The island sat in the middle of the South Pacific was unremarkable. It had plenty of palm trees, white sand beaches and a marvelous view of a crystal blue ocean stretching out in all directions for as far as the eye could see. Under any other circumstances this could have been a resort island, filled with tourists. Under any other circumstances, Snake thought as he peered at the island through the periscope of the USS Houston, a Seawolf - class nuclear attack submarine that was three miles offshore of the landmass.
He pulled his eyes back from the viewfinder and nodded at one of the crewmen who promptly hit the controls that submerged the periscope again.
"See anything?" asked the large, black man that was seated in the command chair.
"Not a thing." Answered Snake, shaking his head.
Captain Lou Richards nodded. "We've been watching that island for almost a day, longer if you count all the satellite surveillance, and we haven't seen a single thing. Do you even think that there might be something out there?"
A smile crept at the corner of Snake's mouth; nuclear submariners were all the same. "I'm sure of it." He answered truthfully.
"How can you be sure?" Asked the Captain.
"Call it instinct." Snake shot back. Actually it wasn't instinct at all. There were several things that told him that this was the place that they were looking for, aside from his instinct. His mind drifted back to the satellite photographs that he had been shown. There was evidence of heavy equipment movement all over the island; it was well covered, but not undetectable to the trained eye. The most damning evidence was the thermal imaging of the ruins, all the animals in the jungle kept a distance of around a kilometer from the decrepit structures. Not the behavior one would expect around hundred year old stone buildings that hadn't been inhabited for the last century or so.
Richards shook his head, slightly annoyed, there was so much more that the Houston could be doing right now. The submarine was designed for combat against other enemy submarines, not clandestine missions. Suffice to say that Richards was a Hunter, and did not like sitting around not hunting.
"The insertion is still going to be as planned?" The Captain asked Snake, who was standing next to the command chair.
Snake nodded.
Richards looked down at his watch, only six hours to go.
Snake climbed down below decks to the crew quarters. He had been given a cabin in officer country with all the amenities, which was where he preferred to spend most of his time, out of the way of the crew. He was the only one on board out of 133 officer and men that was not working around the clock or sleeping, so the small space was where he went when he was not on the bridge.
An officer's cabin on a US Navy submarine was at best Spartan. A small room containing only a bed, small desk which was covered with Intel shots of the island, and an equipment locker.
He threw himself down on the surface of the bed and was almost immediately in a deep sleep, the kind that he would need for this mission.
A knock on his cabin door awakened him. He opened it to see a fresh, baby-faced yeoman standing in the corridor. "Sir, its time." The man said.
Snake nodded and then closed the door; he quickly opened his equipment locker and pulled out all of its contents. His base uniform was a set of US issue Tiger Stripe jungle combats, complete with floppy hat. His boots were soft-soled jungle boots with panama soles for superior grip in the sandy jungle soil. His load bearing equipment was a custom made tactical vest, made from olive drab material, and it held all of his equipment, ammunition, maps, stun and fragmentation grenades, two canteens, flares, a lockpick kit, some C4 explosive, a custom made digital camera, and a small first aid kit.
The final piece of kit that he would be going to the island with was his sidearm. In previous missions he had used both a modified Beretta M9 and the Heckler and Koch Mk 23 SOCOM pistol, but when he had been contacted to perform this mission he was given access to any weapon that he wanted, so he got in touch with the specially trained armorers that worked for the US Military in Quantico, Virginia. They had supplied him with a custom- made Colt M1911. The weapon had been modified with a precision barrel, precise trigger, and rubber coated grips, rounded hammer spur, high profile combat sights, and an extra-wide grip safety for increased comfort and controllability. The issue magazines had been replaced with stainless steel competition grade magazines. The handgun had a custom made silencer and he had two hundred rounds of hand loaded .45 caliber subsonic ammunition.
The pistol went into a tactical thigh holster that was attached to his tactical vest. He went to the small bathroom and used the mirror to apply his camouflage paint to his face and the back of his hands.
The bridge was a hive of activity when Snake stepped on it. Capitan Richards was sitting in his command chair looking tense as the crew prepped the sub and ran final surveillance on the island before the insertion.
"Any problems?" Asked Snake.
Richards shook his head. "No, we had a momentary sonar contact, looked like another submarine in the area, but it was gone when we used active sonar to locate it, probably just a marine life-form."
Snake nodded. "How much longer?" He asked.
"Ten minutes." Richards replied.
The ice-cold water of the south pacific cut right through Snake as he swam his way through it as quickly as possible. He looked back behind him, trying to spot the sub behind him. Of course he couldn't, as it was pitch black in the water because it was night.
The swim was about two miles, but it was shallow, so he had decided not to use a wet suit. A small 32-ounce tank that was strapped to his vest supplied his air.
He made the swim quickly and surfaced a short distance offshore. A quick scan of the beach with the night vision goggles from his vest told him that there was no one waiting to ambush him so he proceeded to go onto the beach.
He quickly ran across the beach to the treeline and found some cover in the bushes. He pulled off his flippers and his air tank and mask and buried them.
He pulled the Colt out of his olive drab tactical nylon holster and pulled back the slide and let it snap forward, chambering a bullet from the seven round magazine. He let the hammer down and replaced the handgun in its holster.
Immediately his CODEC started to ring. Even though he had used the CODEC nanotechnology for a number of years, he always managed to panic when the thing went off, thinking that like a radio, it made ambient noise that other people in the area could hear. Of course the unit directly stimulated his eardrums and made no sound whatsoever.
"Snake, what is your status?" Came the voice of Colonel John Bridger. Bridger had practically written the book on counter terrorism in the last five years. When the CIA had approached Snake to perform this mission, he had insisted that Bridger be his military contact for the duration of the mission. True to their word, the CIA had Colonel Bridger temporarily assigned to the Pentagon to watch over this mission.
"I'm on the beach, Colonel. No sign of enemy activity yet." Answered Snake.
"Rodger that, Snake. We are all ready on this end. We have a team supporting you over here, I suspect that you will hear from our weapons and intelligence specialists, as well I have someone here that wants to say hello."
"Hi, Snake."
Although he could not see the face, Solid Snake immediately recognized the voice.
"Otacon, good to hear your voice."
"You too, Snake."
"What are you doing here?"
"The US Government put me in charge of a few top secret research and development projects for military technology stuff that even you probably aren't cleared to hear about. Then I got a phone call about three days ago from Colonel Campbell, remember him? Anyway, he mentioned that you had been tapped for a mission and I just couldn't let you go out without my help, so I called in a few favors and got signed on as the missions technology specialist."
"That sounds great, glad to have you aboard."
Snake hauled himself up out of the brush and headed inland towards the ruins. He had a hunch that they had something to do with why he was here.
The briefing that he had been given was simple. When the United States Military transported its nuclear weapons, they placed GPS transponders with them in the event of a highjacking, that way they could instantly find out where the highjackers were and where they were headed.
Recently the US Air Force was transporting four nuclear warheads from nuclear missile bases in South Korea back home to be destroyed. The C-5 Galaxy transport that was carrying the weapons was high jacked in midair, how the terrorists had gotten an operative aboard was anyone's guess, but they had been stolen right under the US Military's nose.
The GPS coordinates had been triangulated to the island that he was now standing on. The CIA had been asked by the United States Government to recover the weapons and to do it they had reactivated Snake.
It hadn't been that easy, in fact it took a personal visit from Colonel Campbell before Snake had been ready to give up his life of peace and tranquility in the Alaskan wilderness. Snake had done his part for the world, and now he just wanted to be left alone. Campbell had made it a personal issue. It seemed that he had given the president his personal guarantee that the weapons would be recovered without any problems. If it hadn't been for Colonel Campbell's request, Snake would not have been here right now.
He snapped the night vision goggles over his eyes and headed out.
The island was dead quiet when Snake realized that something was wrong. There were no animal sounds that were normally associated with a jungle environment. There were no birds singing, no monkeys fighting or jumping from branch to branch, not even anything from the nocturnal herbivores coming out in the moonlight to eat.
He had long since removed his night vision goggles, the jungle canopy was less here and there was no need for them with the full moon in the sky.
As soon as he realized that there were no sounds, he dropped to a crouch and listened. At first there was nothing, then there was the snap of a branch. His mouth got dry as his ears strained to pick up any sound. He strained his eyes looking out into the jungle.
Then very slowly the hair on the back of his neck stood up straight. He knew that the enemy was behind him. Slowly he turned.
At first he didn't see anything. There was nothing moving and there was no noise. Then his eyes began to pick out a shape, the muzzle of a rifle. His eyes were then able to pick out the rest of the figure.
The soldier was standing, leaning against a tree, and cradling his rifle in his hands. Snake's mind reeled. There was not supposed to be any habitation on the surface of the island. The latest thermal shot showed no human body heat on the island, and that was taken from an SR-71 ten minutes before he had departed from the Houston.
Slowly Snake backed off from the man. He didn't want to try to kill him, because he had no idea what other soldiers might be in the area. He had only been on the island for an hour and the intelligence had already been proven to be faulty.
A branch snapped under the heel of his jungle boot. The enemy soldier stood bolt upright.
Damn, Snake thought, there was no way out of it now.
The soldier approached his location, his rifle held up as he cautiously approached the area where the sound had come from.
Silently, Snake circled around to the rear of the soldier, waiting for him to stop moving. He reached down to his vest and drew the Ka-bar fighting knife from its sheath, the razor-sharp honed edge glinted in the moonlight as it left the leather.
The man had his night vision out now and was scanning the area in front of him for any intruders. He paused as he looked down to examine the ground where he thought the noise might have come from. Snake could hear the man's intake of breath when he discovered his footprints in the loamy island soil.
The man never saw it coming. Snake's hand clamped down on his mouth and he pulled the soldier tight against him. The Ka-bar was slipped through the side of the man's uniform and between his ribs, where it caused massive damage to the man's lung and his heart. The soldier only had three or four seconds of life to struggle after that, then fell limp against Snake.
Snake let the body down and then cut the man's throat as well, slashing open the jugular and digging deep with the point of the knife to sever the carotid artery as well. No sense in letting the man fake death and then get the drop on him.
Snake's CODEC was immediately ringing. "Snake what happened?" The Colonel was asking him.
"I don't know." Answered Snake. "Why didn't the satellite imagery show this guy, he had to have been caught out in the open for at least on of the pictures that we took?"
"Snake, this is Otacon. I don't know why the satellites didn't pick up this man, the thermal imagers on it alone can pick up all the animals on the island, I mean it even detects subterranean heat sources. This doesn't make sense."
"I know."
Snake bent down closer to examine the body of the soldier. The man carried an M4 carbine, locked and loaded with a thirty-round magazine in the weapon. He also had a Beretta M9 in a thigh holster and a US Military issue tactical vest. He had a Motorola radio set up that was in his ear and clipped to his belt, the very same thing that US Navy SEALS use. Even his jumpsuit was US Air Force issue.
"Colonel, what gives, this guy I just killed looks like he's US Special Forces. His equipment is all US made, even his cloths. I thought these guys were terrorists."
"I don't know what's going on Snake, as far as I know these guys are terrorists, they shouldn't even have access to US equipment. Snake, why don't you give me the serial numbers off that M4, maybe I can see where it came from."
Snake read the numbers off the carbine and then dumped the body in a nearby pond full of tepid water. He weighed the man's vest down with rocks and tossed his rifle in with him, hopefully the fish would take care of the man before his friends found him.
He had no choice but to continue on with the mission, but he had a growing feeling in the pit of his stomach that what he found wouldn't be something that he would like to see.
He pulled his eyes back from the viewfinder and nodded at one of the crewmen who promptly hit the controls that submerged the periscope again.
"See anything?" asked the large, black man that was seated in the command chair.
"Not a thing." Answered Snake, shaking his head.
Captain Lou Richards nodded. "We've been watching that island for almost a day, longer if you count all the satellite surveillance, and we haven't seen a single thing. Do you even think that there might be something out there?"
A smile crept at the corner of Snake's mouth; nuclear submariners were all the same. "I'm sure of it." He answered truthfully.
"How can you be sure?" Asked the Captain.
"Call it instinct." Snake shot back. Actually it wasn't instinct at all. There were several things that told him that this was the place that they were looking for, aside from his instinct. His mind drifted back to the satellite photographs that he had been shown. There was evidence of heavy equipment movement all over the island; it was well covered, but not undetectable to the trained eye. The most damning evidence was the thermal imaging of the ruins, all the animals in the jungle kept a distance of around a kilometer from the decrepit structures. Not the behavior one would expect around hundred year old stone buildings that hadn't been inhabited for the last century or so.
Richards shook his head, slightly annoyed, there was so much more that the Houston could be doing right now. The submarine was designed for combat against other enemy submarines, not clandestine missions. Suffice to say that Richards was a Hunter, and did not like sitting around not hunting.
"The insertion is still going to be as planned?" The Captain asked Snake, who was standing next to the command chair.
Snake nodded.
Richards looked down at his watch, only six hours to go.
Snake climbed down below decks to the crew quarters. He had been given a cabin in officer country with all the amenities, which was where he preferred to spend most of his time, out of the way of the crew. He was the only one on board out of 133 officer and men that was not working around the clock or sleeping, so the small space was where he went when he was not on the bridge.
An officer's cabin on a US Navy submarine was at best Spartan. A small room containing only a bed, small desk which was covered with Intel shots of the island, and an equipment locker.
He threw himself down on the surface of the bed and was almost immediately in a deep sleep, the kind that he would need for this mission.
A knock on his cabin door awakened him. He opened it to see a fresh, baby-faced yeoman standing in the corridor. "Sir, its time." The man said.
Snake nodded and then closed the door; he quickly opened his equipment locker and pulled out all of its contents. His base uniform was a set of US issue Tiger Stripe jungle combats, complete with floppy hat. His boots were soft-soled jungle boots with panama soles for superior grip in the sandy jungle soil. His load bearing equipment was a custom made tactical vest, made from olive drab material, and it held all of his equipment, ammunition, maps, stun and fragmentation grenades, two canteens, flares, a lockpick kit, some C4 explosive, a custom made digital camera, and a small first aid kit.
The final piece of kit that he would be going to the island with was his sidearm. In previous missions he had used both a modified Beretta M9 and the Heckler and Koch Mk 23 SOCOM pistol, but when he had been contacted to perform this mission he was given access to any weapon that he wanted, so he got in touch with the specially trained armorers that worked for the US Military in Quantico, Virginia. They had supplied him with a custom- made Colt M1911. The weapon had been modified with a precision barrel, precise trigger, and rubber coated grips, rounded hammer spur, high profile combat sights, and an extra-wide grip safety for increased comfort and controllability. The issue magazines had been replaced with stainless steel competition grade magazines. The handgun had a custom made silencer and he had two hundred rounds of hand loaded .45 caliber subsonic ammunition.
The pistol went into a tactical thigh holster that was attached to his tactical vest. He went to the small bathroom and used the mirror to apply his camouflage paint to his face and the back of his hands.
The bridge was a hive of activity when Snake stepped on it. Capitan Richards was sitting in his command chair looking tense as the crew prepped the sub and ran final surveillance on the island before the insertion.
"Any problems?" Asked Snake.
Richards shook his head. "No, we had a momentary sonar contact, looked like another submarine in the area, but it was gone when we used active sonar to locate it, probably just a marine life-form."
Snake nodded. "How much longer?" He asked.
"Ten minutes." Richards replied.
The ice-cold water of the south pacific cut right through Snake as he swam his way through it as quickly as possible. He looked back behind him, trying to spot the sub behind him. Of course he couldn't, as it was pitch black in the water because it was night.
The swim was about two miles, but it was shallow, so he had decided not to use a wet suit. A small 32-ounce tank that was strapped to his vest supplied his air.
He made the swim quickly and surfaced a short distance offshore. A quick scan of the beach with the night vision goggles from his vest told him that there was no one waiting to ambush him so he proceeded to go onto the beach.
He quickly ran across the beach to the treeline and found some cover in the bushes. He pulled off his flippers and his air tank and mask and buried them.
He pulled the Colt out of his olive drab tactical nylon holster and pulled back the slide and let it snap forward, chambering a bullet from the seven round magazine. He let the hammer down and replaced the handgun in its holster.
Immediately his CODEC started to ring. Even though he had used the CODEC nanotechnology for a number of years, he always managed to panic when the thing went off, thinking that like a radio, it made ambient noise that other people in the area could hear. Of course the unit directly stimulated his eardrums and made no sound whatsoever.
"Snake, what is your status?" Came the voice of Colonel John Bridger. Bridger had practically written the book on counter terrorism in the last five years. When the CIA had approached Snake to perform this mission, he had insisted that Bridger be his military contact for the duration of the mission. True to their word, the CIA had Colonel Bridger temporarily assigned to the Pentagon to watch over this mission.
"I'm on the beach, Colonel. No sign of enemy activity yet." Answered Snake.
"Rodger that, Snake. We are all ready on this end. We have a team supporting you over here, I suspect that you will hear from our weapons and intelligence specialists, as well I have someone here that wants to say hello."
"Hi, Snake."
Although he could not see the face, Solid Snake immediately recognized the voice.
"Otacon, good to hear your voice."
"You too, Snake."
"What are you doing here?"
"The US Government put me in charge of a few top secret research and development projects for military technology stuff that even you probably aren't cleared to hear about. Then I got a phone call about three days ago from Colonel Campbell, remember him? Anyway, he mentioned that you had been tapped for a mission and I just couldn't let you go out without my help, so I called in a few favors and got signed on as the missions technology specialist."
"That sounds great, glad to have you aboard."
Snake hauled himself up out of the brush and headed inland towards the ruins. He had a hunch that they had something to do with why he was here.
The briefing that he had been given was simple. When the United States Military transported its nuclear weapons, they placed GPS transponders with them in the event of a highjacking, that way they could instantly find out where the highjackers were and where they were headed.
Recently the US Air Force was transporting four nuclear warheads from nuclear missile bases in South Korea back home to be destroyed. The C-5 Galaxy transport that was carrying the weapons was high jacked in midair, how the terrorists had gotten an operative aboard was anyone's guess, but they had been stolen right under the US Military's nose.
The GPS coordinates had been triangulated to the island that he was now standing on. The CIA had been asked by the United States Government to recover the weapons and to do it they had reactivated Snake.
It hadn't been that easy, in fact it took a personal visit from Colonel Campbell before Snake had been ready to give up his life of peace and tranquility in the Alaskan wilderness. Snake had done his part for the world, and now he just wanted to be left alone. Campbell had made it a personal issue. It seemed that he had given the president his personal guarantee that the weapons would be recovered without any problems. If it hadn't been for Colonel Campbell's request, Snake would not have been here right now.
He snapped the night vision goggles over his eyes and headed out.
The island was dead quiet when Snake realized that something was wrong. There were no animal sounds that were normally associated with a jungle environment. There were no birds singing, no monkeys fighting or jumping from branch to branch, not even anything from the nocturnal herbivores coming out in the moonlight to eat.
He had long since removed his night vision goggles, the jungle canopy was less here and there was no need for them with the full moon in the sky.
As soon as he realized that there were no sounds, he dropped to a crouch and listened. At first there was nothing, then there was the snap of a branch. His mouth got dry as his ears strained to pick up any sound. He strained his eyes looking out into the jungle.
Then very slowly the hair on the back of his neck stood up straight. He knew that the enemy was behind him. Slowly he turned.
At first he didn't see anything. There was nothing moving and there was no noise. Then his eyes began to pick out a shape, the muzzle of a rifle. His eyes were then able to pick out the rest of the figure.
The soldier was standing, leaning against a tree, and cradling his rifle in his hands. Snake's mind reeled. There was not supposed to be any habitation on the surface of the island. The latest thermal shot showed no human body heat on the island, and that was taken from an SR-71 ten minutes before he had departed from the Houston.
Slowly Snake backed off from the man. He didn't want to try to kill him, because he had no idea what other soldiers might be in the area. He had only been on the island for an hour and the intelligence had already been proven to be faulty.
A branch snapped under the heel of his jungle boot. The enemy soldier stood bolt upright.
Damn, Snake thought, there was no way out of it now.
The soldier approached his location, his rifle held up as he cautiously approached the area where the sound had come from.
Silently, Snake circled around to the rear of the soldier, waiting for him to stop moving. He reached down to his vest and drew the Ka-bar fighting knife from its sheath, the razor-sharp honed edge glinted in the moonlight as it left the leather.
The man had his night vision out now and was scanning the area in front of him for any intruders. He paused as he looked down to examine the ground where he thought the noise might have come from. Snake could hear the man's intake of breath when he discovered his footprints in the loamy island soil.
The man never saw it coming. Snake's hand clamped down on his mouth and he pulled the soldier tight against him. The Ka-bar was slipped through the side of the man's uniform and between his ribs, where it caused massive damage to the man's lung and his heart. The soldier only had three or four seconds of life to struggle after that, then fell limp against Snake.
Snake let the body down and then cut the man's throat as well, slashing open the jugular and digging deep with the point of the knife to sever the carotid artery as well. No sense in letting the man fake death and then get the drop on him.
Snake's CODEC was immediately ringing. "Snake what happened?" The Colonel was asking him.
"I don't know." Answered Snake. "Why didn't the satellite imagery show this guy, he had to have been caught out in the open for at least on of the pictures that we took?"
"Snake, this is Otacon. I don't know why the satellites didn't pick up this man, the thermal imagers on it alone can pick up all the animals on the island, I mean it even detects subterranean heat sources. This doesn't make sense."
"I know."
Snake bent down closer to examine the body of the soldier. The man carried an M4 carbine, locked and loaded with a thirty-round magazine in the weapon. He also had a Beretta M9 in a thigh holster and a US Military issue tactical vest. He had a Motorola radio set up that was in his ear and clipped to his belt, the very same thing that US Navy SEALS use. Even his jumpsuit was US Air Force issue.
"Colonel, what gives, this guy I just killed looks like he's US Special Forces. His equipment is all US made, even his cloths. I thought these guys were terrorists."
"I don't know what's going on Snake, as far as I know these guys are terrorists, they shouldn't even have access to US equipment. Snake, why don't you give me the serial numbers off that M4, maybe I can see where it came from."
Snake read the numbers off the carbine and then dumped the body in a nearby pond full of tepid water. He weighed the man's vest down with rocks and tossed his rifle in with him, hopefully the fish would take care of the man before his friends found him.
He had no choice but to continue on with the mission, but he had a growing feeling in the pit of his stomach that what he found wouldn't be something that he would like to see.