Eight hours later, ascending cloud cover and the massive double engines on either side of them, twin rockets blew out the glass on their side of the window.
Lara jolted awake. They had been riding the plane for almost eight hours at that point, and would be overhead of their destination within little time left. The duration, Lara had spent asleep, and as she found out later, little had occurred in her stead. Otacon and Snake went over a map of the area, meet up plans after they landed for retrieval (with both accurately guessing Lara might be better suited to play chauffeur, with Snake staying behind in the rural underbrush, and other concerns that would ultimately have little bearing.
Her first thought, after coming to consciousness, was that they had already crashed. Out of instinct or fear, her initial response had been one of reflection to another, much more severe wreckage in her past, one she had no intent on reliving.
"Snake!" She tried to move to her feet, but found it useless. She unclasped the belt. A minor look towards a window not yet shattered revealed miles of treetop canopy in every direction, and not a road in sight.
Snake was already standing, naked from the waist up, pulling on a form of traditional military camouflage fatigues. The hood of the jeep was a makeshift table, and on it laid out a pair a pair of pistols and two other firearms, his parachute, a bit of technological odd ends, and fatigues she'd brought along. He was slipping on a shirt and jacket matching his pants thrown over an open door to the jeep.
Covering the length of his forehead, she also saw the navy-blue bandanna, wrapped around the length of his head, keeping his hair from his eyes and tattered at one end.
He had a pistol holster strapped to one hip, and after covering his torso, he tossed a harness to Lara. The air whipped his voice from the air, and she had to shout at him to get him to repeat himself. Air pressure was non-existent. "We've got trouble, get this on!"
Lara caught the parachute, stood, and went to him. She began stripping and redressing. The plane's bay rocked and shimmied in its movement. Wisps of her hair stung at her face, and she shivered from the cold before slipping into the longer trousers provided. They had a slightly different camouflage pattern, she noticed, trying not to think of the absurdity of the observation.
Another explosion rocked them, and Snake went end over end to the back of the plane, Otacon just having taken to his feet and forcefully sat back down. The items atop the jeep's hood went flying off to one side, and Lara managed to stay on her feet only by the nature of grabbing hold of its grill in time. "Snake!"
He recovered quickly, pushing off the plane's sidewall, the one housing Otacon's seat and the side with windows still intact. "I'm alright!"
Lara had finished dressing, mercifully, and snapped closed the holsters housing a pistol on either hip. "Hal, why are they shooting at us? Can't we ascend?"
"I don't know, and no, not fast enough." As an exclamation point to end the debate, a shudder ran through the plane, and each shot out an arm to the nearest structure for balance. The explosions, tapered with hardly any space between them, sounded dull, like concussive meshes of sound and force married through fire. "This isn't restricted airspace, there shouldn't even be people in this region, let alone anyone with anti-air missiles!"
Snake had grabbed at Otacon's shoulders, helped him to his feet. "Is this thing armed?" He shouted.
"No!" Otacon jabbed at his glasses in what looked a painful measure, like trying to lodge them onto his nose in anticipation of their being ripped from his face. "We don't have any air-to-air defense, why would we? I didn't expect we'd end up shot down!"
Snake shouted something back at him neither Otacon appear to nor Lara heard. Once Otacon was on his feet steadily, he recovered the items thrown to the floor of the plane, picking up her magnetic grapple and harness. Otacon, meantime, was unstrapping large metal containers, slightly taller than he was, from their canvass straps holding them in place. Otacon shouted over the increasingly terrible waver of air assaulting them in a hideous vacuum. "What did you say? I can't hear you!"
"We're not being shot down!"
Snake had loaded a small, single-round pistol with a barrel almost as thick as her fist.
"Open the bay door!"
Otacon looked at Lara, who finished the meager preparations she could, and went to stand by Snake's side. Snake handed her a pistol, likewise, and examining it, it dawned on her.
It was a flare gun, and a bunch of rounds.
"OTACON! Open the bay doors!"
Otacon stared, slack-jawed, at the both of them.
"Snake, I can't! We'll lose the jeep, the gear, the—"
Lara spun on her heel, knowing he had little understanding and trying to fill in where Snake could not. "Hal, those are heat seeking anti-aircraft missiles!" She waved a handful of flare rounds in her palm. "If we don't divert the attention of those rounds, we're not making it to La Paz, we're not making it off this plane alive!" Still, he looked terrified, confused, even on the verge of mental collapse. She went to him, put a hand on either part of his head, and made eye contact, gently tugging on his chin. "Hal, you have to trust us! Please, open the door!"
He gritted his teeth, nodded, then went to the opposite end of the plane, and punched one of the buttons on a panel. Within just a moment, the violent air that rushed past them almost calmed, the bay's air pressure stabilising, and then the bay's door began its slow descent.
Outside, the sun was waving off its work, beams of waning gold cast on emerald, a mountainside of step-like rock outcroppings in the distance blanketed in the scarf of brilliant viridian.
Within a moment, the view was ruined, as from grassy plains ascended the images of smoke-trailed missiles, metal sharks rising up above the treeline and gearing themselves towards the plane without the slightest hint of pause. They came in as a pair at first, then another volley, as three, then seven.
The two of them were on either side of the plane, each clinging to canvass wall-mounted handholds locked to the wall of the plane. They were continuing to descend, and She had to stiffen every leg in her muscle to maintain the sense she would not be sucked from the plane, either by the force of its new convulsions or the rockets' aggression.
Lara took fire first, aiming her flare out and firing without hesitation, trying to arc her shot as the magnesium burned itself in magnificent crimson hues towards the rockets. They did not divert course, not initially, but after a moment, they began a tilt, then their full attention, to the flares. One rocket's explosion blew out its partner closest, and Snake nailed two more, missiles detonating with malicious ebullience. The force of their explosions were, even at the distance they ignited, cacophonous beyond measure.
"We've been lucky so far!" Snake shouted out to her, voice gruff as it was on the rim of perceptible over the wind's howling.
"You call this lucky?" she shouted back.
"They haven't got a direct hit!" Snake fired another flare.
"Well, we live a charmed life!" Lara shot off another flare to follow his own. A missile collapsed in on itself. "Would you believe this isn't the first plane crash I've been in?"
Behind them, Lara could catch glimpses of Otacon, clad in his own parachute and careful not to be ripped off his feet, moving from place to place as he made the preparations for what she hoped would not be an emergency landing. Although she hadn't seen beyond the plane's rear and periphery, she did not imagine any better terrain ahead than behind for a graceful makeshift runway. She thought she heard Otacon yell about their pilots having parachutes, but couldn't make it all of the sentence.
For a moment, the rockets ceased.
Snake jammed out one hand , pointing to her right. "Lara!"
Initially, she didn't see it. Then, as their view accelerated slightly, she saw the clay-coloured dirt road stretching out from the wall of trees and winding itself a thin but clear path. A jeep not unlike their own careened from the road's mouth into the jungle, and was giving chase after them. It was close enough the men inside were visible.
Snake turned, and ran back to the interior of the plane. Lara turned to follow suit.
"Otacon! We've got to get off this plane!" Snake loosed the straps of the jeep and its locking mechanism. "Lara, the emergency brake!"
Lara climbed inside the jeep's door and pulled loose the break, getting out as quickly as she could. "Why the bloody hell did we give up on shooting it?"
"That manpads down there isn't heat seaking, the flares won't make a difference!" Lara did not quibble about the terminology, and Snake offered no explanation. He ran to the front of the jeep and began pushing it backwards out of the plane, and Lara helped the effort. "We have to dump as much as we can before we go down!
Otacon began trying to shove one of the steel containers, and once the jeep began reversing out of the plane's rear, she ran to help Otacon. "Hal, what about the pilots?" she shouted.
"They're going to bail once we're out!" They both had their back to the container and were using their legs for leverage, Otacon's face growing red with the effort. From the corner of her eye, she first saw and then heard the jeep tumble out into the fading light, the sunset swallowing it as the vehicle's undercarriage scraped audibly before disappearing. Snake joined their efforts, and the three of them moved onto the next once the first had enough momentum to simply slide out.
As Lara attempted a reply, the missile collided with one half of the plane, and it concussed itself a sudden weightlessness to the right side, a lopsided lilt that was immediate in its decay. The engines of the plane were suddenly much louder, and the remaining windows collapsed, the blow louder than any of the previous competition and causing a deafness unlike any comparison, close to visual in its disorienting violence. She bit the side of her mouth, and their efforts to push the other two crates from the plane were now moot. They were launched backwards, and the three of them created a daisy chan as they went rolling to the ground, Lara smashing one femur on the ribbed interior wall and grabbing hold in unison. She felt Otacon grab hold of her, Snake hold of him, and the weight was almost unbearable of the two men until the plane made a semblance of stability and they could regain their footing, however temporarily.
It was remarkably brief, to the point where, upon reaching her heels, she wondered if she had gotten up too fast. The plane began a descent sudden enough to propel them up to the bay's ceiling, and she heard Snake yell for one of them, both of them, she didn't know or care. There was only the disorientation that made any form of consistency.
Lara made an attempt at her feet in the limited window of opportunity that followed. If it was training, experience or agility, it made no difference, but Lara managed her footing first, and raced to either of them, still struggling to a type of balance. It was Otacon who had the hardest time of it, having to cling to the sides of the interior like a drunk man. His glasses were gone. His mouth ran blood from one corner of his mouth, and his teeth in a moribund grimace every time he took a step towards the mouth of the plane.
"Lara!" She heard Snake on his second attempt, and when she turned, she saw him reach a hand out to her.
She took it, felt the strength behind his palm.
"I'm going to jump! Grab Otacon!" Snake gave her hand a squeeze, then let go.
Initially, she didn't understand why he had not simply taken the scientist himself, until seeing the ragged cut alongst one strap of his harness, cutting a swatch across not just his harness but his flak jacket, his chest.
Before she could protest, she watched the determination in his face harden like ice, and he sprinted up the ever-slanting bay and leapt from view.
Lara turned to Otacon, wrapped her arm around his, and dove from the plane.