Chasing Shadows
Includes Spoilers for MWII in the first paragraph. If you have not played it to the end, I advise not reading this if you plan on playing it.
Obviously the story and characters come from Call of Duty and belong to Infinity Ward and/or Activision and not me. Also, while I do try to put some effort into making the story believable I am approaching the places and people in the locations this story is taking place from a near complete ignorance of the social, cultural and historical realities. Any similarities of actual people, living or dead, is a complete coincidence and accident. If I misrepresent your culture or homeland in anyway please accept my apologies up front.
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Chest Wounds Suck
Of late Captain Price had been frequently and belligerently repeating his new mantra of trusting nobody, but sitting in the Little Bird with him were two men he felt he could trust with his life. Nikolai, sitting in the pilot's seat regularly risked his life and his "birds" dropping into hot spots dragging Price and his band of SAS commandos out of danger. Above and beyond the call of duty, they say. The other man went by the unlikely name of Soap. He was not so much sitting as laying across the back seats semi conscious with a sucking chest wound. Just minutes before, Captain John "Soap" MacTavish had pulled a K-bar from his own chest and expertly thrown it into the eye socket of his would be murderer seconds before the man put Price's lights out for the final time.
Now the world is in flames and two old enemies who had come together as allies are at each others' throats again, but for real this time. America had not seen any kind of homeland warfare since the Civil War was now facing house to house fire fights with modern, hyper lethal technology. The Cold War paranoia of Red Dawn came to life in modern warfare on Main Street USA. Stories were reaching Capt. Price about face to face gun fights and hand to hand combat in the West Wing of the White House. Showdown at Whiskey Hotel they were calling it.
As Soap lay dying, bleeding out high above the rocky mountains of Afghanistan, Price sank deeper and deeper into morbid thoughts. Hope for his friend was fading. Hope for humanity nearly gone. Not even the sight of General Sheppard, the cold blooded megalomaniac who orchestrated this Machiavellian plot from Hell, on his back in an expanding pool of his own blood was enough to spark some hope in the old man's heart. Price was about to give up. If Soap had died at that point the old warrior who had survived Gulags, countless gunshot wounds, more knife attacks than he could remember, near misses by RPG and Hellfire missiles, and finally a bare fisted fight to the death in the sands of Kandahar, would have thrown himself out of the damn chopper. With my luck I'd probably survive that too, he thought.
Nikolai watched his old friend sink deeper into his silent brooding. The pounding the Captain had just taken was starting to cause his face to swell up and the blood around his lips and nose was starting to coagulate and harden in this dry air. "You look like shit my friend," Nikolai finally said to Price, hoping for one of his wry comebacks. "You should see the other guy" is what Nikolai was expecting him to say but Price just continued staring into the distance.
Suddenly he snapped out of his funk and went straight into a panic. "Where are we?"
"We're almost there," Nikolai assured him. But Price was expecting to see Kabul under him by now. All he could see was wilderness of the most rugged kind here. "We're almost where? We need to get Soap to a hospital now damn it!"
"The capitol is swarming with CIA and American Special Ops. And every single one of them is looking for you two and some crazy Russian pilot who I assume is me." General Sheppard must have knocked Price's sense of humor out of him Nikolai thought because this little joke just seem to make the Captain more angry. "Don't worry my friend. I know a man just over the border in Pakistan. He will know how to save Soap." He reached down under his seat and pulled out a half full clear bottle of brown liquid. "There are Cubans under your seat," he said handing Price the bottle. "Talisker," he explained "I was going to give the rest to Soap, but you look like you need it more." Price took the bottle of scotch and pulled a box out from under the co-pilot seat, careful not to smack his aching face into the extra flight stick. He took out one of the big Cuban cigars and lit it up. After taking several big puffs he took a long pull from the bottle and jammed the cork back in. "Any point in asking who this guy is we're going to see?"
"Of course you can ask! I trust you like my brother"
"I've been working with you for 20 years and I have never told my own brother about you," Price laughed.
"Ah! See? I knew that would do you good!" Nikolai was happy to see some life come back into his old friend's face. He paused a while. "This associate of mine…he lives just over the border. He has seen his share of battle wounds and he does a first class field dress. Don't ask him about diabetes or gout or an ear infection…but if you have a bullet in your guts or a sucking chest wound" he nodded back toward Soap, "He can deal with that."
"So he's in our line of work."
"Not exactly: He's a drug runner… Heroin." Nikolai saw the look of apprehension cross Captain Price's face. "Don't worry so much. You will find his facilities cleaner than anything we could have found in Kabul."
Price glanced back at his wounded soldier. Still out, but still breathing. Hang on Soap!
On the outskirts of Quetta, Pakistan in a small village, children played soccer without paying any attention of the landing helicopter in the field nearby. It wasn't uncommon for there to be 3 or 4 landings and takeoffs a day here. And when two men with a stretcher came out of a nearby house and ran to meet the helicopter the children were still focused on their game. But when the men who got out of the chopper lifted another man covered in blood and the three new men turned out to be "foreign" the children decided it might be a good time to go home.
Price saw the young boys clear out and got an uneasy feeling. He'd been in too many ambushes not to see some of the tell tale signs that the locals, even the children, know something that you don't. And with his only weapon at the bottom of a river in another country he was starting to feel a little naked. Under a nearby tree a grizzled old man sat on a small stool puffing on a long pipe. He was calm and that made Price feel better, but he was probably smoking opium so of course he was calm. At any rate, Nikolai trusted these people so Price decided that he would too, despite what his instincts were telling him.
The door of the little house opened and a man in his mid 40s stepped out and greeted Nikolai warmly. Nikolai responded in what sounded to Price like very fluent Pashto. When they were done talking Nikolai approached and told the Captain that they would be taking Soap into the basement for treatment. He said their host's name is Qamar and that he had welcomed him into his home for some tea.
"So, just how many languages do you speak?" Price asked.
Nikolai laughed in his usual jovial way. "All these years and we never have any time for small talk! They speak my native language here my friend. I'm Russian but I was born and raised in Tajikistan. Practically just up the road."
The two men walked through a small garden to the back door of one of the row houses. Just inside the door was a tiny kitchen with just enough room for a half a refrigerator, a gas stove and a table to two chairs. Already on the table were two small cups with piping hot tea. Nikolai sat first motioning for Price to do the same. He seemed very comfortable here, like he was no stranger to this particular kitchen and this particular table.
"So, you know this man pretty well?" Price asked as he took his first sip of tea in what felt like years.
"There is a saying in this land, 'share a cup of tea with someone once and you are strangers, share a cup twice and you are an honored guest, but when you share a cup three times you are family.'" Nikolai smiled and mixed some sugar into his drink. "I'd say by that reasoning I must be Qamar's long lost brother by now." To prove the point he stood up and opened a cupboard and pulled down a rectangular tin box. "I even know where they keep their biscuits."
For the second time Price allowed himself to smile a bit. But shortly he began to realize that he was in a new position. He had no idea what he was going to do next. He was exhausted and his brain was moving as sluggish as his body.
"I gotta tell ya mate, I'm bloody tired." He took a bite of the shortbread cookie and it hurt like Hell. "I feel like every second I sit here is borrowed time. The last actual plan I made was to kill Shepard and I was pretty well convinced that was suicide."
Nikolai's expression turned serious. "If Soap makes it (and that is a big 'If') then he will need two or three weeks at least to rest here. So that gives you plenty of time to lay low and plan. Qamar has excellent contacts and will be able to keep you well informed of what is going on." He got up again and went to the refrigerator, and pulled an ice tray out of the freezer compartment. "Now, let's see if we can do something about that swelling face of yours."