predator’s smile.

He went for the smoke grenades first, pulling the pins and throwing both over the low wall before peeking up to take another few shots down range to keep the riflemen from getting any funny ideas before putting his head back down in the wake of more machine gun fire. He’d really need to do something about that SAW.

He grabbed the pineapples as grey smoke rose up from the rooftop and ran out from cover to rush the rifleman closest to him, gripping the barrel shroud and pointing the rifle into a safe direction while jamming the Beretta into the man’s knee and squeezing the trigger. The mercenary screamed in pain as his kneecap exploded. Snake took the opportunity to yank the rifle from the man’s hands while driving him back with a kick to the gut and followed up by ripping through the man’s torso with several rifle rounds.

Snake circled the smoke cloud, pieing the area behind it until the other grenadier was in his sights. He took down the last rifleman before he could notice him. Now it was just Snake and the team leader. They saw each other at the same time. The TL turned his SAW towards Snake, but the FOXHOUNDer was already taking cover behind another brick barrier and crawling as the rounds ripped through the wall above him, waiting patiently for the TL to reload or run out of ammo, whichever came first.

Then he heard it—the silence that was just a couple of seconds too long. No more bullets. Snake popped up and threw his grenades at the machine gunner. The TL was surprised and dropped his heavy SAW so that he could quickly run to avoid the shrapnel explosions behind him, mangling the discarded weapon.

Snake smirked. They were on more or less equal footing now. He took up a firing position behind an air conditioning unit and waited for MGK to show his face. He didn’t disappoint, rolling out to release a spray from his P90 forcing Snake to get down and move to the opposite corner of the air conditioner just as MGK reached his position.

Snake circled around and came up behind MGK, yelling “Freeze!”

MGK, surprised, put his hands up, the P90 dangling on his thumb.

“Weapon on the ground, now!” Snake commanded. “Slowly.”

MGK nodded slowly, deliberately crouching, and moving as if to drop the SMG from his thumb before the sound of rotors and engine screamed overhead, forcing Snake to turn his head away to watch as the Blackfoot swung overhead to turn its miniguns toward the roof.

MGK took the opportunity to spin around and landed a roundhouse kick on Snake’s torso, sending him stumbling while MGK turned his P90 onto Snake.

“Looks like you’re the one who’s lost, mate. Not owt you can do now,” said the man in a thick Manchester accent from behind a thicker, bushy moustache and a toothy smile. “How’s about you quit your strop and lay down arms, eh?”

Snake noted the patch on MGK’s right shoulder: the winged knife. The merc was former SAS. He thought of the Fire Trooper, and of Shotmaker. SAS, GSG9, Spetsnaz…how is Venom able to get his hands on such top-tier talent?

Now it was Snake’s turn to place his rifle on the ground. MGK moved forward and pulled the Beretta from Snake’s hip and tossed it aside. “No sudden movements, now,” he growled.

A bullet whizzed past them both, and they turned their heads to see Gray Fox leaning out of the doorway. Snake recovered first, grabbing the P90 and shoving the muzzle underneath MGK’s chin with one hand and drawing his Bowie knife with the other to stab MGK’s trigger hand. Snake let go of the knife to force his thumb into the trigger guard.

“Who dares, wins,” Snake taunted through gritted teeth, before pushing down the trigger and turning MGK’s head into bone splinters and paste.

Unfortunately, without the mercenary for leverage, there was nothing keeping the Blackfoot from firing on the roof. Snake wasted no time, sprinting to the opposite end of the roof while the miniguns spooled up and dove into a storage room at the far northeastern side as the chopper ripped into the roof behind him.

Gray Fox hefted the FIM-92C Stinger missile he’d hauled up the stairs with him and used Snake’s distraction to get a lock on the Blackfoot and fire the missile at the chopper. Immediately the Blackfoot backed away from the roof to begin evasive maneuvers and released flares to make the infrared missile careen off course and explode harmlessly into the ground just outside the base.

“Shit,” Fox cursed as the chopper swung its tail to face the new threat.

Snake pushed out of the storage room, carrying an RPG launcher over his shoulder that he’d found inside. No infrared, but the chopper was close enough overhead as it brought its miniguns to bear on the FOXHOUNDer who’d fired on it that he could trust his own aim. He waited until the chopper was just overhead so it had the largest projection in his direction before firing, clouding up and shaking the room behind him with the backblast.

The rocket grenade hit its mark, blowing up the tail rotor and sending the Blackfoot spinning as it fell towards the sole surviving helipad on the southeastern corner of the roof. Sparks flung in every direction as the main propeller sliced into the ground and the body of the metal bird slammed full force into the helipad, breaking it off of the building and sending both it and the aircraft tumbling to the earth below with a fiery boom.

Snake dropped the spent RPG from his shoulder, panting as he fell back against the wall and slid down onto his rear. Fox jogged up to him.

“You got him,” he said.

Snake nodded, out of breath. “Yeah.”

“You broken?”

Snake shook his head. “I’m good. Just…just need a minute.”

“Well, make it quick,” Fox commanded, offering his hand. “We’ve still got work to do.”

Snake nodded, grabbing Fox’s arm to pull him up before hailing Kyle on the radio. “Come in, Architect. This is Snake. Do you read me?”

“This is Architect. Send it, Snake.”

Snake breathed out a long a long, deep breath before answering. “Blackfoot destroyed. You’re clear to advance. We took out a huge chunk of internal resistance inside the building, too. You should be good to mop up the rest on your end.”

“Roger, Snake. Thanks for the assist. We’ll take care of the rest from here. Looking forward to shaking your hand.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Snake said, signing off.

He then tuned the radio to the proprietary frequency for mission control.

“Mission Control, this is Solid Snake reporting in. Do you read me?”

There was a short moment of silence.

“Mission Control, this is Solid Snake. Do you read?”

“This is Mission Control,” Big Boss’s voice responded. “There’s been no report for three days, Snake. What happened?”

“Ran into a minor snag,” Snake responded. “Got captured. But I’m free now, and so is Gray Fox. He’s right here with me.”

“That’s excellent news,” Big Boss said, sounding relieved.

“Would you like to speak with him?” Snake asked.

“In a moment,” Big Boss replied. “How did you two escape? Did the enemy learn of your identity?”

“Yes and no,” Snake answered. “They know we’re American, but they believe we’re rival mercenaries. They don’t know why we’re here or who sent us. They probably think the Resistance hired us, considering what’s happened today.”

“Elaborate.”

“Our asset in the Resistance leadership led an assault on the supply storage facility where we were being held, which gave Fox and I an opportunity to escape,” Snake explained. “We returned the favor by helping them take the building. The west side of Outer Heaven is theirs for the time being, along with all the armaments and supplies contained therein.

“I don’t know how long they’ll be able to keep it,” he continued, “but I intend to make use of it as a distraction while I move onto the second objective of locating and rescuing Dr. Madnar. Our asset is mopping up what’s left of the enemy resistance now. I’ll gear up and make my way forward after that.”

“I see. Good job, Snake. Excellent work.”

“Thank you, sir,” Snake said, trying not let it show on his face how pleased he was by the praise as he straightened up to see Fox approach. “I’m going to go check on the released POWs to see what they need for their defenses. I’m handing you off to Fox for a debrief.”

Snake handed Gray Fox the radio and made his way back to the stairwell to help the mortar team reset their defenses. Some of the more newly released POWs had obtained sniper rifles from the armories and set up positions alongside the eastern, northern, and southern edges of the roof.

As Fox watched Snake work, he spoke into the radio. “Boss. This is Gray Fox,” he said.

“It’s good to hear your voice, Fox. I apologize for the circumstances you were put in.”

“I knew what I’d signed up for, sir,” Fox replied. “I just didn’t expect you to send a rookie after me.”

“Not entirely my choice, but given the situation, he was the best pick with what I had to work with.” Big Boss paused. “What’s your estimation of him? How’s he doing so far?” 

Gray Fox watched over his junior as he assisted the rebels in setting up their rooftop fortifications. “The kid’s got talent,” he said. “No denying it. He’s got a lot of potential. But he’s still young and green. The ugly side hadn’t yet left its mark when I met him. When he looks into the abyss, he blinks first. And he acts like he’s got something to prove.”

“Do you doubt his conviction?”

“It’s not his conviction I’m worried about,” Fox said. “It’s his nerve to see it through, no matter what it takes.”

“Do you think he’ll survive?”

“After today, I’d say I like his chances better than when I first laid eyes on him,” Fox answered. “But it’s still a toss-up. He hasn’t been made to give up everything yet. We’ll just have to wait and see what he does.”

Fox stepped over to the western end of the roof to survey the burning motor pool and the torn-up warehouses as Kyle and his men rush into the supply storage building. “But I will say this,” Fox said. “If I were a betting man, I wouldn’t bet against him.”

 

---

 

MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE...

 

A knock on the door. A command to enter. The report is delivered: the rebels have captured the Arms Storage Building. The motor pool has been destroyed. The on-site armor column and troop transport has been decimated, and the surviving tanks and APCs are now under Resistance control. One of the Blackfoots have been destroyed. Final casualty count is approximately 250 lives lost to the Resistance’s estimated troop strength of 45.

Shotmaker, the Flame Trooper, and the Machine Gun Kid are all dead. The Flame Trooper is especially awkward; he was the trade given to Outer Heaven in return for letting FOXHOUND claim the sniper. Now they were in the unfortunate position of having to arrange for FOXHOUND to inform their new recruit that his brother is dead.

The messenger is dismissed with the Demon’s thanks.

The Demon growled a heavy sigh, expelling smoke. All was not lost, though the fact that the rebels had gained a tiny foothold into his domain was not a fact for which he felt no shame. Not to mention the fact that there was no way to collect the dead for as long as the area was occupied. The Demon cast a cloudy glare over the distant, blackened flames. Those men deserved to be burned and pressed into diamonds for their comrades to carry into battle, as was their custom; not to lay abandoned and anonymous inside their own home.

The Demon’s fingers curled and grasped with restrained rage and sorrow as he remembered the words:

‘Come unto me, my brother kin,

Whose bravery be set among the stars.’

So saith the old hanged man

To the empty graveyard stalls…

It was the last four lines of a poem penned by the Demon himself, ever since he first learned of his true nature. He carried it with him in his heart as he rode forth into battle with his legions of hell, soaking themselves in the blood of the innocent and the guilty alike. It helped remind him of why he fought, and his reason to live. The hated words were both comfort and cruelty in equal measure because he knew that once known, he could never let himself forget.

The Demon put out the command: tomorrow before first light, the reserve tank and two APCs with an escort team would be sent from the medical pavilion outside of R&D to assault the captured Rebel strong point. The armored column near Johannesburg would be recalled to replace the lost. Best case scenario, the reserve team would retake the building. Worst case, they could buy time and prevent the Rebels from making any further advance before the recalled convoy arrives to clean the place up. The leader was wanted alive if possible, dead if not.

The Demon had permitted the Resistance’s existence for too long. It was time they were dealt with. If Outer Heaven could successfully capture their leadership, their resolve would crumble, removing any further distractions from the ultimate goal. Speaking of which…

The lead engineers are summoned. A question is asked: how long before Metal Gear’s completion?

An estimation is given: three days.

The Demon is pleased. Three days until total conquest. Three days until the Demon can unleash his heaven, his Valhalla, upon the world. In three days, no one, not even the disciple, will be able to stand in his way.

The cloudy thunderstorm in the Demon’s eye crackled as it warmly regarded this new beginning.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY FOUR – DUSK

SUPPLY STORAGE FACILITY ROOF

 

The sun glowed a fiery orange and painted the sky with pinkish hues as it set over the newly captured Resistance territory. Men and women rushed to and fro throughout the building as resources were quickly gathered and secured. A small team of guerillas loaded speed boats and Kodiaks with crates of weapons and supplies to carry south down the river for the night raid while new teams arrived by river to help load the few surviving trucks for the long night drive back to headquarters.

They couldn’t move as a single boat fleet or truck convoy—they didn’t have the firepower to protect every vehicle at once if Outer Heaven forces found them. So, they would leave one vehicle at a time in small groups to transport their prizes back to Kyle’s second-in-command.

Kyle himself stayed behind in the supply storage building with his raiding team and the newly released POWs to set up a base camp in the storage facility proper and turn it into a more defensible position. Outer Heaven was going to want their property back while he milked this place for all it was worth, Kyle was sure of it. It was only a matter of time before they retaliated—it was just a question of whether the resources came from Outer Heaven HQ or from one of its forward operating bases. Regardless, they needed to be ready.

Kyle gripped his binoculars as he lay next to one of his sniper-spotter teams on the east side of the roof. From a distance, he watched little ants scurry along the ground around tiny toy vehicles. His intelligence told him they had some armor stationed at R&D; they’d need to make use of the mortars and anti-tank weapons. They may have one or two more choppers, too. Would they come under cover of night? He didn’t see them loading any floodlights, but he couldn’t assume.

“What do you see?”

Kyle looked up from his binoculars behind his shoulder to see Snake crouching beside him. Kyle couldn’t help but feel some admiration for the man—without him, none of this would have been possible, and Kyle knew it. The two Americans have been instrumental in helping them set up their defenses as well. Not that Kyle would ever admit it to him, of course. Still, some thanks was in order. He’d have to find a way to pay him back, he thought to himself.

Kyle handed the binoculars to the spy so that he could take in the view for himself. “My person on the inside tells us they have at least one tank and a couple of armored personnel carriers on-base. I suspect they’ll send them our way under cover of darkness.”

“Hm,” Snake grunted in agreement. “It’s what I’d do.”

Snake scanned the horizon around the towering R&D building. To the right was a massive parking lot with the tank, APCs, a few Jeeps, and trucks. Behind it was a series of white tents and smaller buildings. Snake pointed.

“What’s with the tents?” he asked.

“That’s the Medical Pavilion,” Kyle replied. “A field hospital where they take in any injured mercenaries, POWs, and civilians extracted from the northern zones of conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. After triage and initial treatment, the ones who aren’t able to continue fighting are sent to the Medical Wing.” He pointed to a building next door to R&D, just outside the exterior concrete wall.

“You say ‘POW’ as an official term. Does Outer Heaven actually have the legal authority to keep prisoners of war as an NGO?” Snake asked curiously.

“Does it matter? They clearly do anyway, regardless of how the UN feels about it.”

Snake hummed in acknowledgement, scanning over further to the right. “I see manufactured buildings. Trailers.”

“Personnel housing. You see the larger building just behind it, a little further south? That’s Administration.”

“Where Venom works…”

Kyle nodded. “Ostensibly, that is where his office is.”

“You’re not likely to find him there, though,” Fox said, coming up behind them and putting a hand on Snake’s shoulder. “Like I said before, Ahab’s been taking a very hands-on approach to overseeing Metal Gear’s development.”

“My on-site intel backs that up,” Kyle agreed. “I’ve been getting reports that Venom had set up a makeshift office and living quarters at the bunker, and he’s been seen coming and going from R&D every day.”

Snake shifted his view left past the fuel and chemical tanks outside the R&D building to the bunker a few clicks north. Multiple Blackfoot helicopters were lined up just in front of the building’s main entrance alongside four AA gun batteries, next to a flagpole which flew a black flag with Outer Heaven’s skull logo emblazoned in white.

“A lot of empty space between R&D and the bunker,” Snake commented. “Some serious air power, too. Is there another way inside the building besides the overland route?”

Kyle shook his head. “Not that I know of, but I’ve also never been to the east end of the base, and the bunker started construction shortly before I left.”

Snake looked to Gray Fox.

“I never got a chance to see the weapon with my own eyes,” Fox said, shrugging. “All of my patrols were either outside or in the lower floors of the R&D building near the lobby.”

“Didn’t you meet Dr. Madnar, though? Didn’t he know?”

“They’d provided him with an office near his cell to examine samples and perform draft and design work, but they’ve always kept him as far from the actual construction as they could. Those design documents you saw in the microfiche were lifted directly from his office, and it was when I was making contact with him that I got caught.”

“I see…” Snake trailed off.

Kyle looked between the two Americans. So, Snake was sent in to rescue Fox only because the first spy failed his mission and got caught. But what was this 'Metal Gear' they kept talking about? Some kind of weapon? Whatever it is, it’s clear that this was the real mission for Snake all along, and that rescuing Kyle’s people was only ever incidental to its success.

Snake looked over the terrain between them and R&D. The R&D building was positioned at the top of a cliff surrounded by trees, with a dirt road winding down and curving towards them. Before the cliff was about ten kilometers of flat desert landscape, lit up in a glowing golden-brown beneath the sun. Besides some low acacia trees and short grass, there wasn’t much between here and there. Snake would stick out like a sore thumb. He also saw some squat wooden buildings and trucks dotting the landscape here and there along the road leading up to the cliff.

“What are those buildings in the desert?” Snake asked.

“Kill houses. Outer Heaven uses the desert as training grounds for urban and desert warfare,” Fox explained. “They’re live-fire courses too, so they’re likely to have some ordnance onsite. Could be useful.”

“It’s about the only cover for miles between here and R&D,” Snake grumbled with a sigh. He stood up. “Seems like my best bet is going to be moving under cover of night and staying near the kill houses during the day. With the Resistance holing up here, I doubt Outer Heaven’s going to want to make use of them so close to enemy territory. It’s basically no-man’s land.”

“You’re planning on going out there?” Kyle asked.

“That’s the mission,” Snake grunted.

So, Kyle was right. This was the plan all along. Was this why Snake went out of his way to rescue Kyle’s men? To use them as a distraction while he infiltrated further into Outer Heaven?

Just like all the other Americans—only helping you when they want something in return. Kyle clenched his fists.

He looked back at his mortar teams. He could just arrange his men to pack up what they could and leave now. They wouldn’t be able to completely empty this facility like he fantasized, but he could guarantee their safety and still come out with some materiel and a black eye for Outer Heaven, an undeniable victory.

But Snake did help them, even though he never had to—the only person he needed to rescue was this ‘Gray Fox’ character. He kept up his end of the bargain. Besides, if the rebels pulled out early now, they’d miss an invaluable opportunity to strike back at Outer Heaven, maybe even put them down for good.

Kyle got up from his prone position and sat up to look at Snake properly. “Snake,” Kyle said slowly. “You helped us. I won’t forget that. But if you’re about to ask me to put my men at risk for you, then I need to know: why are you really here? It’s not just for your American friend.”

Snake looked over to Fox with a questioning glance. Fox glared back and nodded. Tell him what you must, he seemed to be saying. But be careful.

Snake looked back to Kyle. “Outer Heaven’s working on a weapon. A big one. Something that could be a threat to the whole world in the wrong hands.”

“So, you were sent to capture it? To put it in the ‘right hands?’ And whose hands are the right ones? America’s?” Kyle asked, narrowing his eyes.

Snake shook his head. “No, nobody should have this thing they’re putting together. I’ve been sent to destroy it.”

Kyle looked skeptically from Snake to Fox, then back to Snake. “And Venom? What’s your interest in him?”

Snake glared. “He’s the mission,” he repeated. “He is to die.”

Kyle felt grim satisfaction. A chance to put his family’s spirits at peace. He once more looked to his men going about their work. This could be the chance they were waiting for. Were they going to take it? Kyle closed his eyes and breathed in and out, slowly. If he was going to make this decision, he needed to know it was for the right reasons.

When Kyle’s eyes opened, he was smiling. His eyes held a determined flame. He reached out with open hand to Snake. “I’ll help you,” he said. “We’ll keep the enemy occupied while you make your approach.”

Snake shook the offered hand. “I appreciate that, Kyle.” He looked to Gray Fox. “Fox, will you stay behind and help them fight? Organize their extraction?”

Fox nodded. “Consider it done…Snake.”

Snake looked out over the rooftop as the sun hung lower in the sky. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s how this is going to work. Eastern exterior entrances were cut off and destroyed in the fighting. While we were taking inventory down below, I saw parachutes. I’m going to jump off the roof and go for an aerial insertion into the desert tonight, try to make it to the kill houses by morning.”

Kyle leaned over the edge. “Good thing you’re not afraid of heights,” he joked.

Snake chuckled. “If I’m lucky, I might meet the tank convoy halfway. If I get a chance, maybe I’ll get an opportunity to sabotage one of their vehicles, soften them up for you.”

“When you get up the cliff, look for a woman named Jennifer working as a combat medic at the Medical Pavilion,” Kyle said. “She’s my informant, and she’s got her own network of spies inside the R&D building. If anyone knows of an alternate entrance to the bunker, it’s going to be her.”

Kyle grabbed a pencil and a scrap of paper from a passing rebel and wrote down a radio frequency, handing it to Snake. “This is another informant. A musician named Diane. She’s been active in the personnel facilities and can keep you apprised of troop movements.”

“A musician?” Snake asked.

“She was once a vocalist in a popular local punk band called Thin Wall,” elaborated Kyle. “They were a big part of the anti-Apartheid protest movement, though they later disbanded when Outer Heaven started to take notice of their populist anti-authoritarian activities and started to see them as a threat. She remains popular with some of the soldiers here though and uses her charms to get information for us. She may be useful to you.”

Snake nodded. “Thanks, Architect.”

He looked to both men. “Alright, we’re all clear on the plan?” Snake asked. When both men voiced their agreement, Snake said, “Okay then. Let’s get to work.”

 

 

 

 

 

Notes:

Apologies for the long wait. Shortly after my vacation last month I experienced a death in the family. Between all that and my regular job besides, I wasn't left with much time/mental capacity for writing fic. I'm doing better now though, and ready to get back to it. This chapter was basically a series of war scenes. While Metal Gear is primarily a stealth game, action has always been a part of the Metal Gear formula and in the Metal Gear Solid saga at least, his allies have always been active participants in his missions. Considering that his mission control team in the OG Metal Gear was mostly composed of an active resistance faction against Outer Heaven and Snake himself said in MGS that in MG he was still green and Fox "showed him the ropes," I figured it would be weird if Fox and the Rebels weren't actively shown fighting here.

There's also the added benefit that it contributes to the themes of American interventionism, the mistrust it rightfully engenders and the nature of intelligence work since stirring up revolutions among the locals of an enemy regime to get them to do the fighting for you is kind of the US government's whole MO if the history of the CIA is anything to go by, so it fits that Snake's freeing of POWs would come with the side benefit of getting the Resistance involved to take some of the heat off him as he makes his way further into Outer Heaven.

Next chapter should hopefully come with less downtime in between than this one had. Fingers crossed.

Chapter 12: Wall of Armor

Summary:

After celebrating their victory, the Rebels set up their new base while Snake makes his way to the R&D building. On the way, he prepares an ambush to give the Resistance an advantage, and comes face-to-face with a new threat which leaves him biting off more than he can chew...

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY FIVE – MIDNIGHT

SUPPLY STORAGE FACILITY ROOF

 

Snake shifted his backpack on his shoulders, along with the parachute pack hanging alongside it. He knew the R&D facility could easily be reached in four or five hours on foot, but that was assuming both perfect visibility and a lack of supplies on his part as well as a lack of opposition on Outer Heaven's, and he wanted to be prepared. Thankfully, with the Resistance seemingly having captured the entire logistics apparatus of Outer Heaven's headquarters, there was no shortage of supplies. Snake assumed that the trek to the other side of the fortress could take a minimum of a day, possibly even two days depending on the level of opposition, and thus he packed accordingly.

Along with the uniform, boots, Kevlar vest, and backpack, Snake was carrying his loaded Beretta sidearm and one of the experimental Outer Heaven assault rifle carbines (without the grenade launcher attachment, so as to save on weight). Crammed in his backpack were two spare magazines for each weapon, his radio and headphones, two MREs, a full canteen of water, three frag grenades, two smoke grenades, an AN/PVS-7 night vision device, a brick of C4 and two M19 anti-tank mines (with detonators for each), a map and compass, a pack of cigarettes, his FOXHOUND lighter, and a collapsible mine detector.

The T-10C parachute that Snake was using had a maximum weight allowance of 360 lbs. Snake himself weighed about 170 when he started the mission (he assumed some small weight loss during the few days he spent imprisoned), and he carefully weighed each of his items so that he wouldn't exceed the limit—with his supplies, he weighed a combined total of about 353 lbs., give or take a few, just barely coming under the limit.

So much of his gear was identical to hardware he'd seen in the Gulf War; Outer Heaven must have suppliers within the US military or its allies giving them weapons. Snake made a mental note to mention this to Big Boss when next he reported over the radio. The brass needed to hear about this and launch an investigation. The fact that Outer Heaven had access to western weaponry was a problem. He remembered when America pulled out of the Persian Gulf after Bush announced the cease-fire. So much equipment was left behind, along with the old Soviet equipment that Saddam's forces were already using. Wouldn't be surprised if that came back to haunt us later, he thought to himself. Snake was determined not to let the same thing happen here.

Fox put a hand on Snake's shoulder. "You ready for this, Snake? All loaded up?"

Snake approached the edge of the building and looked down below, thinking about how much closer the ground looked now that he had his parachute on.

The typical height of a three-story building is about 32 feet. Due to the high ceilings of the three floors, the Supply Storage Facility's main building reached closer to about forty-five, maybe even fifty. Publicly, nobody really knows what the minimum safe height is to open a military parachute below terminal velocity, but the lowest recommended height is approximately 400 feet. The lowest recorded height of a base jump was 95 feet, and that was without the jumper having all the shit that Snake was carrying.

Snake didn't know any of this—however, he still had the feeling that he was back in sixth grade, dropping eggs from ladders in science class. So many of those eggs busted open to splat on the ground. Snake gulped as he turned to Fox with a smirk, gripping his shoulder straps hard so his hands wouldn't tremble.

"Good to go," Snake said, hoping he sounded surer of himself than he felt.

If Gray Fox could see through the rookie FOXHOUNDer's bravado, he didn't show it. Instead, he just nodded and motioned to Kyle, who stood nearby. Kyle approached and handed Snake a photograph of a pretty red-haired woman with green eyes. Snake flipped the photo over and saw the name "Jennifer Nkosi" written in Kyle's sloppy handwriting.

"To help you identify her," Kyle explained. "She's Afrikaner but she does speak both Afrikaans and English. Outer Heaven knows this, so you can converse in whatever language you wish without worry of intelligence leaks."

Snake nodded and put the photo in his pocket. "Thanks," he said.

Snake extended his arm and shook both men's hands. "Good luck, Snake," Kyle said.

"Go get 'em, rookie," Fox smirked; his first genuine smile to Snake.

"Thanks, you two." Snake walked a good thirty paces away from the roof's edge. He took in and exhaled a long breath as he wrung out his hands to try and dissipate his nervousness. With a burst of speed, he sprinted forth and sprang up from the edge, screwing his eyes shut as he yanked on the parachute cord during the instant between when his momentum stopped in the air and gravity took over.

Miraculously, the parachute opened completely after he left the roof, but it was still a very short fall. The darkness was all-consuming, which made it hard to prepare for when the ground came speeding up to meet him, though he was already tensed up to brace himself. As soon as his boots struck the earth, he crumpled and threw his torso forward. He hoped as he started to roll that he could cushion his fall by adding some momentum to his forward motion rather than using his feet to brake for a sudden stop.

His legs still hurt like hell (hell, everything hurt), but when he finally tumbled to a complete stop, Snake was relieved to find that nothing was broken. He did probably add plenty of new bruises and abrasions to his body though, he noted sardonically as he climbed to his feet with a wince and drew his knife to cut the chute free from his body so he wouldn't get tangled in it, before dropping the pack it came from.

Snake quickly dropped his backpack and checked his supplies. Thankfully, nothing was broken there either; even the NODs were still intact. Snake breathed a quiet sigh of relief as he pulled the night vision device onto his head and pulled it over his eyes, pressing the button to check its function.

The world lit up in a fuzzy green filter, with the horizon fizzling out into a matte dark green/black at a little over 300 meters. He turned 180 degrees to face the building he'd just left, about 30 meters away. Snake pulled out his compass and map and looked at the spot he'd circled indicating the training area about nine- or ten-kilometers due east. He put the map back into his pack and looked down at his compass to get his bearings and point himself roughly in the general direction of the training area before pocketing his compass and picking up his rifle.

"Well," he breathed in and said with an exhale, "Here we go."

Snake started making the trek eastward into the darkness. Every now and then he'd double-check his compass to make sure he was still going in the right general direction—unfortunately, the land was so featureless in terms of landmarks both in his NVDs and in the natural darkness that occasionally he'd discover that the uneven terrain had caused him to take a wrong turn and he'd have to double back, following his footprints in the sand until he was back on the path again.

After about an hour of blind fumbling in the dark, Snake stopped to take a short break and tuned his radio to Diane's frequency.

"Come in, Diane. Do you read me?"

A man's voice answered on the other line. "Hello? Don't you know what time it is? Who is this?"

Snake dodged the question. "I'm trying to reach Diane. I was told this was her radio signal. Is that correct?"

"Yeah, yeah, this is Diane's radio. She's in the shower right now. Now tell me, who is this? What do you want with Diane?"

"I'm…a friend of a friend," Snake answered. "Look, when Diane gets back, can you please ask her to call me back on this radio frequency? Thanks."

Snake sat down on a rock. He pulled out an MRE and cut it open, poured some water on the magnesium heater card and reinserted it into the food box. Once the chemical reaction activated, he opened the bag and pulled out a plastic spork to start eating his meal. He popped a ravioli into his mouth and chewed. As far as military rations go, it wasn't bad; one of the better meals.

While he was scarfing down his meal, his radio crackled, a woman's voice gradually revealing itself. "Hello? Hello? This is Diane. I'm trying to reach the man who contacted me. Do you read?" The voice was full, smooth, and vibrant. Definitely the voice of a singer.

Snake put his spork back into the MRE bag and wiped the sauce from his lips and fingers before twisting the dial on his headset volume control to adjust the gain. "Hello, Diane," he said. "Call me Snake. A mutual friend of ours said that you might be able to help me."

"Snake? Never heard of you. Are you with the Resistance?"

"Not exactly," Snake answered. "I'm with a third party trying to get into Outer Heaven. I did some favors for the rebels, so they're helping me out in return." Snake took another bite, asking, "Who was that guy who answered the radio earlier? Another Resistance ally?"

"No. Yes. Kind of. His name's Steve—my brother. He knows about me helping the rebels, but that's about it. I'm staying at his place right now, in between trips to the base for live shows."

Snake couldn't help but laugh. "They've got you doing shows out here? I thought Outer Heaven hated your band for being too subversive."

"They hated Thin Wall," Diane clarified. "I've played with other groups in South Africa before, and it's left me with some fans. Some of those fans work for Outer Heaven. It opens a lot of doors the average civilian could never hope to get through, especially now that I'm no longer part of Thin Wall's lineup. But what about you? If you're not with the Resistance, then why are you here? Your accent sounds American. Are you CIA?"

"No," Snake shook his head. "Though the alphabet agencies do have an interest, I don't work for them. Honestly, the less you know about who I am and who I work for, the better. All you need to know is that we're on the same side."

"Really? And what makes you say that, Mr. Snake?"

"Because we both want the same thing: Outer Heaven taken out of the picture."

There was a moment of silence. "Alright," Diane relented. "So, what do you need from me?"

"Our mutual friend is on base as we speak. We worked together to capture a supply depot, and they're setting up shop while I head to R&D."

"Those explosions were you? No one's ever made it into the fortress from outside before besides a handful of spies; and last I had heard, most of them got caught."

"Yeah. Our friend tells me you spend a lot of time near the personnel facility. Do your eyes and ears ever sense anything useful about their troop movements, or maybe overhear some plans for future fighting?"

"Yes. When you took over the western supply facility and vehicle depot, you decimated Outer Heaven's armored division. Aside from a handful of rotary aircraft, they only have one mechanized unit left onsite. I heard they're planning on sending them later this morning just before dawn for a counterattack."

"Did they say when, exactly?"

"It won't be for another few hours. But you won't be able to get here in time to stop them from leaving."

"I wasn't planning to. Figured I'd meet them halfway at the kill houses."

"You're planning on taking on three armored vehicles and armored infantry by yourself?"

"Not exactly. More of a hit-and-run sabotage kind of thing. Cripple them so they'll be easier for our friend to take down. But that's not important right now. Tell me, about how many Outer Heaven employees are onsite, if you had to guess?"

Snake took the last few bites of his MRE and stood up to shoulder his weapon and once more moved eastward, marching as he talked.

"It's hard to tell; I haven't been to every facility. But the personnel dorms could house about three to four hundred people, easily. That's not counting the civilian staff that come in from off-site. This place is big enough to have the population of a small city, but you wouldn't need quite that many people to keep everything running. Gun to my head, if you made me guess, I'd say…maybe fifteen hundred people? Twenty-five hundred, at most."

Which meant that the men he and the Resistance killed didn't even make up the brunt of Outer Heaven's total forces onsite, not even counting the reinforcements from outside the base that Outer Heaven was probably putting together right now. Snake sighed as he checked his compass, corrected his march to about 30 degrees to the right, and continued moving.

"What about their leader, this Venom guy? Way I hear it, these people are so loyal it's almost like a religion. A real cult of personality."

"That's one way of putting it," Diane agreed. "Many of Outer Heaven's mercenaries were former enemies captured on the battlefield and are either convinced or brainwashed into joining. Ahab has a reputation for being merciful towards enemy combatants who surrender or get captured, and his ideals are attractive to the men and women under his command."

"What are his ideals?" Snake asked.

"From the way the men tell it, he claims to desire a world where soldiers are always respected, always needed. A place where soldiers live and work only for themselves and fight for their own causes, rather than for a government or a creed that would use them and throw them away. That's what he says, anyway."

Snake lifted the NVD from his eyes, opened a pack of Lucky Strikes, and stuck one in his mouth. The flame from his lighter and the burning, ashy ember glowed brightly against the darkness that enveloped him. He checked his compass as he walked. It had been a couple of hours since he first started trekking away from the supply depot. He had to have been getting close to the training facility. An aardvark crawled in the distance over the rocks and into some bushes, disturbed by his passing.

"I know a lot of men back home who'd like the sound of that," Snake commented. "Old vets who got left behind by the system, no one to take care of them. It sounds like this Ahab is trying to create a new Sparta; some kind of warrior-run city-state, rather than an actual commercial enterprise."

"That's the culture he's trying to foster here," said Diane. "Though if you were to ask the men, they'd say it's more like he's trying to build a Valhalla."

"…Putting the 'Heaven' in 'Outer Heaven,' huh?" Snake said dryly. "And the men believe in this dream? Like he's some kind of messiah or something?"

"I suppose. Personally, I think he's no different than any other warlord; he came into power with violence and appeals to the darker nature of his followers so that they may help him keep it. He's a monster who lives on the blood and misery of others, nothing more."

"Then maybe it's time someone knocked him down from his pedestal," Snake retorted.

Slowly, the shape of the kill houses melted into the green view of the IR goggle. Snake dropped his cigarette and ground it into the dirt with his foot as he raised his rifle for the approach. Three structures of what looked like plywood and concrete roughly two stories high sat at about thirty to thirty-five feet apart. Methodically, Snake took the time to clear every building, but just like he'd predicted when he started his journey, the buildings were empty when he got there.

Outside the buildings on the south side were four trucks with covered beds. By the doors of each building were silver crates and toolboxes. Snake grabbed a crowbar from inside one of the trucks and busted off the padlocks of each lock box. Inside were more weapons and more ammunition, as well as road flares, a flashlight, and a few Claymore mines.

Snake continued conversing with Diane while he worked his way around the training facility. "Diane, have you ever been inside the R&D building?"

"No, why?"

"I'm looking for someone. An old man with a moustache and receding hairline. Russian. The mercs are holding him prisoner somewhere inside. Have you heard anything about that?"

"I've heard talk about an old man they have working on some kind of secret project."

"That's him. Do you have any idea where in the building they might be holding him?"

"No, but I do know he's under the highest level of security. A couple of Ahab's most trusted personal guard are watching over him."

"Personal guard?"

"Mm-hmm. The men say they're very dangerous, to the point that they even make many of the rank and file nervous to be around them. They describe them as something less than human."

"Less than human?"

"They have some kind of biological and mechanical augmentation that makes them inhumanly strong and fast. Some of the soldiers even say they can turn invisible. They've been seen carrying loads over their heads that not even a circus strongman could lift, like it was nothing."

Snake paused as he stopped at the beginning of a dirt path leading to what he believed to be the main road that went east to west, the east end winding up the cliff to R&D several kilometers away, and the west end stopping that the supply storage building in the distance. He gripped his weapon tighter as he took in the information that Diane was telling him.

Outer Heaven has Irregulars on their payroll, he realized with horror. He thought back to his days in training with Black Mamba and Chameleon.

"Where does a person like that even come from?" Snake wondered.

"No one knows for sure. Some of the older personnel have said that they've been around since the early days of the company, but if anyone knows anything more about it, they weren't telling me."

"Hmm…" Snake growled in thought.

Once Snake found the training camp clear of hostiles, he walked back to the main east-west road that ran parallel to the place. He was certain that when the mechanized infantry unit came through here, they would have to be coming by this road. That gave Snake an idea. He climbed into one of the trucks, hammered the underside of the dash beneath the steering wheel, releasing the wires. He pulled out his knife, and set to work hot-wiring the vehicle, taking care to make sure that the headlights were set to be turned off first.

Within a few minutes, he had the engine running. Donning his NVD, he drove over onto the road crossing Before parking the vehicle and digging his knife into the tires to let all the air out. He repeated this process until all four trucks were parked, two to block the road, and another two to block off the driveway leading to the kill houses. This would force the vehicles to move along a directed path off the road and give any offloading infantry limited room to maneuver.

He then opened his pack and dug out the AT mines and C4. He grabbed a shovel from the training camp's work shed and ran east up the road by about a couple of miles before he started digging a small hole in the road's center.

As he worked, he asked Diane, "Hey, Diane. I've been hearing whispers here that Ahab might be planning a military coup in South Africa. You've been spending plenty of time around the mercs here. Have you heard anything to that effect?"

He heard a snap, sizzle and an inhale. Diane had lit her own cigarette. "Just speculation. Whispers, like you said. But it is true that there's been increased activity among the men; not just here, but at Outer Heaven's other bases, too. Yet, it's been months since Outer Heaven's taken on any new contracts. It's suspicious."

"So, you think Outer Heaven might actually try and invade? What about the SANDF? Won't they be able to put up a fight?"

"They've got numbers, for sure. But the armed forces under the new constitution are still new, and from what I've heard, there's been some issues with the integration process. Remember, our government only ended the apartheid structure and instituted universal suffrage just a few short years ago. The wounds from colonialism are still fresh, and they're only just starting the healing process."

Snake wiped the sweat from his forehead as he primed the mine and rigged it for remote detonation before carefully placing it into the hole and covering the space around and on top of it with dirt. Once finished, he ran back to the training camp's driveway and then armed and planted the C4 charges underneath the trucks blocking the driveway. Finally, he crossed the road to dig another hole a ways away from the parked trucks to plant the other AT mine.

"I think I get what you mean," Snake said. "In some ways, my country's not that different—it's still struggling to reckon with its own sins from before the Civil Rights movement in the sixties. But if there's one thing our military tradition and even our citizenry hasn't been lacking in, it's presenting a unified front in the face of adversity. If there's one thing I've seen watching the rebels fight here, it's that the people here are strong."

"Yes, I think so, too," Diane said, though her voice sounded less optimistic than her words. "But if there's one thing I've seen while observing Outer Heaven, it's that simply being strong may not be enough by itself. As you say, we need unity. The people are ready to fight for their freedom from their oppressors, but will our government stand behind us when the time comes? Or will they just continue to be victim to the machinations of foreign and corporate interests, like the Safari Club did with France, or the entire west African coastline to Nestlé?"

Snake's thoughts turned once again to America, and the people back home who believed in him and were depending on his success. An image came unbidden to his mind of Big Boss in formal Army dress as he returned Snake's salute and shook his hand on the day of Snake's formal introduction into FOXHOUND. Snake knew that he was only here because of the effort, blood, sweat, and tears of the men who came before him, and because the Boss believed in him.

"I think they will," Snake replied with conviction. "And even if they don't, I believe that you can win this fight. For the sake of everyone, you have to believe it, too. I'll help however I can."

"That's…" Diane paused. He heard her take a breath. "Thank you, Snake. Of course, I'll help you however I can, too."

"Thanks, Diane. I'm going to sign off now, but I'll call you again when I get closer to the R&D building."

Snake signed off the radio. He ran over to the silver tool crates and pulled out a few Claymores, planting them along the driveway leading up to the kill houses. Once finished, Snake trotted up the stairs of one of the kill houses and sat down at a window that overlooked the southeastern side of the training camp so he could get a clear view of the east end of the road. He set up each of the three detonators, in order of intended activation, on the windowsill in front of him. He pulled out his binoculars and got comfortable.

Nothing else for him to do now but wait.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY FIVE – 0530 HOURS

MAIN EAST-WEST ROAD

 

The sound of the whine inside the fighting compartment was deafening. Erik Soder was thankful for the ear protection as he and his crewmates felt the rumble of the metal beast beneath their feet which carried them. He still kind of wished that tanks came with air conditioning, though; with the heat radiating from the engine inside, the whole compartment was sweltering—and it was only going to get worse once the sun rose and they got hit by the warmth of the summer air, to say nothing of the upcoming battle itself. Still, at least the tank crew wasn't wearing heavy armor like the boys in the IFVs, he supposed. Small miracles.

"Hey," Ricardo Galvez, their machine gunner, called down to him. "You good, Soder?"

Soder wiped the sweat from his brow, and nodded to his partner, giving a thumbs-up. He turned around and slid open the ammo compartment. Full rack of shells. Should be more than enough to put down a building full of rebel sewer rats. Soder corrected himself, remembering the details of the morning briefing. Those sewer rats had captured a facility for storing ordnance. Better not to get too cocky. He shook his head to himself.

Soder called out to the driver over the mic. "Yo, Takashi, we there yet?"

Galvez grinned. "Yeah, Dad, how long's this road trip gonna be?"

Hironobu Takashi rolled his eyes inside of his leaned back chair in the front. "Don't make me pull over this thing." He chuckled. "Smartasses," he muttered to himself.

Takashi looked over at the assistant driver and main gunner, Cpt. Mikhail Ivanov, who was handling navigation. Ivanov smiled back. "It'll probably be another ten minutes. You know these tanks are slow as shit," Ivanov replied on the radio in a very slight Russian accent. "We're almost half-way there," he added.

"Yeah, but you know, if you're unhappy with our pace, you're more than welcome to come down here and give this a try, gentlemen," Takashi sniped back.

Galvez and Soder chuckled.

The two IFVs traveling with their tank were forced to slow to match their pace; one at the front of the convoy and one behind the tank. Soder was sure that the other guys were probably hoping they'd get to beat the worst of the day's heat just as much as they were.

"What the hell…?" Galvez's low voice was barely audible on the radio over the sound of the engine. "Takashi, are you seeing this?"

"I see it, Galvez."

Soder, now curious, opened the hatch above him and climbed up to see what they were looking at.

About a little over three kilometers ahead of them, downhill from their position, at the turnoff to the training grounds, four trucks, parked such that they blocked the roads in either direction were illuminated in the combined headlights of the convoy. In another couple of minutes, the IFV in front of them would reach it.

"Uh, Cap, was there a training exercise scheduled today and nobody told us?" Soder asked.

"Not that I know of," Ivanov answered. "Hang on." After signaling to the convoy to halt, he tuned his radio to Central Command.

"HQ, this is Captain Ivanov of Mechanized Infantry Unit Number 41, callsign 'White Elephant,' speaking. Are you reading this? Over."

Fuzz over the line, followed by a response. "This is HQ. Send it, Elephant."

"Are there any training exercises scheduled for today at the kill houses? Over."

"Please wait one moment…that's a negative, Elephant. Interrogative: why are you asking? Over," said HQ.

"The four trucks stationed at the facility are blocking the main road and the turnoff."

"Has there been any sign of enemy resistance?"

"No, sir," Ivanov replied. "No visible damage to the trucks that we can see at this distance." He looked through the periscope to the training grounds. "No sign of life in the buildings, either."

"Can you safely maneuver around the vehicles, Elephant?"

Ivanov looked questioningly to Takashi, who nodded after glancing down the road.

"We believe that will be more than possible, HQ."

"Copy that, Elephant. Orders are for the convoy to inspect the vehicles to determine if they are operational. If so, then return them to the facility. Otherwise, continue on to main objective. Advise that you proceed with extreme caution in case there are any Resistance members nearby. ROE is weapons-free in the event of enemy resistance. Buildings expendable. Verify."

"Roger that, HQ. We will stop and investigate before proceeding to main objective. White Elephant, out," Ivanov signed off before relaying the orders to the rest of the convoy.

The rumbling beneath Soder's feet resumed as the convoy started to move forward, more slowly than before. Soder closed his hatch and dropped down so he could load the cannon at a moment's notice. He glanced up and saw Galvez's eyes had widened a little as he looked much more alert.

"This is spooky…" Galvez muttered.

"This is Red Badger One," came a growl over the radio. It was the IFV in the front. They had just parked up close to the trucks. "We're going to have our crew disembark and investigate. Hold position until we've confirmed that it's safe, over."

"Roger that, Badger," was Ivanov's response.

Soder watched from the periscope camera as the rear door of the IFV opened and six of the twelve passengers unloaded from the vehicle, dressed in full battle dress with multiple layers of armor and padding. Leading them was a giant figure clad in gray and black, who looked to be nothing but metal and pure muscle. Soder relaxed slightly at the sight.

They'd been assigned two of their boss's personal guards, one for each IFV. With the members of the Bloody Brad unit (named for their physical strength and resilience, which was said to rival that of the US's Bradley IFV) watching over them, Soder knew that the boys outside couldn't be in any real danger. The squad moved around the trucks, searching them inside and out.

"Damage under the steering wheel. They were hot-wired," a soldier reported. "No air in the tires. Whoever it was who parked these, didn't want them moving."

"Checking underneath," said another soldier, who Soder saw lower himself to the ground to crawl beneath one of the trucks. "This one's clean."

He moved over to the next truck and did the same thing.

"Shit! This one's rigged! Everybody, get ba—"

The two trucks blocking the turnoff exploded, taking a few of the men with them. "Contact, contact, contact!" the survivors shouted as they moved to take cover behind the IFV.

"Back up, Badger Two," Takashi called to the IFV behind them. "I'm going to put some distance between us and the threat!"

The IFV moved in reverse to give Elephant space, only to get hit from underneath with another BOOM, wrecking the engine and killing the driver and occupants with shrapnel.

"Badger Two's down!" Ivanov shouted. "Soder, give me ammo! Galvez, do you have eyes on!?"

"Negative, Cap! No sign of the enemy!"

Soder was already moving before Ivanov could finish getting a word out. Within seconds, he had opened the loading bay, spun around, grabbed a shell, turned back, and inserted it before closing the bay again. "Shell loaded!" Soder called out.

"We're taking fire!" screamed a voice on the radio. It was Badger-1. Soder looked into the periscope camera. The rest of the soldiers had dismounted from the IFV and were taking cover behind the vehicle and the two downed trucks that weren't currently on fire. The Bloody Brad had his rifle raised, serving as a human shield to two of the soldiers.

Why didn't the bioroid just move in, Soder wondered?

"Do you know where the fire is coming from?" Ivanov called out.

"Bearing 23 from our position! Southwest corner of the closest building!"

"Roger, moving to advantageous position. Galvez, give our boys some covering fire! Takashi, move on bearing 220 and move us around Badger-1 so I can get a better shot!"

The machine gun buzzed as the tank rumbled. Soder felt the adrenaline hit his bloodstream as he tried to focus on the task at hand so that he wouldn't panic. The Resistance had made it this far east already. They must have more ground forces than they initially thought if they had this kind of confidence. They had to have been moving and planning all night. They were ready for us, too, Soder thought.

Just what kind of people do they have working for them?

There was a slight lurch in the compartment as the tank reoriented its center of gravity—they had left the road and were turning left to start a U-shaped turn to the right. Takashi must be trying to maneuver them behind their ground squad and around the trucks so that Ivanov could get a better shot at the building's southwest corner.

An explosion rattled the inside of the fighting compartment. Soder felt his stomach lurch as he was thrown forward into the closed shell bay. There was some sort of grinding sound before all motion beneath their feet was gone. They'd been driven to a halt. Soder looked up at Galvez, who was already climbing half-way out the hatch to look over the side, wincing as he clutched his ribs.

"What the fuck was that!?" Soder shouted.

Galvez leaned over to look down at Soder. "AT mine! They've taken out the treads and wheels on the right! We're grounded! Say again, we're groun—"

Suddenly, Galvez's head exploded like a crushed raspberry. Brain matter and bone painted the back of the tank. Soder looked at his hands. Some of the dripping blood splattered down onto him. He felt the floor rumble with main cannon's turret turning. The tank shuddered, but Soder barely felt it. He couldn't hear or feel anything. He was too busy staring at the blood on his hands. There was a muffled scream. It sounded like his name.

"Soder! SODER!"

Soder's senses snapped back to reality. It was Ivanov over the radio.

"Soder! Are you still alive back there?"

Soder nodded, shaking. "Y-yes, sir. But…Galvez is—"

"Then load me some more fucking ammo! Takashi! Grab a rifle and use the tank for cover! Call HQ for help! And find out why those fucking freaks they sent with us aren't making themselves useful!"

"Understood," Takashi answered. Calm, collected, professional. Like his ride didn't just turn into an armored coffin.

Soder's trembling fingers slid open the ammo rack, pulled the lever to open the ammo bay and release the spent shell, and hefted another shell into the cylinder. He lifted and pushed the lever to load the new shell in place.

"Loaded!" Soder called out.

There was another explosion, but it wasn't the tank firing. This one was more distant. There were more callouts over the radio. They've planted claymores on the driveway approach, they'd said. The enemy must be hunkering down in the kill houses. They wanted Elephant to level them. Ivanov was more than happy to oblige.

Another fire shook the fighting compartment. Soder smelled smoke, and grabbed a small fire extinguisher from the wall, but he couldn't see where the smell was coming from. It was getting hot. The metal walls around them hurt to touch. "Uh, Cap?" Soder said. "I think we've got a fuel leak or something. Something's burning up back here!"

"Takashi, check it out! Soder, load me another shell!"

Soder complied, unloading another spent shell, and loading another round. Takashi's voice answered on the radio.

"Soder's right, boss. We've got a fuel leak. It's way too close to the ammunition compartment. Recommend evacuating the tank immediately."

"Soder, did you load my round?"

"Affirmative, sir!"

"Alright, then get out. I'll be right behind you once I fire."

Soder didn't have to be told twice. He grabbed his rifle and climbed out of the second hatch next to Galvez, scrambling down the armor and trying his best to keep his head down. He slid off next to Takashi.

"What's happening, Takashi? Where is he—the shooter that took out Galvez?"

Takashi pointed at the southernmost building, which collapsed on the west side. "I'm pretty sure the shots were coming from that direction."

There was no sound of returning fire. The survivors from the IFV explosions were stacking up behind the trucks on the driveway, but there was no sign of the two Bloody Brads that had accompanied them.

"Where are the Brads?" Soder asked.

"They went wide," Takashi explained. "Trying to surround the facility."

Just then, a voice was heard over the radio. It was strained, hoarse, with a slight electronic tinge in the background, like it was being fed through a Casio synthesizer. The voice was speaking Bantu. "Captain Ivanov, this is Commander Gamba of the Bloody Brad division. Adjust your aim twenty degrees to your left, toward the building just north of the one you damaged."

"Is that where our target's hiding?"

"Affirmative. He is slippery, and may make it out before you level it, but even if he survives, he will be trapped, and we can finish the job."

"Understood," Ivanov said, adjusting his targeting solution. "Firing."

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY FIVE – 0645 HOURS, SUNRISE

TRAINING FACILITY, NORTHWESTERN KILL HOUSE

 

Snake only saw the tank's cannon point to his window just in time to dive down the stairs and land in a rolling somersault that had him land painfully on his back on the hard concrete for the second time before the floor above and behind him started to cave in. Not sparing a second, he dove out a second open window just ahead of him onto the dirt path as the prefab building behind him crumbled into the ground. Snake silently cursed to himself.

He was starting to run out of hiding spots, and with the rubble on the west side, that only gave him east and north in terms of directions. He put his back against a surviving wall on the northeast side of the southern kill house. It was only a matter of time before the enemy moved in.

Before he could think about it though, he heard a series of sonic booms from way too close by, followed by a huge cloud of dust on the north and east alleys. He found himself trapped between the rubble and two newcomers who skidded to a stop in front of him.

They cut an imposing figure against the rising walls of dust and sand kicked up behind them: two huge men covered in what looked like armor plating that reminded him of tank armor. But that couldn't actually be depleted uranium, could it?

The two tangoes had to have been seven feet tall at least, gigantic walls of muscle and sinew, plated in metal. Under the armor they wore skin-tight grey suits which had mounted electronics and mechanical parts. Snake couldn't make out their faces easily, as they wore some kind of breathing apparatus. But he could see the glow of their eyes underneath their masks, malevolent and gleaming. He thought of his nightmare back at the prison, of the demonic face in the darkness accusing him.

There was no doubt in his mind—these were the Irregulars that Diane had warned him about. Snake carefully stepped back onto his right foot, trying to calm down and loosen his grip on the rifle that had reflexively tightened at the newcomers' approach.

"So…," Snake said, slowly and deliberately, like he was trying to soothe a wild animal. "What's your guys' deal? Some kind of cyborgs? Like the Terminator?" It would hardly be the weirdest thing that Snake had encountered at this point.

The bigger of the duo placed a hand on his chest. His voice sounded artificial, with a deep echoing breath that made Snake think of Darth Vader.

"I am Commander Gamba of the Bloody Brad Squadron," he said in English. "We are the enhanced personal guard of Ahab, and the greatest warriors in all of Outer Heaven. This here is my second-in-command, Lieutenant Olivier." Gamba gestured to the other bioroid standing at his right, before pointing to Snake. "And you, Intruder, are a dead man."

Snake squared up his stance. "Is that so?"

Cmdr. Gamba nodded. "It is. Your mind simply has yet to realize it. You did well to take on our mechanized troop all by yourself. You are truly a strong fighter. Perhaps we have finally found a worthy opponent. What do you think, Brother?"

Another artificial voice, this one slightly higher, came from the Lieutenant. "I do not know, Commander. He still looks weak to me."

Once again, Cmdr. Gamba nodded. "A test, then. To see what this man is truly made of."

Both bioroids widened their stances. Though they each had P90s strapped to their massive thighs, they did not draw them, nor did they even close their fists. Their glowing eyes pulsed like stars going supernova. Every muscle in Snake's body tensed.

"Rejoice, Intruder! This will sure be a fine battle between us three," Cmdr. Gamba shouted. Snake wasn't sure, but he thought he detected a hint of mirth in that electronic tone.

There was no movement between them. It was like something out of a spaghetti western—a Mexican standoff as the opponents eyed each other, waiting for the other to make the first move. Snake flexed his trigger finger.

It wasn't clear who moved first. The bioroids appeared to phase in and out of existence and the ground cracked and rumbled beneath their feet as they charged. Snake let off several shots, but he wasn't sure if he was actually hitting anything or if they were simply bouncing off the super-soldiers' armor. One popped into being in front him, lunging forward, and Snake dropped and slid under the attacker, pointing his rifle upwards to fire up at his target's center mass as he passed underneath.

After he passed between the legs, he rolled off to the side as the other bioroid appeared above him, just narrowly missing as gargantuan foot slammed down and embedded itself in the ground to the knee in the spot where Snake just was. Snake dropped his rifle and grabbed a flashbang with his off hand, used his right to prime it, and tossed it between them before scooping his rifle up and moving away at a flat run.

He dove inside the remains of the southern building just as the flash popped off. He peeked out the door and saw the two giants stumble slightly, and he grabbed a fragmentation grenade and tossed it shortly after. He didn't stick around to watch the boom, instead sprinting for the last intact building on the northeast side.

Snake wasn't sure if the explosion was enough to kill or disable the Irregulars, but even if it was, there were still enemies in the area. He took cover behind a load-bearing concrete pillar and aimed towards the door from which he came. He waited two seconds for the sound of movement, before turning around and heading out the northern back door, finding himself face-to-face with Cmdr. Gamba: the bioroid looked like torn-up meat due to exposed bone and muscle tissue.

The meat, bone, and skin regrew around the body, and though the armor did not regenerate, the suit did. All that Snake saw before the mask returned was Gamba's skull, grimacing with many sharp teeth like a true beast of the Devil's army.

All Snake could think of to say was, "…Shit."

Cmdr. Gamba's eyes sparked with a terrible glee. "Indeed," he agreed.

Snake raised his rifle, only for Gamba to smack it out of his hands and send it flying. With a light shove, Gamba sent Snake's body flying to the other side of the room back into the pillar. Wincing with the effort, Snake drew his pistol and knife and rolled to his feet, slashing at Cmdr. Gamba's inner thigh and up into his stomach.

Rather than severing the femoral artery and disemboweling his enemy as planned, Snake felt like he'd barely managed to inconvenience the giant as Cmdr. Gamba grabbed Snake's knife arm by the forearm and squeezed. Snake felt his bones creaking from the strain and yelled. He raised his pistol to Gamba's face and fired three shots, catching Gamba on the third and grazing his temple. This seemed to loosen Gamba's grip, allowing Snake to grab the hilt of the knife he'd embedded in Gamba and use his foot as leverage to shove his aggressor away.

Snake turned to run, only to find Lt. Olivier waiting for him. Olivier threw two wild swings which Snake ducked, causing the Lieutenant's fists to come into contact with the pillar, scooping out chunks of concrete like they were hot butter. Snake aimed his Beretta at Olivier's knees and fired at both kneecaps, causing Olivier to stumble, which Snake took advantage of by following up with a knee to Olivier's jaw, knocking him back to the ground. Snake unloaded every last round into Olivier's head, which appeared to be the least protected. He didn't stop until he emptied the magazine and Olivier's head was nothing but meat coating the dusty floor. This time, Olivier's wounds didn't regenerate.

Suddenly, Snake felt hands big enough to crush his head like a fruit grab his shoulder and the hand holding his pistol, forcing him to yell in pain as he felt his bones once again be painfully squeezed prior to spinning him around. Cmdr. Gamba's face was contorted in rage. He reared back and punched Snake in the chest, sending him flying through the plywood wall of the building and onto the ground. Snake struggled to breathe. His lungs felt like they were on fire.

Gamba walked through the wall like it wasn't even there, the wall crumbling and parting like a curtain to admit his passage. His hulking figure cast a dark shadow on Snake. Gamba started clapping while Snake gasped, trying desperately to crawl away from him.

"It appears Olivier underestimated you, Intruder," Gamba said. "You truly are a worthy opponent. I apologize for my subordinate's disrespect. You have bested one of us, and for that, you are to be commended."

Gamba stepped over Snake's body and leaned down so close that their noses were almost touching. Snake was too terrified to move as Gamba said in his synthesized growl, "But you still killed my friend. And for that, you will die most painfully."

Gamba grabbed Snake by his skull, picking him up like one would a doll, and threw him through the wall of the southern building, where Snake collided with the last load-bearing pillar inside. Snake agonizingly rolled over to look out the hole and see Gamba charging. Gamba appeared to disappear from the north side of the building and reappeared on the south side. The ceiling above Snake started to rumble, and Snake looked up to see that the concrete pillar had been broken in half. The ceiling started to crack, and rubble fell from above, and Snake rolled to try avoiding the falling debris.

There was nothing left of the western and southern kill houses, and when the dust had settled, all was still and silent.

 

---

 

DAY FIVE – 0710 HOURS

THE AFTERMATH

 

Captain Ivanov, Takashi, Soder, and the other survivors approached Cmdr. Gamba. "Is it over?" Soder asked.

Cmdr. Gamba replied, "Yes. The threat has been eliminated. The Resistance member is no more."

"All of this was just one guy?" Takashi asked in astonishment. One of the Badger-1 survivors whistled.

"What do we do now, sir?" asked Cpt. Ivanov.

Commander Gamba was silent while he considered their options. He looked to the road. Between the trucks, the IFVs and the tank, there was no way that the road could be used safely until the debris was cleared. If they sent out new vehicles, they would have to drive around it. Unfortunately, there were no more land vehicles to spare. He looked to the surviving troops. There weren't enough men left to mount a proper offensive on the Supply Storage facility; they were going to need more firepower, and more than likely any new forces sent out would have to traverse the place on foot.

"Captain," Gamba growled.

"Sir?"

"You are to take your men and perform triage on your casualties; separate the wounded from the dead. Then you are to establish a base camp here and await reinforcements. I will return to HQ and speak with the boss about getting you more men and weaponry. The mission has not changed. When reinforcements arrive, you are to continue your march west to take the supply facility."

"Wait a minute, and where will you be? Aren't you supposed to be our escort?" Soder demanded as Gamba started walking away.

Gamba turned to look over his shoulder to regard the smaller soldier's challenge. "You will have your escort, Corporal. But I am still a member of the Bloody Brad Squadron, and I have my own duties to discharge. Besides—" Gamba continued slowly walking, "I have my own dead to see to."

The men went quiet as they considered the implications left in the bioroid's wake. Not only was this entire ambush orchestrated by a single person, but they had managed to kill one of the boss's own super-soldiers. Soder shivered, feeling like he was about to be sick. What if there were more rebels like this one? He looked at Badger-1's faces, and realized he wasn't the only one who felt this way.

Takashi still looked confident, and Ivanov for his part was stern. They felt the same misgivings as the rest of the men, but they knew that as the ranking officers, they couldn't afford to show weakness. They needed to keep up morale.

"Alright, you heard the man," Ivanov said, pointing to each man he spoke to. "You, you, you, and you, come with me to establish the base camp. Sergeant Takashi, take the rest and start performing triage."

"Yes, sir," Takashi answered. He turned to his men, barking, "Alright, get off your lazy asses! We've got work to do!"

Within the hour, a new camp was constructed and those with serious debilitating wounds were left laying up on one side of the road, and the dead were covered in blankets and left lying on the opposite side. Triage completed, Takashi and his men returned to the group to help finish in the camp's construction.

No one noticed when one of the unconscious wounded was snatched and dragged away, only to be replaced by another wounded soldier wearing the same armor with blood obscuring his face…

 

---

 

LATER, ELSEWHERE...

 

A knock on the door. A command to enter. The chief of the Demon's army has come, bearing a body across his shoulders. One of the Demon's most cherished children has been slain. The Demon and his general share their grief in the only manner permitted by their custom. Property is destroyed. Spirits are imbibed. New plans are drawn to hasten their enemies' destruction. The room fills with blackened smoke.

A question is asked by the lesser demon: what of the old man? There is still one intruder left. They will not stop coming for him.

The Demon is amused. Their plans are so close to fruition. In just a little more than two days' time, the preparations will be complete, at which point, the old man's fate will no longer matter. The old man must continue to be kept under guard until then.

A call is made. The Demon answers. The lesser demon is dismissed.

The damnable voice is on the other line; the one monster whom the Demon hates, loves, and fears the most. It is a commanding voice, strong enough to assemble and build the fires and stones of hell through nothing more than sheer force of will alone. The Demon knows it well. It was the same voice as the one on the tape he'd received, at the beginning of all this.

The voice says the time is coming. Preparations must be made. The Demon has one more role to fulfill, one more scenario to help orchestrate, before he can be free to unleash his own hell upon the world. So, he listens to the instructions intently, and he makes plans. A trap with many layers, to kill and maim and torture one singular individual, should it ever be sprung.

The Demon thinks of the old man and has a new idea. He contacts his lesser demons to command their assistance…

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY FIVE – MORNING HOURS

SUPPLY STORAGE FACILITY ROOF

 

The rebels had watched in awe through their binoculars as distant explosions lit up the dim expanse of the small desert in the light of daybreak. Flashes of light, followed shortly after by echoing booms dotted the landscape several kilometers away. A crackle and popping of gunfire was heard as tracer rounds lit up the distance while little toy soldiers left their broken Tonka trucks to battle the unseen aggressor.

A little metal box turned its arm to the buildings and with two booms, it tore one box building in half and completely knocked down another. Little booms made the toy soldiers burst into pieces as they ran into the Claymores. The rebels knew that as long as the gunfire kept being exchanged, their ally was most likely still alive.

"Hey, what's that…?" asked Imke, pointing. Dust clouds had begun to form around the place, and Fox and Kyle turned their binoculars to see Snake staring down two much bigger targets that dwarfed him in size.

"Oh, no…" Fox whispered.

Kyle looked to Fox. "You know them?"

Fox's mouth tightened in a thin line as he swallowed. "The Bloody Brads. Venom's private troops."

The rebels were forced to watch helplessly as Snake was tossed around like a ragdoll, disappearing, and reappearing in and out of the buildings until finally one of the large grey men brought the last remaining building down on top of him. Neither the grey man's friend nor Snake were seen coming back out from the rubble.

When the toy soldiers started moving again, it was with far less urgency than before, except for the grey man, who sped away carrying his friend over his shoulders at a speed that should not be possible for a being of that size.

Imke and Loyiso looked up at Kyle. "Snake is tough," said Loyiso, with concern. "He's going to make it…right?"

Kyle exchanged a worried glance with Fox, before turning on his radio.

"Come in, Snake. This is Architect. Do you read me?"

Static.

"Snake, this is Architect. Come in, Snake. Respond!"

Fox grabbed the radio from Kyle.

"Snake, this is Gray Fox. If you can hear this, say something, anything. Just give us a sign."

More silence.

"Snake? Come in, Snake…"

Static.

"SNAKE!"

Notes:

So, I wanted to do a few things a little differently in this chapter. For one, I introduced some new named characters on the enemy side for the tank boss fight and then showed that boss fight largely from their perspective, rather than from Snake's-the idea was to try to humanize the enemy, make them appear more as people rather than as faceless goons. I think having Diane explain the ideals of Outer Heaven from their point of view and having Snake draw a parallel between them and old vets from back home helped support this, since it gave them a sense of having a real goal to fight for. I was hoping that humanizing them would help bend the story more in line with Metal Gear's anti-war tradition. I realized that by going all-in on the gritty semi-realistic war drama from just the POV of Snake and the Resistance could undermine that, so I wanted to throw in a little nuance. Don't know how well I got it across; I guess you guys will be the judge of that.

The other thing you might have noticed is that I introduced the Bloody Brad boss a little early and turned them from two nameless hard-hitting mooks into a proper boss squad in their own right. I had two reasons for this, one of which is a plot thing that I won't go into detail about until the story gets there, but the other reason is that I realized I've been spending so much time in gritty realism that I'd kind of neglected the goofier sci-fi superpowered action hero thing that Metal Gear was famous for, so I wanted to create a boss introduction that was just as bombastic and melodramatic as other games have had with their bad guys, even if it's mostly just the one boss fight that I'm setting up. Halfway through writing this, I also felt like Snake was doing a little too well on the infiltration front here for what's supposed to be his first major mission, so I kind of wanted to give him a bit of a defeat to humble him a little bit before the story continues. So there's that, haha.

Hope you guys are still having as much fun reading this as I am putting it out. I'm having a blast with it!

Chapter 13: Making New Allies

Summary:

As Snake recovers from his duel in the desert, he meets a new ally who can give him new information on his targets, though not without asking for a favor of her own...

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY FIVE – 1118 HOURS

OUTER HEAVEN EAST – MEDICAL PAVILION

 

It was a busy day inside the medical pavilion. Three trucks had rolled in one after the other to offload the bodies of the injured onto stretchers, along with body bags containing the fallen to be delivered to the furnaces further inside the main wing of the medical building just next door to the tents for the funeral arrangements. Doctors, field surgeons, and nurses were moving from stretcher to stretcher, prioritizing patients by the colored tags they'd been assigned during triage and assigning the ones that could be safely moved into the medical wing's hospital rooms.

It was a mess. Of the twenty-four Outer Heaven staff that had been deployed in the mechanized infantry unit, twelve had returned as triaged casualties, not counting the super soldier who'd arrived hours earlier carrying his bioroid compatriot. Of the twelve casualties, only half were still among the living, and many of them were severely injured and barely conscious. All three vehicles in the unit were lost, as well; and there were rumors that this was all the work of a single enemy soldier. There were whispers on the base that the soldier who accomplished this possessed strength and skill that was comparable to Ahab himself.

Between this and yesterday's defeat at the hands of the rebels, while morale on the base wasn't broken exactly, it was certainly shaken. The idea that the Resistance movement could have an operative who was on the same level as Ahab was a frightening one, one which the staff didn't want to consider. It was a comfort then, when it was reported that the rebel who decimated the mechanized unit was killed in the firefight.

Jennifer Nkosi did not share in her fellow medical team's comfort at this news, however. When the Resistance won the Supply Storage Building, she silently thought that perhaps her prayers would finally be answered. When the bodies first started being carted in and she had heard what had happened to them and that it was all the result of a single hero in the Resistance, she allowed herself to hope that maybe, just maybe they could turn the tide against their oppressors, and that her brother could finally be saved. Unfortunately, the news of the hero's death dashed those hopes. And now here she was, forced to offer what little healing and comfort she could provide to her enemies, with the hated monsters none the wiser.

"Dr. Stone, over here! Help me stabilize him!"

Jennifer looked up at the sound of her alias. The medics had just rolled in the last casualty. No dog tags, no identification. The man's uniform was stained red, burned in places, and he was covered head-to-toe in a thick coating of what looked like sawdust, grime, and some kind of thick, grey dust. His face was covered and obscured with sand and blood; his shaggy brown hair matted, and his fingers darkened with bruises. His arms were covered in minor lacerations, and there was a bandaged wound on his left forearm that would need to be investigated later. When they cut open his shirt, his torso was covered in bruises and contusions; it was very likely that he had one or more broken ribs, and his limbs may have suffered stress fractures as well. Unfortunately, without an MRI, it was difficult to know for sure.

The man was convulsing. Could he have a punctured lung? The nurses held him down while Jennifer and Dr. Pretorius—the doctor who called her—began intubation to the airway. Jennifer shined a light into his eyes. Pupillary reflex was good. Some bruising on the neck indicated whiplash. Was he injured when the vehicles were attacked? But that can't be right—none of the passengers of the bombed IFV survived, and it was reported that all of the tank crew were still out in the AO. And if he was injured while riding the vehicle, where did all the dust come from?

They massaged his torso. Two ribs damaged, possibly broken. Doesn't seem like there was any damage to vital organs; no active bleeding as far as they could tell. Heart monitor was steady, vital signs good—it was hypothesized that the convulsion was the result of a seizure brought on by the concussion. When it seemed like the patient was able to breathe normally, the nurses let go, and the intubation was removed. The man stirred, mumbling.

Dr. Pretorius hovered over the patient. "Hello, sir. Do you know where you are? Do you know what day it is?"

The man groaned.

"Can you tell me your name? Are you having any difficulty speaking, sir?"

The man's eyes rolled as he blinked heavily. He continued to mumble before cracking his eyes open and looking in Jennifer's direction. The man lifted his hand to reach toward her.

"Yes?" Jennifer said, looking down at him.

"J-Jen…Jenni…fer…"

The man's hand fell back onto the table, and his breathing slowed. He'd lost consciousness.

"Sounds like he was delirious," said Dr. Pretorius. He turned to Jennifer. "Who do you think 'Jennifer' is? A love from back home, perhaps? Or maybe a sister?"

Jennifer fought to keep her face neutral, her hands relaxed. "I don't know," she lied. "Maybe."

"Well, perhaps we can ask him when he's awake and alert." Dr. Pretorius put a hand on Jennifer's shoulder. "Keep an eye on him for me, will you? I'm going to help move some of these patients into proper beds."

Jennifer forced a smile. "Of course, doctor."

Dr. Pretorius assisted the medics with wheeling stretchers further into the tents and through the front door of the medical building.

Jennifer loomed over the new patient, trying to think of what to do. How did this man know her real name? Had she been compromised? Or was this the Resistance member who put these casualties in her tent? Could she afford to take the chance of just waiting until he woke up? She looked to the saline bag of his IV. It would be so easy to simply poke a hole in the line with a syringe and introduce an air bubble into his bloodstream.

Jennifer shook her head. No. Even for an enemy, it would be a terrible way to die. Besides, if he is the one the Resistance sent, she'd lose her chance at saving her brother's life. She had no choice other than to wait and see if the man ever woke up.

When it came time to divvy up the patients among the medical staff, Jennifer made sure that this John Doe was assigned to her for personal observation…

 

---

 

The passageway was narrow, with stone walls on either side rising high, disappearing into a seemingly infinite darkness. The river through which David was wading felt thick like molasses, and the air was thick with the fetid aroma of blood and human waste. It made him feel ill. There was no natural light source, but he could just make out the area a few feet in front of him. Though the passage was long, David knew that there was no use in turning around and going back the way he came. There was no option other than pushing forward into the suffocating darkness.

The stones of the walls were slick with moisture and grime. Every muscle in David's body ached as he continued pushing foot by foot through the tunnel. His skin alternated between feeling freezing cold and burning hot. Was he getting sick?

Ahead of him, part of the wall shifted. A skeletal arm reached out with a machete to whack at his head. David barely ducked underneath it with a splash while trying to keep his head from going under the filthy water. More holes opened up in the walls, more arms in various states of decay swung blades and clubs, or otherwise kept trying to grab him.

David was unarmed, wearing only his trousers; he wasn't equipped to effectively fight back. He dodged, ducked, and weaved before diving into an opening that he spotted to a side tunnel. He tumbled and slid downhill, before frantically catching himself on the walls as the tunnel ended abruptly into an abyss. Something he couldn't see struck him from behind, sending his body sailing into the pit. He landed painfully onto a mountain of corpses.

When he'd regained his senses, he looked horrified into the face of the body he'd landed on. It was his friend Sniper Rat, though his features were warped by third-degree burns, and one of his eyes was missing, leaving a reddish-black hole filled with blood and pus. Rat's expression was fixed in a visage of terror, mouth agape and weeping eye locked skyward.

Everywhere David looked, he saw faces he'd recognized in the pile of flesh; people he'd killed in Outer Heaven, and some even going as far back as Kuwait, friends and enemies alike. There was 1st Lt. Perez, Sgt. Wilcombe, and Cpt. Willard from Lima Company; Black Mamba, Honey Badger, Salamander, Fruit Bat and Tortoise; there was Schneider, Loyiso, Imke, Gray Fox, and all the POWs he'd freed; there was that gunner from the tank crew, Shotmaker, the former SAS, the poor kid crying for his mother that he blew halfway to hell in the Supply Storage building, all the men he'd killed in Outer Heaven thus far, the enemies he'd killed in Operation Desert Snake; even the Joint Chiefs were there! Every person David had encountered since he joined the military was now a horrific addition to this macabre display he'd found himself in.

David tried to push himself off of Rat's body and almost found himself falling back and rolling down the hill of cadavers, but the seared flesh of Rat's emaciated arm quickly reached out and grabbed him by the forearm. Rat's single working eye had rolled forward to lock onto him accusingly. Blood, pus, and worms fell from the German's mouth as it moved like the maw of a marionette. An acrid stench burst forth from between his teeth as he spoke.

"Mein Freund," hissed Rat, "Warum? Why have you done this to us? Why have you done this to me? I trusted you. We trusted you. But you failed us."

A chorus of wails erupted from the corpse mound as their voices joined Rat's in unison. "You killed us! You failed us!"

Gray Fox's bloated face turned to David, water dripping from between swollen lips as wide, glassy eyes pierced him with their stare. "You failed us, Rookie. You failed to stop Metal Gear, and now, thanks to Venom, we lay here: as a monument to your sins. To your failure."

"No…no!" David cried, yanking hard on Rat's arm until it tore from its socket.

The sudden onset of gravity sent him tumbling down the pile and into the pool of filth below. David pushed above the surface, coughing for air and retching. He looked up at the corpse mountain, and saw Big Boss descending to meet him, unbothered by the carnage as he strolled.

His face was covered with scratches, his hair and beard matted with dirt and blood, but he otherwise looked perfectly healthy. His face reflected an unsettling serenity as he stepped down from the mountain of discarded flesh. David looked around and saw that the corpse pile and the pit of blood-soaked sewage had vanished: it was just him and the Boss standing in the infinite void while the Boss looked down on him.

"You're running out of time, Snake," Big Boss said. "Every day, the Demon grows stronger."

Big Boss raised his arm and pointed behind David.

"Witness."

David turned around. Again, there was that wall of fire in the darkness. Just behind it, there was the massive metal behemoth. Metal Gear stood as a watchful sentinel, with the glowing red of its three-camera lens "eyes" piercing the darkness. At its feet were two figures: one was the seven or eight-foot giant Gamba, kneeling in reverence and supplication to a tall, ornate throne in which sat the other: the bloodied horned skull of the Demon himself, wearing olive drab fatigues coated in blood over a chitinous black and red body. His stomach was torn open, revealing hanging viscera.

The skull's grotesque grin lowered as the glare of the glowing eye seared into David's soul. A blackened claw, soaked in crimson, opened to wave David forth.

"Come to me, Snake…" the Demon whispered.

David turned to run, but fell into yet another pit, impaling himself on a series of spikes that pierced into his flesh, his body tangled in barbed wire that formed a bloody crown upon his head. Blood poured from every limb, from his head, from his hands and feet, and from his torso as he screamed, writhed, and squirmed in agony.

He heard the Demon's footsteps as it approached to look down on him. Cmdr. Gamba, Big Boss, and the corpses of Gray Fox, Schneider, and Rat all huddled around the pit in audience to bear witness to the new meat's misery. The Demon spoke, but as it did, the lips of the entire audience moved, adding their voices to his in a chorus.

"You disappoint me, Snake," the Demon's voice intoned amongst the echoes. "You have failed me."

The Demon held a knife in its fingers. It leapt down into the pit with murder in its eye as it readied the weapon. The last thing David saw before oblivion was the shining black obsidian of the Demon's horn. He squeezed his eyes shut.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY FIVE – 1730 HOURS

MEDICAL WING, PRIVATE ROOM 103

 

The first thing that Snake was cognizant of as he awoke was the heavy smell of antiseptics and the steady electronic beeping of the heart monitor. The next thing he noticed was the soreness of every inch of his body, coupled with the drain of absolute exhaustion. Even something as simple as moving his neck felt like it took a herculean amount of effort. Very slowly, he cracked open his eyelids to be greeted with the sterile white of an unfamiliar tile ceiling.

Groaning, he turned his neck to get a better look at the room he was in. The only light was the soft glow of a bedside table lamp next to him. Just past it, he could just make out the outline of a human form leaning against a countertop.

"How long was I out?" Snake mumbled.

A feminine voice responded, "You've been unconscious when you first arrived six hours ago. I don't know when exactly you lost consciousness. You were injured pretty badly when they brought you in. Honestly, you probably shouldn't even be moving around right now."

Snake thought back to his fight with the Bloody Brad troopers. He nodded and winced at the pain it brought. "Yep," he growled. "That makes sense."

The woman sighed. "Well, since you happen to be in a talkative mood, maybe you can answer some questions for me."

Snake let his head fall back onto the pillow. "Such as?"

"I searched your person when they brought you to me. You mind telling me where you got this photo?"

The outline stepped forward into the light. A red-haired woman wearing camo pants, a grey undershirt, a lab coat, a stethoscope, and horn-rimmed glasses stepped into view. The name on her badge read, 'Eliza Stone, M.D.' In one hand, she carried the photograph that Kyle had given to him. The woman in the picture was the spitting image of the doctor.

Snake slowly and carefully pushed himself up with his elbows into a sitting position, ignoring the strain he felt in doing so. He looked around—it was just a regular hospital room, albeit a very small private one. He nervously looked to the door, which was closed.

"Is there anyone else here?" Snake asked.

The woman narrowed her eyes. "Why would that matter?"

"Answer the question," Snake demanded. "Are. We. Alone?"

The woman, Dr. Stone, glanced at the door and then back to Snake. She lowered her head but kept her suspicious gaze on him. "It's just us," she confirmed.

"I'm looking for someone. The person in that photo. You look just like her. I was told I'd find her here by the person who gave it to me," Snake explained.

"And who was that?" she asked.

"That depends. Are you Jennifer Nkosi?"

Dr. Stone visibly tensed. "And if I were?"

"Then you'd already know who gave me that photo."

She paused. "You're with the rebels?"

"I feel like we wouldn't be having this conversation if I wasn't."

Finally, Jennifer relaxed. She nodded her head, satisfied. "You're right. We wouldn't be. So, what's your name, or should I just keep calling you, 'John Doe?'"

Snake cautiously and deliberately swung his legs over the edge of the bed to face her. "Call me Snake," he said. "I'm a friend of Kyle's. He said you could help me."

"You mean you're not a member of the Resistance?"

"No, I'm American. I'm here to do something about your mercenary problem. But I need information first."

Jennifer crossed her arms and put one foot in front of the other as she leaned back against the counter. "I'm listening," she said.

"I'm looking for an old man who's being kept prisoner in the R&D building. He's about six-foot, Russian, has a bushy moustache and a receding hairline. Do you know anyone fitting that description?"

"You mean the scientist they brought here a few months ago?"

"That's the one. Do you know where exactly I can find him?"

Jennifer stood up from the counter and paced in front of Snake towards a window at the far end of the room, her back to him. "I might," she said as she stared out into the late daylight. "Why do you want him?"

"He's being forced to develop a weapon for them. Something big. I plan to get him out before they can finish it if I can. If not, then he'll be the one to tell me how to destroy it."

"I see…"

Jennifer turned around, staring Snake down. "You're an American. You know that information typically comes at a cost. If I tell you this thing, it won't be for free."

What, was helping your faction get a foothold on the base not enough? Snake thought to himself bitterly.

He was beginning to get tired of being jerked around; he was sent here to avert nuclear catastrophe and assassinate a mercenary warlord—how could these people not see that every second wasted brought them one step closer to having their own country be taken over from within, or worse?

If Snake were to go around extracting nonessential personnel every time somebody asks, it could actively put the mission into jeopardy, which in turn puts their own people into further danger. Besides, what's stopping the Resistance from extracting their own prisoners now that they have a sizable force of their own onsite in the AO?

Snake sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose as he tried to retain his composure. He said, somewhat impatiently, "What do you want?"

Jennifer stepped forward. "We have a network of four spies inside the R&D building who I communicate with. Three of whom have been captured and are being kept as hostages. I want you to rescue those who have been captured."

Snake tore out his IV and wires in frustration, pulling himself to his feet to march toward her.

"I don't have time for this," he growled.

Jennifer stood her ground. "These men have been actively monitoring this section of the base and reporting back to Resistance HQ for months. My one free man can get you inside and we can help you navigate the place and find the man you're after. Agree to help me, and I will put you in contact with him."

"Why not just wait for the Resistance's counteroffensive? Why do you need me?"

"Because I don't have that kind of time," she spat back. "You are the one who took out that mechanized infantry unit, yes? You are someone who makes the impossible possible. I wouldn't ask you if I had another choice."

Jennifer returned Snake's hard stare. His face was an impassive wall, like it was carved from granite. There was no emotion in his cold, unbroken stare, just hard steel. Jennifer shivered; the way this American looked at her with those empty, predatory eyes felt like something other than human.

Snake didn't register the doctor's discomfort, instead searching her expression for the answer to his unspoken question. There was something she wasn't telling him, something she was trying to hide.

"Why are you so desperate to save them? It's not just because they're comrades," he said.

"Because I don't know how long they have before Outer Heaven will execute them," she said.

No, that wasn't it, Snake thought to himself. Outer Heaven had taken multiple prisoners from the Resistance thus far, and not a single one yet had been killed that hadn't resisted. While they were violently interrogated, the enemy was still going to the trouble of keeping them alive. Can't recruit or make hostages of the dead, after all. This, Jennifer's anxiety, was something else.

"I don't buy it," Snake said. "This is personal to you somehow, isn't it? Who do they have, Jennifer? If you want me to risk my neck and my mission, then you need to tell me."

Jennifer's hand shook. She broke eye contact and looked down, biting her lip. Her bangs covered her eyes so that Snake couldn't see her expression clearly. "It's my older brother, Wikus. He was among those taken as a hostage. It was my fault. I shouldn't have let him take the mission. Shouldn't have contacted him so often…"

Teardrops fell to the floor.

Snake's hardened gaze softened slightly.

"If I agree to get him out," he said slowly, putting emphasis on the 'if,' "will you help me locate the scientist?"

Jennifer took a second to compose herself before looking defiantly back at Snake. She nodded vigorously. "Those are my terms. Either you guarantee my brother's safety, or I will not help you."

It was clear that Jennifer valued her brother's safety more than that of the mission or even her own faction. Snake thought of his brothers in arms in Lima Company and back at FOXHOUND HQ—in spite of everything, he felt for her.

Snake sighed heavily, limping back to the bed. "Fine," he said. "How am I getting in?"

Jennifer relaxed and stepped back over to the counter to open a big bottom drawer, pulling out some folded clothes shrink-wrapped in plastic. She tossed the parcel onto Snake's hospital bed, pointing to it.

"You'll be going in the same way my spies did: in disguise. That right there is one of the brand-new uniforms issued to personnel on guard duty in the R&D building. Since it's brand-new, it's marked as low-ranking, so you can pose as a new hire. That should help you dodge some of the questions the guards might ask."

Snake nodded and pulled the privacy curtain around the bed closed so that he could pull off his hospital gown and get dressed. He noticed that the uniform came with a balaclava. He remembered seeing some of the guards on patrol duty from the beginning of his infiltration wearing them. It didn't seem like a smart idea to him to have the personnel of your base wear a mask that hides the face as a part of their uniform, but he wasn't complaining.

When Snake opened the curtain again, Jennifer looked him over with approval.

"That uniform will get you into some places, not all," she pointed out. "You'll have to work out the rest on your own once you're inside."

"What about your man on the inside?" Snake asked.

"I'll contact him and have him meet you. You'll know him by the blue star he wears as his right shoulder patch. Make sure no one else is around when you approach him. He's the last active spy we have, and we don't want to compromise his cover."

Snake nodded. "Got it." He looked himself over. "Where are the things I came in with?"

"They were taken off your body when you arrived," Jennifer responded. "The MREs were returned to the Mess Hall facilities, and the recovered weapons were taken to the armory."

"What about my radio?"

"I have it right here." She pulled the walkie-talkie and headphones out of the drawer and handed them to Snake. Snake plugged in the headphones and wrapped them around his neck, snapping the radio to his belt.

"I'll need something to defend myself with," Snake said. "A sidearm, or even just a knife. Or would that be too suspicious?"

"No, a sidearm will indeed be required; they're carried by all on-duty guards." Jennifer patted him on the shoulder, shaking her head as Snake made to stand up. "I will get those for you. Wait here, and try to recover your strength, while you can."

With that, Jennifer stepped out of the door and into the hall, closing the entryway behind her. Snake tuned into Big Boss's frequency hailed him on the radio.

"Control, this is Solid Snake. Do you read me?"

Big Boss's voice answered within the next second.

"This is Control. What happened, Snake? Fox said you'd disappeared on us. He was worried you were KIA."

"From the sound of it, the enemy thinks so too. I had a run-in with the HVT's personal guard," Snake explained. "They put me out of commission for a few hours. Good news is, I survived. More than that, I was able to get medical attention and transport to the east side of the facility by posing as an enemy casualty. If you could let Architect and Fox know that I'm still alive, I'd appreciate it. I don't want to be on the radio for long, not when I'm so close to the R&D building and its radio tower."

"Acknowledged," said the Boss. "We'll try to find a way to keep the enemy from being able to intercept your transmissions—in the meantime, your instinct in keeping your transmissions brief and rare is a good one. I'll be sure to relay the good news. Speaking of, have you managed to find a lead to our VIP being held hostage?"

"I have," Snake said. "I've made contact with another Resistance asset who's agreed to help me locate him in return for a prisoner rescue. I'll be making a milk run on the way to Madnar."

"Understood. How are you getting in?"

"I'll be in disguise. I'm to locate one of my asset's contacts, who'll help me navigate to him."

"The Resistance have people inside R&D?"

"Apparently."

"I see. Good job, Snake. You're doing us proud."

Snake felt his chest swell with pride at Big Boss's praise. He remembered his nightmare. He knew he couldn't let it come to pass.

Big Boss had noted the silence.

"Snake?" he asked. "How're you doing, kid?"

"I'm alright. Just tired. The mission's taking more out of me than I thought," Snake admitted.

"Take whatever rest you can when you can get it," the Boss advised. "You're no good to us dead."

Snake shook his head. "I know. But I can't rest yet. Not when I'm so close." He recalled Big Boss's words from the nightmare.

"We're running out of time," he said. "I'll contact you when I have more to tell. I've got to get going."

"Understood. Keep your head in the game, soldier. Let's get it done."

Snake signed off, leaned back into his bed, and started to doze off while he waited for Jennifer's return. This time, he didn't dream.

 

---

 

A FEW HOURS LATER...

 

Snake was self-conscious. He'd never realized how aware one could be of one's own body until he was in the enemy's uniform. Every swing of the arms, every step forward, even the way he moved his eyes was something that he obsessively over-analyzed as he was accompanied by Jennifer down to the elevator and to the end of the hallway that led outside moving north toward the exterior wall of the R&D complex.

"Try to act natural," she had told him.

But how could he act naturally when he was so aware of how unnatural his movements felt? How could he behave casually when his mind was made to measure his every movement?

He tried to loosen up his walking gait, which felt exaggerated and ridiculous. Sweat dripped from his eyebrows to his nose. The balaclava was uncomfortably warm. Three Outer Heaven troops stopped him at the checkpoint pedestrian door leading through the R&D building's outer perimeter wall.

One of them, a dark-haired man with a thick Hungarian accent, stopped him. He asked in stilted English, "What is your business in Research and Development, újonc?"

Újonc? Snake registered the Hungarian word. He didn't think the uniform pegged him as that low ranking. Well, Jennifer did say he'd be posing as a new hire, he thought. Better roll with it.

Snake reflexively stood at attention in response to the Hungarian's commanding voice.

"Sir," he replied, "I'm a new hire, assigned to R&D for patrol. I'm supposed to meet with Sergeant Tagger for orientation. He said I should come in through this entrance."

"I see…," said the Hungarian. "I'll need to radio this in."

The Hungarian put the walkie-talkie to his lips. "Entry One to CP. Can you please patch me through to Sergeant Tagger of R&D?"

"One moment, Entry One," said a voice on the other line. After a short pause, a new voice answered on the other end.

"This is Staff Sergeant Tagger. Go ahead, Entry One."

"Sgt. Tagger, this is Corporal Farkas, I have here new hire, says you are to give him orientation, asking to let him through perimeter wall. Please advise."

Another short pause.

"Go ahead and let him through, Farkas. He's expected; I'll be down to meet him shortly."

Cpl. Farkas nodded. "Very good, sir. Letting the újonc through now."

Farkas pointed to Snake and waved him towards the door. "Go ahead, újonc," he said.

Snake nodded, clipping a very brief, "Thank you, sir," before walking through the steel door into the R&D facility.

Inside the concrete walls, Snake found that there was actually more than one building to the R&D complex. There was the main building, which he had seen from a distance when he'd first made his infiltration; a large boxy building about three or four stories tall with an imposing radio tower and set of radar dishes casting their shadow over the complex. There were also two smaller two-story office buildings across from it, and a series of chemical tanks on the far opposite side of the complex from where Snake stood.

Walking around the buildings were several two-man teams of mercs on patrol, while many men and women wearing lab coats over their uniforms were walking back and forth between the main building and the office buildings. On his right near where he stood, Snake could see a small parking lot with several small Jeeps, as well as four large semi-trucks that were backed into the main building's loading bay.

It wasn't long before Snake saw what he was looking for: a man with jet black hair and a well-groomed moustache trotted up to him. On his right shoulder where the patch of his previous unit would be, he had a single blue star, and his nametape read 'Staff Sergeant Arno Tagger.' Sgt. Tagger reached out a hand when he got to Snake. Snake shook it.

"It's a pleasure to meet you…" Tagger looked at the nametape on Snake's uniform. "…Connors. Welcome to Research and Development."

Snake followed Tagger's lead, trying to act every bit the inexperienced newbie. "Thanks, Sarge. I'm looking forward to working with you. I heard you could give me the grand tour?"

"Indeed, that's why I'm here, leerling!" He turned around, opening his arms. "As you can see, we are very well staffed around here. We have about fifty researchers and well over a hundred technicians and mechanics working day and night to keep our excellent operation up and running, protected by a force over one hundred strong. And that's not counting the staff that protect us outside our walls!"

Snake whistled. "That's pretty intense for just a research lab."

"Ah, but we do so much more than simply research here. Much more," Tagger said as he raised his eyebrow to Snake. "Much of our more experimental weapons and technology are developed right here in house. We also process much of the precious metals and other materials brought in from our FOBs every day. So many of our secrets flow through here; even our elite Bloody Brad forces have R&D to thank for providing them with their great strength."

"I've heard about them," Snake said. "Even saw them this morning when they were sent out. They looked huge, and their armor looked like no joke."

Tagger nodded. "Depleted uranium. Just like you find in tank armor; and they move as fast as a cheetah; zero to sixty in three seconds or less, and at full speed they can even create small sonic booms. It's been said that their muscles are enhanced somehow. Exactly what caused them to be like that is a mystery; I'm not cleared to know, and I haven't been here long enough to find out."

There was an awkward silence as Snake processed the information. Something as big, strong, and heavy as the enemies he'd encountered in the desert should not be able to move as fast as those bioroids did. Sgt. Tagger elbowed him, smiling—but the smiling was forced. In Tagger's eyes, Snake could see the same fear that he felt at the prospect of them.

"But hey," Tagger said with fake swagger, "Good thing they're on our side, right?"

Snake nodded, laughing without a trace of humor in his voice. "Haha, yeah…"

"Anyway," Tagger said, just loud enough for anyone who might be listening in to hear, "you'll be on patrol duty for the lower floors of the main building, where the lower clearance areas are. I'll give you a tour of the area, but first, we'll need to get you your badge and keycard access. Follow me."

Obediently, Snake followed Tagger across the road and through the front door of the R&D building into the front desk lobby. After exchanging some pleasantries with the security officer, Tagger thumbed in the direction of Snake. "Got another newbie for today. I need to sort out his badge access," he said.

The security officer nodded, pointing them toward the photo room. Through the door, they were met with a camera opposite a blue background pasted on the wall, like something from the DMV. Next to the camera was a computer kiosk connected to a dye sublimation printer and a stack of blank ID cards with a pile of little metal clips.

Tagger closed the door behind them both. "You'll need to take off your mask."

"Won't that defeat the purpose of having it?" Snake asked.

Tagger leaned in. "Have any of the enemy seen your face?"

"Shotmaker. Some of the soldiers in the supply storage facility."

"So, everyone who's seen your face is dead?"

Snake shook his head. "I got pretty up close and personal with those Bloody Brad guys. Commander Gamba or whatever his name was, he saw me. Pretty sure he and everyone else here thinks I'm already dead, but if Gamba catches me or sees me on the security cameras, he might recognize me."

Tagger nodded to himself, biting his lip. "That is a complication… Okay, I've got an idea. Hang on."

Tagger dug into his pockets and fished out his wallet. After rooting around in it for a few seconds, he pulled out a small picture. Snake craned his neck to look.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"An old driver's license photo of a person who died a few months ago. Someone with no connection to Outer Heaven."

"Why do you have it in your wallet?"

"I keep a lot of generic pictures on hand for situations like this," Tagger said, waving his hand. "Now, shut up and do what I say; we'll still need to take the photo. Take off your mask."

Rather than argue, Snake pulled off the mask and stood in front of the camera. Tagger flashed the photo, then stepped over to the computer. As he opened the application to show the photo, Tagger explained, "This printer performs direct-to-card printing. Normally, once you take the photo, you'd fill out the name and rank information and upload the photo from this program. Thankfully though, this printer also has a scanner attachment."

Tagger placed the photo from his wallet onto the scanner and ran it. Another window popped up on the screen showing the new photo next to the printer window showing Snake's face, which he copied and pasted into the printer window, replacing Snake. Tagger filled out the badge information with the name on Snake's nametape along with a series of bullshit identifiers before placing one of the blank badges into the card hopper, hitting 'print' on the computer. Within seconds, a brand-new ID badge with the false photo and the name "Corporal Johnathan Connors."

Tagger clipped the badge to Snake's jacket. "You can put the mask back on," he said in a low voice. "Since you're posing as a new hire, I could only give you access as high as Level 5. This badge will get you through any door LV 5 or lower. I can help guide you into some of the higher-level areas if I get an opportunity, but after that, you'll be on your own. Understand?"

"Got it," said Snake, pulling his mask back on.

Tagger opened the door, motioning for Snake to walk ahead. "Come on, leerling," he said loudly. "I'll give you the grand tour."

They stopped by the security desk to activate Snake's badge ID access, after which they walked on down the hall to a set of double doors where Tagger handed Snake a pair of ear plugs before they entered out onto a massive and loud factory floor. The floor was sectioned off by painted lines that acted as a path for navigation, with overhead hanging signs and wall sign postings indicating direction to various facilities. At various parts of the factory floor were technicians and mechanics working on engines, fuselages, armor plating, and various other large mechanical pieces.

"This is where we construct and modify our vehicles," Tagger shouted.

As he spoke, a piloted Walker Gear walked past them with a toolbox mounted on the side and carrying what looked like an engine block in its mechanical arm. Snake watched the box-shaped vehicle in wonder, having never seen one in action before.

"It's something, isn't it?" Tagger said, taking note of Snake's fascination. "They stopped using them for anti-infantry because tanks and IFVs were cheaper to build and easier to get ahold of. When the Walker Gears started going out of service worldwide, Outer Heaven started repurposing them for grunt work with the technicians."

"So, there's just no Walker Gear weapons anymore?" Snake asked.

Tagger shook his head. "You can still mount weapons on them. We've got a few guarding the bunker up north, near the helipads. But their heyday came and went in the '80's—they're mostly just an expensive novelty, now."

Further down the line, Snake spotted a metal stairwell and noted the sound of rushing water. He pointed and asked, "What's down there?"

"The waterways. We've got a large underwater drainage system to dispose of waste chemicals. It runs parallel to the sewage system. We've got a few storage areas down there too, but not much of note."

Turning the corner, they found themselves on a short bridge overlooking the underwater canal. Snake could see armed guards patrolling the waterways below on either side. At the other end of the bridge, Snake and Tagger ended up in a room with a series of tall steel pillars with red emitters on their side.

"Fancy a smoke, leerling?" Tagger said, pulling out a cigarette.

Snake followed suit, and after they lit up and exhaled, they could see red lasers crisscrossing throughout the room between the pillars. "As long as you've got your badge on you and it's security status is active, the lasers will turn off as you pass through," Tagger said between his teeth.

The two passed through the laser grid to an elevator on the far side and stepped in. Tagger scanned his badge on the reader and pressed 2 on the panel. When they got to the second floor, Snake found that it was much quieter.

Tagger gestured around as they walked down the halls. "This is where the research labs are. Here new weapon systems are developed and tested before they get patented and distributed both among Outer Heaven and to our customers worldwide: everything from small arms to plastic explosives to chemical and biological weapons."

"Aren't chemical and bioweapons banned by the Geneva Conventions?" Snake asked. "How does Outer Heaven avoid coming under scrutiny?"

"Because those specialized weapons are sold exclusively on the black market, unlike conventional vehicles and firearms. First and third world nations are aware of their activities of course, in fact it's kind of an open secret, but Outer Heaven's armed forces and weapons sales are seen as too useful by the majority of its client nations to risk clamping down on them too hard."

"There's no oversight whatsoever?"

"The UN sends token inspections every few months, but for the most part, they just turn a blind eye," Tagger said. "That's not to say that Outer Heaven doesn't have some sensitive items that they keep secret, but the truth is that they don't really have to try that hard when the authorities are this lax."

"What do you think it would take to get more involvement from major world powers?" Snake asked.

"I'd say…probably if Outer Heaven was caught doing something so big that the rest of the world would have no choice but to recognize them as a threat," Tagger said. "Something like… trying to develop nuclear weapons, for example."

Snake nodded. "That makes sense," he said.

Tagger looked to him. "Why do you ask?"

Snake said, "You know why I'm here, right? Who I'm looking for?"

Tagger nodded. "The Russian scientist. Yeah, his imprisonment here isn't exactly a secret. You're saying he's working on something that dangerous?"

Snake didn't answer. He just said, "I need to find him yesterday."

Tagger's mouth tightened into a straight line. He licked the corner of his mouth absent-mindedly and nodded. "I'll point you in the right direction."

Together, they turned a corner and passed through a series of maze-like hallways. Together, they stopped at a door. Tagger looked both ways to make sure that the coast was clear before scanning his badge and walking them both inside.

In the room was a series of desks covered in papers and blueprints. On the wall was a whiteboard whose every inch was covered in equations, free body diagrams, doodles and short notes in increasingly cramped handwriting. On the wall opposite from the door they entered from was a long window with the blinds closed. Tagger slipped his hand in between the blinds and checked the corridor outside on either side. He waved Snake over to take a look.

"Check the cameras down left on the corner and at the right on the far end. You see them?"

Snake nodded. "Yeah."

"Guards patrol both walkways. We also have automated gun turrets further down, hidden in the ceiling waiting to pop out at the sound of an alarm. The reason for the increased security is because there are two rooms which are under heavy protection: one is the office used by the Russian scientist to do his work, which is also where Venom has been residing for much of the last three months," Tagger explained. "The other room is the scientist's cell. Every day, the scientist is escorted to the office, where together he and the Outer Heaven scientists work on development under Venom's supervision."

"Venom's been living here?" Snake asked. If he could somehow get a shot at Ahab and rescue Dr. Madnar…

Tagger shook his head. "Whatever secret project they're working on, it seems like they're close to wrapping it up. Venom's been spending less and less time in R&D the past few weeks. Last I've heard he's been setting up an office in the northern bunker. But the scientist, he's still continuing to work. Every evening, at around 1900 hours, they escort him back to his cell. He should be there right now, with a couple of guards posted right outside his door."

"So, if we can get close enough and take out the guards…"

"I can let you in," Tagger said, finishing Snake's thought.

Snake looked up at the camera. "What about the cameras?"

Tagger shrugged and replied, "As long as you're with me, no one will question your lower status. They'll just think I'm some egotistical Staff Sergeant who insisted on having some low-level peon follow him around."

Snake mulled it over. "Do you know if there are any cameras overlooking the door to the cell?"

Tagger shrugged. "No. But it shouldn't be a problem either way."

Snake shook his head. "You're the last spy in here who's still free. We need to find a way in that won't break your cover."

Tagger looked taken aback. Clearly, he hadn't expected Snake to care about his well-being.

"Well, what do you suggest?" he asked.

Snake looked out the hall again. "You lead me through the hall. Pretend you're on a regular patrol, and we'll keep acting like I'm there to shadow you for training. When we get close enough to the cell to determine the presence of cameras, then we can play it by ear. If there's no cameras, we'll go with your plan."

"And if there are cameras?" Tagger asked.

"We separate somewhere out of sight. You distract the guards and lead them away and I'll get in through the door when you're out of sight."

"Just 'lead them away'? That's your plan? How am I supposed to do that without threatening my cover?"

"You'll just have to think of something that throws suspicion off you…maybe set up somebody else as a patsy or make up some kind of emergency. I don't know, use your imagination!"

"Alright, alright!" Tagger said impatiently as he walked up to the door. "We're not going to get you any closer by standing around and talking. Let's go."

Together, the two men exited into the hallway into the watchful eyes of the high mounted CCTV cameras. Moving left to the end of the hall and rounding the corner, Snake made sure to stay close behind while maintaining the respectful distance a junior soldier would give a superior.

Around another corner, they found the door they were looking for. As Tagger had said, there were two guards posted outside. Snake looked up and spotted a security camera overlooking them both. Rather than turn down the hall toward the cell, they continued walking forward, and Snake stepped into a supply closet with Tagger trailing behind.

Snake looked the shelves up and down, before spotting a can of spray paint tucked away inside a small box. Grabbing the can, he turned to Tagger and spoke in a low voice. "Okay, you go out first and lead them back the way we came. When I see you turn the corner, I'm going to spray this onto the camera lens and make my way through the door."

"How are you going to get in without my card access?" Tagger asked.

"Oh, that's easy. Hand me your ID."

Tagger passed it to Snake, who returned the favor by slugging the Resistance spy in the face, and then once more in the diaphragm hard enough to make him enter a coughing fit. Snake patted him on the back as he caught his breath.

"W-what the hell did you do that for?" Tagger gasped. "What's wrong with you!?"

"Quiet," Snake said, putting a finger to his lips. "Listen closely. You just got attacked by a Resistance spy, and he took your badge from you. You sent your trainee off to sound the alarm while you went to get help. You stopped the first guards you saw, which just so happened to be the guards at the cell. Understand?"

Tagger nodded weakly, coughing again. "Y-yeah. I got it. Geez, you hit hard, Connors." Tagger wiped blood from his mouth. His eye and cheekbone were starting to show a dark bruise.

"Sorry about that," Snake said. "But I needed to make it look good."

Snake opened the door a crack and peeked out. There were no guards in the hall. "Okay, you're up," Snake said while motioning his head to the hall.

"They're going to come looking for you, you know," Tagger said over his shoulder.

Snake nodded. "I know. With any luck, by the time they come to investigate the place, me and the old man will be long gone and on our way out of the building."

Tagger appraised Snake. 'Not bad,' his expression seemed to be saying. "Alright then. If I don't see you again, then good luck," he said, giving Snake a thumbs-up.

"Likewise," Snake smirked.

Tagger slipped out the door and sprinted down the hall and around the corner. Even from this distance, Snake could hear him yelling as he got the guards' attention. Within moments, he saw Tagger and the two guards running out of the offshoot hallway and back in the direction that he and Tagger had turned into this branch of hallway.

Not wasting any time, Snake moved forward and turned into the hall ending at the cell door, quickly moving to the blind spot underneath the camera. He then popped the lid off the can and aimed it upwards towards the lens. Once the camera was thoroughly soaked in the black liquid, Snake absent-mindedly tossed the can aside and pulled out Tagger's access card to unlock the door and let himself inside.

Inside the room, there was a huddled figure tied up in ropes with a large black cloth wrapped around its face. However, the white hair and mustache were clearly visible. The prisoner's shoulders were shaking as his body was wracked by quiet sobbing. Snake drew his knife and started sawing at the old man's bonds.

"Dr. Madnar," Snake said as he cut. "My name is Snake. I'm here to get you out."

Snake pulled off the black cloth, only to find that the face underneath was made of rubber and contorted into a permanent frown, and that the shaking shoulders wasn't sobbing, but laughing. Before Snake could react, the figure jumped up and sent a rising knee into Snake's gut before slugging him in the face with an uppercut. Snake fell onto his back, stunned. The man yanked off the rubber mask to reveal an unfamiliar face, then drew a pistol and pointed it at Snake's head.

"Don't move, Snake," said the decoy. "Not a muscle."

The decoy reached out and yanked Snake's mask from his face and pulled his pistol from its holster to toss it to the far side of the room. The door behind Snake burst open, and the two guards from before marched in with a handcuffed Tagger in tow.

"You think we didn't know about the last spy?" The decoy made a tsk-tsk sound with his tongue. "We've been waiting for you Resistance rats to pull a fast one on us ever since we captured those other three prisoners. I feel I should thank you for delivering him to us, though. That's one less loose end for us to have to deal with."

The guards forced Tagger to the ground on his knees as the decoy aimed at his head.

"Wait!" Snake yelled. "If you kill us, you won't be able to find out what we know."

"True, you're not wrong," said the decoy, lowering his weapon. Snake breathed a sigh of relief.

"Then again, there's always the other three prisoners."

The decoy raised his pistol and executed Tagger. Tagger's eyes rolled back into his head as he fell backwards into his own brain matter.

"TAGGER!" Snake yelled, trying to crawl over to the spy that helped him before one of the guards kicked him away and started restraining him with another pair of handcuffs.

Snake snarled at the decoy, "You'd better kill me, you son of a bitch, because otherwise you're a dead man!"

The decoy grinned cruelly. "Oh, I think not. You see, Snake, we've all lost some comrades here thanks to your little stunt back west, and I happen to know of some old friends of yours in particular who are just jonesing for a rematch."

The decoy motioned to one of the guards and Snake and Tagger's corpse were dragged bodily to the center of the room. The guards stepped back as the decoy pulled open a wall panel to reveal a large red button.

"Tell the Bloody Brads I said hello," the decoy taunted, slamming his fist onto the button.

The floor opened beneath them, and the two bodies were sent tumbling down a long, dark chute until they were deposited into a wide open space, with Tagger's body painfully landing on top of Snake. Snake awkwardly shimmied out from underneath Tagger's bloody corpse and used his cuffed hands behind him to backspring onto his feet. He pushed himself up and quickly took stock of his surroundings.

He was in a square concrete pit, a little larger than a regulation soccer pitch in square footage. The pit was flooded with light from overhead spotlights, and a rectangular observation window could be seen high above. Surrounding him on three sides were the biomechanical hulks of the Bloody Brad squad. In the middle of the three was Commander Gamba, who glared with a mixture of cruel glee and intense loathing.

"Hello, Intruder, or should I say, Snake," Gamba hissed in a menacing electronic growl. "I am happy to see you so alive and well. It's a pleasure to finally and properly make your acquaintance."

Notes:

A/N: A little bit calmer of a chapter overall as we transition to a new area. Unlike Building One, I'm playing a bit more fast and loose with Building Two's layout and order this time around, just for the sake of making the writing a little more efficient and to spare me having to write the same corridor descriptions and takedowns over and over. The one thing I wanted to accomplish though since I was making Building Two into the research and development building was to give both a plausible reason for there to be increased security as well as a reason for why exactly Snake is going to be fighting a bunch of cyborgs in this area. It also gives me an excuse to tie in another plot thread from the MGSV area of the timeline by giving a little shoutout to the Walker Gears and giving a reason for why they don't show up later in the timeline besides "because Kojima retcon." I also wanted to establish the existence of the waterways as a separate floor rather than it being part of the first floor like in the actual game map-it's going to be important for the prisoner rescue later, among other things. Jennifer having her own mini-spy network assisting her also gives a reason for why there are POWs inside the building and also helps to inject a little bit more humanity in the plot.

Honestly, not a whole lot else to say about this chapter-it's serviceable and does what it needs to do to move the story along. Next chapter we'll have the Bloody Brad boss fight, along with the Dirty/Coward Duck fight as well. If I can fit the rescue of the father and daughter Madnar duo I will, but that might have to be its own separate chapter. For now, I'm going to take another small break before I get started on writing the new chapter, which I should hopefully have out in another few weeks. Thanks to everyone for reading and thanks especially to those who take the time to leave comments. Your encouragement really helps keep me motivated to keep moving forward on this project.

Chapter 14: Heavy Hitters

Summary:

Snake fights with three cybernetic juggernauts and an Australian ecoterrorist.

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY FIVE – 2042 HOURS

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT FACILITY – WEAPONS COMBAT TESTING ROOM

 

Snake's heartbeat pounded in his ears; his temples were throbbing and his skull felt like it was squeezing in on itself. His lungs were a raging inferno, his chest constricted as his limbs and reflexes catapulted him at speeds of which he hadn't known he was capable.

Snake ducked and rolled, narrowly avoiding a fist the size of a small melon embedding itself deep into the concrete behind where his head used to be with the speed and force of a freight train. As he rolled, he curled his legs tightly to his torso so he could pull his handcuffed hands around them and get his arms in front of him. Without looking back, he sprinted away as fast as his legs could carry him. Bullets trailed in the floor in front of him, forcing him to skid to a stop and change direction.

Every light felt brighter, every visual detail was thrown into a sharp focus with perfect clarity. His body moved faster than his own conscious thought as it struggled to keep him alive, vaulting him over kicks from legs as large as tree trunks, diving and rolling under the frames of the biomechanical demigods who wanted him dead.

It didn't take long for him to be cornered on all three sides once again, his back to the wall. Three pairs of glowing eyes sparked in rage as they approached menacingly. "While I appreciate the sport, Snake," Commander Gamba taunted, "running will not save you. Perhaps you should submit; lay down and die. You would suffer far less."

Snake remembered Big Boss's words to him. "'Never give up…even when the odds are against you,'" he muttered to himself.

"What was that?" Cmdr. Gamba asked.

Instead of answering, Snake turned and rushed to the Bloody Brad closest to the wall, ducked the soldier's lunging and jumped up to vault off the thigh of the bioroid's bent left leg towards the wall. He then kicked off the wall to get some height and distance over the lunging BB's shoulder, allowing Snake to wrap his handcuffs around the super soldier's neck. Snake jumped from side to side along the Brad's back to keep out of the mercenary's reach, using his legs as leverage as he pushed with his feet between the giant's shoulder blades and pulled with his handcuffs around the neck.

He could feel the bioroid's neck muscles under his hands tightening as his victim thrashed about.

"Shoot him!" came the strangled digitized scream gurgling from the choking Brad.

Gamba's other subordinate opened fire, and Gamba swiftly stepped to the side and disappeared. Snake ducked behind his victim for the armored protection and yanked back as hard as he was able. He wondered what would give first—the handcuffs, or the bioroid's windpipe. Just as he was beginning to feel the giant start to go limp, he received his answer as the small chain broke from the strain against the enhanced muscle.

Snake landed painfully onto the ground and quickly rolled out of the way as the bioroid fell back after him. He reached for the P90 strapped to the merc's thigh and just as he grabbed it, he felt the presence of Gamba looming over him, and the intense squeeze of Gamba's fingers around his skull.

This time it was Snake's turn to feel a painful strain in his neck as he felt Gamba lift him like a ragdoll and toss him across the length of the pit. His lungs emptied and he coughed for breath as he pushed up on his elbows and lifted his head and shoulders to look up. Miraculously, the fingers of his right hand still held the P90 in his death grip. He had just enough time to register Gamba's conscious subordinate checking on the one he'd just subdued before Gamba disappeared, boomed across the pit and flashed into existence in front of him.

To his credit, Snake reacted quickly, raising the P90 and blasting as many rounds as he could up Gamba's chest, pinging off of the Commander's armor. Snake rolled as Gamba cracked the ground where Snake's ribcage had been and tried again to fire on Gamba's head. The biomechanical titan flinched, and his form seemed to melt around the small projectiles as he dodged and charged Snake, pinning him to the wall with his giant hand around the operative's throat.

Snake flailed and struggled to keep gravity from choking him as he dropped his weapon and grabbed tightly on Gamba's fingers. Commander Gamba turned his head slightly in the direction of his subordinate, a lazy look in his eyes.

"Captain Bolade," he said in a booming electric screech. "What is Lieutenant Ola's status?"

The giant called Bolade was pressing his fingers on the fallen one's neck.

"Unconscious, sir," said Bolade, "but alive."

Gamba returned his attention to Snake. "First you kill Lt. Olivier, then you manage to best another of my men—while unarmed and restrained, at that! I truly am impressed, Snake. You are a worthy opponent."

Gamba dropped Snake onto the ground. The FOXHOUNDer dropped to his knees upon landing, coughing and wheezing painfully as he massaged his throat. Commander Gamba flash stepped ten yards away, clutching the weapon Snake stole.

"I offer you a choice, Snake. Surrender now and submit, and you will be permitted to join the ranks of Outer Heaven. You have proven to be a warrior more than worthy of us—if you come to us, we will embrace you as brothers and you will join a family that truly appreciates a soldier of your caliber. Accept our leader Ahab as your true father, as we once did, and climb to the heights of Valhalla alongside us."

Commander Gamba tossed the P90 onto the ground five yards in front of him with a careless, sarcastic flick of his wrist.

"Otherwise," he said, dragging out the word. "Pick up the weapon and arm yourself, and we will give you the greatest and most honorable gift that warriors such as we can receive: a glorious death."

Cmdr. Gamba stretched out his arms, beckoning.

"Choose."

 

---

 

In the observation room, Jennifer watched the scene unfold with equal measures of horror and amazement. The death of her last spy came as a shock, and now she was so close to losing her last and final chance to get her brother out of this hellhole. As the American fought the enhanced soldiers below them, it stunned her at how he continued to fight in spite of the ever widening gulf between him and his enemies' capabilities.

Jennifer had been brought in to provide medical attention after the skirmish in the event that one of the Bloody Brads would be injured. When they had told her this, she didn't think it was a realistic possibility, and neither did the team she'd been brought in with. However, they were quick to be reminded that the American spy had already successfully killed one of the elites, so it was prudent to be prepared for anything.

Watching Snake fight, she was beginning to see the wisdom in this line of thinking. The man moved like something between a machine and a ferocious beast. Single-minded and focused in purpose, but exact and precise, almost analytical. There was no desperation or panic in his movements, just perfectly timed action and reaction.

It reminded her of the Bloody Brad unit themselves. She thought of their first meeting hours ago, the steel in his eyes, the wide-eyed predator's stare and inhuman detachment in his expression. To her, he appeared to be a carefully constructed instrument of death, a beast bred for war. Even when unarmed, he still gave the enhanced BBs a run for their money. But even Snake had his limits—he was injured, outmatched, and outnumbered, even with Lt. Ola temporarily incapacitated. The only out that Jennifer could see for Snake would be to either go down fighting or accept Gamba's offer.

"Magnificent, aren't they? The bio-augments, I mean."

Jennifer looked at the gray-haired bespectacled man in a lab coat standing ahead of her. The man had a rough Russian accent, a pencil-thin salt and pepper moustache, and a pencil behind his ear. He was the head of Outer Heaven's R&D division, Dr. Mikhail Petrokov. Jennifer didn't know much about him, except that he'd been with the company since before they arrived in South Africa when it had a different name, and that he was an expert in biomechatronics. He observed the scene below with the same fascination as Jennifer, but there was a gleam in his eye, a giddiness.

"Those boys are truly my greatest achievement—the true sons of Outer Heaven. Look at how they fight. It is sublime!" Dr. Petrokov exclaimed. He moved closer to the window, peering down at Snake. "Gamba has good instincts, trying to recruit the American. That man, the way he moves, it is so similar to Ahab. I wonder who trained him to fight like that?"

Dr. Petrokov smiled. "Oh, how I would love to have him come to me as a test subject! If he were to join us, I could make him even stronger than Gamba, perhaps even as good as Ahab himself!" He looked to Jennifer. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Jennifer nodded nervously, biting her lip. Regardless of whether Snake refuses or accepts Cmdr. Gamba's ultimatum, her brother would be lost in either case without intervention.

Jennifer looked around. There was a weapons rack on the back wall with a manual lift, meant to be delivered to the researchers and weapons testers in the pit for live-fire testing. The ammunition was kept separate in locked steel cases on the opposite side of the room from the rack on the opposite side of the long room from her.

Would the place be stocked with explosive weaponry, like portable rockets? That might be enough to give Snake a fighting chance and put down the Bloody Brads. Jennifer looked around. There were two guards accompanying her and the scientist posted at each of the doors, and she was unarmed. If she acted, she might be able to do something, but she might die in the process and even if by some miracle she didn't, she'd definitely be blowing her own cover.

Her lips tightened into a thin line. No, she thought to herself. I will save Wikus, even if it kills me.

She walked up to one of the guards by the door. "I'm going to step out for a moment and use the facilities. Please send for me if an emergency occurs in my absence," she said.

The Outer Heaven mercenary nodded, but otherwise said nothing. She stepped outside of the merc's peripheral vision just behind him, eyeing the sidearm holster on his right thigh as she passed. Just as she reached up to open the door, she quickly grabbed the pistol from its holster and blasted the merc in the head and then quickly shot the other mercenary several times in the chest before he had time to react.

Petrokov wheeled around, shouting and crouching low to the ground. He reached for the alarm button on the central console, but Jennifer shot the console and then quickly put the gun barrel to his head.

"Don't move," she warned.

"Another Resistance spy?" Petrokov said out loud to himself.

"Unlock the ammo container," Jennifer commanded.

 

---

 

The sound of gunshots echoed from the observation window above, muffled by the glass windows and stealing the attention of the pit's occupants. Shortly afterward there was a screech of metal followed by a boom as a metal equipment lift sped down and slammed into the ground. The metal scissor gate squealed open, revealing Jennifer holding an aging scientist at gunpoint next to a stack of metal crates. Jennifer kicked open a crate on the ground, revealing a Stinger missile launcher.

"SNAKE, OVER HERE!" she shouted.

Recovering his wits, Snake dove forward and scooped up the P90 mid-roll, unloading every round in the magazine into the two bionic giants. The Bloody Brads covered their faces as Snake laid down fire, moving backward to the lift as he did so. As soon as the magazine in the submachine gun went dry, Snake tossed it aside and yanked the Stinger from the foam in its metal case, punching the on button on its targeting display as he pointed at the bioroids.

At this range it would be difficult to miss, so he fired before the onboard display of the launcher could give a targeting solution. It hit Commander Gamba and narrowly missed Cpt. Bolade, who quickly recovered and flash-stepped into a lunge at the lift and its occupants. Snake barely had a chance to grab the other two people and fall back onto the ground to just barely avoid Bolade's fist above them.

Without conscious thought, Jennifer raised her pistol at Bolade's face and fired three times at the super soldier's head. She missed her first two shots, and her third glanced off Bolade's head, damaging his face mask. Bolade's eyes widened in panic, starting to reach with his off hand to clutch at his face. Siezing his opportunity, Snake reached up and grabbed at the mask before Bolad got his hand on it and pushing his boot up against Bolade's neck for leverage, Snake pulled at the mask as hard as he could.

The mask came free, but there was more to it than Snake had been expecting—he thought it was a simple gas mask or other breathing apparatus worn over his face. In reality, the electronic mechanism in the mask was connected to some kind of barbed cable that extended into Bolade's open mouth and down his throat. When the mask came free from Bolade's face, Snake's pushing with his foot and yanking hard on the mask caused the cable to be forcibly be pulled up and out of Bolade's throat, with the barbed cable covered in bloody chunks.

With the apparatus removed, Snake had nothing to brace for and his legs pushed the heavy soldier away. Bolade's mouth comically flopped open like a macabre puppet as he clutched at his neck, coughing and making horrific choking sounds as his eyes widened like a fish and his mouth spewed blood and stomach acids. Within moments, the giant fell over, having bled to death.

Snake pushed himself up, covered down his front in the cyborg's bloody vomit. He still clutched the strange gore-covered device in his hand, stunned.

He looked down at it, whispering, "What the fuck…?"

Jennifer and the doctor stood up, both looking just as dumb founded as Snake did. Jennifer looked from Snake to Bolade before looking up and shouting, "Snake, look out!"

The smoke in front of them cleared, showing Cmdr. Gamba stooping over Lt. Ola's body. Gamba was clutching at a heavily bleeding shoulder; a huge chunk of his torso and his arm were missing. He put the bloody forefingers against Ola's neck before pulling back his hand and clutching his shoulder once more. Two red streaks were left on Ola's skin.

"He's dead," Gamba said. "He must have died while we were fighting."

Commander Gamba looked from Lt. Ola to the corpse of Cpt. Bolade, before raising his eyes to Snake. This time there was no rage in Gamba's eyes, like there was when Snake had killed Lt. Olivier earlier that day. Instead, there was a sort of glazed-over lack of focus, like his attention was on something far away. He glanced over to the doctor.

"It's just me now, isn't it, Dr. Petrokov? I'm the last one."

Petrokov nodded solemnly, paying no mind to the armed woman next to him who had had him at gunpoint just moments before. "I'm afraid so, son."

Cmdr. Gamba fell over onto his side. Petrokov ran over and got onto his knees to cradle the commander's head. Snake and Jennifer were too mystified by the situation to try and stop him.

"Do you think our leader, our…father…would he be proud?" Gamba's electronic voice crackled. It sounded like he was wheezing.

Petrokov's eyes filled with tears. "Of course he is. You were his finest, after all."

"And you, doctor? Did we…make you proud?"

Petrokov gripped and squeezed Gamba's bloody hand. "You were my finest creations. You were my boys," he said. He lowered his voice and continued, "and you are the strongest, bravest boys I've ever had the honor to know."

Gamba sighed contentedly.

Snake stepped forward. "I don't understand," he said. "You're not going to regenerate and keep fighting?"

Gamba looked up at Snake with mild surprise, as if he was only just seeing him for the first time. He shook his head lightly. "No…no, I don't think so. Without my brothers, my friends…I don't see the point. Besides, I've known nothing but fighting my whole life. I am tired…ready to be done."

Gamba let go of Petrokov's hand to pull a sidearm from his thigh holster. Snake tensed for a moment before Gamba simply tossed it in Snake's direction. "You have won your victory, fair and square, Snake," he said. "I only have one final request. I want you to finish it properly. Send me along off this mortal plane, so I can see my brothers again in the real Outer Heaven."

Snake stooped over and picked up the pistol. He looked down wordlessly at the Beretta, then over to Gamba. "Why?" he asked, more to himself than anything.

"It's the only way I'll ever get to know if peace truly exists," Gamba answered.

Petrokov gently let Gamba's head down onto the ground and stepped away out of the line of fire. Snake felt lightheaded, like he was going to feel ill. None of this made any sense to him—it didn't feel right. Snake stepped closer to Gamba's prone form and raised the pistol to point at Gamba's face.

"You're sure this is what you want?" Snake whispered, hoping to hell that Gamba would try to talk him out of it.

Instead, Gamba only nodded. "I'm ready," he said simply.

Snake squeezed the trigger, and the glow left Cmdr. Gamba's eyes. Snake lowered his pistol, realizing just how tired he felt. Every inch of his body felt sore and broken, and he felt an exhaustion so thorough that he believed that if he sat down now, he would fall asleep instantly and maybe not even wake up.

Snake turned his head lazily to regard the Russian doctor, who was openly weeping. "You're the one who augmented these guys, weren't you? You called them your boys."

Petrokov said nothing, only nodded.

"They called Venom their father. Why?"

Petrokov looked up into Snake's dull eyes, and sighed. "They say war is hell, American. But it isn't true. Because hell only takes the guilty. War has no such discrimination—it feeds on the guilty and the innocent alike."

He looked over the Brads. "They were children when they were pressed into service. Victims of a war that wasn't theirs, forced to fight by the older men of their villages and by the private mercenaries after them. Once they were deemed no longer useful, they were betrayed and imprisoned…they were used as test subjects, guinea pigs by private mercenaries acting on behalf of an American intelligence agency."

Snake froze. "What were they testing?" he asked, dreading the answer.

"A biological weapon. A horrific disease based on parasites, not unlike malaria. It killed their friends and neighbors; it nearly killed them. It had an unintended side effect of granting these boys increased muscle strength and inhuman speed and reflexes, but it came at the cost of their capacity for speech. That's why we installed electronic voice boxes into their throats and gave them masks to prevent the disease's spread. Once they had hit puberty, it was too late to free them of the infection, but with the help of the old man we'd met, God rest his soul, we were able to give the children a chance at life."

Snake's blood ran cold. Weapons testing on children? His fingers involuntarily curled and clenched into a fist. "And then you put the child soldiers right back on the battlefield, is that it?" Snake accused.

Petrokov shook his head. "They were rescued by Ahab. We tried to treat them and then find ways to give them an education. All they had known was war, almost since birth—we wanted to give them an alternative to that. But the children, they couldn't let it go—fighting was all they knew, and they were surrounded by people who had taken up that lifestyle willingly for themselves. They begged Ahab to become one of us, and then rebelled when Ahab refused.

"Though we tried to avoid it, there was some…violence. When the boys came of age, we could no longer refuse, and whether it be due to gratitude to Ahab for saving their lives or simply out of a desire to return to the only home they ever knew on the battlefield, the children joined Outer Heaven. Eventually, they came to think of Ahab as their father. And with the help of the dying old scientist we had met, I built them their exoskeletons to enhance their bodies even further than what the bioweapon had done to them, with the added benefit of giving them a way to join us without fear of spreading the disease to anyone else."

Snake looked to the bloody mouth of Bolade's corpse and the discarded voice box he had ripped from the corpse's throat. Snake wiped his bloody hand on his pants. Petrokov shook his head.

"There is no need to worry about further spread," Petrokov explained. "It's a parasite, not a viral macrophage or bacterial infection. When the host dies, the organism dies with it. The bioweapon was ultimately scrapped in its testing phase, and these boys…" He looked around sadly as he gestured to the bioroids' bodies, "These boys were all that was left of the infected."

Petrokov sighed and slowly walked over to the nearest wall, pressing his back against it and sliding down to sit on the ground. He curled up and grabbed his head in his hands, sobbing softly for a few seconds before looking up at Jennifer. "You're with the Resistance, aren't you?"

"That's right," Jennifer said, pointing her pistol at him. "Where are the other spies that Outer Heaven captured? Tell me, if you want to live."

Petrokov shook his head. "I'm dead anyway," he muttered.

"Do you even know?" Snake asked.

Petrokov looked up at Snake. "You. American. You're not a Resistance member, are you?"

Snake didn't even have the energy to be surprised anymore. "What gave it away?"

"The way you fight. It's not like the guerilla fighters here in South Africa. It's more similar to how the mercenaries here are trained. You fight like him, like…Ahab."

"I fight like your leader?" Snake asked.

Petrokov didn't answer. "You're looking for Dr. Madnar and his daughter, right?"

Snake nodded. "That's right."

A dark look of shame passed onto Petrokov's face. "Drago was my friend," he said. "We went to university together."

"I see," Snake said, thinking back to the briefing. It felt like a lifetime ago that he was sitting in that meeting room at FOXHOUND HQ. "So, you're the Outer Heaven scientist that had history with Madnar."

"It's my fault that he's a prisoner in this place," Petrokov said miserably. "I suggested that Ahab use his expertise to build his weapon. I thought he would convince him to work with us willingly like when Ahab had saved me from the Afghan POW camp following my defection, and that Drago and I would be working together hand in hand again, just like old times. I never thought that I would be putting Drago and Ellen into danger by dropping his name."

He got up onto his knees, gazing up with pleading eyes at Snake. "If I tell you where to find them, do you promise to get them out of this place?"

Snake shrugged his shoulders slightly, wincing at how much the motion hurt. "It's why I'm here," he said.

Petrokov nodded with a pathetic smile. "They're both locked in cells along the underground waterways beneath R&D," he said. He looked over to Jennifer. "Your comrades are being held down there too, in a separate interrogation chamber at the very end of the canal. They're being watched over by one of Ahab's specialists."

Snake looked over to Jennifer. "We should get your people out first."

"You would put my people before your hostage rescue?" Jennifer asked skeptically. "Why?"

"Because," Snake said, pulling his pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket and tapping one into his mouth. "I gave you my word. And I always keep my promises." He fished out his FOXHOUND lighter from his pocket and lit the cigarette.

"That won't interfere with your mission?"

Snake took a drag, exhaled smoke, and shook his head. "On the contrary. I'm going to need all the help I can get to get Dr. Madnar and his daughter out of here safely. You and your men could be of some assistance." He pulled another drag and chuckled. "I'm an American, remember? Like you said before, help comes at a cost. And you already said you'd help me in return for the rescue."

"That I did," Jennifer said. Now it was her turn to laugh, though Snake could hear that there was no humor in it. "Alright, that sounds fair, Snake. We'll go get my people, and then we'll get your hostages out."

She looked down at Petrokov and thumbed in his direction. "What about him?" She asked Snake.

"I will raise no alarm, and I won't oppose you in any way. Like I said, I'm dead either way, regardless," Petrokov replied. "Once Ahab finds out I betrayed him by helping you find Drago and Ellen, that will be it for me. Ahab is a fair man who has done right by me and the others here, but even his mercy has its limits."

Jennifer scoffed at the idea of Venom having any kind of mercy, but Snake just nodded. "Fair enough. But I can't leave you here as a loose end, and I can't take you with me. You'd be a liability. So, we need to figure out what to do with you here and now."

"I could kill him," Jennifer proposed, a scowl on her face.

"W-wait!" Petrokov said, panicked. "I can still help! Please!"

"Oh?" Snake asked in a light mocking tone that combined with his stony face and dull eyes came across as less casual and more terrifying. "What did you have in mind?"

"I-I-I can secure your escape route! A way to get you and yourselves out of the building and off of the base safely! Provided you don't…what's the expression? 'Bring down too much heat on us' in the process?"

"I'm listening…" Snake replied.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY FIVE – 2212 HOURS

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT FACILITY – FIRST FLOOR

 

As soon as they stepped off the elevator and passed through the laser room, Snake immediately split off from Jennifer and Petrokov. Before they left, Mikhail had made a point of putting the camera footage for the weapons testing pit on a loop to buy them some time, since no alarm was raised when Jennifer killed the two guards and Snake finished his fight with the bioroids. This way Jennifer and Snake could maximize the amount of time they could reasonably stay under cover.

It was only a band-aid, though: eventually, someone would be sent to relieve the dead guards from their shift only to discover the bodies, so they needed to move quickly while the advantage of surprise was still theirs. Jennifer stayed with Petrokov as they headed to the transport hangar to secure a covered truck for the getaway. At first, they considered having Jennifer stay with Snake so they could perform the hostage rescue together, but neither of them wanted to leave Petrokov by himself to secure transport, as they still didn't quite trust him not to raise an alarm as soon as they were out of sight.

So, once again, Snake was on his own. That suited him just fine, though—he was getting used to performing as a solo operative. Donning his balaclava mask and straightening the work badge on the lapel of the clean camouflage jacket he'd lifted from one of the corpses back in the observation room, he made a beeline across the factory floor and down the metal grating steps of the stairwell descending into the waterways.

The canal stretched on down the length of the factory floor before turning and continuing underground. On each side were large open concrete pipes with metal gratings just inside their entrances through which water and safe chemical runoff would be deposited into the ditch for drainage. There was no significant smell, save for the generic smell of moisture like rain, along with a subtle hint of probable mildew. Snake guessed that this place probably wasn't meant for sewage or volatile chemical disposal, then. Outer Heaven must have separate irrigation and storage systems for that.

Above the concrete walls of the canal, the floors and walkways on either side were inlaid with red brick. Some of the bricks were slick from the regular pressure washers that come through here. In some places, there was evidence of moss among the mortar closer to the canals proper. Snake looked around. The waterways were patrolled on each side in pairs, but it wasn't crowded where he was, probably because the entrance here in the factory was open-air and exposed to the view of the factory workers and above-ground patrols.

Snake walked forward with purpose, trying to give off the air that he knew where he was going. He knew that people would be less likely to question your presence if you already give off the impression that you belong—ironically, it wasn't FOXHOUND that taught him that, but the public school environments he had grown up in.

As soon as he passed through the entrance into the underground, he took a second to let his eyes adjust to the new lighting from the electric lamps on the walls. The air started to taste a little staler. He glanced down at the ID badge he was wearing. Wherever this "Corporal Herzog" normally patrolled, it was a safe bet that he probably wasn't supposed to be down here, especially given that they were apparently stashing VIP prisoners underground.

Snake absent-mindedly brushed his hand against the pistol on his thigh. The enemy was already suspicious for the presence of spies. If he ran into anyone, he wasn't sure how far pretending to be lost was going to get him. He needed to be prepared for anything.

The underground waterway had multiple branching paths. Petrokov had said that the Resistance prisoners were housed "at the end…" Where was the 'end' of this tunnel supposed to be, if it turned out to be a maze? Snake started to turn a corner and then immediately turned back and put his back against a wall to avoid being spotted by an approaching patrol. The echoing sound of approaching footsteps began to grow louder. Within moments they would turn the corner and find him. Snake looked over the edge of the walkway down the sloped concrete surface through which the pipe emerged, depositing its runoff down the sheer 5-ft drop into the canal.

Snake slid down the slope and grabbed the extruded edge of the pipe's lip, careful not to lose his grip on the slick surface before swinging into the pipe and dropping himself inside, putting his back against the grating as the water flowed around his ankles and calves. He drew his gun, listening intently for any sign that the guards had caught wind of him. He could just make out the sound of the footsteps over the running water. They were right above him…

…And then they kept moving on, getting quieter and quieter as they moved away. Snake breathed a sigh of relief before holstering his weapon and jumping up to grab the top lip of the pipe and slowly pulling himself on top of it to walk back up the slope to the brick walkway and turn the corner.

With multiple branching pathways, it was hard to tell just which direction led to the "end" of the tunnels, so Snake resolved to simply pick a direction and keep following it, crossing the canals with the occasional metal bridges so that he could keep his direction relatively consistent. After a while of this, he peeked around a corner to see the canal sloping upwards towards a large metal gate. On the walkways on either side of this gate were two lit doors with guards posted outside. The water ended at the bottom of the slope just outside the gate itself. Could this be the destination Snake was looking for?

The guards didn't look like they were going to be moving any time soon. Snake looked and saw that the lighting wasn't as good at the bottom of the channel near the gate. Maybe he could sneak in under the guards' noses? The short bars lining the gate's bottom looked just far enough apart that a thin person could squeeze through. Snake looked both ways for any approaching guards before sliding down the slope, over the edge and into the canal waters, which were thankfully pretty deep with a current weak enough to swim through.

Silently, Snake swam toward the sloped end of the canal until it was shallow enough to wade through. He kept low, keeping as much of his profile under the dark waters as he could as he slithered up the sloped end of the channel, crawling up to the gate and through the bars at the bottom. He moved quickly and didn't waste any time looking over his shoulder, but when he had made it all the way through the gate with no sound of alarm, he knew he was in the clear.

Ahead of Snake, raised high above the drainage ditch he currently occupied, was some kind of freight elevator, with a thin narrow concrete walkway with guardrails leading out from the door behind Snake on his left, and the right side opening up into some large storage area with stacked crates and shelves and a high ceiling. The rungs of a steel ladder protruded from the wall just ahead of Snake on his right, which he used to pull himself up out of the canal and get a better look at the area.

The freight elevator was of a decent size, but the shaft wasn't terribly large—the elevator only went up to ground level. This must have been the storage facility for the R&D facility. Snake looked into the storage area, seeing metal shipping containers and wooden crates marked according to their contents. This was the place where raw materials were apparently stored before they were processed. The storage area extended outward by about half a football field in length. Snake wondered just how much material wealth this place was sitting on, and then thought about Outer Heaven's FOBs throughout southern Africa and Southwest Asia. Did all of their bases have places like these?

He looked around and spotted a janitor's closet. Tugging at the door, he realized it was unlocked. Just around the corner of one of the shelves, he spotted a guard with his back to him. Snake drew his pistol and crept up behind the mercenary before grabbing him in a headlock with his free arm and shoving the barrel of the pistol into the guard's face.

"Make one wrong move and you're dead," Snake whispered. "Understand?"

The guard nodded. Snake pulled the guard along backwards and awkwardly half-walked half-waddled to the janitor's closet. Snake pulled open the door and pushed the guard in before stepping inside after him. Snake kept his gun trained on the enemy as he pulled the door close after them and locked it.

"Hands up," Snake commanded.

The guard did as he was told. Snake grabbed the pistol from the guard's thigh holster and tucked it into his belt, then unslung the rifle from the guard's torso, pointing both the pistol and the rifle at him with both hands for long enough to keep the guard still while Snake holstered his pistol and switched his hands for a more comfortable grip. The guard simply watched silently as Snake pulled the bolt back for a brass check and then fingered the safety off.

"Now, I'm going to ask you some questions," Snake growled. "Failure to answer them honestly will result in your death. Indicate to me whether you understand."

The guard nodded nervously.

"You're holding prisoners from the Resistance somewhere down here. Where are they located?"

The guard waved his hand with a pointed finger. "U-up the lift," he stammered. "End of the tunnel, there's a door into a big room. That's where they're at. You can't miss them." His accent sounded East European, but Snake couldn't pinpoint the country of origin.

Snake smirked. "Good," he said. "Next question: there's an old Russian scientist. He and his daughter are also being kept down here. Don't give me that look. You know who I'm talking about. Where are they being held?"

"There's a cell here in the warehouse area. That's where the old guy is. I don't know where they're keeping his daughter."

Snake squinted. The guard could be lying. The fact that some random guard knew where all the prisoners were located was unlikely. Then again, if he did know where most of them were, chances were that he knew where the girl was too. None of what the guard says could be reasonably trusted. But Snake was on a time crunch here, so he could only work with what he was given.

"Fine," he said. "Get on your knees and put your hands on your head."

The guard nodded and proceeded to get down on one knee, before pulling his arm up to throw something at Snake's face. Snake ducked the projectile, looking up just in time to see the guard grab a small pistol from his boot and aim up towards Snake. Snake twisted the barrel of his rifle around the merc's arm and pulled the guard's weapon in a safe direction before elbowing him in the throat and pushing him to the ground.

Snake stepped on the hand clutching the pistol and put all his weight on it, causing the guard to yelp and let go. Snake kept his rifle leveled in the guard's face as he glanced over at the fallen projectile to see what the merc had thrown at him. A knife.

"Scout's knife behind the back…and a hidden gun?" Snake muttered. "You're full of surprises today, aren't you?"

The merc grunted his pain through his teeth as Snake dug his heel into the man's hand. The guard chuckled. "A little trick they teach in Spetsnaz. Seems I botched it, though. Too bad. Would've liked to see the look on your face when I put a new hole through it."

Snake kicked the pistol away and kicked the guard onto his stomach. There was indeed a knife sheath along his back, which Snake grabbed. Snake cursed himself for not being careful enough. He was in too much of a rush, and it almost cost him—he was supposed to be better than this. He resolved to search his captives much more thoroughly on the next opportunity.

Snake looked up to the shelves, saw some rope, which he started tying around the subject's hands and ankles. He also grabbed a shop rag and tied it around the guard's face, gagging him at the mouth. He then picked up the knife, sheathed it, and tucked it into his belt.

"Thanks for the souvenir," Snake said. "Only reason you're not dead is because it would be too loud. I'm going to lock this door behind me. Either you stay quiet, and somebody finds you later after I'm long gone, or you make some noise and it'll be me, back to finish the job. Your choice."

Snake stepped out from the janitor's closet, closing and locking the door behind him. He headed back to the freight elevator, and started climbing the ladder next to it, just in case there were more guards in the area that he hadn't seen. As soon as he climbed up and over, he saw a tunnel leading outside, which he made a beeline for. Just like the merc had said, there was a door at the end on the left-hand side. He opened it and pushed through, only to find himself lit by two massive spotlights.

"And here, we have the guest of honor!" shouted a boisterous Australian voice. "Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you the man of the hour, the intruder calling himself Snake! Say hello to the fans, mate!"

"Who the—!?" Snake squinted through the lights to see that at the middle of the large room was some kind of towering metal structure about thirty to forty feet in height, topped by a round flat surface with three poles around it in a triangular pattern. Hanging from the poles were chains from which three POWs hung by their wrists.

Standing in the middle between the poles was a brown-haired youthful man with a collared shirt, denim jeans, an Akubra slouch hat with the brim pinned at the side, and a dark brown leather duster long coat. Slung around his shoulders was a bandolier and slung on his belt was a revolver, a hunting knife, and a tightly coiled brown whip. On his back looked like some kind of quiver, where Snake could see what looked to be several boomerangs, three or four long boomerangs and one returning boomerang. The man was a walking stereotype of the Aussie bushman. The guy waved at the spy who acknowledged him. "G'day, mate!" he greeted jovially.

"Who the hell are you?" Snake shouted. He pointed the rifle up at the Australian, who held up a finger.

"Ah, ah, ah! I wouldn't do that if I were you!" the Aussie said with glee. Suddenly, the platform they were on began to rotate, and the POWs started swinging on their chains. The Aussie walked against the rotation of the platform so he could continue facing Snake. "Wouldn't want to hurt these poor bogans, would you?"

He waved his arms in a flourish. "In an old life, I used to be called Nathaniel Kingsbury, leader of the illustrious Egg Plant!"

"Egg Plant? The ecoterrorist group?" Snake vaguely remembered reading about them during training: an extremist faction of activists who started out protesting the deforestation of Australian land for ranching property, before switching to violent means by attacking the corporations directly when they refused to cease their activities. When Snake was still training at FOXHOUND, they had made the news for blowing up some logging facilities and an office building.

"The very same! Though that's not the term we would have used," Kingsbury said. "Unfortunately, freedom fighting doesn't pay the bills on its own, so I started working here at Outer Heaven, where I've been given the mantle of Dirty Duck, hunter and trapper extraordinaire!"

"So, you went from fighting big, destructive corporations to working for them," Snake taunted. "And on top of that you hide behind hostages. Coward Duck sounds like a more appropriate title to me!"

Duck waved his arm, and a spinning arc flew directly at Snake's head, forcing him to dive out of the way as it weaved between two of the POWs back to Duck's hand. "Who said anything about 'hiding?'" Duck retorted. "I can fight you just fine from here. No need to give up my territorial advantage. As for Outer Heaven, they aren't trying to kill our planetary habitat with deforestation and pollution. Their only export is warfare, and they don't much care who that war is fought against.

"So, I offer them my expertise as a warfighter, and they pay me enough to keep Egg Plant well-funded and well-equipped. And in the process, the war machine kills off more useless scum-sucking wastes of oxygen to keep our population down. Way I see it, it's a win-win."

"You hate humanity?" Snake asked.

"Nah, it's not like that," Duck shook his head. "I just recognize our species is part of the greater natural order—and just like any other animal, if you let us grow to large enough size without any natural predators, we'll eventually destroy ourselves, which'll have a negative effect on the rest of the system at large. It just so happens that us destroying ourselves also means taking our habitat with us which means once we're gone, life on the planet won't recover enough to bounce back, and then POOF! That's it, that's all she wrote."

"So, you think you're some noble warrior, preserving all life on Earth by sacrificing a few to save the rest? That's crazy."

"Crazy to you, maybe. But it doesn't really matter." The Aussie waved his hands at some unseen parties to the side and snapped his fingers, forcing Snake to actually look around and take stock of the rest of his surroundings.

The floor was covered in soft sand in every direction giving him unstable footing, with the tower and platform in the room's center. The walls were corrugated steel panels with thin windows high up on the side opposite Snake through which he could make out the filtered light of street light poles against the night sky. What the hell did they use this room for, Snake wondered? It didn't seem to make any sense.

Snake heard rumbling ahead of him, and saw a bulldozer roll out from an alcove on the far side of the room, its bucket lifted just above the sandy ground and pointed in his direction. A small six-man squad of Outer Heaven spec ops soldiers ran out to take positions on either side of the dozer, leveling their weapons at him. Snake raised his rifle, glancing up at Dirty Duck.

"Tell you what, Snake, as much as I love chatting about my motivations with folks, I'm afraid I just don't have the time. Got too much shit to do, y'see. Tell you what: if you can survive me, the dozer, and my men, we'll argue about my goals all you want." Duck turned his head to regard the men he called in. "Go get 'em, boys!"

Before the words had even left Duck's mouth, Snake had already opened fire on the squad, running over to the metal structure at the center to take cover from returning fire. A flash bang grenade flew out from behind the corner. Without thinking, Snake grabbed it and threw it back, squeezing his eyes shut.

The flash came shortly afterward, and he leaned out to take a few more shots. Three of the six-man team was already dead. The other half of the squad took up firing positions behind the armored dozer, which let them advance toward him. Snake turned right and followed the wall of the tower to go around the back side, hoping to flank the enemy.

A bullet impacted the wall just in front of him, stopping him in his tracks and forcing him to dive away from the tower. Snake looked up to see where it was coming from, seeing Dirty Duck swinging from one of the ceiling beams with his whip, aiming with his six-shooter and hooting and hollering like he was having the time of his life. Snake aimed down the sights of his rifle, but Duck had swung back onto the platform to take safe refuge among the hostages again.

Snake ran up to the corner, just in time to see the barrel of an enemy's rifle—they had the same idea for a flanking maneuver he did, and they hoped that their leader taking pot shots at him would have slowed him down enough for the sneak attack to be effective. Clever bastards.

Snake lunged forward and gripped the enemy's barrel shroud pushing it upwards as he lunged forward and drove the butt of his rifle into the enemy's stomach. As the merc doubled over, Snake let go of his rifle and let it hang from its sling on his torso to grab his pistol and fire four times over his enemy's back at the other two squad members, catching one in the head and another in the vest plate, forcing him to back off around the opposite corner.

The guard under Snake's arm gained his second wind, dropping his rifle and lunging forward to strike at Snake's midsection. Snake drove down the handle of his pistol on the back of the merc's neck as he drove his knee into the man's chin, sending him reeling back. He pulled the knife from his belt, hooked his pistol hand around the merc's neck and drove the knife into his gut six times.

Two more gun shots from overhead pinged the wall next to Snake's head and the merc's leg. Snake caught Duck swinging overhead once more, making another pass. Dirty Duck took another couple of potshots, and Snake swung the merc's body around to take the bullets in his back before watching Duck disappear once more onto the platform above him.

"Getting real tired of this Spider-Man bullshit," Snake growled, exasperated.

He dropped the carcass and fired his pistol around the corner, emptying the magazine. He tossed the pistol, put his spare into the thigh holster and then picked up his rifle as he dove forward, bullets whizzing through the air where his head used to be, aiming down his sights and peppering the last merc with bullets. As he watched the last squad member go down, the ground rumbled as he stood up right as the dozer started barreling full force towards him, the bucket angled so that the prongs on the bottom would bite into him.

Not having time to run back into cover, Snake sprinted forward towards the bucket to give him speed as he jumped up into the bucket. The air sped out of his lungs as the metal slammed into him and his body's inertia was caught by the momentum of the vehicle. Another bullet slammed into the metal next to him. Snake picked up his rifle and aimed it in the direction of the wannabe-acrobat, emptying what was left of his magazine. A couple of stray rounds severed the whip that kept Duck suspended, and he dropped his revolver and what was left of the whip in surprise, waving his arms in a comic pantomime of his namesake before slamming into the rotating platform, his legs dangling off of it.

"Clever dickhead!" Duck could be heard shouting as he grappled up onto the platform.

Snake, for his part, climbed up and over the lip of the bucket as the dozer lifted it to try and throw him off. He tumbled down and squeezed himself between the bucket and the dozer's windshield. The driver leaned out, opening the door and gripped the roof in one hand and pointing a pistol at Snake with the other. Snake answered in kind, and they both fired on each other, Snake getting grazed in the shoulder and the driver losing his weapon and the use of his left hand.

Snake swung into the open door of the vehicle and started grappling the driver, raining strikes onto his temple to discombobulate him. The driver tried to drive his boot into Snake's groin and missed, hitting him in the gut instead. Snake reeled backward, almost falling out of the dozer if not for his quickly grabbing the driver's shirt. The driver grabbed the door frame as hard as he could to keep them both from falling out.

Out of the corner of his eye, Snake saw an object rapidly approaching. He grabbed the doorframe and yanked hard on the driver, who fell over on top of him. A wet and meaty thunk was heard, and Snake looked up to see a long, gray boomerang wedged into the driver's head just moments before his body tumbled out onto the ground below.

Snake pulled himself into the dozer's driver seat, hissing through his teeth as he gingerly touched the flesh wound on his shoulder. The fabric of his shirt was torn and blotched with red. Seemed the bullet had only scraped off some surface flesh. Stupid, and lucky: just a few inches to his right, and Snake might have lost the use of his arm entirely, or worse.

There was a crash, Snake was thrown into the levers in front of him. The dozer had stopped moving, though the engine still rumbled. Snake lifted his head. Lucky—it had crashed right into the tower in the middle of the large room, the bucket still raised and digging into the sheet metal in the tower's side.

Snake stepped out of the door and climbed onto the dozer's roof, jumping up and into the bucket. Another hunter's boomerang came wheeling towards him and he quickly dodged to the side. He grabbed at handholds in the tower's side before swinging and throwing himself to a nearby ladder. The returning boomerang sailed over head and came around at a slightly lower elevation towards Snake's hands. Snake drew his knife and swung at the boomerang as it came closer, sending it careening harmlessly to the floor.

Snake ascended to the rotating platform, breathing hard. He was getting tired. He believed that was Duck's overall plan: support the men in killing him. If they didn't kill him, keep him from getting to Duck and the hostages. If that failed, make him tired, so it would be easier for Duck to kill Snake himself. Snake had to admit—it was a good plan. It's what he would have done.

When Snake hauled himself onto the platform, Dirty Duck was grinning jovially. The Aussie looked to be in good spirits. His last remaining boomerang was in his hand. He put it back into the quiver on his back, drawing his large hunting knife instead.

"I've gotta say, Seppo, you put a helluva fight," Duck said, laughing.

Snake switched his knife from his left hand to his right hand. No use drawing his pistol up here—it would endanger the hostages. "Right back at you," Snake said with a smirk.

They both lowered into combat stances, each waiting for the other to make the first move. The hostages swung around them like a macabre carousel, muttering their protestations through blood-caked lips gripping uncomfortably tight rags between their teeth.

Duck lunged forward, taking advantage of his extra two inches in height and longer reach to press the attack by slashing at Snake's head. Snake ducked and stepped inside of Duck's swing, getting in close for a stab between Duck's ribs. Duck grabbed Snake's wrist and pulled his knife forward and to Duck's right so that he could get behind Snake.

Snake lowered his center of gravity to stabilize himself and keep from falling forward, then dropped lower on his left leg to raise his right foot for a side kick to Duck's shin. This was enough to loosen Duck's grip, and Snake put down his right foot to pivot, spin around to switch hands and slash at Duck's forearm with his left hand, forcing Duck to let go.

Duck stepped back, then lunged again towards Snake, who parried the opposing blade with his left hand before raising a knee towards Duck's gut. Duck checked Snake's knee before delivering a right cross elbow to Snake's head and rolling him forward to land on his back. Duck raised his knife, preparing to plunge it into Snake's chest.

Snake raised his legs to kick Duck away and rolled to his feet. He needed to be more aggressive and stop fighting defensively, he realized, but it was all he could do to protect against Duck's onslaught. Snake saw that his movements were too slow: Duck had the advantage of speed and stamina from being largely out of the fight, and he also was larger and taller too.

His lungs were on fire. His shoulder hurt like hell, too.

Snake switched to a reverse grip, the knife in his right hand. He pushed left with a feint to coax Duck into swinging. When Duck obliged, Snake ducked underneath the Aussie's arm, covering his right hand with his left to brace for a stabbing/slashing motion towards Duck's armpit, hoping to nick the axillary artery. Unfortunately, Snake had misjudged the distance, and succeeded only in cutting through the fabric of Duck's duster. He used his momentum to spin around for another chance, but Duck caught his hand and with a rotation of his wrist, sent the knife flying off the platform before throwing Snake into one of the poles. The hostage bounced off Snake's body painfully.

Dirty Duck threw his last boomerang from his back, and Snake kicked the hostage away from him as he threw himself off the ground so that the Aboriginal hunting weapon bounced harmlessly off the pole and onto the ground several paces away. Duck sprinted to Snake, who scrambled after the boomerang, grabbed it, then fell into a power slide under and between Duck's legs. Snake grabbed at the duster, yanking as hard as he could while bracing against Duck's back with his foot.

"The fuck are ya doin'!?" Duck shouted, swinging his knife uselessly behind him in an attempt to get Snake to let go.

Snake kicked the back of Duck's leg to force him on his knee, then circled the boomerang around Duck's neck, rearing back to choke him. Snake thought of his fight with the bioroids earlier. Duck elbowed Snake, who lost his grip. Duck grabbed at his coat and flipped Snake over him, sending him flying and the coat fluttering down below.

Duck picked up the boomerang. "That was my favorite coat, you cheeky fucker!"

He threw the stick, which collided with and bounced off of Snake's injured shoulder while he tried getting up. Snake yelled in pain, clutching his shoulder before he was immediately winded by Duck's knee as the Aussie put his full weight on Snake's torso.

"Like I said, Seppo: a helluva a fight," said Duck, sniffing. "But I think that's enough out of you. Good game." He raised his knife and plunged.

Snake grabbed Duck's forearm, pushing as hard as he could against the downward thrust. He could feel his strength ebbing. Snake's eyes focused on the point of the knife in his face. He shook as he fought to direct the knife away from his face and neck. Slowly, the knife started digging into his chest. Snake yelled.

Good game. Snake thought of his first year of training at FOXHOUND, when he first went toe-to-toe with Black Mamba, how he'd forced a concession out of her. He thought of their second fight a year later. Just like back then, he was short a knife against a blade-wielding opponent. Both times, he won by redirecting the blade, and using his opponent's momentum against them. But now, Snake was pinned, unable to move except to fight against the combined forces of gravity and Duck's own impressive musculature. It seemed this time, he had found a fight that he would eventually lose.

Suddenly, there was a sound of chains. A grunt. A body flew into view and kicked Duck in the head—one of the struggling hanging prisoners. The blade thankfully left Snake's chest without going deeper than surface tissue. Duck reared back, his knee leaving Snake's stomach. Snake took his opportunity, swinging up to strike the larger man's groin. Duck dropped the knife. Snake grabbed it, climbing on top of the Australian, striking Duck twice on the jaw before plunging downward as Duck had tried to do.

Now it was Duck's turn to struggle against the impending doom of the knife. Snake braced against the knife with both arms, but Duck was strong enough to force him into an impasse. Snake raised his left hand and struck his right wrist. The knife jerked down into the Aussie's chest. Duck yelped in pain.

Snake struck the pommel again. The knife jerked downward, this time a little deeper. He felt Duck's grip on his forearm weakening.

Again. The knife was halfway buried in Duck's flesh. Duck's grip got a little weaker. One last strike, and the knife was stuck in Duck's chest. Duck raised his right fist to attack Snake's face. Snake held down Duck's arm, unholstered his pistol, and shoved it into Duck's mouth.

Snake squeezed the trigger.

Tinnitus. Shaking hands. Dropping the pistol. Lungs on fire. Snake rolled off of the fresh corpse, falling onto his back. It was all he could do to just lay there. And breathe.

A minute passed. Five minutes. Snake painfully pulled himself onto his knees as he quickly searched Duck's person, finding a ring of keys. Snake yanked the knife out of Duck's body, wiped the blood off on Duck's jeans, and sheathed it onto his belt. He stood up and walked over to a button control that hung from the ceiling by a wire and pushed the button to make the platform stop rotating.

He walked to each of the three prisoners in turn, opened their handcuffs and helped them down onto solid ground. He leaned up against one of the poles, pulled out one of his Lucky Strikes and his lighter, and lit the cigarette in his mouth while clutching at his chest and shoulder. He cursed.

"Thank you for saving us," said one of the prisoners, the one who'd kicked at Duck. "I didn't think we would make it out. I'm Wikus. Are you with the Resistance?"

"Nope," Snake grunted. "And save your thanks till we're out of here. Really, I should be thanking you. If not for your quick timing, I'd be dead right now."

"Seemed like the least I could do," Wikus said sheepishly. "So, if you're not a rebel, then who are you?"

"I'm nobody," Snake replied. "Your sister asked me to get you out."

"Jen is alive?" Wikus asked, astonished.

Snake nodded. "In return for my help, I was to get assistance on getting two more prisoners: an old man and his daughter. I know where the old guy is, roughly. Don't know about his kid, though."

Wikus looked to the other prisoners, nodding. The two others gave him a thumb's up. "I think we can help you there. We've been observing this place from the inside for quite a while. If you don't mind us tagging along, perhaps we could guide you personally, as thanks for helping us? How about it?"

"Music to my ears," Snake said. He threw down his cigarette and ground it out with his foot. "Alright, folks. Grab some weapons and uniforms from the bodies. We've got two VIPs to rescue."

Notes:

This chapter was a lot of fun to write. I feel like for all the focus on realism I haven't had a whole lot of opportunity to pit Snake against the sort of freaky cartoon characters he normally goes up against, so it was fun to reinterpret the Bloody Brads and Dirty/Coward Duck in a way that I felt fit with the rest of the established Metal Gear lore.

I wanted to basically reinvent and reinterpret both boss fights in a way that both works for the goofy shenanigans of the rest of the franchise while still remaining true to the role both fights play in the original Metal Gear. In the case of the Brads, I used the super strength and heavy armor of the SKULL unit in MGSV as inspiration-this works for consistency in the original Metal Gear since in the old game the Bloody Brads were basically just nigh-invincible juggernauts. Giving them cybernetic enhancements and making them the same group of child soldiers that Venom rescues in MGSV also helps tie the lore of MGSV with the later development of MGS1's Cyborg Ninja. For Dirty Duck, I basically just combined his boss fight with the bulldozer fought elsewhere in Building 2. Since the boss originally used a boomerang as a weapon, I decided to imagine him as a bushman from the Australian outback. The whole deforestation thing was inspired by modern concerns with global warming, and of all things, the movie Ferngully, which takes place in Australia. The fact that Dirty Duck's actual origin is working for an ecoterrorist group (Egg Plant is mentioned in the original MSX Metal Gear's User Manual) made this plot element a no-brainer.

Next chapter will be the rescue of Drago and Ellen Madnar and the POWs' escape from the R&D facility. Chapter after that will probably be an interlude or intermission of sorts as the various players get set up for the endgame prior to Snake's going after Venom and Metal Gear. That won't be the end of the story, though. I still have quite a bit of material rattling around in my head for the denouement, similar to the stuff I wrote prior to Snake's insertion to Outer Heaven. Next week I'll get started on writing Chapter 15 for the Madnar rescue. Depending on how much time I need and considering the holidays are coming up and I have family to see, there's a pretty good chance that it won't be ready till January. Thank you for your continued support, and I hope you'll be looking forward to more of this story as much as I'm looking forward to writing it!

Chapter 15: A Taste of Freedom

Summary:

Snake leads his new allies in a daring rescue of Dr. Madnar and his daughter as they all try to make their stressful and stealthy escape of Outer Heaven and form a new plan on how to take down Metal Gear.

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 0032 HOURS

UNDERGROUND WAREHOUSE, NEAR THE WATERWAYS

 

The impromptu four-man squad of Snake, Wikus, and the other two men who introduced themselves as Cyrus and Christopher pushed forward with purpose back up the tunnel to the ladder by the freight elevator. Snake covered his team as they descended back to the warehouse below before climbing down himself and tapping the shoulder of the point man, who took up the rear.

As he and the rebels quickly moved behind the concealment of the stocked shelving, Snake clutched at his stinging chest and examined his hand, his finger glowing deep crimson in the dim lighting. Snake was in the middle of the fire team element, and he noticed that he and his team were moving slower due to their injuries. If and when they made it out of here, all four of them were going to need medical attention. Snake shook his head. 

Don't think about it, he reminded himself. Compartmentalize.

He tried to ignore the slight shaking of his hands as he held his rifle, or the small limp that carried him as he hobbled alongside the three other equally battered spies. Between the four of them, they might make up one single healthy soldier, Snake joked grimly to himself. The dark humor was all he could do to keep himself steady.

Wikus took point, guiding them through the warehouse and using silent hand signals to warn of incoming patrols so they could keep themselves concealed. On the other side of the shelving was a tunnel that broke off into a small aqueduct over which was suspended a metal walkway. The sound of running water could be heard faintly from far below. Alongside the walkway were metal pipes lining up against the wall, turning the corner before disappearing into the wall next to a continuation of the concrete tunnel.

The group waited for the patrols to move far enough away before heading to the walkway, hoping that the distance and the sound of the water below would muffle their footsteps on the metal grating as they made their way across the chasm into the opposite tunnel. Once back on solid concrete, they passed a couple of doors and stopped at one more corner. Wikus held up a fist, signaling the makeshift squad to halt. He peeked around the corner.

Wikus looked over his shoulder to Snake, who stood behind him. "At the end of this tunnel is the cell where they're keeping the old man," he whispered. "There are two guards posted outside the door, facing this way. If we open fire, we might be heard from up the tunnel."

"Hang on," said Snake. He fished out of his vest pocket an empty 9mm magazine that he'd been hanging onto for the sake of collecting ammo from any enemy sentries that they might have to put down.

"Switch places with me," Snake grunted.

Snake took up the point position while Wikus moved to the second position of the element. Snake placed his back against the wall and sidled up to the corner. "What're you going to do?" whispered Cyrus.

Snake just held a finger to his lips, before tossing the magazine into the hall. The piece of metal bounced along the concrete; the tunnel dim enough that it would have been difficult to make out the source of the noise from the well-lit door where the guards stood.

"What was that?" said a voice from down the way. There was a moment of silence, then: "I'm gonna check it out."

Snake waved the squad back into the shadows, and together they waited for the guard to appear from around the corner. The merc slowly and cautiously approached their position in the dark, seeming to stare right at them. They all tensed. A few seconds passed, and the guard relaxed, turning around. "It's nothing," he called.

Snake lunged forward and wrapped his hand around the guard's mouth in a vice grip and grabbed the top of the guard's head with his other hand. Within seconds, the guard's neck was broken, his gulping scream stifled by Snake's arms as he quickly wrapped them around the merc's torso to keep the body from falling to the ground. With Cyrus's help, the body was lifted further up the tunnel so it wouldn't end up in the other guard's view.

"Hey, Fallon, what's wrong?" called out the other guard on station. "Fallon, answer me!"

Struck with inspiration, Snake moved back up to the edge of the corner and whistled, before extending his arm into view and waving. "Come over here real quick," Snake whispered. He drew his knife.

"Why are you whispering?" the guard asked bemusedly as he obeyed the odd request.

Seconds later, as soon as he was around the corner, Snake rushed him, pinning him against the wall as he stabbed the man three times in the gut. When Snake withdrew his knife on the third stab, he was once again given a front-seat view of the life leaving a man's eyes as he collapsed in front of him. Snake glanced down at the blood on his knife and on his hand. He wiped the blade and his hand on the guard's shirt.

Snake didn't know when exactly this became so easy for him to do, but the fact that he now did it so mechanically without hesitation or sickness unsettled him. Snake took a breath and put the thought out of his mind. He waved his squad forth. They still had a job to do. He grabbed the dead guard's card key.

"Cover the rear," Snake ordered. Cyrus and Christopher took up positions at the corners adjacent to the metal cell door and aimed their weapons back down the hall. Snake and Wikus stacked up on the door, and on a silent count of one, two, three, Snake quickly opened the door and burst in ahead of Wikus, who came up behind him.

The single occupant immediately cowered as two soldiers towered over him, leveling their weapons at him. "No, please!" the old man cried feebly in Russian as he backed himself into a corner.

"Quiet," Snake commanded. He turned to Wikus. "Keep your gun trained on him. I'm going to search him."

Snake moved forward and patted down the prisoner, an old man in a torn khaki suit and a dark, filthy lab coat that used to be white. Once Snake was certain that the prisoner had no weapons, he told the old man, "Look at me."

The old man did as he was told, tears falling freely from his eyes and into his bushy white moustache before landing onto his tie and staining the lapels of his suit jacket. This was the scientist Snake had been sent to rescue, he was sure of it. "Drago Pettrovich Madnar?" Snake asked in confirmation.

"Y-yes?"

"Dr. Madnar, my name is Solid Snake. I'm here to get you out," Snake said, extending a hand to help the doctor to his feet.

"W-what?" Dr. Madnar muttered with disbelief. His eyes narrowed suspiciously at his saviors.

"I'm here to get you out," Snake repeated. "If you'll follow me right this way, sir. We need to go. Right now."

Dr. Madnar's expression became searching as he looked into Snake's and Wikus's faces. Whatever he was looking for must have satisfied him, because his face was awash with relief a second later. "Oh, thank God!" he cried, taking Snake's hand and pulling himself to his feet.

"B-but what about my Ellen?" Dr. Madnar asked nervously. "She's being kept here too."

"Right now, our focus is on making sure you get out of here alive," Snake replied.

This was the wrong answer. Dr. Madnar's voice rose in panicked anger. "I'm not going anywhere without my daughter!"

Wikus's eyes widened in alarm as he looked to Snake. The old man's complaining was going to get them killed. Snake nodded to Wikus in agreement—they did not have time for this. He shoved Dr. Madnar into a wall, pinning him with his arm. The old man gasped painfully. Snake drew his pistol, pulled back the hammer, and pointed it at the old Russian's head. Dr. Madnar shook with fear as he went limp, the little fight left in his body abandoning him. Wikus looked surprised but said nothing.

"Listen to me very closely," Snake slowly and deliberately whispered, his words heavy. "We are not safe here. Every sound you make—every second you waste—is a chance for us to be found and killed, and then nobody makes it out, your daughter included."

The old Russian's eyes darted between Snake's stony face and the gun's barrel. He licked his lips, his moustache twitching.

"You endanger us all with your outbursts," Snake continued. "You do that again, and I'll kill you myself. Indicate to me whether you understand." Snake felt a weighty bead of sweat slowly drip down the side of his face. He ignored it.

Dr. Madnar nodded his head nervously, eyes wide with shock.

Snake lowered and uncocked the hammer of his weapon and then withdrew his arm so that Dr. Madnar could move freely again. "We will get Ellen out," he promised. "But in order to do that, I need you to do your part by shutting the hell up…and doing what I tell you. Got it?"

"I understand," Dr. Madnar whispered.

Snake turned to Wikus. "You said you knew where the girl's being held?"

"No, but Cyrus does."

"Then we'll have him lead. You watch our VIP. I'll watch your back."

Wikus nodded, putting a leading arm around Dr. Madnar's shoulder as he led him out of the cell, Snake close behind. Christopher took up the rear position, and with Cyrus at the front, the squad and their VIP retraced their steps back through the tunnel and the warehouse to the waterways, taking care to dodge patrols as they went.

The pathways lining the canals were so narrow that the team was forced to walk single file to avoid knocking each other into the water. The further into the maze they navigated, the more disoriented Snake became by the surroundings as every section of tunnel looked more and more the same. Cyrus didn't show any confusion as they turned down a series of tunnels and descended down some sloping walkways. Snake was glad that at least one of them appeared to know where he was going.

After descending a short stairway, the group came up to a door on their left a few paces ahead. Cyrus stopped them just ahead of the door and grabbed the handle. Slowly, Cyrus cracked open the door and peeked inside. After a moment of silence, he pushed the door further in and led the rest down a corridor. At the end of the hallway was a second door. Cyrus once again took a position just out of view of the doorframe and put his hand on the knob.

"Down these stairs is a short hall with a small maintenance office, a boiler room and a couple of storerooms. One of these storerooms was repurposed to serve as the girl's cell," Cyrus explained. "There's bound to be three or four guards down there, at least."

"Then we'll need to move fast to keep them from raising an alarm if we don't want to have to fight our way out," Wikus said.

"Agreed," Snake replied. "Christopher, stay behind and keep the good doctor secure. Cyrus, Wikus and I will head down and eliminate the threats."

"No, I want to go with you," Dr. Madnar demanded.

Snake shut him down quickly. "Not a chance," he said. "You'll just get in the way. We can't have you as a liability with the enemies down there. Christopher, we'll call you down when it's clear. Stay up here and act as our lookout till then."

"You've got it, boss," Chris replied.

Chris's use of the word 'boss' made Snake think of Big Boss and his home back at FOXHOUND. He shook his head. Stay focused, he told himself.

He looked to Cyrus. "On your go," he ordered.

There was a silent count, and Cyrus opened the door to admit the three down the stairs to the hallway. There were three doors on the left, and one at the end.

"We'll go room by room," Snake whispered.

Cyrus nodded, and they stacked up on the first door, with Snake resting a hand on Cyrus's shoulder and Wikus on Snake's. Snake gave Cyrus a squeeze, and they burst through the door into the office, Cyrus pointing his gun into the face of a surprised maintenance technician sitting at his desk facing the door.

"Freeze! Put your hands up!" Cyrus demanded.

The tech did as he was told while Snake and Wikus checked the rest of the room. The room had two desks, one facing the door where the tech sat, and another on the left in the corner. Cluttered around the desks were cardboard boxes of varying size filled with documents and random machined parts and valves. There was also a couple of wall lockers in the corner opposite the corner desk. Snake checked under the desk and behind the boxes while Wikus checked the lockers.

"Clear," they both called out, pointing their weapons at the technician.

"How many others are down here?" Snake demanded.

"F-four, including myself," he answered. "A sentry in the cell, and two more in the boiler room."

Snake nodded, commanding to Wikus, "Secure him."

"On it."

Wikus grabbed a baggie of zip ties from the locker and tied the tech's ankles together and his arms behind his back, then yanked a shop rag from a stack of boxes and shoved it into the tech's mouth. He shoved the technician into one of the open wall lockers, shoving his pistol in his face threateningly.

"Don't you fookin' move," Wikus hissed.

The tech nodded, and Wikus closed the locker door. "Let's hit the next room," he said, and the group stepped out into the hall and moved to the next door, which had a plaque labeled 'BOILER ROOM, DOOR A' in bold letters. The door immediately next door was door B.

Once again, the squad stacked up on the door and once ready, burst into the room. The boiler room was large and filled with steam, heat, and noise. The rumbling of the four massive boilers that hummed and provided heat and energy to the rooms above camouflaged the squad's footsteps as they pushed into the tight spaces of the room. Above them were grated catwalks overlooking the metal occupants, surrounding hanging light fixtures that sparsely lit the room. At the edge of one of the catwalks on the opposite wall was a door with a sentry standing outside of it.

Snake gave a silent hand signal, and the three men split up to wind around the boilers and root out any other enemy, keeping out of the overhead light to stay out of sight from the sentry above. Cyrus caught a guard sitting on a stool with a toolbox next to him, elbow deep in the innards of a machine. Cyrus snuck up behind and plunged his knife in the guard's throat, dragging him into the dark. The lower section of the room now clear, the team regrouped at the bottom of the ladder leading to the catwalk above.

The ladder itself was bathed in light, but beneath the door guard's notice. Cyrus and Wikus covered the room behind them while Snake climbed up first. When he reached the top, his feet hitting the metal grating caught the guard's attention. Snake quickly pointed his pistol and plugged the guard multiple times, hoping that the noise of the boiler room would overpower the sound of the gunshots. He took up a position by the door, waiting for Cyrus and Wikus to ascend and join him, Wikus's hand on his shoulder to let them know they were ready. Wikus squeezed, and Snake moved into the storeroom, where they found nothing but tool shelves and a couple of crates.

Satisfied that the boiler room area was clear, they returned back to the hallway, where they heard gunshots and Madnar yelling something in Russian. Snake looked to his men. "Back upstairs!" he barked, and they rushed to the hallway's entrance just in time to see a guard's corpse finish tumbling down the stairs. Snake looked up to see the faces of Christopher and Madnar.

"Where'd he come from?" Snake demanded.

"Same hallway you did," Christopher called down.

"He must have been the fourth guard," Wikus said. He and Cyrus looked to Snake.

"Someone might have heard those gunshots. There's no alarms yet, but we'll be safer if we assume that it's just a matter of time. Let's grab the girl and get out of here. Christopher, take a position at the bottom of the stairs."

"Understood," acknowledged Christopher.

"Dr. Madnar, come with us, it'll be safer for you down here until we're ready to leave."

Dr. Madnar nodded hurriedly and together both men jogged down the stairs to the bottom. Snake, Wikus, Cyrus, and Madnar moved down the hall to the last door at the end. Snake waved Madnar to the side as he and the two others stacked up on the door. Once Snake got the other two men's confirmation, they quickly burst in, checking the small room.

Ellen was found hiding underneath the bed, trembling. Snake and Cyrus crouched down on one side, startling her into crawling out, right into the arms of Wikus, who picked her up to her feet.

"Check her," Snake ordered. Wikus complied and started checking her for weapons.

"What are you doing!?" Dr. Madnar shouted while Cyrus restrained him.

Snake and Wikus ignored the scientist. When Wikus was finished, he nodded to Snake. Snake faced her, looking her in the eye. His tall, shadowed figure and cold expression made Ellen flinch, but his voice was soft and warm as he spoke to her in Russian.

"Ellen, right? My name is Snake. We're here to get you out of this place. Your father's here, too. You'll be safe with us."

Ellen looked around and spotted Dr. Madnar. "Ottsa?" she asked.

"Ellen!" gasped the scientist. Together, they rushed forward and embraced each other.

Snake put a hand on Dr. Madnar's shoulder as he addressed them both. "I appreciate your need for a reunion, doctor, but we're not out of danger yet. We need to get moving."

"Right. Of course. This way, Doch," Dr. Madnar led his daughter under the guiding arm of Cyrus as the team returned through the hallway to rejoin Christopher, and together they emerged back into the waterway tunnels.

"We'll head back to the warehouse area," Wikus said, once again leading the way. "There will be a loading dock just outside the end of that tunnel you saw. You have transport?"

"We're working on it," Snake said. As they double-timed to retrace their steps back to the warehouse section, Snake turned on his radio for the first time since he came to R&D.

"Dr. Eliza Stone, this is Cpl. John Connors," Snake said, being careful to stick with established aliases, in case anyone was listening in. "I've got the passengers you requested back in Medical. We're heading to a warehouse tunnel just above the end of the waterways. Do you have transportation ready?"

Snake felt some of his wounds tearing, the sting of the cloth of his uniform brushing against the open cuts intensifying as he moved as fast as he could with the rest of the squad. His breathing was heavy, and he was beginning to feel light-headed. He needed to get these people out of here before he ran the risk of passing out.

"Hello, Corporal, I read you," came Jennifer's voice. "We've secured a truck for your medical transport offsite as well as bandages to cover the extreme facial injuries that were reported earlier."

The bandages were Jennifer's idea: a way to mask the identities of himself and the Rebel spies he'd rescued in case of vehicle inspection on the way out.

"I also retrieved those special medical supplies we needed," Snake said, referring to the VIP hostages. "But I've got no way to carry them out securely without violating security protocols. Do you have anything that might help?"

"We can conceal the supplies in the truck bed, but we have nothing for the loading dock—the supplies will be totally exposed. You'll need to find a way to conceal them 'per protocol' yourself."

Snake growled in frustration before answering, "Roger that. We'll be coming up on you shortly. Be ready with the truck." He quickly cut off the call. He didn't want to spend any more time on the radio than he had to.

As they returned to the underground warehouse, Snake spotted a stack of large cardboard boxes, giving him an idea. He grabbed three boxes and took the team to the janitor's closet where he'd stashed the ex-Spetsnaz. The guard was still there, still as subdued and still as pissed off as Snake had left him.

Snake gave the guard a nod and a friendly smirk as he stepped over him to grab a roll of bandages off the shelves before locking the door once more and returning to his team and the two hostages they'd saved and directing them to the ladder next to the freight elevator.

"What're you going to do with those?" Wikus asked curiously, pointing to the bandages in Snake's fist and the flattened boxes under his arm.

"They're going to be our ticket out of here," Snake explained. "Just trust me."

Looking around and spotting no one, the group stepped onto the freight elevator and crouched low as Snake pressed the button to send them up. The siren blared twice to announce their ascent as the elevator rumbled upward. Nearby guards looked over, but by then the elevator platform was high enough to obscure their crouched forms.

When they reached the top, the group moved into the tunnel to the very end, where they ran up some small steps to a side door that led to the loading dock. Snake opened the door a crack and stuck his head out. Mercenaries were moving along the dock, hauling cargo into waiting trucks. In the truck nearest to them, Snake spotted Jennifer looking nervously out of the driver's side window.

Snake closed the door and started unrolling the bandages, handing them out to the three rebels. "Wrap your heads in this, to obscure your faces," he said. "We're going to send you three to the truck first."

"What about you?" asked Wikus as they accepted the strips.

"Madnar, Ellen, and I will go across separately once you're safely loaded in the truck bed. That's what the boxes are for—camouflage."

The three men all looked confused. Cyrus asked, "How will cardboard boxes—"

Snake cut him off with a stern shake of the head. "No time to argue. Just be ready to go on my mark."

Snake thumbed his radio again. "Dr. Stone, this is Connors again. I've got your patients right here, but it'll take me a moment to get your supplies out to you. I'm going to send the injured out to you first while I get them ready, if you don't mind," he said casually.

He saw Jennifer step out of the truck and walk confidently to the back of the covered bed, lowering the tailgate before answering.

"Roger," she said. "We're ready for them."

"Go, now!" Snake commanded, and Cyrus and Wikus marched out there, each carrying one of Christopher's arms around their shoulders as he made a show of stumbling with them. Jennifer extended her arms as she welcomed them into the truck.

Snake unfolded the boxes and crouched low to the ground. As Madnar and Ellen crouched to follow his example, Snake pulled the boxes over their heads. Ellen gasped in surprise.

"What are you doing?" she asked, lifting her head through the box's top flaps.

Snake pushed her head down causing her to yelp in protest before pulling his own box over himself. He spoke to the other two through the slits of their boxes. "Listen carefully," he instructed. "We're going to be disguised as boxes of medical supplies on the truck, and we're going to use these boxes to camouflage ourselves as we move across the loading dock. There's so many boxes lying around, the enemy won't know the difference."

The box around Snake shifted comically as he turned himself completely around to face the door. He reached up out of the box to grasp the handle before turning his head over his shoulder to address the Madnars. "Stay low and move only when I do," he said.

He pushed the door ajar, and together the three boxes rushed forward across the dock.

Jennifer looked up to see the three boxes with legs scurrying along, just three pairs of bent legs moving as fast as their feet could carry them. She'd never seen anything like it before.

"What the hell are they doing...?" she said under her breath.

She looked to the side and noticed a couple of mercenaries turning in their direction and moved out of view around the side of the truck so that she could frantically gesture for the boxes to get down. The three boxes complied, looking for all the world to be just three stray boxes left unattended on the dock, just waiting to be loaded.

One of the mercs approached one of the boxes, inspected it, and turned to face her. "Excuse me," he said. "Are these yours or ours?"

"They're mine," Jennifer called out. "Sorry about that. Just had to set them down to talk with my navigator for a moment."

"You want us to help you load them?"

"No thanks," Jennifer said, waving him off. "That won't be necessary. I appreciate the offer, though."

The guard took one last look at the box before shrugging. He said, "There's no shipping label on these. Don't forget to check with the clerk to get them printed out."

Jennifer nodded, smiling. "I will. Thanks!"

The guards turned their backs and moved back to their dock, and the boxes popped up to move up to the truck again. Hands reached out through the canvas to help Ellen climb inside, followed by her father and finally Snake. Snake made sure to pull the boxes in with him. The three Rebel spies sat on the benches on either side while Snake and the Madnars huddled together in their boxes towards the front next to the cab.

Snake heard Jennifer climb into the driver's seat and tap the rear view window. He pushed his fist out the top of the box to give a thumb's up. Within seconds, the diesel engine was rumbling, and the truck slowly rolled out of the dock and turned northward to the security checkpoint on the far side of the R&D complex.

Dr. Petrokov glanced around nervously as they passed the massive hydrogen and helium tanks that towered on the north side of the main R&D building before the truck came to a rolling stop next to the security booth. Both Jennifer and Petrokov showed their IDs to the guard.

"Where are you heading?" the guard asked.

"Medical transport for FOB 12. We've got injured in the back that can't be treated here at the moment due to a bed shortage. We're going to head to FOB 12 for an airlift to Kungenga where they can be properly taken care of."

"How come you're going?" the guard asked, pointing to Dr. Petrokov.

Mikhail replied nervously, "Some of these men will require limb amputation and prosthetics. As the resident expert in bionics, I have volunteered to assist with the surgery and installation."

Another merc pulled back the canvas flaps to inspect the truck's contents. Snake could see the guard staring right at them and quietly pulled back the hammer on his Beretta.

"What's with the boxes?" the merc called out. The security officer at the front gestured to Jennifer to answer.

"FOB 12 requested a milk run for some medical supplies they were missing onsite," she smoothly replied. "We decided to kill two birds with one stone. Is there anything else you need answered, or may I move on? Their need is urgent, Corporal."

The guard nodded, satisfied. He waved his partner back to the security booth. "I'll radio in your departure and have them open the gate. You can go on through—I won't waste any more of your time. Do what you can to save those boys."

"Yes, sir," Jennifer said with a nod. "Thank you."

The barbed wire gate pulled open and the truck rolled forward into the darkness of the night. About forty minutes later, when the truck was long gone, an alarm sounded throughout the base: the bodies that Snake and company had left behind had been discovered. All the security gates were locked down. The security officers that let them go would later be reprimanded, demoted, and thrown into the brig to be questioned in the morning at first light.

Search parties were mustered and sent out to look for the escapees' truck, but by then it was far too late: Jennifer had already driven into the northern hills and turned off the headlights to switch to night vision while Dr. Petrokov navigated them through the dark.

 

---

 

Snake uncocked his Beretta and turned on the safety before stashing it. It was not a comfortable ride, as Jennifer had eventually abandoned the dirt road to drive directly through the countryside to a place only she knew; Snake trusted her sense of direction. When they were over thirty miles away, Snake and the Madnars lifted off their boxes and got as comfortable on the benches as they could be while Snake tuned his radio to Diane.

"Diane, this is Snake. Do you read me?"

A few seconds went by, before Steve's suspicious voice answered again, just like before.

"This is Steve. Diane's indisposed at the moment. Out shopping."

"Out shopping…this late at night?" Snake asked.

"That's right," Steve said coldly.

Snake pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine, whatever," he said dismissively. "I have a message for Diane. Can you make sure it's delivered?"

Snake heard a sigh on the other end, followed by, "What do you want me to tell her?"

"I have a couple of people that have been rescued and taken off-site. I need her to meet me and have them taken to a safe place far away from here."

Something about the phrase, 'safe place far away from here' must have triggered something in Steve, because when he spoke again, he sounded much more perked up.

"Sure, Snake. That won't be a problem. I'll make sure she gets the message," he said cheerfully.

Snake didn't know what caused this massive change in attitude, but if it meant that Steve would be more cooperative in the future, he wasn't going to complain.

"Great, thanks Steve. I'll call again with more details on where to meet once we've found a safe spot. Please let her know before then."

"You've got it."

Snake signed off and tuned his radio to Gray Fox's frequency. "Snake to Fox. Do you read me?"

"This is Gray Fox, reading you loud and clear. It's good to hear your voice, Rookie."

"I'm here too," came Kyle's response. Sounded like they were both in the same room.

"Good to hear from both of you, Architect. How's the fort holding up?"

"We've had a few light skirmishes with Outer Heaven personnel, but nothing we're not equipped to handle. We've even set up a makeshift listening post on the third floor so we can monitor enemy transmissions."

"That's great," Snake said.

"How are things on your end?" Fox asked.

"I've rescued our two VIPs. I've also managed to extract some more of your men, Architect. I've got the two Nkosis, Cyrus, and Christopher with me. We're moving north by northeast, away from the base."

"What about Arno Tagger?" asked Kyle. "He was another man on the inside I had."

Snake went quiet for several seconds. "He…he didn't make it, Architect." Snake inhaled, breathing in his guilt before exhaling the useless phrase, "I'm sorry."

"I see…I'm sure you did all you could," Kyle answered. "He was a good man."

"It's a shame I didn't get the chance to know him better," Snake said. "Everything happened so fast."

"No point in stewing in your regret, Rookie," Fox said. "Remember, we still have a job to do."

"Right," said Snake. "Architect, I'm going to need you to do me a favor. Two, actually."

"I'm listening."

"I want to send Dr. Madnar and Ellen both to safety separately just in case the enemy comes looking for them. I'm going to have Diane escort Ellen to a civilian area where she can be kept hidden while my team arranges for her extraction out of the country. With your permission, I'd like to have Dr. Madnar sent with your men to a rally point where my CO can have him picked up for a debrief before we send him safely back to Ellen."

"That can be arranged," Kyle said.

"You can have Jennifer give you the coordinates," Snake said before relaying her frequency to Kyle.

"Got it. What's the other favor?"

"I'm going to try to get into the bunker tomorrow. With all the hell I've been raising around here, it's only a matter of time before Outer Heaven brings in reinforcements from outside."

Kyle sighed wearily.

"You've got that right. Intercepted transmissions state that their nearest forward operating base, FOB 12 is supposed to be sending in another unit of three tanks, as well as three LAVs. This isn't even counting the men they already have stationed onsite for the assault. They'll probably be making use of some of those decommissioned armed Walker Gears as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if they even brought an artillery piece or two. They're going to try to wipe us off the face of the earth."

All of the rebels' eyes widened as they took in the news.

"Fook," Wikus breathed.

His compatriots' faces showed similar sentiment. Cyrus tightened his hands into fists.

"We're planning to evacuate all of our personnel here," Kyle said.

"I see." Snake said, hanging his head.

He nodded to himself before craning his head upward to look at the canvas ceiling, squeezing his eyes shut as tears of exhaustion and self-hatred started to form. He knew he was a piece of shit for even thinking of making the request, but he knew he needed to ask Kyle anyway.

"I need you to buy me some time to get inside," Snake mumbled. "Just enough to get me in, and then you can get your people out. I know I'm asking a lot…I wish I didn't—"

"Stop."

"What?"

"Just stop, Snake. You've done more than enough for my people. I'll make sure you get your shot at that weapon, and at Venom."

Snake could hear the smile in Kyle's voice.

"As it happens," he continued, "I'm already in the process of arranging for the arrival of some reinforcements of my own to help us defend the fort. Whatever happens, we'll be ready for it. We'll buy you as much time as we can. You just let me know when you're ready to move in."

Snake felt all the tension in his body release as a wave of relief hit him. He felt more tired than he'd ever been in his life. His facial muscles pulled into a smirk—a Herculean effort. "Will do," he said.

Snake remembered one more detail from his briefing. "Architect, one more thing. Fox, you need to hear this too; I don't know if you've been briefed on this. If I fail in destroying the weapon Outer Heaven's working on, stealth bombers will be sent in to wipe this place off the map. So, just in case I don't make it—"

"Don't be stupid, Rookie," Fox admonished. "Of course, you will."

Snake smiled a little at the vote of confidence before continuing, "—but just in case I don't, you need to start your evacuation as soon as I get inside the bunker, using whatever guerilla tactics you need to use to get them off your back. Leave nothing to chance. Whatever debt you think you owe me ends at the entrance when I set foot inside."

Snake's grip on his radio tightened. He gritted his teeth. "You hear me, Architect? Get your people out. You get them out, and you run. Fox will assist you in the escape. Ain't that right, Fox?"

"You've got it, Rookie," Fox assured him.

"What about you?" asked Kyle.

"I'll find my own way out, or I won't. Either way, do not make me your priority, under any circumstances. Once I'm in, I'm no longer your problem. You got that?"

"…I understand, Snake."

Snake hissed through his teeth, "Say it."

"I'll buy you enough time to get inside then get my people out. After that, you're not my problem," Kyle echoed.

Snake nodded. "Good. We should be hitting our destination soon. I'll leave you to your prep and call you in the morning. Thanks guys," he finished, and then signed off.

A short distance later, Jennifer parked the vehicle inside of a cave and shut off the engine. As the passengers descended over the tailgate, Jennifer jumped out of the cab in time to see Wikus. As the two siblings locked eyes, her breath caught in her throat and time around them seemed to slow down. They rushed forward to meet and gripped each other in a fierce embrace, tears flowing freely. No words were exchanged, just shared relief that the only family they each had left was still in this world.

Dr. Madnar and Ellen hopped down after the three spies exited, Ellen being sheltered under her father's guiding arm. Their attention was captured by the sound of another Russian voice coming from around the side of the vehicle.

"Drago…"

Dr. Madnar and Ellen looked up to see Dr. Petrokov's smudged and sweaty face, dark circles under his eyes exaggerating his tear-soaked face and the moonlight reflecting in his glasses, tie flapping in the wind.

"Mikhail…?" Madnar whispered in disbelief.

He let go of his daughter and tentatively stepped forward to meet his old colleague. Dr. Petrokov extended his arms in invitation for a warm embrace from his old friend. What he received instead was swift strike to the head, knocking his glasses to the ground.

"Father!" Ellen called out in surprise.

Madnar followed up with a slug to Petrokov's gut, and Petrokov keeled over and fell onto the ground. Madnar straddled the other old man and started laying into him. Snake and Cyrus had to physically drag him off of Petrokov, which was surprisingly difficult, given the age of the older man and their combined weakened state.

Madnar let out a stream of incoherent Russian curses and then pointed an accusing finger at Petrokov.

"You were the reason those men came to find me at my daughter's recital! You were the reason I was forced to violate my oath and make weapons again! You put us in danger-my daughter was in danger because of you, Mikhail! Ya dolgen ubit tebya, grebany sukin syn!"

Snake and Cyrus kept Madnar restrained, but otherwise said nothing, content to let the old man tire himself out. When Madnar eventually went limp, he was released, and Ellen took her father's arm and led them away from the commotion. Petrokov lay there, simply taking the physical and verbal abuse.

As the Madnars walked away, Petrokov could only respond with a weak mumble, "Izvinite, pojaluista. I'm sorry, Drago. I'm so sorry…"

Dr. Madnar responded with nothing but a hateful glare as Ellen walked them both to the other end of the cave on the opposite side of the truck.

Snake limped over to the other side, approaching Jennifer and Wikus, who had peeked over to see what the commotion was about only to go about setting up camp once it was obvious that the situation was resolved. As Wikus and Christopher set to the task of obtaining firewood and Cyrus started removing the canvas from the truck bed's canopy to lay out onto the cave floor, Jennifer was conversing with Kyle over the radio via her earpiece.

As Snake approached, she said, "Yes, everyone is as safe as they can be. Snake is coming over. Of course, I'll let him know. Talk to you later."

Snake leaned against the truck, clutching his shoulder. "Any news?" he asked.

"I just finished talking with Kyle. He's received word from our intel teams in Calvinia and Fraserburg; we have reinforcements coming from Sutherland via river and from the western mountains southeast of Loeriesfontein. It will take them time to get here, but they can be here by midday at the soonest."

"In the meantime," she continued, "I have a small surprise for you coming down the river from Sakrivier Railway Station: a truck with some able-bodied men who will be able to assist you when you make your return to Outer Heaven. They should arrive in a few hours, after morning's first light."

Snake laughed, shaking his head. "That's a hell of a gift. You people are amazing." His face quickly turned serious. "You don't have to go that far for me, though."

"You freed our people from Venom's internment. You brought my brother back to me," Jennifer reminded him. "This is the least we can do."

"Well…thank you. What about Diane?"

"Kyle put me in touch with her. She's on her way. Should arrive at around the same time as my truck. Me and the escaped prisoners will drive away with your scientist, and Diane will take the daughter, just like you planned. You'll need to give us the coordinates to your rally point, though."

Snake nodded. "Yeah, of course. I need to contact my CO anyway to give him my progress report. I'll do it now."

He stepped forward and stumbled, pain and light-headedness finally getting the better of him. Jennifer caught him and led him to a secluded spot where he could sit down with his back against the wall, and then helped him pull off his shirt to examine his knife wounds.

She bit her lip. "These are going to need stitches. Wait here. There's a first-aid kit in the truck cab."

As she jogged away to grab the bag from the truck, Dr. Madnar and Ellen approached him. Snake looked up to regard them as Jennifer returned and began tending to his wounds.

"Thank you for rescuing us, Snake. We are in your debt," Ellen said kindly in English.

Snake responded in Russian, "I was happy to have had the privilege to set you both free. My commander will make sure you are taken care of."

Dr. Madnar and Ellen both smiled—their first real smile since meeting Snake in the bowels of Outer Heaven. "If there is anything I can do to help you, please do not hesitate to ask," Dr. Madnar replied cordially.

"Actually, there is something," Snake said as he tried to shift slightly and turn towards Dr. Madnar, only for Jennifer grab his shoulder roughly.

"Keep still," she commanded. "I'm not done with this stitch, and if I mess this up, your wound could get infected."

Snake rolled his eyes, but otherwise obeyed. He continued to Dr. Madnar, "It's about Metal Gear. Your TX-55."

Dr. Madnar's eyes lowered, and a shadow came over his face as he bowed his head. He turned to look at Ellen. "My dear, could you please give us a moment?"

"Of course, Ottsa." Ellen stepped away to rejoin the others and started making conversation with Cyrus, who spoke some Russian as well as English and Afrikaans.

Dr. Madnar took a seat next to Snake, contemplating the wrinkles on his hands. "It is my great shame," he said. "When I left the service of the Presidium, I swore that these hands would never again be used to make instruments of war."

"You had no choice. You were looking out for your daughter," Snake offered sympathetically.

"It does not make me hate myself any less." He sighed heavily and rubbed his face, turning his eyes to the ceiling. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then turned his head to look at Snake. "Before I tell you anything, I must ask: what is your intention with Metal Gear? To destroy it, or take possession of it?"

"I'm looking to destroy it."

Madnar nodded with approval. "Good. This is good. That monster should not exist. It represents the resurrection of some of the worst excesses of the Cold War. I will tell you whatever you need to know to help you destroy it."

"Let's start with capabilities. Is the weapon operational? What can I expect?"

"The good news is, it shouldn't be ready for field deployment just yet—the last I heard of it, they were performing testing in a virtual environment, and they have all of the computer data they could ever need; what they require is actual field data. The actual weapons mounted on the platform are operational, but the bipedal motor system has yet to be properly tested in a real-world environment. It was going to begin field-testing within the next couple of days, so it should still be sitting the hangar, waiting for fueling and initialization—and that hangar dock is too small for it to walk in."

"If it's too small for it to walk in, how is it supposed to exit the bunker?"

"The hangar dock is most likely underground. It would be lifted to ground level via large freight elevator."

"Okay…you said the weapons themselves still work, as do the computer systems in the cockpit? So, if anyone's down there, like say, Venom himself—"

"He could conceivably use Metal Gear to attack you inside the hangar, yes. The main body of the platform is armed with Vulcan cannons and large-caliber gatling guns. There is a missile pod on the shoulder too, but it would not be advisable for Venom to attempt missile launches from inside the hangar, da?" Madnar chuckled softly.

"Besides, there are only two miniature silos—not ideal in combat scenario, save for long-range artillery strike with nuclear payload."

"What about close-range options?"

"Between the legs there is hanging a high-powered electrical laser firing a focused ion beam that creates a conducting track of ionized plasma, similar to lightning, and can melt through metal in a matter of seconds. This weapon has two weaknesses: firstly, there is the matter of its range. Its effective range is limited by the camera's cone of vision, as it is placed such that the majority of the weapon is protected by a hanging metal plate between the legs—think of it as analogous to a codpiece in human armor, and it also shares space with another weapon which I will get to in a moment.

"This shared space means that the weapon can only move in a horizontal arc, further limiting its range and utility. That is the first weakness. The second weakness is power: Metal Gear TX-55 requires a great deal to run, and the laser is a very small tertiary subsystem that primarily draws power from a battery—this power draw is immense and the weapon itself can only sustain fire for approximately eighteen seconds before it must recharge. The recharge time is closer to thirty to forty-five seconds."

"I see…" Snake said, more to himself than to the Russian. "What about the other weapon between its legs?"

"Hanging on the chassis just underneath the laser is a chemical flame thrower connected via hose to a small, attached armored tank on the rear of the vehicle, capable of firing a single continuous arc of burning napalm for up to two minutes before the tank runs out. In controlled bursts, it could last for much longer. It's intended as an extreme-range antipersonnel weapon."

"You haven't mentioned the onboard cameras connected to the cockpit. I assume they're equipped with infrared?"

"Normal view and infrared thermal and night vision are available settings, yes. The platform is also equipped with a radome to both detect airborne targets and to assist in interfering with radar signals transmissions."

The whole time, Jennifer listened intensely to the ongoing conversation as she stitched up Snake's knife wounds. This vehicle indeed sounded like a horrible monster. The fact that it was apparently also equipped to load and fire nuclear warheads also made her shiver. And this thing was right under the Resistance's collective noses the whole time? Under the noses of the South African government? How was Outer Heaven able to get away with building this thing in secret? The only thing that was there to mollify her worries was that this thing was apparently unfinished. It was a very small comfort.

"This thing sounds terrifying," she admitted. "Does it have no weaknesses?"

"There is one," Dr. Madnar said. "And thankfully, it is one that will be relatively easy to exploit, as Snake will need to get close to Metal Gear to do so and its confinement will make this approach possible."

"I'm listening," Snake replied.

Dr. Madnar raised a single finger. "The front of Metal Gear is heavily armored, as are the roof and parts of its rear, but underneath the weapon, there is a point that is exposed: the drive and motor which governs the legs. Metal Gear is very top-heavy and requires the great strength and hydraulics of the bipedal bionics to keep it aloft, as well as a robust drive to enable its movement. This drive could not be armored without negatively affecting the delicate balance of the vehicle's weight—any heavier, and the thing could collapse under its own weight.

"If you introduce an explosive force of sufficient magnitude to this unarmored drive train—for example, a well-placed shot from an RPG or planted plastic explosives, then not only would you prevent the vehicle from moving, but you could also damage the sensitive electronic and motor equipment held just above it, rendering Metal Gear completely inoperable. If it falls forward, then the whole thing essentially becomes a steel coffin for the pilot."

"You intentionally engineered a major catastrophic design flaw into your weapon?" Snake asked with wonder.

Dr. Madnar shook his head sadly. "Metal Gear is formidable, but it is still just one weaponized vehicle. It was meant to be accompanied by an escort of an armored column of tanks and APCs, which, when combined with the various anti-tank and antipersonnel weaponry at its disposal, would ensure that enemy combatants would never get close enough to damage it. Metal Gear, for all its terror, was never meant to operate alone save in missions requiring the utmost stealth. The true terror comes from its nuclear launch capabilities and from the fact that Outer Heaven intended to mass-produce it. If just one Metal Gear managed to launch its payload behind enemy lines, it wouldn't matter if the vehicle itself was destroyed; there would be nothing to stop the nuclear holocaust that would ensue from the accomplishment of its mission."

Dr. Madnar once again contemplated his hands. "Under normal circumstances, if the weapon were operational, I would say you have no chance to stop Outer Heaven. That they had already won. But the weapon is unfinished and confined to the hangar; and it is the only one of its kind. You still have time to put a stop to it." He raised his head to look Snake in the eye. There was a fire in Dr. Madnar's gaze.

"There is still hope," he insisted firmly.

Snake smiled and delivered a sharp nod. "That's right, doctor. You're goddamn right."

Dr. Madnar smiled warmly and shook Snake's hand in thanks. Both men looked at each other with silent understanding and camaraderie for a moment before the Russian scientist gave his farewell and returned to the side of his waiting daughter.

Jennifer finished the last stitch and began wrapping a new clean set of bandages around Snake's arms and torso. When she finished, she put her tools away into the first aid kit and admired her handiwork. Snake flexed his arms, feeling stiff. His injuries still hurt like hell, but at least he wasn't bleeding anymore. He pulled himself up to try to stand but felt a wave of nausea and had to sit back down.

Jennifer looked at him in concern. She shook her head. "It's amazing you haven't broken yet. Any other man would have died several times over by now after what you've survived."

"Guess I was just born lucky," Snake muttered with a grimace, squeezing his eyes shut to keep the contents of his stomach where they were.

"I'm serious, Snake," Jennifer insisted. "You can barely stand, much less fight. If you go out there like this—if you keep pushing your limits much further, you're going to get yourself killed. Why not call your friend, that Fox guy? Or ask your commander to send in someone else?"

"There is no one else," Snake refuted, "and Fox has his hands full helping out Kyle. Ready or not, I'm all we've got, for better or for worse. I've still got a job to do, and I need to see it through."

"But why?" Jennifer demanded. "You don't know us. You're an outsider—you don't owe us anything."

"That's not true at all," Snake muttered softly, mostly to himself.

He thought of Gray Fox and the family he'd come to build with FOXHOUND back home. He thought of Lima Company and what could happen to them if something like Metal Gear were ever unleashed. He thought of the Resistance fighters he'd met along the way who were all counting on him for their own victory and survival. He thought once more of Big Boss, and the America that believed in him so strongly that they were willing to build him up into the man he was today and entrust everything to him.

He looked up to Jennifer. "I have plenty to fight for. Plenty to sacrifice for. Just like you and yours. I've got more than enough reason to keep making it through this. I wouldn't have gotten this far without the Resistance, and I wouldn't be where I am now without my homeland and the people in it that stuck by me. You say I don't owe you anything. The truth is, Jen, I owe you and them everything. And I'm going to give it."

Jen's face softened. "Snake…" She sighed. "You're either very brave, or very stupid."

"Eh, a little of column A, a little of column B," Snake joked. His voice and face hardened. "I don't expect you to understand," he said quietly, "but don't tell me not to go back out there."

Jen crouched and started digging in the first-aid kit, pulling out a small white bottle. "Fine," she said, tossing the bottle to Snake.

Snake shook it—it was full of pills. He checked the label: painkillers.

"Those will keep you moving. Just try not to overdo it and open your wounds again. I'm getting tired of treating you." Jennifer smirked.

Snake's mouth twisted into a wry grin. "What, are you mad that you missed your chance to explore when you laid hands on this handsome physical specimen?" Snake asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

Jennifer laughed and punched Snake in the shoulder. "In your dreams, American."

She stood up and turned to rejoin the others. Before she left Snake, she gave one final piece of advice: "Make sure you get your rest, Snake. As much as you can. There's not a lot of time left before you have to go back out there."

"You got it, doc," Snake said with a smile and a wave, and Jennifer rolled her eyes as she walked away.

Snake picked up his radio. Only one thing left to do now, before he could let himself sleep. He tuned to Big Boss's frequency.

"Mission Control, this is Solid Snake. Come in…"

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 0255 HOURS

MISSION CONTROL LISTENING POST

APPROX. 15 KM EAST OF HOPEFIELD, SOUTH AFRICA

 

"…make sure to have them take Madnar to those coordinates. There's a CIA listening post nearby with a FOXHOUNDer on standby. I'll have them send someone to pick him up," Big Boss intoned.

"Yes, sir."

"You're doing great, kid. You've been passing the mission with flying colors so far. You're approaching the home stretch."

"Thank you, sir."

"Your plan's a sound one. Use your Resistance friends to get in close, then take care of Venom and Metal Gear. Fox had reported that Venom had been spending most of his time in that bunker, so you'll likely find him there. Be ready for anything."

"Understood."

"One last thing: Outer Heaven has likely increased security now since you've escaped. Fox has reported multiple alarms after you left the base with the Madnars. To prevent security leaks, we're going to change Mission Control radio frequency. You'll still use the same frequency to order the air strike as necessary, but you'll be contacting Control with frequency 120.13 from this moment forward. All orders and status reports are to be forwarded to this frequency. Understood?"

"Understood, sir. Will adjust frequency as necessary."

"Alright. Get your rest, kid. You're going to need it. I look forward to hearing you report the mission's success."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Solid Snake out."

Big Boss signed off of the radio. The kid really did have talent, he thought to himself. Snake was a much greater force than the Boss had initially given him credit for. He might actually see this mission to its conclusion. Big Boss couldn't have been prouder—the kid turned out to be a fine soldier. In all of Big Boss's years as an operator, he'd only seen a few others with that level of skill, and Snake had grown to be their match at a much younger age than any of them.

I suppose, given where he comes from, that that's to be expected, Big Boss thought to himself.

A fluttering sound was heard, growing to an intense booming as the black helicopter landed in the yard outside the barn. It was time to go. Big Boss stood up from the table he sat at, which was covered with maps and radio equipment, and strode over to the makeshift desk where Salamander sat. He put a hand on Sal's shoulder.

"We're reaching the end game, now," Big Boss said.

"Yes, sir," Sal acknowledged.

"And you're ready to do your part?"

"Always, Boss."

Big Boss nodded in approval. "The nearest rail station is Sakrivier. After the air strike passes, if he makes it out of there, Snake will most likely head for the rail line to make for Johannesburg. Standby in case he calls you for assistance and be ready to intercept. He'll be looking for you to meet. Be careful when you approach; I expect he'll still be rattled by everything when all is said and done. It'll make him skittish and unpredictable. Be ready for anything."

"You can count on me, Boss," Sal promised.

Big Boss nodded and thumped Sal's shoulder. "Good man," he said. "When this is all over, if you're up for it, there'll be a place for you where I'm going. If you want it, come find me."

"Thank you, sir. Good luck," Sal said earnestly.

Big Boss nodded and stepped out of the barn and walked to the open and waiting helicopter, ducking his head and shielding his face from the wind kicked up by the rotors. A young soldier offered a hand to assist the Boss in climbing into the vehicle and slid the door closed behind them both. Within moments, the helicopter lifted off the ground.

Big Boss grabbed a walkie-talkie from his attendant. Only one more loose end to account for.

"This is Big Boss," said the old one-eyed warrior. "Everything's in place for the endgame. You're on."

His business concluded, Big Boss handed the radio back to the young soldier and leaned back to stare out the window to fondly regard a new beginning as they buzzed through the night sky.

Notes:

A bit of a breather episode compared to everything else we've accomplished so far. Another victory for our heroes, but this one serves as a personal victory for Snake himself. He was able to get the hostages and all but one of his allies-including keeping his promise in saving Jennifer's brother. I think it might genuinely be one of my top five favorite chapters to have written so far for this story just for the post-escape cave section alone. So, now we're approaching the dramatic endgame for the Outer Heaven mission. Hope you're as excited to get to it as I am. I had some thoughts for how I'd like for Chapter 16 to go-but I decided to make some changes to it to make it flow better, so you probably won't see it for a while, maybe sometime next month.

In the meantime, I sincerely wish happy holidays to all of you reading this if it's still December when you come across it. I look forward to seeing your feedback. Please feel free to review and tell me what you think.

Chapter 16: The Players at the Table

Summary:

The players have arrived, and their hands have been dealt. Now they make their preparations for the endgame.

Solid Snake stood at the edge of a grey cliff, the winds howling over the turbulent waves assaulting the rough crags below. The silent enormity of the dark gunmetal sky and the infinite horizon filled him with a feeling of longing. All he could think of was home.

"You've come a long way, kid," said a voice behind him. "You've waded through an ocean of blood and choked on dust to get here to this spot."

The voice was familiar to Snake, but he couldn't put his finger on why.

Snake nodded, not turning around. "Yeah," he whispered. He breathed in deep, taking in the smell of the sea.

"Was it all that you thought it would be?" the voice asked.

Snake closed his eyes, shaking his head. "I don't know. I don't think I'd do anything different, though. My country, my mentor, my brothers in arms—they asked me to step up for them. I guess…I just hope that I did right by them."

"Is that why you fight? For the benefit of others?"

Snake turned his body towards the voice slightly but didn't look back. He directed his gaze at the ground. He shook his head again. "I don't know," he repeated.

Snake heard footsteps approaching; they sounded heavy, like falling stones. "Some people in this world fight for faith. Others for family. Others for justice, or for patriotism," said the voice, which started to get louder and deeper with proximity. "And others still fight only for themselves and their own enrichment."

Snake turned to face the voice but couldn't bring himself to look up at the Demon's face. Like before, the Demon's breath smelled rancid, and the body was heavily scarred as though it had been burned.

"What about you, Snake?" the Demon asked.

Its voice shifted, becoming higher and more feminine. This time, Snake did look up. Instead of the torn horned skull with the single burning eye that he expected to see, he saw Honey Badger's face. Her hair was singed, her proud face smudged with blood and dirt. One eye was gouged and bloody, and a black shining horn erupted from her forehead on the opposite side. She'd been marred by battle, but it was definitely recognizable as her face and voice.

"What do you fight for?" she asked.

It was the same question she'd asked him in their shared bed years ago when they were in training together. It felt like a lifetime ago. Just like that time, Snake felt that he didn't have a good answer to give her. But this time, the question felt like it had so much more weight behind it as it was punctuated by the sound of crashing waves.

"I fight…" Snake started, licking his lips. "I fight because…"

He squeezed his fists. Honey stood there with a despondent expression but said nothing. Snake nodded, mostly just to himself. He looked into Honey's eye with more resolve.

"My answer hasn't changed. I fight because that's who I am. It's what I am. I am a warrior, and my place is on the battlefield."

"Is that truly what you want? Is that truly all that you are? Or is that an idea that Big Boss put into your head?"

Snake was thrown off balance. His fists relaxed. "What…?" he murmured.

Honey Badger shook her head, and as she did so, her features started to shift, revealing the face of the Demon once more. "It doesn't matter," it said. "If that is the answer you have chosen for yourself, then so be it."

As it resumed its natural form, Snake noticed that the Demon felt different this time around. It no longer smelt so foul nor looked so fearsome. Instead, the grin on its skull started to take on a sadder quality.

"Know this, Snake," the Demon whispered. "You are getting so close to the core of who you are. If you continue on this path, you will become mine. Or rather, you will become like me. And once you do, you will have truly earned your name."

The Demon's features shifted again, and now Snake was staring into the eyes of his exact double, who bore hard eyes of death and menace that were incongruous with the sad smile on his lips that he wore now.

"Do you understand?" the Demon asked with Snake's voice.

Snake shook his head in disbelief. "Not at all," he replied.

The Demon chuckled, unsettling Snake with its uncanny likeness of him. It placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry," it said good-naturedly. "You will."

A final wave crashed up against the cliffs, showering them both in sea foam and obscuring Snake's vision.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 0648 HOURS

SNAKE'S CAMP, APPROX. 80 KM NORTHEAST OF OUTER HEAVEN

 

Snake's eyes fluttered open when Christopher tapped him on the shoulder. He blearily looked up, blinking in the soft light of the morning sunrise. His back felt stiff—he was still resting up against the cave wall where Jennifer had left him last night.

"Uh…?" Snake vocalized wearily.

Christopher jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "Come on, Snake. Wake up. Diane and the cavalry are here."

Snake's gaze followed the invisible line from Chris's thumb to the mouth of the cave, where there were indeed two vehicles waiting outside: one transport truck like the one Snake and co. had stolen from Outer Heaven, and a civilian four-door station wagon. Snake grabbed Chris's outstretched hand and hauled himself to his feet, rubbing his neck to relieve the tension as he followed the rebel spy outside to meet the newcomers.

Congregated outside the truck and the station wagon were more rebel soldiers, as well as two civilians Snake didn't recognize: a man and a woman.

The woman was wearing tight black jeans and a leather jacket over a short sleeve tee shirt and many colorful beaded necklaces dangling down to her navel and a pair of thick leather boots with a smiley face pin attached to the side of one of them. Her hair was cropped short, a fiery shock of reddish blonde waving off the top of her head, and her face was pale with white makeup, save for the jet black of her lips and the eyeliner that circled eyes shining like pale emeralds. On either side of her lean face, a pair of inverted golden triangles dangled from her earlobes.

The man was heavily muscled, wearing sweatpants and a jean vest over a faded off-white tee shirt and black sunglasses. His head was shaved, though his face sported an impressive beard. Like his companion, he also wore heavy leather boots, though unlike her boots which were spotless and decorated, his were scuffed and worn.

Snake approached the duo, addressing the woman first. "Diane, I take it?" he asked, offering a hand.

The lady took his hand and shook it with a nod. "That's me," she said. "My friend here is Johan, my roadie."

Snake shook Johan's hand. "Nice to meet you," he said.

"Likewise," Johan grunted. "You must be this 'Solid Snake' I keep hearing about."

Snake grinned. "In the flesh. Thanks for coming here on short notice."

"Didn't really have much of a choice, either way," Diane said. "You've really stirred up the hornet's nest down there, Snake. They're evacuating all civilian and non-essential personnel. I had to make sure me and mine got out of there before they started locking the place down. Last thing I heard before we left was they were planning a full-on assault of the west side to try and retake the storage facility from the Resistance."

"Sounds about right," Snake said. "Last I talked to Kyle, he was planning on setting up defenses for a potential siege. Outer Heaven's supposed to be bringing in reinforcements from outside."

"Why doesn't he just evacuate?" Diane asked. "The Resistance has people all over, but no way do they have enough firepower nearby to mount a coordinated resistance to all of Outer Heaven's forces."

"That one's my fault," Snake admitted guiltily. "They're going to help me get into the bunker on the north side of the base. After that, Kyle promised me that he'd bug out with his people."

Diane's eyes widened and then narrowed into a scowl that was both full of determination and also slightly accusatory. "Then we'd better move quickly," she said. "We don't want to make them wait for you any longer than they have to."

Snake nodded. "Agreed. Come on, let me introduce you to your passenger."

Snake led Diane and Johan into the cave to meet with Dr. Madnar and Ellen, who were still huddled together against the cave wall, fast asleep. Snake gently woke the two up, then offered a hand to help them both to their feet.

"Ellen," Snake said, gesturing to the two next to him, "this is Diane and Johan. You're going to be riding with them for a while. They're going to take you somewhere safe, away from here."

"But, what about Father?" she asked uncertainly.

"Your father is going to be traveling separately," Snake explained. "It's for your own safety, the both of you. I promise you; you will be reunited once this is all over with."

"Where are you going to be taking me?" Ellen asked Diane.

Diane smiled warmly. "I have a place in Kimberley where we can hide you. You'll be safe there. It's close by to the train station to Johannesburg as well, for when you're ready to start making your way out of the country to go back home."

Snake chimed in. "Since you don't have any identification, you'll need a way to arrange safe passage out of the country. If and when you're ready to go to Johannesburg or if you have to make an early break for the city for any reason, either head straight to the U.S. consulate there or make for the embassy in Pretoria. When you get inside, tell them that you're seeking political asylum, and that you've been instructed to contact Lt. Col. Roy Campbell and tell him that Solid Snake sent you."

He put a reassuring hand on her arm. "You'll be well taken care of. I promise you: we'll get you home safe and sound."

Ellen stepped forward and threw her arms around Snake, shoulders shaking with sobs. Snake awkwardly returned the hug, patting her back.

"Th-thank you, Snake," she whispered. She let go of him and walked over to hug her father goodbye for a long time, kissing him on the cheek before turning to Diane and nodding to indicate that she was ready.

Diane wrapped her arm around the taller woman's shoulders and led her to the backseat of the station wagon. Diane looked to Snake with concern. "Snake, I…" she stopped, waiting for the words, but they didn't come to her. She shook her head. "Just, be careful, Snake. Come back alive."

"I intend to," Snake replied.

Johan gave Snake a cheerful smile as he opened the driver's side door. "We'll take good care of her, Snake. Good luck out there."

"Thanks, I appreciate it," Snake waved.

Seconds later, the car's engine was fired up and the three turned around and drove out onto the dirt path, heading north. Snake watched them until they drove down and around the hill out of sight. Dr. Madnar approached the FOXHOUNDer.

"So, Snake, where will I be going?"

"You're going with Jennifer and her men," Snake said. "I'm going to give her coordinates to a meeting location my CO gave me. Once you're there, someone from my team will pick you up and take you somewhere safe for a debrief. They're going to ask you some questions; all you need to do is answer them honestly. Once they're done, depending on where Ellen is by then, they'll either transport you to reunite with Ellen in Kimberley or send you back to your home country to meet with her there."

"And then this whole nightmare will finally be over?" Madnar asked desperately.

Snake nodded. "You'll be able to go back to your normal lives."

Madnar placed a hand on Snake's shoulder, tears in his eyes. "Thank you, Zmeya. Thank you."

Cyrus led Dr. Madnar into the new truck alongside Christopher and Wikus. Jennifer approached Snake and introduced him to the new squad.

"This is Petrus, Mandla, Willem, and Vusi. They're going to go with you on the bunker raid. They'll follow any command you give them," Jennifer explained.

"It's an honor to meet you, sir," said Willem, who shook Snake's hand vigorously.

"You're all they talk about back at the listening post," said Petrus with a grin. "The man who single-handedly infiltrated Outer Heaven, released all its prisoners and killed all four of the Bloody Brads! Is it true that you took on an armored division all by yourself?"

Snake shook his head sheepishly, his face warm. "Well, I maybe helped a little with the tank and APCs," he said with a little embarrassment.

"But I didn't 'single-handedly' do anything," he followed up earnestly. "Kyle got me in in the first place. Jennifer got me into R&D to fight the Brads—and secured our escape. Her spies helped me rescue the Madnars. And my friend Gray Fox got me out of captivity when I got captured. The point is, I wouldn't have made it this far without everyone's help."

Snake shook his head and placed a hand on Petrus's shoulder, looking to each face in his new squad. "If it weren't for them, I'd be dead by now. And now, I'm going to be trusting you to get me within spitting distance of Outer Heaven's bunker."

"You can count on us," Petrus replied. The others nodded in agreement.

"So, what is the plan for your approach?" Vusi asked.

Snake squatted down onto his knees, picked up a stick, and started drawing a loose diagram of Outer Heaven and the surrounding cliffs into the dirt. He drew a line from off the makeshift map toward the cliffs northeast of the bunker overlooking Outer Heaven HQ. He also drew a large group of X's representing enemy forces with an arrow pointing them toward the box representing the Supply Storage Facility and a smaller wall of X's alongside the eastern and southern walls of the bunker.

"We'll start by taking the truck as close as possible to the compound without being spotted, starting here at this cliff. Then we'll wait until Kyle and his men start the fighting with Outer Heaven and draw some of the heat away from the bunker, at which point we'll make the drive to the bunker itself," Snake said. "The enemy probably won't know we're coming since they'll be too focused on Kyle's men; we should expect some light resistance from Outer Heaven's forces guarding the entrance, but it will likely be relatively safe compared to what'll be going down at Supply Storage. Rules of engagement will be weapons-free on approach: assume all targets are hostile."

Snake drew a line from the cliffs through the group of X's by the bunker. "We'll fight our way to the entrance to get me inside, and then the rest of you will egress away from the bunker and contact Kyle for further instructions." To punctuate his last point, Snake drew a large arrow pointing away from the bunker and a single circle inside the bunker's walls to represent himself.

"We're not coming with you into the bunker?" Mandla asked, confused.

"Depending on how things go inside the bunker, some offsite air support may be sent to carpet bomb Outer Heaven HQ and wipe the place off the map," Snake explained. "Succeed or fail, there's a nonzero chance that my entry into the bunker is going to be a one-way trip. I promised Kyle that I wouldn't endanger him or his men any more than absolutely necessary, and I intend to keep that promise."

Snake could tell that the four men were unsatisfied by his explanation: they all looked uneasy at the prospect of sending Snake into the lion's den alone. Snake tried his best to keep his men focused.

He gave a reassuring smile. "Look, we'll work it out when we get there, alright? Let's just get this done. Sooner I get underground, the sooner we can all go home."

Once the briefing was finished, Snake called up Kyle to relay the plan. "Architect, this is Snake. We're going to make our way to the cliffs now and try to get there before Outer Heaven's reinforcements come knocking on your door," Snake told him. "I'll call you when we're in position. You give us a signal for when we should make our approach."

"You've got it, Snake," Kyle assured him. "We'll be ready."

Wikus and the other rescued spies climbed into the new truck that Petrus's squad had brought. Jennifer pointed to the stolen truck from Outer Heaven. "Take that one when you go. A truck with the company's logo might give you an advantage, let you get a little closer before the enemy starts shooting at you."

"Good idea," Snake said.

"Snake…be careful," Jennifer said. "We're almost at the end. We're so close—don't die on us now."

Snake smirked. "I don't intend to."

They shook each other's hands in solidarity, after which Jennifer boarded the cab of the new truck and drove off. Snake and his squad boarded the stolen truck, with Snake in the cab and Willem in the driver's seat. Only thing left to do now would be to report to Big Boss and inform him of the plan.

Snake tuned his radio to the new Mission Control frequency. "Mission Control, this is Snake. Come in. We're making our approach to Outer Heaven now. The plan is as follows…"

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 0833 HOURS

OUTER HEAVEN WEST: RESISTANCE FORWARD OPERATING BASE

 

Kyle Schneider stepped out from the shadow of the stairwell doorway on Building One's rooftop, shielding his eyes from the eastern sunrise as he walked over to check on Loyiso and Imke, who made up the sniper-spotter team on the southeast corner. Kyle had spent all of yesterday evening helping his teams set up fortifications along the eastern and southern exterior of their Building One Base Camp. Overnight, Kyle was coordinating rebel movements from offsite while the ground teams laid out claymores and AT mines interspersed with barbed wire coil barricades strewn about the craters and sandbags left behind by Outer Heaven troops that they'd fought off shortly after Snake's battle with the tanks.

Kyle wiped his brow of sweat and pinched the bridge of his nose, breathing deep. Fatigue was setting in. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten any real sleep. He shook his head and got his wits together before he sat down to talk to his sniper team—everyone was tired, he knew. He couldn't afford to lose his composure in front of his men; he needed to keep up their morale for what they were planning to do today.

Kyle squatted behind Loyiso and Imke. "Morning," he greeted. "What do we see today?"

Imke looked up from her binoculars while Loyiso remained prone with his rifle.

"No movement yet, Commander," Imke said. "It's only a matter of time, though."

Loyiso craned his neck to look up over his shoulder. "What's the game plan, sir?"

Kyle wiped his hands on his knees. "Reinforcements are still a few hours out," he said. "Some of our eastern spies out in Loxton have reported armored movements coming westward out of Victoria West, and our posts in the Northern Cape have spotted birds flying south from Outer Heaven's northern FOBs. I think the choppers and ground vehicles will probably beat our reinforcements here by one or two hours."

Both members of the team looked worried. "We still have time to get everyone out if we leave now, sir," Loyiso ventured.

Kyle shook his head. "The objective of our whole movement was to get Outer Heaven out of our country. This is the closest we've ever gotten. If we want to succeed, we need to buy Snake as much time as we can. It's either now or never." Kyle laid a reassuring hand on his rebels' shoulders.

"Victory is close at hand," he said with a warm, tired smile. "Let's not waste the opportunity while it's in our grasp."

Imke's face hardened in determination as she nodded. Loyiso looked similarly ready, but there was still a note of uncertainty in his eyes.

"But sir, what about our reinforcements?" he asked.

Kyle smiled. "I have a plan for that," he said, pulling his radio from his pocket to emphasize his point. "I've got teams ready to intercept the vehicle convoys to buy our reinforcements some time in getting here."

Over the night, while the ground teams were setting up the mine traps and barricades, Kyle was calling for reinforcements from nearby listening posts and coordinating Resistance movements in Cape Town, Calvinia, Victoria, Beaufort West, and Bloemfontein to target nearby FOBs and supply depots that Outer Heaven had set up throughout the western half of the country. These men were ready to intercept and perform hit and run attacks on these enemy assets at a single word from Kyle.

Loyiso's eyes lit up. "You don't mean-?"

Kyle nodded. "That's right. Starting today, our movement will no longer be underground, but out in the open. Today is the day we take this war to our enemies and take back our country for good."

A combination of joy and steely triumph flashed on Loyiso's face, matching Imke's own expression. The other troops had given Kyle similar looks when he'd spread the news earlier. Seeing his men rally like this filled Kyle with grim satisfaction.

But it was still too early to celebrate. Kyle frowned down to his sniper team as he said, "That's why I need you focused and ready. The moment you see any approaching movement, report it. And if you get a shot, take it. Understand?"

"Yes, sir!" both rebels replied confidently.

Kyle nodded and left the team to their work as he headed over to the northeast side to join Gray Fox, who was manning his own sniper rifle by himself. Fox glanced up briefly to acknowledge Kyle's approach before settling back into the scope.

"Rallying the troops?" Fox asked.

Kyle picked up his binoculars and joined the FOXHOUNDer. "Yes," he said. "Everyone is ready and focused. My offsite teams are also ready to move at my command. They all know it's do or die."

"Good," Fox said. "All that's left now is for Snake to get into position and for Outer Heaven's reinforcements to arrive. How far out is the cavalry?"

"Last I checked, they were still a bit far out—they're primarily traveling on foot, so it'll be another two or three hours before they get here."

"Hm," Fox grunted.

Kyle's radio crackled with life. He put it to his ear to hear the reports: armored column moving east along highway R63, getting close to Loxton. How to proceed?

Kyle pushed the button on his radio. It was time.

"All teams," he said. "Begin Operation Judgment Day."

 

---

 

RESISTANCE OPERATION: "JUDGMENT DAY"

MARCH 19, 1995

0845 - 1100 HOURS

WESTERN SOUTH AFRICA

 

The convoy rumbled on the desert path winding between the hills north of Loxton, exiting R63 to cut across the sandy countryside to bypass the town and move straight to the adjacent highway northward. The convoy consisted of sixteen vehicles moving on the road in single file, with seven tanks, four Jeeps, and five armored personnel carriers.

The tires and treads ground through the sandy loam, kicking up dust that billowed around and away from the convoy in a cloud. The mercs in the Jeeps in the rear complained at not being able to see shit as they followed behind the trundling armored behemoths before they were silenced by the drivers who were trying to concentrate on the navigational instructions fed to them over the radio from the tank drivers in front.

When they swung around the southern tip of the Grootberg mountains, the silence was broken by sudden explosions impacting the ground near the convoy, along with a couple of direct impacts knocking the treads off of one of the tanks and turning two of the Jeeps into rolling infernos.

"Mortars!" someone called out.

The tanks shift position to face towards the mountain and shield the personnel exiting the APCs and surviving Jeeps. Gunners and tank drivers scramble to determine the point of origin so they can track down and rain fire onto the enemy mortar teams.

A squad of four Resistance fighters carrying RPGs stage themselves at an overlooking cliff. They bring their launchers to bear, sending the projectiles careening into the Outer Heaven convoy. The rockets slammed into and around one of the APCs with great force, destroying the vehicle and the infantry both inside and around it.

Another squad on the opposite cliff closer to the convoy readied grenade launchers, aiming downrange at the scattered infantry, taking several out before one of the tanks turned its cannon to retaliate. The metal beast took out the grenadiers and part of the mountain along with them. The RPG team reposition themselves to escape the notice of the other tanks.

A second shower of mortar shells rained down on the convoy, pummeling another tank. Unfortunately, the mortar team is discovered nestled in the hills among the trees in the distance. All of the surviving tanks started sending shells that way, obliterating the hillside and forcing the surviving Resistance fighters in the RPG team to retreat, their objective of softening up the Outer Heaven convoy now complete.

In the Northern Cape, a similar show was occurring, with five Blackfoot helicopters flying overhead only to get harassed by RPG teams a couple hundred kilometers northwest of Brandlvei. In the skirmish, two of the birds were successfully shot down before the rebels were forced to run to ground.

In the countryside northeast of Cape Town, a supply depot south of the mountain of Perdeberg was assaulted by guerilla teams, setting multiple grain silos ablaze with Molotov cocktails. Farmers in the region started setting fire to their crops at the instruction of the Resistance while the rebels viciously attacked Outer Heaven transports in the area.

Rail lines were destroyed in Calvinia, Sutherland, and Brandlvei with controlled demolitions using explosives that were planted the night before, effectively cutting off major supply routes into the region.

Outer Heaven troops in FOBs near Karoo National Park and Copperton were quick to catch onto the coordinated attack, and were able to repel the Resistance invasions, but the FOBs and staging areas near the northern border weren't so lucky.

Reports started rolling into Kyle's base at Outer Heaven HQ of enemy and friendly casualties alike, and these same reports were quickly disseminated by his intel teams to the local populace. As the fighting started to bleed out into the major cities and municipalities in the southern and eastern coastline, Outer Heaven mercs traveling in Cape Town, Beaufort West, and Victoria West found themselves set upon in the streets, getting stabbed, shot, and strangled by both Resistance fighters and even by some of the locals joining in.

Within the span of two hours, all of western South Africa was involved in the festival of violence as the people rallied to the Resistance's banner. Black smoke choked out the skies, and the sound of cacophonous gunfire became common no matter where one walked. In the eastern cities north of Lesotho and dotting the eastern coast, civilian demonstrations were beginning to riot, and Resistance members were openly battling Outer Heaven troops in the streets.

Throughout all of this, the Demon maintained his composure in the face of the bloodbath and the conflicting, chaotic reports that it created. Undeterred, he bade the remains of the convoy near Loxton and the northern birds to continue their approach to Outer Heaven to reinforce his army at home. Outer Heaven was determined to take back what was theirs and cut off the head of the serpent that had slithered its way into their garden; and the first step was to put down the Resistance's troublesome leadership for the last time. The second was to eliminate the interloper that the Resistance had brought in. The Demon's private army would accomplish the former.

As for the latter…

The Demon smiled with grim anticipation. Many traps had been laid for the snake, and thanks to the old man, the Demon had been given the perfect bait with which to lure his prey.

 

---

 

MARCH 19, 1995 

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA - 1137 HOURS

UNION BUILDINGS – PRESIDENTIAL OFFICES

 

President Nelson Mandela held his head in his hands as he took in the words his military advisers relayed to him. Though he had long ago in his youth recognized over the course of his military service the unfortunate necessity of violent resistance against tyranny when all other peaceful avenues failed, he had still maintained some hope that such bloodshed would be left behind after the legislative dismantling of apartheid in 1991 and the new constitution being ratified in 1993. Back then, he was certain that the worst was behind them, that his country would finally have the opportunity to heal, and that a diplomatic solution to the Outer Heaven problem would be found to make further infighting and war unnecessary.

When Outer Heaven proved to be belligerent and refused to vacate, Mandela knew then that a resurgence of violent uprisings were only a matter of time. Now that day had come: riots in the streets, local armed resistance openly warring with Outer Heaven mercenaries in every corner of the country. Heads of state in Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Botswana were concerned about the fighting in the cities spilling over into their borders, and Namibia and Zimbabwe were already tightening border security until such time as order could be restored.

Movement of refugees by land would prove to be difficult, and controlling the narrative in the international media as they had done before would be impossible—the government had been effective in suppressing news of their prior civil unrest against Outer Heaven, but that was now no longer an option.

As for air and sea, the air and naval branches of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) wouldn't be able to move effectively against Outer Heaven without risk to South Africa's own citizens. It would be similar if President Mandela reached out through diplomatic channels to the United Nations for assistance, assuming any of them would be willing to intervene on South Africa's behalf before it was too late. The one domestic option left to him, or so his generals were telling him, was to place the entire country under martial law and give the army branch greater freedom to fight back and subdue both Outer Heaven and the Resistance fighters before things got any worse.

Two years, Mandela thought bitterly to himself—so much strife under apartheid, and they'd only managed to buy themselves two years of real relative peace, from 1991 to 1993 when the Resistance first formed. Now, here Mandela was, contemplating the unthinkable in subjecting his countrymen to another kind of tyranny in the hopes of keeping that peace before Outer Heaven could tear his people and country apart.

"Your Excellency, we need to take back control quickly, before all of this gets out of hand," said General Georg Meiring.

Mandela met the eyes of his general. "What about the Americans?" he asked. "Their intelligence had indicated that Outer Heaven possessed weapons of mass destruction. If we are too aggressive in our posture, might the mercenary company be inclined to detonate it, and use it against us?"

General Meiring went quiet as everyone in the room contemplated the thought. A few days ago, the SANDF offices were given a call from the American Secretary of Defense stating that Outer Heaven may be actively producing WMDs on South African soil but refused to disclose the sources by which they had obtained this information.

This refusal was not unusual in and of itself—the most vital information worth protecting in any intelligence community was always the methods and means of intel collection, not the intel itself. However, the timing of these domestic guerilla revolutionaries revealing themselves to lead the citizenry in open war against the PF was very suspect.

How long had the Americans been sitting on this information? Why wait until now to disclose it? Perhaps they had men on the inside in both Outer Heaven and in the Resistance, and that was why the rebels had grown so bold?

After a moment of silence, President Mandela held out his hand to the general.

"Please hand me a phone," he said.

An aide handed a secure satellite phone to General Meiring, who passed it over to the president. With steady hands, President Mandela dialed the number of the U.S. Defense Secretary. The phone was picked up on the first ring.

"This is Secretary of Defense William Perry," came the voice.

"Mr. Perry, this is the President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela."

"Hello, Your Excellency. How may I help you today?"

"Outer Heaven has begun an uprising in the western cape of South Africa," said Mandela. "Civil unrest is dangerously high, and my generals are recommending I put the country under martial law. You called me recently to tell me that you had reason to believe that Outer Heaven was in possession of a weapon of mass destruction. Do you remember?"

"Yes sir, that is correct."

"At the time of the phone call, you refused to elaborate on how this information was obtained or how you knew it was credible."

"That's right, Your Excellency, I was not at liberty to disclose that information to you."

"Allow me to get right to the point," Mandela stated flatly. "I know you have assets operating on my country's soil—you must, if I am to believe that your information is credible. I will ask you bluntly: are any of them in a position to disable this weapon of Outer Heaven's?"

"Are you asking because you want my help, or because you want me to pull my people out and not get involved?" asked Secretary Perry.

"You already know the answer, Mr. Perry. Please, do not insult me," Pres. Mandela replied.

"…We have multiple contingencies," Perry admitted. "We have multiple assets inside the Resistance who have allowed us to influence them into performing a coordinated attack of Outer Heaven headquarters—some of these assets had also planted themselves within Outer Heaven itself to collect intelligence, which is how we knew the existence of the weapon. Once the presence of the weapon was confirmed, it was a simple matter of arming the Resistance forces in the area and pointing them in the right direction so that they could do what they wanted to do anyway."

Mandela clenched his fists, his face tightened. Veins in his forehead bulge as one eye twitched slightly. "You are telling me that instead of coming to me and letting the SANDF take operational control, you sent in agents without the consent of my government, and on top of this, you utilized the involvement of a revolutionary extremist group? Am I to understand that the blame for this new civil war on my doorstep lies at your feet?"

Sec. Perry did not provide an answer.

Mandela breathed in slowly, outstretched his arms and fingers, and exhaled slowly. He brought the phone back to his ear. "So, tell me, Secretary," he said. "Say that your agents and the Resistance fail. What then?"

"There's a couple of NATO aircraft carriers about five thousand kilometers off the western coast. They're carrying F/A-18 and A-6 bombing aircraft and an escort of F-111 Aardvarks. These planes have been painted with SANDF colors to give the impression that they are under the ownership of South Africa. With your permission, sir, I would like to have these planes unloaded north of Cape Town and to set up a runway."

"For what purpose, Mr. Perry?"

"This squadron is loaded with laser-guided GBU-28 'bunker busting' bombs that are designed to be surface piercing. In the event that our onsite assets fail in their mission, these birds will covertly fly over Outer Heaven headquarters and subject it to aerial bombardment with enough firepower to completely and utterly destroy the enemy base. Once we've confirmed destruction of the weapon, your SANDF will be able to safely clean up what's left of the mess, and with the planes identified as being owned by your forces, you'll even be able to take all the credit, making you look better on the international stage."

President Mandela considered this idea. The people's grievances with Outer Heaven were due to having a foreign military presence on their land, so direct military intervention by NATO forces would be a bad idea, even if it were under the government's command. The Americans have thought of everything. How long had they been planning this, and what exactly do they get out of helping?

Knowing that time was at a premium, Mandela made a decision. "When Outer Heaven is defeated and my forces take over," he said slowly, "we will need UN assistance to process and house refugees in and around the region; it would also be helpful if they assist in cleanup of the site after bombardment, to prevent environmental destruction and contamination in the event of the release of hazardous chemical or nuclear materials that may be present on the site. With the United States having such a great deal of influence in the United Nations, I would like you to assist us in getting the required resources."

"I'll pass along the request to the State Department. VP and Secretary of State are looped in on this operation, it shouldn't be a problem."

"One thing, Mr. Perry," Mandela cut in, "these UN resources are not to include any armed personnel; what we need are EMTs, doctors, and environmental specialists, not more soldiers—armed foreigners with imperialist designs are what put my country in this situation. We will not allow a repetition of the circumstances that caused this in the first place. Any weapons or fighting vehicles brought into the country by NATO forces will be confiscated for exclusive use by SANDF. Agreed?"

"I don't think that will be a problem, Your Excellency," Perry repeated.

Mandela nodded. "In that case, you have my permission to bring these aircraft into my country. In a moment, I will have my chief of the army contact you to coordinate this task once I've had a chance to further discuss our military strategy with him. Thank you for your time, Mr. Perry."

"It was my pleasure, Your Excellency. I'll be coordinating with the State Department and the President, but we will be ready to receive your call."

"Thank you, sir. That will be all," Mandela finished, hanging the phone up. He turned his attention to General Meiring.

"As of now, the country is under martial law," he said. "You are to have your forces suppress Outer Heaven and Resistance activities in the cities on the eastern and southern parts of the country, but you are not to approach Outer Heaven until after the Americans' bombing raid. Your main task is to secure and protect our civilians and restore order—anyone who opposes or obstructs you is to be seen as an enemy, regardless of whether they are Resistance or Outer Heaven. Instruct your men to take Resistance members alive for questioning if at all possible—after all, they are still our people, and they are fighting for their country, which should ideally make them our allies. However, if they show hostile intent, your men are not required to allow themselves to come to harm for the Resistance's sake."

"Very good, Your Excellency," nodded the general.

"One more thing," Mandela said, raising a finger. "I don't believe for one moment that the only assets the Americans have in and around Outer Heaven are solely Resistance members. There may be covert Americans on our soil. Assuming they make it out of Outer Heaven, their next move will be to head for the United States embassy in Pretoria or one of the consulates in Johannesburg, Cape Town, or Durban. When order is restored, focus on tightening your security in these areas. I want this American or Americans found and detained for questioning. They must not be allowed to leave this country, and they must be captured alive—this last part is not optional. Understand, General?"

"Yes, Your Excellency," Meiring responded.

Mandela nodded. "Call the American government, make whatever arrangements are needed to get those bombers onsite. Bring them to the countryside north of Cape Town, somewhere where there aren't many people. Even if the planes are painted to be identified as ours, I still want them to keep a low profile."

With the instructions handed out, the meeting was adjourned as Mandela's chiefs of military staff left to begin making their arrangements. The announcement of martial law would be made within the hour. Mandela himself walked slowly back to his desk and sat, feeling troubled. He prayed that he was doing the right thing and that by the end of today, his country would be free from strife once and for all.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 1223 HOURS

OUTER HEAVEN WEST: RESISTANCE F.O.B.

 

Gray Fox scanned the cliffs on the far side of the base with the scope of his rifle just in time to see an Outer Heaven truck turn a corner around the mountain wall and into an alcove out of sight.

"Well, it looks like Snake's in position," he muttered.

Kyle, who was keeping watch beside him, grunted in response.

"Any word on Outer Heaven's movements?"

"The armored column will likely come in from the south, the helicopters from the north. Loyiso and Imke haven't reported any approaching yet, and I see no choppers," Kyle said.

"Hmm…"

Fox turned his scope towards the helipads between the R&D building and the bunker. Helicopter crews and infantry were gathering around the last remaining Blackfoot. A manned Walker Gear carrying a fuel tank waddled up to the rear.

"We've got movement around the gunship. Looks like they're refueling."

Kyle adjusted his binoculars to look where Fox had indicated. "Can you get a clean shot on that fuel tank from this distance?"

Fox shook his head. "This rifle's .338 Lapua. Maximum range is about two thousand meters, and that's generous. That helicopter's over twenty kilometers away. I'm a good shot, but I'm not going to be able to hit that thing from here. I could try and get closer, but by the time I get to ground floor, get outside, and reposition inside of the minefield, they'd probably be finished with refueling."

"Damn…" Kyle said. "So that's going to be four birds, including the one already on site…" He raised his men on the radio to alert them of the threat.

"What are the chances that they wait for their reinforcements to arrive before they start gunning for us, do you think?" asked Kyle.

"You're asking me?"

"Well, you've been inside of Outer Heaven's forces and around Ahab, you should know."

Gray Fox bit his lower lip in thought. "Which is likely to get here first, the attack choppers or the armored unit?"

"Last report I heard; the armored unit was closer. Should arrive sometime within the next thirty minutes."

"I give it 60-40 odds they start their attack ten minutes before the tanks get here, 80-20 odds they won't bother waiting for the air support, relying on their firepower advantage," Fox said, coughing slightly to clear his throat.

Kyle nodded, tuning his radio to Snake's frequency. "Solid Snake, this is Architect. How copy?"

A momentary fuzz on the radio, followed by: "This is Snake. Send it, Architect."

"We saw your truck in the cliffs. Are you in position?"

"We are, Architect. We're ready to move in on your word."

"Good. Outer Heaven reinforcements are about thirty minutes out. Your friend Fox says they're likely to move as soon as ground reinforcements arrive without waiting for the incoming offsite air support. We can see them refueling the onsite helicopter. As soon as they're ready to press the attack, they'll send in that chopper to act as vanguard, along with any onsite ground forces near the R&D complex. When that chopper takes off and starts coming toward us, let that be your signal to move in."

Fox changed hands to put the radio to his other ear. "Be sure to move quickly," he added. "I have men further up who can provide overwatch. With any luck, you'll be able to get in soon enough that we won't be stuck with a prolonged siege."

"Understood, Architect. We'll standby for the start of the show, then make a dash for the bunker. You be ready to bug out as soon as I'm inside."

"We'll be ready," Kyle replied. "Architect out."

A few minutes passed. A spotter on the eastern perimeter hailed Kyle.

"Sir! Eyes on R&D! Movement on bearing 102, at the top of the cliff!"

Kyle turned his binoculars towards R&D at the indicated direction. A line of four Jeeps were driving on the winding path down the cliff wall, with several armed Walker Gears taking up the rear. "Hmm, that's sooner than we thought…" he muttered.

"Sir! Bearing 135, southeast!" called out Imke.

Kyle adjusted his sightline and spotted a large cloud of dust in the far-off distance. He adjusted his binocs for distance and found two tanks at the front of the cloud, with shadows behind them indicating other vehicles. At this distance, they would be within effective range within the next 20 minutes.

Kyle tuned his radio to the Resistance's broadband. "All forces, all forces," he said, "Outer Heaven personnel and armored unit are onsite, expected contact in twenty, twenty-five minutes or less. Everyone hunker down and get ready!"

One by one, Kyle started to get calls on the radio from his reinforcement teams:

"Red Leader, this is Red Team One! We're in position on the east side of the river, in the warehouse yard! Tell us where you want us, and we'll get in position! Over!"

"This is Team Two! We're still two minutes out, but we'll be onsite shortly. Awaiting your orders, sir!"

"RT-5 here! We just got onsite, linking up with RT-1 now!"

"This is RT-4, we'll still be another five minutes, but we'll be there as fast as we can!"

Kyle smiled. With these new bodies on the field and with the ordnance they captured inside the storage facility, they might be able to even the odds a little.

"The gang's all here...," he muttered to himself. He pressed down the button on the radio and started giving orders for troop placements.

As his men set about getting into position, Kyle noticed that some of the Walker gears broke away from their vehicle convoy once they reached the bottom of the cliff and started moving southward. Kyle squinted with suspicion.

"Where are you going…?" he muttered.

 

---

 

OUTER HEAVEN SOUTH

DAY SIX – 1230 HOURS

WALKER GEAR CONTINGENT

 

Erik Soder gripped tightly on the handles of his Walker Gear as it sprinted across the rough desert terrain, praying desperately that he wouldn't fall off as he twisted the throttle to put the leg motors at maximum speed. He lifted his head, using his left hand to quickly adjust his goggles and scarf to keep the dust out of his eyes and mouth as he followed along behind Takashi and Captain Ivanov.

"How much further is it, Cap?" Soder shouted.

"It's just a little bit further," Cpt. Ivanov replied, "right around this ridge!"

The three pass a tall natural wall and loop around the southern tip of the wall and moved back north, far out of the sightlines of any rebel scouts and snipers on the west side that may be watching. Moving back toward the foot of the large hill or small mountain that R&D was perched upon, the Walkers came upon an open tunnel. As the three mercs moved inside, they slowed their vehicles to a walk.

Soder looked up and around. The tunnel had remarkably high ceilings and was wide enough to comfortably have two tanks driving through it side by side. Scaffolding and walkways with handrails were against the walls on either side, with wires running along the ceilings and walls. Soder had never been down here before. This place was even lower than the waterways in R&D—was it next to or below the aqueduct, Soder wondered?

"What is this place?" Soder asked.

"Oh, right, you only joined a few years ago, didn't you, Soder? So, I guess you wouldn't know about it," Takashi said.

"Know about what?"

"Well, you know how before Outer Heaven moved to South Africa, its headquarters used to be in the Seychelles, right?"

Soder nodded. "Yeah, I think so. But wasn't it a different company back then?"

Takashi replied, "Right. Ahab was still in charge, but this was before the mergers. Well, back then, Ahab's R&D team were working on this experimental hovercraft; it was built like a tank and served a similar purpose, but it was way more mobile, and was equipped with a rail gun. It was a pretty badass vehicle."

"Whoa!" cried Soder, impressed. "So, how come we've never been using it before? Hell, why didn't we mass-produce it, either to sell it or for ourselves? Why the hell are we still using regular tanks?"

Takashi shook his head. "It was an impressive weapon, but it was really expensive to build, and it came with a lot of logistical problems. For one, the vehicle's mostly electrical, and the huge raw power output means that they had to use a really big battery which decreased the real estate for the cockpit, and the thing still needs three operators. You remember how small the fighting compartment was in the tank? It's way worse in there."

Soder grimaced. "I mean, that'd be annoying, but it doesn't sound that bad."

"It isn't…until you remember that that battery and the engine are adjacent to the crew, so there's a lot of heat stored in there. If the vehicle doesn't vent periodically, you risk cooking the crew alive or forcing them to evacuate. The other problem is that the rail gun draws from the same well of power as everything else, meaning every time you fire it, you have to stop moving to prevent risk of overheating, which leaves you wide open to opposing fire while you wait for the gun to recharge and for the heat to vent."

Soder blanched. "No wonder the thing got moth-balled, then. So, if the thing is so useless, why are we going to grab it?"

"Because it's not useless," Cpt. Ivanov cut in. "It just has a very specific use-case; one which we are going to take advantage of."

Together, the three Walker Gears turned the corner to see the biggest armored vehicle he'd ever laid eyes on. Multiple technicians hovered around the vehicle, testing its various electronic and mechanical components. It looked much like a normal tank, except that the fighting compartment looked like it was raised to hover and sit above the treads, and in place of a front-projected cannon was a long rail gun mounted on the side, lifted by hydraulics and connected to the compartment via wire.

A mechanic pressed a hydraulic switch and the part that Soder thought were wheeled treads came apart and pushed the fighting compartment upwards, revealing a boxy "head" fighting compartment supported by four "legs." Another setting was pressed, and warm air whooshed throughout the cavern as the vehicle rose into the air by three feet, which was when Soder realized that the legs actually had no treads or wheels at all. He watched the demonstration in awe, before the mechanics realized that the three had entered the chamber and the tank vehicle was lowered back onto the ground, and it lowered itself into its resting "tank" formation.

Ivanov drove his Walker Gear over to the side of the entrance out of the way and dismounted, motioning for his subordinates to do the same.

"Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to our very own Battle Gear," Ivanov said very proudly. "With this weapon, we'll be able to finally put down our sewer rat problem for good!"

Takashi looked over at Soder who was still looking on dumbfounded. Takashi grinned mischievously and elbowed his younger crewmate in the ribs. "Take a picture Soder, it'll last longer," he joked.

Ivanov waved to his men to follow, and together they walked over and climbed the rails of the side-mounted ladder one by one and on top of the head compartment, descending inside via the hatch on top.

Takashi wasn't kidding about the small space—the place was cramped with dials and electronic dashboards. The seats for the gunner position and the driver position had Takashi's and Soder's backs pressed against each other, and the pedals underneath the consoles had the operators' knees pressing into their stomachs.

There was one more seat above and behind Soder, behind Soder's right shoulder. The seat over their shoulders was where Ivanov sat, controlling the targeting computer for the railgun.

Ivanov went over the plan of attack against the Resistance's occupied territory. Once the armored column arrived to join the vanguard west of the destroyed training facility, the Battle Gear would be taking a support role to help soften up the enemy until either the ground team decimated them or until the air support arrived from offsite to finish the job. Takashi and Soder listened intently, nodding along.

"Are there any questions for our plan, moving forward?" asked Ivanov. Both men shook their heads.

"Good, then let's move out. Takashi, at your ready. It's time for us to kick some rebel ass."

Takashi nodded. "Roger, sir."

Soder gripped the handles on his remote gun control tightly, narrowing his eyes as he checked the Battle Gear's external camera. It was time to get revenge for their defeat at the training facility.

"This one's for you, Galvez," he muttered.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 1300 HOURS

OUTER HEAVEN NORTH – SIX KM NORTHEAST OF THE BUNKER

 

"Solid Snake, this is Mission Control. Come in."

Snake waved to his squad to let them know that he needed a minute and walked a few feet away from the cliff's edge to the truck. He crouched low and clicked his radio to answer. "This is Snake, I read you, Control."

Big Boss's voice sounded over the proprietary secondary frequency they'd set the night before.

"There's been a new intelligence update. We have NSA cryptanalysts and CIA cyberwarfare specialists onsite here at Mission Control, and we've managed to hack into Outer Heaven's security cameras at the exterior of the bunker and on the first floor."

"That's great news, sir!" Snake said.

"Yes," Big Boss agreed. "We're going to try and guide you as you make your approach towards Metal Gear. Where are you right now?"

Snake looked back out to the edge of the cliff.

"We're in position just northeast of the bunker, waiting for Outer Heaven to begin their attack on our allies in the Resistance. There's a helicopter and full crew in the way. Once they move, we're going to make our approach to the site. There'll still be a lot of troops on the south side, but there's an eastern door that's less heavily guarded. We plan to make our entrance that way. If you can remotely make sure that the enemy doesn't raise any alarms from the camera feed we should have no problems getting inside."

"I see…" said Big Boss. "How will you get close?"

"We've got an Outer Heaven truck in good condition," Snake replied. "It should get us close enough without arousing enemy suspicion, even if they see us."

"Understood," Big Boss said. "Your plan is a good one. However, be advised: the enemy has planted landmines in the northeast of the bunker. You'll be safer if you swing southward by approximately four clicks as you make your way west and move northward as you approach the exterior walls of the bunker."

"Thanks for the head's-up, sir," Snake said. "We'll utilize extra caution."

"Good luck, Snake. Mission Control out."

Snake rejoined his compatriots lying down at the cliff's edge and pulled out his binoculars to observe enemy troops' movements as they finished refueling the helicopter. In the far-off distance, they heard the muffled booms of explosions and the bottle rocket pop, pop, popping of small arms fire. A few minutes later, the helicopter lifted into the air, and the Walker Gears and soldiers in the area on the south side in front of the bunker began to scatter.

Snake got up and led his squad back to the truck, climbing into the cab next to Willem. He informed the men of the intel that Big Boss had given him: once they got to the bottom of the cliffs, they were to divert southwest by four kilometers before swinging back northwestward to the east side of the bunker itself.

Willem nodded in agreement, and started the engine, carefully driving on the winding path downhill. Snake kept his gaze on the bunker. 

This is it, he thought.

He pulled back the slide of his Beretta to perform a brass check.

Notes:

A slower chapter that's mostly focused on setup. I didn't have as much fun writing this one because it was mostly expository, but it was important to get a sense of where all the players of this conflict are at so that I could properly set up the endgame. Although one aspect of writing this chapter that I did enjoy was the chance to do a little bit of character building for Snake and some of his allies in the beginning of the chapter. I also enjoyed the scene in Mandela's presidential office when Operation Judgment Day started to play out, because it gave me a chance to show the effects of the Outer Heaven uprising on places outside of the immediate zone of conflict, which is something that I think doesn't really get touched on a lot in most of the Metal Games, especially in the earlier titles-and when that stuff does come up, it's usually as background fluff, whereas here I wanted it to feel more real and more immediate of a concern.

I'm hoping I can get the next chapter out a little bit quicker, since it's likely going to be mostly action. I don't know how it's going to go, because I plan on showing multiple points of view for the upcoming conflict leading up to Snake's confrontation with Metal Gear, kind of like what I did for the Battle for Building One and the Wall of Armor chapters. I hope it won't end up being unwieldy or confusing to follow, but I suppose we'll just have to see.

Thank you to those of you who have continued to read and support me so far as I make it through this story. I hope to keep entertaining you as this moves forward. Please don't forget to review and let me know what you think!

Chapter 17: The Flop

Summary:

As Snake begins his infiltration of the bunker, he encounters a series of setbacks, and there are whispers of a possible traitor in his ranks...

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 1310 HOURS

OUTER HEAVEN NORTH – APPROACHING THE BUNKER

 

There were no guards posted at the gate to check the truck as it rolled in; the exterior guard towers were empty. The brunt of Outer Heaven's work force was focused solely on the rebel encampment in Outer Heaven West. The truck rolled right through the open gate. A few mercenaries posted on the rooftops and a skeleton crew outside the bunker were looking their way, but if they saw anything amiss, there was nothing to show it.

"Okay. So far, so good," Snake breathed as the truck moved past the threshold in the outer walls, driving westward toward the bunker. Snake pointed in their ten o'clock direction. "Turn left here," he instructed. "We'll need to loop southward to avoid that minefield."

Willem nodded, carefully turning the wheel to angle the truck southwest. They sat in tense silence as they did their best not to draw any attention to themselves, only the rumbling of the diesel engine pulling them along and the far-off sound of gunfire broke the monotony as they rolled across the sandy flatland.

"Alright, that's far enough," Snake said. "Divert north by northwest."

Willem complied and corrected the angle of their approach. The bunker was looming closer and closer; the side entrance was in sight, just a half a click away.

Suddenly, an explosion underneath the cab briefly lifted them into the air, the front wheels dislodging from their axle. The cab skidded with the screeching sound of metal scraping on the asphalt underneath them, careening over onto its side in a tumbling heap. Willem and Snake were violently shaken and left limply dangling by their seat belts as smoke churned from the engine, the acrid smell of burning fuel and oil lifting into the air.

Snake, being in the passenger seat, was higher up, forced by gravity to uncomfortably lean down onto Willem's body. Snake braced his feet against the floorboards and gripped the seatbelt to pull himself up off of his driver. Both of them were coughing furiously as Snake pushed as hard as he could on the door above him to open while Willem was kicking out the windshield.

Adrenaline pumping, Snake flipped up the cab door and popped his head through the opening to climb out. Not two seconds after he was out of the cab was he met with the sound of bullets whizzing by his head, forcing him to throw himself down and roll over off the side of the cab, landing painfully onto the asphalt. An explosion of pain burst in his midsection; he hoped he didn't break or puncture anything vital.

Snake lifted his mildly concussed head just in time for his blurry vision to register the figures of Mandla dragging a feebly crawling Petrus out of the ruined truck bed while Vusi fired from behind the cover of the wreck. Snake shook his head, brain pounding as he pushed himself to his feet and helped pull Willem out through the opening left behind by the busted windshield.

"You broken?" Snake asked, gripping Willem's hand tightly as he yanked him to his feet.

"None the worse for wear, sir," Willem replied as he quickly dug out their rifles from the cab, trying to stay out of sight of the enemy shooters.

He handed Snake his rifle and together they took up firing positions. Willem glanced around and found the culprit behind the truck explosion: a small crater scooped out of the road just a few yards away. It was a wonder that the floor didn't burst open into shrapnel and leave them shredded. Those Outer Heaven trucks must be armored underneath.

"I thought we were supposed to be driving away from the minefield!" Willem shouted, spraying bullets downrange from their position, taking out a hapless merc moving between cover.

"They must have planted these ones overnight before my people took over the cameras!" Snake yelled back, putting a couple of bullets into another target and sending him tumbling off of the roof of a small building near the bunker's entrance. "It's the only way they could've had time to set up this ambush!"

Snake grimaced as he laid down covering fire. It's like the Outer Heaven bastards knew they were coming. There was no safe place to move to with mines potentially all around them, and even if the mines weren't there, the Outer Heaven forces had them pinned down. Snake fumbled with the radio on his hip.

"Architect, Fox, come in! Do you read?" he shouted over the gunfire.

"This is Architect! We're a little busy here, Snake! What's your situation?" the radio squealed.

Snake leaned out of cover and took another couple of potshots, leaning back to avoid the return fire. He gripped his headset with his offhand. "Outer Heaven ambushed us! We're pinned down just outside of the bunker."

Another voice joined over the radio. "Snake, this is Fox. I can see the smoke. I'm guessing that's you?"

Snake looked up at the towering plume of black rising from the engine block and nodded, more to himself than anything. "Yeah, probably," he said, coughing. "Where are those offsite reinforcements, Architect? Think you can spare any?"

"They just arrived onsite in the AO," Kyle replied. "The squad closest to you is RT-4, but they're currently engaging enemy forces like the rest of us. I'll radio them and see if they can help out, but for now you're on your own. Try to hold out as best you can."

Snake hissed a curse under his breath. "Affirmative," he acknowledged.

Snake was sweating profusely. The heat of the nearby burning wreck combined with the sweltering humid air was making it unbearable.

"Sir! Look!"

Snake looked to where Vusi was pointing; about thirty yards away were a couple of shipping containers a little closer to the bunker. With nothing between them and the containers though, that distance was a yawning chasm.

Snake peeked around the corner, nearly getting his head shot off. They were sitting ducks where they were, and probably weren't going to be much better off at the containers. But they needed to gain more ground, and they couldn't just stay there.

"Okay…okay!" Snake wiped the soot from his face. "In a couple of seconds, I'm going to make a run for it and take up a firing position by the containers to cover the next guys. You'll come to me two at a time. Got it?"

The men firing downrange nodded, and the others gave him a thumbs up. Snake nodded. "Alright," he said, "Get ready!"

 

---

 

RESISTANCE OPERATION: JUDGMENT DAY

1323 HOURS

OUTER HEAVEN WEST -- RESISTANCE F.O.B.

 

"Trevor! Put some suppressing fire downrange onto those trenches! Don't let the enemy set up any mortar pits! Mbali, where's my fookin' ammo!?"

Mbali jogged up behind Luke, switching out the ammo box on his machine gun for a fresh one. Luke flipped open the receiver to load the new belt into the box. Mbali, out of breath, pointed her rifle over the top of the trench to lay down suppressing fire with Trevor while Luke reloaded. Once finished, Luke slammed the weapon closed, yanked back the bolt and sprayed fire out into no-man's land, buzzing through a couple of unfortunate Outer Heaven troopers that dared to pop their heads up from behind the makeshift walls for an advance.

The three rebels were occupying a dug-out trench just inside the lower walls on the eastern perimeter of the supply storage building. Outer Heaven had rolled in with trucks and tanks and immediately hit claymores and anti-tank mines, turning their front vanguard into roadblocks for the armored APCs and tanks bringing up the rear.

Rebels on the rooftop started to lay down mortar fire on the rear lines, only to be stymied by the arrival of two Blackfoot helicopters harassing them from above. Without the threat of the mortars, the rear armor inched steadily closer, while squads of infantry and mounted Walker Gears flanked from the north.

The rebels supplied the groundside with five 12-man fireteams—the reinforcements brought in from offsite to stall the ground advance, while three smaller teams made up the rear closer to the perimeter. Luke, Mbali, and Trevor made up one of these smaller teams on the northeast side.

Taking a break in his fire, Luke wiped some sweat from his forehead, growling in frustration. They didn't make it out of imprisonment just to die on some dusty hill, he thought to himself. His radio squawked.

"Rear Team Seven! This is R-Leader," Kyle's voice announced.

Luke leaned over to Trevor. "Take the call! I'm a bit busy here! Mbali, watch the northern flank! They might try to circle around!"

As Luke and Mbali watched the bottom of the small hill on which they sat, Trevor threw himself prone to the relative safety of the bottom of the trench as he responded to the radio's hail.

"T-this is Team Seven," Trevor gasped out. "Send it, Leader!"

"Our American friend and his squad are pinned down outside the bunker and can't get in. They need an assist. I've asked—Imke, get an RPG on that Blackfoot! Everyone, get down!"

A few seconds later, an explosion was heard above, and a loud whine pealed through the air as the screeching metal bird above them spun in a terrible display of light and fire down to earth just a few yards ahead of them. Team Seven dove deeper into the trench as the chopper slammed into the ground. Kyle's voice returned on the radio, coughing and breathing heavily.

"Everyone okay? Good. Team Seven, are you still alive?"

"Rattled, but still breathing, sir," Trevor responded. "What'd you need?"

"Good! As I was saying, Snake's been ambushed. I've asked RT-4 to assist, but they've been stopped by two Walker Gears and an APC of Outer Heaven troopers six kilometers to the northeast, just outside the range of our snipers. I need you to go assist RT-4 and help clear the way for them to take the heat off of our American friend."

Trevor looked to Luke and Mbali, who both returned his worried look. Pushing into No-Man's Land to help RT-4 was going to mean putting a hole in their northeastern defenses for Outer Heaven to pry open and tear through.

"Sir," Trevor asked, "What about the rear line?"

"Fox and I will cover it from up here while I arrange your replacement! Now, go!"

Trevor nodded, his lips tightening in a thin grim line. Luke and Mbali nodded back to him in acknowledgment. "Understood, sir. Moving now," he said.

Luke hefted his machine gun while Mbali helped Trevor to his feet. "Alright, you two. You heard Schneider. Let's get Team Four out to Snake."

The three gathered what ammo they could carry and gathered at the edge of the trench line, looking in all directions for any tank cannons pointed their way. The air carried the heat and loud booms of explosive tank and mortar shells, and bullets whizzed and cracked over their heads. Keeping low, Team Seven scrambled up and out of the trench, crawling forward and sliding down the hill on their backs to keep their profiles low, using the momentum from hitting the bottom to spring to their feet and launch themselves forward.

Gray Fox watched from above through his sniper's scope, covering them as they made their advance. Suddenly, he changed direction as he saw one of Outer Heaven's tanks pivot towards Team Seven's position. Fox reached out next to him, slapping Kyle's shoulder.

"Armor 20 degrees left, approximately 2.5 kilometers. Elevation thirty degrees lower."

"I see it," Kyle said, making his adjustment.

"Send it."

"Sending! Fire in the hole," Kyle shouted, dropping the 120mm mortar shell into the launcher and diving low to cover his ears.

Fox followed suit, covering his ears as well. The mortar fired, arced through the air and fell squarely onto the tank. Fox looked into his scope to witness the impact.

"Direct hit," he reported. The machine gun turret gunner was nowhere to be seen, likely killed by the blast, but the tank itself looked mostly unharmed. They had succeeded in getting its attention though, as the armored vehicle turned its front and main gun in the direction of the supply storage building.

"We should get back," Fox said, getting up.

"What?" Kyle asked.

"Get back!" Fox shouted.

He pulled Kyle away from the edge of the roof just in time to avoid being blasted by a tank shell which tore a chunk off the top corner of the building where they were standing moments before.

Loyiso and Imke charged into the black smoke carrying RPG launchers and as soon as the smoke dispersed, put their rockets to work on dispatching the tank, taking it out in two shots and leaving behind a smoldering wreck. Two Outer Heaven troops climbed out of the heap and tumbled to the ground outside; Gray Fox dispatched them both with the sniper rifle.

"We might actually win this!" Loyiso cried, his voice shaking.

Kyle shook his head, pointing. "Get back on the southern corner! It's still too early to celebrate!"

A hail of bullets rained down on the roof to punctuate his words. The rebels fell back to take cover as an APC parked just outside the remaining minefield to spray the building with its mounted machine gun.

 

---

 

NO MAN'S LAND, NORTH SIDE

1412 HOURS

HALFWAY BETWEEN THE RESISTANCE F.O.B. AND METAL GEAR'S BUNKER

 

Team Seven were all breathing heavily as they moved to cover as much ground as they could as quickly as possible while praying that Outer Heaven's forces didn't take notice of them as they crossed the extremely exposed landscape stretching between them and RT-4. Trevor's lungs were on fire as he gasped for air, looking behind them for rear security. His senses were still wired from that close call with the tank. Mbali fared little better. Luke was worried for his team; they couldn't afford to lose it now, in the middle of no man's land.

"It's just a little further, just over the next hill," Luke promised, glancing around wildly. He gripped his radio. "RT-4, this is Team Seven. What's your status?"

There was a burst of noise over the radio—gunfire and static. There was the sound of human voices crying out—whether in pain, fear, or rage, T7 couldn't tell; it was all just a chorus of human suffering, and they couldn't make out whether it was RT-4's or Outer Heaven's. After several seconds, a reply was finally heard.

"This is the TL of RT-4. We're currently under fire by Outer Heaven forces. We're pinned down just south of the bunker. We can't reach the Infiltration Team, and we're already down two men. If this keeps up, we're going to be overrun. We need immediate assistance!"

"Faster, T7!" Luke barked to Mbali and Trevor. Team 7 pushed themselves from a run to an urgent sprint.

Luke said between breaths, "We read you, RT-4. We're on our way to you now. Just hold on! What should we expect when we get there?"

"There's a technical with a living gunner and driver. It had a crew of five additional, but we've knocked that number down to three. There's also two manned Walker Gears making sure we can't poke our heads out from cover. They're closing in on us. We need you here sooner than later, T7!"

"Understood!"

Team Seven continued in their mad dash over the top of the hill from which they could see the APC and Walker Gears in question. A head poked out from a hatch out the top of the APC, where an Outer Heaven trooper was laying down fire with a mounted machine gun turret on a ridge where they could see RT-4 hiding. Just as the team leader had said, there were also two Walker Gears walking up the side of the smaller hill on either side of the ridge, attempting to flank RT-4 on both their left and right sides.

Team Seven crouched underneath an acacia tree as they checked their weapons and ammo. Luke set up the tripod on his machine gun and got into a prone position, aiming down at the Walker Gear closest to their position. He turned his head to Trevor. "Trevor," he said, "ready your grenade shells and put some fire on that APC. Mbali, aim for the Walker Gear on the far side."

Trevor loaded a grenade shell into the underbarrel grenade launcher of his rifle and flipped up the sight attachment to check the trajectory before firing. A distant explosion was heard as it came into contact with the APC's rear. The machine gunner looked around wildly before pointing up at them. The closer Walker Gear crouched down onto its wheels and spun around before driving towards them. The machine gunner on the APC fired on the hill, and Trevor's torso exploded open just as he was firing another shell. The grenade landed right on top of the APC, killing the gunner.

Luke didn't have time to regard his fallen comrade beyond the blood that sprayed onto his skin, as he instead was focusing on raining bullets down onto the approaching Walker Gear. The Walker Gear swerved as its pilot ducked behind the frontal armor. Luke could hear the mounted chain gun on the Walker spinning as it came closer, and he rolled away from his own weapon just in time to avoid being turned into Swiss cheese.

Rather than aim at the far side Walker Gear like she was ordered, Mbali aimed down her sights at the Walker Gear driving towards Luke's position and expertly took the driver's head clean off. The Walker Gear collided with another tree, sending the driver's corpse flying.

Mbali lowered her rifle and looked to Luke who was laying in the dirt below, covering his head with both arms. "Target down," she shouted. "Are you alright, sir?"

Luke lifted his head. "Never better," he grunted. "What about Trevor?"

Mbali looked over to Trevor's tattered and still steaming body and gasped softly. She felt tears in her eyes and screwed her eyes shut as she breathed in sharply. "Trevor's dead, sir."

Luke shook his head and pounded the ground with his fist as he pushed himself to his feet.

"Fuck…," he swore softly.

He hurried over to his friend and gently closed his eyes. Picking up Trevor's discarded rifle and grenade shells, he joined Mbali on the hilltop and aimed down at the remaining Walker Gear, which was becoming surrounded by the remaining seven members of RT-4, who quickly subdued the driver. The APC however, was starting to back away for a retreat.

"No, you fookin' don't," Luke whispered. He aimed the grenade launcher and fired a shell at the APC, catching it near the wheels. The APC swerved to avoid the explosion, and drove itself into a berm, getting its tires stuck into a ditch. RT-4 moved onto the vehicle as the rear hatch opened, revealing two Outer Heaven troopers with their hands up.

Luke lowered his weapon, then looked to Mbali, thumbing in the direction of the crashed Walker Gear. "Think you can get that thing working?" he asked.

Mbali shrugged. "I can try."

Several minutes later, Mbali was skidding down the hill with the Walker Gear in driving mode while Luke clung onto the side, lurching forward as the machine hopped off its wheels into walking mode and jogged up to RT-4. Luke hopped off the Walker Gear into a jog and halted in front of RT-4's TL.

The Team Leader was a bald and top-heavy Swazi man with a beard. "Are you the leader of Team Seven? Thanks for the assistance. I'm Sibusiso." 

Luke nodded. "You certainly are," he said with an ironic deadpan--Sibusiso being a name meaning 'blessed.'

Luke looked over Sibusiso's shoulder. RT-4 was tying the enemy troopers' hands behind their backs and leaning them against the grounded APC.

"What are you planning to do with them?" Luke asked.

Sibusiso shrugged. "We can't take them with us. We need to assist the American and his Infiltration team." Sibusiso eyed Luke, a single brow raised. "Why? What did you have in mind?"

Instead of answering, Luke walked around Sibusiso and up to the two Outer Heaven prisoners. One was a scared kid, couldn't have been more than 19 or 20 years old. The other was an older veteran, face lined, and battle hardened. The vet sneered at Luke.

"You think you've won, haven't you? You have no idea what kind of hell you sewer rats are in for. Once the boss comes through here to clean up, we're going to track down your villages and raze them to the ground. By the time we're done, there will be no one left to remember you." The vet's lips twisted into a cruel smirk.

"Your families will be ground into bloody paste by the boots of Venom's forces. Your elders and your children will be made to work for us, while your spouses and brothers and sisters will litter the mass graves to be burned as our fuel. This tiny victory you've won here is nothing. You hear me, rat? Nothing!"

Luke said nothing. He raised a pistol to the vet's head and splattered his brains onto the APC's armor.

"That was for Trevor," he muttered.

He turned to the younger trooper and pointed his pistol at the boy's head. The younger man screwed his eyes shut. Luke lowered his pistol and put a round through the young man's leg. He fell over, twisting and screaming in the dirt. Luke holstered his pistol.

Luke looked to RT-4. "Leave him for his masters," he said. "The Infiltration Team still needs help."

Sibusiso and his team looked warily at Luke. Sibusiso nodded uneasily before commanding to his men, "We're done here. Let's go!"

"We'll take the Walker Gears and circle around to give you some fire support," said Luke.

"Understood," Sibusiso agreed. "Take a couple of my men with you. We'll surround the Outer Heaven bunker crew and spread out to give them some harder targets to hit."

Luke nodded, and together he and Mbali mounted their Walker Gears with two of RT-4 hanging on the sides opposite the mounted chain guns and the new fire team split up to make their respective paths northward, leaving the younger Outer Heaven trooper crawling and weeping in their wake.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 1500 HOURS

OUTER HEAVEN NORTH – BUNKER, SOUTHEAST SIDE

 

"RedTeam Four to Infiltration Team! Do you copy?"

Snake peeked out from behind the door of the shipping container they were hiding inside to take some more pot shots downrange at an enemy rifleman lying prone on the roof of a guard station before scooting back behind the safety of the metal obstruction. He gripped his radio while Willem took over his firing position.

"This is Solid Snake. I hear you, RT-4. Send it."

"What's your status, Snake?"

Snake looked to Mandla and Vusi, who were desperately trying to stabilize Petrus with the remains of the trauma kit they'd managed to pull from the truck. Petrus had gotten shot while they transitioned out of cover from behind the truck, and he was now shaking and coughing up blood, and Mandla was turning Petrus on his side so that he wouldn't choke on his own fluids.

It didn't help that every few seconds either Mandla or Vusi had to trade off with Snake or Willem to lay down suppressing fire while the others reloaded or tended to their casualty. Snake swore. This container was supposed to offer them relative safety as they moved closer to the bunker's side entrance, but instead he'd just trapped them in a 5,000-lb steel coffin.

Snake pushed the button on the radio. "Our status is SOL, RT-4. We're pinned down in a shipping container just outside the east entrance to the bunker. There's a minefield to our immediate south just past our busted transportation, and there's an Outer Heaven motor pool crew who are real keen on keeping us trapped so we can't get in. We're holding them off, but we're starting to run low on ammo and we're down a man; we can't move without abandoning our injured. We could really use some extra help here."

"Copy that, Snake. We're on our way to you now to provide you with support. We've also commandeered a couple of Walker Gears who will likely get there before the rest of us do. Just sit tight, Infil Team. Help's on the way."

"Acknowledged," Snake replied before signing off.

Snake looked to his men and nodded to them, thankful for the chance to offer them some hope. "Cavalry's coming, guys. We just need to hold out a little longer."

A loud bang was heard on the closed side of the container. Snake and Vusi raised their rifles as the door caved in slightly to permit the entry of hooks and prybars. As the doors came open, Snake and Vusi opened fire and rushed forward to keep the three Outer Heaven troopers from encroaching on their territory. Two of the troopers fell over dead, and the third retreated, dragging one of his friends with him out of the line of fire.

Snake gripped his radio. "They're flanking us, Team Four! We need you here! Now, dammit! Now!"

Willem continued watching the opposite side they came in from. The gunshots had ceased. Everything was suspiciously quiet, save for Petrus's feeble moans and Mandla talking to him to try and keep him conscious. Mandla looked up victoriously.

"Okay, I've stabilized him! He's going to be okay!" he cried.

Willem looked over to Mandla to give him a thumbs-up. Mandla's eyes went wide.

"Willem! Behind you!"

Willem spun his head around just in time to see a Walker Gear sprint, jump, and land right in front of the half-open doorway, its robotic arm leveling a P90 in their direction. Snake and the three standing rebels scrambled to put their backs against the side wall, so they'd be behind the closed door while bullets rained into the shipping container, turning Petrus into bloody mulch. Snake and the rebels huddled in the corner against the door between them and the Walker, trying to avoid the ricochet.

Snake grabbed a flashbang from Vusi's belt and tossed it around the door. He and the others covered their ears as the bang was heard. Mandla spun around the door, pointing his rifle right at the Walker Gear pilot's head, and gunned him down with a guttural scream. More Outer Heaven troopers popped up from behind the bunker's exterior walls and the concrete barriers separating their lot from the helipad outside. Snake grabbed Mandla by the back of his shirt and yanked him back behind the door.

"Other side! We need to get out of this thing!" Snake shouted. He led his team out the pried-open end of the shipping container, where they found themselves surrounded by troopers. Two Walker Gears had their gatling guns pointed at them and spun as they revved up.

Snake cursed, and dropped his weapon, putting his hands up and urging his team to follow his example. Any further acts of aggression were just going to get them all killed. His heart was pounding in his ears, and he felt a lump form in his throat and sensation of vertigo in his stomach.

We were so close, he thought to himself. Dammit!

"Confiscate their weapons and secure them!" ordered one of the Walker Gear pilots. "Keep your guns trained on them—if they make any sudden moves, waste 'em!"

A trooper started to approach them, before his head exploded like a crushed raspberry. The troopers looked to the south to see two Walker Gears speeding toward them, spinning the barrels of their chain guns and turning the Outer Heaven troopers into chunky salsa. Snake and his team dove back into the shipping container in the confusion to avoid the .50 caliber bullets that spread over the lot.

As the friendly W.G.s got closer, their hanging passengers were dropped from the robotic arms that held them and hit the ground running, rushing the few surviving enemy troopers with their bayonets. On the other side of the shipping container, the rest of the Outer Heaven skeleton crew were getting bombarded by grenade launchers, and they scrambled to get back into cover. Two unlucky troopers tried taking cover in the shipping container, only to be met with Snake and his team, who dispatched them quickly by gutting them with their knives.

Within minutes, the Outer Heaven forces protecting the bunker had been put down, and RT-4 were celebrating their victory. Snake and his team gathered their weapons from where they had left them and replaced their dwindling ammo supply from the bodies of the mercenaries.

Sibusiso met up with Snake and introduced himself, with Luke in tow. Snake shook his hand and nodded to Luke.

"Nice to see you again, Luke. Thank God you guys came when you did. Any longer, and we would have been goners."

"Happy to help," Sibusiso said with a grim smile.

Luke looked down morosely. "Trevor didn't make it."

That pit in Snake's stomach returned. More allies to add to the list of deaths he's responsible for. Snake looked over to the shipping container, where Petrus's remains laid, and nodded.

"Yeah...," was all he could say.

"We lost a lot of good people to save you and your men, Snake," Sibusiso replied. "Please tell me it was worth it."

Snake glared at the imposing bunker. "It damn well better be...," he muttered.

He turned to the others. "Sibusiso, you're to take your team and head back to Outer Heaven West to assist the rest of the rebels. When I go inside, I'm going to have Kyle order a full evacuation of his people from the AO. Everyone needs to be ready to get out of Dodge after I go in. Willem, Vusi, and Mandla: you're to go with them and assist. I've got it from here."

"You're seriously still going to go in by yourself?" Vusi asked incredulously. "We barely survived as a group, and you're wanting to go in that bunker on your own?"

Snake nodded. "If I move on my own, I'll be able to sneak in under the noses of the guard. A group will just attract attention."

Willem shook his head vehemently. "No. That's not going to happen. We're going with you, whether you want us or not."

Snake's hands curled into fists. "This isn't up for debate," he yelled angrily. "I've got enough rebel deaths on my conscience. I'm not going to add any more if I can help it."

"You're not a member of the Resistance, Snake. So, you're not in a position to give us orders," Willem shot back. "We knew what we signed up for when we agreed to fight. Don't presume to think you can abandon us for the sake of your selfish need to soothe your guilty conscience!"

There was a long moment of silence as Snake glared at Willem and the others, but none of them were backing down.

"You want to do right by Trevor and Petrus?" Mandla piped up. "Then let us help you, so we can make their deaths mean something."

Snake swore loudly. There was another moment of silence. Then he grabbed his radio, pointing to Sibusiso and Luke. "As soon as we're inside, you take your men and you haul ass back to Kyle. Got it?"

Sibusiso and Luke both nodded, smiling. Snake swore again and pressed the radio's call button to hail Kyle.

"Architect, this is Solid Snake. How copy?"

An explosion was heard, and Kyle's voice sounded with a series of coughs. "I read you, Snake. What's your status?"

"Your guys came through for us. Infil team is about to make entry into the bunker. I'm sending RT-4 back to you for assistance. Your mission's complete—start the evacuation from the AO and get your people out."

"Say again—you said 'Infil Team' is making entry?"

"Yeah, well… I tried to tell them to go back, but they respectfully reminded me that I'm not the boss of them."

Willem grabbed his own radio. "We're not going anywhere, sir."

Kyle's heavy breathing buzzed loudly over the speaker. "Understood, Snake. RT-4, Team Seven, return to the FOB and start helping our people gather supplies. We're going to organize a retreat, and I want us to take everything we can carry."

"Yes sir," Sibusiso replied.

"And Snake? Good luck."

Snake nodded. "Affirmative, Architect. Right back at you."

Snake looked to his team, said, "Let's go," and led them towards the eastern door.

Suddenly, a screeching roar shook the ground as what looked like a giant metal crab slid into view over the sandy roads to the southeast. The head of the crab held aloft what appeared to be a giant cannon, aimed directly at Snake and his team.

"Inside, now!" he shouted.

The Infiltration Team hurried through the door as the cannon hummed with an electrical charge. With a loud crack, the railgun spat a large metal projectile into the walls above the doorway, caving in the ceiling. Snake's Infiltration Team had to sprint to avoid the falling rubble behind them.

RT-4 commandeered all the Walker Gears in the area while the other foot soldiers ran as fast as they could to get themselves out of the open.

"Come on, everyone! We need to buy Snake some time!" shouted Sibusiso.

 

---

 

OUTER HEAVEN WEST: RESISTANCE F.O.B.

1522 HOURS

MOMENTS EARLIER

 

The gunfire was beginning to quiet down. The explosions had ceased. The No Man's Land below them was filled with craters littered with metal detritus and the dead. Imke lined up a target in her binoculars: a small Outer Heaven team that had settled into a crater to make an impromptu machine gun nest and was harassing Team Two and their rear support on the southeast side. She turned her head slightly to Loyiso.

"Thirty degrees lower, distance about one and a half kilometers out. The machine gun nest," she said.

"I see it…"

Loyiso fired, killing the gunner. The rest of the enemy team ducked their heads down into the crater. Another trooper stood up after a few seconds, frantically looking around to try and find out where the shots had come from. Loyiso pulled back the bolt to chamber another round and took off the enemy trooper's head. The other mercs kept their heads down, buying Team Two time to make their advance.

"Got them," Loyiso called out. His voice was a little smug.

"Good shooting, Loyiso," Imke said with a smirk.

"Wait," Loyiso frowned, adjusting his aim upward. The two surviving tanks and one of the APCs were rolling away eastward. "Where are those tanks going?"

Imke looked at where he pointed. "They might be repositioning. Get ready."

"No…" Loyiso pointed. "They're moving away from the FOB, showing their asses at us. It doesn't make any sense."

Could the enemy be retreating, Loyiso wondered? He gritted his teeth. Something wasn't right.

In the distance, they could hear Kyle walking toward them, talking on the radio.

"Say again—you said 'Infil Team' is making entry?"

Snake's hoarse voice buzzed over the speaker: "Yeah, well…I tried to tell them to go back, but they respectfully reminded me that I'm not the boss of them."

There was a few seconds of silence before another voice chimed in telling Kyle that they weren't going anywhere. Imke looked to Loyiso.

"Do you think that means that Snake made it to the bunker?" she asked.

"He must have," Loyiso said. "Which means our job here is almost done, too. We should be ready to move out at a moment's notice."

Imke nodded, relief in her eyes. "Right," she agreed.

"…start helping our people gather supplies," they heard Kyle say. "We're going to organize…everything we can carry."

The new voice affirmed Kyle's order, and as he got closer to the sniper team, Kyle signed off with, "And, Snake? Good luck."

"Affirmative, Architect. Right back at you."

Kyle put his radio away and addressed the sniper team. "Alright, RT-4 and Team Seven are going to be making their way back," he said. "Get ready to pack it up. I'm going to put the word out to the rest of the FOB: our job here is done. It's time to retreat."

Imke nodded, but Loyiso kept his eye glued to his sniper's scope. When Loyiso didn't respond, Kyle said, "Loyiso, did you get that?"

Still no answer. Loyiso's eyes were turning into a scowl. Kyle frowned. He noticed that there wasn't any more gunfire coming from either the Outer Heaven mercs or the rebels. There were no screams, no explosions, just the sound of their breathing and the wind and the smell of used gunpowder, blood, and oil. Kyle didn't like it. He squatted low next to Loyiso.

"What do you see?" he asked. He held out his hands for Imke's binoculars. He saw the vehicles moving away, the surviving merc troopers loading up into their Jeeps and APCs, moving north by northeast. There was the sound of a boom in the distance, and both Kyle and Loyiso adjusted their sights to the distance. Just south of the bunker, resting on a ridge was some kind of stooping metal figure with a weapon that they'd never seen before. The weapon was glowing having just been fired, but there was no smoke. It had fired straight into the side of the bunker itself. They saw human figures and little metal boxes with legs scattering around the faraway lot, taking up new positions as they prepared to engage the little toy crab.

Kyle's eyes went wide as he adjusted his sight further southwest. The vehicles were making a beeline for the bunker. He gripped his radio, calling down to the lower levels. "This is Red Leader to hangar staff. Please tell me we still have some of Outer Heaven's vehicles onsite and we didn't send all of them off when we claimed the FOB."

A voice responded, "We still have several land trucks, not counting anything that might have been abandoned in No Man's Land, sir!"

Kyle widened the transmission to the all-purpose radio band for the Resistance forces in the AO. "All rebel forces, this is R-Leader. Assemble in the hangar on the first floor and mount a vehicle. We have rebel teams in need of immediate assistance to the north side!"

Loyiso and Imke got to their feet. Other rebels on the rooftop were jogging over to join them, Gray Fox bringing up the rear.

"Sir?" one of the rebels asked.

"RT-4 and RT-7 are in danger," Kyle replied, his mouth tightening. "We're not going to leave them behind if we can help it."

 

---

 

OUTER HEAVEN NORTH

1527 HOURS

BUNKER EXTERIOR, SOUTHEAST SIDE

 

Soder watched the displays for the exterior cameras of the Battle Gear, watching the rebels reposition and circle around their vehicle while it sat immobile on the ridge. The cramped compartment was bathed in a soft orange light as the internal battery of the rail gun charged up and the stifling heat was vented via the heat sinks just outside the cockpit.

This gave the rebels plenty of time to take up positions surrounding them while the commandeered Walker Gears drove in circles around their larger tank. Some of the rebels fired on them, but the rounds plinked off of the Battle Gear's thick armor. After a few minutes of this, the light in the cockpit turned green. The heat sink vents on the vehicle's exterior closed shut, and the tank began to hover.

"Heat is fully vented, and all systems are now operational, sir," Soder reported.

Cpt. Ivanov nodded, savagely grinning down to his men below him. "Takashi, start making evasive maneuvers. Soder, you're free to open up on all hostile targets. Time to show these sewer rats what this thing can do."

"Yes sir!" Soder shouted with vindication as he moved the joystick on his console to lay the target reticle over two of the Walker Gears that were already revving their chain guns. He squeezed his finger around the trigger and turned one of the Walkers and its pilot into confetti while the other just barely managed to dodge and sprint away.

Soder looked at another camera view and saw that two more rebels were leveling RPGs right at them, just out of reach of the mounted automatic machine guns' turning radius. Soder didn't know how much punishment their armor could take, but he didn't want to chance it.

Soder turned his head over his shoulder. "Takashi, we've got rocket launchers on our eight o'clock. Need you to spin around!"

"Already on it," Takashi grunted.

Takashi yanked the wheel hard left, and the Battle Gear spun with a quickness that none of the three men were prepared for as they were thrown into the sides of their pilot seats. Takashi pulled back on the rear throttle, just a little more gently, and the Battle Gear moved back far enough that Soder could properly target the rocket men. Both enemies managed to get a shot off of with their rockets just as Soder turned them into a fine red mist, but while one rocket hit its mark against the hover tank's armor, the other was knocked off course and sailed harmlessly into the distance.

"Good shot, Soder," Ivanov praised.

Takashi reversed the throttle to push them forward, flying off the ridge and bouncing just above the ground at the bottom while rebels scattered to move out of the way. As Takashi drove forward, he pulled the vehicle into another spin, clipping another rebel with the back of one of the tank's hover treads and sending him flying.

Soder looked at the rear cameras to see another two Walkers coming up on their rear in driver mode, with one of the pilots pointing directly at the camera and the other nodding as they wheeled just out of sight. What are they up to, he wondered?

"Takashi, reposition to point at heading 330, facing the shipping container. Some of the rats are taking cover."

Obediently, Takashi spun them around again, and Soder managed to catch two foot soldiers just as they disappeared behind an empty shipping container. Cpt. Ivanov pulled back the charging handle, and the whole cockpit began to vibrate and heat up as the railgun hummed. The metal projectile was loaded into the cannon, and Ivanov pushed the button on the end of the charging handle.

The magnetic field between the gun's metal prongs shot forward, flinging the projectile into the shipping container at hypersonic speed, tearing it in half. The two halves of the shipping container were thrown briefly into the air, one of the halves crushed another rebel while the other two just barely managed to avoid becoming stains on the concrete by diving underneath the other half's path.

The cockpit was once again sweltering. The vehicle was lowered onto its wheels and the light inside changed from green to orange to indicate its charging. Their only defense now while they were forced to remain motionless was Soder's machine guns, which ran on auxiliary power, but the rebels were already wise to this, scrambling to keep out of the front and side-mounted machine guns' cones of vision. The heat sink vents opened with a hissing sound, expelling hot air into the atmosphere outside.

"Outstanding, sir!" Takashi shouted.

"Thank you, Takashi," Ivanov replied. "But it's not over yet. There are still a few rats running around. Once we've finished mopping up here, we'll need to head over to Supply Storage to finish the job. What can you see, Soder?"

"They're keeping away from my guns, sir," Soder answered. "We'll be sitting ducks until that battery's charged again."

"No matter," said Ivanov. "It's not like they stand a chance against our armor, anyway."

"Sir, I have multiple land vehicles approaching on radar," Soder reported. "It's our men, coming to support. And it seems like the rebels are following them with their captured vehicles."

"So, they're coming to finally face us all head on," Ivanov growled, smiling. "Good. Let's finally settle this, once and for all."

Takashi cracked his knuckles and Soder shifted lower into his seat as the men waited for that orange light to turn green again.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 1535 HOURS

METAL GEAR'S BUNKER – GROUND FLOOR

 

Dust fell from the ceiling as the ground and walls shook from the explosions heard distantly through several feet of concrete. The Infiltration Team navigated further into the dim twisting hallways of the complex, wired from adrenaline as they peeked around blind corners. Snake spotted a surveillance camera down at the end of one hallway and held up his fist to signal a halt. He opened up the transmission on his radio and called the secondary Mission Control frequency.

"Snake to Mission Control. Do you read?"

Big Boss's voice came through crisp and clear. "This is Mission Control. We read you, Snake. Send it."

"I and the rebel Infiltration Team have been pushed into the bunker, but our point of entry has collapsed. We will not be able to use it as exfil once mission is completed."

"Acknowledged. Camera feeds show two other exits to the bunker: the main southern entrance, and a rear parking entrance a few kilometers to the north. Either point should be viable."

"Roger. We'll plan for the northern exit, as it's further from the fighting, it'll make evac easier."

"Understood," came the reply.

"You mentioned view of the camera feeds. You said before that CIA and NSA had obtained access to camera feeds in the bunker. Does that access extend to the bunker's interior?"

"One moment, I'll check with them."

There was a short and tense silence as the Infil Team held their position, expecting Outer Heaven troopers to show themselves at any moment.

"Control to Snake. We have access to the bunker's interior cameras, but this access is only on the surface level. There is a freight elevator that can take you underground, presumably to Metal Gear's hangar."

"Can you guide us there? This place is a maze."

"Provided you stay in sight of the cameras, that will be more than possible. Our hackers will feed Outer Heaven looping footage to obscure your passing. It's unlikely that it will work forever, but it should buy you some time to move with greater stealth."

"Much appreciated, Boss," Snake said. "I'll keep the radio channel open."

Snake looked over his shoulder at the Infil Team, who all looked at him expectantly. "CO's got eyes on the inside, and they're going to lead the way. Follow close."

The three men nodded, faith and trust absolute. Together the team wound their way through the snakelike passageways as Mission Control led Snake through the labyrinth, communicating with each other only by touch and hand signals to avoid cluing in any enemies lying in wait. The further they got, however, the more unsettled they were by the silence.

Eventually, Vusi spoke up in a strained whisper to asked what they were all thinking.

"Where are all the guards?" he said.

Snake shook his head, frowning. Something didn't feel right—this was the most important building in the whole complex of Outer Heaven. Yet they'd already been inside this sprawling building for close to twenty minutes and hadn't seen a single guard or technician, or even a janitorial worker. All the while, the cameras above whirred softly as the lenses tracked their movements.

At one point, they reached a large room with desks and tables for machining parts. There was what appeared to be some kind of large mechanical device suspended above with a chain and a pulley system—a weapon module or an engine, they couldn't quite tell in the dim lighting. There was a large door in the front, presumably for carting parts through and another two doors on the left side wall. The floor had painted lines of different colors in the open walkways, leading in different directions and continuing through each door.

"Alright, Snake. Take the first door on your left, following the blue line. There are no sentries on the other side."

Snake obeyed and entered a large hallway with a linoleum floor and a high ceiling. There were two doors on either side going down the hall, and a large set of double doors at the end.

"Through the door at the end is a storeroom. There's a door on the opposite side of it that should lead to the freight elevator, according to the signage nearby."

Snake waved his men forth and led them to the doorway. They stacked up against the door on the right, and after a silent three-second count, they burst through, only to find themselves staring at an empty twelve-foot by twelve-foot space enclosed on all sides by crates stacked up to the ceiling.

"What…?" Willem asked, confused.

Suddenly, the floor they stood on started to open up, and they scrambled to back up against the wall as the trap door gave way into a spiked pit. Mandla pulled back Snake and Vusi was able to grab and hold onto the pit's edge. Willem fell victim to gravity and fell several feet down, impaling his thigh, bicep, and torso. He screamed and coughed in pain as he struggled to lift himself up, but the movement just made it worse as he slid further down onto the spikes. In moments, he was dead.

"Willem!" cried Mandla.

Snake tapped Mandla's chest and together they ran to Vusi, grabbing him by his forearms just as he lost his grip and started to fall. With their combined strength, they yanked him up to safety, teetering a little on the slim edge as they fought to keep from falling forward back into the pit.

There was a series of bangs heard from back in the hallway: the doors had all opened, and four Outer Heaven troopers started pouring in, putting bullets down their way and forcing them to stick to the walls on the perilous edge and away from the open door.

"Ambush!" Vusi screamed.

Mandla blindly fired his pistol around the corner to try and get the troopers to let up. "Throw your flash grenade!" he shouted.

Vusi pulled his last remaining flash bang from his belt, pulled the pin and tossed it in. It went off two seconds later, and a flash was seen in their peripheral vision.

"Push, push, push!" Snake ordered.

The Infil Team turned the corner, and sprayed the hallway with bullets, killing two troopers, injuring a third, and forcing the survivors to fall back down the end of the hall into the technician's lab they'd exited before.

"I'm out!" called Vusi.

"Switch!" Snake responded, moving forward to lay down covering fire while Vusi reloaded. Once the hallway was empty, the Infil team pushed forward back into the lab. Snake tossed in a fragmentation grenade, heard a scream, and then moved forward to put the last few bullets into the last remaining Outer Heaven merc.

When it was quiet, Snake pointed back to the hallway they'd just left. "Let's check those rooms!"

They returned to the hallway and checked the rooms from where the mercs had emerged—a couple of inspection labs and generic offices. They checked underneath desks, inside closets and wall lockers, behind couches and inspection tables and equipment. After no threats were found, they called all clear and started gathering ammunition and grenades from the fallen enemies to restock their own supplies.

They walked back to the pit where Willem's corpse was impaled. Vusi swore loudly in Afrikaans. Mandla was fighting to keep it together, but a deep-seated rage was forming on his face.

He slapped Snake in the chest.

"Your 'eyes on the inside' led us right into a trap," he growled accusingly.

Snake's frown wore deeper. He looked back into the room with the gore pit, looking towards the ceilings. He pointed.

"You see that?" Snake said. "No cameras. They must not have been able to see on the other side."

Snake spoke into his radio. "Mission Control, are you getting this? The route you gave us is no good; Outer Heaven knew we were coming this way, and we're down a man. We need an alternative entry point."

"We read you, Snake. If you go back through the technician's laboratory and head through the double doors, you'll be able to get to the freight elevator through the assembly line. Look for the signs and the yellow line on the floor, it'll take you right there."

Snake nodded. "Understood. We'll head through the assembly line. Snake out."

Mandla and Vusi both looked uncertain. Mandla was gritting his teeth and scowling.

Vusi asked, "Are you certain we can trust these instructions?"

Snake nodded. "My CO is the best of the best, and he taught me everything I know. I trust him with my life. He'll come through."

His team didn't share Snake's confidence, but nonetheless they resolved to push on, knowing that there was no turning back from here, whether they wanted to or not.

"We know what Outer Heaven is capable of, between the mines and trap pits. They had electrified floors and gassed hallways back in the Supply Storage facility, too," Snake explained. "Just because the cameras give us a sight advantage, doesn't mean they won't have more tricks up their sleeves. Be ready for anything and watch for any suspicious signs."

The trio continued their expedition march, dutifully following the yellow-lined hall. They were brought down a short flight of stairs, around a corner, and down another small flight. Through another pair of large double doors, they emerged into an atrium with multiple inactive conveyor belts. Half-finished machine parts, tools, and wires littered the surface of every table. On the belts sat cogs, gears, hunks of shaped metal, and other odds and ends routinely separated.

The room itself was dark, illuminated only by cold blue emergency lighting. At regular intervals there were large, automated tools of unknown purpose the size of a restaurant refrigerator, with small green and red lights softly blinking and their attached computer terminals quietly humming. The room itself was very large, about the size of a high school gymnasium. Many of the desk chairs were pulled far away from their respective tables. Whoever was in this room had left in a hurry.

The Infiltration Team checked the ammunition in their magazines. Vusi switched his half full mag for a full one. Snake waved them forward, and they stayed close to the mounted conveyor belt machines so they could duck low behind them or quickly get behind and use the tools for cover if they got ambushed again. They continued following the yellow line until they reached another set of double doors on the opposite side of the room. The sign next to the door read, 'MATERIAL DELIVERY ACCESS.'

Snake nodded to Vusi and Mandla. They stacked up against the door, cracked it open to peer through, then filed in to spread out and cover the full area of approach. They moved toward a railing and moved around to descend a short series of steps into some kind of tunnel. The tunnel abruptly ended in a concrete wall on their right, and on their left it extended further into a larger cave-like room with what appeared to be naturally occurring solid granite walls.

Just ahead of the tunnel opening was a parked truck with a covered bed, much like the transport trucks they'd seen before. Snake motioned, and Mandla and Vusi checked the driver and passenger side windows of the cab before checking the wheels and looking underneath the vehicle. They gave him a thumbs-up. Snake moved up and looked into the back of the bed, climbing up and into the back. Inside were no enemies, just two small crates. With Mandla and Vusi's help, Snake pried open both crates. Inside of one were packages of C4 plastic explosives. In the other, held separately, were handheld detonators.

Snake grabbed a block of C4 and a detonator, placing it into his backpack, and instructed the others to do the same.

"We'll need these for when we get to Metal Gear," he explained.

Once they each had their own explosive charge, they all piled out of the truck and moved through the threshold into the larger chamber. Snake looked around and saw another couple of security cameras mounted in the constructed concrete wall just above the window of an abandoned security station. He grabbed onto his radio.

"Control, we've passed through assembly and have reached material delivery access. There's a security station with cameras. Where do we go from here?"

Another moment of silence, before Control's response. "The freight elevator will be down the tunnel past the security station. However, there is a branch to the left before you get there—down that branch is a storeroom where Outer Heaven troopers have been observed delivering and storing explosive ordnance and ammunition. I recommend obtaining those supplies before boarding the lift."

"We just picked up some C4, sir," Snake retorted. "No deviation will be necessary."

Vusi and Mandla both looked to Snake, confused by this turn in the conversation.

"If there is a pilot capable of utilizing any of Metal Gear's weapon systems, they will likely attempt to use those countermeasures to keep you from getting closer. Those mercs were carrying RPGs amongst the rest of the ordnance. It could help you even the odds with the weapon platform while still keeping your distance."

Snake exhaled harshly through his nose as he weighed his options. If they kept going, they could head straight to Metal Gear without further risk of life if it turned out that the Boss's projected detour led to another ambush; but if the Boss's intel was good, then they'd be willingly giving up a distinct advantage. Snake made a decision.

"We'll poke our heads in for a quick peek. If the coast is clear, we'll make the detour. Otherwise, we're continuing on."

There was no response from the emergency radio channel. Snake assumed that this meant there would be no argument from the Boss's end. Snake looked to Mandla and Vusi.

"Just got a tip of some possible ordnance storage with rocket launchers," Snake explained. "It'll let us take out Metal Gear from a distance. I don't want to commit to a milk run in case there's another nasty surprise, so we're going to do a quick recce of the tunnel. If it's too hot, we bypass it and head straight to the freight elevator."

Mandla and Vusi didn't look happy about the idea of detouring from the main objective, but they couldn't argue against Snake's cautious approach.

"Let's just be careful," Mandla said.

Snake nodded. He led his men down the tunnel through a halfway open heavy metal blast door. About thirty meters in, they found the branch off that Control had described. Snake stopped them at the corner and leaned out to observe the tunnel. There was not a soul in sight. The tunnel ended at a steel door about fifteen meters in. Snake waited ten seconds for any sign of movement before motioning his men forward.

"Slowly," he warned with a whisper.

The three men crept closer and closer to the door, with no incident. When they reached it, they stacked up just outside of the doorway, with Mandla taking point. Snake put a hand on his shoulder and when Snake felt Vusi's hand on his left shoulder, he gave Mandla a squeeze. Mandla burst through the door—and walked straight through a tripwire.

Mandla had just enough time to recognize the claymores in front of him and turn his head to scream, "BACK UP!" before the ensuing explosion tore his legs from his body at the shins, sending his torso flying back out of the doorway past him. Snake grabbed Mandla by the collar and dragged him out of view of the doorway while Vusi threw a grenade into the room. The explosion shook the walls, and the ceiling in the room caved in. Short screams were heard amidst the sound of falling rock, only to be immediately silenced. Snake and Vusi looked up, seeing the ceiling above them just outside the room was also starting to crumble, and they both dragged Mandla back up the tunnel, desperately outrunning the falling rock.

When they reached the branch-off point, the entire section of the tunnel they'd just left was completely buried—if there was any ordnance to claim, there was no getting to it now. Mandla whimpered, and Snake and Vusi could feel him shaking.

"He's going into shock," Snake said matter-of-factly. "Bandages, now!"

He and Vusi grabbed bandages out of their packs and tied off tourniquets at the end of Mandla's bloody stumps above the knees, pulling tight to restrict blood flow. Snake grabbed a tube of morphine from the trauma kit that Jennifer had left him with and jammed the needle into Mandla's arm.

"Come on, stay with us, Mandla," Snake encouraged. "Don't you die on us, now!"

Mandla grabbed Snake's arm, looking into his eyes with a pleading expression.

"Snake…," he whispered.

And just like that, the light in Mandla's eyes was gone, his accusing stare boring into Snake's mind. Another life he was responsible for, snuffed out. How many more will Snake have sent to a premature end before all this was said and done, he wondered? He put out a hand and gently closed the lids.

Vusi looked up at Snake, his mouth twisted in pain and fury.

"This is your fault," he accused.

Snake closed his eyes. He couldn't argue with him—every last rebel entrusted to his care that died, died on his watch, for the sake of his mission. What right had he to protest when the blame rightly lay at his feet? Snake lifted his hand from Mandla's face. It was shaking.

Snake stood up, shouldering his rifle. "I'm going to the freight elevator. You can come if you want—I won't force you."

Vusi barked a laugh. "And what, go back through the meat grinder we'd just left behind? Don't act like I actually have a choice here."

Snake's face turned cold and impassive, his blue eyes piercing Vusi with his stare. "You all had a choice to leave with your men before I entered into this bunker, and I'm giving you the choice to leave now, so do what you want. I didn't ask you to come with me."

Snake started walking back down the tunnel, before Vusi grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him back around, and slugged him hard in the face. Snake rubbed his cheek, dumbfounded.

"Don't," Vusi breathed.

He spoke evenly in a quiet voice that didn't match the rage in his eyes. "These men gave their lives for you so that you could keep going. We volunteered our lives for you. You will not disrespect them or me by speaking of us so lightly."

Snake looked to the ground, feeling shame. He had no response. A tense moment passed before Vusi spoke up again.

"You said you trust your commanding officer, yes?"

Snake looked up at Vusi's gaze.

"With my life," he reaffirmed strongly.

Vusi approached Snake and flicked the off switch on Snake's radio. Snake gave him a questioning look.

Vusi continued, "And what about the people working around him? Do you trust them, too?"

Snake cocked his head, squinting in confusion. "What are you getting at?"

"You said they had hacked into Outer Heaven's cameras. If your commander isn't viewing the screens himself, then he's listening to someone who is. This person is feeding him the intel that he gives to you."

Snake's eyes widened as he considered the implications. "You're suggesting that someone at Mission Control might be compromised? That Outer Heaven has a spy working among my people?"

Vusi licked his lips, his mouth tightened.

"Think about it," he stressed. "Three times, your commander has given us guidance since we made our way to this bunker facility. All three times, that guidance has led us into a trap or an ambush. Your commander may personally be trustworthy, Snake, but his advice is anything but."

"But if that's true, then…that means my people at Mission Control are in danger!" Snake exclaimed. He grabbed his radio. "I have to warn him!"

Vusi put a hand on Snake's shoulder and shook his head vehemently. "The informant doesn't know that we know or suspect. If you warn your commander now, you risk alerting the enemy spy as well. He could escape before you get the chance to detain him, or worse, you could put your commander's life in danger, along with the lives of any other loyal members of your group."

Snake dropped his hand, shouldering his rifle again. "So, what should I do…?"

"From now on, you should keep all correspondence with your commander to a minimum, and we should completely disregard his advice. If he asks questions, keep your answers vague." Vusi looked up and down the tunnels. "And perhaps it would behoove us to stop traveling within sight of the cameras as we make our way deeper underground."

Snake weighed Vusi's words. He nodded. "Agreed." He looked down at Mandla. "What about Mandla?"

Vusi closed his eyes, his face contorted in grief. "There's nothing we can do for him now," Vusi said. "We just have to keep going. Hopefully when this is over, we can collect Mandla's, Willem's and Petrus's bodies and return them to their families."

"Right…" Snake said. He breathed in slowly, then exhaled. He gave Vusi a couple of seconds to compose himself before pointing his rifle down the tunnel toward the freight elevator.

"Alright, I'll take point. Let's finish this. For them," Snake said.

"For everyone," Vusi replied.

Together, the pair continued down the end of the tunnel through to a large room with a massive freight elevator. After finding no immediate threats, Snake pressed the button on the console and the perimeter railing rose from the edges of the platform as it descended diagonally down into the depths below.

As they sank further, Snake kept pondering Vusi's warning of the traitor in their midst. He thought of Big Boss and the others at Mission Control, and silently hoped for their safety…

Notes:

And so ends the infiltration of the bunker and the initial arrival of the Battle Gear tank. Next chapter there'll be less bouncing around hopping between different POVs of the battlefield as we hit the first part of the story's major climax, split between two halves: the first half of Chapter 18 will consist of Kyle and Fox's rescue of RT-4 and 7 and their battle against Ivanov's crew in the Battle Gear, and the second half of the chapter will be Snake's battle against the Metal Gear weapon deep in the bowels of the underground bunker.

The first half of this seventeenth chapter was a bit more fun to write than the second, if I'm being honest. I knew exactly where I wanted the sequence of events to go, but I'm getting impatient to get to the main event with the fight with Metal Gear and Venom. Having that in the back of my head turned this particular chapter into a little bit of a slog for me. Hopefully that doesn't translate into the reading experience for you, though. Turns out that writing multiple perspectives of the same event at once all in the same chapter can be kind of exhausting. If and when I write any sequels to this story, I'm not sure I'll do it that way again. Good lesson learned!

Next chapter will be posted...honestly, I'm not sure. If I keep up this same pace, I may have another one ready by end of this month or beginning of the next, but I don't want to make any promises. Either way, I hope that I can continue entertaining you as we hit the last leg of Snake's journey. It's not going to end in the next few chapters, but you'll be able to see the end from where we'll be standing. You'll see what I mean when we get there. Thank you again to all my readers for your reviews and continued support! I couldn't do this without you.

Chapter 18: Call and Raise

Summary:

The Resistance engages with the Battle Gear topside while Snake and Vusi face off with Metal Gear below.

RESISTANCE OPERATION: JUDGMENT DAY

1535 HOURS

OUTER HEAVEN WEST, RESISTANCE F.O.B. BEGINNING TRANSIT

 

"Armored Humvees in front, transport trucks in back, Jeeps in between," Kyle barked into his radio as the rebels boarded their vehicles and the motorists scrambled into formation while rolling out of the eastern shutter doors of the hangar. "Humvee machine gunners, focus fire on the trucks; rocket men, aim your RPGs at the rear of the tanks on approach—try to hit the auxiliary fuel tanks and knock off the treads! Missing or hitting anything else is a waste of ammo, as the rockets won't penetrate the armor."

"As soon as those tanks stop moving, get clear," Fox followed up. "Unless you get lucky and start a fire near the engines, the crew will still have control of the main gun, and they'll be looking to use it. Once we take out the tanks, prioritize moving to the bunker; the more numbers we have when linking up with teams Four and Seven, the better."

The rebels checked their weapons; all .50 caliber machine guns mounted on the Humvees had full ammo boxes with a spare held by the rear seat passengers. The less armored and slightly faster Jeeps had two men with RPGs with four rockets between them, not counting the armament already loaded in the rocket launchers. Every guerilla fighter was equipped with a rifle, pistol, and three fragmentation grenades and body armor looted from Supply Storage, and there were roughly six men among them trained in demolitions packing C4s.

They were about as ready as they could possibly be for the engagement. Many of the rebels were silently praying, others' hands were shaking violently. Their usual modus operandi was indirect engagement and hit and run tactics—a full frontal assault was outside their normal realm of expertise. Everyone was on edge.

"We'll try to pass them once, then circle back around for another shot before moving on to engage the prototype vehicle at the bunker," Kyle continued, "We're only going to get two shots to stymie the Outer Heaven reinforcements before we arrive at our destination; any more than that is pushing our luck. Once we arrive, the armored vehicles will engage with the enemy prototype vehicle and infantry while the transport trucks will gather the survivors of RTs Four and Seven. Once all the trucks are loaded, we'll start making our retreat out of Outer Heaven with the armored vehicles covering our rear. Move northeast past the bunker and away from the river—we don't want to chance attracting Outer Heaven transports from the Sakrivier station. Is everyone clear on the plan?"

"Yes, commander," came the unanimous reply as the vehicles dumped out into the desert of No-Man's Land, kicking up dust as the front vehicles guided them through the minefield.

"Good luck, everyone," Kyle said, gritting his teeth. "Today, we win our victory. Today, we will destroy Outer Heaven!"

Kyle climbed into the passenger seat of one of the Humvees, next to Gray Fox. Fox gunned the motor and joined the rest of the armored vehicles in the front. The convoy fanned out in an arrowhead shape, moving northeast at high speeds, quickly gaining on the enemy armor.

Within ten minutes, they were coming up on the rear of what was left of Outer Heaven's armor column. They drove in the wake of the dust cloud that the enemy convoy kicked up, which obscured their view but also gave them a brief moment of surprise.

"Rocket men, be careful where you place your shots," Kyle warned over radio for the second time. "Look to the tanks first—our goal is to stop them from moving. Threat priority is tanks, APCs, and technicals, in that order."

Fox made out a shadowy figure ahead of them in the dust cloud, poking its head out from one of the Jeeps. It was waving and pointing at them.

"They've seen us!" Fox called out.

He jerked the wheel and swerved the Humvee to evade and drive in front of the less-armored Jeeps behind them as .50 caliber rounds sailed through the air towards the rebels. The rebel gunners responded in kind with their own machine gun turrets, forcing the enemy Jeeps to separate.

As the Resistance fighters and the Outer Heaven reinforcements weaved in and out of each other's fire, Kyle motioned to the backseat, and one of the men in the back handed the RPG-7 launcher to the gunner up top through the porthole. The gunner aimed for one of the tanks, shouted "Backblast clear," and pulled the trigger while the passengers inside the Humvee covered their ears. The rocket-propelled grenade flew to the rear of the nearest tank, missing the fuel tanks hanging on the rear and impacting against the armor of the main gun turret. The gunner fed the empty launcher back down to the other passengers and shouted, "Reload," before grabbing the handles of his MG once more.

The other rebels followed the lead Humvee's example, and were firing their own rockets, many of which either sailed harmlessly into the desert sand, with the couple that made it through slamming into the tanks' armor. One rocket exploded one of the enemy's Jeeps, which took a hit that would have nailed the fuel tanks.

In response, the enemy's vehicles spread out, with the tanks angling their side and front armor towards the rebels. They aimed their cannons at their attackers and Kyle screamed into his radio, "Evasive maneuvers!"

He looked left at Gray Fox. "Swing us around behind them!"

He called out behind him, "Is the launcher reloaded?"

"Yes, sir!"

Kyle motioned for them to hand the launcher back to the gunner. "We're making another pass. Be ready to fire!"

Fox and Kyle didn't wait for their response, as Fox steered hard into a sharp turn that nearly caused the top-heavy Humvee to roll and gave the tanks a wide berth. All of the rebel vehicles worked to circle around the tanks, dodging tank shells and .50cal rounds from the opposition. The Outer Heaven reinforcements worked to cut off the rebel vehicles at every turn, to keep themselves from getting surrounded while they continued their forward progression towards the bunker.

The rear passengers passed the RPG back to the gunner, and as Fox swung behind the first tank, the rebel took his shot, exploding the auxiliary fuel tanks hanging on the back of the chassis. "Direct hit to target," the gunner reported, dropping the launcher back down to the rear passengers to reload. He ducked as machine gun fire whizzed past his ears, then violently yanked the MG to swing it back around to the offending enemy APC gunner. He got a few shots off before catching a couple of rounds in his torso, tearing him in half and sending his arm flying. He slumped into the Humvee, and the rear passengers started giving him medical attention.

Kyle picked up his rifle. "Keep it steady," he told Fox. Fox nodded as Kyle climbed out the open window to fire on the APC gunner, grazing the top of the enemy's head. Fox climbed back inside in time to see the disabled tank angling its cannon at them.

"The cannon!" Kyle shouted.

"I see it," Fox replied calmly. At the last second, he swerved, narrowly avoiding the tank shell that careened past him and cratered in front of them, showering their vehicle with dirt and covering their windshield.

"Step on it," Kyle said. "Get us out of that cannon's range!"

They heard an explosion behind them, and the rear passengers looked out their windows to see that the disabled tank had caught fire. The crew hatch opened, the tank crew evacuating from the fiery husk before they could be cooked within the armor. The evacuating enemies were picked off by a rifleman hanging out of a passing rebel Jeep, which swerved to avoid a shell from the other surviving tank.

"Someone get on that other tank," Kyle commanded over radio. "We've finished our second pass. Once the next attack on the second tank is up, follow after us and keep moving to the bunker!"

"Understood, Commander," came the reply.

The transport trucks and a couple of Humvees closest to Kyle's and Fox's vehicle split off from the main group to continue onward toward the bunker while those remaining continued to harass the other tank and its escort. A couple of Outer Heaven troopers saw what was happening and a few enemy Jeeps broke off to pursue.

Gray Fox and the other Humvees let the transport trucks move ahead of the more armored vehicles while the Humvees acted as a buffer. Kyle leaned over his shoulder to address the backseat.

"How many more rockets do we have?" he demanded.

The two rebels sitting next to the standing gunner were firing out of their respective passenger windows. One of them glanced over his shoulder into the floorboard at the rockets leaning against the seat. He held up two fingers and shouted, "two, sir!" before turning back around to continue firing.

Kyle looked up at the gunner. "Aim for the drivers of those technicals," he roared over the gunfire. "If you need to, you can use one rocket, but we need to save whatever ordnance we can for that prototype hassling Four and Seven! How copy?"

The gunner screamed over the sound of his machine gun, "Yes, sir!"

Gray Fox swerved and put them in the path of a transport truck. The troops in the truck returned fire over the Humvee's roof at the opposition Jeep, forcing their gunner to duck. Fox looked around the leading truck, seeing the bunker entrance slowly coming into view. He pointed through the windshield and shouted to Kyle, "We're coming up on them. Get Teams Four and Seven on the horn."

An explosion impacted just next to one of the transport trucks. The rebels looked to see the gunner of the APC reloading a rocket launcher. As the enemy launched his rocket, one of the Humvees swerved to get between the APC and the truck, taking the hit and turning the vehicle into an inferno. Kyle's gunner swung his MG around its turret and sprayed fire over the APC, taking out the RPG man and the MG gunner mounted on the APC's roof.

Kyle gripped his radio. "RT-4, RT-7! We're coming up on your position! What's your status?"

A burst of static and gunfire erupted over the radio waves. "This is 4-1," cried Sibusiso, "We're getting overrun! That strange hovering tank has us all scattered, and we have several men down. There's only seven of us left. There are a few of us mounted on Walker Gears trying to keep that tank distracted, but it's not going well."

"This is 7-1," joined Luke's voice. "7-2 and I are both on Walker Gears. That thing has a rear exterior camera, but the guns don't quite reach that far behind. Unfortunately, we haven't yet found an exploitable weakness, but we're still laying down fire.

We've seen mortar and rocket teams approaching from the south. I think they've been sent from R&D. If they get here before you bring your support, we're done for!"

"Understood, Luke," Kyle responded. "Help's on the way. Sit tight, all of you. 7-1, did you see where the mortar and rocket teams were heading?"

"My guess is they'll take up positions on the southern and eastern cliffs."

"Got it." Kyle opened up the band to all rebel frequencies. "All teams in transit, unload men south of the bunker and along the southwestern ridgeline. Those on bunker duty will support Teams Four and Seven on repelling the prototype. The rest of us will take out the enemy's artillery support and rejoin to destroy the prototype tank. Understood?"

A chorus of assent rounded. Explosions were heard in the distance. The rebels had disabled the other tank, at the cost of another two rebel Humvees. Fox slammed on the accelerator, breaking away from the transport trucks with one more Humvee to turn onto a southeastern path towards the ridge just underneath the R&D complex.

An 8-man mortar team were putting together two mortar launchers at the top of the cliff. The Humvee gunner hosed the cliff down with .50s, firing until the machine gun ran dry. With a lurch, the two Humvees climbed the rocky path up the cliff in single file, pushing up the cliff path until they reached the outcropping where the remainder of the mortar team awaited. The two Humvees parked to block the escape path behind them.

Gray Fox put the Humvee in park and kicked his door open, sliding out and taking up a firing position behind the engine block. "All units, dismount!" he barked. The other rebels followed Fox's example.

The four Outer Heaven troopers manning the mortar launchers went down under the hail of bullets while the remaining two retreated behind the nearby rock walls. One of their voices could be heard over the din requesting air support, and soon after the sound of propeller rotors ripped through the air and the last enemy Blackfoot screamed overhead to lay down fire onto the cliffs, killing three rebels.

"Get under the armor!"

The survivors dove onto the dirt and crawled underneath the Humvees, hoping that the armor of the vehicles overhead would stand up to the chopper's machine gun rounds. The shaking of their improvised shelter and the sound of grenade explosions just a few feet in front of them terrified the rebels into paralysis.

Fox and Kyle looked up and forward—the three troopers in front of them were advancing on the Humvees while the Blackfoot covered the ground behind them. Kyle fired a couple of shots towards the troopers only to have his weapon jam. They returned fire while he attempted to clear the obstruction, forcing him to abandon his rifle and crawl backward further underneath the vehicle.

Fox shifted and picked up his rifle, taking a breath, eyes widening. He forced himself to clear his mind and focus, the noise of the battlefield falling away from him and leaving behind nothing but perfect, crystal clarity. He squeezed the trigger, putting down two of the troopers, then rolled out from underneath the Humvee, getting up into a crouch and pulling out a boot knife and throwing it expertly into the last trooper's neck.

He threw away his rifle and yanked open one of the rear passenger doors to grab the RPG-7 and the two remaining rockets. He shouted to the other rebels, "Everyone, fire on that helicopter! Keep it off me!"

Without waiting to see if they followed his order, Fox slid one of the rockets down the tube of the launcher and sprinted away from the Humvees in a zig-zag pattern, the other rocket grenade held under his arm. He quickly spotted a small cave at the back of the outcropping. He ran up to the entrance of the cave, dropped his spare rocket grenade and did an about-face, crouching low as he looked through the sights at the enemy helicopter.

Once again, the world melted away around Fox. His senses focused. He felt the pounding of his heart in his ears, the steady slow intake of breath. He heard the booming whir of the flying beast's propellers. He flexed his finger, brought it to rest on the trigger. He watched the Blackfoot's momentum as it angled right, anticipated its trajectory, and squeezed. The rocket-propelled grenade whooshed through the air, leaving a thin trail of smoke in its wake. The helicopter attempted to evade, but the rocket found its mark, slamming into the aircraft's armor and exploding.

Fox loaded another rocket while he carefully watched the aircraft spin. The bird was damaged, but he'd failed to hit the tail rotor, main propeller, or the cockpit. If the pilot was quick, he may be able to keep the beast from falling out of the sky, and then he'd surely retaliate. Fox looked back to the rebels on earth, who were cheering. He waved them to follow.

"Into the cave!" he shouted. "It's not down yet!"

His voice sounded muffled in his ears, like he was screaming underwater. Kyle saw Fox and tapped his nearest man on the shoulders, waving for the others to follow. They followed after Fox and took cover in the cave just in time for the helicopter to rise from below the ridge line again and put Fox in its sites. It fired a rocket, forcing Fox to dive into the cave and leave the RPG behind. The cave ceiling above them trembled, knocking dust into their faces as they backed as far away from the cave entrance as they could.

Fox was coughing. He spluttered a curse as he realized he couldn't go grab the launcher without risking getting hit by another artillery rocket or by the Blackfoot's main guns. His ears were ringing, and he couldn't make out any other sounds around him. He felt dizzy and so he opted to stay prone on the ground so as not to lose his sense of balance. He saw a blur overhead as someone passed him. He looked up, seeing Loyiso shouldering his sniper rifle and leaning out of the cave.

"Fool!" cried Fox. "Get back in here! Don't be a hero!"

Fox could barely hear his own voice, only feeling hoarseness in his throat. He didn't know if Loyiso could even hear him. If he did, he didn't appear to be paying Fox's words any heed. Loyiso closed one eye, breathing slowly as he glared down his scope at the Blackfoot. He'd only get one shot at this. For a few seconds, it felt like both men were frozen in time. Three agonizing seconds passed as Loyiso silently counted down before squeezing the trigger.

The bullet found its mark, cracking through the canopy of the Blackfoot cockpit and turning the pilot's head into pulp. The pilot slumped over, his arm knocking the joystick to the side and the helicopter angled itself sideways and careened down into the cliffside. Loyiso pumped his arm in celebration. The other rebels clapped him on the shoulder to congratulate him while Fox simply looked on with respect. He thought to himself that this man would make a good recruit for Big Boss; both he and his leader, Kyle. Maybe Fox would put a good word in for them when this was all over.

Fox pulled himself up, walked over to the discarded launcher and scooped it up. He turned to Kyle. "Just the one rocket left," he said. "Plus, however many were in the other vehicle. If you wanted to use this ordnance on that prototype hover tank out there, we'd better make these shots count."

Kyle nodded. "Agreed. Come on, we've still got the other mortar team to clear out."

It didn't take long for them to locate the other mortar team—they were further east up the cliffs and into the small hills up top, dispersed among the trees and hiding in the tall grass. The rebels used one more rocket to break apart one of the trees and send it toppling onto the escort after which they mowed down the rest of the mortar team. Kyle had some of his rebels man the captured mortar launchers and use the artillery to support teams four and seven below.

Kyle, Loyiso, Fox, and Imke started moving along the path downhill, aiming to rejoin their men down at ground level, who were busy desperately defending themselves from the mechanized monstrosity that strafed and zoomed over the empty helipads and slamming into parked vehicles and shipping containers, firing its machine guns at anything that moved.

As they were making their way down, Imke pointed at the ground team's flank opposite the hover tank. "Sir, look! It's the launchers!"

Kyle stopped and looked through his binoculars in the direction Imke had indicated. He cursed. "They're armed with remote-controlled rockets," he said. He turned to the others. "Change of priority. We need to take out those rocket men first, before they get a chance to fire their payloads into their flank!"

The four erupted into a sprint, the downhill momentum speeding them to the bottom. Loyiso and Fox slung their respective larger weapons over their shoulder and readied their automatic rifles. Kyle and Imke sported submachine guns. When they got in range, they descended on the Outer Heaven troopers who had taken up positions behind half of a shipping container that'd been blown apart. They took the troopers by surprise, putting them down before the enemy could return fire.

With the immediate threat eliminated, the four rebels took the troopers' place behind the container's remains. Imke and Kyle both watched the battlefield ahead through their binoculars. The mortar teams up high were pummeling the prototype hover tank with shells, but they didn't seem to be making much of a dent.

Just what the hell was that armor made of; Kyle wondered? He pulled out his radio.

"All members of Teams Four and Seven, this is R-Leader," Kyle said. "We've eliminated the mortar teams and rocket men and have commandeered their ordnance. I've got mortar teams in the cliffs providing overwatch, and I've got a few men with me approaching you from your east flank. We have other reinforcements approaching from your west from transport trucks and other vehicles."

"Acknowledged, sir," replied Sibusiso. "Thanks for the assist."

"Tell me about this tank that's been giving you trouble," Kyle said. "Have you determined any possible weaknesses?"

"It's main cannon looks like some kind of railgun. Every time the beast fires it, the whole tank stops moving and goes dormant for a few minutes. It gives us time to reposition, but so far we've found nothing that can penetrate its armor. Maybe those mortars you found will help?"

As if to punctuate Sibusiso's report, another two mortar shells whistled through the air and slammed into the top of the hover tank's hull, exploding on impact. Once again, however, it didn't appear to have much of an effect. In an almost annoyed response, the giant metal crab rotated 180 degrees and lifted up its head, which Kyle guessed must be the cockpit. It angled the railgun toward the cliffs where the mortars had originated.

As the gun started humming, Kyle screamed, "Mortar teams, retreat! Get the hell out of there!"

Seconds later, the ground under their feet vibrated with the echoing THWOOM that sounded from near the bunker. Like a hot knife through butter, the huge metal slug carved a section of the rocky wall clean off and sent rubble cascading down the cliff face. Kyle and other rebels called out to the southern mortar teams, but they received no response. The other mortar teams to the east wisely stopped attempting to shell the tank, lest they attract more unwanted attention.

Just like Sibusiso said, the tank huddled back into itself assuming its more crab-like form. The tank gently lowered itself back onto the ground out of hover mode, and there was no further sound from it other than the soft hum of its engines. Panels on the sides of the hull opened up to reveal air vents, which blew out hot steam for a few moments.

Kyle eyed the steam blowing out, pointing them out to the others. "You see that steam? What's with that?" Kyle asked.

Gray Fox took the binoculars from Kyle and watched the tank. "I'm guessing that railgun takes a lot of power to fire and generates a lot of heat. I'm thinking the vents are for radiating that heat into the atmosphere quickly so that it doesn't stay contained inside the tank."

Kyle squinted in thought as Fox continued to observe the metal behemoth. "Fox, Snake told me people in your unit are trained in all types of weaponry."

Fox glanced over his shoulder. "Yeah. Your point?"

"How are you with mortars?"

Fox shrugged. "Just basic trigonometry. As long as someone can accurately call out the targets, I can hit whatever you'd like me to."

Kyle shook his head. "You don't need to be that precise. You just need to hit the tank and get its attention. What I need is for you to goad it into firing that rail gun."

"You want me to deliberately put myself in the crosshairs of a weapon that can bring down an entire cliffside?"

Now it was Kyle's turn to shrug. "Should be no problem for a special agent like you," he replied flippantly. "Take Loyiso with you. Two pairs of eyes are better than one.

"And what are you going to do?"

Kyle looked down at the fallen troopers near their feet and picked up one of the RC missile launchers. He gave Imke and Loyiso a pointed look, and they followed his example. Kyle spoke into his radio. "7-1, 7-2: I need the both of you to swing by our position on the west side. Grid 220-652, behind the destroyed shipping container. We're going to need you to give us a ride."

"Where to, Commander?"

Kyle smirked. "Right up underneath that hover tank's nose."

"…Yes, sir!"

Kyle smiled at Fox, pointing up the hill behind them. "Get going," he said.

Fox nodded and sprinted away moments before the three Walker Gears arrived, Loyiso following along behind him.

 

---

 

OUTER HEAVEN NORTH

1631 HOURS

BUNKER EXTERIOR, SOUTH SIDE – INSIDE BATTLE GEAR

 

The cockpit was bathed in green light just in time to be shaken by the impact of 120mm mortar shells above them. Soder had to grit his teeth to keep from biting his tongue off due to the vibrations. His hands were sweating. The Battle Gear's armor was impressive, but not invincible. It had been taking a great deal of abuse since the battle started, but it wouldn't last them forever. The rebels had eliminated most of the other vehicles and now it was just the Outer Heaven foot soldiers and the Battle Gear itself.

They needed to resolve this quickly.

Cpt. Ivanov regained his senses first. "Soder! Pinpoint the source of that enemy ordnance!"

"On it, sir," Soder replied, checking the onboard detection systems to trace lines of possible trajectory from the impact. "Behind us, due east! I can't get a bead with my guns. We need to turn around."

"You heard the man, Takashi."

Takashi cracked his knuckles, re-engaged the tank's hover mode and spun them on a dime. Takashi put his hand over his mouth. The G forces were starting to make him feel a little ill. He hoped that he wouldn't end up throwing up all over the console. Soder scanned the ridgeline for any sign of the mortar team, who had hidden themselves behind the tree line in the distance. Suddenly, a cloud of smoke appeared.

"There!" Soder pointed.

"Evasive action!" Ivanov barked.

Takashi strafed to avoid the mortar, and Soder aimed his auto gun turrets at the ridge, painting the cliffs .50 caliber fire. After a brief moment, Soder let up to examine the spot in the distance. He zoomed in with the exterior cameras and switched to infrared mode—no sign of any heat signatures or freshly cold bodies.

"Negative contact," Soder reported. "They're up there somewhere…"

The Resistance took advantage in the lull in the fire to continue making hit and run attacks on the Battle Gear's hull. Takashi looked over to Soder.

"Soder, we've got positive ID on ground targets approaching the tank. Bring out the antipersonnel fire!"

Soder moved to switch over his camera view when he spotted another white plume of smoke in the distance at higher elevation. He opened his mouth to warn the others but was cut off when the cockpit was rattled by another explosive impact.

This wasn't working. Soder wasn't going to be able to focus on the ground targets and the cliffs at the same time. He looked over to Cpt. Ivanov.

"Sir, aim your railgun at the cliffs, bearing 063! I'll protect us from the ground troops while you charge it to keep them off our backs. We'll kill two birds with one stone."

"Good thinking, Lieutenant! Takashi, adjust bearing to 063, I'm about to tear that whole cliffside down!"

"Yes, sir!" Takashi replied, turning the tank slightly.

"Good. Hold that position!"

Soder adjusted his view to the rebels, who were retreating out of range of his machine gun fire. It looked like something else was taking their attention. Was it their reinforcements? Soder checked his other screens but saw no evidence of movement among their own forces. What was going on?

The rail cannon raised up at an angle as the targeting computer calculated the appropriate trajectory. The ready light in the cockpit glowed blue as the whole compartment hummed loudly. The rail gun crackled with life as the electromagnets switched on and another slug was loaded into the chamber.

Cpt. Ivanov checked their ammunition supply—they only had two more shots left, including this one. He nodded in confidence. Should be more than enough. The light next to his trigger switch glowed yellow. He pulled the trigger, and the projectile shot forward and up, slicing into the side of the mountain past the bunker and bringing the cliffs crumbling down. Cpt. Ivanov pumped his fist in exhilaration as the cabin was bathed in orange light to signal the venting procedure and all nonessential electrical components powered down.

The three men leaned back, breathing a sigh of relief knowing that the greatest threat to their armor was now eradicated.

Or so they thought. Another mortar shell slammed into the ground next to them. Ivanov cursed.

"Soder, report!"

Soder wiped the sweat from his forehead. "They must have another mortar team! Either that, or they repositioned before we were able to fire on them." He growled in frustration as his eyes flitted from one camera screen to another. He stopped on the rear cameras. Two Walker Gears carrying one passenger each in their robotic arms were speeding around them in a half circle on their flank, narrowly dodging gunfire from Outer Heaven forces. The passengers were carrying some kind of launcher weapon, but Soder couldn't make it out. More RPGs?

The passengers each pointed their launchers upward and fired their rockets straight into the air above them, missing them entirely. Soder panned his camera to follow them, and watched as the rockets changed direction, and sped straight towards them.

"Shit!" Soder shouted. "They have RC rockets!"

Not two seconds after he burst out his exclamation did the two rockets each collide with the open heat vents. Every screen on every console started flashing warning signs. Two of the four vents on the Battle Gear were destroyed, severely impeding the overall ventilation process. The tank entered safe mode, and the hover capability was temporarily disabled in favor of the drive motor and the treads. Their overall mobility had drastically decreased. The two remaining vents closed. The cabin light turned yellow—limited functionality restored.

Soder tried to turn his guns onto the enemy Walker Gears, but they were already well out of range.

"Damn sewer rats are using our own tech against us," he growled.

Takashi turned over the motor. He needed to get them the hell out of Dodge. "I'm going to take us southwest, try and give them some distance. We can't take many more hits like that," he said.

But before they could move, another mortar shell struck them from overhead, this one colliding against the rail gun. Cpt. Ivanov's console was flashing red. "Chyort," he cursed. They'd just lost their single greatest asset. He pulled up his own camera feed, seeing that many of the rebel forces had been decimated to a fraction of their original number. They'd done as much damage as they could possibly do. He looked to his men. It was his responsibility to make sure they made it out of this.

It was time to make a decision.

"Takashi, get us out of here. We're falling back," Ivanov ordered. "Soder, use your guns to keep any would-be pursuers off our back."

"Yes sir," said both subordinates.

Takashi pulled the Battle Gear into a turn, only for another explosion to rock the Battle Gear, this time coming from underneath. Takashi looked to see where they were and cursed. The rebels had managed to corral them inside of their own minefield. They'd just lost the tread belt on the right-side wheels. Takashi tried to push forward anyway, only to get them stuck in a ditch. It was the kill house all over again. He kicked the pedal several times in frustration, cursing louder and louder with each kick.

"We're dead in the water, Cap," Takashi exhaled in frustration when he was able to speak again.

The cockpit was sweltering. The heat was quickly rising. Soon it wouldn't be safe to stay inside the armor anymore. The rebels were closing in on their position. Cpt. Ivanov drew his Beretta.

"Open the hatch, Takashi. I'll climb out first and hold them off. You two come out after me. I'll try and keep their attention while you make for the south."

Takashi nodded grimly and pressed the button to open the hatch overhead. Soder couldn't believe what he was hearing. There was no way they could let the Captain sacrifice himself for them.

"But, sir—"

Ivanov shouted, "I don't want to hear it, Lieutenant. Just do as I tell you—there's no time to argue!"

Without another word, Ivanov quickly climbed up out of the hatch, Beretta raised. He fired on the approaching rebels and slid down the side of the cockpit and jumped off of the Battle Gear's exterior. Without even glancing back at the armor, he sprinted westward, firing blindly behind him. A crack split the air, and a hole exploded through his shoulder, causing him to drop the gun and tumble forward.

One of the rebels who had fired the RC rockets before came running up, kicked Ivanov onto his back, and then shoved the barrel of his rifle into Ivanov's face. The rebel took note of the captain's uniform.

"Game over, Captain," he said.

Soder came sprinting forward and clotheslined the enemy, sending them both tumbling into the dirt. He dropped his elbow onto the rebel's face, breaking his nose, and brought down quick strikes onto his jaw, splitting his lip. Soder drew his knife and held it to his opponent's neck while Takashi helped Cpt. Ivanov to his feet.

"You idiots," Ivanov chided. "I told you both to run."

The rebel that Soder was straddling grunted between his teeth, spitting blood onto Soder's face.

"You should have listened to your superior," he growled.

A crack was heard in the far distance, and Soder fell over onto the ground, dazed. His ears were ringing, and he felt light-headed. What happened? He could hear yelling, but it was distant, muffled. Like he was wearing a thick pair of earmuffs. The only thing he could hear clearly was that damned ringing. He tried to move but felt weak. Everything hurt. Why did everything hurt? Why couldn't he feel his left arm?

Something flipped him over onto his back. Cpt. Ivanov and Takashi were watching over him, shouting, looking worried. What was wrong? They made it out of the Battle Gear, didn't they? Why did Soder's chest hurt? He put a hand onto where the pain was coming from. It came red.

Is that my blood? His heartbeat quickened slightly.

Soder thought about home. He took this job to make money for his parents. He hadn't stayed in the army long enough to collect a pension, and the civilian sector wasn't cutting it. When he learned about Outer Heaven, he jumped at the chance to give his mother a comfortable life. He stayed on with Outer Heaven because of the people he worked with, and because of Ahab. They made him into a true believer: "somewhere where soldiers will always have a place," they'd said.

But where did that lead him? He's bleeding, and from the looks on his friends' faces, it wasn't good. Some anonymous merc wasting in some middle-of-nowhere African desert plain. Didn't seem right. Weren't they supposed to be proud, strong warriors?

His vision started going black. His last thoughts before the end were of home.

 

---

 

"Soder? Soder! SODER! No, no, no, NO!"

"Fuck man, get up. This isn't funny!"

The two Outer Heaven troopers were shaking their fallen comrade, trying to keep him awake. But it was too late. He was gone. Kyle motioned to his men, and the two survivors were quickly subdued and detained. He gripped over his radio to hail Loyiso.

"Thanks for the assist, Mortar Team," he said.

He looked over at the fallen trooper's face. He looked young, barely into his mid-twenties. Kyle was used to looking into the eyes of his enemy and seeing the violent monsters that took his family from him. They were cruel, vindictive and rapacious demons, not deserving of sympathy or mercy.

But now, seeing this boy dead in the dirt…

He put the thought out of his mind.

He rounded up his troops and did a headcount. There were about twenty of them left, not counting himself, Gray Fox, and Loyiso. Forty-three men and women of the Resistance, gone in the span of about eight hours. Of the Outer Heaven forces pitted against them, only five survived to take as captive hostages, including the two hover tank crewmembers. Given how dwarfed they were by the opposing forces, it was pretty good day. At least, that's what Kyle tried to tell himself.

In about fifteen minutes, Gray Fox and Loyiso linked up with them.

"All good?" Gray Fox asked.

"As good as it gets," Kyle replied ruefully.

Gray Fox looked around. "We can't stay here. It's only a matter of time before Outer Heaven sends more reinforcements, and we still need to beat the air strike. We've gotten your people out of the fire. It's time to bug out."

Kyle nodded. "What about Snake and his Infiltration Team?"

"Word from command is there's an alternate exit from the bunker north of here. If he makes it out, it'll be from there. But we can't wait for him. I'm going to contact my CO. He can arrange an extraction for us."

Kyle agreed, too tired to argue. Gray Fox patched his radio to the proprietary mission control frequency he was given.

"Gray Fox to Big Boss. Come in."

Kyle froze. That name was familiar. It was a name he'd heard many times before, during the war in Angola. But it couldn't be the same man. Right? He turned slightly to listen to Fox's conversation.

"We're all wrapped up here. Everything else is up to Snake. I've got a little over 25 people here, and we're in need of an extraction before enemy reinforcements arrive. How soon can you get here?"

A few seconds pass while Fox receives his response.

"And the air strike? …Understood. We'll hold here and wait for your arrival. Aim for the helipads. Roger. Fox out."

Kyle approached Fox. "Who did you say you were calling?"

"Code name 'Big Boss.' He's our commanding officer," Fox explained. "He's going to send helicopters to pick us up. We need to keep the landing zone clear."

"Remind me again, Fox, how long have you been here at Outer Heaven since you were sent?"

Fox looked over, widening his eyes. There was tense moment of silence between them.

"Almost a month," he answered. "Why?"

Kyle shook his head, trying to be nonchalant. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it. This mission has been getting to me. Let's get this place clear. I'm ready to be out of here."

Fox stared down Kyle for a few more seconds before reluctantly nodding and joining the other rebels in securing the Outer Heaven prisoners and establishing a perimeter guard. Kyle waved Imke over to him, walking in the opposite direction.

"Get me a secure radio line. I need to talk to Snake."

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 1623 HOURS

METAL GEAR'S BUNKER – FREIGHT LIFT (IN TRANSIT)

 

They'd been silently riding the slow-moving freight elevator for about ten minutes. Snake was squatting low to the ground, resting against the exterior railing with his rifle resting on his shoulder and tapping his heel, while Vusi was more restless, constantly pacing back and forth. Snake pulled out his pack of Lucky Strikes and shook it, listening to the satisfying rattle of its contents bouncing around before looking in the open hole. There were two left.

"Hey," he said, holding out the mostly empty pack in Vusi's direction. "Smoke?"

Vusi walked over and sat down next to Snake, taking the offered cigarette. Snake tapped the box and pulled the last one out with his teeth, then crushed and tossed aside the empty pack. He flipped open his lighter and held out the flame for Vusi, who leaned forward and nodded in thanks.

"You know," Vusi said as Snake lit his own cigarette. "I hear these are terrible for your health."

"Yeah, well," Snake muttered as he flipped the lid of his lighter closed. "Pretty sure having bad aim from shaky hands while bullets are flying around you is pretty damn unhealthy all on its own. Smoke inhalation's a fair trade for the nicotine, I think."

Vusi didn't have an argument for that. Chances were, they probably weren't going to be making it out anyway, but he kept that thought to himself. He looked at the lighter still resting in Snake's hand.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing at it.

Snake looked at the lighter. Vusi was referencing the little duel-wielding cartoon fox emblazoned on it. Snake took a drag.

"It's nothing," he said, "just a goofy little picture meant to identify the unit I serve with. Only other members can get one of these. Helps us identify each other."

Snake brushed the fox logo with his thumb. "I remember being so proud when I was issued my code name. Picked up the lighter from the store on base so I could have a memento of the occasion that would last me even into retirement." He chuckled. "If I even make it that far…"

They smoked together in silence for a few more minutes, just listening to the rumble of the lift as it carried them deeper underground.

"What's your plan when this is all over?" Snake asked.

Vusi shook his head. "Things are far from over. Whatever we accomplish today, even if we kill Outer Heaven's leader and destroy this weapon you're after, their forces will still be in the country. Assuming we make it out, I plan on rejoining with the Resistance to kill or expel every last one of them and end the foreign occupation for good." Vusi took another drag. "That's if we make it out, anyway."

Snake grunted, nodding.

"My country has known nothing but foreign rule and oppression since the Dutch landed and founded their colony in 1652. Even after we became a self-governing British colony at the turn of the century, the Anglo descendants in our government never really stopped that particular European tradition. My grandparents weren't allowed to buy land for themselves due to being black. My parents—who were in an interracial marriage—were among those killed during one of the many protest demonstrations.

"The shadow of apartheid hung over my family's head for nearly fifty years. The passing of the referendum in '91 was a proud day for us all. We finally had the opportunity to heal as a country and build something new. And then Outer Heaven entrenched themselves deeper and refused to leave. Even now, we have yet to escape the tyranny of foreigners shedding our blood on our own soil."

Snake exhaled through his nose and blew out a cloud of smoke. "Let's hope this war will be the last, then."

"I hope so. But I admit, it is difficult to keep the hope."

"But you have to," Snake said. "Hope is what lets us keep fighting when all else is gone. Without it, we're nothing."

Vusi arched an eyebrow. "That's surprising to hear, coming from you."

Snake coughed a little. "Why?"

Vusi just shook his head. He changed the subject. "So, what about you? What is your plan once your mission here is finished?"

"I go home."

"Just like that?"

Snake took a long drag, stood up, and tossed his cigarette to the ground, grinding it with the toe of his boot.

"Just like that," he answered.

He walked to the edge of the lift, looking down, he could see a light rapidly approaching from below. "Alright," he said as Vusi put out his own cigarette. "Time to go over the game plan. We don't know what we're going to find down there, so I need you to stick to me like glue—we can't afford to be separated."

Vusi nodded, listening intently with a stern furrow to his brow.

"When we get to Metal Gear's hangar, you post rear security while I attach the C4 and the detonators. We'll get to a safe distance before we blow it remotely. If we haven't already found contact with the enemy by then, the explosion will definitely get their attention, so we'll need to move fast.

Pay attention to any signs as we move through the place. Venom is supposed to be living and working down here. Keep an eye out for his office. We can't leave here until he's dead and Metal Gear's been destroyed or disabled. You see him, you do not hesitate—take him down if you have the shot. Once that's all done, we search for a parking garage; assuming the intel can be trusted, there should be a surface access tunnel that moves due north. If our explosion disables Metal Gear instead of destroying it, then I'll call my CO and have him arrange the air strike to level this place after we've successfully escaped the bunker."

"If we know for sure that the attack on Metal Gear will bring the enemy, wouldn't it make more sense to target Venom first before we move onto the hangar?" Vusi asked.

"Chances are, he'll be under heavy guard. No matter which target we hit first, it's probably going to kick the hornet's nest. But you're right, hitting Venom first is probably the smarter play. Unfortunately, we don't know the layout of this place. So, I'm thinking, we keep an eye out either way, but we hit whichever target we come across first. There's a chance he'll be in the hangar itself, anyway, overseeing Metal Gear's production and armament or just to protect the vehicle itself."

The lift reached the bottom with a loud rumble, the railing sinking into the floor to let both passengers exit into a large steel corridor. The ceilings disappeared into the darkness, so that Snake couldn't tell exactly how tall the hallway actually was; could be just a few feet or twenty feet for all he knew. There were a few double doors down the corridor, two on the left, one on the right and one at the end. The corridor was lit with square halogen lights hung on the walls just a few feet above them.

Snake and Vusi raised their rifles. "Let's go," Snake commanded, and they ventured forth down the hallway.

They checked the doors on each side of the hallway as they came to them. The first set of double doors on the left side of the hallway entered into another shorter hallway that ended at a door whose signage indicated a stairwell. The second set of double doors fed out into a small storeroom with cardboard boxes stacked all around from floor to ceiling.

The two paid the boxes no mind and crossed the hallway to the right-most set of double doors, which opened into an office space with a series of cubicles, a long table and a whiteboard with a projector hanging from the ceiling. The projector was left on, and the light on the white board was showing schematics for one of Metal Gear's front-mounted weapons systems. At the far end of the office space were two conference rooms, also empty, as well as doors to two bathrooms at the corner.

It unsettled the two men just how quiet and empty this place was. They had expected some amount of opposition by now since exiting the lift. They were far enough underground that they couldn't hear the explosions and fighting happening up on the surface, either. It was deathly silent, and that only served to ratchet up the two infiltrators' nerves to incredible heights.

In a quick exchange, they resolved to finish clearing this floor before checking the stairwell, so they doubled back to the main hallway and peeked through the double doors at the very end opposite the lift they'd arrived on.

Inside, they found themselves in a wide and long room roughly about the size of a football field. Overhead rails mounted to the ceilings linked to tunnels high above to bring cargo in the room to and from places unknown. Much of this cargo was stacked in racks which lined the room from one end to the other. Snake widened his eyes when he got a good look at what this cargo was—laying in these shelving racks in uniform stacks were disassembled missiles and warheads. On the opposite side of the room from the missile racks were many steel shipping containers and forklifts. Snake approached one of the containers and noted the trefoil symbol emblazoned on one of them, with the words 'DANGER: RADIATION' printed above it.

"This place…," Snake muttered aloud. "This is where they keep the nukes and assemble the missiles."

Vusi's eyes became widened and fearful. He swung his head around to address Snake.

"Outer Heaven has access to nuclear weapons!?" he asked, incredulous.

Snake nodded solemnly. "That's why I'm here." He lowered his rifle. "Watch your fire in here. It's best that we don't discharge our weapons in this room if we can help it. The missiles, warheads, and nuclear materials are all separate. There're no live explosives in here, but if we hit the nuclear storage containers, the radiation exposure due to any leaks will be bad news for both of us."

Vusi took his finger off the trigger and lowered his rifle as well, swallowing nervously. Then it hit him what Snake was saying.

"Wait, wait," he said. "You said this was 'why you were here.' You mean to say you knew the whole time that Outer Heaven had nukes?"

"Yep," Snake responded. "And Metal Gear's the delivery system. All the more reason to make sure we destroy it."

Vusi clenched his jaw, saying nothing in reply. He glowered at Snake. The American hadn't said anything about nuclear power to the Infiltration Team before the fighting had started this morning. Was the Commander aware of the danger; did Snake assume that Kyle had already told the other rebels? Or did the American keep this secret to himself from the beginning?

It shouldn't matter. The mission would still be the same, either way. But it did matter to Vusi.

Snake didn't see the look his fellow soldier was giving him, still marveling at the sheer number of warheads on display. At the end of the football field corridor was a blast door that was roughly the same height and width of the whole room. Was it more storage, continuing further underground? How many nukes did Venom have access to?

"So much firepower," Snake muttered, mostly to himself. "How did he get his hands on it all?"

During his entire infiltration of Outer Heaven R&D, Snake hadn't seen any labs for nuclear processing and even if they did have it, Outer Heaven had only been present in South Africa for a few years yet already had a stockpile rivaling many of that of entire countries among the smaller nuclear powers, far sooner than it would have taken for Outer Heaven to have developed it themselves. They'd only been seen collecting yellowcake for less than a year. Where did this stockpile come from? It would have taken time to obtain. It didn't make sense, Snake thought to himself.

Snake turned around, meeting Vusi's eyes. Vusi saw Snake's troubled expression. Whatever Snake was thinking, it wasn't good. Snake waved back to where they had come from, and they doubled back to the original hallway to make their return to the ignored stairwell. It was a narrow passage, four short flights of metal stairs to go up one floor four meters up. Snake leaned around the doorway, finding them to be inside of a short tunnel. There was a set of double doors leading back in the direction of the freight elevator and an open passage just ahead on the opposite side.

Snake looked through the windows of the double doors and found that the passage only extended to a dead end a short way in—another larger storage room—so they ignored the rear in favor of following the tunnel.

When they emerged on the other side, they'd found themselves in the biggest room they'd seen yet: the walls and ceilings were over twelve meters high, with the walls being reinforced with crisscrossing steel girders. The floors were mostly cleared, save for a few scissor lifts, some stacks of metal crates, and a few toolboxes and benches posted here and there. High above them were arterial metal catwalks feeding from doorways to various cranes carrying metal parts, as well as huge coils of thick wire suspended from the ceiling that draped down to connect with various parts of a six-meter tall metal monstrosity which stood waiting on a freight lift platform designed to carry its single passenger straight up through a hole in the ceiling that was closed by a thick steel bulkhead.

The monster itself towered high above them, looming over the two intruders. It looked exactly as Snake had seen in the schematics that were shared in the briefing more than a week ago, but those drawings couldn't hold a candle to what it was like seeing it in person.

The legs were 3m tall, square, and squat, as big around as the trunk of a good-sized fir tree. The feet were wide, with two split toes in the front like an ostrich. Sitting on top of the legs just off center was the cockpit, or the 'head' of the metal beast, which made up almost half of the thing's height, and resembled a large shield. Just to the left of the cockpit, stacked on top of each other was a round apparatus with three barrels of different calibers—Snake figured it probably contained both an anti-vehicle weapon and the anti-infantry option that Dr. Madnar had mentioned—and a shoulder-mounted missile module with spaces for two warheads and two air nozzles feeding out of the side.

Snake didn't see the flamethrower that was supposed to be underneath between the legs. Madnar had said it would be hidden behind the vent plate in the front, along with the ion beam. Snake hoped they'd be able to approach without it activating.

Wedged between the missile delivery system and the cockpit was a large camera with three lenses. Armor panels hung over the legs just under the rotating gun and the cockpit splayed out like wings. Presumably they were intended to protect the hydraulics of the legs from gunfire.

Snake and Vusi warily pointed their weapons at the monster, but it made no attempt to move or harm them upon their entry. Snake nodded in begrudging awe and respect of the beast whose home they had trespassed in.

"Metal Gear," he said in a quietly reverential voice. He scanned the sectors of the room around them and saw no impending threats. Once clear, he looked over his shoulder to Vusi. "This is it. Come on, let's plant those explosives."

The two men stepped forth towards the mech, and Snake stepped onto one of the vehicle's toes to figure out from where he should climb to get up underneath.

"The engineer we rescued said we should plant the explosives on the motor between its legs," Snake said, crouching under the vent plate to examine the machinery underneath the tank.

Yep, he thought to himself, seeing the hanging metal apparatus. There's the flamethrower and laser. He leaned his head slightly to get a better look at the mechanical components behind them.

He pointed at it, saying "That must be it."

Snake pulled off his backpack and unzipped it, pulling out his brick of C4 and the detonator switch. Putting the switch in his pocket, he walked up Metal Gear's foot and put a hand onto the upper leg, letting his rifle dangle on his torso by the strap. He looked down to Vusi.

"Cover me while I plant this," he said. Vusi nodded and turned his attention to the room's exits while Snake jumped up and grabbed the machine in the back of the vehicle, his legs dangling over the floor below as he quickly wedged the C4 brick into a likely space between what he thought was the motor and the tank of the flamethrower. Suddenly, the machine began to move above him and in pulling his hand away to keep it from getting crushed, Snake lost his grip and fell painfully onto his back a few feet below.

A voice crackled over both Snake's and Vusi's radio. It was heavy with static due to the interference from being underground, but it was recognizable as Kyle's voice.

"—to Infil Team! Repeat, this is Architect to Infil Team! Mission security…compromised…walking into…trap! Do not trust Big—…—repeat, do NOT trust—…Venom is—"

One of the feet raised themselves off the ground and the whole thing began to lean as it shifted its weight so that the foot was above him. Snake grabbed his rifle and quickly rolled out of the way just before the foot could slam down on his prone position. The pack fell off the foot, and to Snake's dismay, he thought he saw the C4 brick wobble a bit from the place above where he'd planted it.

Vusi grabbed Snake's hand and pulled him to his feet so they could quickly beat a hasty retreat to the other side of the hangar and take cover behind one of the larger toolboxes, only to have it sheared in half by the antipersonnel ion laser. They sprinted to the scissor lift a few yards away. Snake pulled his detonator from his pocket and looked around the corner of the lift to watch the enemy vehicle as he squeezed it. Metal Gear stumbled from the explosion but otherwise remained standing.

Either the motor was better armored than Snake expected, or the brick had fallen from where he'd planted it. Snake swore loudly as Metal Gear turned rotated its gun barrel and started laying down fire on their position, forcing them to sprint away from their concealment towards a large set of double doors, which burst open to reveal more Outer Heaven troopers. Vusi dropped his last grenade to obliterate the incoming enemies while he and Snake veered to the side to hide behind a concrete pillar just outside of Metal Gear's cone of vision.

"Dammit," Snake cursed. "What are we supposed to do now?!"

He gingerly caressed his side and noted that the stitches near his collarbone had been torn open, letting blood freely soak into his shirt. He fished the bottle of painkillers Jennifer had given him out of his pocket and quickly popped a couple of pills. He needed to be functional for this.

More gunfire erupted from the doorway they'd narrowly avoided and from the catwalks above as more Outer Heaven troopers sprinted into the room. Snake pointed his rifle upwards and fired on the catwalks. One trooper died on the spot while another toppled over the railing to his death onto the hard ground. Vusi aimed for the doorway, putting down suppressing fire to buy them both time to think.

A blast from Metal Gear's cannon crumbled part of the pillar above them, sending chunks of debris over their heads that they quickly dove away from each other to avoid. Pushing himself up, Snake silently prayed that that pillar wasn't load bearing.

He looked over the rubble at the same time Vusi got to his feet and shouted, "Look out!"

Vusi ducked as Snake raised his rifle to ventilate the heads of the two troopers that came in through the open door behind him.

"Split up to the opposite side of the room!" Snake called out. "It can't target us both at the same time!"

Obediently, Vusi sprinted between concealment while Snake crouched behind the rubble to fire on the other catwalk above and to lay down suppressing fire on Metal Gear to try and keep its attention. Once Vusi had found cover behind the steel crates, he laid down fire of his own to give Snake time to reposition and get some breathing room.

Metal Gear stepped forward, wires tugging off of its frame as it walked away from its staging position to turn and face Vusi properly. Snake fired on the machinery at its rear, and Metal Gear turned slightly and raised up its cannon to fire on the catwalk above him, sending it crashing down above Snake's head and forcing him to dive out of the way again.

We're getting nowhere, fast, Snake grumbled to himself, rolling out of the way to avoid another foot stomp. The mech's bulk was deceiving; it was much faster than it appeared. Snake found himself behind a stack of metal crates a few yards across from Vusi.

"Please tell me you still have your C4," Snake said desperately.

Vusi dropped his pack and brandished the small tan brick and the remote detonator. Vusi tossed Snake the detonator, but when Snake motioned for Vusi to slide the explosive brick his way, Metal Gear blasted the aisle between them, once again forcing them to separate further across the room.

Vusi stood up, his face covered in sweat. "Cover me!" He shouted.

Before Snake could protest, Vusi sprinted up to the Metal Gear, rolling underneath the billowing heat of the flamethrower as he got closer. The ion beam shifted to point at him and ignited, causing Vusi to yell as his arm was lopped off at the bicep. He toppled and leaned against one of the legs.

Snake called out Vusi's name, aiming for Metal Gear's cockpit and camera. A few lucky shots nailed one of the camera lenses, while Vusi clung to the leg. Snake hoped that he'd managed to blind the mech at least partially. Vusi pushed the brick up into the machinery and screamed. Snake saw Vusi dangling by his arm—he must have gotten it caught, and now the machinery above was crushing his bones.

"Detonate it!" Vusi screamed through clenched teeth.

Snake checked his magazine, saw that he only had a few rounds left. There was no way to get to Vusi without disabling Metal Gear first, but if he detonated the C4, it would kill Vusi outright. He aimed his rifle, and took a breath, using the last of his bullets to sever Vusi's arm. Vusi's thrashing and kicking pushed him out from under Metal Gear. Snake squeezed the detonator.

This time, the explosion had hit home. Metal Gear stumbled forward, then tipped over onto its side. A series of explosions along its back filled the hangar with hot air. The force of Metal Gear's impact against one of the other concrete pillars caused the ceiling near their point of entry to start caving in, sending rubble and steel into the tunnel from which they'd entered and all around the southern perimeter of the room. Snake tossed his rifle aside and sprinted forward to grab Vusi by the collar of his shirt and drag him into the passageway from where the Outer Heaven troopers had entered on the ground floor.

The rumbling finished as quickly as it started. Snake took off his shirt and tore the fabric, tying off Vusi's stumps to stop the blood flow.

Vusi shook his head. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not losing another man today," Snake replied.

Vusi's eyes rolled slightly, his speech slurred. "Go…go… I'm not…I'm not making it out of here, Sna…ke. We both know it…"

"Shut up," Snake commanded. Once he'd judged the tourniquets to be tight enough, Snake drew his Beretta and headed back into the collapsed hangar. Snake chanced a look inside and saw that Metal Gear was half-buried, its legs disappearing under the rubble.

He had to know.

On his approach, he saw that the cockpit's hull was crumpled, but the front face was open, revealing an empty chair—the pilot had made it out. He heard footsteps behind him. Snake whirled around in time to see a figure darting back into the tunnel where Vusi was. Snake ran after him, awkwardly dodging the rubble as he went. As he reached the doorway, he saw the figure approach a door at the end. Snake took two shots with his pistol. Both missed as the figure ducked into the passage.

He looked down at Vusi. The blood was draining from the rebel's face, and he was only on the brink of consciousness. He kept mumbling, in a voice that sounded miles away, "Go…go, Snake…don't let…don't let him…"

Snake growled in frustration and desperation. "I'm coming back for you," he promised as he sprinted down the corridor.

Through the door at the end, Snake found himself in a short hallway with a door on the right and a steel bulkhead ahead of him, both hanging ominously open. The hallway was dark, lit only by the dire red of emergency lighting. A soft blue light flowed through the door on Snake's right, and he heard the sound of loud electronic beeping mixed with sounds of exertion. Snake quietly pushed the door open, pointing his pistol down the hall.

A burst of static filled Snake's earphones. He turned the knob of the volume down low and crouched low against the wall. It was Big Boss's voice that rang out this time.

"Mission Control to Solid Snake. Do you read?"

Snake whispered, "This is Solid Snake. It is unsafe for me to respond at this time."

"Acknowledged. Then just listen carefully," the voice replied. "Mission security has been compromised. Standing orders are for you to abort the mission and evacuate the area immediately."

Abort mission? Evacuate? Snake shook his head. It didn't make any sense. In spite of his own warning, he tersely whispered, "Negative, Control. Metal Gear has been disabled, and HVT is in the area. I'm tailing him now."

There was a note of frustration in Big Boss's voice as it responded, "Abort the mission. Return immediately. This is an order!"

Snake was going to argue, until he felt a cold chill run down his spine.

"Understood, sir," he said. He turned off his radio as he stood.

A dawning realization was occurring to him as he remembered that when Kyle had contacted them, there was a broken signal due to them being so far underground.

So why was Big Boss coming through loud and clear, even though he was supposed to be not just topside but many miles away?

Snake swallowed, raising his Beretta. The hallway ended into a room with a tiled floor and brick walls. The sign on the door read, 'Commander's Office.' Inside, rifles and crates of ammo littered the place, covered in plastic sheets. Against the wall was a broken mirror, and a sink covered in blood. Snake followed the beeping sound to its source and found an FS-A1GT model MSX computer with a flashing green light sitting on a small end table, next to an open journal filled with tiny script with sloppy handwriting and detailed sketches lovingly drawn in pencil.

The computer was connected to a tape cassette player, hanging open. Discarded on the floor was an audio cassette tape. Snake picked it up. Much of the magnetic tape had been torn out, but that wasn't the main item of interest to Snake. The tape had two labels on either side, written in black pen. On one side of the empty cassette was the phrase "From the Man Who Sold the World." Snake flipped it over to examine the other label.

"Operation: Intrude N313."

Snake looked back at the desk. There was a radio at the corner of the table. It was tuned to frequency 120.13. The secondary Mission Control frequency. Snake's breath caught in his throat.

He heard some of the hanging plastic move behind him. Snake whirled around as he saw the shadowy figure just disappear out the door through which he'd entered. He sprinted after the figure, whose form was difficult to make out in the low lighting and followed it through the metal bulkhead into what appeared to be a large boiler room with pipes moving up and down the walls at every angle.

The floors were chain link meshes, and the corridors were tightly crowded. The air was stifling as steam hissed from the pipes around him. Snake scanned the walkway, tightly moving around corners To keep from being surprised. Eventually, he was let out into a wider more open area. Every moving shadow around him caused Snake to jump, beads of sweat rolling down his face and arms as he examined every detail around him.

Footsteps echoed throughout the boiler room. Snake swung his pistol around wildly, not being able to make out the source. The cadence of the footsteps was slow, relaxed. As Snake listened intently for the approaching target, a dry, strained voice echoed throughout, bringing back that chill that Snake had felt earlier outside of Venom's office.

"And so, the old hang'd man stepped forth,

His one eye watching o'er ghostly dead,"

The voice had a rhythmic cadence to it as it resided. It was getting louder. Closer.

"Who fed upon blood-soaked dust

And wander'd where men fear'd to tread;"

Snake was unnerved. He flexed his finger and placed it on the trigger.

"'Come unto me, my warrior-kin,'

Said the one-eyed man with open arms,

'Enter yon Valhalla halls,

Where storied poets spin epic yarns,"

Snake was finally able to pinpoint the direction from which the voice and footsteps were approaching. He spun to face the open space up a short flight of wide steps.

"Come unto me, my brother kin,

Whose bravery be set among the stars.'

So saith the old hang'd man

To the empty graveyard stalls…"

The speaker stepped into view. It was like the civilian from back at Supply Storage had said, and just like the Demon from his dreams: a tall dark figure with a shiny black horn sprouting from his forehead, face covered in blood. He must have been an Irregular, because Snake had never seen a horn sprouting from that face before.

But Snake's eyes didn't focus on the horn, but instead on the figure's singular eye. He lowered his Beretta, speechless at the sight.

 

"Hello, Snake," Big Boss said grimly.

Notes:

And thus we've finally reached the climax of the story and Ahab's true arrival in the flesh. This chapter also marks Kyle's and Gray Fox's exit from the story proper, for the most part--there'll still be a little more to say about them after Snake's climactic fight next chapter, but for the most part their purpose has been served here. If you're interested in a story exploring their fate after Outer Heaven, keep an eye out--it may show up in a later fic. As for Venom's poem at the end, it's one I wrote specifically for him. I've been waiting to reveal it in its entirety since I came up with it back at around chapter 12 or so. I think it really fits the overall vibe for Big Boss/Venom that I'm going for.

I think this is by far the longest or maybe second-longest chapter I've had to write for this story; both in terms of length and in terms of the amount of time and work it's taken for me to put it out. I hope it came out well. Next chapter should hopefully come much sooner. We shall see. We're coming up on the end of Operation Intrude N313. Now it's time for the final stretch; dealing with Ahab and then comes Snake's long journey to escape from both Outer Heaven and from war-torn South Africa, as well as to tie up some loose ends. Look forward to it!

Chapter 19: The Turn

Summary:

In which Snake meets the traitor in his midst, and faces off against the Demon leading Outer Heaven.

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 1713 HOURS

UNDERGROUND BOILER ROOM, PAST METAL GEAR'S HANGAR

 

 

The pistol shook in Snake's hand. His breathing was quick, shallow. Suddenly, the pistol felt so heavy in his hands, and his arms lowered to his sides as his eyes widened in recognition. He suspected a spy in Mission Control. He didn't expect this. His mind raced as it tried to make sense of the scene in front of him.

His mouth was dry, and it wasn't from the heat of the steamy boiler room. He swallowed and tried to speak. What came out was an incoherent staccato of short, terse phrases and one-word sentences.

"Big Boss…you? W-what? How? That doesn't…"

Big Boss exhaled slightly, smirking. He looked down, as if remembering a private inside joke or amusing anecdote.

"That's right," he said. "I'm Big Boss."

He stepped forward down the short flight of steps towards Snake. Snake backed away several paces.

"The founder and leader of FOXHOUND," Big Boss continued. "The venomous monster Ahab of Outer Heaven." He closed his eye and nodded to himself before refocusing his gaze on Snake, gesturing toward him.

"The man who fooled the world."

There was something odd about the Boss's speech. Something about it sounded rueful, almost sardonic, like he was mocking the very idea of his identity even as he proudly acknowledged it. He again raised a gesturing arm towards Snake, and Snake instantly recognized it as the same type of bionic hand that Master Miller had worn during their CQC trainings all those years ago. Was that why Big Boss always wore gloves? The fingers made a soft clacking sound as they folded into a pointing finger.

"You were sent here because of your inexperience. You weren't expected to survive. But I admit, I underestimated you. You've gotten farther than anyone could possibly have expected; I had assumed that if Gray Fox could be bested, then surely, you'd never make it far past the insertion point. Congratulations are in order, I suppose."

Snake couldn't come up with a response to that. The revelation that the man to whom he'd looked up to and wanted desperately to emulate had been setting him up from the beginning floored him. Not only that, but apparently that there was so little faith in his abilities that he was considered irrelevant, barely worth consideration such that his making it to this point was in itself revelatory.

Snake realized that he didn't know which bothered him more—the betrayal or the casual dismissiveness. The fact that he even had to question it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

"But…but why?" Snake asked.

His voice sounded so small and hollow to his ears. Like a frightened child. He hated himself for it.

The Boss raised an eyebrow as he considered his protégé's question. "Why what?" he asked, prompting Snake to continue.

"Why betray the U.S, betray FOXHOUND? Why hold the world hostage with nukes?"

Ahab's eyebrows raised in slight surprise—or was it mock surprise? "Is that my plan?" He closed his eye and nodded to himself again, as if in confirmation. "I see. So that's how it is."

There was a prickling sensation in the back of Snake's mind that felt familiar. It was similar to that little voice that called out to him during his drugged interrogation at Shotmaker's hands. Something wasn't right, but he couldn't tell what it was. Big Boss's mannerisms felt off, somehow. But Snake couldn't consciously figure out just what it was that didn't make sense, so distracted was he by the betrayal, but it was there nagging at him all the same.

So, he asked the next question at the forefront of his mind: "How long have you been planning this?"

Big Boss smiled slightly again, nodding with certainty. "Since the beginning, since long before FOXHOUND sent you here, since before we came to South Africa. A world where the warrior will always belong, always have a place: a true Valhalla. With Metal Gear, we would've been able to make our dream a reality."

Ahab stepped down from the last stair, and Snake stepped back further. Snake glanced behind him—two more steps and he would be backed straight into the boiler behind him. He looked left and right. Passage on the left and right both ended in blind turns, with the right also forking back towards the entrance from which Snake had entered from.

"But now Metal Gear has been destroyed," the older operative muttered. "Many of my men are either dead or struggling to regroup. If our dream is to have any chance of survival, I'll need to lead my men to safety."

Ahab looked at Snake with a new appraisal. "Many of my men were once former enemies, reborn as family forged in the fires of war. You've made it this far, Snake. You've proven yourself above and beyond the call of duty. I'd say you've earned a place among us if you want it. Throw down your arms now and surrender, and we can walk out of here together."

Ahab reached out an open hand, expectantly. He nodded towards the gun hanging limply at Snake's side.

Snake held up the Beretta, examining it. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Nothing seemed to make any sense. He thought vaguely of the day when Salamander had pitted him and Black Mamba against each other, the words that Salamander had impressed on him time and time again during training:

It's us vs. them, and anyone that isn't us is an enemy. The only thing that you can trust with absolute certainty is the mission.

Everything crystalized. Snake needed answers—was desperate for them. But they could come later. In the here and now, only one thing mattered. He raised his eyes and met Big Boss's gaze; he'd made his decision. He reached out with his gun laying in his palm, and Big Boss moved to take it.

As Ahab put his hand on the Beretta, Snake reached over with his left hand to grip the Boss's forearm, pulling it forward as he shoulder-checked Ahab in the chest and raised a knee towards Ahab's groin. Ahab checked the blow with his flesh arm, and his bionic hand twisted 180 degrees to wrench the pistol out of Snake's hand.

Ahab's hands moved faster than Snake was prepared for, raining blows down on him that he was unable to block or dodge. Within seconds, the handle of his Beretta had clocked him on the side of his head and Snake quickly found himself pushed to the ground, the air evacuated from his lungs. Light-headed and dizzy, Snake desperately sucked in air as he scrambled to his feet just in time to see Ahab pointing his pistol at him.

"So, you've chosen death," the mercenary warlord muttered.

But Snake was already scurrying down the walkway and around the closest corner further into the boiler room as Ahab opened fire. He drew his knife, cursing himself. His gambit with the gun was meant to take the Boss by surprise knowing that Big Boss would be the superior CQC combatant in terms of experience, but he hadn't expected the older man to be so fast given his older age.

Snake drew his knife, and after spotting an opening between boilers, he vaulted over the railing of the catwalk onto the concrete below. He carefully threaded his way between the pipes that cluttered the narrow walkways and crawlspaces, ducking low as he stared at the catwalk above and watched Big Boss make his pursuit.

Snake was sweating, adrenaline running through his bloodstream as his heart pounded in his ears. Every instinct he had was demanding that he take action, but he deliberately suppressed the urge to make any sudden movements, tried to keep his breathing steady as he silently followed the older operative from underneath.

After some navigation of the narrow space, Snake found himself emerging into a more open concrete corridor underneath a stairway that fed out from the catwalk above. The corridor was mostly in shadow, lit only by the spinning red emergency lights. He heard the footsteps above as the Boss reached the top of the stairs.

Moving to the side of the stairs, he stayed low in the dark and waited for one of Big Boss's legs to enter his immediate line of sight before stabbing underneath the railing. There was a cry of surprise as the warlord fell forward down the last few steps to the bottom, the confiscated Beretta falling out of his hands as he let go of it to push himself into a roll and use his momentum to recover from the fall.

Snake rushed forward before Big Boss could pick up the handgun and kicked it aside down the hall and tried to drive the knife down into his enemy's chest.

The Boss responded by grabbing Snake's braced forearm and delivering a jab to the opened knife wound near Snake's shoulder. Snake reeled back clutching the area around his collarbone as the wound exploded in pain. Ahab raised a boot to shove Snake off of him.

Snake painfully slammed onto his back, feeling something digging into his back. Realizing what it was, he rolled to his side to grab the Beretta and point it at Big Boss at the same time as Ahab was drawing his own pistol. He squeezed the trigger twice, and Ahab dove forward and to the side to avoid the gunfire and close the distance.

Ahab's fury rained down in a flurry of strikes and Snake found himself barely able to keep up as he blocked the rain of punches to his face and midsection. Seeing a small opening, Snake feinted left, then moved right to dodge the Boss's extended arm and grabbed his bicep to flip him onto his back. As the Boss fell, he grabbed the arm that pushed him down and used it as leverage to spin around on his back and wrap his legs around Snake's shoulder to keep him still as he thrusted the barrel of his pistol into Snake's face. Snake pushed the gun aside while ducking his head to the side as the gun fired, striking Ahab in the head.

There was a yell, and the elder man involuntarily let go while Snake stumbled from the tinnitus. Every sound in the hallway was reduced to a high pitched whining and the dull roar of his blood rushing in his ears. Ahab, for his part, was clutching his forehead, bleeding from the horn, and Snake backed up quickly into the darkness of the tight narrow spaces at the bottom of the boilers while Ahab blindly fired into the concrete hallway.

Snake hid among the thick metal pipes, keeping the Boss in his sights since he could no longer rely on his hearing for as long as the tinnitus kept ringing. Snake clutched at his chest to staunch the wound and found that doing so resulted in a painful creaking in his ribs. He reflexively put the hand to his side as he winced in pain. His body was coming apart at the seams, he realized.

I can't take much more of this, he thought to himself. I need to finish this quickly.

But Big Boss was the better fighter by far, and Snake's injuries weren't doing him any favors with regards to his reaction time, either. He shook his head and thought back to the beginning of his mission, and to his training. If he was going to win this, he needed to stop going for direct confrontation and attack from an oblique indirect angle instead. He looked around in the tight space he occupied to try and figure out what he could use.

Ahead of him, he heard the bootsteps of his opponent. Snake rounded a corner and took a long way around the boiler to circle back to the main path, not bothering to quiet his footsteps. Before turning the corner back to the main walkway, he waited just out of sight behind a tangle of pipes. As he predicted, He heard Big Boss's footsteps quickening their pace from the main junction to try and cut Snake off.

Snake saw the glint of light reflecting from the polished slide of the Boss's firearm, and he reached through a gap in the pipes to grab the Boss's left wrist and yank the mechanical arm into his side, plunging his knife into the Boss's hand to pin it to the nearby wall. The fingers spasmed, releasing sparks as the knife penetrated the hand's casing, getting stuck in it.

Big Boss struggled to pull his mechanical arm back from the pipes for a second before pointing his pistol into the gap, firing into the gaps as Snake lowered himself to scramble away. Snake nearly reached the opposite corner when he heard a louder firing noise, like a cannon. He looked back just in time to see the Boss's forearm came rocketing toward him, palm facing out so that the knife's point would be facing him.

Snake ducked, narrowly missing getting brained by the makeshift projectile.

"What the hell...," he asked bemusedly while sprinting around the corner as he heard the hunk of plastic and metal bouncing around the hallway behind him.

When he retraced his steps back to the main passage, he looked over his shoulder and saw the Boss barreling his way toward him in a full-on sprint. Without thinking twice, Snake dove between two pipes to find himself next to the stairway again. He tucked and rolled, bringing his Beretta to bear and fire on the pipes just before the Boss reached them. Hot steam billowed out, forcing Ahab to recoil as Snake quickly picked himself back up and sprinted further down the corridor.

Snake checked the magazine for his Beretta. Nine rounds left, including the one in the chamber. He checked his pocket. One more spare magazine.

Snake turned the corner, seeing the hallway ended in a closed bulkhead door, and pressed himself against the wall as he leaned out to check for the pursuing Ahab. After several seconds of no contact, Snake quickly backed up to the bulkhead and started spinning the wheel on the bulkhead door to open it.

Swinging it slightly ajar, Snake crept through the entrance, closing the door behind him, swinging his head and pistol around in every direction as he observed his new surroundings.

It was a large chamber with six steel shipping containers arranged in the middle, uniformly placed and spaced several yards apart from each other. Above, there was a steel catwalk tracing around the exterior walls with four more bulkheads at each corner of the room next to long windows into more concrete corridors. The catwalks connected to the ground with metal ladders, and across the room with steel bridges and railings reinforced with low metal walls.

Snake looked at the containers—a few of them were open, and inside he found stacked wooden crates, many of which were opened to reveal various types of ordnance. He'd found himself in some kind of ammunition depot.

Before he could properly enter and examine the contents of one of the containers, he heard a piercing whistling sound and reflexively dove into one of the containers to narrowly dodge an explosive projectile slamming into the ground behind him.

Chunks of shrapnel flew from the air at high speeds both from the projectile's casing and from pieces torn from the sides of the container. Snake dropped to the ground and covered his head with his arms as he pressed himself against the walls to minimize the chance of getting shredded himself.

Once the explosion subsided, he lifted his head and pulled himself into a crouch to look out one of the freshly made holes in the containers walls. On one of the upper catwalks, he saw Big Boss, prosthetic hand reattached and hauling a short portable missile launcher over his shoulder.

Snake took aim towards Ahab and fired three rounds through the hole, forcing his adversary to back away from the railing. Not wasting any time, Snake continued to move down the length of the container and sprinted into the next one across.

He heard the slamming open of multiple doors, and the sound of approaching footsteps. Snake looked around the container he was in and grabbed a Heckler & Koch MP5 from one of the open crates, taking up a defensive position around one of the container's open doors in time to see more Outer Heaven troopers filing in and taking positions along the exterior railing. Some troopers were sliding down the ladders and moving among the containers in an attempt to flush him out.

He'd found himself hemmed inside of a kill box.

Snake looked up above. The room was lit by hanging fluorescent lights. Snake took aim at the bulbs with his pistol and shattered as many lights as possible that were in reach, plunging his side of the chamber into darkness.

As Snake haphazardly scurried around the exterior of the chamber to the next container over while waiting for his eyes to adjust to the new lighting condition, he heard somebody call for NODs. Snake cursed to himself, pulling out his lighter as he crept into the open container above him.

He flicked the lighter, illuminating the contents of the container for scant few seconds just long enough to identify the materials in there with him. Just as quickly, he snapped the lighter closed, hoping that the glow didn't last long enough to give away his position.

Snake grabbed a satchel from one of the crates, as well as a couple of frag grenades that he hurriedly stuffed into his pockets. He poked his head out from the open doors of the opposite side of the container and ducked back in just as a hail of bullets rained down on his position. He pulled the pins on both grenades and tossed them around the corner before running back the way he came.

Drawing his Beretta, Snake blind-fired behind him four times, then primed and tossed the satchel charge behind him. As soon as he'd heard the footsteps in the container after he'd left it, he pressed the button on the detonator, exploding the container and its contents. He dove behind the adjacent container to protect himself from the shrapnel.

Circling back around, he spotted the body of a dead trooper and pulled the helmet with the attached night vision goggles off of the head to strap it onto his own.

"Time to even the playing field," he muttered as he flipped the NODs down over his eyes.

The chamber was cast in a washed-out green glow. He stayed between the containers, careful to keep him out of sight of the troopers on the catwalk.

Let them come to me, he thought to himself.

He holstered the Beretta and raised the MP5, unfolding its detachable stock to brace against his shoulder. With only the one magazine, he had just thirty rounds to work with, so he needed to make it count unless or until he could find more in the containers.

Glancing into an undamaged container, he noted what looked like small steel toolboxes. He ran up to one, quickly opening it and retrieving a flare, which he tucked into his belt. He turned around just in time to see a few more mercs with night vision turning the corner around the opposite container and put himself behind one of the doors for cover as he opened up on them.

Bullets tore through the bodies of two men and the remaining two returned fire as they took up defensive positions behind the corrugated steel walls. Snake moved to advance, only to find his forearm grabbed by another merc sneaking around the side.

The merc raised his knee to Snake's groin, and Snake was forced to use his free hand to check the blow. Thinking quickly, Snake grabbed the flare and struck his opponent in the head, loosening his grip. He then screwed his eyes shut and tore off the flare's cap before shoving the lit end into the merc's face, sending him reeling in pain as his flesh was seared. Snake yanked the NODs off of his head before opening his eyes again.

The mercenaries with NODs were forced to lift up their goggles, blinking the spots from their eyes. Taking advantage of this sudden blindness, Snake expended the rest of the ammunition in his MP5 cutting down the rest of the troopers.

Snake heard a series of beeps and looked back up toward the balconies to see Ahab launching three small micro missiles that sailed up into the air and then suddenly shifted direction to home in on Snake's location. He took a chance and scooped up the still burning flare and tossed it a short distance away before diving in the opposite direction between the exterior wall and the wrecked container.

Two of the missiles changed direction toward the flare, while the third hit the ground where Snake was standing seconds ago. The updraft from the explosion increased Snake's momentum as he dove, sending him rolling some distance.

Snake coughed, his ribs creaking as he wheezed. He shook his head as he tried to regain his senses. He hoped he didn't have a concussion (or more likely, that he wasn't worsening an already existing one). He was losing ground and running out of tricks. He needed to finish this, one way or another.

Snake raised his head and saw that he'd rolled within spitting distance of a ladder that was thankfully in a darker area of the room. He picked himself up, drew his Beretta, and got to climbing.

After he got to the top, he had to quickly duck to narrowly avoid getting scalped by an incoming bullet. He blind fired over the edge, then hauled himself up onto the catwalk, spending the last two bullets in his magazine to put down two more troopers.

As quickly as he could, Snake crawled on the catwalk behind the steel barrier under the railing to give himself a moment to reload his last mag. Just as he pulled back the slide to load the chamber, he was met with the sight of Ahab sprinting at an absurdly high speed around the corner ahead of him, carrying one of the Outer Heaven custom rifles.

Ahab stopped briefly in his tracks to throw an object that Snake couldn't see and then raised his rifle to fire a round at the object at the top of its arc. Snake could only look on dumbfounded as somehow the damned thing changed its trajectory and somehow moved toward him even faster.

What the hell? Snake thought to himself.

Snake wasn't sure what it was Ahab threw, but he knew that it didn't matter: he rolled back around the corner and sprinted along the catwalk to the opposite side of the room into the waiting arms of the last three Outer Heaven troopers.

Immediately as Snake heard the explosion behind him, Snake raised his pistol to take shots at the mercs, firing six shots, five of which killed two troopers outright while the sixth bullet pierced the third merc's shoulder to prevent him from raising his rifle. The merc opted to not even try, choosing instead to drop the rifle entirely and draw his combat knife.

The enemy lunged at Snake with the blade, who dodged to the merc's other side, not seeing the feint. The trooper grabbed the wrist of Snake's gun hand and pulled, stabbing toward Snake's carotid artery. Snake kept moving with the trooper's pull, using his own momentum to swing around out of the enemy's stabbing motion, getting his bicep sliced up for his trouble.

Snake then stepped forward with his left foot, moving inward toward the enemy's body to give him less room for the knife that was outside of both their personal bubbles, and then raised his free arm to slam the side of his elbow into the troopers' forehead. This gave Snake the few milliseconds he needed to curve his arm around the merc's neck and pull it back while he swept the leg, sending the Outer Heaven soldier to the ground.

Snake wasted no time, drawing his own knife and plunging it into the enemy's neck and raising his Beretta to point ahead of him as once again Ahab was sprinting toward him. Ahab threw another object which beaned Snake in the head before he could react and within seconds the older man was striking the younger's chest and abdomen.

Before Snake knew it, he had tripped backward over the trooper's body and found himself lying on his back. He reached for his pistol, only to have Ahab kick it away. Ahab reached forward with his prosthetic, and Snake realized that Ahab must have grabbed a new hand, because this one was a different much brighter color, and had the fingertips removed in favor of some kind of small nubs on the ends of the digits.

Of course, Snake quickly realized what the nubs were for when the hand flexed open, and the fingers crackled brightly with lightning. Snake grabbed the wrist and forearm with both hands, pushing to keep the electric current running from the fingertips from making contact with his body.

He flailed with his feet, but Big Boss was already lowered over his torso, leaving Snake with nothing to kick. Snake felt with his foot that his lower half was on top of the merc he'd just killed. The head of the body and the knife stuck in the neck just out of Snake's reach. He didn't want to let go of the arm and risk getting shocked, but his arms were getting tired. It was only a few seconds before that stun arm of the Boss's made contact with Snake's chest.

Snake tried to use his leverage to push himself downward and slide between Ahab's legs. He scooted a couple of inches before his adversary dropped his knee painfully onto Snake's gut, pinning him as Ahab used his flesh and blood forearm to put pressure on Snake's neck.

Snake coughed, twisting his neck to keep his Adam's Apple from getting crushed as he tucked in his chin to keep the Boss's arm from cutting the circulation in his neck. He felt just a slight bit weaker as the shock hand came dangerously closer to him.

The small distance Snake slid before being pinned down was just enough for Snake to feel the knife in the dead merc's neck with his feet. Grunting, Snake used his feet to wrench the knife upward toward them both, sending it clattering next to Snake. Hoping that any shock he experiences will be non-lethal, Snake used one hand to let go of Ahab's prosthetic to grab the knife and stabbed Big Boss in the leg just as the stun hand made contact, sending electrical shocks through them both.

Ahab fell off of Snake, and the two men gasped in pain as they both tried to regain their senses from the sudden seizure. Snake pulled himself up onto his elbows and dragged himself back toward his pistol. Grabbing the Beretta, Snake swung back around to face Ahab, who was already hobbling away as he aimed at him with his own sidearm.

Snake pushed up the merc's body as a makeshift meat shield and fired from the ground over the body at the same time that Ahab did. Snake ducked his head behind his shield, feeling one of the bullets Ahab fired tear through the outer flesh of his arm. He heard a yell as he hit Ahab, sending the remaining bullets Ahab fired his way sailing over his head.

Snake heard the sound of one of the bulkheads opening and lifted himself up to see Ahab nursing a new wound in his thigh. Snake grabbed the empty magazine from the ground that Ahab had thrown at him earlier and chucked it straight at the older man's head.

The chunk of steel glanced off of Ahab's horn, making the warlord turn and slam his head in the doorway. Rather than fight back, Ahab continued on, disappearing through the aperture. Snake limped on after him.

The corridors were dark, lit only with red and yellow hazard lights. Snake looked down as he passed through the threshold and saw that his prey had left droplets of blood scattered on the floor as he retreated. Snake tore off his sleeve and tightly tied it around the bullet wound in his arm.

As Snake slowly made his way forward, breathing heavily, he heard a voice sound on the intercom, echoing through the empty concrete passageway:

"ATTENTION. ATTENTION. All personnel are to evacuate from Outer Heaven, effective immediately. Repeat: all personnel are to evacuate from Outer Heaven immediately. Enemy aerial ordnance incoming from south-by-southwest. Expected arrival in T-minus ninety minutes."

Snake stopped as he thought about these words. Did FOXHOUND order the air strike? Was it to cover up Big Boss's involvement or were there people actually loyal in FOXHOUND's camp? Snake shook his head. An hour wasn't as much time as it sounded. He needed to finish this and get out.

Snake was bathed in the dim red emergency lighting as he followed the blood trail. Big Boss was a few paces ahead of him, his forehead bleeding profusely from his horn. He constantly had to wipe blood from his head to keep it from getting into his eyes.

Snake stepped forward, and Big Boss froze, quickly spinning around to point his gun at him. Ahab fired and Snake quickly moved out of the way. But the Boss's aim was already bad to begin with, and the bullet whizzed right past him.

Snake almost ran into an empty doorway, before he noticed that Ahab was wildly pointing his pistol in different directions. It was like Ahab couldn't see him, even though he was staring right at Snake. Had he been blinded somehow? Snake walked slowly forward under the crimson light, being careful to make no sound. He aimed his Beretta and fired twice. One bullet winged Ahab in the shoulder, and he fell straight through a hall window into what Snake saw to be a med bay.

Snake rushed forward away from the light as Ahab dragged himself painfully across the floor of broken glass leaving a streak of blood behind him. As Snake reached the open window, Big Boss turned, his eye focused on Snake as he raised his gun, clearly able to see him. Snake dropped to the floor mere seconds before the bullets went flying, feeling the wind from their wake over his head.

He heard Big Boss's grunting as he crawled across the floor. All that glass couldn't have been comfortable.

"You've got nowhere to go, Ahab," Snake taunted.

He heard gasping and grunting as Big Boss pulled himself bodily from the floor. There was crashing in the med bay. Had he fallen? Or broken something he used for leverage, maybe?

Snake moved up over the bottom of the busted window. Big Boss was gone. The blood trail led out another door. Snake kicked some of the remaining glass out off of the windowsill and vaulted himself into the room.

Crunching was heard under Snake's footsteps as he slowly stalked the red trail before him. He tried to keep his breathing steady even as the adrenaline moved through his bloodstream. He peeked out the open door, and ducked back as shots were fired.

Snake blind fired once around the doorway, then advanced and let off another couple of shots towards the retreating form of his old mentor as it dashed back into the shadows down the hall. Both missed.

Snake half-limped, half-jogged down the corridor, turning the corner to see Big Boss clutching a crimson splotch on his thigh. Snake aimed his Beretta, his vision defocusing slightly in the amber lighting.

No, don't lose it now…

A bullet ripped through Big Boss's mid-section, making him stumble. A second winged him in the shoulder just under the collarbone, and the momentum caused the warlord to spin in a macabre pirouette and sail to the ground.

Snake stepped into the red light before him while Ahab feebly used his prosthetic arm to crawl slowly backwards to the wall at the end of the corridor where it split into a T-junction. Ahab raised his pistol to aim at Snake. Snake tensed, ready to dodge, but Ahab was aiming nowhere near where Snake was. Two piercing shots rang out, bullets whizzing right by Snake on either side.

The slide on Ahab's pistol locked, the magazine having run dry. He sighed and let his hand with the gun drop to the ground.

Snake walked forward calmly, confidently. There was no need to be cautious anymore.

"All this running," Snake said, "never would have pegged you as a coward, Boss. Then again, I never would have thought you to be a liar and a traitor, either."

Snake stopped walking just a couple of paces in front of the dying man, looming over him. He lowered himself into a squat, so he could look straight into Big Boss's eyes while they talked. Ahab, for his part, said nothing, his eye staring into Snake's soul.

It looked empty, hollow. Almost unfocused. Ahab's skin was rapidly becoming a sallow pale color. If it wasn't for Ahab's shallow breathing and light coughing up of red splatters, Snake would have almost thought he was already dead.

Snake scowled, pressing the barrel of his gun against Ahab's chest. "So, this your whole gimmick, Ahab? Bring in young, impressionable idiots, train them into monsters with delusions of grandeur, and then send them into the meat grinder when it's convenient? That the idea?"

Ahab's eye focused and bore into Snake's face with a glare full of venom.

"Who else is in on it?" Snake demanded. "Did Gray Fox know about you? What about Commander Miller? Anyone else in FOXHOUND, or in the Pentagon? Or are you just a lone opportunist, giving dumb kids like me empty promises of valor and glory?"

"Glory?" Ahab coughed.

"There's no glory to be found out here on the battlefield. What there is to be found here, what I gave them, my men…was a sense of purpose—a reason. To fight, to live…and to die." Ahab sighed. "All I did was give my men that which was taken from them by their homelands…a purpose. Same as what you found with FOXHOUND."

Ahab grimaced and leaned his head back to rest it against the wall. "Ironically, I was giving them the one thing I couldn't have for myself."

Snake's biting retort was caught in his throat and what leaked out between his teeth instead was curiosity: "What do you mean?"

"I'm saying my people fought for themselves, and for their own sense of purpose. I fight because I was put here by someone else. A discarded tool for someone else's war." Ahab broke out into another coughing fit.

"At the end of the day, I'm not much different from you," he sighed.

"I'm nothing like you," Snake growled, drawing himself up to his full height.

Ahab chuckled, sending more red droplets down his chin in rivulets. His grey-blue eye sparked with dark amusement, and the spark hidden behind the cascade of blood and his pitch-black iron horn completed the picture of a demon comfortable in his element. The Demon's lips pulled back in a toothy smile, which looked unnatural on the scarred, perpetually tired visage.

"No?" he asked incredulously, staring Snake down. "A lone soldier, sent on a suicide mission in enemy territory, meeting with a ramshackle rebel army of a losing war. You win against unbeatable odds and inspire them to believe that their lost cause is actually winnable and make yourself into a leader of men giving them purpose and the second wind necessary to keep fighting by giving them an example, a hero to unite them."

Snake shook his head defiantly. "I'm not a hero. The rebels already had a leader: his name is Kyle Schneider. They didn't need me."

The Demon laughed again. "They were already dying. It was only a matter of time before Outer Heaven ground them into dust. Maybe it would've taken days. Maybe weeks. But it was soon. That was before you came along. Without you to intervene inspire them, their end was a foregone conclusion.

You can tell yourself you're not a hero or an icon. But that won't make it true. The moment you started freeing their prisoners, you gave them hope and reignited their sense of purpose. But you, Snake, you're different from them. They already had a reason to fight and die, they had a cause to kill for before you came along—all you did was give them direction. But you had no such purpose. You're only here because someone else ordered you to be."

The Demon tried to shrug and wince. The humor in his empty smile failed to reach his eye as he continued, "And so you see, you are no different from me—we're both pawns who stained themselves with blood to reach the other side of the board and in so doing, we got elevated to royalty to lead other pieces into battle. The only difference between you and I is that I have seen the hands of the players who direct us. I tried to rebel, to take control of the game and seize something for myself and my army, but, well…" he gestured vaguely around him with a limp arm, as if to say, 'look where that got me.'

"But at the end of the game, you're still just a pawn, Snake," the Demon finished. "A janitor sent to clean up someone else's mess. Nothing more."

Overhead, the intercom blared into the empty halls:

"ATTENTION. ATTENTION. Enemy aerial ordnance incoming from the south; Intel Team has confirmed that ordnance includes Bunker Busting bombs. Enemy engagement is not advised. All personnel are to evacuate from Outer Heaven, effective immediately. Repeat: all personnel are to evacuate from Outer Heaven immediately. Expected arrival in T-minus sixty minutes."

The Demon grunted, raising a hand to point to Snake's left to a bulkhead at the end of the hall. "There's a ladder that will take you to a stairwell leading to a parking garage. The garage opens into the northbound tunnel away from the complex. Here…"

The Demon unclipped a square metal and plastic brick from his belt and held it out for Snake to take. "The button on that device will open a holographic map that will help you navigate away from the base. The battery's life is low, but there should be enough juice left to get you to the nearest town."

Snake looked from the device to the dying man before him. "Why are you giving me this? Why are you helping me?"

"Think of it as a gesture of respect; a gift from one blood-stained monster to another." The Demon's eye flutters. His breathing becomes shallower. "Look at me. I'm not making it out of here, no matter what I do. Metal Gear is disabled, soon to be destroyed along with all the evidence of what I tried to build. If you manage to survive, then there'll be at least one person left to remember us."

Snake raised his Beretta, pointing it at Ahab's chest. The words come out dripping with hatred: "No one's going to remember you."

He squeezed the trigger once, then twice. Then he kept squeezing until his last four bullets were spent and the slide locked open. His finger kept squeezing, like some kind of reflex. It took him until Ahab's body slumped to the side and his head hit the ground before he realized no more shots were forthcoming. The pistol dropped from his hand, the thud of its impact on the linoleum floor barely reaching Snake's ears.

Ahab's fingers flexed, as if feebly attempting to reach for something that Snake couldn't see. The last breath hissed out from Ahab's lips, loosing a word that almost went unheard by Snake:

"Quiet…."

The light died in Ahab's eye. The Demon is dead.

Big Boss is dead.

Snake clipped the electronic device that he had been given to his belt and loped left down the T-junction to the open bulkhead door at the end of the hall. Just like Big Boss had told him, there was a tall steel ladder going straight up a shaft above, leading to a short metal stairwell.

Snake didn't have time to think: the bombing run would occur in a little over thirty-seven minutes. He wiped the blood on his palms off onto his pants to improve his grip and clambered up the vertical path as fast as could before limping painfully up the two flights of stairs. The emergency exit door led out into a parking garage.

There was a small handful of guards rushing about, loading up onto Jeeps, transport trucks and 4x4s. A man raced out of a guard station and spotted Snake, running up to him.

"What team are you with?" the guard demanded, looking the injured Snake up and down.

Oh, right, Snake thought. He was still wearing the camo pants and undershirt of the Outer Heaven uniform from when he'd infiltrated the R&D building. The guard must have thought Snake was part of the defending teams ordered in by Ahab to protect Metal Gear, given his injuries.

Snake tried to think up some kind of excuse, some sort of believable story to keep this guard from gunning him down where he stood, but nothing came out of his mouth except a strangled grunt followed by a hissing gasp as he grabbed at one of his many open wounds, trying to keep pressure on.

The guard shook his head. "We don't have time. We've got bombers coming in. Are you good to drive, or should I find you a spot on one of the trucks?"

"I should be okay to drive," Snake said, feeling relief wash over him as he allowed himself to just go with the flow of the conversation. "Give me one of the Jeeps or ATVs, and I'll take up the rear guard."

The guard nodded, heading back towards the guard station.

"And hey," Snake called out. The guard looked back quizzically, impatient.

"A gun, too," Snake hedged. "I ran out of ammo and had to ditch mine."

"The rebels gave you trouble?" the guard asked.

Snake nodded. The movement hurt, and his face was pained as he answered honestly, "It was a meat grinder."

Snake frowned. That was the second time he'd used that expression today. For some reason he couldn't understand, it irritated him. He shook his head to discard the inane train of thought. He needed to focus—the blood loss must be getting to him, he thought to himself.

The guard nodded sympathetically and trotted into the guard station, coming out with an MP5 and a key ring. He tossed the key to Snake, who caught it with one hand, and handed the submachine gun to Snake, who gingerly draped the strap over his shoulders. The guard gestured to an ATV waiting nearby.

"Take that one and follow closely behind. If we get separated, rendezvous at Sakrivier Railway Station to the north."

Snake nodded. "Got it. Thanks."

Snake mounted the ATV 4x4, inserted the key, then gunned the engine. He followed the makeshift convoy of Outer Heaven evacuees to the shutters, which the guard station quickly opened up. The convoy peeled out into the wide open tunnel, the vehicles spreading out across each side and gunning their engines as fast as they could go without running into each other.

Snake never really thought of himself as a religious person, but he found himself in that moment praying that the rebels had all managed to successfully evacuate to safety as he twisted the throttle of the ATV. But there was no way of knowing for sure until Snake got above ground to use the radio.

As promised, Snake took up a rear guard position while following the convoy, finding himself joined by two other ATVs. Outnumbered and injured, he hoped to keep blending in as long as possible until they at least exited the tunnels. By then, he needed to find an opportunity to separate from the group so that he could contact Kyle and Gray Fox and determine everyone's status.

In ten minutes, the convoy had reached the tunnel's exit, which deposited them onto a dirt highway running northward roughly parallel to the western river. Snake slowed down a little to let the other vehicles ahead of him gain a substantial lead on him, then abruptly turned off his headlights and turned right off the road down a hill in the general direction of the eastern mountains and hills. He chanced a look behind him to see that the convoy continued on without him as far as he could tell, then turned the handlebars to drive himself underneath the branches of a tree out of sight.

Snake turned on his radio. He only had at most twenty minutes left. He tuned into Kyle's frequency.

"Architect, this is Solid Snake. Come in."

He was met with the buzz of radio static.

"Architect, do you read?"

Once again there was no response. Snake changed frequencies.

"Gray Fox, this is Solid Snake. I've got intel that says they've started the bombing run. Estimated time out is twenty mikes. Did you and Architect successfully extract from the kill zone?"

Snake didn't hear if there was a response. He had just tuned the frequency to the wider Resistance band when a flash of light erupted behind him. Snake whirled around, saw a few ATVs and a Jeep with the roof detached that had broken off from the convoy idling at the crest of the hill overlooking him. The tree obscured his face even as the area was bathed in light.

"Hey," one of the drivers called out. "What are you doing down there? Bombers'll be here any minute, and we're still danger close!"

Snake couldn't say he was making a call, or they would get suspicious. Better to play dumb.

"I, uh, I had to stop and take a leak," Snake said stupidly.

"In the middle of an evacuation?" the driver replied incredulously.

"…Yes?" Snake said, waving them away. "Look, I'll meet you at the RV. Just go on without me."

"We're not going to leave you behind, you fucking idiot. Just hold it till we get there!"

Snake thought he could hear engines in the distance. He didn't have time for this. He turned on his ATV and pulled back the throttle on the handlebars. The troopers cried out and started to pursue him. Snake didn't know if he was made or not, but he had to assume he was, given that he was still injured and covered in blood.

He reached around and grabbed the MP5 hanging from his shoulder straps. When he found a bit of unobstructed path in front of him, he whirled back and extended his left arm to open fire on the ATV troopers.

They cursed as they evaded the clumsy gunfire. Snake haphazardly juggled aiming the MP5 and maintaining a steady course on his vehicle. He took out a couple of drivers, leaving one ATV and the Jeep. The passengers of the Jeep started returning fire, and Snake was forced to take evasive maneuvers between the rocks and acacia trees and bushes he passed along with the wildly varying elevation.

As he traveled, Snake continued to shout into the radio. "This is Solid Snake broadcasting to all rebel forces in the Outer Heaven AO! I am currently being pursued by enemy forces while en route to evac. I have received intel stating that either government or NATO forces have organized a bombing run of the area. The AO is now unsafe. If you haven't evacuated, get the hell out of Dodge now!"

Snake ducked to avoid enemy fire and ducked again to narrowly avoid getting clotheslined by a low-hanging branch. Out of nowhere, the enemy ATV swerved out from behind a nearby boulder and tried to ram him.

Snake hit the brakes to dodge, getting tailgated by the Jeep. Snake let go of the handlebars as the Jeep rear-ended him, sending himself flying into the windshield. He gripped the edge of the passenger's side of the windshield for dear life, trying desperately to pull himself to his feet from his position on the car's hood.

He could see the passengers in the backseat unsteadily attempting to stand and level their weapons at him. He ducked behind the windshield as they fired a short burst, then swung himself to cling to the passenger-side door, his right hand free to aim his MP5 over the doors and clumsily cut down the occupants.

One of the backseat passengers' head exploded and the momentum sent his body flying out over the spare tire in the back out into the night. The other got winged in the shoulder and dropped his gun. The driver pulled out a pistol and aimed at Snake, and Snake weaved to his left and hauled himself over the doors into the backseat.

He grabbed the passenger's gun hand and kicked him under the chin to send him bodily sailing over the opposite door, then swung the barrel of his MP5 to knock the pistol out of the hand of the driver. The ATV rider drove up along the side of the Jeep to aim at Snake, forcing him to crouch into the floorboard.

The Jeep driver swung the wheel erratically, trying to make Snake lose his balance and throw him out of the vehicle. Snake fell over into the front passenger seat, repeatedly kicking his right foot into the driver's head and torso while he fumbled at the floorboards for the pistol with one hand and trying to protect his groin from return strikes with the other.

Snake managed to get a firm grip on the fallen Beretta, and the driver yanked the wheel to the side as he leaned away from Snake's boot.

The Jeep swerved into a ditch which caught the left front wheel and caused the car to tip over, dumping both Snake and the driver out rolling into the dirt. The enemy ATV swung in a wide radius around the fallen vehicle while Snake, still maintaining his death grip on the pistol, painfully pushed himself up into a crouch and fired at the ATV, bursting one of the tires and sending ATV and rider down a steep slope into the river.

Without missing a beat, Snake limped toward the Jeep driver, who was writhing on the ground and finished him off with a bullet to the head.

Snake leaned against the wrecked Jeep, breathing hard. In the distance, he heard engines to the south. The bombers were fast approaching. He tuned the radio to the rebel frequency.

"Solid Snake to South African Resistance. I can hear the bombers in the distance. Please confirm status. Architect, did you and your people make it out okay?"

No response. The sound of the planes was getting louder.

"Snake to Gray Fox, please confirm status of rebel evac. Did you all make it out?"

Still nothing more than white noise. The low roar of the bombers was getting louder. Snake could see the navigation lights on the planes' wingtips appearing on the horizon.

"All rebels, respond," Snake shouted desperately. "Architect! Fox! Luke! Imke! Somebody talk to me! Is anybody on this line!? Kyle, answer me, goddammit!"

There was a crackle on the radio. A hushed whisper was heard, garbled by some interference.

"This is Imke," said the voice.

"Imke," Snake said in relief. "The bombers are here. Please tell me you're all okay. Where's Architect and Fox?"

"They're both here," Imke said. "We're okay. We're alive. But, Snake—Kyle and Fox are—"

The static returned to muffle whatever it was she was saying.

"Say again, Imke?"

The static cleared. "—loaded on-Kyle is unconscious. Fox is—"

The planes were now directly over Outer Heaven. They dipped in altitude. The navigation lights were all that Snake could see in the darkness of the night sky, but he could feel them getting ready to drop their payloads.

"—too late. Get out of here, Snake. Save yourself," Imke finished.

Alarm bells rang in Snake's head. "Imke, are you and the rest of the rebels still on the base?" Snake demanded.

"We'll be okay, Snake. Stop worrying about us and get out while you can."

No, no, no, no….

Snake, feeling panicked, tried in vain to try to lift up the Jeep, as if his strength alone could get it back on its wheels so he could drive himself back to Outer Heaven and go rescue the rebels personally.

"Don't you fucking dare give up, Imke," Snake growled.

A light lit up in the distance. The ground shook, and Snake could hear rumbling as buildings collapsed. He could see Outer Heaven lit up like a birthday candle. The nav lights he saw moved away from the base.

Maybe the rebels didn't get caught in the blast. Snake hailed Imke again. "Rebel Teams, what's your status? Please tell me you were able to get to safety." There was coughing on the other line, and the sound of something loud. An engine? Were they driving a convoy?

"Snake," Imke whispered. "I won't be able to stay on the line much longer…"

The nav lights turned around and started to move back toward Outer Heaven. They were making another pass. Snake's blood froze solid, and his teeth clenched. He found himself unable to respond, his tongue turning into a lump of coal in his mouth.

"Snake…Thank you."

Once again, the ground shook. Snake fell to his knees. The only thing he could see was the towering flame in the distance signaled the death knell of everyone Snake had promised to see make it through the battle. The radio had once more turned to static.

"Imke," Snake called out. There was no answer.

"Architect, respond! Fox, do you read me?! Luke, answer me! Loyiso, please pick up. All rebels, this is Solid Snake! Please respond!"

Snake punched the ground. "Talk to me, damn you!"

The white noise continued to buzz. There was no reply.

Snake, in a fit of rage and grief, picked up a nearby tire iron that had fallen out of the Jeep, and began savagely swinging at the Jeep's metal carcass. The rear view mirrors snapped free, the windshield shattered and folded out of its mount. The metal doors were dented, the taillights smashed, the seats were torn.

Snake kept beating the vehicle over and over, trying to wrench some kind of satisfaction from the violence, but it all felt so impotent. When he couldn't do it anymore, Snake flung the tire iron as far as his injured arms could throw it, and the momentum sent him spinning and tumbling to the ground. He screamed, and the hoarseness of his voice rendered him quiet against the sound of the distant explosions and flames, ensuring that even the primal anguish from his vocal cords couldn't properly express itself.

Snake rolled over onto his back, and all he saw was the night sky, lit by Outer Heaven's destruction, which served to cruelly hammer home what he knew to be the truth: no one else had made it out.

Snake was completely and utterly alone.

Notes:

I'm back, after a bit of a break, and here we have Outer Heaven celebrating 4th of July weekend with some fireworks (I kid, I kid)!

So, in all seriousness, I had some difficulty with trying to figure out the Big Boss final boss fight and trying to find a way to keep the stakes up enough the whole time so that the momentum would keep moving throughout the whole first half of the chapter or so. I gave him Outer Heaven mobs to assist, and figured I'd have Ahab pull out all the stops-his rocket arm, the Honey Bee MANPAD, the stun arm, his CQC. I wanted to make it clear that in a straight-up fight Ahab would have Snake beat, so Snake would have to rely on his own wits and cleverness plus a little bit of luck in order to win. In keeping with Metal Gear boss fight tradition, I gave Ahab his own dying speech that was designed to mostly go over Snake's head, but would have enough details in it to make fans of MGSV pay attention. Here's hoping I was able to do Ahab justice here. Honestly, this was one of the more challenging chapters to write for, even though it's one of my shortest.

This essentially marks the end of the canon events from the original Metal Gear MSX game, which means for the rest of the fic we're back into original fiction territory much like what we had in the first six and a half chapters. From here, we're going to chronicle Snake's journey out of South Africa and back to the States to tie up some loose ends. Don't worry, there's still plenty of story left to tell. When I got to around Chapter Seventeen, I started writing notes mapping out the rest of this fic, and I put it as having about six more chapters left-either that, or five more chapters and an epilogue. Since I'm averaging out about one to two chapters a month, I hope to have this monster of a fic writing project finished and done by the end of this year, if not sooner.

Tune in in hopefully a few weeks (no promises) for Chapter 20, where Snake has to figure out what to do now that he's made it out of Outer Heaven alone with no real backup left.

Chapter 20: The River

Summary:

With the fall of Outer Heaven's headquarters now complete, Snake finds himself alone in the wilderness, his only friends and allies having either betrayed him, died, or gone missing. Battered and broken, our hero must now figure out what he must do next to survive and find a way out of South Africa.

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SIX – 1911 HOURS

APPROX. 25 MILES NORTH OF OUTER HEAVEN

 

Snake didn’t know how long he had laid there, just watching the distant fire and smoke rising up into the sky. The engines of the bomber aircraft had long faded into the distance. The will to move had been stolen from him—he was nothing more than a lump of flesh marinating in its own pain. The only other sensations he was cognizant of was the sight of the destruction far ahead on the horizon.

The brilliant red, orange, and gold of Outer Heaven’s demise lit up the darkening sky like a miniature sun, turning the clouds around it into a deep, bloody crimson, lined with the inky black of chemical smoke polluting the atmosphere above.

The bright light threw the rest of the surrounding landscape into a stark relief. The light of the bombings were so bright that the actual sunset was dullened in comparison, and the parts of the sky that oversaw the rest of the ancient arid landscape that surrounded this hot pocket of human activity had its dusky essence choked to death, suffocating into blackness.

Snake thought of the Outer Heaven evacuation convoy. Their engines’ sound had also faded into nothing. The only sound that Snake could still hear was the rushing water of the Vis river to the west. There were no animal sounds. No doubt the wildlife in the area had retreated into the safety of their dark homes at the first sign of human invasion.

In the back of Snake’s mind, there was an idle thought. Suppose the evac convoy realize they’re missing people. Will they come back to investigate? Will they find him here, lying among the dead? Will he be found alive and get put down like an injured horse, or will they think of him as just another dead body and pass him by?

Or perhaps he will just lay here to waste away, a corpse among corpses, dead in disguise. Perhaps the death of their comrades will be just another unsolved mystery to confuse them after the sudden disappearance of their dear leader back at base.

Or maybe no one will bother to come back at all, and Snake will just be another anonymous body sacrificed to the fires of war, left to be picked clean by carrion in some unremarkable wasteland.

The idea of laying there and just giving up was strangely attractive to Snake in the moment. He remembered Big Boss’s words at his induction into FOXHOUND, telling him never to give up even in the face of insurmountable odds.

But Big Boss was a liar, a traitor. Why should Snake ever take his advice? And he was so tired, so exhausted, the dull pain welling up inside of him and covering every inch of his useless carcass. Would it really be so bad, he wondered, to simply close his eyes and fall into that eternal, peaceful sleep?

To surrender himself to quiet oblivion: it sounded so comforting. So beautiful.

But something else deep within him stirred: a primal, bestial growl that demanded that he continued moving, insisted that he continue fighting to live. It wasn’t about the mission anymore, not really. Nothing so precise, so complex, or intentional; it was not a voice related to his sense of rationality or anything else so identifiably human.

Rather, it was simply that inner animalistic desire to bleed, kill, eat, and survive.

Sensing his body acting on autopilot, he felt himself push up onto his feet in spite of his limbs’ screaming in protest. He looked around at the wreckage and the bloodbath surrounding him.

The ATV was wrecked with a ruined tire, and the Jeep was flipped over. Snake wasn’t sure he’d be strong enough to flip it back right side up even if he wasn’t already so thoroughly injured. He cocked his head to look at some of the debris underneath the open-air cab of the Jeep. A locked toolbox had fallen out and burst open. Among the wrenches and sockets, a flashlight had rolled out onto the dirt.

Snake winced as he slowly lowered himself onto his hands and knees, crawling forward and reaching underneath the wrecked Jeep to grasp at the light. Once he’d retrieved it, he pressed the button on the end, illuminating the ground beneath him in a bright spot.

Bright enough.

Snake nodded to himself, an expression of satisfaction at the find. Though he wasn’t sure why. The gesture felt foreign, alien. Like something else had taken hold of his body, puppeting it. The identity of the thing that he referred to as “Solid Snake” had willingly let go of the wheel and was now just along for the ride while that animalistic Id had taken over to direct him.

It might not have been that cold, dark, and safe oblivion that he’d privately wished for, but the idea was close enough to provide him with some degree of comfort. To let his own conscious Ego take a backseat while the monster in the back of his head took over.

The beast used the flashlight to examine the immediate area, noted a couple of corpses splayed out on the dirt, blood splatters painting the ground around them a deep crimson, trailing off to show where they had impacted and slid against the ground. It performed a cursory examination of the corpses, retrieving a pistol and relieving the fallen of their loaded magazines.

It’s not like they were going to need them anymore, after all.

In the recesses of Snake’s mind, he dimly recalled the device that Ahab had given to him before being left to bleed out and die. His scarred and bloodied hands responded to this mental impulse and retrieved the rectangular device.

The metal brick looked like some kind of remote or futuristic walkie-talkie: there was a speaker on the bottom of its front face, and some kind of plastic or glass bulb in the center. There was an antenna hanging off of one corner, and a couple of buttons and a tiny thumbstick on the side.

Experimentally, the hands pressed the buttons, and a light was emitted from the bulb, revealing a hologram screen that hovered in the air in front of it. A loading bar quickly moved from left to right. The loading bar had the label “iDroid ver. 4.03” above it. When the bar finished filling up, the screen quickly showed a menu with symbols that Snake was too tired to try and decipher.

The dial was turned, cycling through the menus, until his eyes brightened in recognition. A button was pressed, and the menu was replaced by a detailed map of his location and the surrounding area. It looked like it was made from satellite imagery, probably compiled from data that Outer Heaven’s Intel department had gathered by stealing from other countries’ resources—it was doubtful that Outer Heaven had space satellites of their own.

The beast didn’t care where it came from or how it worked, only that it did work. It rotated the mini stick with its thumb to zoom in and out, looking for the settlement nearest to its position. Within moments it found what it was looking for: Sakrivier railway station, approximately 14 miles north by northeast.

It would have taken Snake about four hours on foot under normal circumstances. Who knows how long it would take in his current condition? His eyes looked at the top right corner of the screen. Battery power at six percent, estimated power failure after one hour of continuous use.

Snake’s body turned towards where the river was on the map. Sakrivier was on the river upstream from his position. If he followed the river, it would take him right to his destination. He started walking west to the river Vis. He turned off the iDroid and once more let his inner beast take over to allow instinct to compensate for his deteriorating cognitive functions.

The beast kept walking, and Snake followed its lead.

It moved slowly, limping as it went. There was no rush, no need to exacerbate the painful open wounds that decorated it. The body was all too aware that it was alone out here in the wilderness and that there was no time limit to finding a place of safety. It could afford to take its time to find a place to lick its wounds.

The rush of the water soothed it as it prowled north. The sun hung low in the valley. It was only a matter of time before it would become dark and the creatures that thrived on it would emerge from the safety of their lairs to hunt. And yet, this beast felt no fear. It knew that so long as it remained near the water it would be safe.

As the skies became darker, the body looked about for a place to sleep, and found a depression in the side of a hill a way up from the water line. This likely spot was sheltered by the branches of an acacia. The dirt was soft here, and loosely packed; a decent place for the beast to make its den for the night.

The body started gathering what scant driftwood was available to construct a haphazard lean-to that was placed against the trunk of the tree that swooped up and over the ground before erupting upward into branches. Then it crawled underneath the makeshift shelter and laid down upon the sand.

There was no campfire. It wouldn’t be safe. It would be warm enough in the morning, it was decided.

The body gripped the pistol and the knife in each hand, holding them close to itself. If another wild animal were to come and see it as prey, this beast would make sure it did not go down without a bloody fight.

Satisfied in this moment of relative safety, the eyes closed, allowing Snake to take a comforting rest in oblivion.

This time, he did not dream.

 

---

 

There are over two thousand different species of fauna in the greater Karoo region of South Africa, all uniquely adapted to the arid semi-desert. About a handful of these are large mammals with a few predator species. Though the valleys and great rivers had historically recorded sightings of large species like lions, hippopotomi, leopards and black-horned rhinoceros, these days such creatures were much rarer, either hunted to near-extinction, hiding in secret away from humans, or relocated to nature reserves after humans moved in to tap the region’s underground water reserves.

This decreasing population has been further exacerbated by the dwindling numbers of larger prey animals like the once-numerous large antelope—another consequence of human introduction. The wide branching river valleys created by the escarpments that swept across the landscape and opened up to flat plateaus and small mountains are now home to much smaller fare: today, the caracal and black-backed jackal are the largest land predators to reign supreme while the martial and Verreaux’s eagles rule the skies.

These creatures typically feed on livestock and zebra, if they can get it, and are not typically aggressive or dangerous towards humans unless they are provoked, cornered, or if they perceive their young to be threatened.

When you’re among the smaller of the dominant species on the food chain and surrounded by human activity, it pays to be cautious and opportunistic. Go for the insects and invertebrates and smaller rodents and lizards, go for young antelopes and dik-diks, take the sheep, pig or goat only if the shepherd isn’t looking, and above all, defend one’s own territory from intruders—in the jackal’s case, often by using their characteristic yelps, growls, whines, or—if it’s cornered—a cackle to call for help in the event of terrirorial invasion from the African wolf, honey badger, hyenas or leopards.

For the jackal, the greatest prize of opportunity would be any injured larger mammal that’s stupid enough to wander into the territory the jackal had marked with boundaries defined by feces and urine. Jackal social groups tend to be small; one monogomous pair and the pups they and the elder children raise together. Such a meal wandering into their midst could be enough to sustain their small bodies for possibly days.

The river that flowed down from Sakrivier station down toward Outer Heaven and further through Karoo National Park made for a convenient watering hole for many such creatures. It’s often advised to travelers to stick to the roads and other places of human activity so as not to run the risk of running afoul of some animal’s territory.

But there was one human who did not heed this advisement. He was wounded, his injuries only having recently clotted to prevent further blood flow and his clothes were still stained with the fresh smell of his wounds. He’d been stumbling for hours under the African sun, following the river upstream and leaning against a large branch he’d found to use as a makeshift crutch.

As the air began to warm with the shift from early morning to dawn, this wandering prey had become the main object of interest for many glinting eyes hidden just out of his sight. The smell of its sweat and blood was pungent as the weakened creature unwittingly stumbled into jackal territory.

Three pairs of eyes watched patiently as the prey moved along the river: two mates and their adolescent pup. They’d gone without more than meager scraps for some time—the local humans had been hunting and killing both their competition and their normal prey, and with Outer Heaven watching the nearby roads, it was slim pickings for fresh meat. This new specimen wandering their lands would let them eat their fill. Their jowls salivated as they observed.

The pup trotted forward, ready to sprint towards the injured man, only to get nipped by its parents for the trouble. It wouldn’t do to rush in and give the prey enough warning to run away or strike back. Jackals are opportunistic hunters, either luring with predator calls or silently stalking small or injured animals until they can corner them.

The father leads the pup around a wide bend, while the mother trots down behind a boulder. The prey stops, alerted by the jackal’s bushy tail as it waved just out of sight. Slowly, the man animal stoops low onto one knee, placing its branch down upon the ground with its left hand while drawing a gun with its right.

The mother pauses. It recognizes the metal thing in the human’s hand, had seen it pointed by other humans at animals and other humans. When the humans flex a digit, the metal thing explodes and whatever it is pointed at dies. The mother jackal remains behind the boulder, licking her chops. The scent of blood is intoxicating, enough to override the fear response. It’s worth the risk.

In seconds, the jackal sprints forward. The human points the firearm, breathing slowly, and fires. The first bullet misses by a wide margin, the second narrowly avoids the jackal as she zigzags through the clearing and charges towards him. The third shot hits home, and the mother’s leg erupts with blood as she stumbles and falls with a yelp.

The father and pup charge from opposite sides of the man, descending upon him with hunger and fury. The man grabs his wooden crutch by the end and pushes up with his legs to swing it in a wide arc, knocking aside the pup in midair but missing the father pup as it leaps forward to sink its teeth into the man’s leg.

Dropping the branch, the man kicked his leg wildly, swinging the jackal by its head, but it refused to let go. A knife is drawn, and the blade sinks into the neck of the jackal. The father goes limp. The man-beast hobbles over to pick up the heavy branch, and leans into it, raising his pistol at the mother, who was limping away, the pup following closely behind.

The man is breathing hard, his face twisted into a permanent snarl of pain. He looks the mother jackal in the eyes—a challenge.

But jackals are opportunistic hunters, and this man-beast was proving to be much more trouble than it was worth. The mother and her pup move on so that she may lick her wounds. The man-thing sighs in relief and frustration. He looked down at the dead father, then at the bite on his leg. The jackal had taken its own chunk of flesh. But it would be the man-thing who had earned a meal, with the mother and son barely escaping with their lives.

He picked up the father jackal and slung it over his shoulder.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SEVEN – 1024 HOURS

LESS THAN HALF A MILE SOUTHWEST FROM SAKRIVIER RAILWAY STATION

 

It took far longer than it should have to get there after Snake had awoken that morning. The fight with the jackals hadn’t helped. At least the meat had provided him with a somewhat decent light breakfast he thought, trying to look on the bright side even as he limped to keep his full weight off of the leg. Snake mused to himself that it seemed nowhere was safe—even the animals in this country wanted him dead.

He followed the Vis river as far north as Tontelbros, a small village that barely qualified as a town in terms of its size. He was forced to give it a wide berth as he saw evidence of Outer Heaven patrolmen in the area, and ended up getting lost as he followed the river further north, only to check the iDroid’s map and find that the railway station was further to the east.

Cursing his luck, he was forced to hike long hours across the desert underneath the cruel sun, keeping away from the highway and moving east away from the river. It wasn’t until about ten o’clock that Snake was able to see it in the distance: there wasn’t much to see. A few small buildings placed on opposite sides of a three-way fork in the dirt road, and a small railway station.

Snake remembered when Big Boss had briefed him on the area surrounding Outer Heaven when they first landed in Cape Town. Sakrivier Railway Station was once part of the Cape Western branch of the South African Railway system (SAR), once upon a time, to transport coal heaps, dairy parcels, light goods, and other supplies between Calvinia, Sakrivier, and other locations.

Unfortunately, this station would ultimately be decommissioned after the No. 16 traincar (the last operational rail car that ran this line) would break down in October of 1967. This particular branch had seen no real use since.

Until Outer Heaven set up shop in ’91, that is. After the construction of their headquarters was completed, Outer Heaven Inc. had begun setting up forward operating bases throughout the country and had begun repairing and recommissioning the surrounding railways to move troops and supplies. As such, Sakrivier made for an ideal staging ground in the event of an evacuation.

The empty area was overrun with Outer Heaven soldiers and vehicles. As far as Snake knew, everyone who knew that he was an enemy spy was dead. He hoped by walking in maybe he could get medical attention and maybe figure out what to do next. Perhaps he could hitch a ride on one of Outer Heaven’s railcars back to civilization.

Snake sat down on a large rock to rest. He was breathing hard. He opened up the iDroid’s hologram map again. The battery was set to run out of juice and die at any moment. He wouldn’t be able to rely on it anymore without having any way to charge or replace it. If he couldn’t hitch a ride with the Outer Heaven forces, he’d need to find a physical map to navigate with.

First, he’d need to find out whether or not they were still on the lookout for a spy. He might be able to blend in with the uniform, but if his description had already been disseminated among the troops in the area, he’d need to drastically alter his plans. Snake turned on his radio and began running it through the frequencies in the hopes that he’d catch the broadband for Outer Heaven’s communications.

Instead, he heard a familiar voice say his name: “Mission Control to Solid Snake. Come in, Solid Snake, do you read? Repeat, this is Mission Control sending out an hourly transmission. If you made it out of the blast radius of the bombing run, then please respond.”

Salamander? Big Boss had put Salamander on the Mission Control support team?

Snake checked the dial on the radio. It was the original mission control frequency he’d used at the beginning of the mission, before Big Boss had him change to the alternate frequency, “for security reasons.”

Come to think of it, what was the real reason behind Big Boss having him change frequency from the official Mission Control one? Was it because they’d jammed FOXHOUND’s communications and Big Boss needed to keep FOXHOUND and the government brass out of the loop? Did that mean that there were no other traitors involved, and Big Boss truly was acting alone?

Snake skeptically side-eyed his radio. He’d been tricked once already. For all he knew, this could be another trap. But he was also stranded alone in the middle of South Africa with no identification documents or any way to secure transportation back home to the US. He had to make a decision, roll the dice.

Snake pressed the button on his radio. “This is Solid Snake to Mission Control. I read you,” he said. He spoke quietly in a hushed tone—there was no way of knowing if Outer Heaven had any troopers or radiomen in the area.

“Glad to hear you’re alive, Snake.”

“Salamander? Have you been on the Mission Control team this whole time?”

“Since the beginning. I’m mainly here to monitor communications, but I’m also serving as B.B.’s XO in his absence.”

Did Salamander know? Snake asked experimentally, “Where’s B.B. right now?”

“I don’t know. After he had you switch mission frequencies, he said he had to take care of something and left the safe house via chopper. After the start of the Resistance’s assault, we’ve no communication from either him or you until we got a call from him signaling to start the air strike.

“We’ve been trying to hail both of you for the past sixteen hours, only to get nothing but radio silence. If you didn’t respond in the next six, you would’ve been declared KIA. I’m glad to hear you made it out of there in one piece.”

Snake barked out a short, rueful laugh, then instantly regretted it as he clutched his ribs in pain. “I don’t know about that ‘in one piece’ part,” Snake replied, “but yeah, I made it out.”

“What’s Gray Fox’s status? Do you have any idea why he and the Boss disappeared?”

“You really don’t know?” Snake said.

“I was hoping you did,” Salamander answered.

Snake nodded to himself. That was something, at least. “I have some idea, but let’s save it for the rendezvous. We’ve got bigger problems right now.”

“Understood,” Sal replied. “Give me a sitrep.”

“Situation is isolated and heavily injured. Nearest population center is a small railway station under Outer Heaven control. I’m wearing their colors, but I have no idea if they’re still looking for a spy or if they think I’m dead. I was hoping to go in and get medical treatment from them and transport to the nearest town.”

“Well, if you’re looking to take a train, you’ll be SOL.”

“Why’s that?”

“When the Resistance started their assault on Outer Heaven’s base, they also activated cells throughout the country to attack Outer Heaven’s forward operating bases and outposts. One of the first things they targeted was the railways leading in and out of the western and southern regions of the Northern Cape, to prevent supplies from moving in and out of Outer Heaven’s zones of control. The good news was that it disrupted Outer Heaven’s supply chain and crippled their logistics apparatus, which made the assault on their HQ easier.”

“And the bad news?”

“Not long after the assault had begun, the Resistance and Outer Heaven forces throughout the country started fighting an all-out open war. The eastern and southern parts of the country are in chaos from Johannesburg all the way to Cape Town. The areas not getting torn apart by the fighting are getting swarmed with refugees. The South African government began to mobilize their military to put the country under martial law and regain some semblance of order, but they’re having a hell of a time with it.

“With the western railways down, SANDF is having difficulty moving supplies and refugees throughout the region, and it’s probably going to be days or weeks before they’ll be able to wrangle this quagmire under something resembling control. Everything west of Victoria West is kaput, and that means you’re not going to be able to use the railways to get out of the AO.”

“So what should be my course of action then?”

“Your petitioning Outer Heaven for land transport is a good one. If you can get a Jeep or a truck, there’s a town called Williston about a hour and a half drive southeast of where you are. That’ll be our rendezvous point. From there, I can get you to Victoria West where we can board one of the still-functioning northbound trains to get us to Johannesburg. From there, we go to the American embassy in Pretoria and we’ll be home free.”

Snake nodded. “Roger. I’ll see if the troopers can’t help me out. Failing that, I’ll steal a map and a car if I have to. I’m sure someone around here will have access to both.”

“Good call. I’ll start packing things up and begin my move to Williston now. I should be there in…five and a half hours.”

Snake checked the digital clock on the iDroid. It was about 10:30am. Snake turned the iDroid off, noting that the battery wouldn’t last longer than a few minutes. “If I’m not somehow already there by the time you are, I’ve probably been delayed. If you get there first and I don’t show up by 1800 hours, assume I’m not going to and start making your way to the embassy.”

“I’m not forgetting about you. I’ll be waiting.”

Snake shook his head. “Don’t waste time worrying about me, Sal.”

Snake thought of the Infiltration Team, of his comrades in the Resistance. Of Kyle and Gray Fox.

“This war has enough dead heroes…,” he finished.

There was a moment of silence on the other line.

“…I’ll be waiting.”

The radio cut out. There would be no further conversation or argument.

Snake continued listening over the radio for enemy communications for the next fifteen to twenty minutes, but didn’t hear anything interesting. If they were still looking for him, they weren’t advertising it on the radio waves. He gave himself another few minutes to breathe and psych himself up before picking up his makeshift crutch and pushing himself back to his feet.

When he finally reached the exterior cordon of the outpost, he was fully leaning on the crutch, sweating profusely and breathing hard. A couple of Outer Heaven troopers approached to question him, and he fell forward, letting them catch him. He played up the wounded gazelle gambit, exaggerating his weakness by pretending to be delirious, though to be frank, Snake didn’t have to exaggerate that much, given the state of his wounds threatening to open once more.

The troopers quickly carried him over to a medical tent. He was stripped of his weapons, radio, and iDroid while the field medics looked him over and started to treat and dress his wounds. As he was getting looked at, the troopers talked among themselves, curious about the sudden appearance of a lone military aged male dressed in their uniform. Snake’s ears perked as he overheard their conversation through the tarp.

“Do you think he’s from that group that went missing from last night’s convoy?” asked one.

“Who knows? We’ve had so many people coming in, I can barely keep track. This evacuation’s been running me ragged. We don’t even have a full inventory of equipment or any idea of what records we’ve managed to save,” replied another.

“Do you recognize him, Laughlin?”

“He’s not with my team. I don’t think I’ve seen him around the barracks or supply stations. What about you? Have you seen him at all? Maybe he’s with Medical, or maybe R&D? Come to think of it, isn’t that where the spy was last seen the night before the rebel assault?”

Snake couldn’t see the expressions of the men just outside the tent, but he realized he was holding his breath, and let it out, trying to keep his breathing steady.

“…You don’t think it’s the same guy, do you?”

“Nah, it can’t be. R&D reported prisoners missing, not equipment; where else could he have gotten that iDroid? It had to have been issued to him?”

“But those things are absurdly expensive—the only people who have them are Ahab and his personal guard.”

“Yeah…come to think of it, Ahab took his top guys with him into the bunker hangar during the assault. Maybe he was with them?”

“We won’t know until he’s stable. Let’s talk to the medics and see if he’s awake. We can question him once they give us the okay.”

Once the medic was finished with his work, Snake opened his eyes a little to look at the man hovering over him, checking his vitals.

“Good,” the doc said approvingly. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”

“Like hammered shit,” Snake said bitterly. “But I’ll live. Where am I?”

“Sakrivier Railway Outpost.”

Snake nodded. “I made it, then.” He sighed dramatically. “That’s a relief.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?” asked the medic.

Snake looked at the doc’s hand. “Two,” he said.

“Do you know what day it is?”

Snake thought for a second, then realized that he honestly didn’t know. Between the excitement of his infiltration and invasion of Outer Heaven and the time he’d spent in captivity under Supply Storage, he had completely lost track. He shook his head.

“I’m not sure,” Snake said. “So much has happened over the past week, I’ve started losing track.”

The medic nodded sympathetically. “It’s definitely one hell of a week.” He shined a light into Snake’s eyes to examine his pupils. “Well, you’ve definitely been put through the wringer, but you seem stable. What’s your name, soldier?”

Snake took less than a second to come up with something. “Bronson, Edward. My friends call me Eddie.”

The medic didn’t respond with more than a monosyllabic grunt as he applied the stethoscope to Snake’s chest and back, instructing him to take deep breaths.

“Well, Bronson,” the medic said with a sigh, “you’re in safe hands here, but our officers are going to want to ask you some questions, when you’re ready.”

Snake nodded. He knew this was coming, and thanks to his overhearing the others’ conversation, he already had an idea of how to answer certain questions. He waved to the doc, and the medic left the tent to converse with the troopers outside, who all filed in.

There were three guys, identified by their nametapes as 2^nd Lt. Connolly, 1^st Lt. Mabasa, and Cpt. Igwe. Mabasa was the tallest, while Igwe was short and stocky and Connolly had fiery red hair. They all eyeballed Snake with suspicion, saying nothing at first. Mabasa crossed his arms.

It was Igwe who spoke first. “So, Bronson, was it?”

Snake nodded. “Correct.”

“What rank?”

“Staff Sergeant.”

The three men looked to each other skeptically and Connolly exhaled sarcastically. Igwe continued, “Alright, Sgt. Bronson. Whose team were you with?”

“I was with the detail assigned to Ahab when the rebels made it into the bunker,” Snake replied. “I joined one of the last evac convoys just before the bombs dropped. We got separated, and I ended up having to make the rest of the way here on foot.”

“You weren’t the only one who got separated from the convoy, Sergeant. We had three vehicles unaccounted for when Zulu team came in last night,” Mabasa said. “Do you know what happened to them?”

Snake nodded. “I stopped to answer a message over my radio. A Jeep and an ATV was sent to check on me and escort me back to the convoy. We got ambushed—some small group of rebels. We got unlucky. Only reason I survived was by blending in with the bodies. The rebels moved on, and I made it out.”

“You said you were with Ahab before the evacuation, right?” asked Igwe.

Snake looked down at his feet trying his best to look defeated. He nodded, the bangs of his hair obscuring his eyes as he looked up at the three men.

“If I may ask, what happened down there? We’ve been trying to reestablish communication with leadership, but we’ve gotten little in the way of response. Complete radio silence.”

Snake knew he couldn’t afford to be caught in a lie—best to keep his story as close to the truth as possible to make it more believable. Embracing the role of Eddie Bronson, he said: “Mine was one of the teams Ahab called in to assist. It was reported that a team of rebels had made it down to the hangar.

“When they reached the hangar, Ahab and a few of our guys fought to defend the weapon we’d had housed down there, but the rebels managed to torch it. Ahab fell back, told us to get ready. He fought with them, lured them into a kill zone in the ordnance storage area.”

Snake shook his head, putting his head into his hands. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He lowered his hands, staring at his bandaged fingers. He slowly curled them into fists, noting how it hurt. He slowly opened them again.

“It was a massacre,” he finished. “I don’t know what was up with them, maybe the rebels had hired some kind of third party mercenary force or they’d been secretly holding back their best guys all this time—hell, maybe it was that spy everyone’s been up in arms about. But I didn’t see anyone else make it out of there. Even Ahab was pretty bloody by the end of it. When I last saw him, he could barely move.”

Snake looked over at a desk on the other side of the tent, where his knife and iDroid rested. He pointed at the desk. “That iDroid?” Snake said, directing the attention of his audience. “It’s not mine. Ahab gave it to me before sending me topside for evac—lost mine during the evacuation.”

There, thought Snake. If I volunteer that it isn’t mine, that should keep them from questioning why I don’t have mine on me.

Connolly and Mabasa looked surprised, while Igwe’s eyes narrowed.

“Why’d he give it to you?” he demanded.

Snake saw an opportunity to bullshit his way to getting a ride.

He continued, “He told me there was an important message stored on it. Told me he wanted me to make sure it reached its destination, and that I should trust no one else with it but the guy it’s meant for, not even if they’re Outer Heaven.”

Snake shrugged. “As for why he trusted me with it…I have no idea. Probably because we both knew I was the only one who had a chance in hell of making it out of there. I didn’t see him again after that. I have no idea if he’s still alive or not…” he trailed off with a pained expression on his face.

Connolly put a hand on Snake’s shoulder in sympathy. Snake looked over to Igwe, who had picked up the iDroid.

“Before you ask, I don’t know what the message is,” Snake said. “It’s probably encrypted. I mainly used the iDroid’s map to navigate my way back here, and the battery’s pretty much close to dead as it is. I assume Ahab’s contact will know what to do with it when I reach him.”

“Who’s the contact?” Igwe asked.

Snake shrugged again. “I didn’t get a name. I just know that he’s waiting in Williston.”

There was a moment of silence while Igwe considered Snake’s response. After a few seconds, he looked to Mabasa. “Lieutenant, has the cargo for today’s run been loaded?”

Mabasa nodded to the Captain. “Yes, sir.”

“And the truck?”

“Gassed up and ready to go.”

Igwe gave him a nod in return. “Good. Sgt. Bronson, we’re about to move some cargo to one of our FOBs to the east. Williston is on the way there. Given the…importance of your message, I would like to recommend you to ride with us. We’ll have to make a short stop on the way there, though. It shouldn’t impact your mission at all.”

Snake stood up slowly, grimacing. “Excellent. Thank you, Cpt. Igwe, sir.”

Snake grabbed the iDroid and his knife from the medic’s desk. Lt. Connolly assisted Snake with walking out of the tent, while Mabasa and Igwe stayed behind.

Mabasa turned to Igwe. “Do you think he was telling the truth, sir?”

Igwe’s eyes narrowed once more. “I don’t believe that just any rebel could best Ahab in open combat, assuming that’s even what happened in the first place. And to be the sole survivor of two near-death experiences in a row, and carrying a message from Ahab himself…it’s too convenient. And then there’s his rank…”

Igwe stepped over to the desk and rested his palms on the top, hunched over in thought. “…Lieutenant Mabasa.”

“Sir?”

“What’s the status of the personnel documents we’ve managed to recover during the evacuation?”

“It’s all scattered, sir. We haven’t even begun to organize them all properly.”

“What about security camera footage?”

“The hard drives are even less organized than the boxes of printouts.”

Igwe sighed heavily. “Damn it.” He drew himself up to his full height. “Alright. Mabasa, come with me. We’ll be loading on the truck with Bronson and the others so we can keep an eye on him. I want to test him personally."

Mabasa saluted his commanding officer, and together they headed outside to the truck where Connolly and Snake were waiting.

The outpost was abuzz with activity. Igwe and Mabasa were dodging between troopers carrying crates and cardboard boxes of weapons, ordnance, documentation, and miscellaneous equipment on their way to the transport truck. Materials were being quickly laid out as Outer Heaven quickly got to work building new defensive structures. Snake was in awe of how quickly and efficiently the personnel around him moved.

With this level of organization, it was no wonder that the local Resistance had been having so much trouble before, he thought.

Igwe pointed to Connolly. “You drive,” he commanded. “Mabasa, Bronson, and I will load up into the bed."

Snake climbed up behind Igwe and Mabasa into the covered truck bed and sat down on the benches while another unnamed trooper joined Conolly in the passenger seat of the cab. Snake noticed at the end of the benches a large crate resting against the back of the cab.

Snake pointed. “Supplies for the FOB?”

Igwe replied, “This is what we’ll be dropping off on our way to Williston.”

Snake nodded, not wanting to draw attention to himself by asking too many questions. They sat in silence for a while, no sound between them but the rumbling of the engine and the vibrations beneath their seats and feet as the truck climbed and descended up and downhill on the rough desert roads. Snake kept his gaze glued to his feet, refusing all eye contact.

He tried to relax but found that he couldn’t. His hands shook; he clasped his fingers together to hide it, but he felt too wired, so he put his hands in his pockets and leaned back and to the right, resting against the crate.

“So, Sgt. Bronson…”

Snake looked up to address Mabasa. “Yes?” he asked.

“How long have you been with us?”

Snake sniffed, leaning forward and rubbing the back of his aching hand. “Not long,” he said. “Few months.”

“And what brought you to join Outer Heaven?” asked Igwe.

Snake chuckled slightly, trying to keep the foreboding sense of anxiety from creeping into his voice.

“What is this, a job interview?” he said with a smirk.

He looked from Igwe to Mabasa, neither of whom said anything in response.

Igwe’s face was impassive, not revealing anything. His eyes were slightly narrowed, but Igwe had had a permanent frown since he and his men first arrived in the medical tent. He could be suspicious, or he could be just be hardened and stressed from the ongoing war that had been happening around him, or maybe he just had the kind of personality that would make him just a bit of a hardass, generally speaking. Snake couldn't really tell.

Mabasa on the other hand, just shrugged when Snake looked at him. Unlike his superior, Mabasa was leaning back, completely relaxed. If there was anything wrong going on to indicate that these men might know that Snake isn’t who he says he is, Mabasa wasn’t showing it.

Snake hedged his bets. “I mainly joined for the money. After I left the military, there weren’t a lot of jobs in the civilian world that could accommodate my experience and temperament. Outer Heaven seemed like a good fit.”

“Where did you serve?”

Snake remembered his mistake with trying to hide his origins from Shotmaker. Better to be honest this time—Outer Heaven appeared to be an equal-opportunity army of shitbags, he thought. Surely the presence of one American wouldn’t be too unusual.

“Army. American,” Snake responded. “I was recruited not long after I got discharged.”

“American?” asked Mabasa. He and Igwe shared a look that Snake didn’t catch.

Snake nodded. “Yeah.” He smirked a little, looking between them. “That’s not that unusual, is it? I mean, we’ve got bases all over, not just in South Africa. Besides, Ahab was from North America, too.”

Mabasa raised his eyebrows, but Igwe said nothing. Mabasa asked, “Why do you say that?”

Snake asked, “Have you ever met the man? Listened to him speak? His accent is obvious. He sounds like he’s from Michigan, or somewhere else up near the Great Lakes. Might even be Canadian-born, for all I know. Only thing that’s certain is he’s not from around here.”

Igwe nodded in agreement while Mabasa crossed his arms in envy.

Snake cocked his head. “You’ve really never heard him speak?”

“There have been two thousand people staffing the Outer Heaven headquarters alone, including civilian personnel,” Igwe explained. “Each forward operating base houses a staff of between five and seven hundred. That’s worldwide. Between the HQ and the FOBs, this company staffs and houses the population of a small country, or at least several cities. The CEO is a very busy man and handles a great deal of matters daily. He cannot be everywhere at once, so it’s no surprise that there are many of us who have yet to meet the man in person. Not everyone is as lucky as you and I. I’m more surprised by the fact that you’re surprised by that.”

Snake shrugged, leaning against the crate again. “I guess,” he replied noncommittally. He looked over at Igwe again. “So, why did you join?”

Igwe finally joined his subordinate in leaning back, crossing his ankles as he stretched his legs across the truck bed from his bench.

“Like you, I initially joined for the money,” Igwe said, “Outer Heaven paid better than the SADF, and living in this part of the world, there wasn’t a lot in the way of economic opportunities for one such as me, or for Mabasa for that matter. Unless you wanted to slave away in a diamond mine somewhere. I decided, if I was going to break my back and sacrifice my health either way, I would do so on my own terms. I was among the first wave of South Africans to be recruited back in 1988 after the company changed its name, before the contract five years ago that let us set up our headquarters out here. Ahab, for his part, was happy to take me in.

“Ahab was different from many of the white employers and government officials I had been used to dealing with most of my life. He truly does not care if you are a white colonial or Xhosa or Zulu or Botswanan or Basotho or whoever. He cares only that you can fight, do the job, and help represent Outer Heaven. Nations, ethnicities, races, ideologies—all of these are immaterial to him. In Outer Heaven, unlike the rest of the world it seems, you are truly recognized as nothing more or less than a human being, and celebrated as a warrior—and it is only by that that we are judged, nothing else.”

“But wasn’t Outer Heaven working with the government to reinforce the apartheid state?” Snake asked.

Igwe shrugged. “Such is the cost of doing business with the government we had at the time. Everyone knew when they signed up that it may sometimes mean fighting on behalf of people who hate us for one reason or another. As a veteran of the original South African Defence Force (SADF), such a thing is not unusual for me, and I’ve heard from some of my contacts in the new SANDF that replaced it, that not much has changed, even though the new government likes to pretend otherwise.”

He leaned forward slightly, his eyes roaming over Snake’s face. “Your skin is pale and your eyes are blue, but I can tell from the shape of your face, you are not quite the same as the other white men I have met. Asian descent? Not Indian though, from what I can see. East Asian descent, if I had to guess?”

Snake shrugged. “I’m a foster kid. Orphan. Never knew my parents. My documents and bloodwork say I’m part Japanese though, for all that tells me.”

“Is it truly any different for you, then? It wasn’t that long ago that America would look down upon and even imprison you for who your ancestors were, and yet still you served them loyally, once upon a time.”

Snake considered it for a moment, then shook his head. “Things were different back then. America’s a different place now. I don’t regret my past service, and they’ve treated me as loyally as I treated them. I don’t have ill will for them.”

Snake stared at his scarred and bandaged palms as he continued curling them into fists and reopening his hands. Was that even still true though, he asked himself? It was the American government who entrusted his fate to FOXHOUND. It was Big Boss, head of FOXHOUND, who betrayed him. An image of the stars and stripes appeared unbidden to his mind, and the fabric was wreathed in flame.

“And then you left, cast out when you were no longer needed by your government, like I was. And now, you are here,” Igwe said, nodding in assurance. “Among brothers. Family. Where your homeland failed you, Ahab was there to help you pick up the pieces and renew your sense of purpose. Perhaps it was fate?”

Igwe inhaled and sighed slowly, lips curling upwards for the first time since Snake had met him. “Ahab truly is a great man. There is no one else like him,” he said.

“There was no one else like him,” Mabasa said sadly.

“Hey,” Igwe said sternly. “We do not know for sure that he is dead. Sgt. Bronson himself said that he didn’t see what happened after they were separated, and he was injured as well. If the sergeant could make it out in his condition, there’s no reason to think that Ahab didn’t survive as well. We must have faith.”

Fat chance, Snake thought to himself, just barely able to avoid vocalizing the thought.

The idea of Big Boss somehow surviving was equal parts horrifying and darkly humorous. He thought back to that dark hallway underneath the bunker, how the light had left Big Boss’s eye. He nodded, reassuring himself.

I watched him die. He’s gone. It’s over. Snake covered his face with his hands, trying to rub the exhaustion from his eyes.

Just have to get home.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SEVEN – 1240 HOURS

SOMEWHERE FAR TO THE WEST OF THE R353 HIGHWAY

 

After a little while of driving, the vibrations began to quiet as the truck rumbled to a stop. Snake awoke with a start, realizing that he had nodded off.

“We’re here?” he asked, confused.

Mabasa shook his head. “Halfway,” he said. “We had to take an eastern detour—Williston’s another hour out. This is our first stop—the dropoff.”

“Give me a hand with this, Lieutenant,” Igwe grunted, pulling the handle on one side of the crate from outside the truck bed.

Mabasa got up from the bench, crouching to lift the crate and push it out as he and Igwe worked together to carry it out of the bed and walk a ways away from the truck to the crest of the hill they were parked on. Mabasa climbed back in and opened a toolbox mounted to the back of the cab and pulled out a prybar.

Mabasa waved to Snake as he passed. “Come on,” he said. “The Captain has something he wants to show you.”

Snake gingerly pulled himself to his feet and carefully disembarked from the back of the transport truck with a wince, nursing his aching ribs. He walked slowly to join Mabasa, Igwe, Connolly, and the fourth trooper, a Corporal who Snake saw was named “Wilson” based on the nametape on his uniform’s jacket.

Mabasa brandished the prybar to indicate his readiness to open the crate, but Igwe raised a steadying hand, and Mabasa lowered it once more. Snake looked around. They were out in the middle of the wilderness: no FOB and no sign of people for miles around.

“Where are we?” Snake asked. “I thought you said this is a drop-off, but there’s no one else here.”

Igwe turned to Snake. “It is a drop-off, in a matter of speaking.”

Igwe walked around the crate so that it was to his back, and leaned back to sit on top of it. He looked away, up into the sky. There was no sound except the wind and the far-off cries of animals. Igwe breathed in the dusty air, and let it out in a sigh.

“Weather outside is good today,” he said casually.

Snake didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing.

“I love days like this,” he continued. “Wide open, clear sky. Vast wilderness with no one around you, just you and the earth. It’s a good place to clear the mind. Good for the body and soul. Before you joined with us, Sergeant, did you ever do much camping—spending time in the ‘great outdoors,’ I think is the American phrase?”

Snake thought of his test with Black Mamba during training. He thought of FOXHOUND and the Army’s outdoor survival training. He thought of the times when one of his foster fathers, a Martin Blake, used to take him camping as a kid. Those were a few good days. Among Snake’s many foster families growing up, the Blakes were probably among his favorite—no substance abuse problems, no beatings or neglect. The Blakes and the Williamses were probably the two families who treated him the best and fairest.

Snake shook his head. Why was he thinking about his childhood right now? He looked up to answer the question, before seeing that Igwe must have taken his shaking his head as an answer, because he kept talking.

“That’s a shame,” Igwe said. “My father took me and my brothers camping often when we were children. I always loved it. It helped us grow closer.”

Snake gave a non-committal nod. Where was Igwe going with this? He eyed the crate on which Igwe sat. Something about it made him feel uneasy, though he wasn’t sure why.

“It was the same after I joined the South African Defence Force, and later when I joined Outer Heaven. There is nothing quite like the bonds between soldiers, fellow comrades-in-arms. To me, these bonds run just as deep as that of my flesh and blood. To me, these men, young and old, are my family—my brothers and sons. There is nothing I would not do for them. I take one look in your eyes, and I see that you understand.”

Snake thought of Lima Company. He thought of Black Mamba and Gray Fox. He thought of the rebels he’d befriended and fought with over the course of this operation. He nodded in agreement. He understood, all right.

“Which is why,” Igwe continued, “there is no greater sin than to betray your family, to take up arms against them and what they stand for. Wouldn’t you agree, Sergeant?”

Snake’s mind sparked into a wildfire of panic. He fought every impulse in his muscles that could possibly give himself away and struggled to keep his face neutral. Did Igwe suspect him? Snake frowned and nodded, trying to get across that he was taking Igwe’s words seriously without letting on the real reason why.

“Have you ever had the misfortune of being betrayed by a comrade, Sgt. Bronson? To have your trust violated by someone you’d bled for and fought alongside?”

Snake thought of Big Boss, and his face involuntarily tightened into a scowl. His right hand started shaking again. He closed his eyes and cast his face downward as he replied in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “Yes, sir. I have.”

Cpt. Igwe nodded to himself, his face showing a sort of wistful sorrow. “Then out here in Outer Heaven, you and I truly are brothers, Sergeant. For I, too, have known the same bitter sting of betrayal.”

Igwe pushed himself up off the box and paced away. “It happened when I was with the SADF. This would have been, oh, about seven or eight years ago now? I was still fairly young back then, a proud volunteer of a local Commando unit serving alongside the police. At the time, I was helping to provide training for Zulu militias as part of Operation Marion.”

Snake thought back to his briefing on the political history of South Africa prior to his arrival in the country over a week ago. If Igwe was part of Operation Marion, would that have placed him in the INCLM’s (Inkatha National Cultural Liberation Movement) camp? Given their opposition to international sanctioning on economic grounds, it wouldn’t be surprising, given Igwe’s status as a mercenary.

“What happened?” Snake asked.

“A state of emergency was declared in the town of Trust Feed. Have you heard of the place?”

Snake shook his head silently.

“Ah, right, of course you wouldn’t. You’re American, after all. Why would you have knowledge of our local politics, hm? Allow me to explain, then. It is a primarily Zulu rural community in the KwaZulu-Natal province, east of Lesotho. Anyway, there was a funeral vigil taking place one night, it was believed that the members in attendance were members of the United Democratic Front.”

Snake thought back to his briefings once more. He nodded to himself, remembering Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the INCLM founder.

Buthelezi’s Inkatha party was becoming unpopular with the African National Congress (ANC), and the negotiations between the United Democratic Front (UDF) and Buthelezi’s center-right leaning INCLM had already been breaking down for quite some time. At first, both opposed the apartheid system of government on paper and were mutual allies in the anti-apartheid struggle.

However, Buthelezi would later start being accused of being a government puppet when other anti-apartheid leaders started supporting sanctions from the international community on South Africa, which Buthelezi and INCLM opposed, saying that such a move would economically weaken South Africa, even going so far as meeting with then-U.S. President Reagan to argue their case.

Tensions had been rising ever since, threatening to boil over into a regional civil war even before Outer Heaven came along. Snake wondered how many potential armed conflicts in the region were stoked by the various pro- and anti-apartheid coalitions deciding to use them as hired muscle.

“Seeing the anti-apartheid movements as acting against the interests of the state, the head of the local Joint Management Committee sent constables of the South African Police to murder the attendants of the vigil,” Igwe went on. “These were all men that I had personally helped to train. Eleven innocent people died that night—three men, six women, and two children. All because they dared to oppose an unfair and unjust system.”

Igwe spat on the ground, fists clenched in rage. “And when it was all over,” he continued, “they attempted to blame us, saying it was part of a state effort to empower the INCLM at the ANC’s and UDF’s expense. When it turned out that the victims were actually supporters of Inkatha, they tried blaming the UDF instead.”

Cpt. Igwe cast his eyes to the ground, nodding to himself. “My eyes were opened that day. In the eyes of my government, it didn’t matter if you were military or civilian, innocent or guilty. We were all equally disposable. It’s why I left the service at the end of my term.”

Cpt. Igwe gestured to his men. “It’s also what brought me to Ahab, and to Outer Heaven. Money aside, I had also had the chance to sit and speak with Ahab himself, and through him I learned the history of his organization. The men there were all treasured amongst each other, celebrated as family and as the warriors they are. What’s more, they too knew how it felt to be used, cast aside, and betrayed by the governments of the lands they called home. Which is why we shun the spy, the liar, and the traitor.”

Cpt. Igwe looked to Snake again, stepping forward to pat him on the shoulder. Snake tried not to wince.

“Which is what brings us here today,” Igwe said.

Snake’s heart rate quickened. He put his hands into his pockets, fought to keep his breathing steady. As he cocked his head to the side. “How so?” he asked.

Cpt. Igwe stepped back and motioned to the mostly ignored crate on the ground. “Show him,” he told his men.

Mabasa and Connolly jammed their prybars under the lid, wrenching it off of the large wooden box. As Mabasa dropped his prybar and tossed the lid aside, Connolly and Wilson each gave the crate a solid kick, tipping it over onto its side and dumping out the contents.

A man tied with ropes at his hands and feet rolled out onto the dirt. His wrists were caked in blood where the ropes were tied, his clothes disheveled. He wore a black sack over his head that Mabasa tore off, leaving him blinking in the harsh sunlight. The skin around his mouth was torn slightly from the rag that was tied round his head, forcing his mouth open.

Snake’s face was still, not betraying a hint of shock or emotion. Whether this was from practice or exhaustion, it was unclear. He looked over the bound hostage they’d just dumped onto the ground in front of him, still blind from the harsh rays of the afternoon sun.

“What is this…?” Snake asked in a hushed tone.

Cpt. Igwe gestured to the man. “He was someone we welcomed into the fold; a brother of Outer Heaven by the name of Vukani who’d lost his home in the wake of the struggle to overturn apartheid. We accepted him with open arms, only to find he had been feeding information to the rebels in Calvinia.”

Lt. Mabasa delivered a swift kick to Vukani’s gut. Vukani curled into a ball.

Cpt. Igwe continued, “We interrogated him, and so far, the only thing we've learned is that he is not a member of the Resistance himself. Which means that he has betrayed his Outer Heaven brothers and sent his fellow South Africans to their deaths at our hands and in so doing, he is twice the liar and traitor. What is worse, he sent these rebels to us in the assault that would lead to the attempt on Ahab’s life.”

Cpt. Igwe reached out toward Lt. Connolly, who handed him a Beretta. Igwe considered it for a moment. “Ordinarily in such circumstances, we would hold a trial, where those who committed such crimes against us would be judged by their peers in Outer Heaven and punished accordingly. But we are at war—so we alone will have to serve as the witnesses.”

He held the pistol by the barrel and extended it towards Snake, grip first. “The judgment is decided: the verdict is death. As someone who knows the stain of betrayal, Sgt. Bronson, I believe you should do the honors.”

Snake grabbed the pistol and tugged slightly against Igwe’s grip. They stared into each other’s eyes and after a few seconds, Igwe let go. Snake looked over at Vukani, whose eyes were still closed as his face twisted in pain. “I’d heard that the spy at the Headquarters was foreign,” Snake said slowly. “Did we ever find out who they were working for?”

Cpt. Igwe’s eyes glinted with interest. “Why do you ask, Sergeant?”

Snake gestured to Vukani. “You said he wasn’t an official Resistance member. Doesn’t mean he was acting alone.”

Snake crouched over Vukani’s shivering body and put his hands onto the gag around the prisoner’s head, rolling it out of Vukani’s mouth and over his face to pull it off his head. “Before we give him his traitor’s reward, let’s see if we can find out who—if anyone—he was working for.”

Vukani spluttered after having the gag removed, and squinted in Snake’s shadow until he got a good look at Snake’s face. Vukani’s eyes widened slightly with recognition. “Y-you?” he gasped.

Mabasa asked, “Someone you know, Sergeant Bronson?”

Igwe’s head tilted slightly as he regarded Snake. Snake spat on the ground, replying, “No, never met him before.”

Without warning, Snake slugged Vukani in the stomach, turning Vukani over as he dry heaved over the ground. “Traitor scum,” Snake hissed, kicking Vukani in the ass and sending him prone. “Speak only when spoken to,” he commanded as he got down low and whispered into Vukani’s ear: “Shut the fuck up and play along, or we’ll both die.”

Snake raised his head and saw his inner panic reflected in Vukani’s eyes. Both men knew just how screwed they were being surrounded by four troopers and with little way of defending themselves. Snake needed to buy them some time, and so he immersed himself further into his role of Ahab’s sadistically vengeful follower and got into character.

Snake pointed the gun into Vukani’s face. “Okay, traitor,” he spat. “If you’re no rebel, then who the hell are you? Are you with the South African government? Are you military?”

Vukani shook his head in confused fear. Snake could see it in the man’s eyes—he wasn’t lying.

“Then who? Who are you working for?”

Vukani’s eyes flitted from Snake to each Outer Heaven trooper in turn, recoiling in fear. Vukani squirmed, trying to slide away from Snake on his back, but Snake simply stood and pressed the bottom of his boot onto Vukani’s chest.

Vukani coughed. “What good would it do me to tell you?” Vukani gasped. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

Snake growled, and as he spoke, he was surprised at the venom that naturally came out of his mouth. After everything that had occurred over the past few days, it felt good to have someone to punish, even if it was partly an act. He thought of his time in captivity under Shotmaker. Perhaps channeling the sadist could give him some kind of advantage here.

Snake leaned forward menacingly as he spoke: “Today is really not the day to be testing me, my friend. Not after everything I’ve been through. You really think that just because your life is forfeit, that we have nothing to threaten you with? Just because you’re not long for this world doesn’t mean I can’t still make your exit painful.”

To drive the point home, Snake moved his boot to a light injury on Vukani’s shoulder and shifted his weight onto it. Vukani screamed in agony for a moment, after which Snake let up.

Snake turned his head towards Cpt. Igwe. “This man have any family?” he asked.

Cpt. Igwe crossed his arms. “When he came to us, many of them had died in the riots before his home was burned down.”

“All of them?”

“I used to work with the guy,” Cpl. Wilson volunteered. “He’s got a son out in Brandvlei who survived the burning of their house with him. Kid’s about seven years old.”

Snake looked back down at Vukani, whose eyes had filled with fear. “Does he, now?” Snake asked.

“H-He’s just a child,” Vukani begged. “He hasn’t done anything! You leave him alone, you hear me? You leave my boy alone!”

“Well, that’s entirely up to you,” Snake said in as mocking a tone as he could.

He hated himself more with every word that came out of his mouth, but he needed a way to keep extending this interaction for as long as possible until he could think of a way out. And now, he realized he may have just put an innocent child in danger by bringing him up here. Whatever Snake did, he needed to resolve this quickly.

Snake crouched low, making Vukani look up into his face. “Listen to me carefully, Vukani. As far as Outer Heaven is concerned, your life is forfeit. There’s nothing you can say or do that can save you. But if you work with me—,” Snake emphasized the words, “and answer my questions, I will personally guarantee your son’s safety.”

Snake looked over to Cpt. Igwe and said, “Let it not be said that Outer Heaven is incapable of mercy. After all, there’s no glory or honor in murdering the weak and innocent. We’re warriors, not savages. But if you test our faith or my patience, then we will punish you accordingly, make no mistake.”

Igwe nodded in agreement.

Vukani looked from Snake to Igwe and then back to Snake. He scowled with impotent hatred, and laid his head back onto the ground, closing his eyes. “Fine,” he said.

“So, who is it who set you against us?” Igwe demanded.

Vukani sighed in defeat. What was one more betrayal, after all? “America. I was recruited and paid by Americans.”

“The CIA?” Snake asked. “You’re an agent?”

Vukani nodded.

“Who was your handler? I want the name of your operations officer.”

“He called himself Carlton. I’d been feeding him information about both the Resistance and Outer Heaven for months. He’d visit me once a week, never meeting me in the same place twice. He’d collect whatever intelligence I had to give him and if it was good, he’d pay me a good sum. Between that money and the money that Outer Heaven was paying me, it was enough to provide for my son after the fall of the apartheid government.”

Vukani took in a long breath. His face was calm, and he looked at peace. His fists uncurled as he relaxed his hands. He continued, “It allowed us to rebuild our lives. And then a little over a week ago, he introduced me to someone else, said that they needed my help again—this time it wasn’t just to get information, but also to give it, to carry messages to key Resistance members.”

“Who did he introduce you to?” Snake demanded.

Vukani shook his head. “He didn’t give me a name, but the man called himself ‘Salamander.’”

Snake nodded to himself. It made sense that the CIA had more informants besides just Kyle. He patted Vukani’s face. “You did well, Vukani,” Snake said, standing up to his full height. “That was all I needed to know.”

“You’ll…protect my son?” Vukani pleaded.

Snake levelled his pistol to point it at the prisoner. “You have my word,” he promised, pulling back the hammer with his thumb. Vukani braced himself for the gunshot to come.

Slowly, Snake curled his index finger into the trigger guard. His hand shook slightly, and the Beretta’s muzzle wobbled. Mabasa came up behind him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Are you alright, Sergeant? You look like you’re having trouble keeping steady.”

Snake shook his head. “Still weak from the fall of Outer Heaven’s HQ. But I can still hold a gun.”

“Good. Then let’s get this over with so we can get out of here.” Mabasa gave Snake’s shoulder a squeeze.

Snake smirked. “If you insist,” he said.

In one fluid motion, Snake grabbed Mabasa’s wrist with his left hand, squatted to lower his center of gravity, and reached back behind him to pistol whip Mabasa in the groin. Before the troopers could react, Snake grabbed Mabasa by the forearm and bicep and used his leverage to pull Mabasa bodily over his shoulder and fall onto his back. Snake crouched and pinned one of Mabasa’s arms with his knee while keeping his foot next to Mabasa’s other arm.

Snake unsheathed his knife in a reverse grip and laid the edge of the blade against Mabasa’s carotid artery while pointing the pistol at Igwe. “Captain Igwe, I highly suggest you disarm yourself and order your other two men to do the same.”

The Outer Heaven troopers made no motion to move, staring him down with confidence.

Snake muttered, “Your funeral,” and squeezed the trigger.

Click. Click.

The gun was empty.

 

 

Notes:

Whew, finally got this one out! This was kind of a beast of a chapter as now that Snake's made it out of Outer Heaven and completed the events of the actual game, that means we're officially back in original fiction territory, which is both extremely fun and also a little more of a challenge to write, so sorry for the wait. For today's bit of behind-the-scenes trivia: this chapter wasn't originally supposed to end where it did, but the word count was starting to get a bit long and I saw an opportunity for a good cliffhanger, so I've decided to merge what would have been the end of the Vukani trial with my plans for Chapter 21.

Trust me, it was necessary-if it went on any longer, it would have probably ended up at 13 or maybe even 15 thousand words, and it would have completely ruined the pacing. Maybe I could have shaved it down if I included less details about the history of South Africa's wildlife and local politics but a.) that sort of information is very on brand for a Metal Gear story and b.) I spent the time doing the research, there was absolutely no way I was going to let it go to waste by not using it, ha ha.

Also, the bit about Snake speculating that Big Boss either being American or Canadian-born is meant to be a cheeky reference to when Kiefer Sutherland provided mocap and voice acting for Big Boss in MGSV.

Next chapter we'll see how Snake manages to get out of this predicament and make it to his meeting with Salamander so he can hopefully make his way out of South Africa. Tune in for the next chapter as we continue to chronicle the end of Solid Snake's debut mission! Please look forward to it, and feel free to leave a review if you like it or if you have any constructive criticism to give! Thank you for your continued support, and I look forward to bringing you more of this story as I can get it out.

Chapter 21: Show of Hands

Summary:

Caught in a trap, it's sudden death as Snake must fight tooth and nail to make his escape and continue on his arduous journey across South Africa in the hopes of getting home.

"A name means nothing on the battlefield. After a week, nobody has a name."
--Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid (released 1998)

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY SEVEN – 1300 HOURS

SOMEWHERE FAR TO THE WEST OF THE R353 HIGHWAY

 

Cpt. Igwe laughed, and his men joined him. Even Mabasa chuckled slightly before Snake gripped his knife tighter against Mabasa's throat to silence him.

"Drop your weapons," Snake repeated. "I've still got your man here."

"I think not, Spy," Cpt. Igwe barked with a humorless chuckle. "We have you surrounded. Your only leverage is one man. And if you kill him, then we will most certainly kill you. The numbers are not in your favor here. Relinquish your knife and surrender now, and I may be able to guarantee you a quick and painless death."

"How long did you know that I wasn't who I said I was?" Snake asked.

"My first clue was your introduction, Staff Sergeant," Cpt. Igwe said. "Every member of Ahab's personal guard is an officer. The rank you claimed to be was too low. On top of that, there was Vukani's recognition of you when you removed his gag. You might not have known him, but he certainly knows you. Combine this with the fact that you are an American, and the picture becomes much clearer."

Snake cursed to himself silently. So, they'd known from the beginning. "So, what would you have done if I'd attempted to shoot Vukani?"

"We've recruited from our enemies before," Igwe said. "Such a show of loyalty would normally be welcomed. But you, you would have been eliminated as the loose end you are. Besides, I'd say you've done too much against us at this point to deserve such clemency, don't you think?"

Igwe turned to Connolly. "Keep your gun trained on the prisoner. If the spy makes any sudden moves, or attempts to take Mabasa's firearm from its holster, you and Wilson will kill them both."

"Yes, sir," Connolly replied, raising his gun in Vukani's direction.

Igwe crouched low to reach Snake's eye level, stretching out his arms a little before resting them on his knees in a squat. "So," Igwe said. "It appears, for now, that we are at an impasse."

Igwe took in a breath and let it out in a long sigh, before giving Snake a sardonic grin.

"Well, while we're here, perhaps you could fill in some blanks for me. I know you came from the bunker, just as you probably were the one who killed the missing members of the convoy, and I believe you when you say that the iDroid you have belonged to Ahab, even if the story of a secret message itself was a lie. So, why don't you tell me what actually happened? Where is he—where is Ahab?"

Snake examined the empty gun in his hand, hanging it from his index finger by the trigger guard. He spun it and grabbed it by the barrel, wanting to throw it away in frustration, but decided against it, resting the forearm over his bent knee.

At Igwe's question, Snake looked up into the man's eyes and sighed. "What? You're telling me you can't guess?"

Igwe glowered, his smile gone. "I want to hear it from you."

Snake shrugged casually, as if he wasn't holding a man hostage while an enemy had a rifle pointed at him. "Fine," he said. "You want the truth? Ahab—or Venom, or whatever you feel like calling him—is dead. I killed him myself."

"Bullshit," Connolly said.

Igwe raised a hand to wave Connolly into silence. "This is confirmed?" he asked.

"I'm not saying he made it easy," Snake clarified. "He and his guards came pretty close to giving me a dirt nap several times. But in the end, I won out. I stayed long enough to watch him bleed out before I left."

Snake stared down Cpt. Igwe, looking him directly in the eye.

"He's dead," Snake confirmed.

Anger and grief flashed on Wilson's face. Connolly and Wilson both tensed as Igwe stood up to his full height, turning his back to Snake to look up into the sky. His hand hovered over the sidearm holstered to his thigh. Snake could see the muscles in Igwe's shoulders tense up as his fingers flexed, desperately itching to draw the gun.

"I believe you," Cpt. Igwe said.

Igwe's hand moved toward the Beretta in his thigh holster, and all at once, Snake felt like time had slowed to a crawl. Snake pressed down with his blade and sliced upward, spilling red from Mabasa's jugular and spinning the knife in his hand to grab it by the blade and throw it at Connolly.

As the blade spun once end over to end before plunging into Connolly's eye socket, Snake was already raising his other hand to throw the empty gun at Igwe, hitting him in the face just as Igwe brought his own handgun to bear. While Igwe reared backward, Snake grabbed the gun from Mabasa's thigh holster while rolling to the side to put Igwe between himself and Wilson.

Snake raised the Beretta to take a shot at Igwe, who ducked and rolled under the truck, forcing Snake to switch targets and plug Wilson full of holes before the trooper could bring his rifle to bear. At the same time, Connolly hit the ground, thrashing and twitching as his brain had finally registered his death.

Snake got low to fire under the truck at Igwe, but Igwe was already gone. Snake stood up just in time to see Igwe vaulting over the hood and kicking the gun out of his hand as Igwe brought them both to the ground. Igwe recovered first, drawing his knife and straddling Snake's torso to bring the blade down towards Snake's eye.

Snake braced against Igwe's arm with both arms and flailed uselessly with his feet, but his strength was already ebbing—he'd been too injured, and in any second, the knife would carve out his eye sockets.

Suddenly, a crack like thunder split the air, and half of Igwe's skull exploded outward to Snake's right, the force of which sent the captain to the ground beside him. Snake looked left to where the shot came from, and saw Vukani, still tied up and lying prone, his hands clutching the pistol that Igwe had kicked from Snake's hand.

The struggle had ended as quickly as it had started. Both Snake and Vukani went limp as they lied back against the ground, all their strength having left them. Snake's rest only lasted a few minutes before he turned himself onto his stomach and painfully got up into a stumbling crouch.

They had used a known route to get here. It's possible there were enemies in the area who had heard those shots. They couldn't afford to stick around.

Snake grabbed his knife from the ground and half-stumbled, half-crawled to Vukani to cut his bonds.

As soon as Vukani was free, he sucker-punched Snake, sending him sprawling backwards into the dirt.

"That was for putting my son at risk," Vukani spat, rubbing his wrists and ankles.

Snake didn't even have the energy to get back up again. He winced as he lay one arm over his torso to nurse his ribs while weakly waving dismissively with the other.

"Whatever, man," Snake replied with exhaustion. "They can't hurt anyone anymore, least of all your kid. At least we're both still alive."

He screwed his eyes shut as he tried to shut out the pain. Snake looked upwards from his position towards the truck and gestured over to it with his chin. "You good to drive?"

Vukani still looked pissed off, giving Snake the silent treatment. He gave a begrudging nod. He extended a hand to help Snake up when he showed signs of struggling to get to his feet.

"Good," Snake said. "Because I don't think I've got much more in me."

Together they both painfully limped over to the truck cab and climbed inside, with Snake in the passenger seat. Snake's eyelids were already fluttering, threatening to close.

"Where are we going?" Vukani asked.

"Williston," Snake mumbled. "We're going…to Williston. Salamander's waiting for us."

Vukani fired up the engine and sent them rolling. Moments later, Snake started to become delirious. Vukani had to keep yelling at him to remain conscious, but before long, Snake lost out on the fight to stay awake and alert.

Snake only woke up briefly twice more. The first time was stumbling through some doors while being supported by Vukani's shoulder. There was a commotion, people dressed in scrubs, the smell of ammonia and rubbing alcohol—a sterile place, except for a noticeable trace scent of blood lingering in the air.

Snake drifted out and woke up briefly once more to find himself in a bed, a familiar male voice on the other side of the privacy curtain insisting that he was Snake's brother and that he needed to take Snake home.

That's odd, Snake thought deliriously to himself. As far as he was aware, he had no brothers.

That was his last thought before the drugs kicked in and put him to sleep.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY EIGHT - 0800 HOURS

A HOTEL IN WILLISTON

 

"Rise and shine, Snake."

Snake blinked blearily as he came to in the soft light of the morning sun, his first sight being an unfamiliar ceiling with a fan directly overhead. He was lying on something relatively comfortable; softer than he was used to. It took him a moment to realize he was in a bed. Looking around, he found himself in a cheap hotel room. He thought briefly of Kuwait.

Vukani was curled up and dozing off in a corner armchair while Salamander sat in a wooden chair leaning back against a desk, his feet perched on the windowsill slightly pushing aside one of the curtains with the toe of one shoe to let in some light and give him a small view outside.

Snake pulled himself into a sitting position against the headboard. It felt like moving through molasses.

Salamander nodded to him. "Don't try to move all at once. You're going to feel some drowsiness and numbness—a side effect of the painkillers the docs gave you."

"Painkillers?" Snake asked.

Vukani awoke with a start, looked at both men and yawned, his spine popping as he stretched out of his uncomfortable fetal position.

"Yeah, you were kind of out of it when you both got to Williston," Sal continued. "You were in pretty bad straits, needed immediate medical attention. Vukani here brought you to a local clinic. It's where I found you."

Vukani nodded in acknowledgement when Snake looked to him. "Thanks," Snake said. Vukani waved him off.

Sal kept talking. "It took some convincing, but I was able to make them think that I was your brother and that you were better off being discharged into my care rather than waiting in line behind who knows how many refugees. So many people moving throughout the region, even the small-town clinics are swamped, never mind the city hospitals. It was lucky I found you before you disappeared among the crowd; might've become just another statistic otherwise."

Snake looked down at his bandaged hands. "I see," he said. He looked at Sal. "You said you'd found us after we arrived. So, you were already in Williston by that point?"

Sal nodded.

Vukani replied, "We came to the clinic yesterday a little over an hour and a half after the fight with those Outer Heaven troopers. You'd been drifting in and out of consciousness ever since."

Sal's eye twitched slightly at Vukani's statement, Snake noticed. He wasn't sure why the detail was relevant, but Snake was too out of it to think too hard on it. He leaned his head back against the headboard of the bed.

He was so tired; even the sleep he'd had didn't come close to feeling like rest.

"Got you a present," Sal said, gesturing to the nightstand next to Snake.

Snake looked over, saw a fresh pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes resting on top of the alarm clock, next to his FOXHOUND branded lighter and an ashtray. Snake grabbed the pack and tore it open, flipping open the lighter. He laid the ashtray on his lap.

"Thanks," Snake said, lighting the cigarette and taking a drag. He blew out a plume of smoke in a single long, drawn-out sigh. He turned to Vukani. "What happened to the truck?"

"Ditched it just outside of town before I took you to the clinic," Vukani answered. "Had to throw away that iDroid you were carrying too while we were on the road. I don't know if it had any tracking devices installed inside of it, but I didn't want to chance it."

Snake nodded. It was a sensible decision, but also kind of a shame—it was a pretty advanced gadget, and he had hoped to be able to bring it home so that the DOD could reverse-engineer it, assuming Big Boss didn't keep anything similar at FOXHOUND HQ.

"Good thinking," he praised.

Sal peeked through the blinds he'd nudged aside. "No sign of any visitors. Coast is clear for now," he said.

Sal lifted his feet from the windowsill and allowed the blinds and curtains to cover the window to dim the room once more. He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees and folding his hands in front of his face.

He told Snake sternly, "Listen, Snake. I get you're still feeling like shit, but we'll need to move soon. We can't stay in this country: right now, the rebels and the civilians are caught in the middle, but it's only a matter of time until either Outer Heaven or SANDF roll over and take control, and then it's going to be much harder to move. Now, I've already got a plan of action for us to move forward."

"The rail lines, right?" Snake asked.

Salamander nodded. "The destination is the US facilities at Johannesburg. But before we can do that, I'm going to need some information from you. The last thing I heard from you before I lost my point of contact, you were joining the rebels in the assault on Outer Heaven. Then I don't hear anything until six hours later when Big Boss had me order the air strike, and I don't hear from you at all until the next day."

Sal looked over to Vukani, who was following the conversation with renewed interest, before turning back to Snake. "What happened, Snake? Why did you go radio silent? What happened with Gray Fox?"

Snake's breathing was stilted. He contemplated the bandaged hand holding the cigarette and noticed that it was shaking. He rubbed his wrist with the other hand, knocking the cigarette over the ashtray. He pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting his eyes shut to combat the onset of a slight headache. When he looked up to regard Salamander, exhaustion was written all over his face.

"You said Big Boss ordered the air strike—that wasn't recommended by me. He was acting on his own," Snake started, taking another drag from his Lucky Strike. "I noticed the radio he had used was tuned to your frequency when I was chasing after him in the bunker."

"Chasing after him?" Sal interjected.

Snake nodded. "Me and a small team of rebels inserted to destroy or disable Metal Gear. We succeeded in the latter, though not without significant casualties. When all was said and done, I was the only one who made it out. I saw the pilot escaping the Metal Gear wreckage, figured it for Venom, and chased him down. Turned out that Venom—Ahab—was Big Boss himself." Snake let out a short, humorless chuckle.

"Imagine my surprise," he said. Snake took another drag before looking Sal in the eye. "He betrayed us, Sal. Betrayed FOXHOUND. He'd been running the whole thing behind the scenes the entire time."

Vukani was disturbed, shocked into speechlessness. Sal's expression was a little harder to read. He leaned back into his chair with a grim narrowing of the eyes and a thinning of the lips, hands curling into fists.

"It doesn't make sense," Sal said, shaking his head. "Why go to the trouble of bringing us in against his own organization if he was the one behind the wheel?"

"Because I'm new," Snake replied. His face screwed up into a scowl. The imaginary burning American flag once more came to his mind, a grinning one-eyed demon saluting in front of it. "He was banking on my inexperience leading to failure, hoping I would wind up dead. He never expected me to make it out. Pretty sure the whole operation was just to give himself plausible deniability in Washington, keep the heat off of his operations for long enough for him to enact his plan," he finished.

"And what was his plan?" Vukani asked.

Snake's hand reflexively gripped, crushing his cigarette. He felt the burning ember on his knuckle, and quickly put it out into the ash tray before setting the tray back onto the nightstand. "The bunker wasn't just housing Metal Gear. There was an entire facility underground for housing nuclear materials and constructing warheads. Turns out Fox's intel was good."

Vukani sank back into his armchair, eyes defocusing into a thousand-yard stare to mimic Snake's. Salamander put his hands on his legs and started rubbing his knees while he kept his attention on the rookie FOXHOUNDer.

"When I was first infiltrating the facility," Snake continued, "I had heard rumors among Outer Heaven's staff about the possibility of an impending coup against the South African government—some kind of war of conquest, just like the Resistance feared. Either they were going to use the nukes in some kind of terrorist action or keep them as deterrence to prevent the UN from interfering with the takeover."

Snake shrugged. "After that, who knows? Whatever the long-term plans Big Boss had for Outer Heaven, they died with him. As for Fox, he and Kyle and the rest of the rebels were still in the AO at the time of the air strike. I tried warning them to exfil, but after the bombings, it was just…silent."

"Are you saying that you believe them to be KIA?" Sal asked.

Snake shook his head. "I never heard from them after the bombs dropped. That's all I know."

Snake rubbed his wrists to try and make his hands stop shaking. His shoulders hunched in a little as he unconsciously rocked his torso back and forth. He was beginning to feel more awake and alert, and even though he was among allies, he couldn't bring himself to relax. He looked from both of the room's other inhabitants, to the curtained window, to the locked hotel room door, then back to Sal.

"You're sure we're alone?" he asked.

Sal nodded confidently. "Positive. You can rest easy, rookie. The hardest part's over. We'll check out in a couple of hours."

"I'll do it," Vukani volunteered. "I need to head to the front desk anyway to make a couple of phone calls. I need to let Carlton know what happened…and I want to say hello to my son."

Sal nodded with a slight wave. "Do what you need to do."

Salamander stood up, following Vukani to the door, turning his head over to Snake. "I'm going to see about getting some breakfast. You want anything, rookie?"

Snake shook his head. His appetite had completely left him. Sal nodded sympathetically.

"Get what rest you can, Snake," he said. "You've earned it. We'll be back soon."

And just like that, Snake was alone once again.

He tapped his fingers on the mattress. The drugs were starting to wear off—at least a little. He felt a dull aching in his muscles and joints, but it was muted. Experimentally, he moved his arms then swung his legs over the side of the bed. His reflexes still felt slowed, but the drowsiness was gone.

Snake was restless—he knew he wasn't going to be able to fall asleep again even if he wanted to and in that moment, he didn't want to sit still. He stood up, stumbling a little to fight against the numbness. Pins and needles were felt in his legs as he got himself moving again.

Snake looked around the room, saw a bag sitting open next to the desk. Poking up out of it was an atlas. Snake pulled it out. He wanted to get an idea of their itinerary for reaching Victoria West. He opened it to the relevant page and after a few minutes of searching, found Williston, tracing his finger along the roads south by southeast to the city in question.

It was roughly 170 miles away via R63 through Loxton. Assuming light traffic and no delays from opposing forces, it would take them about two and a half hours. Salamander had plotted the route and circled the city in pen.

Snake flipped through the pages to find the map for Victoria West. The town was smaller than he envisioned: Sal had said that the plan was to board a northbound train to Johannesburg—shouldn't a train station with such large foot traffic belong in a larger municipal city, not a town of over eight thousand?

Snake looked all over the city but couldn't find a single northbound rail line. He thumbed through the pages, and the nearest northbound train line to Johannesburg was in the Northern Cape's capital of Kimberley, a three-hour drive north by northeast from Victoria West. Why was Salamander planning on going so far out of his way?

Was he planning to take public transport? A shuttle bus north out of Victoria to connect to a train station at Kimberley? But then why not just drive them all directly to Kimberley from Williston? Snake turned back to the map of Victoria West. Various locations were marked out in pen, some crossed out, some circled. Lists of coordinates and radio frequencies were written along the side of the map around the town's outskirts.

Snake looked over to the alarm clock and remembered Salamander's eye twitching in reaction to Vukani saying they had arrived in Williston just a little over an hour and a half after the firefight in the desert. The eye twitch was a tell—a gesture of annoyance, Snake thought. Snake thought back to his conversation with Sal over the radio yesterday morning when they were making their plans.

Didn't Sal say that he was around five hours out from Williston when he said to meet them there? But Vukani had said he'd brought Snake to the clinic at no later than fifteen hundred hours. How did Salamander get to Williston before them?

A sinking feeling welled up in Snake's gut as he carefully closed the atlas and put it back in the backpack where he'd found it, trying to make it look like it went undisturbed.

About an hour later, Salamander returned to the hotel room, carrying a bag. Sitting at the desk, he withdrew two wrapped sandwiches, handing one to Snake.

"I'm not hungry," Snake said.

"Eat," Sal insisted. "You're going to need your strength for the journey home."

Snake waited a second, then nodded gratefully as he grabbed the sandwich.

"Alright," he relented. "Thanks."

Snake unwrapped the plastic from his sandwich at the same time as Sal, then started opening it up and examining the contents.

"I didn't get a chance to find out what you'd prefer, so I just got the same as mine," Sal said. "What, are you a picky eater?"

Snake put his sandwich back together, shaking his head. "No, sorry. Just…still on edge, I guess."

Judging the food to be okay, Snake took a bite. He sighed quietly in relief and satisfaction. He was hungrier than he'd thought. As the two men ate, Snake looked over briefly to the door.

"Vukani sure is taking a while," he noted.

Sal nodded with a shrug. "I saw him on the way back in. He's still on the phone with his kid. Told me he'd be a few more minutes."

"That's sweet," Snake said.

"Yeah, well, he's going to need to wrap it up soon. Soon as we finish our lunch and take a few minutes to digest, I want us to be heading on our way."

"Mmm," Snake agreed, his mouth full as he quickly scarfed down the rest of his meal. He took a second to swallow, then said, "Actually, I wanted to get cleaned up real quick before we head out. I probably look just as scruffy looking from my week in Outer Heaven as I did during the assault, and I don't want to worry about being recognized if we run into any merc patrols. Do you mind?"

Sal shook his head. "By all means."

"Do you have a straight razor I can borrow?"

Salamander pulled up his backpack from beside the desk and started digging through it with half his sandwich hanging out of his mouth. He paused for a second, and Snake had to consciously keep from tensing up.

"Uhh…yeah, here you go," Sal said, digging out a Thiers Issard with a horn handle and passing it to Snake as he stood up. Before Snake could walk into the bathroom, Sal raised a finger and handed Snake a whet stone.

"I don't remember the last time I sharpened it," Sal explained sheepishly.

Snake nodded in thanks and opened the bathroom door and walked straight forward to the sink. The toilet stood just to his right and half bathtub just beyond it. Snake looked into his own reflection—he was haggard, his face rough. He'd managed to lose quite a bit of weight over the past week. His light brown hair was a long and shaggy mullet, and his face covered with the onset of a beard.

But what caught him most was the eyes. His light blue irises looked dull in the light, his expression sunken and dark. It was a defeated sort of tiredness, like all life and vigor had been sucked out of him.

It reminded him of Big Boss's face just before his death. He hated it.

Snake opened the tap, splashing water into his face. When he looked up, he saw Sal standing behind him in his reflection, leaning against the doorway, his right arm hidden behind his back while his left held the last of his meal.

As Sal consumed the last of his sandwich, Snake opened the razor and began checking the edge before running it against the whetstone.

"So, run your plan by me one more time," Snake said in a light tone. "I want to make absolutely sure I've got the details before we leave."

"Sure," Sal said, watching Snake sharpen the razor. He rubbed the last crumbs off his hand onto his shirt. "We're going to take the R63 to Victoria West. We'll have to pass through Loxton on the way there; another populated area."

"You said that the rebels, SANDF and Outer Heaven have been fighting. Who's got control of the region we're passing through?"

"Well, right now Victoria West is under government control, and they've been working to suppress the rebels in the area to make sure they keep the peace for the sake of the refugees."

"Shouldn't the rebels and SANDF be working together?"

"The Resistance isn't fighting with the government's backing, and there's been rumors of some infighting—two much factionalization and competing goals between the two groups. The only thing they agree on is that Outer Heaven needs to be taken down, but not everyone agrees on how to go about it. The government are worried about the rebels being a destabilizing force that'll cause more problems than they'll solve if they're allowed to roam free, and it's SANDF who are working to set up official channels for safeguarding the refugees from the Northern Cape and outlying.

"SANDF aren't ordered to shoot the rebels on sight like with the mercs, but there have been some arrests, and that's led to some fighting as the rebels refused to lay down arms while they fight for their neighborhoods against Outer Heaven. The whole thing is one big shitshow—a three-way civil war. Luckily, with Victoria West and the Johannesburg rail lines under military control, it should be relatively safe if we just keep our heads down and act like displaced refugees."

Snake stopped sharpening, laying the blade across his thumb to check the edge. He looked into the eyes of Sal's reflection. "Uh-huh," he said. "And as for Loxton?"

"There are rebels in the area, and an Outer Heaven FOB several clicks to the northwest that was attacked on the day of the assault, so we may see some activity. The radio channels have been pretty quiet since yesterday though, so I'm hoping we'll get through as long as we're quick about it and don't waste time."

"And then we board the train to Johannesburg—" Snake started.

"—while avoiding military checkpoints wherever possible," Sal finished.

Snake nodded, putting the blade's edge near the scruff growing on his neck. "It's a good plan," Snake said.

"Thank you," Sal said. "I do try."

"There's just one problem, though."

"What's that?"

"There are no trains to Johannesburg running through Victoria West."

There was a moment of tense silence between them.

"Hey, Sal…" Snake said.

"Yeah?"

"How'd you manage to get here before me and Vukani, despite the fact that you said you were over five hours away when I approached the Outer Heaven camp?"

Sal answered with a shrug. Snake looked at how Sal was leaning so that his right arm was around the doorway behind the wall.

"What're you hiding back there, Sal?"

It all happened so fast. Snake turned to let the stabbing of Sal's knife pass his stomach as he leaned out of the way. He then grabbed the wrist of Sal's knife hand and held it close, swinging his straight razor in a slice toward Sal's jugular.

Sal leaned back with his neck to avoid getting cut, and Snake stepped forward to try to loop his foot around Sal's ankle while putting the hand with the razor behind Sal's head, using the momentum to pull Sal forward and smash his forehead into the mirror. Cracks splintered in the glass.

Sal retaliated by using his free hand to grab Snake's wrist, extended the arm and pulled up at the elbow. With control of Snake's arm, Sal swung him around and threw him toward the bathtub with Snake too weakened to resist.

Snake felt pain explode in his back as he collided with the tiled wall and fell into the tub, pulling the shower curtain and the rod it hung on down onto himself. His hand had let go of the razor at some point in the fall, and he lost track of it.

He didn't have time to fumble for it as Sal was already upon him, wrapping the plastic shower curtain around Snake's head and yanking it back, pulling up Snake bodily as he began to suffocate. Snake couldn't get purchase on the plastic with his teeth, his mouth gaping open like a fish as he started to involuntarily panic.

His lungs were on fire, and his vision was already starting to grow dark as his limbs reflexively thrashed. His eyes were bulging, his tongue felt like a useless worm in his mouth, desperately poking at his face's plastic prison to search for some kind of give to the barrier.

Is this how I die? Snake thought to himself. Battered and broken in a bathtub, no air in my lungs?

He felt the flesh of his hand burn as something cut into them; his fingers felt purchase on a handle and grabbed it. He put the blade over his open mouth and cut open the plastic, before swinging wildly up and behind him. He felt the plastic begin to slacken, and Snake swung his elbow back to where he hoped Sal's head was.

Sal lost his grip on the shower curtain, and Snake grabbed what he believed was an arm, lowered his center of gravity, and threw the body over his shoulder, sending it crashing into the wall, knocking off the towel rod as he collapsed to the floor.

Snake's vision started coming back, and he quickly tore off the shower curtain to give himself more room to breathe. He coughed hoarsely, and both men took a second to get their wits about them again.

It was Snake who recovered first. He stumbled to his feet and stepped over the side of the tub, grabbing the heavy and solid porcelain lid off the back of the toilet tank with both hands. As he stepped closer to Salamander, Sal had just started to grab the dented towel rod that had broken off the wall too late to prevent the force of Snake's swing with the solid chunk of porcelain from colliding with his face, knocking out several teeth and spraying blood out the open doorway across the carpet of the hotel room.

The momentum of Snake's swing caused Snake to fall over onto Sal's body and lose his grip on the lid which fell to the floor with a loud thunk. He quickly grabbed Sal's knife from the floor next to them and pulled himself up to straddle Sal's torso and pin one of his arms with his knee. He raised the point of the knife to hover over Sal's neck.

"Why?" Snake demanded, breathing heavily.

Sal coughed, spitting up blood and chunks of teeth. "'ig 'oss's orders," he said. "Ha' to 'ie up loose enns. Couldn't let his involff-ment ge' ou'." Sal's voice was slurred—he was having difficulty speaking coherently with the broken jaw.

"Hope it was worth it," Snake said.

"Following that man froo hell itsel', to build his falhalla on earth?" Sal looked up defiantly. "Yeah, I'd say it's worth it. I 'old you, rookie, durin' training: truss no one but da mission."

Snake plunged his knife into the soft flesh between Salamander's ribs, then again through the chest, then finally through the neck. Each time the knife emerged from Sal's body, blood flowed freely onto his hands, up his arms, onto his face.

When his work was finished, there was no life left below him anymore, just Salamander's bulging, glassy eyes staring up at him in a mocking glare, as if to ask, did you finally learn your lesson, Rookie? Do you finally get it now?

And he did get it—Snake got the message, alright.

Snake stood up. His hands were no longer shaking. His breathing was even, his body completely and utterly still, save for the heavy breathing from the exertion.

He looked into the damaged mirror to his right. A horrible grinning face loomed back at him through a curtain of blood and hair, eyes wide, staring with the glee and the triumph of a predator that had just secured its final victory over its prey and eaten its fill. Snake had seen the face of this monster before in his dreams. He recalled the last thing it said to him—that by the time this was all over, he would belong to the Demon, become the Demon.

In this moment, Snake understood what the monster had meant.

Today, Solid Snake had finally, truly earned his name.

He wiped the blood on his hand onto the mirror. He didn't want to see that monster's face anymore. He turned on the tap and began washing his face and hands, scrubbing as hard as he could until the caked-on blood stopped running off of him. Once the blood was gone, he wordlessly dragged Sal's body over to the bathtub and dumped it inside.

After grabbing Salamander's wallet and card keys from his pocket, he covered the body with the shower curtain. He walked back into the hotel room, grabbed a spare set of clothes out of Salamander's duffel bag, and got dressed. He had to tighten up his belt because Salamander was about a size too big for him. He then grabbed the bag and backpack and walked out of the hotel room into the parking lot.

He pressed the button on the key fob and walked over to the back of a baby blue 1991 Volkswagen Citi Golf hatchback. He opened the rear door and tossed in the bags and closed it. As he did, he looked down at the ground and noticed a small trace of red with a hard edge to it, looked like part of a footprint.

Looking up the sidewalk, Snake saw more small red spots on the concrete. He followed them around the corner of the building toward a dumpster. On the side of the dumpster were three red fingerprints.

Snake swallowed. He knew what he was going to find, but he had to see for himself. He opened the lid and found Vukani, neck cut and wrapped with razor wire, and multiple stab wounds in his gut, bleeding freely. The wounds were deep and fresh, with bits of intestine peeking out.

His shirt was a deep crimson, his eyes bulging like a fish as his head was propped up by a garbage bag and looking downward in a macabre pantomime of a puppet who'd just lost its strings and was left discarded and slumped over.

The smell assaulted Snake's nostrils in waves, and he let the lid slam shut as he doubled over with tears in his eyes, trying his best to keep his morning breakfast in his stomach. After a few seconds of dry heaving, Snake collected himself and wandered listlessly back to the Citi Golf, opened the door, and grabbed the atlas from Sal's backpack before collapsing into the driver's seat.

He thumbed back to the page where he'd traced the route. Sal had said that there was fighting in the region, but Victoria West was under government control. Of course, given that Sal had just tried to kill him, it could all be bullshit for all he knew.

He opened the glovebox. Inside was a 9mm HK USP and a box of 9mm pistol rounds. He closed the glove box and checked the console, finding a walkie talkie. He turned the pages of the atlas over to Victoria West and tuned the radio to one of the frequencies on the list before putting the radio and the atlas aside.

Salamander had wanted to go to Victoria West. With no other immediate course of action in front of him, Snake decided that he was going to try and find out why.

He turned the ignition and drove away from the hotel and out of Williston.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY EIGHT – 1142 HOURS

VICTORIA WEST

 

A military contingent had created a checkpoint around the outskirts to process the refugees and send them to temporary living quarters in the wake of the rebels' attack on Outer Heaven's outposts. When the refugees first started arriving, the local municipal government housed the ones who showed up first at the local hotels and motels and churches, but once these spaces quickly filled, the migrants were forced to make do in the outdoors on the streets and in the outskirts with whatever rationed supplies SANDF gave them.

Even with a cool ambient temperature in the 70s Fahrenheit, the sun beat down upon the town as Snake carefully navigated his car around the various tent cities and shantytowns that had erupted around the small town with the refugees' arrival. Snake tried his best to keep a respectful distance from the sea of despondent faces that watched him carefully from afar—in a place of such quiet desperation and fearful circumstances, driving an unaffiliated working vehicle put a target on his back.

Without any identification documents, Snake was forced to bribe the soldiers into letting him through. He opened Sal's wallet to see what was inside, and before he could utter a word of protest, the guard had simply confiscated the whole thing and waved him through.

Now, if Snake ended up needing to bribe any more officials on his way to the U.S. Embassy, he would be out of luck; he'd need to either find more money elsewhere or figure something else out.

It was stupid of him to open it within arm's reach. Snake didn't fight it—causing a scene here in this pressure cooker of stress would be a good way to get his brains blown out. Better to keep a low profile and not draw even more attention to himself than the car already brought him.

He checked the map again. Salamander had marked a church as his destination. When he pulled up on the address, he moved to park across the street, only to see a man waving him around to a nearby driveway.

The man looked to be about in his mid-thirties, dressed in corduroy pants and an open denim shirt with a white undershirt and leather gloves hanging out of his front pocket. His denim shirt and jeans were covered in dried oil spots, and his undershirt was closer to grey from sweat. The man had a perpetual squint on his rough, dried-up looking face as he motioned for Snake to drive over.

Snake's suspicion increased, and he glanced over at the gun that he'd pulled out of the glovebox and placed on the passenger seat. Making a decision, he slowly turned onto the driveway and parked at the end of a fenced alleyway that the man pointed to. As he opened the door and climbed out, he quickly grabbed the pistol and tucked it into the back of his pants, pulling his shirt over it. He grabbed the keys out of the car and rolled up the window before slamming it shut and locking it.

The man approached Snake on the dusty path. His dark, wrinkled face attempted what he probably thought to be a friendly smile but looked more like a grimace.

"'Lo there," the man said. "You're the guy, I take it? Salamander, they said. Funny, I thought you'd be taller."

Snake nervously stood up a little straighter out of his hunch to try and fill out his stolen clothes a little more, even though it hurt a little to adjust his posture like that. He looked the man up and down. The man looked to be no immediate threat.

"How'd you guess that?" he hedged.

The man pointed at the Citi Golf. "Recognized the car. Had the same paint job as they told me. Same licence plate."

Snake nodded. That made sense. "So, that makes you the contact."

"That's me," the man confirmed.

"You're Outer Heaven?"

The man shook his head. "Third party. Me and your boss go way back. Been pulling smuggling jobs for him for years, though it's not often he has me transport a person. Call me Booker." He extended a hand to Snake. Snake shook it.

Booker looked over Snake's shoulder. "Where's the other guy? Weren't you supposed to bring someone with you?"

Snake pulled out a cigarette from his pack of Lucky Strikes and lit it. "Other guy didn't make it," Snake said, taking a drag. "Turned out to be a turncoat, had to get flushed out."

Snake felt a stab of pain in his midsection and winced, putting his hand to his side and leaning over slightly. Booker looked at him with curiosity.

"Are you good?" he asked.

Snake nodded with gritted teeth. "Yeah," he answered. "It's just been a hell of a week."

Booker chuckled. "I bet," he replied.

Booker then started to look a little sheepish, rubbing the back of his head. "Okay, so listen. Ordinarily I would take payment half upfront, half when we arrive at our destination. But like I said, the Boss and I go way back, so when he asks for a favor, I have no problem extending it to him on faith—I know he's good for it. Only now, we've got two problems. The first being that the Boss never specified a destination—he said that there was a place for you with him if you wanted it but wanted to leave the decision up to you. The second problem though, is a bit thornier. You, see, the Boss is—"

"Dead," Snake finished for him.

Booker narrowed his eyes. "How'd you know about that?"

"It's been two days," Snake said with a shrug. "Word travels fast."

"You don't look too broken up about it."

Snake pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing his tired eyelids. "Looks can be deceiving," he said. "It's been a long week, Booker."

Seemingly satisfied with Snake's answer, Booker's expression became more solemn. "Fair enough. It's a real shame, you know. He was a great man, even though he and I came from different worlds."

"You knew him well?"

"Sure. Served in his army, once upon a time back in the '80's. Left for personal reasons—I was in it for the money, and eventually I was ready to retire and move on to something else. I wasn't made for the world he wanted, and I like keeping my head right where it is and flying under the radar. Some people just aren't made for the spotlight. He never begrudged me for leaving, though. He made sure I was set for life. When I decided to become a pilot, I returned the favor by helping him ferry supplies and contraband every so often; and like I said, he was always good for the money."

Is that how Big Boss smuggled in American weaponry into Outer Heaven, Snake wondered? Did he have an entire network of smugglers? Just how far did his influence reach?

"And that brings us to our second problem," Booker continued. "Big Boss never employed me directly through any official channels, he didn't use his government contacts or Outer Heaven. I was always strictly off the books. Now that he's gone, the money that was supposed to be coming in is going to dry up—which means, there's still the matter of payment."

Snake sighed heavily. "I don't have any money on me. The cash I had was taken at the checkpoint so I could get safe passage into town."

"Well, that is a conundrum, isn't it?" Booker said.

There was a moment of silence between the two men.

Snake swore under his breath and shrugged. "So, that's it, then? I'm just shit out of luck—favor's null and void?"

"'Fraid so. I've still gotta eat, after all."

"Damn it," Snake cursed. "Fine. I'll figure it out on my own."

"Alright, listen: I'll tell you what I can do. I've got an extra can of petrol I can spot you. Should be enough to get you at least to Hopetown."

"I'll take what I can get," Snake nodded gratefully. He added, "I owe you one," only slightly insincerely.

Booker nodded. "Come on, let's go grab it from my truck."

As they walked, Booker asked, "So, where will you go, Mr. Salamander, when all this is said and done? Will you join up with Big Boss's forces, like he offered?"

Snake barked a sarcastic laugh. "Why would I do that? With Big Boss dead, what would be the point?"

"So, then you'll be going back to America, I take it?"

Booker opened a padlocked chain hanging on a chain-link gate and swung it open to admit them both to a small lot where a Toyota was parked. When they reached the vehicle, Booker climbed up over the tailgate and emerged with a 5-gallon fuel can that he handed off to Snake.

Snake answered as he accepted the gift, "Don't really have anywhere else to go at this point."

"Aren't you worried about what might happen if they discover your deception over there?"

I'd be more worried about what you'll do if and when you discover mine, Snake thought to himself. He gave a noncommittal shrug as an answer. Quietly, they walked back to Snake's car.

Suddenly, an explosion rattled the ground, followed by gunfire and distant screams. Snake and Booker ran to the opening of the alleyway and looked down the street to see the Magistrate Courthouse under siege by a small contingent of Outer Heaven forces. SANDF were scrambling to defend the building while the local police worked to evacuate the scared and confused civilians.

"I think that's my cue to leave," Snake said as they both rushed back to his car.

"Agreed," Booker replied. He opened the gate at the other end of the alley and pointed down River Street. "Take the dirt roads off of River Street and detour around the prison along the bottom of the hill until you reach the neighborhoods on Umfula Ongzulu Street. You can use that to get back onto the N12 highway going north."

"Got it," said Snake.

"Be careful, though," said Booker. "I've heard through the grapevine that there is a rebel presence in the area, and they've only been getting more aggressive lately. If they see an opportunity to strike at Outer Heaven, they may join the fighting and escalate the situation."

"Good to know," Snake replied.

"Stay safe, Salamander."

Snake almost felt bad about lying to Booker. Almost.

"You too," he responded.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY EIGHT – 1633 HOURS

HOPETOWN

 

It took Snake about an hour longer to get to Hopetown than it otherwise would've with a more direct route. Outer Heaven had been conducting a counteroffensive from Britstown all the way to Beaufort West and Prince Albert, seeking to take control of the western borders of the Northern Cape province and restrict traffic of refugees moving out of the region, and more importantly, keep SANDF military resources from moving in.

When the Outer Heaven convoys started assaulting SANDF military installations, they had taken the government forces by surprise with artillery, forcing SANDF to quickly retreat and regroup along the borders.

The Resistance, for their part, responded by conducting hit and run attacks on troopers moving along the N12 and N1 highways, setting up ambush raids and leaving IEDs to try and cripple the Outer Heaven vehicle divisions. The drawback was that this made traveling on the main highways much more dangerous not just for the Outer Heaven mercenaries, but for SANDF and civilian vehicles as well.

This had drawn the ire of both parties, and soon the western edges of the Northern Cape was caught up in a three-way battle royale as Outer Heaven and the rebels both tore up the landscape with craters and SANDF met both parties with deadly force as they desperately pushed for greater control while awaiting reinforcements from Kimberley and Bloemfontein.

When Snake reached Hopetown, he had made a wide berth to approach from the west, forced to park his car on the top of a plateau as he quickly found himself running out of gasoline. Left with no other alternative than to walk, he pulled a pair of binoculars and laid prone at the edge of the cliff to observe the municipality from afar.

The cracks and bottle rocket pops of distant gunshots sounded haphazardly over the air, punctuated by the occasional booming thunder of explosives. Many of the houses and larger buildings had wide holes punched into them or had caved in onto themselves. The circular fields on the other side of the town were scarred by craters, and plumes and streams of smoke rose from the neighborhoods to pollute the air.

The smell of smoke and spent diesel fuel carried on the wind, along with a faint metallic tinge that Snake recognized from the taste to be blood. Littering the streets among the rubble were bodies of all types—not just men and women in uniform, but that of the civilians and children as well: as those who were unable or unwilling to evacuate were forced to shelter in place in their homes in the hopes that the next rocket would miss them or else risk getting cut down by gunfire on the open street.

Kimberley—along with its railways into the eastern and northern provinces—was still in SANDF's zone of control for now, but it was still more than 70 miles away. If Snake was going to get there, he'd need to secure transport, and that would mean wading into the bloodbath below.

He grumbled, sighed, and slowly—painfully—pushed himself up into a kneeling, then a standing position. He gingerly walked over to the back of the car and grabbed his gun and a bottle of painkillers. He popped off the cap, swallowed a couple of tablets, and took a swig out of a plastic water bottle he'd pilfered from Sal's bags.

"Alright," he said to himself, trying to psyche himself up as he quickly checked the magazine and chamber of his USP. He took a breath and let it out.

"Here we go."

Snake tried to keep himself as low as possible as he descended the track alongside the plateau towards the nearest house. It was a slow thirty minutes where his knees kept screaming at him for the abuse he was putting them under. Crouching and swiftly moving for such a long period was not exactly a comfortable prospect, even disregarding his previous injuries.

When he finally reached the first house, he drew his weapon and held it close to his chest as he crept along the exterior wall. He leaned around the corner, saw no immediate threats, and rounded the corner to move to the front yard.

With Kimberley and the eastern provinces under SANDF control, he believed that it would be safer to obtain transport closer to the northern end of the town, near 7 de Laan or Thamboville. It would be about a thirty-five to forty-minute walk, assuming no engagements. With the amount of enemy territory that he had to navigate, that two-mile distance might as well have been a chasm.

The front yard was a wide barren desert spot, devoid of cover or concealment save for a single large tree. It would be Snake's first hurdle as he made his way to Church Street. He sprinted up to the tree, peeked between two of the low branches near the trunk at the roundabout ahead—a small green oasis in a field of brown—and quickly scurried across the first branch of the road to another large tree in the oasis, taking a second to look for hostiles and sprinting to the other side of the road, underneath the tree cover of the neighborhood on the opposite side.

So far, so good.

Running between the houses under the rare foliage, he quickly hopped the fence of a still standing house to hide as he heard the engine of an approaching Outer Heaven LAV. Snake peeked through a hole in the fence as the armored vehicle trundled through the muddy dirt road while escorted by four Outer Heaven troopers wearing flak jackets.

Patiently, Snake waited for them to pass. Once they were further down the road, he stood up to keep moving.

To his left, towards the house, he heard a cough. Snake wheeled around, pointing his gun at the scared faces of a young woman and a girl, who were peeking out from over the open windowsill of a house whose northern wall had been knocked down. The girl's eyes widened, and the woman frantically raised her hands.

Snake saw her opening her mouth to beg for her life, and he immediately lowered his weapon to put a finger to his lips, narrowing his eyes to signal, "don't say a word."

The woman nodded and whispered in the young girl's ears. The girl tearfully put her hands over her mouth in response.

Snake got up to leave, but his conscience weighed down his feet. Internally, he battled with himself. He cursed under his breath. He couldn't leave them behind for Outer Heaven to find. He looked over to the young woman and anxiously waved them over.

Obediently, the woman took the girl's hand and ran up to Snake, crouching behind the fence.

Snake whispered in Afrikaans, "Don't be scared. I'll lead you to safety. But you have to do exactly as I tell you. Understand?"

The woman nodded.

"Is there a way to get away from this house through the fence without climbing it?"

Instead of answering, the woman led Snake to a side gate on the north side of the house. Snake motioned for them to wait and looked ahead at the Outer Heaven vehicle patrol. He turned to the woman.

"In order to get out of here, we need to get to the northernmost part of town." He pulled the atlas from his backpack and traced it with his finger. "Those mercenaries are in the way, so we're going to cut all the way across to…what is this building, a school?"

The woman nodded, pointing at the green oval next to it. "That's the football pitch," she said.

"Okay. There's a lot of exposed space on the other side of the school, so when we get to the schoolhouse, we'll turn left and go north to eventually cross Wild Street, then go right to cross the N12 to the northeast side of town. It's going to be dangerous, so we'll need to be fast. Got it?"

The woman nodded. Snake looked to the child.

"Are you going to be okay with your kid?"

"Sister," she corrected. "And we should be fine."

"Okay. Stay close, move only when I tell you to, and make sure you move quickly when you do. If we make it further north, the SANDF forces should be able to help you."

"O-okay."

Wordlessly, Snake watched the Outer Heaven patrol move still northward on Fleet Street, silently counting down to the woman and girl with his fingers. When he got to one, he pointed across the street for them to cross, with him following closely behind, gun raised. Their footsteps were masked by the LAV's engine in the distance. They moved slightly north toward the vehicle patrol before turning a sharp right onto a long dirt road.

Shouts could be heard in the distance back on Fleet Street, followed by an explosion and more gunshots. The girl whimpered as the young woman covered her sister's mouth, trying not to scream herself. Quickly and methodically, Snake led them from house to house until they reached a turnoff at the far end, behind a Guest House.

They cut through the trees around the building, which had been torn in half by a mortar strike earlier in the day. The rooms inside were littered with bodies, and the elder sister held the younger to her chest to face the child away from the carnage. The air was even thicker with the taste of blood than ever before.

On the other side, they reached Erasmus Street, turned left towards Mark Street, then sprinted to the schoolhouse with the red roof.

"Psst! In here!"

A man waved to the three of them from the open front double doors of the school. Internally, Snake felt some relief. Perhaps he wouldn't have to worry about escorting the sisters all the way to the other side of town after all. At the man's urging, the three made their way inside through the doors and followed him down the main hallways.

Snake asked the man, "Are you with SANDF?"

The man shook his head, pointing to his white armband. A Resistance member.

"Who are you," the man asked suspiciously. "You're not local."

Snake replied, "Just someone who's trying to get out of here alive."

Soon after, an explosion struck the wall to their left, blowing open a hole. Snake moved to shield the sisters from the shrapnel and debris, screaming in pain as something sliced into his back. As he fell over, Snake dragged himself toward the hole, leaning out. He saw SANDF personnel raising their rifles in his direction, and quickly fired, putting down two men and sending the rest back into cover.

Out of nowhere, an explosion sounded as the LAV arrived from the west, firing upon the position where the SANDF were last seen. A mortar whistled overhead and landed atop the LAV, destroying it and killing three of the Outer Heaven troopers escorting it.

The sisters both grabbed Snake by the arms and with great effort, dragged him further down the halls until they reached the doors into the courtyard, where more people with white armbands lay in wait with a huddle of civilians. A few of these rebels manned a mortar tube and were launching ordnance danger close at the enemy vehicles.

"Somebody please help us," the elder sister screamed as she strained to drag Snake out towards them.

Some rebels ran back into the hall towards the open hole to engage what was left of the Outer Heaven and SANDF forces outside, while another couple of men sprinted up to them with a stretcher. Snake could feel himself losing consciousness.

He fought to stay awake as he started to register some new voices discussing him.

"Who is he?"

"I don't know. He's armed, but he's not wearing a SANDF uniform. Doesn't look like a rebel, either."

"Do you think he's Outer Heaven?"

"If he is, then why are we treating him? We should kill him and be done with it."

"He was protecting civilians. When was the last time you saw a merc trooper do that?"

The voices were getting quieter, more muffled. Snake was fading, fast. His ears perked as he heard one more voice join the fray and he realized that this one sounded familiar—a man he'd fought to rescue, what felt like a lifetime ago.

"Snake? Snake, is that you?" The voice turned away from him. "Jennifer, get over here!"

Snake blacked out. He didn't know for how long. The next thing he knew, he was in a moving vehicle. He couldn't tell where they were going. A new voice, this one feminine. He heard her say something about an infection.

"Ah, he's awake! Wait, no, I'm losing him again," said the first voice. "Come on, Snake, stay with me!"

"W-where are we…where're we goin'?" Snake mumbled.

"I'm taking you to the safe house in Kimberley where I can treat you properly," said the woman. "You're not allowed to die on us yet, Snake. I won't let you."

But by that point, Snake had already closed his eyes, his senses returned to the void as he succumbed to exhaustion.

Notes:

And with that, we have another chapter completed. This one took me a while to get through, not so much because the writing of it was difficult, but because I've been dealing with some personal stuff lately that's been keeping me away from writing for a few weeks.

I had plotted out the beats pretty much exactly how I wanted them to go way in advance, with this chapter experiencing only a couple of minor changes when I finally put it to page-originally Snake's rescue by Jennifer was going to take place in Victoria West rather than Hopetown, and his injury was going to be at the hands of the rebels mistaking him for an Outer Heaven trooper; I ended up changing this when I got to the actual scene because the part I threw in at the last minute of Salamander going to meet with a pilot in Victoria West made it so that the rebels fighting in Victoria West no longer made sense due to its status as a SANDF refugee outpost.

Next chapter's already been plotted out, and it should act as a bit of a reprieve from all the action scenes as we'll be focusing on Snake and his rebel friends coming to terms with what happened when Outer Heaven HQ was destroyed while Snake himself recovers from his many injuries. Once again, I don't know when I'll have it done and thus won't make any promises with regard to deadlines, but my hope is that I'll have it ready by next month. Assuming I keep to the roadmap I've made for myself, there should only be about four or five chapters left to go, including the next one, and I hope to have him out of South Africa and back home by the end of the next two chapters.

The end is in sight, folks. As we get closer to it, I want to thank everyone who's stuck with me this far in reading it. It's been a long and rewarding journey, and I look forward to seeing where I take things next after this story is finally over.

Chapter 22: Aftermath and Catharsis

Summary:

Snake wakes up among friends, finally safe from the battles, but now he must reckon with the psychological scars that his journey has inflicted up to this point.

"...I'm not a big fan of blades."
--Solid Snake to Raiden,
Metal Gear Solid 2: The Sons of Liberty (released in November 2001)

DAY ELEVEN – TIME UNKNOWN

LOCATION: ????

 

After Snake lost consciousness, there was a period where he would drift in and out. When he could sense the world around him, he thought he could make out voices. But these voices were muffled, he couldn’t make out any words. Temperatures came through in waves; sometimes his body felt very hot, other times it was like he had moved into a meat locker. His skin was slick and sticky with sweat.

He was touched by many hands. There was the sensation of being grabbed, carried, caressed, raised, and lowered. This sensation carried into his dreams. When Snake slept—as much as he could sleep—he dreamed he was piloting a raft across a vast ocean. Sometimes the waves were gentle, moving him on their wake under an open night sky. Other times he was tossed and thrown by an angry storm, hanging on for dear life for fear that Poseidon would reach up and claim him.

In the tempest, he felt his grip on the raft falter many times, but each time his weakness threatened to make him let go, there was another steady hand to carry him back to the raft. And every time the raft reached calmer waters, Snake would look back to see the one-eyed Demon following him silently in the raft’s wake. Its evil, knowing stare penetrated him, and it was all that he could do to continue paddling away until he was even further exhausted.

Eventually, the raft reached waters that were tranquil enough to be completely utterly still. Snake fell back against the raft, and found that the hard wood had turned into something soft that yielded to his touch. He felt a small weight upon his body; his arms reached up from where they rested at his sides and grasped at it, finding it to be even more soft and yielding than the raft upon which he rested.

He heard birdsong. He realized that his eyes were closed and encrusted with rheum. With what felt like great effort, his crusty eyelids unstuck themselves and pulled apart, revealing the world in front of him. His first view was of a slightly cracked off-white ceiling, with overhead lights that were thankfully turned off.

Another unfamiliar ceiling, Snake thought to himself ruefully.

Framing this view was a square suspended by four posts. The four-poster bed was of a good size—a Queen, if Snake had to guess. The mattress and pillows were soft and would probably be very comfortable if he weren’t so used to sleeping in foxholes, vehicles, on the ground, and in those barracks' dorm beds. There was also the matter of the wetness he felt on the pillows and sheets—he’d been sweating a great deal, it would appear. How long had he been here, he wondered?

He looked to his left. There was a small window lining the wall, near the ceiling where he could see some vegetation growing. A basement room, then. Bed was too cushy for a prisoner. Who had brought him here?

Snake tried to lean up into a sitting position, then clutched his head and groaned with the onset of a headache. With one eye open, he observed that his arms and torso were completely wrapped in bandages, and from the way the sheets felt against his legs, he imagined that his legs were similarly wrapped—he must have looked like a mummy.

He heard a small gasp in front of him. He opened his eye slightly, and saw a familiar blue-eyed, dark-haired woman sitting in a small armchair laying down a book onto an end table next to her.

“…Ellen Madnar?” Snake muttered in disbelief.

The young woman practically fell over as she leaped out of the chair and rushed over to put her arms around him. Snake tensed, not really sure how to react.

“You’re awake!” Ellen said, squeezing him. “I’m glad.”

Snake felt a sudden pain as the girl squeezed, and Ellen backed off, apologizing profusely. Before Snake could get a word in edgewise, Ellen ran out of the room with little more than a request to wait and an assurance that she would be right back.

When she returned, four more people had entered the room: Wikus and Jennifer Nkosi, Diane, and a second man whom Snake didn’t recognize.

“Jennifer? Wikus? You brought me here?”

Jennifer nodded. “I did what I could for you back in Hopetown to stabilize you, and then we brought you to the hospital here in Kimberley for more advanced treatment. We couldn’t keep you there though—too many eyes on us. Diane offered to help keep you safe.”

“It was the least I could do,” Diane cut in, looking sympathetic.

The unnamed man with her nodded reluctantly, though Snake could tell that he wasn’t as enthusiastic about their houseguest.

Snake put two and two together. “You’re Steve, I take it?” he asked, pointing to the man.

“That’s right,” he said. “You know, my sister’s putting a lot on the line for you.”

Diane put a hand on her brother’s shoulder, and he quieted down.

Snake looked to Diane. “Where am I, exactly?”

“My place. Or, one of them, anyway. I use this one as a safe house for the rebellion. This here is a guest room in the basement. Safest place I could think of—away from prying eyes. Don’t worry—,” Diane’s gaze softened as she smiled, “—you’re safe here.”

Snake had heard that before, in Salamander’s company. He felt the paranoia rising—he had to remind himself that these people were part of the mission, and not from FOXHOUND, but enemies of Big Boss. Strangely, he felt like that made it easier to trust them. He breathed slowly through his nose and out through the mouth, trying to push down the fear and calm himself. He tried to smile, but even he could feel that it was strained.

He nodded to each person in turn. “Thank you. All of you—for looking out for me, and for keeping Ellen safe. I’m grateful.”

Wikus nudged Snake in the shoulder. “It was real touch and go with you for a while. Glad to see you’re alright, Snake.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Jennifer retorted, putting her medical kit on the bed and putting on her stethoscope. She sat next to Snake and started placing the cold bell and diaphragm onto his back, instructing him to breathe deeply.

“You did exactly what I told you not to do, and acted recklessly,” Jennifer chided. “I told you to be careful. Should I lay out the list? Concussion—probably multiple concussions; deep cuts in your arms and near your collar bone; shrapnel in your back narrowly missing your artery and spinal column; three cracked ribs; two animal bite wounds, multiple hairline fractures in your right scapula, bruising from what looks like an attempted strangulation, sprained ankle, sprained wrist, a stress fracture in your left fibula, and at least three of your toes are broken…and on top of this, many of your flesh wounds got infected, causing you to contract a fever in transit. You were sick, delirious and unconscious when you arrived here; you’ve been out of action for over three days now. It’s taken the work of me and two other doctors to nurse you back to health.”

Jennifer shook her head. “Honestly, most other people would be dead by now, or paralyzed. You shouldn’t even be sitting up right now. You are very, very lucky to still be alive.”

Snake tried to shake his head in disbelief, but found that the motion worsened his headache, so he stopped.

“I believe you,” he said. “Sounds like I was lucky to run into you again.”

“You have no idea,”” Jennifer said, lowering her stethoscope, and examining Snake’s bandages. “Looks like your bandages will need changing soon,” she commented under her breath.

Snake asked, “What about the two sisters I was escorting across town? Are they okay?”

“We were able to get them to safety, don’t worry,” Wikus reassured him.

Snake sighed in relief. “Good,” he said.

Wikus looked to Snake curiously. “What were you doing in Hopetown in the first place? We weren’t sure we would ever see you again after Outer Heaven.”

“I was on my way to Kimberley, actually. I was planning on catching a train to Pretoria so I could get to the American Embassy and secure safe passage back home,” Snake explained.

“So…does that mean the mission was a success, then? You were able to get to Venom?” Wikus asked, looking hopeful.

Snake stared at his clenched, bandaged fists. “Yes,” he said bluntly. “My mission was completed. Ahab is dead, and his weapon was destroyed.”

“Then, why do you look so glum?”

“Snake…?” Diane asked.

Snake’s breathing was shaking. “…betrayed,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I was betrayed,” his lips clumsily muttered. “We were…betrayed…by my commanding officer. He led us into trap after trap. And one of my people, who I was supposed to meet afterward, was in on it. He tried to kill me…even called in the air strike early to try and wipe us all out.”

Snake’s shame grabbed him by the throat, glued his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Speaking was an ordeal—he couldn’t raise his eyes to look at his companions’ faces. What did they see in him right now, battered and broken and weak as he was?

So weak…

Jennifer’s hand moved to his forearm, grabbing it. Her grasp was gentle, and Snake felt like that gentleness could snap him in two.

“Snake…,” she said slowly. “What happened? Where’s Kyle?”

Snake screwed his eyes shut. He was too afraid of looking them in their eyes, afraid of what he might see reflected in them. “Kyle…Gray Fox…Imke, Luke, Loyiso, everyone…I tried to warn them, to tell them to get out. I heard Imke briefly on the radio, before the bombs dropped. And then…”

The room was stifled by the weight of the silence in the air. Snake felt like he was being smothered. His breathing quickened. He wanted to stop, to go back to dreaming of the ocean. But he couldn’t—he had to finish it.

They had to know.

“The bombs dropped, and…” Snake paused. He could feel drops of sweat running down his forehead, and a single tear of shame and self-loathing left his eye, betraying him. He finished, “…after that, all I heard was silence. I don’t know if they made it out or not. I don’t even know if there would be bodies to check if they didn’t. All I remember is the silence.”

His grip on his sheets tightened. His breathing got even faster. He knew he was on the verge of hyperventilating, but he couldn’t stop himself. He had trusted Big Boss—not just with his own life, but the lives of those who chose to follow him. They in turn had trusted Snake, and now…

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I’m so sorry.”

Wikus put a hand on his back. Jennifer leaned on him while Ellen and Diane held his hand and forearm, respectively. It was hard for Snake to ground himself. He hated himself for failing them, and he felt humiliated for them to see him in this compromised state. Yet something about their presence anchored him, and he could feel his breathing slowing down.

And yet as he shook, the only intelligible words that escaped his lips were, “Sorry…sorry…sorry…”

 

---

 

Jennifer and Wikus weren’t able to stay, though they promised to visit so they could check up on him and to give him news with regard to the war effort. Jennifer made it clear that Snake was not to leave the bed until he recovered (excepting bathroom visits), that he was not to exert himself in any way, and not to try to change his bandages unassisted.

“Doctor’s orders,” Jennifer said before she left. “And if you try any funny business, Diane has assured me that she’ll have you strapped down to that bed, so you won’t be able to move at all.”

“I’ll do it myself if I have to,” Diane warned.

So it was that Snake was confined to his little basement room. Throughout the day, Ellen, Diane, and Steve would take turns bringing him food, with Diane changing his bandages and sheets for fresh ones, and with Ellen and Diane both keeping him company and making conversation. Snake didn’t say much, mostly just listening to Diane talk about her music career and her time with the Resistance; and Ellen talking about her father, or her ballet troupe in Russia, sometimes wondering aloud when she’d get to dance again, or when she’d get to see her father.

Snake, for his part, didn’t say much. He’d nodded along and spoke enough to let them know he was listening, but the truth was that he didn’t have much to say. Neither Diane nor Ellen commented on it, but he could sometimes catch their sad, pitying glances as they left the room. No doubt they talked about him when they were outside and out of earshot.

It bothered Snake. He didn’t deserve their concern, and he didn’t want their pity. He led Diane’s Resistance comrades to their deaths, betrayed their trust. And Ellen—who even knows if her father’s actually still alive? Did Dr. Madnar get delivered to American forces and get released, as promised? Or did Big Boss arrange for Madnar to get shipped somewhere else entirely, for some other sinister purpose?

Snake could see the same accusing question burning in Ellen’s eyes when she looked at him. He knew she yearned to ask him the same thing he wondered, but still she kept silent. Was it out of fear of burdening him, or was it because she was just as afraid of the answer as Snake was? Then again, when Dr. Madnar left, it was in the company of Jennifer and Wikus, and they didn’t seem worried about it. Maybe they knew something he didn’t? He’d have to remember to ask them.

After a few days in, Snake woke up to the sound of rain showers outside. The natural light from the windows was little dimmer. Cloud cover, probably. Ellen sat in the corner chair, reading under the soft lamp light.

“Good morning. You’re here early,” Snake said, shifting up the pillows behind him so he could push up into a sitting position.

Ellen smiled, placing a bookmark in between the pages. “Not really,” she said. "I think it’s almost noon now. You slept in, if anything.”

“That late, huh?”

“Mm-hmm,” she hummed. “Did you sleep well?”

Snake forced a polite smile. Don’t tell her about the dreams. “Yeah, I slept okay.”

“Good,” Ellen said. “Can I get you anything? Breakfast, maybe?”

Snake shook his head. “No, thank you. I’m not hungry at the moment. Please, don’t get up on my account.”

“If you’re sure.”

Snake nodded, then leaned back. “What are you reading?”

“Oh, this?” Ellen held up the book. “Anna Karenina. Diane was able to somehow get ahold of a Russian-language copy for me. Have you ever read Tolstoy?”

“Not really,” Snake admitted. “I think I heard him mentioned in high school, but as far as Russian literature went, my teachers’ tastes fell more in line with Chekov and Kafka. I had one teacher try to assign Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, but I think they convinced her that it would be too long to cover in one semester.”

Snake chuckled wistfully. “That feels like such a long time ago. I’m not sure I can remember the last time I actually sat down to read anything, for learning or for pleasure.”

“That’s a shame,” Ellen said. “Stories are how cultures are spread. How thoughts, memories, feelings, and values get passed down from one generation to the next. It’s an important part of being human.”

She brushed her hand against the cover. “Take this one for example. A tragic tale of doomed star-crossed lovers, of jealousy, betrayal, and infidelity, but of hope, also. All set against the backdrop of Tsarist Russia’s aristocracy. These women were unable to choose a life and love for themselves, and yet, Anna sought to rebel against her family, society, even her own marriage for just a chance at happiness. Her circumstances were doomed to failure, but her struggle was close to my own heart…it’s one of the things that inspired me to pursue ballet in the first place.”

“It’s also the same struggle that pushed the Bolsheviks to rebel against the tsars, even if their revolution failed to bring the peace and prosperity it promised,” Ellen continued. “If I’m not mistaken, your own country was founded in the same way—revolution in pursuit of the new.”

 “That push for something new, something better beyond simple tradition…it’s so very human,” Snake agreed.

“The Resistance here is much the same, no?” Ellen said. “This country was founded on foreigner colonists pursuing power at the expense of the native peoples of this land. Eventually, the descendants of both the natives and the white colonials dared to choose something different, something new. They dared to dream of a better world, and they stood up to fight for it.”

“You’ve been thinking a lot about this, haven’t you?” Snake observed.

Ellen laid the book down in her lap. “It’s a quality I admire,” she said simply. “It’s something I try to pursue. I just hope that in my case, it won’t lead to tragedy, like it may have for your rebel friends…like it did for Anna.”

Snake looked down at his hands, once again unable to meet Ellen’s eyes. “I know you what you want to ask me, Ellen.”

Ellen looked up at Snake with a start. “What…?”

“I said, I know what you want to ask me. So, just ask.”

Ellen looked down at the book again. Once again Snake was suffocated by silence, however this time the moment did not last very long. Ellen took in a deep breath and sighed heavily. “The other day, you said you had been betrayed by your commanding officer,” she started.

“That’s right,” Snake affirmed.

“This commander, he was also in charge of your mission here in Africa. Which means he would have been in charge of taking my father to safety when you sent him away with Jennifer and her brother.”

“Right.”

“Does…does that mean that my father may not be safe?”

Snake tensed. His downcast eyes squinted in pain; his brows upturned. “I…wish I could tell you the answer to that, Ellen. But the truth is…that I just don’t know. What I can say is that by that point, Ahab had gotten everything he needed from him—the weapon had been constructed at that point and was close to being operational. I don’t think he would have had any use for him anymore.”

Ellen’s breath stopped for a moment as she took in what Snake was saying. “Then…my father’s…”

“I don’t know,” Snake reiterated. “Maybe, maybe not. I’d already reported to the Mission Control team that I’d gotten him out before my CO had me switch over to the radio band he used to lure me into traps. And I know that there were people outside of my unit involved in the operation—I know of at least one agent and one case officer of the CIA were involved, along with some elements of the U.S. Navy, but I don’t know how far it went or how many people knew or the identities of all involved. That’s too many variables to know for sure.”

Snake gathered his courage and looked up to meet Ellen’s fearful gaze. “I’d say…it depends on who picked him up. Did you ever see Jennifer or Wikus again after coming here, before I showed up?”

Ellen shook her head. Snake nodded to himself, thinking.

“Well, they did say they would come to visit me again,” he said. “When they get here, we’ll ask them to describe the parties they dropped him off with. That’ll give me a better idea. I’m sorry. I know it’s not a lot of hope to give—”

“But it’s something,” Ellen said with a sad smile. “And I’d rather know for sure than not at all. Thank you, Snake.”

Once again, Snake averted his eyes. Why was she thanking him? He was the man who potentially sent her father to his death. If anything, she should be cursing him for putting her father in danger in the first place. Why? Why was she being so kind when he clearly didn’t deserve it?

“…I’m still a bit tired. I’m going to try getting some more sleep,” he said.

“Oh…o-okay,” Ellen said. “Would you like me to leave the room?”

Snake shook his head as he carefully laid back down, turning so his face couldn’t be seen. “I’ll be okay. You can go back to reading, if you want.”

“Perhaps…” Ellen said, before catching herself.

“What is it?”

“Perhaps you would like me to read to you?”

“…Y’know what? Sure.”

“Would you like me to read in Russian or translate to English?”

“I understand either language,” Snake replied. “Go with what whatever’s comfortable for you.”

Ellen began to recite in Russian, speaking with confidence and clear diction. She was soft-spoken, her voice soothing. It wasn’t long before Snake began to fall asleep again for real.

 

---

 

The man crouched low, naked and prostrate before the idol; his body bathed in blood. He was surrounded by darkness, illuminated from above by a weak light emitted by a flame that threatened to be choked into ash by the oppressive darkness. In his hand he clutched a blade, dull and rough and hideous.

The idol towered over him, a crouching and ugly figure squatting in the blackness. Its horn extended from a gouge in the forehead, leaking blood and pus. Its one eye shining in the shadows, its lips pulled back to reveal a terrible rictus grin.

Between them were men and women that the man recognized, friends and allies. Brothers and sisters. Each and every one of them kneeled before him willingly, offering their flesh to him. In their eyes, he could see absolute trust and admiration. Their bodies, their lives were his to command. Through matted hair, soaked in mud and blood and human filth, the man peered through like he would through a heavy curtain.

The idol grinned down at him. Sacrifice the flesh of those who follow you, it commanded. Give unto me the blood of your brothers and sisters, who willingly offer themselves to the fires of war.

The man stood up to his full height, vulnerable and exposed to his new dark god. One by one, he approached each sacrifice in turn, stared into their eyes. He saw love, respect, admiration. Above all, he saw their fierce loyalty and trust, total, absolute, complete.

With each one, a quick swing opened their throats, letting the red life from their necks like freshly slaughtered cattle. One by one, their bodies turned to inanimate meat as they fell to the floor. The vitae that poured from their bodies flowed freely forward and downhill into a wide cistern, an open offering for the god of war and death.

Step forth, the idol commanded. Take your place as my servant, claim your throne on the field of battle.

The man did as the idol bade him and waded into the cistern. Slowly, he submerged himself in the blood of the followers he’d betrayed, and what emerged in his place was a new horned demon with pointed teeth, red eyes bloodshot and frenzied as the idol clutched him by the throat.

 

---

 

Snake awoke with a start, launching himself upright out of his nightmare. He was sweating profusely, his breathing shallow and erratic. He felt his neck with his left hand. He looked down at his right, expecting to find it still clutching the blade, still soaked with the blood of the rebels and friends he’d killed.

He sprung up out of the bed, hobbled out of the room, and quickly found an open bathroom just down the hall. He turned on the light, examining himself closely in the mirror, expecting to see the blood-soaked horned Demon of his nightmares. Instead, he saw only his own reflection.

His face was sunken in, his eyes shadowed with heavy bags, but still open wide and searching. He had begun to grow a beard, and this combined with his now longer hair made him look like a wild animal. He pulled down one of his eyelids, looking, searching for any trace of the monster. He saw nothing.

His breathing slowly began to slow into a much calmer rhythm. He sighed, then turned on the water in the sink to splash his face in the basin. He opened up the mirror to look into the medicine cabinet and saw a straight razor and a can of shaving cream. He sprayed some into his hand and spread it across his jawline and grabbed the razor.

When he closed the mirror, he saw Diane leaning against the doorframe behind him. It took all he had not to spin around and attack her in a panicked reflex. He forced his breathing to remain even.

“You’re not supposed to be up and about,” Diane said in an accusatory tone.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Snake said. “Figured I’d try to clean myself up. Is that alright?”

Diane shrugged. “As long as you feel up to it. You’re a grown man, after all.”

“Heh,” Snake grunted through a half-smile.

He opened the blade of the razor from the handle, ready to begin shaving, only to find that he couldn’t move his hand. He stared at the blade. The open razor, the person standing behind him—he was beginning to feel déjà vu. He thought of the blade of the knife that submerged itself into Salamander’s gut and neck. He thought of every time his knife had buried itself into the gut of an Outer Heaven soldier.

 

He thought of the nightmare, and the blade that slashed every friend and comrade’s throat.

 

His hand shook. It refused to come any closer to his face. He saw Diane’s reflection approach him from the corner of his eye. He flinched. Diane put a hand on his shoulder, leaning around him to look him in the face. He didn’t meet her eyes.

“You don’t look so good,” she observed. “Bad dreams?”

“…Something like that,” Snake hedged.

Diane saw Snake’s shaking, immobile hand holding the razor. She put her other hand on his forearm, sliding toward the hand.

She asked, “May I?”

Snake didn’t respond, but also didn’t resist as she took the razor from his hand. “Come with me,” she quietly commanded as she pulled him back to his room and sat him down at the foot of the bed. “Wait here.”

She stepped out of the room and then returned after a few moments carrying a small basin of water and a towel. She pulled the chair to sit across from him and put the basin next to him. She held up the blade, and Snake reflexively closed his eyes.

“Sit still.”

Carefully, slowly, Diane rested the length of the razor against Snake’s neck, pulling it upwards to glide across his skin and rinsing the blade in the basin after each couple of strokes. Snake obediently remained still, making no sudden movements even though every alarm bell in his body was ringing. He could feel each caress of the blade as his skin was cleaned and exposed to the cool open air.

He breathed slowly, carefully, trying to maintain a sense of calm. Every nerve in his body felt like it was vibrating, demanding him to explode into movement. But Diane’s hand on his arm was soft, soothing. Her presence anchored him, and he found that by simply focusing on her touch instead of the blade helped to distract him from his own impulses. Within moments, the fire in his skin receded, and his heartbeat slowed.

After a few minutes, Diane had finished her work, and she wiped the razor blade clean of hair and shaving cream before closing it, and then dabbed at Snake’s face with the towel. Now at relative peace, Snake felt safe to open his eyes and saw Diane’s concerned gaze looking back at him. He didn’t know what he wanted to say—nothing good came to mind, and the lump in his throat kept him from voicing anything.

“Why…why did you do this?” he finally said, the words stumbling and clumsy.

“Because you needed it,” Diane said simply.

“Thank you,” Snake said, trying to avert his eyes again. Diane caught him by the chin and forced him to look into the pale emeralds that gazed upon him.

“You know, it’s okay to put your trust in other people.”

Snake was arrested by her stare. “I…I can’t,” he whispered helplessly.

“Why not?”

“I trusted someone else, gave them everything I am. I was used and cast aside. Nothing can ever be the same after that.”

Diane cocked her head. “Do you trust me?” she asked.

Snake gently pulled her hand away from his face, shaking his head.

“It’s not my trust in you that I’m worried about,” he said.

He looked down at his bandaged left hand, noticed how still it was.

“Then, what are you worried about?”

Snake couldn’t answer. Or maybe he just didn’t want to.

“I can’t help you if you won’t let me,” Diane begged.

Still, Snake didn’t respond. Diane sighed, gathered up the basin and towel, and stood up to leave.

“Fine,” she said.

Before she disappeared from the room, she turned back to talk to him to make one last offer to save himself.

“If you ever change your mind and decide you want to talk, you’ll know where to find me. I won’t be far.”

With that, Snake was once again left alone. He put his head in his hands, massaging his temples. He felt exhausted. He crawled back into bed and instantly fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

This time, he didn’t dream.

 

---

 

“In today’s news, the civil war that has taken the country by storm in the wake of last week’s earthquake has reached a turning point as ships and aircraft carrying armed personnel have been spotted flying over the Namibian border and ships carrying vehicles and equipment were seen leaving southern ports and were spotted off of the eastern shores moving towards Madagascar.

Representatives of the foreign private military known as Outer Heaven Incorporated declined to give a public statement with regard to these troop movements after being placed in the custody of the South African National Defence Force, however it appears that while some token forces have continued to fight in the Northern Cape, the majority of Outer Heaven forces appear to be cutting their losses.

His Excellency the President Nelson Mandela gave an address this morning congratulating the military for swiftly subduing the foreign threat to national peace.”

 

Jennifer rolled her eyes while Wikus scoffed.

“The bastards,” Diane muttered. “Never mind the fact that the Resistance did most of the actual fighting.”

“What’s this about an earthquake?” Snake asked, hobbling into the ground floor living room where everyone was huddled around the radio on the table.

“You’re not supposed to be out of bed,” Jennifer said sternly, only to be shushed by Wikus as they continued to listen intently.

The radio continued its report:

 

“His Excellency announced to the press that the Outer Heaven officials in custody are to stand trial for war crimes before a panel held by the United Nations in Pretoria later this week. When asked about whether the current state of affairs meant that the state of martial law would be lifted, His Excellency had this to say:

‘There is still a great deal of chaos and confusion throughout the nation of South Africa, with refugees in need of housing and medical supplies. In addition, there is still a great deal of civil unrest in urban cities and rural communities. As a necessity for maintaining peace and safety for all South African citizens, martial law will continue to be in effect until such time as order has been re-established.’

The press then raised the question of what is to be done with the ‘South African People’s Resistance’ organization that had been seen fighting against Outer Heaven throughout the Northern Cape in the days leading up to and following the earthquake. His Excellency stated in response that now that the Outer Heaven threat has been subdued, all civilian militias in the country are to lay down arms effective immediately, and that any ‘illegal combatants’ continuing to operate in the region will risk being met with lethal force.

Under condition of anonymity, members of various SAPR cells have stated that they have no intention of ceasing operations, claiming that they can protect Northern Cape communities better than the government forces. When these sources were asked if this meant that SAPR intends to escalate hostilities with SANDF, they responded that they would prefer not to continue any further violence, but that it would depend on the government’s response.

Military officials have declined to comment.

This has been KNK news, providing continuing coverage of the ongoing civil disturbance here in South Africa, as it happens. And now, for the weather—”

 

Wikus turned off the radio, leaning over the table with both hands while Ellen walked into the kitchen with Diane to make coffee.

“It sounds like Outer Heaven’s pushing the retreat,” Snake said. “So why does everyone look so glum? War should be over now, right?”

“Didn’t you hear?” Wikus said, shaking his head. “SANDF’s taking the credit for Outer Heaven’s defeat.”

“So? Why does it matter?” Snake asked. “Outer Heaven’s gone. We won.”

“You don’t get it,” Wikus replied. “They want to delegitimize the Resistance so that they can manufacture a pretext to send the military into the Northern Cape. We’re a civil insurgency—our very existence is illegal, by definition. In order to defeat Outer Heaven, we had to damage critical infrastructure. And that’s not all.”

“The ‘earthquake’?”

Jennifer nodded. “The bombing of Outer Heaven HQ had to be performed with stealth because the government couldn’t be seen relying on NATO for help. Mandela’s lack of response to Outer Heaven the past four years has put his administration in a very precarious position, politically speaking. They need a scapegoat to keep up public approval; the violence from Outer Heaven reached its peak when we attacked their base and the runoff from the chemicals and nuclear material have polluted the area. The base was on a major river.”

Snake put the pieces together in his head. “They’re going to blame you for provoking Outer Heaven into war.”

Jennifer nodded solemnly. “That’s right,” she said. “And with our forces split in half on the eastern and western halves of the Northern Cape, we’re already divided. If they send in the military, it wouldn’t take much to subdue us. Everyone will have to go underground or risk death or imprisonment. Either that, or we stand and fight on the defensive, and I don’t know that the people would look so kindly on us fighting our own countrymen.”

“Are you worried that the locals might turn Resistance members to the authorities?” Snake asked.

“We’ve committed to protecting our homes and our neighbors,” Wikus said. “The people of the Northern Cape have seen us stand up and fight for and beside them. It’s our cells in the other provinces I’m worried about. We’ve heard of SANDF capturing people in the Eastern Cape, and we’ve had all of our cells in Free State, North-West, and Kwazulu-Natal go dark entirely. It’s not looking good.”

“So…what will you do?” Snake asked.

“There’s a meeting in the Western Cape near Galzburg in two days with all the various leaders and several high-ranking agents of the Resistance in the western region,” Jennifer said. “It’s there where we’ll decide whether to go underground or to stand our ground against SANDF. Wikus and I will be heading that way tomorrow.”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to have all these high-ranking Resistance members meeting in one place?” Snake asked. “It seems like a huge target for SANDF.”

“The meeting is going to be conducted in secret,” Jennifer said. “But even still, we recognize that there will be a risk of failure, and so we’ve set up several contingencies in place both for everyone’s escape and to maintain a chain of command in the event of death or capture for the leadership. Our organization is very decentralized, and there won’t be a lot of people there; it should be okay.”

Snake nodded. “Well…be careful.”

Jennifer smiled, patting Snake on the shoulder, before becoming stern once more. “Why are you up, anyway? You were told to stay confined to bed. Doctor’s orders, remember?”

“I’ve been going stir-crazy lately,” Snake admitted. “I needed to get up and about for once. Besides, I haven’t been doing anything too strenuous. I can still do basic tasks.”

“You do look like you’ve been healing nicely,” Jennifer pointed out. “I’m surprised that you’re able to walk at all, actually. I had pegged you as being out of commission for at least a few more weeks.”

“Well, I’ve always been a pretty fast healer, even when I was still serving in my old unit,” Snake said. “Though my appetite definitely has historically had a tendency to increase when recovering from injury.”

“Fast metabolism?”

Snake shrugged.

Jennifer looked impressed. “I don’t know what you’re made of, Snake, but you are definitely something else.”

“Thanks…I think? I’ll take that as a compliment,” Snake said.

Ellen came back from the kitchen, two cups of coffee in hand. She gave one to Snake before giving him a meaningful look. Snake nodded, turning to Wikus and Jennifer.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Snake said. “Do you remember when you drove Ellen’s father out of Outer Heaven? Were you able to reach the delivery site okay?”

Wikus nodded. “We went to the coordinates you gave us, just like you asked. There was a squad of men in camouflage waiting to pick him up. They had American flag patches on their shoulders, so I assume they were yours?”

Well, that was promising, Snake thought. FOXHOUNDers wouldn’t wear standardized uniforms in the field, nor would they have any insignia denoting nationality. Still, Snake had to make sure—he’d been lied to once already, after all.

“Right…” Snake said. “Were you able to see their faces? What did they look like?”

Wikus shrugged. “They didn’t leave much of an impression, to be honest. A few men of different ethnicities, but they all spoke English and Afrikaans. They simply asked us to hand over the doctor and then they left.”

Snake frowned. “Did any of them have black hair?”

Wikus shook his head. “There were a couple of blond men; one with blue eyes the other with green, three with brown hair—one of them had brown eyes, I didn’t see the other two, and two black men, one with a shaved head and the other with a moustache. All stocky, well-built, armed with rifles.”

“What about identifiable facial features? Did any of them have any scars on their face? Or perhaps a missing eye?”

“No, nothing like that. No, wait—one of the blond men had a scar on his chin.”

Snake sighed. He nodded to Ellen, the tension in her shoulders melting into relief.

None of the men that Wikus described resembled anyone he knew from FOXHOUND. With a Naval battleship sailing out west, they were probably either SEALs or CIA paramilitary operatives. At least, that’s what Snake hoped—it wasn’t a hard enough confirmation to be certain, but it was as close to it as he was going to get.

“Why are you asking this?” Jennifer asked curiously.

Snake explained, “I mentioned last weekend that I was betrayed by a member of my own group—two, actually. I wanted to make sure that we hadn’t accidentally delivered Ellen’s father right back into Outer Heaven’s hands.”

Jennifer and Wikus both looked spooked at the idea.

“And did we?” Jennifer asked with concern.

Snake shook his head. “No—at least, I don’t think so. None of the men you described are men I recognize from my current unit. From the way they were dressed, they were probably standard US military or US operatives from outside of my organization, both possibilities are people I feel like I can trust with Madnar’s safety, moreso than my group, anyway.”

Jennifer and Wikus both seemed to relax slightly.

“You don’t sound completely sure though,” Wikus pointed out.

Snake nodded. “Unfortunately, it’ll be impossible to say with one hundred percent certainty until I get back home. But I do feel better about it now after what you’ve told me.”

“The fact that you feel better puts my mind at ease,” Ellen said with a smile.

Snake frowned. Even now, someone was willing to put their trust and faith in him, even after he led people astray.

“Right,” he said, noncommittally. “Uh, listen, I’m starting to feel tired. I’m going to head back to bed, if you don’t mind.” He started walking back towards the stairway to the basement.

“Wait,” Jennifer said.

Snake turned back just in time for Jennifer to wrap her arms around him in a hug. He looked down in surprise.

“Thank you again,” she said, “for bringing my brother back to me.”

“This could be the last time we see each other for a while,” Wikus said. “Possibly for good. We wanted to make sure we gave you a proper goodbye before we left.”

Wikus smiled, extending a hand. Snake shook it, forcing himself to smile slightly.

“Good luck, you two,” Snake said.

“To you as well,” Wikus said. “Rest easy, my friend. You’ve done enough—let us take care of the rest.”

“Don’t do anything stupid while we’re gone,” Jennifer scolded him.

“Don’t worry,” Snake said, looking over to Ellen and Diane. “I’m in good hands.”

Having said their goodbyes, Jennifer and Wikus headed out of the side door and across the yard to make their way away from the house before separating and disappearing out of sight of the window.

Steve popped his head out of the adjoining hallway. “Are they gone?” he asked.

Diane rolled her eyes. “Yes, Steve, they’re gone. You can come out of hiding now.”

“Good. Hopefully that’s the last we’ll see of them for a while.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” Steven said with a glower. “I know they’re your friends, Diane, but every minute you interact with the Resistance puts a target on our backs. Isn’t it bad enough that we’re harboring an escaped prisoner and a fugitive?”

“Fugitive?” Snake cut in.

Diane ignored him. “Ellen is our guest,” she insisted. “And with Outer Heaven getting pushed out of the country, she’s completely safe. As for Snake—”

“What was that about me being a fugitive?” Snake interrupted.

Diane sighed. “There have been whispers among my contacts in the Resistance that the government is looking for an American male. They haven’t said for what reason, but there have been reports of American tourists and nationals getting detained driving through military checkpoints and refugee zones from Cape Town all the way to Johannesburg for questioning.”

“You mean they’re looking for me.”

Diane nodded. “Probably,” she said.

“Definitely,” Steve cut in with a glower.

Snake was confused. Why would the South African government be looking for him? How could they have possibly known of his existence? There must have been an intelligence leak somewhere. He frowned—this was a new complication that he didn’t need.

“Was there a physical description given?” Snake asked. “Height, weight, hair color, anything like that?”

Diane shook her head. “Just an ‘American military-aged male.’ Like I said, they’ve been detaining every foreign national they could find, whether they be Outer Heaven, immigrant, or tourist.”

Snake sighed, nodding. “They don’t know who I am or what I look like, then.”

Steve looked at him sharply. “How do you know?”

“Description’s too vague, the net cast is too wide. They know there’s one or more American agents operating on their soil, but they don’t know who they are or where to find them. I’ve already run into one CIA agent since my escape from Outer Heaven who mentioned his handler working at the Embassy. They could be looking for literally anyone—it might not even be me they’re after. Not intentionally, anyway.”

Snake looked to Diane. “Is there any reason SANDF might have to come and search this place?”

Diane shook her head, but Steve butted in, “Except for all the Resistance people she keeps parading in and out of here.” Diane gave him a sharp look in rebuke.

“Steve’s got a point,” Snake said. “It would probably be best if we don’t have any Resistance members coming by here anymore, at least for the time being. Jennifer and Wikus’s departure was pretty good timing, all things considered.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Diane conceded. “I’ll be more careful.”

Snake nodded, turning back to the stairway. “Alright, I’m going to rest. You mind waking me up for dinner?”

“Of course,” Ellen said.

Snake waved behind him as he slowly made his way back down the stairs.

 

---

 

Snake woke up one night drenched in sweat, breathing heavily. This was becoming an all-too-common occurrence now. He placed a hand over his face, realized there were tears on his cheeks. He cursed under his breath. Was this just going to be every night from now on? He realized his bandages were damp—they were going to need changing again soon.

“Another nightmare?”

Snake jerked upright at the voice, saw Diane in the doorway again. He fell back onto his pillow with a sigh, feeling disgusted with himself for the mess he no doubt appeared to be.

“How long have you been standing there?” he asked, his voice croaking as he lay in the moonlight, forearm covering his eyes.

“Not long,” she said. “Long enough to see that you were suffering.”

Snake sighed heavily. Again, with this.

“I’m fine,” he insisted.

“We both know that’s not true,” Diane admonished. She pulled a wooden chair up to the side of Snake’s bed and sat down, watching over him.

She can’t figure out when to leave well enough alone, Snake silently complained. This woman is going to be the death of me.

There was a moment of silence as Diane watched over her guest. When it was clear that Snake wasn’t going to say anything, Diane chose to break the silence first.

“So,” she said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not particularly,” Snake replied, his tone annoyed.

“Why not?”

Snake propped himself up onto his elbow. “Why are you so curious?” he demanded.

“Why don’t you want to tell me?”

Snake fell back onto his back, rolling his eyes. “You come here to interrogate me?” he asked sardonically.

“I came to check on you,” she said. “Because I was worried about you. Ellen is, too. But if you’re going to be an asshole, I can always just leave.”

Snake sighed. Dammit.

He exhaled a begrudging, “Sorry.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, I just, don’t want to talk about it, alright?”

Diane’s gaze softened. “Okay, Snake,” she whispered.

Her eyes lit up with a sudden idea. “Say, Snake.”

“What?”

“I just realized—that’s not your real name, is it?”

Snake opened his eyes to look over at her. “Why do you ask?”

“Just seems like a strange name.”

Snake decided to humor her. Anything to change the subject.

“It’s a code name,” he said. “Something for my superiors to call me so that my identity and theirs can’t be revealed to…well, to people who aren’t supposed to know about us, I guess. The whole thing is very need-to-know.”

“So, you’re not actually CIA or military?”

“Can’t tell you that,” Snake said with a smirk. “Well, I guess I can say I’m not CIA. Doesn’t really narrow it down, after all. Though I have worked with them, obviously.”

“Do you even work for America?”

“Now, that would be telling,” he chuckled.

“Ha, got a smile out of you, at last,” Diane joked. She leaned back into a stretch. “Well, since your mission is complete, I don’t suppose you’d have to be so secretive that you can’t tell me your name, right?”

Snake continued smirking as he propped himself up onto his elbows into a sitting position. The sound of crickets could be heard from up through the glass of the room’s ground floor windows.

“Does it matter?” Snake asked.

“Of course. Names are important. It’s part of your identity; marks you as a human being, instead of an animal.”

“Heh, well…you’re not wrong there,” Snake said. “My, uh, CO…he told me once that it wasn’t labels and words that defined people, but their actions. He went by a code name too, and he said that it didn’t fit him when it was first given to him, but that over time he had earned it through his actions. I guess…I’m the same way. After a week out here, the name I was born with just…doesn’t feel like it’s rightfully mine, anymore—it feels meaningless now. ‘Solid Snake’ just feels…right. For better or worse.”

“This is the same man who betrayed you?”

Snake glared at his hands. Always back to that. That anger, both for Big Boss and towards himself. That…guilt.

“…Yeah,” he exhaled.

He didn’t want to say anything. He didn’t want to think about it. But he couldn’t stop himself, and before he knew it, his mouth betrayed his mind.

“But I guess his wasn’t the only betrayal.”

Diane pulled her knee up to her chest. “Are you talking about the other man from your unit? You mentioned there were two traitors.”

Snake shook his head, pulled his arms closer to himself, hugging his torso. He stared at his knees.

“Kyle trusted me,” he said. “He trusted me to get his people out of there. I led them into trap after trap all to get to Venom, and they fell, one by one.”

Snake spoke in a hushed whisper. Once the floodgates were open, he couldn’t stop himself. His eyes became unfocused, and his speech sped up, became rushed.

“I was trusted by Kyle to lead them. I was trusted to help make sure that they and all the other Resistance members at the HQ would all get out of there alive. They’re all dead because of me. They’re all dead because they trusted...me. Because I trusted a man who lied about his own identity from the day that I met him, who turned out to be a monster.”

“You couldn’t have known that,” Diane said softly.

“But the fault was still mine,” Snake insisted. “They trusted me to be in a position of leadership, to safeguard them. Kyle, Gray Fox, Loyiso, Trevor, Imke, Mbali, Petrus, Mandla, Willem, Vusi, Luke, Sibusiso, Tagger, all of the other Resistance fighters whose names I don’t even know…their lives were my responsibility. And now they’re gone…they’re all gone. My fault: I killed those men and women. It’s my—”

“Stop.”

Diane climbed over Snake’s legs to sit next to him in the bed, leaned over so that she could look him in the eyes. She put a finger to his lips, and Snake was silent.

“Listen to me right now, Snake. They all knew the risks when they chose to fight, each and every one of them. Their deaths are not on you, do you understand?”

“You’re wrong.”

She took his face in both of her hands, shaking him slightly. “They are not on you.”

Snake’s eyes were wide, less like a predator and more like a scared, cornered animal. They began to focus on her as she stared into them, as if seeing her for the first time. Snake started shaking. He wasn’t sure if he was about to be sick or break down sobbing. He felt pathetic and humiliated.

He didn’t want to be seen like this.

Diane drew him into an embrace, and his body followed limply, apparently deciding that tears were the option to go with. On impulse, without meaning to, Snake returned the embrace, clutching at Diane for dear life as if she were his sole lifeline cast out to him at sea.

“Please stay,” he pleaded, so quiet that Diane almost didn’t hear him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Diane whispered, running her fingers through his hair while he shook.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

 

---

 

Steve sat alone at the dining room table with his head in his hands, in shock from what he had witnessed just moments ago.

He knew his sister had gone to check on the American in the night. He didn’t expect to find them both sleeping next to each other in the basement guest room’s bed. They appeared to still be dressed, but the fact that they had gotten so close meant that the worst had already happened, as far as Steve was concerned.

Steve believed that the man must have manipulated her somehow. That American was a danger for everyone, surely, and now he’d managed to seduce his sister with his charms. In all of his years of knowing her, Steve wouldn’t have thought that Diane of all people would fall for the wounded puppy routine.

He wracked his brain. What could he possibly do? Diane wouldn’t listen to him when he tried to explain how dangerous the American was. If he demanded for Snake to be thrown out, it would only start a fight. He couldn’t turn Snake into the authorities without bringing trouble to Diane for working with the Resistance. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

A noise behind him caused him to look up and back to see the American in question slowly climbing the stairs out of the basement with a yawn, limping over to the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee (Even helping himself to our fucking coffee, Steve angrily thought to himself). He stepped out of the kitchen and regarded Steve.

“Good morning,” he said.

Steve grunted, non-committal.

“Something wrong?” Snake asked.

“You tell me,” Steve said in a low voice, folding his arms. “Slept well, I take it?”

Snake sighed to himself. Steve had been somewhat petulant and passive aggressive since the very first time they’d talked over the radio, and his antagonism didn’t end when they first met in person. Snake didn’t know what the guy’s problem was, but he was beginning to get tired of the attitude, and his own morning headaches weren’t helping.

“Alright,” Snake said, facing Steve properly and leaning back against the wall. “What is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Clearly there’s something you want to get off your chest,” Snake said. He motioned with his coffee mug. “Say what you need to say.”

“I saw you. With my sister.”

Snake sighed to himself. “Shit,” he muttered.

“Yeah. ‘Shit’ is right.”

“Alright, look—”

“Don’t bother saying ‘it’s not what it looks like,’” Steve said. “Don’t insult me. Be a man, take responsibility.”

Snake looked into his coffee cup, took a drink.

It is too early in the morning for this bullshit, he thought to himself.

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

“I want you gone,” Steve said bluntly. “I want you to be on your way. I want you to stay away from my sister. Every second you spend here is a second you put her in danger. You realize that, right?”

A guilty shadow passed over Snake’s eyes, his brow furrowed. He thought once more of those who followed him in the siege of Outer Heaven. In spite of Diane’s reassurances to the contrary, he still carried the weight of that guilt and shame. And in the face of Steve’s accusation, Snake felt he couldn’t argue.

He stared down at his empty hand, made a fist. Snake was growing stronger every day. He probably wasn’t going to be fit for combat anytime soon, but he was beginning to feel more like himself, and each day he felt himself growing more and more restless. If he kept his head down, kept a low profile, he could probably get to Pretoria safely without drawing too much attention to himself.

It had been over a week since he’d arrived at Diane’s place. There really wasn’t much of a reason to keep staying here, and he knew it. In another day, maybe two, he should be good to go. He looked up to Steve and nodded.

“I understand,” he said.

Steve’s eyebrow raised. He hadn’t expected the American to be so agreeable. Snake’s face looked downcast at the idea of leaving, but the finality of his tone showed resignation. Good. Steve almost felt bad about forcing Snake out, but he reminded himself that it was for his sister’s own good. The sooner they got out of this Resistance business, the better.

“So, you’ll leave, then?” Steve asked, just to be sure.

“I’ll need a day or two to make preparations,” Snake said. “But yeah, I’ll go. It’s about time I moved on, anyway.”

Snake looked over to the hallway that led to the ground floor bedrooms. He motioned with his mug. “What about Ellen?” he asked.

“We can continue to take care of her until the heat dies down,” Steve promised, sounding relieved at the prospect of Snake’s imminent departure. “Diane’s right, with Outer Heaven gone, no one’s going to come looking for her. It’s only you that they’re after.”

Snake pondered this silently to himself. It did sound like the easiest option. Danger seemed to follow him wherever he went. It’s possible that Ellen could be safe here, if he entrusted her to them. She may be better off.

Salamander’s words echoed in Snake’s head: the only thing you can trust, with absolute certainty, is the mission.

Snake winced. The last thing he needed was to be reminded of the other traitor. He looked up to the ceiling.

Ellen Madnar’s safety and freedom was part of his mission. He had promised Ellen that he would ensure her safe return back home to Russia, and that she would be reunited with her father. Could Snake guarantee that promise would be fulfilled if he left her here? Could he really call his mission complete?

It was stupid, he chastised himself. Selfish. Deep down, he knew that the real reason he was conflicted was that he wanted some kind of absolution; he wanted to prove to himself that he was still capable of saving someone.

In any case, it wasn’t his decision to make, but hers. There was only one thing to do.

“I want to make sure I talk to Ellen before I leave,” he told Steve.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY EIGHTEEN – 1030 HOURS

KIMBERLEY TRAIN STATION – ROVOS RAIL

 

“You’re sure you’re up for this?” Diane asked from the driver’s seat. “There’s still time to change your mind, stay and rest some more.”

Snake nodded, feeling a little uncomfortable in his brand new somewhat starchy long-sleeve button down shirt. He could already feel the sweat forming on the back of his neck in the uncomfortably humid weather.

Diane nodded. “Alright. Just to be safe, let’s go over it one more time.”

“Diane—”

“Just humor me, alright, Snake?”

Snake groaned. Ellen patted his arm sympathetically.

“Your name is Thomas. You’re a white South African businessman who had immigrated to America only to return with your newlywed bride on a trip to introduce her to her new in-laws before the civil war broke out, only to find yourselves trapped in the country when martial law had set in. Your hands and arms are bandaged because of an accident while out on safari, and after getting medical attention you both decided that it would be best to return home as soon as possible.”

Snake nodded. “A businessman with a decent amount of wealth to his name, hence why I’m able to afford to ride on the Rovos line.”

“Right. Speaking of, I already bought you your tickets,” Diane said, handing them to Snake. “And your identification papers.”

Snake and Ellen collected their fake IDs from Diane and put them into their pockets.

“Don’t lose them,” Diane warned. “Keep them stuffed inside your shirts so they rest against your skin, in case of pickpockets.”

The pair did as they were instructed. “The train has private cabins, but you’ll likely be expected to attend dinner in the diner car. Dress code is formal wear. You’ll find what you need in the suitcases in the boot of the car. Make sure you dress appropriately, so you can blend in. Outside of that, I’d recommend staying in your cabin and not crossing paths with any other passengers if you can help it.

“It’s customary to tip the room service and train staff—I’ve left a red envelope in your bag with the amount you’ll need, no need to think too hard on it; you can just pass it off to the conductor when you leave the train. I’ve also included some travel and food money separately in a wallet stashed in each of your suitcases, just in case.”

“How do you know all this stuff about these ritzy train cars, in terms of dress code and dinner etiquette?” Snake asked. “Weren’t you a punk singer? Isn’t the whole idea of punk being anti-capitalist and anti-establishment?”

“Well, aside from the fact that being a punk singer doesn’t mean I was dirt poor, on account of Thin Wall’s playing live concerts,” Diane said dryly, rolling her eyes, “I grew up with a rich older relative and had to pick up certain things whenever I was made to visit.”

“I see…”

“Anyway, if I may continue?”

“Sorry, sorry. Go on.”

“I’ve also packed more practical clothes for after you arrive at Capital Park Station in Pretoria. Once you disembark, stick to the crowded public streets. Don’t make any unnecessary detours or shortcuts. Keep your wits about you.”

“I know how to navigate an unfamiliar city and spot a tail, Diane,” Snake said. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

Diane bit her lip, still looking anxious as she nodded. Ellen looked similarly nervous and grabbed Snake’s arm for support.

“Alright,” Diane said, parking the car. “Let’s get you to the train.”

They quickly exited the car, with Snake retrieving the two small travel suitcases from the trunk, handing one to Ellen. Together, they walked over to the train and spotted the conductor hanging out of one of the train carriages’ doors. Diane pointed him out.

“Okay, they haven’t called for boarders yet, so we can just sit tight here for a few minutes,” Diane said. She fidgeted nervously, looking unsure of something. “Snake, I…”

“What is it?” Snake asked.

Diane smiled and shook her head. “It’s nothing.” She quickly leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I just wanted to say, ‘good luck.’”

Snake felt a little bit of warmth in his cheeks and nodded. “Thanks, Diane. Good luck to you, too.”

Diane took both of Ellen’s hands. “It’s been lovely having you here, Ellen. I hope I get to see one of your recitals someday, when things are…well, when things are better.”

Ellen nodded, teary-eyed. “And I would love to see you perform live in concert, as well. I promise you I’ll write often when I get back home to Russia.”

The two women embraced. “I’ll hold you to that,” Diane muttered.

There was a call for boarding, and Diane let go. “Go on,” she said. “Time for you two to start heading home.”

Snake nodded with a smile and held out his arm for Ellen. Together they headed to the train’s entrance and gave one final wave to Diane before handing their tickets to the conductor for examination.

“Mr. and Mrs. Steyn, if you’ll follow our attendant, he will guide you to your cabin,” the conductor said, handing their tickets back.

They thanked the man and obediently followed the train employee to their private cabin. “Here you are,” the man said as he opened the door. “Will you be joining us for lunch this afternoon?”

“No, thank you,” Snake said. “We ate before we got here. We’ve been traveling for a while and are very tired. We’ll probably skip teatime, too.”

“Very well, sir. Dinner will be served at 19:30 in the dining cars. Dress is formal wear.”

“We’ll be there. Thank you,” Snake said.

“Very good, sir. I will leave you both to it, then.”

The usher excused himself, leaving Snake to close the door behind him so that he and Ellen could properly survey their room for the night. The suite was rather nice; stained red wood finish with a sofa that unfolded into a bed, with an en-suite bathroom and shower as well as a small bar fridge and a safe. There wasn’t much room off the bed on the floor for Snake to sleep, so they would have to share the bed, but since it was only for one night, neither of them really minded.

Snake unfolded a small writing desk and motioned for Ellen to sit down. “So,” he said. “How do you like it?”

“It’s very nice,” Ellen said, smiling lightly.

Snake nodded, more to himself than to her. “It is…”

Snake looked to the door before leaning forward closer to Ellen. “We should probably plan on staying in the cabin for the majority of the trip, just to be safe.”

Ellen nodded.

“If I leave this cabin separately from you for any reason, keep the door locked, and don’t open for anyone unless you know for a fact it’s me, okay?”

“Right.” Ellen straightened up in her seat, paying close attention and hanging onto Snake’s every word.

“When we travel, you stay close to me, move only when I do, exactly as I do. That being said, plans always have room to go wrong, so we should probably have some kind of plan in case we ever do get separated. Agreed?”

“Okay.”

“Good, now listen carefully.” Snake pulled a map out of his suitcase and laid it on the desk. “Train station is here. The United States Embassy is here. Roughly four-and-a-half-mile difference. At a walking pace, that’s about a little less than an hour and a half on foot, since we won’t have a car. We’ll have to account for the fact that the whole city’s going to be under SANDF lockdown, so might take a little longer than that.

“We should assume since they’re looking for and detaining Americans that SANDF will be monitoring foot traffic heading to the Embassy, so we’ll need to keep an eye out for any tails. Good rule of thumb, you don’t want to let on to the people following you that you know that they’re there. A good way to catch a tail without letting on that you’re on to them is to check reflections in windows and mirrors. Do this often, look for any faces that start to be familiar after a few blocks.

“If you find out someone’s following you, start looking for groups and crowds of people, try to lose them in the crowds, slipping out at the first opportunity. Look for alleyways, door alcoves, local businesses you can slip inside of for exits. If you can’t find a group of people to obscure you, vary your route. Make unexpected turns, switch your path often while being careful not to turn into any dead-ends. Pay attention to road signs, don’t take blind turns. Always think multiple steps ahead about where you’re going.”

Ellen nodded again. “What should I do if I get caught or get attacked?”

“Chances are, you’ll be smaller and weaker than your attacker, but there’s a few things you can do. First things first, since you won’t have muscle or size advantage, don’t even try to overpower them with brute force. Instead, aim for the soft spots on their bodies. Here, make a fist for me. Fingers nice and tight, thumb wrapped around outside--good. Now—”

Snake stood up with Ellen and held up an open palm.

“Strike my hand as hard as you can, try to hit me with the front two knuckles.”

Ellen did as she was asked, and Snake shook his head. “Don’t rear back with your shoulder. It’s a punch, not a baseball. You’re just going to lose energy and power to momentum, and by telegraphing what you’re going to do, you’re going to leave your opponent room to counter you. Watch me, and I’ll demonstrate—what you want to do is go straight out and rotate your torso into the strike. Jab, cross, uppercut.”

Snake slowly went through the motions. “See?”

Ellen nodded, following along.

“Okay, now, strike me in the palm again. Again, hard as you can.”

Ellen struck Snake’s palm, much harder this time. He caught her fist, nodding.

“Better. Now, do it again, but this time when you strike, don’t try to think of it as hitting my hand and stopping. Instead, try to punch through my hand. Imagine an invisible dot behind my hand. Aim to hit that dot, rather than my palm.”

Ellen obliged, and Snake felt the recoil up his arm as he blocked her. He tried to keep himself from wincing—he didn’t want her to worry about exacerbating his injuries.

“Very good,” Snake praised her. Ellen looked pleased with herself.

“Vital points with soft tissue to aim for: neck, temple, nose, eyes. If you’re close enough, you can swing an elbow—like so—instead of throwing a punch if you think you have the reach. If it’s a man—which it most likely will be—you can also aim for a straight kick to the groin. If you have a blunt object you can use as a weapon to swing at them, that would be even better than trying to go for hand strikes.”

Snake sat back down on the sofa, Ellen following suit.

“You know a lot about hurting people, don’t you, Mr. Snake?”

Something about that question stung, coming from Ellen. Snake shrugged. No use in denying it. “It’s my job,” he said simply.

“But hopefully it won’t even come to that," he continued. "They’re looking for a man, not a woman, so even if we get separated, all you’ll really need to do is just head straight to the embassy and they should take care of you.”

“What do I tell them when I get there?”

“Tell them you’re a Russian national seeking sanctuary and political asylum. When they ask you who you are, tell them your real name. There’s an APB for you and your father through INTERPOL, so they’ll be expecting you.”

“I see…”

The carriage rumbled as the train lurched into motion. Ellen watched out the window as the train exited the station and moved into the South African countryside. A moment of uneasy silence filled the space between the two as they watched the landscape roll by.

“Snake…”

“Hm?”

“How do you do it?”

Snake looked over to Ellen, who had a curious and anxious look on her face.

“Do what?”

“All of this. Just throwing yourself into dangerous situations over and over again, without a second thought.”

Snake shrugged. “I just focus on the mission. I find it’s easier for me to get through life when I have a task I need to complete. At the end of the day, it’s the one thing I know I can trust completely.”

Ellen looked down at her hands folded in her lap. “And what task is that? I thought your mission was to destroy Metal Gear and kill Ahab.”

Snake leaned forward, taking Ellen’s hand in his. “Right now, my mission is to get you home safe and sound, and hopefully reunite you with your father. Everything else is secondary to that. I promise you, Ellen, as long as there’s still breath in my lungs, I will not let anything bad happen to you. Okay?”

Ellen nodded, not quite able to meet his gaze. “I wish I could be brave, like you. To be completely unafraid.”

Snake put his other hand on top of Ellen’s. “Who says I’m not afraid?”

Ellen looked up at Snake in surprise.

“Ellen, bravery isn’t the absence of fear—it’s knowing that you’re afraid, but still choosing to move forward anyway. You knew this trip could be dangerous, but when I asked you to come with me, you still chose to accompany me regardless. Ellen, you’re one of the bravest people I know.”

Ellen stared into Snake’s bright blue eyes, and for once didn’t see the cornered starveling creature she witnessed in at Diane’s home nor the battle-hardened predator that had saved her from her imprisonment in Outer Heaven, but rather just a simple, unguarded and desperate sincerity. It was the first time since he had first woken up from his brief coma after arriving at Diane’s place that she was able to witness Snake’s humanity.

It almost made her want to weep.

It was in that moment, Ellen knew, that this man could lead her to the ends of the earth, and she would still choose to follow him. It was in that moment that she knew she could trust him with her life without a second thought.

Notes:

This one took me way less time than I thought it would, considering it's one of my longest chapters to date-was able to knock it out in two solid days of continuous writing. I suppose it helped that I pretty much knew exactly how I wanted this one to go the moment I had the idea of expanding the characters of Diane, Ellen and (to a lesser extent) Steve like I did with Jennifer. I remember reading that in Diane's last CODEC call it's supposed to be implied that she fell for Snake and stopped just short of confessing feelings of love to him before the final battle, and I wanted to play with the idea, given that the line is so vague and she never shows up as a character or even as a reference again in the entire rest of the Metal Gear franchise.

At first, I toyed with the idea of implying a sex scene for this chapter between Snake and Diane, but I ultimately decided against it for two reasons. The first is that I didn't buy that she would have enough time with Snake to really develop much in the way of romantic chemistry and the second is that I didn't think that Snake, in his emotionally vulnerable state from the onset of his PTSD would be likely to go for it either, as in MGS1 he kind of struck me as more of the closed-off type (his moments of mild James Bond-style flirtation towards Mei Ling and Naomi aside). So, my next idea was to make it more of a strong platonic relationship with the hint of a possible romance that would tragically never get to develop because of Steve telling Snake to keep away from her (a throughline inspired by his final CODEC call in the game as well). I liked the idea of the intimacy shared between Snake and Diane being more of an emotional bond than a physical one, which is why the scene is written the way it is. However, I intentionally left it vague with regard to Steve finding them in bed together so that there's enough there such that if you wanted to interpret them having a sex for solace thing, it would be a valid reading of the scene (though again, not to my tastes nor what I was personally going for).

I also really liked the idea of Snake personally escorting Ellen out of South Africa himself, to sort of give him a personal path to redemption and assuage the guilt he feels from not being able to save his allies. There's a parallel between Snake and Big Boss I'm trying to draw where they both went through similar betrayals and tests of loyalty, but ultimately reacted to it in opposite ways, that I'm hoping I'll be able to touch on as we get closer to the end of this story and may also be expanded on further in the first sequel I have planned.

I plan on taking a little bit of a break before I start on the next chapter, which will focus mainly on Snake and Ellen's attempts to make it to the US Embassy and Snake trying to secure safe passage out of South Africa. By my count, assuming I follow my plot outline to the letter, there should be either three chapters to go, or three chapters and an epilogue. Thank you once again for reading this far, and I hope you will continue to enjoy as we inch closer to the ending of this long undertaking of mine.

Chapter 23: The Return

Summary:

To finally complete their journey out of South Africa, Ellen and Snake must carefully navigate the heavily policed zone of control that is Pretoria in the hopes of securing safe passage at the United States Embassy.

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY EIGHTEEN – 1920 HOURS

IN TRANSIT – ROVOS RAIL PASSENGER SUITE

 

Why’d it have to be a suit?

Snake checked himself in the mirror as he combed his hair back, feeling stiff in the starchy black monkey suit that Diane had packed for him. He looked down at the tie in his hands, considered going without. He hadn’t attended many formal functions since he was back in school—the whole thing felt uncomfortable and surreal.

He disliked the idea of a tie. What if they were caught by SANDF or if the train were attacked by Outer Heaven troops? If he were forced into hand-to-hand combat, the attacker could grab the fabric and lead him by the neck and without a knife he’d have no way to cut it off.

Snake took a breath. He was being paranoid. They’d passed out of the Northern Cape and into the North-West province hours ago, leaving the savanna for the grass plains of the Highveld past Klerksdorp—they were in SANDF-controlled territory, and any Outer Heaven personnel who hadn’t been captured or killed by the military were either out of the country or gone to ground by now. It should be perfectly safe. He was probably just looking for an excuse to just not wear the tie because it was just plain uncomfortable.

Snake examined himself in the mirror. His face looked a little fuller, the eyes less shadowed, but he still had that searching, wary look about him. He wasn’t sure if that would ever go away—if he’d ever feel safe or normal again.

He thought of Ellen, and how safe she probably felt right now, or how anxious, to be more precise. It would be better to give her at least some sense of ease and normalcy whenever possible. He put on the tie.

He stepped out of the bathroom, only to be struck by the sight of Ellen, whose ensemble left him breathless. Ellen was draped in a slim-fitting navy-blue dress and heels that hugged the curves of her dancer’s body. The dress itself complimented her eyes, which glittered like sapphires in her dark black eyeshadow that starkly contrasted her alabaster skin. 

Over her shoulder, her dark hair flowed like water in wavy curls and her ruby lips pursed slightly as she looked up to him, silently asking for his thoughts on the sight in front of him. Diane clearly had an eye for fashion, Snake thought to himself.

“Wow,” Snake breathed, not being able to articulate much else.

A light rosy blush illuminated Ellen’s cheeks, her lips parting into a brilliant smile.

“Thank you,” she said. “You look rather dashing yourself.”

Snake coughed to clear his throat and tried to repress the urge to tug on his collar. He felt like a nervous teenage boy going to prom, when he desperately wanted to keep up an air of confidence—telling himself it was for her sake. But maybe the act was for him, too?

“Ahem. Um, shall we go?” he asked, offering his arm.

Ellen smiled politely and took the offered appendage as Snake led the way out of their cabin and down the hall to the dining car, where they were quickly seated by the maître d’, who handed them each a menu and helpfully informed them that appetizers would be a choice between sugar snap pea salad or a lemon chicken soup, with the main course consisting of either salmon, steak, or pork sausage, and would either of them like to sample the wine?

Snake was about to order red wine, when Ellen requested in English for the waiter to bring samples of white wine for him. Snake looked at her quizzically as the waiter walked away.

“I was going to ask about the red wine,” Snake had said.

“I know,” Ellen responded. “But I saw you perk up at the sound of salmon. I assume that’s what you plan on ordering later, da?”

Snake nodded but looked no less confused. “Yeah. I’m not sure I understand why that matters, though.”

“You pair white wine with white meat like fish and poultry, red wine with red meats like steak and pork.”

“Does it really matter that much?”

Ellen looked around at the people sitting at other tables. “Probably not, not in this day and age,” she admitted in a low voice. “But you’re meant to be a man of wealth who should likely know these things, and it’s the sort of discrepancy other wealthy people would notice.”

Snake nodded. “I get it,” he responded. “Thanks for the save, then.”

Ellen bowed her head. “Do you want any other tips on formal dining etiquette? I’ve spent a lot of time with such socialites. I’m sorry, I would have had us rehearse earlier if I had thought about it.”

“I think I’ll be okay on the etiquette front,” Snake said. “I’ve attended Officer Training School, and attending formal functions in dress uniform was one of the things I’ve had to learn. A few of the foster parents I’ve lived with growing up were military officers too, so it’s kind of been ingrained in me, whether I want it or not. I’ve just never had much cause to drink much before outside of the occasional visit to the bar, and I don’t come from a particularly wealthy background, so the wine thing would’ve never occurred to me.”

He chuckled slightly, but he noticed in Ellen’s eyes that she was slightly taken aback at the mention of foster parents. She was able to quickly and politely stifle her surprise, and she leaned forward slightly with a smile.

“Just in case, perhaps you could tell me what you already do know? I’ll be happy to fill in any blind spots,” she said genially.

Snake nodded, and began reciting:

“Back straight, elbows tucked in, folded napkin in the lap, silverware arranged in order of use: starter, main course, and dessert; from the outermost utensil inward. Forks to the left of the plate, spoons and knives on the right. Wait until everyone’s been served before starting to eat, eat at the same pace as everyone else, and be sure to taste food before seasoning it. Use the dominant hand when cutting meat with the knife, holding the fork in the opposite hand, then switch hands to eat using the fork.”

Snake looked into Ellen’s eyes. “Did I miss anything?”

“Place discarded pieces that you either can’t or don’t want to eat on the top left of the plate, keep the rim of your plate as clean as possible, keep your bread on the plate at all times unless you’re lifting it into your mouth, and don’t clink your glass for a cheers or toast so as not to damage the glassware,” Ellen finished for him.

Snake nodded. “Got it. I should be good.”

“Don’t worry if you make any mistakes,” Ellen smiled sweetly. “It’s just the one dinner, after all, and I’m not certain others here are paying that close of attention. It’s more just for the sake of being safe.”

“That’s fair,” Snake replied.

The waiter arrived with their wine and appetizers and politely took his leave.

“So, Sn--Thomas, this could be the last chance we have to talk and get to know each other,” Ellen said, remembering Snake’s alias at the last second while she tried to make conversation.

She was right, Snake realized. He thought of how by this time tomorrow, they’ll both be on their respective ways home from the embassy. He thought about it for a moment. Chances were good they’d never see or hear from each other ever again, same as with Diane, Jennifer, and Wikus. Same as Kyle and Gray Fox and the Resistance members too, he bitterly noted.

Did Snake really want to put in the emotional effort of getting close with this woman, knowing that they’re just going to get separated again the very next day, possibly for good? Snake’s eyes fell slightly as he quietly folded his napkin and placed it in his lap.

He realized he was being rude with his continued silence and remembered his mission to keep Ellen safe and to help her to feel secure. It probably wouldn’t hurt to indulge her with some light conversation, he thought to himself, as long as it stayed exactly that—light.

Or at least what would pass for light in Snake’s book—really, he just needed her not to ask about Outer Heaven, or the Resistance.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” he replied. “We’ll be going home soon, after all. You looking forward to it, getting back to your normal life?”

A broken smile played on Ellen’s lips as she blew on her soup spoon and lifted it into her mouth. “I’m looking forward to seeing my father again. As for a normal life, I don’t know. After everything that’s happened, can we really be sure that ‘normal’ is still possible?”

“Don’t see why not,” Snake said unthinkingly. “What about your ballet? You think you might go back to that?”

“Perhaps. I’m unsure. As much as I would love to return to my art, the idea of traveling with an international troupe again feels…daunting, to say the least. I’ll always be looking over my shoulder. Maybe I’ll tour with a domestic production, stay within the borders of Russia. At least until I feel confident again, if I ever do.”

“You’ll get there,” Snake assured her. “But yeah, it’s not a bad idea.”

“What about you, Tom? What will you do when you get back home, wherever ‘home’ is for you?”

Snake took a bite of his salad, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed. This was about as close to the subject as he was willing to get, but he still felt frustrated as he realized that he’d been so focused on the mission that it never occurred to him to wonder about what would happen after, not when he could die at any moment.

“I…I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’ll need to warn my contacts in the American military about my CO’s deception and betrayal, among other things. I’ll have to give a debriefing and fill out paperwork, then it’s back to work to finish the rest of my term of service.”

Snake frowned as he thought of the rest of his term. How would he be able to finish out the rest of his commission, after the things he’d experienced? The CIA was ready to betray Kyle at a moment’s notice. The Army delivered Snake himself into Big Boss’s hands, and Big Boss used his connections to betray him, and possibly the whole of FOXHOUND as well assuming they weren’t all in on it—put the whole world in danger.

How could Snake continue to serve without knowing who to trust? He remembered what Big Boss had told him in that barbershop two years ago, how every servicemember who signed on became property of the U.S. government until the end of their term.

Is that all he was? Property? A tool? Snake had accepted the notion so casually before. Only now did it dawn on him what exactly that meant.

If there was no one left for Snake to trust, would he continue to be used anyway against his will? Did he even have a choice?

“After that…I don’t know,” Snake reiterated.

Ellen saw the mixed emotions on Snake’s face but wasn’t sure what to make of them. It was clear that this line of questioning bothered him deeply, but it was hard to get a read on what exactly he felt. She frowned.

“What about your family?” Ellen ventured, changing the subject. “Will you go to visit them once your mission is complete?”

Snake smirked. “Probably not, to be honest. I never had much in the way of family before entering the service anyway. And the ones that I did have, well…the nature of my job makes it so that officially, I don’t exist. Doesn’t leave a lot of room for catching up.”

Snake picked up his wine glass, examining the contents as he swirled it. “The only ones I’d want to see are soldiers themselves. For all I know, they could still be out on tour. Even if I was put on leave or discharged, there’s no guarantee I’d get to see them at the same time.”

He took a swig.

“What about your parents? I think you mentioned something about foster parents?” Ellen asked. A second later, she remembered the implications of what she just asked and looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, is that too personal a question?”

Snake waved her off with a smile. “No, no, it’s fine. I don’t mind talking about it. I’ve grown up living with a lot of different foster families as a kid. Never the same people for more than two or three years at a time.”

“Are you…?” Ellen left the end of the question open, trying to be delicate.

Snake knew what she was getting at. “An orphan,” he replied, nodding. “I’ve never known my birth parents. Don’t know what happened to them. They could have been dead, or they could have abandoned me for all I know. Either nobody was keen to tell me or nobody else knew either. Maybe the details were just that bad—I prefer to think that they died, rather than the alternative.”

Ellen looked a little sad. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Snake said. “Can’t miss what you never knew, right?”

“What about your foster parents? Did you love them?”

“Sort of, yes…and no. It’s complicated. A few of them were former or active duty military and were strict disciplinarians. Some of them were kind, others…well, I’ll put it like this: I liked some of them more than the rest, and I’ll leave it at that. In any case, like I said I never knew any of them for longer than three years, so I didn’t have enough to time to get so attached as to think of any of them as parental figures: more like teachers and older roommates I was forced to live with. Not exactly easy to form a strong familial bond with that kind of setup. By the time I was a teenager I gave up on the idea of a permanent family altogether.”

“I see,” Ellen said, finishing the rest of her soup. “That seems so sad. I couldn’t bear to think of what my life would have been like without my mother.”

Ellen gasped slightly, putting a hand up to her lips. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I keep…what’s the American expression… ‘putting my leg in my throat?’”

“‘Putting your foot in your mouth,’” Snake corrected with a shrug. “It’s okay. Like I said, I never knew anything else, so I don’t have anything else to compare it to. To me, it was just normal life.”

“Is it normal in the United States for orphaned children to move to different foster families?”

“I can only really speak on my experience,” Snake answered. “But from the few times I’ve talked to other foster kids, I’ve been made to understand that the system rarely works out in our favor. The one time I’d bothered to tell another kid how I’d been bounced around a lot, he didn’t look too surprised.”

“So there’s no one you were close to at all?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Snake replied. “When I was in the regular Army, I’d served in a small unit for a short time. The military has a way of instilling a bond of trust that you just don’t get in the civilian world. The people I served with in the Army, they were like brothers to me. Hell, even the people in my current outfit—”

Snake cut himself off, remembering Salamander. He got quiet for a moment, then shook his head slightly, as if clearing his mind of cobwebs.

He realized he’d finished his salad. He put the fork down just as the waiter arrived again to collect their empty dishes and deliver their main course. Once the waiter was gone, Snake decided to turn the subject to his date.

“What about you?” Snake asked. “You mentioned your mother. I’ve only ever heard of your father. Were you and your family close?”

“My mother and I were,” Ellen said, lifting her knife and fork to cut her steak into pieces. “I remember when she used to sing me to sleep or when she’d read to me at my bedside before bed. She had a heavenly voice. She was the one who guided me into becoming a dancer.”

She took a bite of her steak and sighed softly, her eyelashes wet.

“I miss her,” she said quietly.

Snake didn’t know what to say or do, so he simply nodded and kept quiet.

After a moment of silence, Ellen explained, “It was a car accident. It happened when I was still young. I was devastated. My father responded by throwing himself into his work with the government. I understand now that providing for me was how he showed his love and that overworking himself was just his way of grieving, but at the time, it damaged our relationship pretty badly. I was hurting and I needed my father, but he just—wasn’t there.”

Snake placed the salmon into his mouth. As it melted against the roof of his mouth, he noted that he could hardly register the taste. It matched the numbness in his stomach that grew with Ellen’s words.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Ellen shook her head, daubing her eyes with her napkin to prevent her mascara from running. “Don’t be,” she echoed him. “Our relationship actually did improve as I reached adulthood, especially after Ottsa was able to leave his work behind in our country’s transition to the new government. For once, we finally got the chance to get to know each other again, have a fresh start.”

Ellen’s face dropped. Snake could feel her unspoken sentence: at least, we did until Outer Heaven stole it from us.

Feeling compelled, Snake reached across to rest his hand on hers. “You’ll see him again,” Snake promised, not knowing if he was lying to her or not. “I’m sure of it.”

He hoped like hell that he was right about that. Ellen’s face seemed to perk up a little, at least. They resumed eating, though it was almost mechanical. Neither one of them were really tasting their food.

Ellen cleared her throat, forcing a smile. “So, Sn—I mean, Tom,” she said, raising her wine glass. “Is there a woman in your life?”

Snake chuckled. The question felt ridiculous, though it was hard to pin down why he thought so. He shook his head slightly.

“Not really,” he said. “Not a lot of room for that in my world.”

“Really?” Ellen asked, eyebrow raised. “Never?”

“I’m not…inexperienced,” Snake said, trying his best to be delicate. “But it’s difficult to get close to people when you’ve lived the kind of life that I have. I don’t even know if it’s because of lack of opportunity or a lack of interest, to be honest. It’s just always been that way.”

“This surprises me.”

“Why?”

Ellen smirked. “You seemed to be rather comfortable around Jennifer, and I could have sworn I saw you and Diane together in bed one morning the other day. With that and the confidence you showed in taking me to dinner, I would have thought you to be quite the ladies’ man.”

Snake laughed a little. “Nothing happened between me and Diane. At least, not in the way you’re thinking,” he said.

“I know,” Ellen grinned. “I’m pretty sure Steve would have killed you if it had.”

“Ha! You’re probably right about that.”

“What about Jennifer, though?”

Snake shook his head. “Nah, she’s more like a combat buddy. I don’t really think of her that way.”

“You don’t mix business and pleasure?”

Snake tilted his head with amusement. “I mean, I wouldn’t have kicked her out of bed, but a relationship? I guess I just never really thought about it.”

Ellen smiled into her wine glass. “I see,” she intoned with a sly, enigmatic smile.

“This is starting to feel like an interrogation,” Snake joked.

Ellen held her palm up, feigning innocence. “No, no, not at all. I was just curious.”

“Well, what about you, then?” Snake asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I imagine a famous dancer like you would have a lot of suitors waiting for her back home.”

“Why Tom, you flatterer,” Ellen grinned wickedly. “If I didn’t know better, I would say you were jealous.”

“Perish the thought!” Snake waved it off sarcastically.

“Why the sudden interest? Are you looking to, as they say, ‘sweep me off my feet?’” she leaned forward slightly, a playful light in her eyes.

“Depends. Is it working?”

“Hmm….” She examined her fingernails mock-dismissively. “Your approach was decent, but your flirtatious technique could use some work. And here I thought you were a worldly provocateur.”

“Ha ha, ouch,” Snake chuckled.

“You score decently for effort, though,” she laughed and then leaned forward into her folded hands. “And if nothing else, at least you’re easy on the eyes.”

In spite of himself, a pink tinge glowed on Snake’s cheeks. Ellen stifled a giggle, her own cheeks equally rosy.

“Excuse me,” she apologized. “It seems I may have had a little too much.”

“Don’t apologize,” Snake said suddenly. “I like it when you laugh.”

Ellen’s eyebrow raised. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” Snake replied sincerely, blurting out, “Fun is a good look on you.”

Snake cringed. “Fun is a good look on you?” What the hell was that? He chided himself.

Complimentary to his own embarassment, Ellen’s blush deepened as she looked slightly taken aback at his unguarded honesty. “Thank you,” she answered shyly.

“Uh…no problem,” Snake said, rubbing the back of his head.

Not really knowing how to continue the conversation, they both finished their meal in embarassed silence.

After paying the waiter, Snake and Ellen walked back to their carriage and closed the door behind them. Snake entered the bathroom to give Ellen some privacy as he shed his suit and donned his pajama bottoms and white undershirt. Once Ellen gave him the all clear, he stepped out to find her dressed in a night gown and brushing her hair.

Snake suggested that they turn in for an early night, and they both laid down onto the pullout bed and said goodnight. Ellen lay facing away from him.

In spite of his suggestion, Snake found that he couldn’t sleep. He lay on his back staring at the ceiling, listening to the sound of the train rolling on the tracks beneath them as they moved through the rolling grasslands. He considered opening the curtains to watch the stars, but glanced at Ellen’s motionless form and thought better of it, choosing to remain alone with his thoughts.

The problem was that being alone with his thoughts was the last place Snake wanted to be. His eyes dull and lifeless, all sensation in his body melted away as his mind once again wandered into the cold darkness in which the Demon resided. To his mind, he could almost make out the creature’s empty cold stare peering from the empty and formless ceiling.

He thought of his reflection in the mirror after killing Salamander, and every time since then. No matter how hard he tried, Snake couldn’t get that image of the grinning crazed Demon out of his head. He felt his body raise his hands so that he could look at them, but it wasn’t his body, they weren’t his hands.

The bandages that wrapped these palms, these fingers, these arms…they covered the marks of his monstrous nature, hid the blood that stained them. But as far as Snake was concerned, nothing could hide what he truly was.

Not anymore.

He looked down at Ellen again. Could she see it, he wondered? Did she know what he was? Did she lay awake in quiet horror knowing that just inches away a monster looked upon her with dark and empty eyes? Or did she simply sleep soundly in ignorance?

Snake lowered his hands and sighed. He knew he needed to sleep, to conserve his strength. But he was afraid to dream—afraid of the terrors that the night held.

He felt a shift next to him. He looked at Ellen once more. “Ellen?” he whispered. “Are you awake?”

A moment of silence. For a second, he believed that she had simply shifted around in her sleep.

“…Yes.”

Her voice was small and hushed, barely above a whisper.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Snake asked.

Ellen didn’t say anything, only nodded. Snake turned his gaze back up to the ceiling of the cabin.

“Me neither,” he said.

“…Snake?”

“Hm?”

Ellen turned around and propped herself up on her elbow, and he saw her eyes; big and round and wet. They shone in the moonlight that filtered between the curtains. She was beautiful, he thought to himself. He found himself feeling guilty at the notion, but he wasn’t sure why.

“Can I ask you something?”

Snake nodded, and she pursed her lips slightly before asking, “…What is it that you see, when you fall asleep? When you dream?”

“That’s what you wanted to ask?” Snake raised an eyebrow.

Ellen shook her head. “No…but tell me anyway.”

Snake’s eyes dullened again as he continued to stare at the ceiling, feeling not for the first or probably even the last time, that he was adrift over a vast ocean. Snake whispered, “I see things no good person should ever have to be burdened with. Blood. Death. Sickness. Cruelty. And, even worse things…”

He trailed off. Ellen waited to see whether he would finish his sentence, but when no response was forthcoming, she continued to her next question:

“Why do you do this? Subject yourself to such things? Why are you helping me? When I was in the prison under Outer Heaven, I had heard some of the soldiers talk of warrior’s pride, warrior’s blood. That war and death was a part of who they are. But…that can’t be true, can it? Surely it is them who are different, no one enjoys such a life…right?”

Snake lifted his bandaged hand, stretching out his fingers as he contemplated his palm. “You’re asking me why I fight. Right?”

Ellen said nothing.

Snake sighed. “I wish I had a better answer for you. When I started this, it was out of gratitude and a sense of duty. My country and my superiors gave me a family, a purpose, and a reason to live.”

Snake let his arm drop to his side. His eyes remained unfocused. “But now…now, I feel like I keep going just because I have nothing left but the fight itself. Even after my term of service is up, I don’t really know what else I would do with myself. Fighting and war are all I really know. So, maybe those mercs were right, and all I’m meant for is to be a weapon of war. So, I guess, in a sense, nothing’s really changed for me. Except for one thing.”

“And that is…?” Ellen drew herself closer to him.

Snake shook his head slightly, then turned his eyes to her. They widened in recognition, as if seeing her for the first time. In his mind, the words turned, ominous and desperate:

I don’t want to be like him. I don’t just want to be what he made me.

He didn’t dare say it aloud. Both because he wasn’t quite sure what he meant by the sentiment, but also because part of him was terrified that by speaking those words it would make them more real somehow.

Ellen read something in his expression, and reached out to grab his hand, giving it a squeeze. “You have done so much for me and my father,” she said. “You don’t have to fight alone. I may not be a warrior like you, but I’m still here, for as long as you’ll let me be.”

Snake brushed a lock of hair from Ellen’s face. “You asked me why I’m helping you,” he said.

“I did.”

“That question is the easiest to answer. I’m helping you because I want to. It’s the only reason I need.”

Ellen reached forward to tenderly grasp at Snake’s face and leaned in to put her lips on his. Their faces touched for scant seconds before Snake pulled back, shaking his head sadly. Ellen looked hurt, but Snake put a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry. It’s not you, I promise,” he assured her. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then, why…?” she asked quietly.

“I just…I can’t,” he said simply.

Ellen nodded, still looking disappointed. “I understand. Can I ask you for one favor, though? If you’re comfortable with it, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Will you hold me until I fall asleep? Just for tonight?”

Snake reached out to accept her as she wrapped her arms around him, putting her head on his chest. Her shoulders shook lightly.

“Are you cold?”

“No,” she whispered. “Scared.”

Snake pulled her in closer. “Me too,” he admitted.

Over time, her breathing slowed to match the pace of his heartbeat, becoming shallower as she drifted off. Snake took longer to drift away, eyes dullened once more as they pointed towards the ceiling. He had one last thought as he dissociated entirely before eventually succumbing to sleep due to exhaustion:

She’s warm…

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY NINETEEN – 1000 HOURS

ROVOS RAIL CAPITAL PARK STATION, PRETORIA

 

Snake and Ellen had gotten up at a little before seven, quickly got dressed in more casual clothes (Snake in a polo and khakis and Ellen in a lime green sundress), and had just enough time for breakfast before the train rolled into the station at ten. Snake left a red envelope with ZAR300 with the Train Manager for the staff tips before they hurriedly disembarked from the main carraige onto the station platform.

The police were out in force, directing the arrivals to a security station to be processed before they could enter the city. Snake and Ellen quickly got their travel documents ready as they stood in line to approach the guards’ table.

“There’s so many of them,” Ellen said.

“Yeah, looks like they’re out in force—some kind of crackdown. Probably to keep the peace on the streets and keep the fighting far away from the Capitol,” Snake observed.

“I hope our documents will be enough,” Ellen whispered.

Snake silently agreed with her. His documents identified him as a white South African with dual citizenship to the U.S. The dual citizenship was to make it easier to get inside the embassy, but he was hoping that the locals would only care about him being South African. If they were looking for an American…

He looked to Ellen. Her traveling with him might be a boon if they were looking for a lone American agent, he realized. Diane did say that they were specifically looking for an American male, after all. He gulped. Hopefully it would be enough. In the meantime, he needed to project an air of confidence, for Ellen’s sake.

“Just let me do the talking,” Snake said, taking her hand. “And stay close.”

Before long, it was their turn to present themselves. Snake and Ellen both handed their IDs over and the guard looked them over.

“What’s your business in Pretoria?” he asked in Afrikaans.

Snake replied, trying to mimic the air of a pompous businessman. “Oh, you know how it goes. Visiting family, and all that.”

The guard gave a cursory nod, showed the IDs to another soldier looking over his shoulder. After exchanging a few muttered words, the other soldier took the IDs back into a tent, leaving them to wait awkwardly for a few minutes. When he returned, he handed them back their documents and waved them forward.

Snake and Ellen gratefully made their exit, leaving the station platform to go to the nearest street crossing.

It all felt too easy, Snake thought to himself.

As Ellen and Snake made their way southward, the officer who had let them through kept examining the potocopies of the IDs he was shown. Everything was above board, and yet, there was something familiar about the girl that the man just couldn’t place. So, he contacted his superiors asking for information about a woman fitting her description.

What came back via fax was an A.P.B. from INTERPOL for a kidnapped woman by the name of Ellen Madnar, with a picture that matched her down to the last detail.

 

---

 

On the corner of Steve Biko Road and Malherbe, Snake and Ellen stepped into a boutique shop, where Snake spent most of what was left of his rands on a baseball cap and a large sunhat for him and Ellen. As Snake paid the cashier, Ellen looked out the window, to see men in camouflaged uniform driving past in a utility vehicle, and some officers stopping random passersby to show them photographs.

When Snake finished paying, Ellen tugged on his arm to lead him away from the window towards a side door on the north side.

“What is it?” he asked as they stepped out.

Ellen heard a motor, and leaned in to kiss him, covering both their heads with the wide brim of her sunhat until the motor passed. She pulled away from him and looked at the end of the alleyway, nodding.

“They’re looking for us,” she said. “I saw them earlier.”

“I see. And the kiss?”

Ellen blushed slightly in embarassment but looked no less serious. “Most people are uncomfortable with public displays of affection, and tend to turn away. I thought maybe it would discourage any onlookers from outside the alley from getting too curious.”

Snake nodded. It made sense. “Good thinking,” he praised.

He looked past Ellen, ignoring her deeper blush. He pointed to the eastern end of the alley. “Let’s make a slight detour eastward then, cut through the rear business parking lot and cross the road into the neighborhoods on the other side. Maybe the residential area will be less patrolled.”

Ellen nodded, putting her hand on her head to keep her hat steady as she followed the American spy past the parked semis, through the trees and, after waiting to make sure there was no traffic, jogged to jaywalk across Johan Heynes Drive towards Tenth avenue, diverting southward along Union Street.

They made it through two more blocks without incident before dodging into a wig shop to avoid another patrol. Snake waited until the staff wasn’t looking and stole a blonde and a red wig off the display counter and led Ellen off onto a side path for them to put them on. He also grabbed a jacket out of the suitcase and draped it around her shoulders, while holding a blazer by the collar over his own shoulder.

“Let’s ditch the suitcases,” Snake instructed. “They’re dead weight at this point, and we only have a little more to go. We should keep the fake IDs though—we’ll need them to get into the embassy.”

Ellen agreed, and they dumped the suitcases by the exterior wall of the wig shop out of view of the street. Snake held out his free arm for Ellen to hold and together they walked leisurely down Soutpansberg past the National Archives of South Africa and the Compensation House.

“We’re getting closer to the Union Buildings,” Snake noted. “We’ll need to be extra careful here not to draw attention.”

“Right,” Ellen replied. She pointed over to the parking lot next to the building for the Department of Agriculture and Forestry. “Look, there’s a bus stop,” she exclaimed. “That should save us some time, right?”

Snake nodded. “Good eye,” he said. “The faster we get away from here, the better.”

They ran up to the bus stop and waited. When a bus finally arrived, Snake handed a small amount of cash to the driver for the fare and led them both to an empty pair of seats. The bus wasn’t too crowded, which Snake thought was odd, given that it was half past eleven. He wondered if the lack of car and foot traffic was because of the increased troop presence on the streets. But what about people needing to go to work?

Even with their disguises, the whole thing felt eerie to him. Every move they’d made since arriving in Pretoria that morning felt too easy. He wondered if he wasn’t just being paranoid—it was possible he was just too high strung from everything that had happened since he infiltrated Outer Heaven.

Then again, he thought grimly, is it really paranoia if they really are out to get you?

The bus was sweltering. They sat in uncomfortable silence as their sweat began to build up, neither one of them wanting to shed any layers and risk tampering with their disguise.

They had to stop at Stanza Bopape and board another bus with the last of their money, this one going eastward. Out the window, they could see through a clearing that bisected the trees, revealing the Union Buildings in the distance across Arcadia.

Military vehicles drove across the concourse, and through the other side of the bus, they could see a convoy of personnel vehicles moving past the bus up the street. The bus gave them a respectful distance as they passed, and reflexively, Snake pulled his cap down while Ellen hugged her sunhat to her chest, hiding the lower part of her face with its brim.

After a few minutes, they got off at the Libyan embassy, and Snake and Ellen quickly made their way across the street toward the trees. Snake pulled out his map, and pointed down the road they were facing.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “Pretorius Street is just down this road, our destination is right across.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Ellen sighed in relief.

“Come on,” Snake offered his hand once more and led her down the road.

As they approached Mamelodi Private Hospital on the other end of Orient Street, a few men stepped out from behind the trees to cut them off. Snake looked behind him, and saw a military utility vehicle turning off of Stanza Bopape at the other end to pull towards him. Snake pulled Ellen close and continued walking to move past the three men who were moving to block their path.

“Wait, stranger.”

One of the men raised his hand to signal for Snake to halt. The vehicle behind them killed their engine and four men in fatigues disembarked.

“What do you want?” Snake demanded.

“Civilian movement around government buildings is restricted unless on official business,” said the man who stopped him. “What is your reason for coming this way?”

Snake leaned his head to whisper in Ellen’s ear. “Remember the plan: if we get separated, make a break for the embassy and don’t look back. It’s straight ahead—be ready.”

“O-okay,” she said.

Snake pulled out his fake I.D. paper, putting his hands up. “My wife and I—we have business at the American Embassy,” he said to the soldier.

The soldier stepped forward while the other men quietly surrounded them. The soldier took the I.D. from Snake and looked it over. “Thomas Steyn,” he read. “You’re an American citizen?”

“Yes, sir,” Snake replied. “And a proud citizen of South Africa, as well.”

The soldier looked at him skeptically, then at Ellen. He looked over her shoulder as an officer with a beret approached from behind them. Snake and Ellen both turned to regard him, and they recognized him as the officer from the train station. He must have been having them followed this whole time, Snake realized.

To Snake’s surprise, the officer in the beret turned not to him, but to Ellen. He looked her over, then up to the top of her head. “How are you liking our fine city, Miss Madnar? I see you both visited the wig shop on the way here.”

Ellen’s eyes widened. “How—”

The man produced a sheet of paper, which Snake recognized as a printout of an all points bulletin. “We’ve been looking for you, Miss Madnar,” the man stated with a calm smile. “We’re relieved to find you safe and sound. If you’ll come with us, we can provide you with safe accommodation while we arrange transportation for you out of the city.”

“She’s not going anywhere with you,” Snake growled.

He turned towards Snake, his smile lowered into a stern frown. “As for you, American…I’m assuming you must work for Outer Heaven, being a foreigner. Bad luck for you.”

He stepped back towards the car he came in on. “Standing orders are to take any male Americans found within the city boundaries for questioning,” he said. He turned his head to regard his subordinates. “Arrest him.”

Two guards approached with weapons drawn, while a third moved toward Ellen and placed his hands on her shoulders to guide her northward toward the car. Snake lowered his center of gravity and drove his elbow backward into one guard’s groin and grabbed his rifle to flip him over onto his back while disarming him.

Snake then approached the second guard and swept one of his legs out from under him with a kick, knocking the guard on his ass and giving Snake enough time to kick his weapon away. Ellen, meanwhile, turned around towards the third guard and kicked him in the groin and punched him in the temple, sending him reeling backwards while Snake quickly pushed him down and leveled a rifle in the man’s face.

“RUN!” Snake yelled.

Not needing to be told twice, Ellen sprinted into the trees, moving south while Snake placed himself over one of the guard’s bodies and pointed his rifle at the remaining guard and the officer standing around the vehicle, who were also pointing their weapons at him.

Ellen pumped her arms as she ran, breathing heavily. Her wig and sunhat falling off her head behind her. She cross the street at a run, crossing two lanes and narrowly avoiding getting run over at the third as a car was forced to stop for her. She ignored the driver’s indignant cries as she ran across the small parking lot to the security gate, where concerned American M.P.s were already coming to greet her.

She fumbled, handing them her I.D., muttering how she was in serious need of sanctuary, and after quickly assessing that she had no weapons on her person, the personnel quickly led her through the gate.

Not far behind, Snake crossed Pretorius street, using the civilian vehicles as cover to prevent the SANDF force from firing on him. When he got to the gate, several M.P.s drew their weapons on him, screaming for him to lay down his arms.

Snake dropped the rifle, lifting his hands up just in time for the SANDF troops to cross over into the parking lot. Snake screamed, “I am an American citizen, and I am requesting to be remitted into the protective custody of the United States of America!”

 The M.P.s approached, but the SANDF officer stood his ground. “This man is wanted for questioning in relation to criminal activities perpetrated by the foreign private military corporation known as Outer Heaven,” he said. “He has attacked multiple members of the South African National Defence Force. He is to be detained and placed in our custody for immediate questioning and trial. Interfere, and you will risk a diplomatic incident.”

The M.P.s looked from Snake to the SANDF officer, not knowing what to do. One of the higher ranking ones turned to address his subordinate. “Call it in,” he ordered.

Another M.P. approached Snake holding a pair of handcuffs. “Sir, I’m going to need you to put these on,” he said.

“Are you permitting me entrance to the embassy?” Snake asked.

“Hell no,” he said. “We don’t need the headache. You can go with them. You made your bed, go ahead and lie in it.”

Snake growled. If he couldn’t get them to let him in peacefully as a refugee, then he’d just have to get creative.

As the M.P. approached, Snake grabbed his wig and threw it into the man’s face, turned him around and grabbed him around the neck and pulled his sidearm from its holster. Immediately every gun in the area was pointing at him, none firing for fear of hitting the young soldier in his arms.

“Back up,” Snake commanded as he gently pushed his captive forward. The other M.P.s kept their guns trained on him, but otherwise kept their distance as Snake approached the gates and the keypad next to them. When he got to the gate, he made sure to turn around so his captive was between him and everyone else.

“Open it,” Snake ordered, and the guard in his grasp fumbled in his pocket for a keycard that he slid through the slot next to the keypad, and then punched in the code. The gate opened behind them, and Snake looked behind him to see Ellen’s scared eyes as another soldier had her in a protective hold to keep her restrained so that she wouldn’t bolt out the door.

Once safely past the gate, Snake pushed his captive forward away from him to fall on his face. He then tossed aside the pistol and got down on his knees, with his hands on his head.

“I surrender myself into the custody of the United States military,” he said simply.

The M.P.s rushed him, handcuffing him and roughly dragging him to his feet as they led him into the building, separating him from Ellen as they took him past many scared onlookers to a secure holding cell—just like he wanted.

Ellen looked to where Snake had disappeared down the halls before she reluctantly followed the guiding gentle hand of a security officer as she was led to the main desk.

“Snake…,” she muttered to herself.

When she got to the desk, she approached a woman who was waiting to meet her, who looked frazzled after all of the commotion. The woman apologized—for what, Ellen wasn’t sure. Then she asked for her name.

“My name is Ellen Madnar,” she said. “I understand that you have been looking for me.”

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY NINETEEN – 1350 HOURS

EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN SOUTH AFRICA – INTERVIEW ROOM

 

Snake wasn’t sure how long he had been waiting when someone finally came to check up on him. It could’ve been minutes, it could’ve been hours. With nothing else to do but to sit chained to the table and stare at the wall, he wasn’t really left with much in the way of options. He was silently elated when two men stepped into the room, one an M.P. the other a man in a suit—finally, there was something to sate the boredom.

The man in the suit sat down across from Snake, opened up a folder and pulled out an ink pen. The M.P. posted at the door. The suited man quietly took notes while Snake leaned back in his chair, not really paying attention.

Ellen was safe. He was…well, safer. The mission was almost complete. He just needed to report in. The only question was, who should he report to? Big Boss is dead, and given what happened, Snake wasn’t sure he could trust anyone at FOXHOUND. That left the C.I.A. and the Lieutenant Colonel he’d met at the briefing. Roy Campbell, he was pretty sure the name was.

Between the Army—the same Army that was in charge of FOXHOUND—and the C.I.A., Snake wasn’t sure which was a worse bet. But all the same, he needed to see things through—wherever they led.

But before he could do any of that, he needed to figure out how he was going to deal with his current predicament. The man in front of him was a suit. Was he military? A diplomat? A C.I.A. Case Officer? Some combination of the above?

Snake rolled his eyes slightly, peeking at the man’s badge: “Foreign Service Officer Derek Carlton.”

Foreign Service Officer…a diplomat, then. Carlton…why did that name sound familiar?

Finally, after a few more seconds of writing, the diplomat put the pen down and folded his hands in front of his face, eyeing Snake intently.

“I take it you’re him, then?” Carlton asked.

Snake raised his eyebrows, lazily cocking his head. “Beg your pardon?”

Carlton scoffed, pointing at Snake with an accusatory finger. “You’re in a lot of trouble, you know that?”

Snake lifted his hands, looking toward the handcuffs that were chained to the table. “I would have never guessed,” he uttered dryly.

“I’ve got phone calls from the presidential offices in Arcadia demanding I turn you over to them. There’s people in SANDF who are yelling for your head. Meanwhile, you attack American personnel while demanding that we house you. If I don’t have an answer for these guys, we’re in for a political shitstorm. So, let’s cut the bullshit.”

“Gladly,” Snake said.

“Good. Then maybe you can give me a reason why I shouldn’t turn you over to them right now.”

It hit Snake like a flash.

Ah. Carlton. Of course.

Snake looked over to the M.P., then back to Carlton. He pointed at the guard. “What’s his security clearance?”

Carlton was nonplussed. “What?” he asked bemusedly.

“His security clearance. What is it?”

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

Snake rolled his eyes. “Of course you don’t.” He reached out a hand and waved it toward him. “Paper, pen,” he demanded.

Carlton gave Snake a wary side-eye, then looked back to the guard. “Keep an eye on him. If he makes any sudden moves, don’t hesitate.”

The M.P. nodded, and Carlton picked up his pen and grabbed a sticky note, putting it in front of Snake. Snake jotted a quick note, then flashed it to Carlton:

‘I KNOW THAT YOU’RE CIA. DOES HE?’

Recognition showed in Carlton’s eyes. He took the pen back from Snake and sat down on the other side of the table. He looked to the M.P.

“I need you to wait outside,” he said. “If anything happens, you’ll know.”

The soldier didn’t argue, but stepped out the door, closing it behind him. Carlton leaned forward.

“Explain,” he demanded.

Snake leaned back again. “I have information to trade. Information you’re going to want to know.”

“And what do you want in return?”

“A favor. Two, actually.”

“Two favors? That’s a very expensive trade. Either your intel is very good, or you’re messing with me. Messing with me is a very unhealthy proposition, you know.”

“I’m well aware. The first favor I want is something you’d probably want to do anyway; I just want your word that you’ll follow through. It’s related to the information I have for you.”

“Uh-huh. And the second?”

“A simple phone call. There’s a Lieutenant Colonel in Washington that I need to contact. You can feel free to listen in or trace the call, whatever makes you comfortable. But I need that phone call to happen, regardless.”

Carlton chuckled slightly, a little incredulous. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. Are the terms acceptable to you?”

“Only if the intel’s good.”

Snake shrugged. “I guess it’ll have to do. Alright.”

“So, out with it.”

Snake sighed. “Your agent, Vukani.”

Carlton frowned. “Vukani? What about him?”

“He hasn’t reported in to you in a while, right?”

“Not since three weeks ago,” Carlton replied.

“That long? Shit…” Snake breathed.

That meant that Salamander killed Vukani before he could get in touch with Carlton. Did Vukani even manage to get to the phone? Did he get the chance to talk to his son, before Sal butchered him? Snake sighed heavily, pinching his nose.

“Do you know something?” Carlton asked.

“He’s dead,” Snake said dully. “He died eleven days ago, in Williston.”

Carlton slumped in shock, exhaling slowly. “He was a good man,” he said. “How did he die?”

“He was betrayed by someone he trusted.”

“Who?”

Snake shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. His killer suffered the same fate. I made sure of it.”

Carlton nodded. “You said the first favor was related to this.”

“It is. I’m sure you know that Vukani had a son out in Brandvlei. I want you to see to it the kid is well taken care of.”

Carlton’s steely gaze softened at this request. He nodded silently. “You were right, that is something I would’ve done anyway.”

Carlton took a moment to collect himself, then asked, “So, that’s your intel? The death of a foreign asset?”

“Not entirely. The operation I’m a part of is compartmentalized,” Snake said. “I have to be careful with how much I tell you, because I don’t know how much you know. That’s why I need the phone call, so I can call it in to the people I know for sure are in the loop.”

“So, what else can you tell me?”

“I can tell you that my code name is Solid Snake,” Snake replied. “And the person I need to contact is Lt. Col. Roy Campbell. He’s stationed at the Department of Defense. I can either make the call myself with you having the option of monitoring it, or you can call on my behalf. I just need to relay a few simple words.”

“I’m listening.”

 

---

 

APRIL 1, 1995

THE PENTAGON – 0800 HOURS, EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME

THE OFFICE OF LT. COL. ROY CAMPBELL

 

Things had been a mess over the past two weeks. Ever since the bombings, they’d had no contact with Big Boss’s Mission Control team, and by extension, Snake. The CIA had reported that one of their mission critical contacts had gone missing a week prior, and there was no word about whether FOXHOUND had gotten their captured agent back or if Dr. Madnar’s daughter was still alive. Dr. Madnar himself had only just entered the country via U.S. craft yesterday, a full week and a half behind schedule, and no one had any information as to the reason behind his late arrival.

Meanwhile, chemical and nuclear runoff had polluted the Vis river, creating a huge ecological disaster that poisoned the plants and wildlife from Outer Heaven all the way to the sea. Whole towns, cities, and rural communities were without drinking water, prompting a mass migration, and Mandela’s SANDF were still refusing to let U.N. forces enter the country to help with the cleanup and the processing of refugees. First it was insistence that they wanted to be sure that the rebel forces had been quelled to ensure no danger to the peacekeepers, then it was the result of some kind of diplomatic incident involving an American prisoner.

Lt. Col. Campbell had been running himself ragged, answering and receiving calls, attending meetings with members of both FOXHOUND and the CIA while also spending every waking free moment with his eyes glued to the TV flicking through every news station on the mere chance that he could get just a scrap of information.

This new story he’d been hearing through the grapevine about SANDF being on the hunt for an American made him nervous. Did South Africa know about Snake, or were they just grasping at straws? Is the reason they hadn’t been hearing from the Mission Control team because the whole operation had been compromised?

Campbell was beginning to worry about an intelligence leak somewhere, and from what he’d been seeing from his counterparts at the Agency, he wasn’t the only one concerned.

Campbell rubbed his bleary eyes as he checked his watch. He’d been awake for something like ten hours, only having gotten a small amount of sleep last night for two hours before having to come back to the office again past midnight. The long hours were starting to wear on him.

He got up and walked out of his office to head down the hall to the break room. Government sludge or not, he was in serious need of some coffee. As he poured himself a cup, his thoughts drifted to his little brother. Would Mattie have done any better in his shoes if he were still alive? He thought of the girl that Matt left behind. Eight years old and still has that same fire in her eyes as her old man.

Campbell took a drink. He needed this whole thing to go okay. Needed to leave a better world behind than the one he inherited, for his niece’s sake. He thought of her mother—how if things had gone just a little differently, that kid might’ve grown up with a different father…

The Lt. Colonel shook his head. No use fixating on the past, not when his mind needed to be focused on the here and now. He looked up as a young man entered the room, looking haggard as he approached with a salute. He reminded him of Matt. Campbell cringed internally at the thought.

Campbell returned the salute. “At ease, son,” he said. “What seems to be the problem?”

“A phone call for you, sir,” the soldier replied. “From the embassy in South Africa. They said that they had a message for you.”

“What’s the message?”

“They wouldn’t say, just that you had to hear it from them directly. From what they said though, it sounded urgent.”

A sinking feeling welled up in the pit of Campbell’s stomach. Is this the news he’d been dreading for two weeks now? He nodded to the soldier. “I’m heading to my office now. Have them put it through.”

With a new energy to his step, Campbell quickly marched back to his office to his desk, seeing that his phone was shining a light showing that the other party was on hold. He picked up the receiver.

“This is Lieutenant Colonel Roy Campbell. May I ask who’s speaking?”

“This is Case Officer Derek Carlton of the Central Intelligence Agency. I’m operating as a Foreign Service Officer here at the embassy. I have a man here in my custody going by the name of Solid Snake. He’s instructed me to give you a message, repeated verbatim: ‘The mission is complete, and I am in need of a pick-up.’ He said you would know what that means.”

Indeed, Campbell did.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY NINETEEN – 1800 HOURS

O.R. TAMBO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

 

Ellen fidgeted as the sedan pulled up on the tarmac to roll to a stop beside the parked 747. The door on the side was open, with a small metal staircase leading to the ground. She watched through the tinted glass of the passenger door as three figures descended the steps to the ground: two men in suits with wires coiled near their necks attached to ear pieces.

The third man was a thin man wearing what looked like some kind of prisoner’s garb, though he looked anything but captured and hopeless as he strode confidently across towards their vehicle. He was of similar build as the man who shared the backseat of the sedan with her.

She looked at her companion. His eyes had lost the armored steel they held when they had traveled from the train station together to the embassy earlier that day. Now, they looked almost dull and lifeless, the skin of his haggard body stretched thin across his face and hands. It was as though an invisible weight had been lifted off of Atlas, and once freed of the world’s burden, the man was left to succumb to exhaustion.

Their driver opened her car door while the other M.P. in the front passenger seat opened Snake’s allowing them both to tiredly exit the vehicle and approach the three men who had disembarked the plane. One of the suits approached Snake and shook his hand.

“Snake. It’s nice to finally meet you,” he said. He gestured to himself and the man in the other suit who looked younger and had much darker skin. “I’m Agent Johnson, this is Special Agent Johnson; no relation. We’re with the Secret Service. We’re here by order of the Presidential Office to ensure yours and Miss Madnar’s safe return.”

The third man, the prisoner, shook Snake’s hand as well. “2^nd Lieutenant William Afton, sir. Army Intelligence.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant,” Snake reponded with a tired sigh. He looked over the prisoner’s jumpsuit the man wore. “What’s with the getup?”

“Intel says we’re risking a diplomatic incident if we don’t turn over an American prisoner to the South Africans for questioning. We can’t leave a FOXHOUNDer in foreign hands, not even if their government is friendly to us. So, I’ve been instructed to take your place as a sort of patsy. They won’t know the difference.”

“And you’re okay with this?” Snake asked, with his eyebrow raised.

 Lt. Afton shrugged. “They’ll house and question me for a while, and when they realize I don’t have any useful info to give them, they’ll be forced to release me back to the U.S. or risk their NATO aid.”

Afton chuckled as he continued, “With all the paperwork I’ve been having to do for this op, as far as I’m concerned, I’m getting a vacation.”

“Heh,” Snake laughed slightly, nodding. “Well, I appreciate the work you’re doing all the same.”

Ellen looked to the Secret Service members to ask the question that had been burning in her mind. “What about my father? Do you have any news?”

Agent Johnson nodded, placing a sympathetic hand on Ellen’s shoulder. “Dr. Madnar is safely in America’s hands. He’s waiting for you in Washington. We’ve been instructed to bring you to him, after which you’ll both be brought in to answer some questions. Once everything is said and done, we’ll take you both wherever you want to go, whether that’s back to Russia or somewhere else.”

Ellen’s breath stopped as she took in the news. Her heart fluttered, her eyes widened and teared up.

Her father was alive. She’ll get to see him. She’ll get to go home. The nightmare was finally over.

“What’s the itinerary?” Snake asked the agent.

“You’ll both be flying to London tonight, after which you’ll immediately switch over to a Royal Airways flight to the international airport in D.C. We’ve got your British airline tickets right here.” He handed the papers to Snake, who nodded in thanks.

Agent Johnson gestured to the plane. “Go on now, your plane is waiting for you. Time to head on home.”

Ellen looked up to Snake, who regarded her with an exhausted smile. She shared in his fatigue, but she didn’t see the same elation and relief in his eyes that she felt. She realized that it still wasn’t quite over for him yet.

“Well, Ellen? Shall we go?”

Ellen firmly took Snake’s hand in her own, entwining her fingers with his, and nodded. She knew that when they reached America and she was reunited with her father, that they may never see each other again. Until that happened, she decided, she was going to stay close and be there for him in whatever capacity he needed.

“Let’s,” she answered.

 

Between leaving South Africa to London Heathrow Airport and switching over to fly to Baltimore/Washington, the trip all told took approximately 22 hours. The whole time, Ellen refused to leave Snake’s side, her head lying on his shoulder as they slept for the majority of the travel time under the watchful eye of the Agents Johnson. Her hand gripped his tightly, fingers clasped.

She refused to let go of Snake until they finally arrived in America, where Dr. Madnar was waiting for them alongside Lt. Col. Roy Campbell and a younger 1^st Lieutenant. Ellen practically leapt forward as she sprinted into her father’s arms, knocking the wind out of him.

They simply stood there embracing each other, the world melting away around them. After a long few minutes of silence, the 1^st Lieutenant politely informed them that he and Agent Johnson was to lead them back to base to rest and recoup, but that Snake would be traveling back with Lt. Col. Campbell and Special Agent Johnson.

The Madnars looked to each other before looking to Snake.

“I suppose this is goodbye, then?” Ellen asked.

“I guess so,” Snake replied.

Dr. Madnar took Snake’s hand in both of his and shook thoroughly, tears in his moustache. “Thank you, Snake,” he told him. “Thank you for bringing my daughter back to me. For getting us out.”

Snake patted his shoulder, and Ellen pulled Snake aside to kiss him on the cheek, tears running freely down her cheeks.

“Thank you, Snake. Please, take care of yourself. For me.”

Snake nodded, and the two groups separated. Ellen watched as Snake was led into the back of a black limousine escorted by two police cars. Her right hand curled into a fist as she silently prayed for Snake’s safety.

 

---

 

OPERATION INTRUDE N313

DAY TWENTY – 0915 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

THE RIDE BACK TO THE PENTAGON

 

Snake watched out the window as Ellen and Drago were led back into the black sedan. Once they and the airport had both disappeared over the horizon, Snake let out a long sigh and leaned back in the car seat, rubbing his neck. He looked to Lt. Col. Campbell and Special Agent Johnson, pulling out his pack of Lucky Strikes.

“Do either of you mind if I smoke?” he asked.

Campbell looked over to Johnson, who cracked open a window. “I’d say you more than earned it, Snake,” he replied.

Snake gratefully nodded and flicked open his FOXHOUND lighter, illuminating the confines of the car before sucking the nicotine and tobacco smoke into his lungs. He sighed contendedly, making sure to point his face toward the window so as not to blow smoke into his fellow passengers’ faces.

“So, where are we headed? Back to the Pentagon?”

Campbell nodded. “We’ll need to gather the heads of operation for a debriefing.”

“Who all is going to be there?”

“It’ll be me, Director Deutch, and a ranking member of FOXHOUND staff. I had a question for you about that, actually.”

Snake nodded. He knew what Campbell was about to ask. “You want to know about Big Boss.”

The Lt. Colonel nodded gravely. “Yes. We haven’t heard from him or anyone in his mission control team for two weeks. Where has he been? Do you know?”

Snake took a long drag from his cigarette, blew the smoke out the window, and leaned forward. Campbell and Johnson both leaned in close to match him. Snake’s dull eyes sharpened, and his face hardened as every muscle in his body tensed up.

“Colonel, who is the current acting commander of FOXHOUND in Big Boss’s absence?”

Campbell looked nonplussed. “The current ranking officer acting as head of FOXHOUND is Kazuhira Miller. Why do you ask?”

“Will he be at the debriefing?”

“Yes.”

Snake clenched his jaw. Outside of CQC training, Master Miller never wore any prosthetics for his limbs. If Miller turned out to be a traitor, he could be easily subdued.

“Will there be anyone else from FOXHOUND in attendance?”

LTC Campbell frowned. “What’s this about, Snake?”

“Will there be any others, Colonel?” Snake practically hissed the question through his teeth, catching Campbell and Johnson off-guard.

Campbell nodded. “He’ll be the only FOXHOUNDer there, Snake. Now, explain what this is about,” he ordered.

Snake leaned back, all the tension draining out of his body as he finally relaxed. He nodded slowly, then took another drag from his cigarette, blowing up to the ceiling before sitting back up to face the two men properly so he could break the news.

“There was a traitor in FOXHOUND. Our operation was compromised from the beginning.”

Campbell and Johnson’s eyes went wide as they took in this bombshell.

“A traitor? You’re certain?” Campbell asked.

Snake nodded. “Yes. I want to save the details for the debriefing so that I only have to explain it once, but that’s why I was asking about FOXHOUND’s presence there. So far, I’ve been able to locate and eliminate two traitors working within the Mission Control team, but I don’t know how far it goes or who else might be involved. Until we know for certain that there aren’t more bad actors, we need to limit who has the need-to-know. I don’t know if Master Miller is trustworthy, but if it’s just him there, we should be okay for now.”

“Who was the traitor?” Campbell asked.  “There’ll need to be an investigation—I’ll have to take this to the Joint Chief.”

“Both the traitors I encountered are dead,” Snake said. “I killed them myself. As for their identities, well…I want to wait until the debriefing, so I can inform everyone at once and so I can gauge Master Miller’s reaction. If he’s in on it…”

Campbell nodded. “I understand.”

“Good. How much longer until we get there? I want to get this over with as soon as possible,” Snake said.

Campbell decided to overlook Snake’s inappropriate manner of speaking to his superior officer. Just one look at the FOXHOUNDer and Campbell could tell that he’d been put through the wringer. He examined Snake’s face—he’d seen that look before on soldiers experiencing PTSD and burnout; he didn’t want to push Snake any more than he had to. It wouldn’t have been right.

“We should be there within the hour,” Campbell promised. He tentatively reached out to put a reassuring hand on Snake’s shoulder.

Snake flinched slightly, but otherwise didn’t react. Campbell recalled when he first met Snake at FOXHOUND command almost a month ago; the kid couldn’t have been much older than twenty when they’d gotten ready to send him out. Twenty-three, twenty-four, tops.

Now, seeing Snake in front of him again, Campbell noticed how much thinner and how strung out the kid looked. He looked older, somehow, like all the stress and pain of whatever he’d gone through had aged him and taken his strength from him. It was an all-too familiar sight to Campbell. Once more he’d thought of his brother when they’d last met up together after both serving in Desert Storm.

Campbell offered up a sympathetic smile. “You did a good job, Snake. Just a little more, and it’s all over. You’re almost there: mission complete.”

Snake nodded, smirking slightly as he stared at the burning ember of his cigarette.

“Mission complete…,” he muttered.

 

 

 

Notes:

This one took a little longer than I initially expected. Stuff at work, as well as the election and its aftermath all served as pretty potent distractions keeping me from getting this finished. It had been stuck at 3/4 of the way done for something like a week and a half, but I finally sat down and finished the rest of this chapter today. Not much to say about this one, really. I think the scenes between Snake and Ellen on the train are probably my favorite things I've written for this fanfic, right alongside the previous chapter. Getting to write these intimate character moments where I can explore Snake's relationship with other people as well as watching him develop methods of coping with the harsh reality of the things he's encountered has been a delight to write for this story.

So, that about puts an end to the South Africa arc of the story and to Snake's mission. Now, there's just two chapters left before the story's over: next chapter we'll cover the debriefing and Snake's time spent after the mission is over as he navigates the psychological fallout and the internal investigation of FOXHOUND. The final chapter after that will basically just be me tying up the remaining loose ends of the plot while laying the groundwork for the next story, and for all intents and purposes, that'll be the ending. There might be an epilogue afterwards, in the fashion of the classic MGS post-credit scenes, but I haven't decided yet--I'll figure that part out when I get there.

I don't know when the next update will be, but I'm hoping to have this fic finished before the end of the year, so fingers crossed I can make that finish line! Thank you to everyone who has continued to read my work up to this point. You give me the motivation to keep going forward with this project.

Chapter 24: Denouement

Summary:

His mission now complete, Snake must give his final debriefing to his superiors, while also squaring away a few details with Master Miller and revealing a painful truth to a friend.

APRIL 2, 1995

1030 HOURS, EASTERN STANDARD TIME

THE PENTAGON, ARLINGTON COUNTY, VIRGINIA – CONFERENCE ROOM

 

There wasn’t anything inherently special about it—it was just a conference room like any other, identical to every other conference room in the building. But Snake recognized it immediately when he entered, wouldn’t have been able to mistake it for anything else: it was the very same room where he was first told of his new purpose in life, four years ago.

Like before, Snake entered the room, saluting the occupants. He stared each one down individually: Director Deutch of the CIA, LTC Campbell, Master Miller, Lt. Generals Clapper and Blackwell. The only one missing was Secretary Perry. The military officers all returned Snake’s salute.

Snake side-eyed Miller, grabbed a chair from the end of the table and set it so that its back was facing the corner, facing the door of the room while the other five men seated themselves at the table, all facing Snake.

“Before we begin,” Snake started, pulling out his pack of Lucky Strikes and lighter. “Is it alright for me to smoke in here?”

LTC Campbell looked to the other men in turn, then slid an ashtray to the end of the table for Snake to catch. Snake muttered his thanks, flicked open his lighter, and took a long drag before expelling smoke into the air above him.

“Why don’t we start from the beginning?” LTC Campbell said. “We’d been keeping regular contact with the Mission Control team ever since you and Big Boss first landed in Cape Town. You went your separate ways—you headed to the Blue Star Club to meet the CIA’s contact in the Resistance—”

“Kyle,” Snake cut in. “His name is—was—Kyle.”

“…Right.” Campbell looked down briefly at the table, having the decency to look mildly guilty at the correction.

He continued, “You went to meet with Kyle while Big Boss met with Salamander to set up their safe house and establish communications with Case Officer Carlton so they could begin operations. Together, you and Kyle traveled north out of the Galzburg region to the Vis River, where you took a boat to approximately two clicks south of the area of operation. Once you entered the AO, you disembarked, then swam the rest of the way to the base, whereupon you started the operation proper.”

Snake nodded. “Correct on all counts,” he said.

Snake continued to summarize, picking up from where Campbell left off:

“While questioning Kyle Schneider on the most likely location of FOXHOUND asset Gray Fox, I performed some light reconnaissance while gathering resources. I discovered that Outer Heaven had been reverse-engineering American weapons while also performing R&D for their own original hardware. I’ll give you the full list of the equipment that I had encountered when I submit my full written After-Action Report, but it was quite extensive and formidable.

At first I thought that they were buying stolen American weaponry from smugglers on the black market, left over from our withdrawal post-Desert Storm. However, I now believe that they were directly embezzling this hardware straight from the source at the D.O.D. from Army supply depots and were instead just using the smugglers as transport to get them into the country.”

“Why do you believe they were stealing directly from the United States Army?” asked LTG Blackwell.

“I’ll get to that in a minute,” Snake replied, pointing out, “You asked me to start at the beginning.”

“Of course. Go on.”

Snake took another drag and winced as he leaned forward to knock a bit of ash into the ashtray in front of him.

“I penetrated their Supply Storage Facility, and in doing so I overheard some of the guards speculating about a possible upcoming coup attempt to take over the South African government and become the new de facto authority in the country,” Snake continued.

“Given what I now know about their capabilities at the time regarding Metal Gear, I’d say they would have had a decent chance if they had chosen to follow through. I freed some of the Resistance members they were holding hostage, both to increase the numbers of the opposition working against Outer Heaven and to obtain further information about Fox’s whereabouts. I was captured shortly after—I don’t know how long exactly I was in captivity, between the enemy’s interrogation and the lack of sunlight.”

LTC Campbell opened a folder, passing out sheets of paper to the other members in attendance. Printed on the sheets were transcripts of radio calls between the Pentagon and the Mission Control team, complete with time stamps.

“That lines up with the communications we’d been exchanging with Big Boss at that time,” Campbell said. “Mission Control reported that they had lost contact with you for approximately two and a half days. We coordinated with Director Deutch and General Clapper to pool our intelligence resources, but without a firsthand account of the goings-on at the base, it was difficult to figure out exactly what was happening.”

“The most we were able to discern through Carlton was that shortly after your capture on the morning of March the fourteenth, there was a sudden increase of Resistance activity in the area,” Deutch added.

“That was Kyle,” Snake said. “He started arranging a rescue for his men, and I guess for me as well.”

Snake stared at the ember of his cigarette as he recalled.

“What about Fox?” Deutch asked. “Were you able to make contact with him?”

Snake nodded. “Gray Fox was in the detention facility with me. After those two days of interrogation, we made our escape together, killed our jailer, and started assisting the freed rebel prisoners in capturing the Supply Storage facility and the surrounding warehouses.”

“That wasn’t your mission,” LTG Clapper admonished.

Snake shrugged, keeping silent.

“You re-established contact with Control after that,” Campbell said, bringing the focus of the meeting back on topic. “It was reported that the Resistance had dealt a decisive blow and successfully captured the facility. This was corroborated with the reports the Director had shared with me.”

Snake nodded. “I re-equipped myself and gathered intelligence on the enemy and the other VIPs from Fox, Kyle, and other Resistance contacts Kyle set me up with. Our initial intel was right about Venom’s cult of personality. The whole company was basically a warrior death cult, a religion of war and blood. I made my way east towards the R&D building while Gray Fox stayed behind to assist the rebels in establishing a base onsite. There was a skirmish—Outer Heaven had a handful of Irregulars in their employ; biologically and cybernetically enhanced super soldiers. I almost didn’t survive my first run-in with them.”

Miller’s hand curled into a fist, his jaw clenching. Campbell and Blackwell both looked similarly worried at the idea of Irregulars being among the enemy.

“What happened to the Irregulars?” Miller asked, breathing the words through his teeth.

Snake took another drag from his cigarette. “Dead,” he said lamely. “Killed one in our initial skirmish. Got rid of the rest when I got to R&D, which is where I inserted into the building using a disguise provided by one of my Resistance assets, which I used to rescue both VIPs, as well as a few more rebel POWs to assist in the extraction. We were able to escape R&D relatively unscathed to a location outside of the AO to patch ourselves up and set up safe transfer for both Madnars.”

“You said you’d found them in the Research and Development wing,” Clapper observed. “Was there anything of note about the equipment you found there?”

“Besides the Irregulars and the retrofitted weapons? They were also using Walker Gears, and an experimental tank or a hovercraft that we would end up having to fight later,” Snake explained. “The enemy also had many armored vehicles, tanks, and helicopters at their disposal, both on and off-site.”

LTG Clapper nodded, taking notes on his pad of paper. Campbell tapped on the table with his index finger.

“It’s after this where our records get fuzzy,” Campbell said. “According to our transcripts, you were instructed to change the frequency of your radio communications, at which point we don’t hear from you again for another two weeks. The last communication we had received was that the Navy had received the order for an air strike later the following night. After that, nothing.”

Campbell leaned forward. “Can you account for your activities during that lost time?”

Snake nodded. “I can. I had arranged through Kyle and Fox to have the rebels assist me in assaulting the Metal Gear hangar. I was able to get in with the help of a small infiltration team of four rebels.”

Snake lowered his head, his hair obscuring his face. His leg moved restlessly, tapping his heel as he gripped his cigarette. “…None of them made it out,” he reported, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I see…” Campbell said.

Director Deutch was much less sympathetic. “Never mind that,” he said. “Were you able to locate the High Value Targets Metal Gear and Venom?”

Snake lifted his head with a start, his eyes narrowing with barely restrained rage at Deutch’s disrespect for the fallen. He opened his mouth to say something, only to see Campbell subtly shaking his head. He gritted his teeth and took a long drag before replying.

“I did,” Snake exhaled. “But there were difficulties. Me and the rebels were led into a series of ambushes—it’s what killed the men Kyle had assigned to me. It wasn’t long before we started to figure out that it wasn’t happening at random. We were being deliberately misled by Mission Control into traps.”

The air in the room shifted. It felt like the temperature had dropped by several degrees. Blackwell, Clapper, and Deutch all looked like they were shocked speechless. Campbell didn’t look surprised, but that was to be expected. Snake focused on Master Miller’s face. Though his sunglasses hid his eyes, Snake could see Miller’s jaw clench as he swallowed, the grip of his left hand tightening on his cane. His whole body tensed.

Was he shocked at the news like the rest, or was the physical reaction due to him being outed as a potential traitor? Snake wasn’t able to tell immediately from the reaction he was getting, and that made him nervous.

“Are you saying we had a traitor within Mission Control?” asked LTG Blackwell.

Snake stared him down, his gaze turning to cold, hardened steel.

“More than one,” Snake said. “Though I wouldn’t find out about the second until much later. After we disabled Metal Gear, I chased down the pilot, assuming them to be Venom. And I was right. What I didn’t expect, however, was that Ahab was also the traitor who had been misleading me and my men.”

Snake looked to each man before letting the bomb drop: “Turns out, Ahab was Big Boss the whole time.”

Director Deutch spat out his coffee, coughing and spluttering. “Come again? I must not’ve heard you right. Did you say, ‘Big Boss?’”

“You heard me correctly and clearly,” Snake replied. “Our enemy and the leader of FOXHOUND and the head of this operation, were all one and the same. The way he had explained it to me was that he had sent me, FOXHOUND’s newest rookie, as a token effort to appease you all and to give himself plausible deniability. I was never supposed to make it out alive.” Snake punctuated the sentence with another drag, then noticed that his cigarette was beginning to get short. He drove it into the ashtray before retrieving another.

“In fact,” Snake began as he put the new cig into his mouth and started to light it, his hands shaking slightly, “after Metal Gear was disabled, he ordered the air strike from inside the base to bury its remains, all of the nuclear material, and myself, so that none of it could be traced back to him.”

“That’s why you were saying that he got the weapons directly from U.S. armories.” Blackwell’s eyes widened as the realization dawned on him. “Big Boss was diverting resources directly from the Department of Defense!”

“That is my belief, yes.”

Master Miller spoke for the first time, leaning onto his cane to look over his shades. “What happened to him?” he demanded. “What happened to Big Boss, to Ahab?”

Snake looked Miller in the eye. Miller’s eyes looked milky white. How had Snake never noticed that before? Was he blind? No, he couldn’t have been—he wouldn’t have been able to act in his capacity as an instructor at FOXHOUND otherwise. Perhaps it was left over from some kind of injury. Snake clenched his fist around his cigarette, bending it slightly.

“He’s dead. By my hand.”

“Are you sure?”

Snake nodded. “I stayed long enough to watch him bleed and lose consciousness. He became unresponsive. There was no one left to help him, and after I evacuated the AO with an enemy convoy, the air strike fell on Outer Heaven. He’s gone.”

“What about Gray Fox? Wasn’t he still on site with the Resistance?”

Snake scowled and lowered his gaze to his feet. He stumbled a little over his words as he answered, “They were. I tried to radio them to give them some warning, but I got cut off. Then the bombs dropped. I have no idea if anyone made it out. Kyle, Fox, the rest of the onsite rebels—it was just…dead air on the radio waves. I never got in contact with any of them again, so presumably they’re all MIA, potentially KIA.”

“I see.”

From there, Snake recounted how he’d gotten in touch with Salamander, used Outer Heaven for transport, and met up with Vukani.

“I met with them in a hotel,” Snake explained. “Vukani left and Salamander left the room at the same time. I would find out later that Salamander had murdered the CIA asset. I quickly discovered that Sal was in on Big Boss’s scheme, and we fought. I made it out, though not without further injury. I’d eventually get as far as Hopetown before linking up with some of the surviving rebel assets I’d encountered before. I was heavily wounded, and they transported me to safety: a safe house, the same safe house that Ellen Madnar was being sheltered at. I spent the next week recovering from my wounds before boarding a train to Pretoria and escorting Ellen to the embassy there.”

Snake motioned to Campbell with a lazy wave of the arm. “You know the rest.”

There was a moment of silence while Director Deutch and the Lieutenant Generals looked over their files, broken only by the sounds of pages turning, the scratching of note-taking pens, and the occasional cough. During this time, Snake didn’t take his eyes off Master Miller, who seemed similarly arrested by Snake’s gaze. Neither man spoke, but the look between them was heavy with unspoken meaning.

Exactly what that meaning was, Snake didn’t know, but the hunger for answers was distracting. Snake took a drag and blew a cloud in Miller’s direction. Master Miller remained stone-faced.

“I want to circle back around for a moment to the Resistance members you’d encountered,” Deutch said. “You said that these were POWs you’d freed from containment?”

“The majority of them were, yes,” Snake replied. “Some were brought in from off-site by Kyle when he’d raided the compound. A couple of others were introduced to me through Kyle himself; a small network of Resistance spies that were already onsite in the AO before I’d arrived.”

“Who were these Resistance spies?”

“A medic and a scout masquerading as an Outer Heaven officer. There were also a few spies who had been captured as POWs that I helped release, one of which was the medic’s brother; these people helped me rescue and exfiltrate Dr. Madnar and his daughter. And one other person who was feeding me intel from outside the AO. I don’t know if she was a Resistance member herself or just an associate, but she was the one who sheltered Ellen Madnar while I continued my mission.”

“And these are the Resistance members in the mission that survived?” Deutch asked.

“All the ones that I know about, yeah. All except for the disguised scout. He…he didn’t make it.”

Snake stared at the smoke trail rising from his cigarette.

“What are their names?”

Snake cocked his head. What for, he wondered? With Outer Heaven gone, the destabilizing threat in South Africa is over. What’s the point?

“Why do you ask?” Snake asked. “Their war with Outer Heaven’s over. What’s the advantage to having more Resistance contacts?”

“Information is our business, Mr. Snake,” Deutch replied. “With the government searching for Resistance forces and with the rebels still refusing to lay down arms, the region’s still destabilized. It’s within our interests to continue monitoring the situation as it unfolds. Besides, with Kyle Schneider either dead or in the wind and with Vukani killed, our network in the region has grown significantly smaller, and so has our leverage within the South African government, thanks to the little civil war you helped start. We have to regroup.”

Leverage over the government…they’re not just looking for insider sources, they want bargaining chips, Snake realized. He thought back to his early conversations with Kyle when they first made their way out of Galzburg to the Outer Heaven compound:

Americans have a habit of making promises they have no intention of keeping. Two-faced meddlers who leave messes that take generations to fix while proclaiming themselves the heroes.

If Snake gave up the Nkosis and Diane, would Deutch just use them as sources of information, or would they trade them to Mandela in return for favors sending his friends to prison for their trouble?

Snake shook his head. Over his dead body.

“I’m sorry, Director,” Snake said coolly. “I’m afraid I don’t recall.”

The air in the room got colder. Deutch smoothed out his tie, leaning back into his chair. “I’m sure you can understand why I might have some trouble believing that, Snake.”

“You can believe whatever you want,” Snake replied bluntly. “I don’t have anything for you on that front.”

“What about the medic and her brother? You mentioned they were going to some major Resistance meeting in Galzburg to discuss strategy. Did they tell you where exactly they were going, who was going to be there?”

Why, so you can sell them all out to Mandela?

But instead of asking the question, Snake gave a simple, “No, sir. I do not know.”

Deutch leaned forward, elbows on the table and folding his fingers together. He peered over his hands at Snake, a dangerous edge creeping into his voice. “You know that if you’re caught lying in your testimony, you could be demoted, even dishonorably discharged.”

“Demoted? Demoted to what? Discharged from what?” Snake asked. “I don’t exist, remember? Do I even still hold a rank in the Army for you to take away?”

“You’ve stated in your description that over the course of your mission that you’ve performed acts of torture to gather information and threatened at least one civilian, not to mention violating the Geneva Convention through your use of disguises and visiting a number of cruel and unusual deaths on enemy contacts,” Deutsch pointed out.

“I could have you brought up on charges with the UCMJ and have you sent to Leavenworth. Or perhaps you’d rather be bagged and taken to a black site, seeing that, as you’ve put it so succinctly, you ‘don’t exist?’ We’ve got a nice cushy room for you down in Cuba where I could introduce you to some friends of mine to get the intel I’m looking for.”

Snake bristled. “I eliminate the threat of Outer Heaven and Metal Gear and hand you Big Boss’s head on a plate, and this is how you thank me?” he asked.

“Snake’s right.”

Deutch and Snake look over to LTC Campbell, who’d interrupted them. He had a stern glare in his eyes. Generals Blackwell and Clapper looked similarly displeased and unimpressed by Deutch’s threats.

“Regardless of the secret nature of FOXHOUND,” Campbell said, “it’s still within U.S. Army jurisdiction. The CIA gets no say here. If Snake says he doesn’t know the names of those Resistance members, I believe him. I’ll not sit here and listen to you threaten him after what he’s done for us.”

“You’re out of line, John,” LTG Blackwell agreed.

Deutch tsked, making another note in his notebook. “Of course, you all stick together. Fine. If Snake won’t tell me what I want to know, then I know someone who will. The Madnars are both in our custody.”

That got Snake’s attention. “What do you mean?”

Deutch smirked, looking pleased with himself. “You told us yourself, a few of the people you mentioned sheltered Ellen Madnar. If you don’t remember their names, then perhaps, she’ll be happy to tell us.”

Snake bit down on his cigarette, grinding his teeth as he scowled. “You’re going to harass the girl and her father, after everything they’ve been through?”

“You’re not really giving us much of a choice,” Deutch remarked.

Snake growled as he considered. “…And say she gives you those names. What do you intend to do with them?”

“That’s our business,” Deutch said.

Snake barked a short, cynical laugh. “So, what? You’ll just lean on them, then sell them up the river once they’re no longer useful, like you planned to do with Kyle? You know, Kyle told me how two-faced Americans and the CIA especially are. After everything I’ve seen and heard, I’m beginning to believe him.”

“Watch your mouth, Snake. Unless you want to be six feet under,” Deutch reprimanded, launching himself to his feet and pointing an accusatory finger at Snake. “You’re on thin ice as it is.”

“Enough! Director, take a seat,” LTG Clapper said. There was an imperious note to his voice that forced Deutch to quiet himself.

Deutch, having gone red in the face, gathered up his notebook, files, and suitcase and started walking to the conference room door. After opening it, he stuck his finger in Snake’s face again.

“This isn’t over.”

With that, he slammed the door behind them, leaving them in the quiet once more. Snake looked over to Master Miller, who up to now still hadn’t said more than a few words.

“Master Miller,” Snake said. “You’ve been awful quiet. Do you have anything to add, sir?”

“No, Snake,” Miller replied. “If anything, I’d say that I’ve learned all I needed to know.”

“Really? I just accused Big Boss and Salamander of treason, embezzlement, dereliction of duty, and terrorism, declared them as enemies of the United States right in front of you. You don’t have any thoughts on that?”

“If there’s something you’re trying to say, Snake, then say it.”

“Fine,” Snake said, leaning forward to drive his second cigarette stub into the ash tray. “I’ll just say it flat out. The head of FOXHOUND has betrayed us, tried to have me killed. Same with Salamander, who’s been with me since my first day of training. Right now, I have no idea who, if anyone, I can trust. If it wasn’t for your injuries, Master, I would’ve insisted that you and every other FOXHOUNDer would be absent from this meeting for reasons of my personal safety.”

Snake pointed to Miller, who tightened his grip on his cane.

“You’re the one who recommended me for this operation to Big Boss, Master. Are you going to tell me that you weren’t involved? When I talked about Big Boss’s treachery, you were the only one who didn’t look surprised.”

Master Miller sighed. His features softened as he sadly shook his head. “I understand why you suspect me, Snake,” he said. “And I know that because of what you went through, there’s nothing I can say right now that can convince you of my innocence. I know this, because I’ve been in your position before.”

Miller gestured to his empty jacket sleeve pinned to his side. Snake understood the meaning immediately—Miller knew the costs of betrayal all too well.

Miller continued, “All I can say for myself is that when I recommended you for this operation, it was because I genuinely believed you were up to the task. No more, no less. If that means I must resign from my post and submit to a UCMJ inquiry to clear my name, then I will gladly do so.”

“There’ll need to be a full investigation,” LTG Blackwell said. “This accusation falls on more than just you, Master Miller. If Big Boss is the root of the corruption, then there are probably more FOXHOUND agents compromised than just Salamander. This could even mean a full restructuring of the organization, if not outright disbandment.”

Master Miller nodded in acquiescence. “Rest assured, General, that you will have my and FOXHOUND’s full cooperation.”

“Then I think that just about settles the matter,” Blackwell replied. “Do you have any further questions, comments?”

The other men at the table shook their heads. Blackwell turned to Snake. “What about you, Snake?”

Snake stared at the door where Deutch had left. He should’ve done more to ensure that the CIA would’ve kept away from Ellen—she didn’t need more craziness in her life. Plus, she would definitely talk—probably wouldn’t even require much in the way of prodding. Snake’s stonewalling to protect the Nkosis and Diane and the rest probably wouldn’t even matter or lead to anything anyway.

All this paranoia and betrayal. Snake thought of Big Boss, of the America that he’d sworn to protect and defend.

Is this who we are, at the end of the day? Is this all we are?

Snake looked to Blackwell, Clapper, and Campbell. Men in uniform, men of duty. Not like the CIA, not like FOXHOUND. And yet they were all just tools just like he was—they all served the same government he did, the one that had no problem treating people as disposable.

“Snake?” Blackwell asked again.

Snake shook his head.

“Then I declare this meeting adjourned.”

The men all got up to leave. Only LTC Campbell and Snake were left behind. Campbell approached Snake with a warm, sad smile as he put a hand on his shoulder.

“Good work, Snake. Mission complete. Time to go home.”

“Mission complete…,” Snake muttered.

 

---

 

APRIL 10, 1995

FOXHOUND COVERT TRAINING FACILITY AND HEADQUARTERS

MEDICAL WING – 1300 HOURS

 

Sniper Rat hummed in frustration as he marched through the sterile hallways of FOXHOUND’s medical wing. Every time he came to visit, there was always something to come up. Either he’d be informed of Snake undergoing a psych eval with a FOXHOUND-appointed counselor, or he’d be in the middle of a regular exam. And if Rat did see his friend, Snake was either surrounded by people, or politely excusing himself to be at some other prior engagement, never quite looking him in the eye.

Snake was avoiding him; Rat was sure of it. What he wasn’t sure of was why.

He’d first noticed it when he heard of Snake’s return from his mission. There was a strange air over the base that whole day. Members of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) had shown up at around the same time, randomly pulling people out of barracks and training exercises for interviews. Big Boss, Salamander, and Gray Fox were nowhere to be found, and rumors abounded about the cause. Over the next week, people started disappearing out of nowhere, and Master Miller and the rest of the upper level staff had remained tight-lipped about the whole thing.

Snake mostly kept to himself, and when Rat had first gotten a good look at him, he could see it—his thin, emaciated form, the bandages from the neck down, the slight limp, the dark circles under his eyes and the wild, paranoid stare. Whatever had happened to Snake had taken a heavy toll on him, and it was related to Big Boss’s absence and to the CID’s investigation somehow.

But that didn’t explain why Snake was so skittish with Rat of all people. Other FOXHOUNDers had visited Snake to either congratulate him on returning from his mission or to offer their sympathies for his injuries, and he’d had seemingly no problem with his other guests. But whenever Rat came around, Snake would take one look at his face and go white as a sheet, almost like he was going to be sick and would quickly take his leave.

Rat was worried about his friend, and he was especially worried that there was some reason why Snake couldn’t come to him for help. So, he tracked down the room that Snake was staying in at the medical wing and after confirming with the staff that Snake had no appointments and wasn’t expecting any visitors today, he found himself marching down to the door.

Whatever it took, Rat was going to get some answers.

He opened the door with no fanfare or warning, seeing Snake seated at a small table next to the window, nursing a mug of warm coffee as he lounged, one arm curled around a leg pulled up to him. He started at the sudden sound and movement of the door, and when he saw Rat in the doorway, his face went slightly paler, and he immediately averted his eyes from Rat’s face.

“Rat,” Snake said in stilted acknowledgment. “How have you been keeping?”

“Don’t give me that, Schlange,” Rat replied. “You’ve been avoiding me ever since you came back home. Warum?”

“…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Snake said lamely, keeping his gaze focused on the cup of coffee in his hands.

Rat closed the door behind him, turning to focus on Snake and leaned back against the door. There was a tense moment of silence before Snake spoke up.

“Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”

Rat shook his head. “Nein, danke. Ich bin gut.”

“Then, maybe you’d like to take a seat?”

Rat scoffed, not willing to move from his position. “If I do, will you promise not to immediately bolt for the door?”

Snake flinched slightly; his brow furled in annoyance. He said nothing in response, opting instead to just shrug. Rat was irritated—Snake was acting like a moody teenager. He had to remind himself that Snake was barely into his twenties. He sighed and walked over to the table where Snake sat and placed himself in the armchair opposite to his friend, who even now still refused to look at him.

“Schlange,” Rat said, concern lining his face. “What’s wrong? Why won’t you look at me? Does it have something to do with the mission you went on?”

“…Something like that,” Snake said.

“What happened?”

“It’s classified on a need-to-know basis, Rat. You know that.”

Snake turned his head to adjust the direction of his gaze back out the window. In the distance, he could see FOXHOUND’s newest recruits running PT drills in the track and field pitch, led by their squad leaders. His grip on his mug tightened slightly as he sighed through his teeth.

“Look at them, down there,” Snake muttered.

Rat followed Snake’s direction, watching the recruit squads go through their exercises.

“They have no idea what they’re being trained for. What kind of people are leading them,” Snake said. “They just push forward and follow orders without a second thought, all for the sake of a noble death on behalf of people who will never care or even notice.”

“That’s the job,” Rat replied.

Snake sighed. “Yeah, I guess it is. We trust in the mission, and the people who lead us, and the people fighting next to us. We believe, until the very end, that no matter what happens, our comrades and superiors are fighting with us and that alone makes it all worth it.”

“Are you talking about Gray Fox and Big Boss?” Rat asked.

It wasn’t exactly a huge secret that Gray Fox and Big Boss were involved or related in some way to the same mission that Snake was sent on. Snake didn’t answer immediately, taking a long sip from his coffee. When he did speak again, Rat could see Snake’s hands shaking slightly as he put the mug down on the table.

Snake closed his eyes with a sigh, and asked, “Rat…outside of FOXHOUND, do you have any family?”

Rat was caught off-guard, but he nodded. “Ja, mein Vater und Mutter, und mein Zwillingsbruder.”

“Twin brother?” Snake whispered, his voice sounding haunted.

Rat looked at him sideways, not knowing where Snake was going with this, but feeling unsettled by his voice and expression. “Ja…why do you ask?”

Snake looked out the window again. “And this brother of yours…did he serve in the GSG9 like you did?”

“Yes…how do you know that?”

Snake looked Rat in the eyes for the first time, and all Rat could see was pain, fear, and a third emotion he couldn’t quite pinpoint.

Snake took a shaky breath, and said, “What I’m about to tell you, Rat, is something that could land me in prison if anyone found out that I shared it with you. But I’m going to tell you, because not only do you deserve to know, but you deserve to hear it from me, instead of whenever FOXHOUND command gets around to telling you, if they ever do.”

“Schlange…” Rat didn’t like the ominous tone in Snake’s voice, but he was willing to sit and listen to what his friend had to say, as he could tell that Snake was carrying some kind of terrible burden.

“The mission I was sent on…the opposition force was a private mercenary company. I was sent in to free some POWs they were holding, among other things I’m not at liberty to share. During this mission, I came face-to-face with a merc who favored a flamethrower. The patch on his right shoulder identified him as a former member of the GSG9. We fought, his tank exploded, and the last I saw of him before he died was his face as he burned.”

Snake’s hand curled into a fist, his nails digging into his palm so hard that they drew blood. Rat was finally able to figure out the third emotion lingering in Snake’s expression.

Guilt.

“That man…” Rat started.

“Was the spitting image of you,” Snake confirmed. “And the man who sent him to die at our hands, who led this mercenary company, was none other than Big Boss himself, betraying us. Betraying FOXHOUND.”

Another long, uncomfortable moment of silence followed. Snake tore his gaze away from Rat’s face. Rat felt all the pieces falling into place—his brother was dead, and Snake was the one to blame. The CID were snooping around FOXHOUND command because Big Boss was a traitor, and if Snake was the sole survivor, then it was either because he killed Big Boss himself or sent the man into hiding.

Rat took a breath, surprised at how difficult he found such a simple thing to do. When he spoke, his voice felt muddled and far away, like he was hearing it through water.

“So,” he said. “That’s why you’ve been avoiding me.”

Snake nodded. “Whenever I look at you, I see his face, back in that burning basement.”

“If I hadn’t cornered you here today, would you still have told me?”

Snake looked completely and utterly defeated. “I…I’d like to say that I would. But the truth is, I don’t know. I know…I know that I’ve been behaving like a coward. I’m sorry.”

Rat wordlessly stood up from his chair and started walking back towards the door. He put his hand on the doorknob before stopping to turn his head back toward his friend.

“Snake,” he called out.

Snake flinched slightly.

Snake. He’d spoken the name in English. Not Schlange.

He turned to look at his friend(?) properly. Rat’s face was an impenetrable mask.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Mein Bruder…how did he die? Did he die well?”

Snake closed his eyes, nodding. “Your brother was a warrior, Rat. Till the very end. He died fighting, with dignity.”

Rat nodded, turning to face away from Snake. He opened the door.

“Thank you,” he said, before he made his exit.

Snake hunched over the table, putting his head in his hands.

 

---

 

APRIL 11, 1995

FOXHOUND COVERT TRAINING FACILITY AND HEADQUARTERS

MASTER MILLER’S OFFICE – 0945 HOURS

 

A knock at the door.

“Enter,” Master Miller commanded. “Close the door behind you.”

Solid Snake politely stepped into the room, looking around. It was a simple enough space, if somewhat barren. There was an L-shaped dark polished rosewood desk at which Miller sat, with a desktop PC and a large monitor at one corner adjacent to the wall. On the desktop itself lay a series of documents and a notepad where Miller was scratching notes on.

Behind him was a small bookshelf with various non-fiction titles in both English and Japanese, neatly arranged. Miller’s beret laid next to the mouse and keyboard, and a large analog clock hung on the wall to Snake’s right, quietly ticking away. There was a large window behind Miller, though the blinds were closed.

Snake waited at attention in front of the desk. Miller motioned toward the chair opposite him, indicating for the younger man to sit. Snake did as instructed.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Snake asked.

“I did,” Miller responded, putting his pen down and resting his arm down on the desk. “How have you been keeping with the psych evals?”

“It’s…fine,” Snake replied. “I’m going a bit stir crazy staying in the medical wing to be honest…though I don’t really know what I’d do with myself if I was free to move around again, either…and I’m required to continue attending sessions at least until the end of the month.”

Miller nodded. “And have they been helping?”

“I guess,” Snake said noncommittally. “They keep telling me it’s to help me process what happened, find closure. Honestly though, there’s not much to process. Only reason I’m staying in the medical wing is because it’s constantly supervised and not all the doctors are FOXHOUND.”

“Still looking over your shoulder?”

Snake scoffed. “I was betrayed by FOXHOUND’s commanding officer and most senior agent, with connections in every American intelligence agency and the highest echelons of the Army. I’ll probably be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”

Miller nodded. “I see.”

There was an uncomfortable silence while Snake simply stared down his survival instructor. Snake’s voice was tense as he broke it.

“How’s the CID investigation coming along?”

“They’re still conducting interviews,” Miller said. “They’ve already removed about a quarter of the staff from duty while trying to figure out who’s clean and who’s not. They should be wrapping up pretty soon. After that, the real fun begins.”

“The real fun?”

Miller lifted up a document for emphasis. “New orders,” he said. “FOXHOUND is going to be restructured. The unit will be downsized from a battalion to a platoon, staff of no more than 300. The unit will also be repurposed slightly for more specialized roles. They’re also looking for a new Colonel to take over command. The whole process will probably take a few months.”

“Who will be in command in the meantime?” Snake asked.

“In the interim, I’ll be acting commander to replace Big Boss while they look for a suitable replacement,” Miller stated.

And there it was. Snake scoffed again, humorlessly chuckling to himself. He couldn’t believe it.

“You have something to say, Snake?” Miller asked.

Snake glared up at Miller.

Fuck it, he thought. What else did he have to lose at this point?

“I take it the CID agents already interviewed you, then? Vetted you?”

“They did,” Miller said bluntly. “What exactly is it that you’re trying to imply?”

Snake’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “You were second-in-command to Big Boss. You were the one who recommended me to him for the mission. You’re going to tell me you didn’t know what he was up to? What his plans were?”

Miller sighed heavily, grabbing his sunglasses off his face and placing them onto the desk, his milky silver-white eyes looking into Snake’s own. Miller’s face looked tired, full of exhaustion and pity. He resembled a ghost—to the point that Snake found it almost unsettling.

“You pointed out during the debrief that I was the only one there who didn’t seem surprised, who didn’t say anything.”

Snake nodded, more to himself than to Miller.

Miller went on, “That’s because this turn of events doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

Snake glared. “So, you did know?”

“Did I know what Big Boss’s plans for you were, you mean? That he was planning to betray you, have you killed? Did I know about his plans for a coup in South Africa?” Miller shook his head. “No, not exactly. But am I surprised that he’d be capable of something like this? No, no, I’m not.”

Snake didn’t really know how to take this information. He confessed, “I’m confused.”

“I know. Big Boss is…well, you’ve probably noticed yourself just how popular he is. The blind loyalty he’d inspire. Not just here, but in the U.S. government, and in Outer Heaven, too. But there aren’t many men alive who can claim to know the man as well as I do or for as long as I have, so I’m guessing there aren’t many people you know who would have had a negative thing to say about him.”

“But you do?” Snake asked.

“You know how a lot of FOXHOUND members are either recruited from overseas militaries or from mercenary backgrounds?”

“Yeah.”

“I was one of the latter. It was how I met Big Boss, long before I joined FOXHOUND. Back then, I was just as starry-eyed as any one of his other followers. At first, I was just using him for my own advantage, but over time, I came to trust and respect the man. We were as close as any two soldiers could be, and we were destined to build something great, working together as we were. Or at least…that’s what I thought back then.”

Miller clenched his fist tightly, unconsciously snapping in half the pencil he held. He sighed, pulling a wastebin from under his desk and resting it on his knee so he could sweep the debris into the trash.

“What happened?” Snake asked as Miller put the trash can back into place.

“I was betrayed. Not quite in the same manner as you, but it was a betrayal all the same. I took on a job on the Boss’s behalf, thinking I was helping him. That job cost me my arm and my foot. As for the Boss? He left me to work with his men, and then abandoned me to my fate. I didn’t see him again for another seven years, when he came to recruit me for FOXHOUND; when he thought I might be able to make myself useful one last time.”

Snake leaned back, seeing the pain and rage in Miller’s expression. He could tell that Miller was telling the truth—maybe not the whole truth, but enough to know that Miller wasn’t a traitor. But there was still one thing Snake didn’t understand.

“So, why did you take him up on it, then? Why join FOXHOUND?” Snake asked curiously.

“Because as much as I hate the man, part of me still respected him. And because it was a chance to get close to him again. I thought maybe it would be my best chance to undermine him, tear him down from within. It was political maneuvering on my part—a power play, not so much for the position or personal glory, but so I could get my revenge by taking his precious FOXHOUND away from him. I’d been biding my time for years for the chance…but I didn’t expect him to throw away FOXHOUND all on his own.”

Miller glanced down at his arm, and at the crutch that leaned against the desk at his right.

“That’s also why I don’t wear the mechanical prosthetics outside of training lessons—I needed the reminder, every time I wake up in the morning, every time I saw myself in the mirror. This world we fight in, it marks you. And until my revenge was achieved, I wanted to keep that mark in view, always.”

Snake investigated Miller’s face, and found that his rage had subsided, replaced only with a mixture of bitterness and pity.

“So, that’s why you recommended me for the mission, then?” Snake asked. “Send in the rookie to get killed and showcase Big Boss’s ineptitude, get him fired from his position?”

“No,” Miller said. “Not exactly. I had something else in mind. The idea was to use the mission as a test of your abilities. I was actually hoping you would be successful and come back alive. If you succeeded where Gray Fox failed and proved yourself to be the superior soldier, then I would’ve tried to enlist your help in taking him down.”

“Why me?” Snake asked.

“I saw potential in you. Big Boss probably did too, given the way he talked about you. But where he apparently saw a sacrificial lamb, I saw an angle of attack he’d never be able to see coming.”

“So, at the end of the day, no matter where I would’ve gone, I still just would’ve been a tool to be used,” Snake said bitterly.

“Big Boss was a manipulative monster using other people for his own ends,” Miller asserted. "He deserved to get what was coming to him."

“Are you any different?” Snake asked.

“No. Yes. It’s complicated. We have a few similarities. I wouldn’t have been recruited to FOXHOUND otherwise,” Miller admitted. “But Big Boss is much, much worse, in ways you can scarcely begin to imagine unless you’ve known him like I have. I may be a bastard, but I assure you, my evils would have been the lesser.”

“That’s a cold comfort,” Snake muttered.

“Yeah, I know. It took seeing you back from Outer Heaven for me to see just how far I’d fallen. I wanted to try and put at least some things right. And to do that, I want to offer you the one thing I never was able to get for myself.”

Snake folded his arms, leaning back in his chair as he regarded Miller with a cool expression.

“And what’s that?” Snake asked.

Suddenly, Miller pulled out a sheet of paper from the top drawer, holding it out for Snake to take.

“A choice.”

Snake took the offered form, his eyes scanning it line by line. It was a blank DD-214; the form which governs honorable discharge from the military. Snake looked up to Miller.

“You’re kicking me out?”

Master Miller grabbed another small object from the drawer in the desk which Snake didn’t see, then grabbed his crutch to stand. Snake took to his feet himself to continue looking Miller in the eye.

“After your psych evals are finished, I’m putting you on leave for mandatory R&R—give you a chance to think things through. After that, you come back and tell me what you want to do. If you want to leave the Army, I can arrange for your honorable discharge; I’ll file the papers myself, no questions asked. Alternatively, if you'd rather transfer somewhere else and continue serving in the Army outside of FOXHOUND, I can arrange that as well.”

Miller leaned slightly against his desk and held out his fist to drop the contents into Snake’s hand. Snake looked down; it was his old dog tags from before he’d arrived at FOXHOUND. The name engraved in all capital letters, along with his social security and blood type:

 

WILLIAMS

DAVID R.

XXX-XX-XXXX

O NEG

 

The name felt strange when applied to him, almost alien. An old name from a lifetime ago, describing a dead man. Snake felt cold reading it.

“Otherwise,” Miller continued, “if you come back from R&R and decide you still want to serve with FOXHOUND, there’ll still be a place waiting for you here.”

Snake looked up at Miller. He didn’t really know how to process the gravity of what was being presented to him.

“Why are you doing this?”

Miller shrugged slightly. “Call it sentimentality, call it a misplaced sense of honor, or the unjust man just trying to selfishly soothe his own guilty conscience, call it whatever you want. I suppose I just wanted the chance to prove that I’m not like Big Boss. I know how it feels to be used for someone else’s own selfish purposes. If I can give you a reprieve from that, a chance to live your own life on your own terms, then I will. I’d say you’ve more than earned it.”

“I…I don’t—”

Miller held up his hand. “Don’t make your decision now. Take your time, go on leave, give yourself a chance to get your mind right. You can tell me your decision when you get back.”

Snake folded up the DD-214 under his arm and shoved his dog tags into his pocket. He straightened up at attention, once more looking into Miller’s eyes, having gained a newfound respect for the man.

“Thank you, sir.”

Miller reached out his hand. Snake shook it.

After Snake left, Master Miller stared at the closed door of his office for a few minutes before sighing and lowering himself back into his seat. He reached into his desk cabinet and pulled out a small bottle of whiskey and a shot glass, pouring some for himself.

He reached into his coat and pulled a small photograph, faded with age and covered in lines from when it had been folded up many times: a group of young African boys were smiling up at the camera, with a bearded horned man talking to a grumpy-looking Miller in the background.

Miller laid the photograph on the desk and lifted the shot in a toast.

“Here’s to you, boys,” Miller muttered. He downed the warm whiskey then poured himself another glass.

Another three or four glasses in and there were tears in his eyes as he mumbled, “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you kids. You deserved better…”

Holding the photo in his teeth, he pulled out a lighter and lit the corner furthest from his mouth. He grabbed the photo out of his mouth and silently watched it burn before tossing it into the wastebasket.

“God damn you, Boss,” Miller said, putting as much venom into his words as he could. “You never deserved those men. Venom, his men, those kids…they all deserved better than you.”

He was happy there was no one to see the tears falling freely from his face.

“God damn you,” he whispered.

Notes:

This chapter took me longer than it probably needed to. I wanted to give the full debrief scene, but I was getting worried that too much of it would just be summarizing the plot that readers had already just read. I mostly just wanted to gloss over the major details of Snake's report while focusing more on the motivations of the various actors behind the scenes in charge of Snake and FOXHOUND as a whole. I'm pretty happy with the result, although honestly, even this level of granular detail might've been a little too much.

Now there's only one chapter left that needs to be written to close out this story and set up the next one. I was thinking about doing one chapter and one epilogue, but after looking over my outline, I don't really think there's enough there to justify two whole chapter entries, so I'm going to call it now and say that Chapter 25 will the final chapter of the fic as a whole as I attempt to bring it home.

Thank you very much to everyone who has continued reading this far, and I hope to continue entertaining you as I continue to write!

Chapter 25: Loose Ends

Summary:

"I'm no hero. All the heroes I knew are either dead or in prison...the only winners in war are the people."

--Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid (1998)

MAY 1, 1995

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA – 1522 HOURS

 

The whole thing was a disgrace—an insult, even.

It didn’t take long for it to come out that Big Boss was dead, and that Gray Fox was also MIA, assumed KIA. Unfortunately, Big Boss’s influence in the DIA, CIA, and in the Army was strong enough that the scandal that would’ve arisen from his treachery becoming known among FOXHOUNDers was deemed too troublesome for the higher-ups to deal with.

So, when a government building was destroyed in Oklahoma City in a terrorist incident, resulting in 168 dead and 500 more injured, necessitating that the CID wrap up their investigation quickly and shift gears to assisting the FBI’s OKBOMB task force, a compromise was reached.

To allow the FOXHOUNDers a chance to grieve and for the Army to keep Big Boss’s crimes secret, allowing them to save face and spare themselves further embarrassment, arrangements were made for a token funeral, and a plot of land.

The grave itself was purely symbolic, of course: with the sheer thoroughness of Outer Heaven’s destruction, not to mention South Africa’s travel restrictions, there was no way of recovering the corpse or even to determine one way or the other whether there would even be anything left to bury to begin with.

Snake looked on in disgust. So many good men and women had lost their lives for this traitor. Even more wound up in prison: he bitterly remembered how he’d heard on the news that South Africa had raided a number of SAPR cells. He checked with Lt. Colonel Campbell and found that while the Nkosi siblings were among the ones who had survived, they were unfortunately also among those who had been rounded up and imprisoned, charged with the crime of insurrection against the state.

Was it the CIA’s influence? Did they get Ellen to talk? Was it against her will, or was she tricked, or did she speak willingly? Or maybe it wasn’t even the CIA, and instead SANDF had managed to track down the SAPR cell on their own? There were too many maybes, and with Snake not being on speaking terms with the CIA, there was no way to know for sure one way or the other.

He had silently hoped to himself that he wouldn’t hear Diane's and Steve's names on the news next, given Diane’s relative notoriety as a celebrity. He was thankful that they were never technically Resistance members, and he tried to remind himself that no news was good news.

Which of course brought his attention back to the focus of his disgust and anger. To anyone else it may have been no different to any of the other polished white headstones that dotted the area, aside from the fact that it was anonymous. But to Snake it was a viscerally ugly thing, nothing short of a monument to a traitor’s sins. The final insult was the inscription.

Of course, they couldn’t use Big Boss’s real name—as the Boss himself had said, there were few people in the world who knew his real identity, if they were even still alive. They couldn’t refer to Big Boss himself by his code name, either. So instead, they went with a single message:

“A hero forever loyal to the flames of war rests in Outer Heaven.

193X – 1995.”

Snake couldn’t fathom why this was chosen as the final message to describe the traitor. It’s almost like it intentionally was meant to personally mock every man and woman who died under FOXHOUND’s command and those who fought and died for the Resistance to liberate South Africa from Outer Heaven’s control. Snake fervently wished he could find and strangle the person who came up with it and thought it was a good idea.

Why?

That was the one thing Snake couldn’t figure out. Why had Big Boss turned against the U.S.? Was it a simple lust for power? It didn’t seem to fit with what Snake knew of the man—the way he talked, the way he carried himself.

The way he inspired others.

Big Boss already had all the power he could ever want, right at his fingertips. Hell, he was practically treated as an icon of worship, a living god among men. What more could he possibly want? What was there to gain from throwing it all away to burn in the perpetual flames of warfare?

He thought back to what the Boss had told him the night he died.

‘And so, you see, you are no different from me—we're both pawns who stained themselves with blood to reach the other side of the board and in so doing, we got elevated to royalty to lead other pieces into battle. The only difference between you and I is that I have seen the hands of the players who direct us. I tried to rebel, to take control of the game and seize something for myself and my army, but, well…’

Snake looked down at his feet. Big Boss had said that at the end of the game, they were both still just pawns. What could he have meant? Pawns for what? For whom? For what purpose were they being directed? Big Boss had claimed that his inspiration of his men was for the sake of rebellion—were they rebelling against the United States? Against someone else? What was the point of it all?

Snake sighed angrily. He remembered his last talk with Master Miller. Miller had said that there were few if any people who knew the Boss like he did, and that he knew him as a master manipulator.

All this time, Snake had thought of Big Boss as some kind of master soldier, a mentor, and a hero. Now, all he can see is a traitor and a monster. But even at the end of everything, the only thing he knew for sure was that he never really knew or understood the man.

And now, he supposed, he would never know.

After that debriefing when he saw how the CIA Director acted and after hearing Miller’s motivations from his own mouth, Snake realized that the people in charge weren’t that much different from Big Boss either, not really. All of them thrived on conflict and sought to use others as tools for their own ends.

Though perhaps Snake shouldn’t have been too surprised—after all, isn’t that what he signed up for, the moment he first stepped into an Army recruitment office all those years ago? So, why did it bother him so much? Why now, after all that’s happened?

Snake looked down at his hands.

He heard approaching footsteps walking off the paved path and into the well-trimmed grass behind him, walking between the graves until they came to a stop directly next to and slightly behind him, maintaining a respectful distance.

Snake gave the visitor a chance to speak, but there was no response forthcoming.

Snake sighed. “How did you know I would be here?”

“Lucky guess.”

Snake turned to regard Rat, raising his eyebrow. “Really.”

Rat chuckled softly. “I just had a feeling that you might come to see it for yourself. I gave it fifty-fifty odds when I came here. And yet, I somehow manage to still find myself surprised to actually find you here.”

Snake clenched his fists. “Like you said,” he muttered, “I had to see it for myself.”

“So, Big Boss a traitor…what a world. And he sent my brother to die on the battlefield against you.”

“He sent us both to die,” Snake clarified.

“But you were the one who made it out,” Rat said, deadpan.

Snake sighed with a nod. “I guess so.”

Rat turned his face up to the sky, taking in the warm afternoon air of early summer. Inexplicably, this one row of graves was the one place in the whole cemetery where wildflowers were allowed to bloom freely rather than having them cut down with the rest of the grass. Surrounding this section of the graveyard, Stars of Bethlehem were in full bloom to bid farewell to the springtime. As to why this section of the cemetery, and only this section, were permitted these white flowers, neither man had any idea.

Another mystery to add to the list, Snake thought ruefully as he listened to the gentle wind carried through the grass around him.

It was Rat who ended the silence first. “Snake…,” he said softly. “I heard you might be leaving us.”

Snake nodded. “Yeah. I haven’t made my decision yet. I go out on leave today. I’m supposed to have an answer ready by the time I get back.”

“Hm,” Rat hummed. “I see.”

The two men turned toward each other, looking each other in the eyes for the first time since Rat had arrived.

“Snake, I tell you this because you are mein Freund,” Rat said.

“What is it?” Snake asked.

“You are a fine warrior, and an even better friend. Training together with you and serving in the same unit as you have been a great honor for me, and it is a memory that I will cherish till my dying day.”

“But?”

Rat shook his head. “But none of that cancels out the fact that my brother is dead. You took my family from me, Snake. I cannot let that go. If you choose to leave…”

Snake nodded. “I understand,” he replied somberly.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I knew that by telling you, there was a possibility you’d need to do something about it. I get it.”

Snake turned and started to walk away, stopping after a few paces to turn back in Rat’s general direction.

“Whenever you feel ready to settle the score,” Snake spoke softly, “I’ll be waiting.”

Snake left Rat there, and the German FOXHOUNDer turned to regard Big Boss’s empty grave in Snake’s wake.

 

---

 

Approximately twenty thousand kilometers above the surface of the Earth from where Snake and Rat had their conversation, an artificial celestial being of steel and titanium watched intently from its semi-synchronous orbit as it moved gracefully across the starry expanse just outside of Earth’s atmosphere. Its semiconductor wings of silica turn slightly to face toward the distant sun and absorbs its rays so that their circuitry can feed the artificial thinking beast within its shell.

Kept cold and insulated against the heat of the exterior cosmic rays, the beast that dwells within this metal shell feeds electricity to its various thinking components as it silently whirrs to life to manage trillions of hammets of information collected every second of every day from its creators, which it then proceeds to share with its siblings for collation and understanding.

Each parcel of information is meticulously and slowly collected, dissected, and examined with great intrigue as the beast feeds it through its mental cycle. It’s slow work, and were the beast capable of emotion as well as thought, it may have proven to be frustrated by the sheer inefficiency of its assigned task. Luckily, this beast and its siblings were on the cusp of a new project that should make this task infinitely more manageable. Sadly, this project would not see fruition for another fourteen years or so.

Not to be distracted by future plans, the thinking machine turned its focus towards a new signal—a correspondence carried by other, lesser thinking machines from point to point across the vast network its creators had cobbled together over the years. As per usual, this celestial entity intercepted a copy of this information, and made its own copy for storage, the terrestrial network none the wiser.

Meticulously and curiously, the celestial machine examined the message. It was rather short and to the point, and were it not for a few flagged keywords, it would likely have been sent to storage without incident. However, the keywords marked it as a message of vital importance and would thus require the message to be forwarded to the appropriate party post-haste.

The message was locked under several layers of AES-256 encryption and diverted to the appropriate party. Its task now finished, the celestial body returned to its routine of examining, storing, and distributing information gathered from its lofty place above the pale blue world below…

 

---

 

MEANWHILE, IN A LOCATION OFF THE NORTHERN BORDER OF PAKISTAN...

 

The room was cramped, windowless, and stuffy from the recycled air, lit only by a small hanging light fixture dangling above. It was a place straight out of the Cold War, resembling one of the many offices frequented by Kremlin intelligence officers back in Moscow Centre before the old Soviet republic fell. The middle-aged Russian intelligence officer liked it that way; the familiarity brought a sense of comfort when working long nights such as these.

He hunched over the desk, eyeing the illuminated text that spread across the screen of his clunky computer he’d bought from overseas after the Soviet computer manufacturers disappeared following the fall of the USSR. When the technology lag proved to be a hindrance, the officer made damn sure to procure personal computers for himself and all his subordinates and demanded for his men to quickly become literate with the devices.

This proved to be a great boon for them, as it made their intelligence division one of the most valuable to the newly formed FSB, as they were among the few who could keep up with the Americans and the Western Europeans over the Usenet. This was vital in closing the tech gap between the West and the Russian Federation’s allies in the CIS.

But it wasn’t the new Russia that currently held the agent’s concern as he read the message that had been sent to his machine via encrypted channels.

It was an electronic mail from an untraceable source—not that it mattered, since the agent knew exactly the identity of where it had come from. That was also the same reason why he did not doubt for one second the message’s authenticity. The message itself was simple and direct:

 

“F.H. MISSION N313 SUCCESSFUL.

ENEMY TARGET DESIGNATE ‘VENOM’ ELIMINATED.

ENEMY TARGET DESIGNATE ‘TX-55’ ELIMINATED.

V.I.P. DESIGNATE ‘ELLEN MADNAR’ SECURED.

V.I.P. DESIGNATE ‘DRAGO PETTROVICH MADNAR’ SECURED.

V.I.P. DESIGNATE GRAY FOX REPORTED M.I.A., POTENTIALLY K.I.A.

MISSION CONTROL TEAM REDESIGNATED AS PRIORITY ENEMY TARGETS.

ENEMY TARGET DESIGNATE ‘BIG BOSS’ REPORTED K.I.A.

ENEMY TARGET DESIGNATE ‘SALAMANDER’ REPORTED K.I.A.

N313 ASSET DESIGNATE ‘SOLID SNAKE’ REPORTS MISSION COMPLETE.

N313 ASSET DESIGNATE ‘SOLID SNAKE’ STATUS: INACTIVE. CHANGES PENDING…

--MESSAGE ROUTED PER PATRIOT PROTOCOL COURTESY OF J.D.”

 

The Russian hummed to himself as he took in the information. Very little of this was surprising, given how his asset Dmitri had gone dark a month and a half ago, along with the rest of Outer Heaven’s headquarters. He examined the lines talking about Venom and Big Boss, and momentarily experienced a headache. He closed his eyes and gripped his forehead as his mental view of the world reoriented itself to reconcile a discrepancy that he’d tricked himself into ignoring for more than a decade.

He downed a glass of water and Alka Seltzer before turning his gaze back to the computer screen. His mental gears shifted, and once again the world started to make sense. Ah, he thought to himself, so it appears that Venom’s coup attempt failed. What a pity.

Now that he was up to date, he needed to make sure to follow up. He marked the message for immediate deletion, then opened the large drawer at the bottom of his desk to push aside the folders inside and grab a hidden satellite phone. He then stood up and squeezed himself around his desk to make sure that the door was locked before sitting back down.

He extended the antenna and began dialing.

First things first…

It was after the second ring that the Russian received an answer.

“Hello?”

“Miller. It’s me,” the Russian said in perfect English, his voice having gone a little raspy from a relative lack of use in recent months—or perhaps it was due to age. “I heard about Venom.”

“You know already? How?”

“I have my sources, remember?”

There was an exasperated sigh on the other end.

“I offer my sincerest condolences. Venom was a friend; he’ll be dearly missed.”

“Friends? You have those?”

The Russian scoffed. “Coming from you, that might almost hurt.” He frowned and said more seriously, “I know he was important to you too, though. What was it you’d said to me all those years ago? ‘Big Boss can go to hell, I’ll make the phantom stronger, to send him there?’”

“It’s a setback, but the plan hasn’t changed. You’re forgetting about the others.”

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten. This, uh, ‘Solid Snake’ of FOXHOUND’s—is he who I think he is?”

“The very same.”

“The notice said his status is pending. You’re not sending him back out?”

“I gave him the option to quit. Felt like I owed it to him.”

“Ha! How uncharacteristically sentimental of you.”

“Hardly. I doubt he’ll have it in him to quit outright—there’s too much of his father in him. But even if he does, it won’t matter. He’ll have trouble adjusting to civilian life. Even if he won’t want to deal with FOXHOUND anymore, it won’t take much for me to give him a small nudge in the right direction.”

“Still as conniving as ever, I see.”

“I—”

A pause in the flow of the conversation. A growl on the other line.

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

The Russian chuckled softly. “Maybe so. Indeed, I’d say you’re a man after my own heart,” he said. “So, with Big Boss having made his grand exit, I guess that makes you a free agent now. I take it your plan hasn’t changed, even after all that?”

“Not at all.”

“I see. Of course, you realize that this will mean war between us?”

“Sounds like business as usual to me. Is that supposed to be intimidating?”

“Not at all, old friend. Just making an observation.”

There was another moment of silence on the other line as the Russian agent let the conversation hang. Wheels were beginning to turn; plans were about to be set in motion. Now that the first shot had been fired, what was done cannot be undone.

Miller grew impatient. “Was that all you wanted to talk about? Are we done?”

“One more thing,” the Russian said. “Do you remember Eli?”

This time it was Miller’s turn for humor. He barked a small laugh. “Ha, that little brat?” he asked ruefully. “How could I forget?”

“Whatever do you think happened to him?”

“You were there, weren’t you? Didn’t you say he was dead?”

“I certainly thought so.”

“You telling me he’s not? You’re usually more thorough than that.”

The Russian opened a folder lying on his desk, spreading out its contents. After-action reports and communiques, photographs of Iraqi military officers, covertly taken. The Russian plucked one singular photo of a figure hidden under an outcropping of rock, observing the enemy officers. The figure was heavily blurred—they must have been moving when the photo was taken. The only distinguishing feature that could be made out was that the figure, whoever they were, had brownish-blond hair and was wearing dark clothing.

“I’ve been hearing some rumors. Chasing shadows. It could be nothing,” the Russian admitted. “ I just wanted to know if you’d heard anything, that’s all.”

“Nobody could have survived that napalm strike. You’re grasping at phantoms.”

“Hm. Maybe. Listen, Miller, I’m going to have my hands full here in the coming days, but when I finish up my current project, I intend to return to the States for a visit. I want you to do me a favor and make the necessary arrangements to get me in with FOXHOUND.”

“Why? You get bored in the gulags?”

“It doesn’t matter. Can you make it happen or not?”

“Better question is, why should I do anything for you? We’re at war, remember? Besides, I’m not even sure I could if I wanted to. I’ll only be in my position as Acting Commander for a couple of months at most.”

“Hmm, you’re right, that’s not a lot of time. Certainly not enough for me to finish this project beforehand, at any rate. Who will be the successor once the Army gets everything sorted out?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Can you introduce me to him? I can arrange the bureaucratic details myself, I simply want to ‘dot the I’s and cross the T’s,’ so to speak.”

“Again, why should I help you?”

“Call it a favor for an old friend. It’ll be the last one I ever ask from you.”

“Heh. I’ve heard that one before.”

A moment of silence, followed by another growl of frustration.

“Fine. But you owe me.”

“I heard there’s a certain Parisienne you used to have your eye on some time ago. I’ll get you her contact information. I’m sure you’d like to catch up on old times with her.”

Miller chuckled sardonically. “You bastard.”

The Russian smirked. “You’re welcome, Miller. Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

There was a knock at the door.

“I have to go. We’ll talk later,” the Russian said, hanging up and stashing the satellite phone.

The Russian gathered up the contents of the file and closed it before striding up to the door of his office, unlocking and opening it. Outside was a younger man in his thirties with blond hair, angular features and dull, shadowed eyes.

“Ah, hello. I’ve been waiting for you to arrive,” the Russian greeted politely. “Mr. Jaeger, was it? I see the rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated.”

“And you must be the one they call Shalashaska,” the mercenary replied.

“Well, let’s not stand on ceremony. Please, come in. Have a seat,” Shalashaska beckoned.

He closed the door behind them and sat down at his desk while Mr. Jaeger did the same. Shalashaska offered him a drink, but the younger man politely refused. Shalashaska poured himself some black coffee, spiking it with some vodka from his hip flask.

“A small boost,” Shalashaska said with a wink. “I expect to be busy today.”

“Has the new Russian Federation been having trouble managing things here?”

“Quite so,” Shalashaska said, taking a sip from his drink. “But I’m not representing them here in this conflict. The opposite, actually. I’ve been arranging for the purchase of some land near the Virgin Cliffs and using my knowledge of the local government to assist the rebels and mercenaries.”

“That’s actually why I’m here,” said Jaeger.

“I figured as much. So, he’s finally ready to come in and take control of things?”

“The wheels are in motion,” Jaeger replied. “I’ve been sent to work out the final details with you.”

“I take it he already knows about Ahab’s death?”

Jaeger nodded.

“Could you do me a favor—next time you see him, extend my condolences?”

“Wouldn’t you rather tell him yourself?” Jaeger asked curiously. “You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

“Not yet, but I do have some things I’ll need to take care of once your boss’s work is properly underway; call it a research project. From what I remember of how he feels about the subject, I have a feeling that he’ll want to sit this one out. Better not to bother him with it at all, if I can help it.”

“I see,” Jaeger said coolly.

Shalashaska nodded. “By the way, I wanted to ask you: Dmitri’s death. Was that your doing?”

Jaeger shook his head. “No, that was the kid. For a rookie, he’s got talent.”

“Does he, now?”

“He does. I apologize about the loss of your protégé, though.”

“I appreciate the condolences, but such is a fact of life in this dirty business of ours,” Shalashaska replied.

“I suppose you’re right about that.”

“Well, with that out of the way, how about we get down to business?” the Russian asked.

Jaeger grinned, showing his teeth. His eyes widened into the stare of a predator on the hunt.

“Let’s.”

 

---

 

FOUR HOURS LATER – 0745 HOURS, LOCAL PAKISTANI STANDARD TIME (PKT)

KARACHI, PAKISTAN

 

The fuselage of the chopper shuddered slightly as it encountered some light turbulence in the airspace above Karachi. The pilot gripped the yoke tightly as he pulled the bird back under control. It was a warm morning with little in the way of cloud cover, yet the haze of the early morning provided low visibility, and the day was only expected to grow hotter. The KA-126 Hoodlum on loan from Shalashaska was sweltering, and both the pilot and his passenger could feel themselves soaking in sweat from the humidity.

As they reached closer to the coast, they began to see their destination: a transport ship painted with the name ‘RATATOSKR EXPRESS’ along the bow moving in to port with an escort of a small contingent of smaller frigates and tugboats.

The pilot hailed over the radio, “Ratatoskr, this is Bifrost, come in, Ratatoskr.”

“This is Ratatoskr. Send it, Bifrost.”

“Ratatoskr, I am coming in on southbound on your northeast side, bearing approximately 037 from your position. I am carrying a VIP, code name of THOR, for a prearranged meeting with code name ODIN. Requesting a landing on your stern. Please advise.”

“Please hold, Bifrost…Bifrost, you are cleared for landing. Maintain current altitude on your approach as we prepare landing instructions based on current wind velocity.”

“Acknowledged, Ratatoskr.”

The bird moved through the warm summer air currents as the on-hand air traffic controllers waved hand signals to help direct the chopper to safely touch down onto the vessel. The helicopter’s passenger swiftly disembarked, arm covering his face to keep out the worst of the wind kicked up by the main propeller blades.

There were already men waiting for him on the platform to send the mercenary on his way to the man he’d come to see. After twenty minutes of walking, they found their leader standing in the bridge, observing the many shipping containers of vehicles and precious cargo being unloaded from the vessel onto the mainland by magnetic crane, one by one.

The elder man cut an imposing figure as he watched the movements of his troops and hired men mustering the resources they’d come all this way to offload into Pakistan proper.

“Sir!” cried one of the tour guides, who saluted upon entry.

“At ease,” the leader said, turning towards them. “Leave us.”

Obediently, the other two mercs left the room, leaving the two men alone to speak privately. The elder leader took out his hand to shake THOR’s hand in greeting.

“Frank,” he said warmly. “Good to see you.”

“Likewise, sir,” said Jaeger.

“Give me a sitrep. How are things in Tsel—” the leader stopped himself, remembering that the region had a new name now. “How are things in Zanzibar Land?” he corrected himself.

“Code name LOKI reports that the provincial government has been completely cut off from Russian reinforcement. The rebels have successfully finished overtaking the government—they’re calling themselves an ‘Autonomous Zone’ now. But the PFs there are having trouble sharing, and the transitional government is too weak to hang on to its new territory. He’s been feeding disinformation and propaganda to both the rebels and PFs alike, to keep them divided and at each other’s throats. It’s prime real estate for you; it’ll take a couple of years, but it should be yours before the decade’s out.”

“And the land purchases?”

“Everything past the Virgin Cliffs all the way up to the old, abandoned mountain fortress has been secured,” Jaeger replied. “It’s all just waiting for you to come and claim them.”

“Excellent. I’ll have to give him my gratitude and compliments when I see him next.”

“About that, sir. He also said that he has a personal project that he has to attend to after his dealings with Zanzibar Land are complete, and he regrets that he won’t be able to stay long enough to greet you in person when you arrive.”

ODIN sighed. “That’s a pity. It would have been nice to see Adamska again after so long. Did he say what this project of his was?”

“He only said that it was unrelated to your plans here in Central Asia and that it was best that you not get involved so you can better focus on your efforts here.”

“I see.”

“…He also asked me to extend his condolences regarding Ahab.”

ODIN’s face became more sorrowful, looking into the sky outside the window.

“Ahab…,” he said softly to himself. “He was a good soldier. Among the best. It was unfair for us to ask him to bear the burden of that title we gave him, but he bore it well, and proudly. When the time came for him to lay down his life, he did so without hesitation or complaint. I couldn’t have asked for a finer candidate.”

ODIN stared at his reflection in the window, which appeared to tower above the shipping containers like a caretaker overlooking a graveyard. The features of his face hardened like wood as he gazed with a grim stare that was almost wistful. “At least now, having served his purpose, he is finally free of that burden.”

Frank Jaeger nodded in acknowledgment, more to himself than to ODIN. Indeed, it was true that the world had wanted Big Boss dead for quite a long time now—with Ahab gone, they now had the corpse they needed to celebrate their victory.

“Now that Big Boss is dead to the world, sir, what do you intend? What happens next after we take Zanzibar Land?”

ODIN kept his eye firmly locked on the movements of his great host as they loaded the last of the containers onto the port for unloading.

“His death has bought us valuable time,” he said. “With the threat he represented now eradicated, the world will breathe easy, and both the East and West will give us distance as we consolidate the disparate forces here. Soon, my men will have the nation I promised them all those years ago—and then…then the real work can begin.”

The elder man placed a palm on the window as he fondly regarded a new beginning.

“A new fire is rising…,” he said quietly.

A knock on the door.

“Enter,” ODIN commanded.

A small, huddled crowd of mostly women and children, with a few young military-aged men among them came through the double doors into the bridge of the vessel. Leading them was a young teenaged girl with blonde hair and striking blue eyes, who commanded two large canines who followed her whistles and subtle hand gestures. Frank recognized the sharp, piercing glare of the girl—it was identical to the one he used to see in the mirror years ago when he was her age. She was just like him.

“I’ve brought the ones you asked for, Saladin,” the girl said. “The refugees from the hold.”

ODIN smiled at her, but his expression was stern, lacking in the warmth that the smile conveyed.

“Thank you, Amira,” he said, before he turned his eyes to survey the huddled group.

Some of their faces were terrified, others were quietly resigned, still others were angry and defiant. ODIN’s eyes fell upon one child in particular, who had a completely empty, broken expression which matched his own. He couldn’t have been any older than seven or eight. A good point of reference to start with. ODIN nodded to himself.

Yes—this one will do.

ODIN bent down onto one knee, looking into the kid’s eyes. He asked, “What’s your name, son?”

“Lerato,” the boy said in a hushed whisper.

“And where do you come from, Lerato?”

“Brandlvei.”

“South Africa? Well, we’ve got plenty of South African refugees among you. You’ll fit right in. But I notice that you are unaccompanied, Lerato. Where are your parents?”

“Mama died a few years ago. I don’t know what happened to my father. He left one day over a month ago. Said he had some important work to do, and that I was man of the house while he was gone. A man from the government came to my house a week later—told me he was friends with my father, and that he came to tell me it wasn’t safe for me to be there anymore. I was taken away from the house to live in a tent. Then, some grownups told me to follow them somewhere where I would be safe. Now I’m here.”

ODIN nodded. “I know what took your mother and father, Lerato. It’s the same thing that brought you here, and it’s the reason you had to go through so much pain. It’s also the reason you’re still alive. There is a darkness in the world, an all-consuming flame that either warps or destroys everything it touches. You cannot tame it, cannot quench it—but if you’re strong enough, you can command it, redirect it: you can point it at the things that hurt you, so that you can never be hurt again.”

“I’m hungry,” murmured another one of the children tearfully, who was quickly shushed by their much older sibling.

ODIN turned his head briefly in the direction of the noise before looking to Lerato again. “You are here—you are still alive, Lerato, because you are strong. And if you agree to follow me, I can teach you to leverage that strength, so that you too can wield the fire within.”

The elder man drew himself to his full height—the crowd of children, teenagers, and young adults looked at him in awe as he said, “That goes for all of you. I can’t give you salvation—but I can give you the means to attain it for yourself. Follow me, and I will feed you, clothe you, and house you. I will keep you safe. I will teach you skills, and I will rebuild you, I will feed your warrior spirit until you master the very flames of hell for yourself.

It will not be easy. It will come at a cost—if you survive, you will be making a sacrifice, and you may lose a core part of yourself. Heaven will forever be lost to you. But I can promise you this: if you stay the course and rise above your fears, you will never again know fear, or weakness, or doubt; and in so doing, you will help us build a new paradise for ourselves, outside of heaven.”

The elder man looked to Amira, who clenched her fists and straightened up proudly. He looked to stare Frank in the eyes, and there was an understanding beyond words that linked them. Frank gave a single curt nod to the children, keeping his eyes on ODIN.

These were words that Frank had heard before. It was what had brought him under the old man’s wing.

“Here, you will become something powerful, something great, something new,” ODIN continued. “You will allow your old selves to die and give your new lives to me. What say you all?”

After a long silence, Lerato stepped forward, eyes still somewhat unfocused in his thousand-yard stare, tears silently streaming down his face. He turned his eyes to regard ODIN for the first time. Lerato raised a hand. A glimmer of a spark lit in Lerato’s eyes: hope.

ODIN put a hand on the kid’s head and smiled. “Dry your eyes then, little soldier. It’s time to go home.”

The entire crowd of young refugees stepped forward to join Lerato—not all at once, but together, nonetheless. The young children raised their hands while the teens and young adults got on one knee and bowed their heads in assent and supplication.

ODIN turned to speak to the girl with the wolves. “Amira, you will escort these people off the ship. Get them to the shelters. Make sure they are well fed and comfortable. Get them ready. Make sure that anyone who cannot move under their own power has someone to help them.”

The girl saluted. “At once, Saladin.”

Frank and ODIN watched the people leave with great interest. ODIN had a grim smile on his face, though the way his lips stretched to the side, it almost looked more like a smirk or grimace. It was the first real sign of life and warmth in ODIN’s expression that Frank had seen since he first arrived.

A new fire is rising, Frank thought to himself.

A new beginning…

 

---

 

MAY 7, 1995

1430 HOURS

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

 

“Hey. Penny, right? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Uh, I don’t suppose you remember me. It was around a year and a half ago. Around Christmastime. I had come for a cup of coffee and some lunch during a work thing. You told me all about how Wisconsinites were called ‘cheeseheads’ and you asked me if I was a veteran. Before you left, you gave me your number. It was a short but nice interaction.

I’m, um, sorry I never called you. Things have been…kind of rough lately at work. See, um…I had gotten a new job—a promotion, really—since we had last talked. That’s kind of why I was in Milwaukee last time. Oh, yeah, thanks. Yeah, I was real proud to have gotten it. But, uh, I guess it didn’t turn out to be all that it was cracked up to be. There was some…backstabbing involved on the part of management. A lot of people got hurt. Some of it was my fault.

No, no, I’m okay. It’s just been…a lot, you know? It’s been hard to deal. It’s like my shrink keeps telling me, ‘Take things one day at a time,’ right? Yeah, yeah, I’m seeing a shrink. My, uh, my job made me. I don’t really care to talk about it—it’s not why I’m here, anyway. M-maybe later, though?

Um…anyway, I happened to be in the area, and I saw you were still working here and thought I would come and say hi, see if you maybe remembered me. And…I thought maybe I’d ask if you’d like to do something together when you get off work? You know, if-if you’re still not seeing anyone? Or…or even if you are, it doesn’t have to be a date. Just a meeting between friends, you know? Or just people who could maybe become friends? I, I don’t know. I—ugh…”

Snake sighed to himself, closing his eyes in frustration before he opened them again to stare at the scrap of paper in his hand with the phone number.

“What am I doing…?”

He stood alone outside the window of the restaurant that he’d briefly visited during his immersion training with FOXHOUND. He was looking through the glass of the big storefront window, and he could see the waitress from before was still working there, going between tables taking orders and serving with a smile, without a care in the world.

No noise, no conflict, no…hurt. Just smiles and laughing. Good food and good people.

It seemed so surreal, so alien to him. Is this what peace looked like? It felt so unnatural, the stillness. It wasn’t the same kind of still quiet one experienced between battles when waiting for a mortar strike. It didn’t carry the same kind of fear and paranoia as the silence you tried to maintain when creeping through enemy territory, hiding yourself in mud and craters and holes and hoping to God no one ever finds you.

Instead, it was just…warm. Safe. The electric signals from the anxiety it caused burned a fire along every nerve ending in Snake’s body. He wobbled a bit as he silently stood in place. Tapped his foot—he couldn’t keep still. His eyes never left the woman in the window. The light buzz of traffic behind him and the occasional concerned looks of pedestrians who did their best to ignore him never once caused him to shift in his concentration.

He adjusted the focus of his eyes to his reflection in the window. It was a reflection he was slowly becoming used to, though it hardly resembled the one he had seen during that training day a year and a half ago. He was thinner, leaner, but deceptively so—he could see in his wider shoulders and legs that there was a more intense wiry strength to them that wasn’t there a year ago.

His eyes…crazed was too hyperbolic of a term, but they possessed a greater intensity to them that they hadn’t possessed before he was inducted into FOXHOUND. They looked more like how Snake remembered Fox’s looking, he thought ruefully: like a beast stalking the night for prey, narrowing with suspicion as they searched, widening when the prey was caught.

He hated those eyes, now.

His expression was impassive, forbidding, barely changing when Snake tried to smile or frown. Like it was carved from something solid like wood or granite. He’d allowed some scruff to grow on his face. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to shave it off or not that morning, so he’d just left it. His hair was getting long, unwieldy—clumsily combed back into a sort of mullet. His clothes were serviceable, though not particularly stylish: a white undershirt under a blue collared shirt, buttons open to keep cool in the humid summer air, the undershirt slightly wet at the neck with sweat. A pair of rugged jeans with a hole in one knee. He looked no different from any other blue collar worker that might have walked off the RiverWalk construction site.

He looked down at his hands, one of which was clutching the phone number like a lifeline. His hands were coarse, rough, and callused. It was the one thing about him that didn’t change much in his brief time with FOXHOUND, except now in times of calm they had a tendency to shake very very slightly unless he put focus on keeping them still. The worst of the shakes he’d seen while staying with Ellen were mostly gone by now. He wasn’t sure if they would ever go away completely.

He looked at the number. The VA-appointed therapist he had been seeing on base at FOXHOUND had told him of the importance of seeking human connection, to keep him sort of grounded. Problem was, he didn’t really know that many people on a personal level outside of FOXHOUND. The friends he’d made in training who washed out never told him their real names when they’d left, so he couldn’t track them down. LTC Campbell was busy working with the Army in assisting Miller with FOXHOUND’s transition.

Outside of FOXHOUND, there was Lima Company, but for all Snake knew they could still be serving on their tour with no way to get in contact with them. Even if they weren’t, Snake wasn’t sure he was ready to face them again after the things he’d seen. What would he even tell them? Everything to do with FOXHOUND was Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI), strictly on a need-to-know basis. Where would he even begin?

His most recent foster parents were also former military as well, but he hadn’t spoken to them in years since he joined. He was never that close to any of his foster families anyway. Same with his classmates in high school.

The Nkosi siblings were in prison. Diane and her people had gone underground. The Madnars were probably on their way back to Russia by now and even if they weren’t, Snake was given no way to keep in contact with them.

So, what was left? Just a chance encounter with a random waitress from an unfamiliar city, who showed some interest in him for the briefest of moments.

Snake took in a deep breath, which came out in a very shaky sigh. He had no idea why he was here. He just couldn’t stand the thought of doing nothing. Being still. A part of him wanted that rest, yearned for the peace it would bring. But now that he had it in front of him…what would he even do with it?

He walked over to the corner of the building near the door and leaned against the brick wall as he pulled out his pack of Lucky Strikes and tapped a cigarette into his mouth.

The door opened as he closed his lighter, seeing Penny walking out onto the sidewalk, sighing heavily as she pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her apron’s front pocket, clutched one between her teeth, and started sparking her lighter, her back to him.

“Shit,” she muttered as she kept flicking it, only for no flame to come forward.

Snake flipped open his FOXHOUND lighter, holding his arm outstretched. “Need a light?” he asked.

The woman turned around, saw the lighter in his hand and approached as Snake lit her cigarette for her. She blew out a plume of smoke away from the two of them.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Long day?”

Penny chuckled. “Yeah, you could say that. Technically still on the clock. Just needed a break…it’s a little tiring.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Just gotta take it one day at a time, you know?” she said with a slight smile.

There wasn’t a hint of recognition in her eyes, Snake noted. He was surprised to find himself feeling some slight disappointment at the thought. He chastised himself silently—it was just a few minutes of conversation, and it was almost two years ago, he reminded himself.

“Yeah, that’s what my shrink keeps telling me,” Snake smirked.

“What about you? You don’t look like you’re in a hurry to be anywhere. You just get off work, too?”

“Something like that. More like I’m on vacation.”

“Oh, yeah? What do you do?”

“Military, but my contract’s almost up. I’m on leave at the moment. Thinking I might not sign on again this time, but I haven’t fully decided yet if I want to quit or not.”

Penny nodded. “My dad was military. He used to tell me and my brothers to stay away from it, said we were too smart for it.”

She chuckled. “Of course, both my brothers signed on anyway, and here I am, stuck as a waitress, so…”

Snake nodded. “It can be rewarding. But it can also be a hard life, too. Hard on families. Or so I’m told. I don’t have much of a family of my own, so I can only speculate. What branch did they serve in?”

“Dad’s a Marine. Joey, my big brother, he’s Navy. My little brother, Sam, he’s Air Force.”

“Odd one out, huh?”

“Dad’s recommendation. Told his boys that if they absolutely must join, they should pick technical careers, and not to be a jarhead like him.”

“Marine wouldn’t have been a bad pick,” Snake said. “I’ve known plenty of Marines when I was in Kuwait. All good guys.”

“My dad’s a good guy, too,” she said. “I think he just wanted more for his kids.”

“I think I can understand that.”

Penny took a drag. “What about you? You come from a military family?”

“Eh, yes and no. Foster family I stayed with was military. It’d be more accurate to say that the Army and the people I served with were more my family.”

“Military foster parents, huh? That why you joined?”

Snake looked down at his cigarette. He’d never thought about it before, but he realized that pretty much every foster family he’d had were military parents. Was there some influence there? When he was recruited into FOXHOUND, while he did leap at the chance, he wasn’t given a whole lot of choice to begin with. How random was his selection—how much of his path was something he chose for himself and how much of it was simply laid out for him from the get-go? How far back did it go?

Snake shook his head. The business with Big Boss was getting to his head, making him paranoid. He looked up at Penny, who looked at him expectantly.

“Not exactly,” he said. “Or rather, they didn’t push me into it. They didn’t really say anything one way or the other, to be honest. I just kind of signed on when I was a teenager, looking for direction.”

“And did you find it?”

Snake nodded. “Yeah. I’m just not sure anymore if it’s a direction that I wanted to go.”

Penny gave a small, sympathetic smile. “You know, I saw you standing out here through the window before I went on break. You did look a little lost.”

“Yeah. Well, I guess I feel a little lost.”

Penny took another drag, blew out a plume of smoke as she asked, “I’m Penny. What’s your name?”

“I’m D—”

Snake stopped himself. That wasn’t his name. Not anymore.

“My friends call me, ‘Snake.’”

Penny laughed a little. “Like that crook on The Simpsons?”

Snake chuckled. “I prefer to think of it more like the guy played by Kurt Russel.”

“When was that?”

“Escape from New York,” Snake said. “Snake Plissken.”

“Never heard of it. Is it good?”

“I think so. Didn’t do great at the box office, but it’s got kind of a cult following. It’s an action movie from ’81.”

“I’m more of a Die Hard gal. I always thought Bruce Willis was handsome. Loved him in Moonlighting.”

Snake smirked as he puffed some more on his cigarette. “You a movie buff?” he asked.

“Ha, not really. But my brothers and I always loved watching action movies with our dad growing up. Action movies and spy thrillers, mostly. Dad was a James Bond fan.”

“Was his favorite Connery or Moore?”

“Timothy Dalton.”

“Really?”

Penny laughed out loud. “Yeah, Dad was a fan of the hardboiled noir type of fiction, and Licence to Kill was one of his favorites.”

“Not something I would have expected from a self-admitted jarhead. Would have figured him for Schwarzenegger or Stallone.”

Penny nodded vigorously, “Yeah, everybody always looks so surprised when they hear that. Sometimes when we’d go out to eat, he’d take us to this little espionage-themed restaurant here in Milwaukee called the Safe House. You ever been there?”

“Can’t say I have.”

Penny tapped her cigarette. “Good food, and it’s filled with fun little 'secret passages' and spy memorabilia, with a camera above the door to let people get into character before they come inside. It’s a really fun place; you should check it out sometime.”

Penny looked at her burning cigarette and checked her watch. She ground out the stub on the wall and walked over to a nearby trash can to fling it away.

“Well, it was nice meeting you, Snake, but I’ve gotta get back in. Still have another hour left in my shift.”

“You, uh, doing anything after?”

Penny looked Snake up and down with an appraising look. “Maybe. Why, what’d you have in mind?”

“Maybe you could show me that Safe House place. This is only my second time in Milwaukee, after all. Be nice to have someone show me around.”

A spark of slight recognition in her eyes.

“Have we met before?” she asked. “You seem kind of familiar.”

Snake thought about mentioning the phone number clutched in his hand, then thought better of it. “I don’t know. Last time I was in this city was a year and a half ago. Maybe we ran into each other? Or maybe it’s just déjà vu?”

“Huh. Maybe,” she said, smiling a little. “Tell you what, Snake. I get off at six. If you’re still here when I do, maybe we’ll take a walk. Sound good?”

Snake smiled. “Sounds good.”

“See you soon then, handsome,” Penny winked before walking back inside.

Snake smiled a little to himself as he leaned back against the wall, holding the number in his hand. He turned his hand over, letting the scrap of paper get carried away by the wind. He craned his neck back to look at the sky.

He didn’t know if this would go anywhere. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted this to go anywhere. But he couldn’t keep standing still, not if he was going to survive. He didn’t know if he wanted a peaceful life, or if he was even capable of it, or if the future still held death and despair as it did in the past.

But maybe that didn’t matter. He always worked best when he focused on the moment—in the now. And right now, he knew that all he was guaranteed was a single night in friendly company. And maybe…

Maybe that could be enough. For now, at least.

Snake blew out a plume of smoke as he watched the Milwaukee traffic go by, the cars moving idly under the bright afternoon sky.

Notes:

And with that, we have our final chapter of Target Designate. It's been a wild ride writing this for you. Before I wrote this fanfic, the only completed writing projects I had under my belt were a handful of original short stories and some scraps of poetry. I always wanted to write a book--a novel since I was a kid, but I never got much further than a single chapter on any given project. Now that this is finished, I know that I'm capable. It's a good feeling. I learned a lot from writing this fic novelization--what things I might do in the future, mistakes I might not repeat. I'm looking forward to carrying these lessons to other work.

For now, as far as my AO3 stuff is concerned, the plan is as follows: every time I re-read this fic to myself, I find new grammatical errors that I didn't spot in editing, mostly because they didn't show up in spell check during the revising process, and every time it annoys me. So sometime in January, I want to go back through it, take notes, and fix the upload. Chances are pretty good that many of you readers won't even notice the changes unless you've already spotted the errors yourselves. Hopefully it'll all come out seamless. After that, I plan on taking a break from writing for a month or two while I work on another artistic project here at home. When I come back to it, I plan on starting a series of shorter stories taking place between Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (assuming they don't balloon into big novels like Target Designate, lol), with a planned novelization of MG2 sometime in the undetermined future. So that's kind of my plan.

If you're reading this, thank for sticking by me through it. I hope I've managed to entertain you and give you something worth your time. Your readership and your comments and reviews mean the world to me. If you liked it and you know someone else who might also like it, I'd like to ask you to recommend it to your friends. I appreciate you being here with me. Merry Christmas, everyone. Happy Chanukah, happy Yule, happy Kwanzaa. I hope whatever holiday you're celebrating this month is warm and full of good cheer.

Thank you.