Prologue:
12:02pm 11 May, 2001...Somewhere Near the Nebraska/Wyoming Border
Solid Snake stared out at the bland Nebraska countryside as it zoomed by along Interstate 80. He was currently sitting in the pasenger seat of a black Linclon Navigator, as Otacon drove. They soon would be across the Wyoming border and on their way to a town called Rawlins.
"So tell me Hal," Snake never called Otacon by his codename away from operational situations, "why we are all the way out here in Wyoming?"
"For the same reason we just got done in New York, we have a tip on a new type of Metal Gear."
Snake chuckled, "Isn't this always the way. I wonder what kind of a stink we are going to dig up now. If it's true this will be, what five of these things you and I have tangled with."
"From Rex to Arsenal," Otacon surmised. "That and your side project."
"It's more than a side-project Hal. I promised Raiden I would find Olga Gurlukovich's child. I am going to get him away from the Patriots, and when I do I'm going to find Jack and tell him. He and Rose are going to have a baby, he doesn't need to be living under that extra pressure." Snake reached into the back seat for a laptop computer that had been stashed there. He flipped it open and turned it on. "Where did you put that stuff you downloaded last night?"
"In the folder called 'Patriots'. I got tired of you digging around in my personal files trying to find it, so I started a new file for you," Otacon said.
"Thanks," Snake quieted down as he stared into the screen, reading the seemingly endless ammount of data Otacon had delved up on the Patriots. The Patriots have supposedly been around since just before the Industrail Revolution. Raiden had learned of them during the Big Shell incident, and he had told Snake all about them over the Codec. Apparently they were a council of 12 men who ran the country, and have been doing it for over a century. Snake had managed to get a disk out of Arsenal Gear that was supposed to contain the names of the Patriots, but, when Otacon analyzed the disk, all he found were 12 names of men who had died around the turn of the 20th century.
Ever since then he and Otacon (well mostly Otacon) have been digging deeper into the mystery, and the search had merited some strange results. All 12 names on the disk were those of immigrant workers, all either Irish or Italian. All 12 men lived in Pittsburgh, and had worked for Andrew Carniege, the steel magnate who was insturmental in the establishment of the American library system. All 12 men listed were killed when the steel mill they were working at burned to the ground, and amazingly enough they were the only people killed in the blaze. None of them left any family behind. None of the bodies were recovered. Aside from that, there was not much record of them. There was a record of their registry at Ellis Island, and the usual documentation in Pittsburgh. There's an old front-page newspaper article about the fire, and a sub-sequent letter to the editor from Carnegie himself addressing the tragedy. Lastly there was a memorial to the 12 men in a Pittsburgh cemetary, and natrually the 12 death certificates were on file. Snake and Otacon had no idea what that all meant, but they knew it couldn't have been coincedental.
6:20pm...Rawlins, Wyoming
Snake and Otacon settled in to a small house on Daley Street in Rawlins, Wyoming. The street was near the outside of town, and connected directly to the Interstate. Philanthropy, the Anti-Metal Gear organization that the pair worked for, had pulled a few strings and gotten them access to the place for a month. Their field operation rarely took that long, but it was always better to err on the side of caution. The had spent the last hour or so unloading the SUV, settling into their rooms, and setting up the four PC's and two laptops that Otacon used frequently. It was unseasonably cold for mid-May, 26 degrees with light snowfall. Snake had remarked about the weather to the girl working the counter at the Subway he had visited to get dinner, she had simple smiled and told him that such weather was fairly common for Wyoming. He sat on a couch, eating his Cold Cut Trio and watching the news, when Otacon came into the room.
"Okay Snake, I'm hooked up and I logged in to the Philanthropy network," he announced. "Didja get my Club?" Snake motioned to a small table in front of the couch. Otacon took a seat nearby, muted the sound, and unwrapped his sandwich. "I've read the briefing."
"Well, what's the story," Snake asked.
"Okay, about 117 miles North of here is the city of Casper. It's connected to Rawlins by a little winding stretch of two-way highway, Highway 287. About halfway is Independence Rock," Otacon paused to take a bite of his sandwich. "It was a popular stop along the Oregon Trail, where travelers often carved their name in the sandstone before moving on. It's a historic landmark, but it also serves as a refernece point. About 10 kilometers West of Independence Rock there's a huge power station. A transfer grid, where a bunch of lines from all directions and states meet, and are monitored. Out here they're probably checked once a month, unless there is a problem, and one of the alarm goes off back in Casper at the power company's office."
"Gee, thanks for the geography lesson," Snake began, "but when are you going to come to the point?"
"Okay, okay...I was coming to that," Otacon sounded annoyed, but soon dismissed it. Snake never did like his anticdotes. "Anyway, this transfer station is actually a front."
"You mean, it's not really a transfer station?"
"No. It used to be the largest underground nuclear missle base in the world," Otacon replied.
"In Wyoming," Snake sounded highly skeptical. "Why would they build it in Wyoming?"
"Well for one it's centrally located. When you consider that the average ICBM (Inter-Continental Balistic Missle -Author's note) can travel around the world 1.5 times once it's in space, it doesn't really matter where you have your missle base, but, with it being in the center of the Continental US, it's at an optimal point for land or air defense."
"And you can't get to it from the sea," Snake added.
"Right," Otacon consented.
"So you already eliminate one medium of attack," Snake said.
"Also, you don't have a lot of people out here to snoop around," Otacon added. "Wyoming has the smallest population of any state, just a little under 494,000 in the last Census, it also covers 98,000 square miles, making the population density about 5 people per square mile. Only Alaska's is smaller; 1.2 people per square mile. The economy is mostly agrarian and mineral resource..."
"...farmers and miners," Snake deduced. "People who aren't typically nosy. They usually do their jobs and keep to themselves."
"Precisely!'
"I suppose when you look at it that way, it makes perfect sense to build a nuclear base out here," Snake said. "So where does Metal Gear tie in to this?"
"Well, since the Cold War ended the US, along with other nuclear powers has been gradually scaling back their atomic arsenal," Otacon began. "This base was cut in early 2000. However, sattelite photos have shown that there still is a steady flow of traffic in and out of the facility daily."
"Let me guess, the heads of Philanthropy think that the base is now being used," Snake stopped, giving a faux dramatic pause, "to develop..."
Both men finished the statment in disgusted mockery, "A new type of Metal Gear."
"Yep," Otacon laughed. "So the question is when do you want to go in?"
"How soon can you be ready," Snake asked.
"Tomorrow at noon."
"Okay," Snaked paused to calculate. "I want to go in tomorrow at sunset."
12:02pm 11 May, 2001...Somewhere Near the Nebraska/Wyoming Border
Solid Snake stared out at the bland Nebraska countryside as it zoomed by along Interstate 80. He was currently sitting in the pasenger seat of a black Linclon Navigator, as Otacon drove. They soon would be across the Wyoming border and on their way to a town called Rawlins.
"So tell me Hal," Snake never called Otacon by his codename away from operational situations, "why we are all the way out here in Wyoming?"
"For the same reason we just got done in New York, we have a tip on a new type of Metal Gear."
Snake chuckled, "Isn't this always the way. I wonder what kind of a stink we are going to dig up now. If it's true this will be, what five of these things you and I have tangled with."
"From Rex to Arsenal," Otacon surmised. "That and your side project."
"It's more than a side-project Hal. I promised Raiden I would find Olga Gurlukovich's child. I am going to get him away from the Patriots, and when I do I'm going to find Jack and tell him. He and Rose are going to have a baby, he doesn't need to be living under that extra pressure." Snake reached into the back seat for a laptop computer that had been stashed there. He flipped it open and turned it on. "Where did you put that stuff you downloaded last night?"
"In the folder called 'Patriots'. I got tired of you digging around in my personal files trying to find it, so I started a new file for you," Otacon said.
"Thanks," Snake quieted down as he stared into the screen, reading the seemingly endless ammount of data Otacon had delved up on the Patriots. The Patriots have supposedly been around since just before the Industrail Revolution. Raiden had learned of them during the Big Shell incident, and he had told Snake all about them over the Codec. Apparently they were a council of 12 men who ran the country, and have been doing it for over a century. Snake had managed to get a disk out of Arsenal Gear that was supposed to contain the names of the Patriots, but, when Otacon analyzed the disk, all he found were 12 names of men who had died around the turn of the 20th century.
Ever since then he and Otacon (well mostly Otacon) have been digging deeper into the mystery, and the search had merited some strange results. All 12 names on the disk were those of immigrant workers, all either Irish or Italian. All 12 men lived in Pittsburgh, and had worked for Andrew Carniege, the steel magnate who was insturmental in the establishment of the American library system. All 12 men listed were killed when the steel mill they were working at burned to the ground, and amazingly enough they were the only people killed in the blaze. None of them left any family behind. None of the bodies were recovered. Aside from that, there was not much record of them. There was a record of their registry at Ellis Island, and the usual documentation in Pittsburgh. There's an old front-page newspaper article about the fire, and a sub-sequent letter to the editor from Carnegie himself addressing the tragedy. Lastly there was a memorial to the 12 men in a Pittsburgh cemetary, and natrually the 12 death certificates were on file. Snake and Otacon had no idea what that all meant, but they knew it couldn't have been coincedental.
6:20pm...Rawlins, Wyoming
Snake and Otacon settled in to a small house on Daley Street in Rawlins, Wyoming. The street was near the outside of town, and connected directly to the Interstate. Philanthropy, the Anti-Metal Gear organization that the pair worked for, had pulled a few strings and gotten them access to the place for a month. Their field operation rarely took that long, but it was always better to err on the side of caution. The had spent the last hour or so unloading the SUV, settling into their rooms, and setting up the four PC's and two laptops that Otacon used frequently. It was unseasonably cold for mid-May, 26 degrees with light snowfall. Snake had remarked about the weather to the girl working the counter at the Subway he had visited to get dinner, she had simple smiled and told him that such weather was fairly common for Wyoming. He sat on a couch, eating his Cold Cut Trio and watching the news, when Otacon came into the room.
"Okay Snake, I'm hooked up and I logged in to the Philanthropy network," he announced. "Didja get my Club?" Snake motioned to a small table in front of the couch. Otacon took a seat nearby, muted the sound, and unwrapped his sandwich. "I've read the briefing."
"Well, what's the story," Snake asked.
"Okay, about 117 miles North of here is the city of Casper. It's connected to Rawlins by a little winding stretch of two-way highway, Highway 287. About halfway is Independence Rock," Otacon paused to take a bite of his sandwich. "It was a popular stop along the Oregon Trail, where travelers often carved their name in the sandstone before moving on. It's a historic landmark, but it also serves as a refernece point. About 10 kilometers West of Independence Rock there's a huge power station. A transfer grid, where a bunch of lines from all directions and states meet, and are monitored. Out here they're probably checked once a month, unless there is a problem, and one of the alarm goes off back in Casper at the power company's office."
"Gee, thanks for the geography lesson," Snake began, "but when are you going to come to the point?"
"Okay, okay...I was coming to that," Otacon sounded annoyed, but soon dismissed it. Snake never did like his anticdotes. "Anyway, this transfer station is actually a front."
"You mean, it's not really a transfer station?"
"No. It used to be the largest underground nuclear missle base in the world," Otacon replied.
"In Wyoming," Snake sounded highly skeptical. "Why would they build it in Wyoming?"
"Well for one it's centrally located. When you consider that the average ICBM (Inter-Continental Balistic Missle -Author's note) can travel around the world 1.5 times once it's in space, it doesn't really matter where you have your missle base, but, with it being in the center of the Continental US, it's at an optimal point for land or air defense."
"And you can't get to it from the sea," Snake added.
"Right," Otacon consented.
"So you already eliminate one medium of attack," Snake said.
"Also, you don't have a lot of people out here to snoop around," Otacon added. "Wyoming has the smallest population of any state, just a little under 494,000 in the last Census, it also covers 98,000 square miles, making the population density about 5 people per square mile. Only Alaska's is smaller; 1.2 people per square mile. The economy is mostly agrarian and mineral resource..."
"...farmers and miners," Snake deduced. "People who aren't typically nosy. They usually do their jobs and keep to themselves."
"Precisely!'
"I suppose when you look at it that way, it makes perfect sense to build a nuclear base out here," Snake said. "So where does Metal Gear tie in to this?"
"Well, since the Cold War ended the US, along with other nuclear powers has been gradually scaling back their atomic arsenal," Otacon began. "This base was cut in early 2000. However, sattelite photos have shown that there still is a steady flow of traffic in and out of the facility daily."
"Let me guess, the heads of Philanthropy think that the base is now being used," Snake stopped, giving a faux dramatic pause, "to develop..."
Both men finished the statment in disgusted mockery, "A new type of Metal Gear."
"Yep," Otacon laughed. "So the question is when do you want to go in?"
"How soon can you be ready," Snake asked.
"Tomorrow at noon."
"Okay," Snaked paused to calculate. "I want to go in tomorrow at sunset."