My eyes blurrily opened after a few unconscious moments, greeted by the foggy haze of the clouded sky and the dirty beach. I was resting on my back, my head craned to my left while I blinked the dust from my eyes, my ears ringing painfully. I took a short breath, and immediately began to lurch, feeling all the water I had chugged from falling into the river quickly rise up my throat and into my mouth. I reflexively coughed a few times, trying to get the water out of my lungs, heaving up full gobs of the stuff straight into my mouth and into my nose.
I tried to lift myself onto my knees – each of my arms and my legs felt heavy as lead, and my chest as beaten as a well-played drum. I felt my bones cracking into place and my muscles stiffening as I rose, and my head throbbed with the worst headache I had in years. My eyes were still unfocused as I clambered myself upright and onto all fours. The last time I had really felt this broken and beaten was against Zakhaev on the bridge.
Finally getting myself into a proper crawling position – my body moaning and cracking with each movement I made – I felt a sudden rush in my chest, and immediately heaved up all the water I had inhaled from my dip in the drink. It wasn't a lot, thankfully, but the other juices that came up with it left a stale taste in my mouth.
I looked up, across the desert of the beach I had washed up on. Sand and stone as far as I could see through the natural fog and my own dizzy eyes, along with the occasional brush growing out of the hard bedrock, but off in the distance was an unmistakable pillar of smoke, and the familiar sound of fires crackling. I replayed the event in my minds eye, remembering how Captain Price had managed to expertly snipe the helicopter's propeller engine and disabling the entire machine mid-flight, bringing the bird down harshly. Before I could get in a word of congratulation, though, our skiff had fallen off the business end of a waterfall, the boat's engine incapable of matching the harsh running waters sending us over.
I groggily searched for Price, turning my head side to side, scanning the area for any sign of life, but as far as I could tell, I was alone. I knew there was no way Price was dead; if the Gulag couldn't break him, a little fall like that into soft, deep water wasn't going to so much as slow him down. But Price would have to wait: we both had a mission to accomplish. There was a chance, if unlikely, that that son of a bitch Shepherd had survived the crash. If he had, I was going to fix that.
I pulled myself to my feet and reached for my rifle across my back – my hand gripped at nothing, my fingers simply sliding over my uniform where my weapon should be. I tried reaching for my sidearm on my waist, only to find that the holster had been clipped open; both of my weapons were probably miles downstream by now. Thankfully my combat knife was still with me, if jarred a little loose in its grip; I drew it from its sheath along my left hip, keeping it in a reverse combat grip in my left hand, like I had always been trained. I took an exploratory step forward, and nearly lost my balance; I was still disoriented from the fall, and my balance had been knocked all askew. I could hardly take four steps forward before tripping over my own heels like a moron, but I knew where I was going, and I wasn't stopping until I got there.
The light of the fires easily penetrated the surrounding fog as I got closer, illuminating the details of the helicopter crash all around the closer I got. There was no sound, no ambience, aside from my own footfalls as I clumsily stumbled forward towards the wreck. My footsteps were soon joined by a rough dragging sound across the dirt nearby – I gave a quick cursory look around, to find the pilot, one of Shepherd's personal lackeys, trying desperately to pull himself away from the wreckage and to the water. The man was riddled with holes all across his body, and he was leaving a massive trail of blood with every inch he pulled himself. It would have been cruel not to stick my knife into his neck as I passed, in his condition.
I walked on towards the flaming wreckage. I was trudging my way upwind, unfortunately, so I had to feel the stinging heat of the flames and the unpleasant singe of the smoke on my face as I made my way towards the clipped bird. The helicopter was once a magnificent (and expensive) engineering marvel of American technology at its very peak, and now, its metal blanketed the beach in every direction. It was as beautiful a pile of scrap metal could be.
Sitting on the rocks in front of the shattered cockpit, lying on his back on top of the broken glass on all sides, was another of Shepherd's dogs. His suit blended in with the bent metal fairly well; I wouldn't have noticed him at all if it wasn't for the suspicious clicking of an empty automatic pistol standing out against the petering flames and the rushing winds. He had his weapon raised in his left hand, the gun pointed roughly in my general direction as he pulled the trigger again and again, apparently missing the fact that the gun was empty. He barely had the strength to lift the gun at all, and he didn't fight back when I made quick work of him, too.
The side door to what was left of the bird was lying on the sand a good distance away from the body, so it wouldn't have been a hassle to go in, find Shepherd, and stick my dirty, bloody knife into him a few times before calling it a day. My stance and my stride strengthened with each step, and my vision was becoming increasingly focused, even with all the smoke pushing right into my face. Shepherd had framed me and Price – blacklisted us as traitors and put our faces up for a sum. He called us criminals. He had set us up to take his fall for the massacre at Zakhaev International. We would go down in history as the ones that started World War III, not him, and not Makarov. Our reputations, our lives, were completely destroyed by Shepherd – it would be satisfying to return the favour.
Just before I could pull myself up into the hatch, who else pulls out of the bird's carcass than the man himself. He looked around the landscape, as confused and as disoriented as I was just a minute ago, when his eyes fall to me just as I start to pick up the pace, the grip on my knife tightening as I approach. His eyes grew wide the moment he recognized me, and immediately started to make a break for it just as I raised my knife up. My heart raced as I swung the blade down as angrily as my still-bruised body could, just to hear the wind whistle around the steel as I whiff the swing behind his back. For a guy in his forties that just survived a helicopter crash, the man could really run when he needed to.
There was no way I was just going to let him go, naturally, so I took chase, galloping lopsidedly after the bastard while he ran into the fog. He may be fast, but from his own hunched-over limp, he was still hurt pretty badly, and with his smoker's lung, he wasn't going to go far. I lose him in the mist for a split second as I jog in his direction. The sight of an enormous abandoned building starts to come in from above the ground-level fog as I follow his footprints, and soon enough I find an old, rusted out shell of an old pickup truck standing on cement bricks and surrounded by old oil drums, with Shepherd leaning against the frame, wheezing and hacking up his old man's lung after his sprint.
My mind was as muddled as the visibility as I come in on Shepherd – at that point, the only things that existed in the world were him, me, and the knife in my hand. All semblance of strategy and training was tossed out the window as I became a man obsessed with vengeance the closer I get to that handlebar-moustache of his. With no wit about it, I charged head on towards Shepherd with my knife held high, expecting him to just stand there and take it while I stuck my knife into his skull. When I swung my arm down a second time towards him, it took me a moment to register that he had caught me by the wrist, and before I could react properly, he grabbed me by the back of my head and slammed my skull into the truck's frame.
Dazed and suddenly in a lot of pain, I quickly lost my balance, dropping my knife and falling hard onto my back after a few awkward steps. I quickly blinked the sand from my eyes, my hand frantically searching the ground for the knife I had dropped as I looked up at Shepherd. I felt only rage as I looked into those hating eyes of his, watching his wrinkly old face bunch up in disgust as he casually stepped towards me. My hand found no blade in the sand, and when I noticed Shepherd draw his own knife from his own sheath from his hip, I recognized the sudden gravity of the scenario and try to pull myself away. I was too slow, though, and before I could gather the sense to at least try and counter his swing the way he had mine, he knelt down and swiftly struck his blade tip-first straight between my ribs. The last thing I see before my vision fading from the shock was that old man's grisly face right up close to mind, his teeth clenched and his lips curled into a scowl.
My senses began to dim as time slowly passed. My vision had left me entirely, but I could still hear the sound of the passing wind, and feel my throat still itchy from the harsh treatment in the river earlier. I could still breathe, and I could still think – Shepherd had me at my most vulnerable position, and he still managed to screw up killing me. Not that a reprieve from an instant death was going to help me in a few minutes anyway.
I could still hear the huffing and puffing of the old bastard just a few feet away while he collected himself. "Five years ago," he said calmly, his voice gruff and hard, mostly from all the cigars, "I lost thirty-thousand men in the blink of an eye." That was a difficult day for everybody – not just for America, but for the world at large, watching one of their middle-eastern countries detonate itself. In an instant, the sky was lit from an atomic blast, and not a soul within a several hundred mile radius survived the explosion for more than a few minutes. "And the world just fuckin' watched." He struggled to keep his composure as he spoke.
"Tomorrow," Shepherd said as he pulled his revolver from its holster, my vision returning to me again slowly and painfully. He swung open the chamber and dumped out the six empty shells from earlier spent bullets, spilling them heedlessly across the ground just to my side. He reached into his pocket with his other hand, taking out a single copper bullet and loading it into the first chamber before stylishly swinging the cylinder of the gun closed. "There will be no shortage of volunteers. No shortage of patriots." He pulled the hammer back on the revolver as he pointed the barrel right between my eyes – and me, with a knife stuck in my chest and my head still spinning from the slam into the car frame – I simply laid there, watching. "I know you understand."
I heard the chamber rotate and I saw the cylinder spin as he squeezed the trigger on his revolver. But just as the shot rang through the air and the bullet came bursting through the barrel, to both of our surprises, Price came in to Shepherd's left and tackled the old man, throwing his arm off just in the nick of time as the bullet ripped through the air and straight into the sand next to my right ear. My ears rang from the sudden blast and I could feel several little stings in my face from the sand flying up from the impact, but my eyes were focused on Price and Shepherd. Price's hands were on Shepherd's revolver, trying to pull the gun from his grip, when he took a swift headbutt to the face. Shepherd came in with a left-handed swing, trying to pistol whip Price, but the Captain saw it coming and kicked him in the wrist, knocking the gun clean out of his hands and across the sand a good five yards away.
Price and Shepherd continued to fight just out of my line of sight; the moment that gun slid to a stop, my reaction was to crawl my bloody, beaten self over there and get it back. Shepherd only loaded one bullet, which he fired and missed, and I didn't have any ammunition on me, but the weapon would be much safer in my hands than potentially back into Shepherd's. My arms ached and my throat was parched, and the knife pulled and dragged painfully in my ribs every time I lent a little too far to one side, but I was determined: the sand bunched up against my palms as I kept crawling, pulling myself forward as quickly as I could towards the gun.
I was only just out of arms' reach when I looked up to see Price take a nasty spill just in front of me. His face was bruised and bloody, and his arms wobbled as he slowly tried to push himself back up. Shepherd was only a senior officer – where did he learn to evenly fight a highly trained S.A.S soldier like Price? Price should have been able to bury him without so much trouble; or so I thought, as my fingers danced just along the gun's barrel, unable to grasp its metal just as Shepherd's heavy boot stepped in front of me and kicked the revolver away.
I looked up along Shepherd's body, getting a good look at his face. It was considerably worse than Price's: he was bleeding out the teeth, and he had deep bruises on both of his cheeks. His left eye appeared swollen, too. I considered trying to grab onto his ankles, or something, but before I could bring my hands up to my sides, Shepherd brought his boot up, and then straight back down, onto my face. My vision faded for a second time.
I awoke shortly after, since Price and Shepherd were still at it just a few feet away. I was lying on my back, the handle of the blade still sticking straight up out of me. I felt weak; the fatigue and the pain were finally catching up to me, robbing me of my senses and sapping my strength.
Price came in with a wide right hook, which Shepherd quickly answered with a jab, before I lost my sight again. It was only for a moment; the whole scene seemed to steadily fade in and out before me every few seconds, and each time, someone was beating up someone else. I'd see Price give a powerful left hook into a strong knee to Shepherd's face, before my vision failed me just as Shepherd ducked another right swing. When it came back, Price was hunched over on the ground, just as Shepherd gave him a quick punt to the ribs, knocking the captain onto his back. Another blink, and the last thing I saw was Shepherd straddling Price, sitting on top of him, just hammering away at his face, powerful blow after powerful blow, knocking the man senseless.
I felt a certain tinge of a particular feeling I had never felt before. Resignation, maybe; seeing Shepherd in such a dominate position over Price, who was the last guy I could count on to take the bastard down, it felt like things were so out of my control that all I could really do was just tilt my head back and accept it. We would go down in history as the instigators to the next World War, and nobody will ever know the truth – history is written by the victors. My only solace was knowing that I tried my hardest.
My eyes settled on the cloudy sky, the feel of the dust storm kicking up around me. I errantly watched some sand just toss about in the sky, the sound of Shepherd's fists brutally hammering into Price's face the only sound I could hear. Just as I was thinking of closing my eyes and ending it, my eyes fell on the handle of the blade, still standing surely out of my chest. My right hand was resting idly by the base, looped around it loosely. I suddenly had a thought…
I brought my hand up, reversing my grip, and grasped onto the handle as tightly as my drained fingers could, my hand twitching weakly all the while. The slightest jolt on the knife caused me searing pain all throughout my insides, but I was dead whether or not I did anything. The pain was far too great to simply ignore, however: a terrible feeling striking through my body in all directions as I tried to lift the knife out of my chest. My vision began to dull once again, fading out like before, but I managed to keep my focus as I pulled on that knife as hard as I could. Drops of blood spurted out and all around with each millimetre I managed to gain.
My arm was shaking violently as I pulled that blade straight up, and the vibration went right to my skull, my entire face shaking with effort as I tried to lift that knife out of me. It took every effort I had to gain the slightest bit of leeway – the blade was less than a foot long, but it felt like it may as well have been an entire sword stuck in me. It felt electric, trying to pull the metal out of my body, feeling it slide across my skin and rip me open even further.
The more I tried to lift, the more my arm, and my eyes, began to shake from the strain. My vision began to distort into all sorts of colours and patterns – mostly slate reds and yellows, but occasionally my vision would nearly falter entirely until I forced myself to stay awake. The blood from my wound would leap out with each of my hyped heartbeats, coating my gloves and my suit with the effort. For the moment, I had forgotten about Shepherd and Price, my attention entirely undivided on just getting the knife out of my torso. I was grunting under my own strain, but I couldn't hear myself over the thunder in my ears. The blade continued to slide out of my body; I brought my left hand up to the handle to help with the pull, putting everything I had into dislodging the knife.
The hole in my ribs was practically a fountain the farther up I pulled the knife, with blood just gushing out from its sides the higher and higher I drew it. The steel was coated in my blood, thoroughly drenching it, and my suit was getting bloodier the more stress I put in my chest, trying to push the knife out from the inside. Finally I felt the knife give way, pulling entirely out of my torso with a rough force, both of my arms flinging above my head from the sudden lack of resistance.
I wasted no time; with the knife finally out of me, the rest of the world came crashing back to my senses, and I was reminded of Shepherd on top of my Captain, beating the living shit out of him. I spun the blade around in my fingers seamlessly, gripping the knife loosely by the blade, as I painfully twisted my body around to face the old man. My head was throbbing, and I was dying from the huge hole in my chest, but I was determined to take Shepherd down with us if this was our last day.
Shepherd hadn't paid me any attention at all while he continually beat on Price, his knuckles bloody (although if it was his or Price's, I couldn't tell) from the constant pounding. I aimed right for his skull, his eyes down towards Price and away from me at all, as I brought the knife over my head, winding up to fling it with everything I had left straight into the monster.
Just as I brought the knife back down, slinging it towards Shepherd, the old man, seemingly sensing that something was about to go wrong, looked up towards me, his fists pausing mid-strike. Everything seemed to slow down as the knife spun top-over-bottom towards Shepherd, my blood spilling over in a wide circle as it flew. As much pain as I was in, I wanted to see this more than I had wanted anything before: my vision was finally crystal clear and my focus was completely still as the knife arced through the air. At first, Shepherd seemed to be confused over what was coming towards him, and he only realized that he was in any immediate danger just before the knife dug point-first straight into his left eye socket. He didn't have the time to even try to react, and once the knife was firmly lodged into his skull, he collapsed back; his blood spilling over the sand in an explosion of gore, arcing wide through the air, making my own wound seem like a minor graze in comparison.
After a few seconds, that was that. Shepherd was dead, his own knife, which he had graciously given to me, now where his left eye was. But it was only another small reprieve for me compared to the big picture – America would most definitely be going to Moscow to return the favour the Russians had done to Washington for us, and the whole world over would forever look at a pair of pictures of MacTavish and Price as the worst people since that German fellow. My vision began to waver once more, and this time, I let it; the pain of the wound was subsiding awfully quickly, and the dull coldness that replaced it was almost welcoming. The three of us, dying on this beach in front of an abandoned steel mill – not the most poetic of graves, but at least–
A rough, gargled cough cut the silence of the air, overpowering the rushing wind from the brewing dust storm. All at once I thought a million and one thoughts: was it Price? Was it Shepherd? Was it someone else? Was it me, and I was just too spaced out to notice? Another rough cough, and Price's chest immediately heaved, causing him to, perhaps subconsciously, bring his hand up to cover his mouth while he hacked up some more. Price lifted his head, looking side to side for a moment before tossing Shepherd's limp leg off his body and painfully rolling himself back up. I really should have figured: if a little trip off a waterfall wasn't going to slow him down, then an old man with a smoker's lung wasn't going to stop him either.
Price lowered his head and he picked himself onto his stomach. He hunched himself over painfully, and it looked like he was just checking for any broken bones or serious debilitations for the moment. He lifted his head once he was ready, looking straight into my own surprised eyes, and he immediately lifted himself onto his knees to crawl himself towards me. "Soap!" he called weakly, his mouth drenched in his own blood from his busted teeth. He reached his left hand out to me as he called my name, trying to get my attention, which he undeniably had, but I was too fubared to respond at all. "Soap!" he said again, a bit louder, picking himself up onto his feet to hobble himself towards me as quickly as he could. He took one step, and immediately collapsed right next to me, back onto his hands and knees.
I must have blacked out again for just a moment right then. When I awoke, Price was leaning over me, stitching me back together with whatever first-aid we had on us. Some gauze and some antiseptic which stung like a bitch. His own bruises to his face went untreated, and his jaw looked a little misaligned, but it wasn't anything he could treat right here and now.
What awoke me, though, was the sound of a helicopter engine, its rotors spinning wildly and kicking up the sand all around us. Off in the distance, lightly shrouded by the dust storm, was a tiny little chopper. Practically meant just for personal use, its body hardly had the size to carry four people. But its size wasn't so important as who was flying it; from this distance, I couldn't really tell who it might have been, but apparently Price had an idea. "It'll hold for now," he said gruffly, picking up my left arm and wrapping it around his shoulders while he placed his right arm behind me, lifting me to my feet. "Come on, get up!"
I just sort of dragged my feet with each step. Any movement, period, right down to making the faintest of breaths, hurt me like nothing else, but I did as my Captain told me. We limped ourselves past Shepherd's corpse, making our way to the helicopter just a few metres away. I lifted my eyes towards the bird, trying to focus my vision to see through the kicking sand around the chopper, which was gradually settling with the machine's engine. Right next to the helicopter was a man standing tall, and right away I recognized the guy.
"I thought I told you this was a one-way trip, Nikolai!" Price yelled sourly, helping me slid my heels across the rough dirt. Nikolai had his hand up to his forehead, trying to filter out the sand dancing around us all to help him see through the dust.
"Looks like it still is," he replied, that thick Russian accent absolutely unmistakable. He relaxed his arms as we hobbled our way into his view. "They'll be looking for us, you know." Just as he said that, I felt my feet trip over themselves, and I immediately began to slump back down. The sudden pain in my chest was excruciating, and my vision faltered slightly once again. The moment I began to fall, Nikolai ran himself to my other side and caught me, wrapping my other arm around his own shoulders and supporting me as we all made our way to his transport. It wasn't the prettiest or most gracious bird ever, but to me, right then and there, I had never seen such a perfect vessel in my life.
"Nikolai," Price said, a bit softer, his earlier vinegar gone, "we gotta get Soap outta here."
Our feet dug into the sand with each step, giving way to our combined weights as we made our way to the chopper. "Da," he replied, "I know a place."