By Virtual HiT MaN
hitman@evilemail.com
Chapter One: Incipience
Part Two
***
What hell the past week had been for the combat-starved Agent Decker. He arrived in the small town and assumed command over the meager police force, sending them to keep the peace and keep their eyes open for any strange happenings. Meanwhile, he sat in the police station all day, emerging only for food and a breath of fresh air, reading over the files of everybody in the town. Only two dozen had criminal records, and none of them were even felonies. He knew this wasn't some local man who didn't like the mayor and the police chief. He knew command knew that wasn't the case. Decker sat for hours wondering what was really going on. Something big must have been happening in that facility in the mountains. Every few days a couple people from another agency would drop by for a status report. Decker had never seen them before, and they never really did present any clear form of identification. They claimed they were outside consultants. Colonel Reid confirmed this funny story, so he gave them the information they wanted to know and after that they vanished. Only a few more files to go through, then he could take a breather and scope out the town for himself. There had to be something going on: before he left the base they injected him full of nanomachines, issued him a Codec device and personal frequency, and had him pack up a smart-skin skull suit 'just in case.'
***
The dreary and foggy day dragged on for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, the sun sank down beneath the mountains and the moon pulled itself up into the middle of the sky. Two dark figures stood atop a hill overlooking a barren stretch of road in the middle of a frozen snowfield. A few US Army marked jeeps sat barricading the road and a group of four soldiers stood around, clenching their icy weapons, most likely freezing their asses off. The two figures watched these men wander around on patrol through pairs of binoculars, every once in a while pulling them from their faces to wipe the foggy lenses off with their gloved hands. The thunderheads had begun to build up a little over an hour ago, preparing to release another frosty barrage of snow and hail. Perfect cover. The figures observed a few snow drifts where they could make their approaches from, out of the soldiers' sights. Slowly, the snow began to fall to the ground in light little clumps. One figure slipped his binoculars into a pocket of his combat suit and turned to the other who still scouted ahead. "Liquid," one figure spoke. The second figure let his binoculars rest on his chest and turned, saying, "Ready?" The other figure nodded in confirmation, and with that they dashed down the hill, one going left, the other going right. Leaping gracefully forward into the air, they came sliding behind the snow drifts that surrounded the road on either side. Weaving in and out from drift to drift, they slowly approached the Army jeeps from the sides. The soldiers stood around, oblivious, one smoking a cigarette, the others wiping the frost from their rifles. Quickly and quietly, the two figures leapt out from behind the jeeps and snapped two soldiers' necks, gently setting them down in the snow and removing their rifles from their tight grips. The other two soldiers simply stood and looked around ahead, not hearing a sound. With no warning the shadowy figures synchronously struck them in the bases of their necks with the rifles and sent them to the ground face first. The figures quickly propped the soldiers up against their jeeps in various stages of standing and sitting, and bolted off in the misty snow towards the mountains, dashing down the road, their boots cracking the ice. Never once did either of them slip, the bottoms of their combat boots were specially fitted for treading over icy grounds. A few silent minutes passed as the two man team dashed the rest of the way up to the next Army outpost, this one only feet away from the hidden entrance to the Granite Hill facility. The team slid around behind the snow drifts, and repeated their silent soldier neutralization method once more. One of the men slid into the small security station at the base of the mountain, and pressed a few buttons on the control panel inside. Slowly, the large door to the facility slid open, creaking and groaning as snow flew around it. The man inside the station tapped on a few more buttons, and the door began to close, only partially open in the first place. Both figures stealthily slid underneath the heavy metal door as it slammed shut. They were in.
***
Solid Snake sat in his warm den at his computer desk, quietly reading a few dossier files on upcoming mercenary jobs he could have a few of his men embark upon. Setting the files down and puffing on a cigarette, he quietly typed in an address and checked his e-mail. Noticing a new message, he clicked the document and opened it up. It was addressed to him from a person named H, the message reading, "I think you know who this is. Close this account immediately it is being monitored. I'm coming to see you, we have things to discuss. - H." Snake raised an eyebrow, and closed the mail program immediately. So, FAST was trying to track his e-mail? Hal was always a reliable source, with information he knew he could trust. He wondered when he would arrive as he tapped the cigarette against the ash tray, a few burning embers drifting down into it.
***
The warm, palely lit room stretched out vastly ahead of the two men as they
slowly crept through rows of supercomputers, each humming monotonously and emitting
all kinds of heat, despite the intense system of cooling ducts which pumped
cold air into the room round the clock to control the room temperature.
"This is the information archive," one of the figures whispered as
they cautiously stepped from terminal to terminal. "Each supercomputer
has its own console for direct data deposit and extraction," the man whispered
again in a German accent, setting down a small bag of tools next to one of the
terminals. "This is the one," he said, picking up a disk from his
pack and sliding it into the terminal's drive. "Each terminal has a ten
digit pass code on it which is changed every twenty-four hours," the Germanic
figure said, typing in a few numbers and letters.
"And thanks to our generous benefactor, we have the code for this terminal,"
the other man said, smiling as the pale glow of the monitor splashed against
his face.
"Here it is," the other man said. "The encrypted documents containing
the exercise and construction information on the Metal Gear prototype."
He copied several encrypted files from the terminal onto his disk. As the last
one finished, he slid the disk out and stuffed it into the bag. "Come on,
let's get out of here. Each terminal is monitored all day long. They probably
already know it is being used. There's a ventilation shaft over there, we can
slip into it and find an escape route from there," the German man spoke,
grabbing his bag.
"Good call Hornet," the other man said, following the first towards
the vent shaft and pulling out a screwdriver to open it up.
***
Somewhere in the Fox Archipelago, Alaska - One day later
***
Snake greeted his old accomplice warmly, letting him brush the snow off of
his jacket and inviting him in to sit by the fire. Hal Emmerich had never been
so glad to see a fireplace in his life.
"Boy Snake, I don't know how you can survive out here," he spoke,
shivering and rubbing his hands together. Snake hung Hal's icy jacket on the
coat wrack, and sat down on the chair across from him.
"I've gotten used to it. Hell I don't even need any anti-freezing peptide
any more."
Hal grinned, pulling his heavy bag over and sliding out a laptop. "We've
got some action going on," Emmerich said as the white loading screen's
light bounced off of his thin glasses. "Did you close that e-mail account?"
Snake nodded.
"FAST has been monitoring the net a lot lately. Suddenly there was a surge
in their activities. Something's going down."
Snake hunched over to look at the laptop's screen as Emmerich tapped on a few
keys.
"Did you hear about the Pentagon hacker a while back?"
Snake nodded, "Yeah. Got linked to you, didn't it?"
Emmerich's eyes remained fastened to the screen, "Yes, it did. But"
he trailed off or a second.
"But?" Snake looked at him.
"I didn't pull that job," Emmerich still stared as his laptop. "And
there's only one or two other people in the world that could have. So, I dug
up some information; some bad information."
Snake peered at the screen as a report appeared, a man's face profiled on one
side.
"This is Hans Kimmle, a German hacker."
According to the report he was in his mid-thirties. He had a pale complexion,
one of a man who never sees the sunlight very often. His eyes were pale azure,
probably suffering after so many years of staring into a glowing monitor. He
had thick, scraggly dirty blonde hair, that of a man who never tends to his
looks, a man who never needs to go out in public. He was a fearful shut in.
Snake could read his personality just from looking at his photograph. He hid
behind a computer all of his life, because he was afraid. Snake could see this,
because it was what he once saw in Otacon's eyes. Breaking a few electronic
laws was no way to prove his bravery, but he did it nonetheless. For profit.
To sustain his meager body and to continue his meaningless existence. Snake
disdained him already.
"He's one of the best hackers in the world. He was the one who cracked
the Pentagon database and stole that information. He's a former FOXHOUND computer
operator as a matter of fact. Code named Cyber Hornet. A few months after he
was relieved of duty, he moved out to Germany for a while, but then disappeared
somewhere in Russia. He was recruited into a secret Russian army called the
Spetsnaz."
Snake looked up, "Spetsnaz? The Russian GRU's intelligence army, right?"
Emmerich nodded his head, "Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the end of the Cold War, Russia maintained their secret intelligence organization
and placed it under the GRU's authority. The number of men operating within
the Spetsnaz is still a mystery. Their leader is a Colonel Sergei Gurlukovich,
a hardened war veteran. He's apparently trying to re-invent Russia, bring the
USSR back and put it in power."
Snake rubbed his chin, quickly falling into an endless void of fragmented memories,
"Gurlukovich? I've heard that name before"
"Shadow Moses Island," Emmerich derailed Snake's train of thought.
"Gurlukovich's Spetsnaz were allied with Liquid and his crew. They gave
Liquid that Hind D gunship and most of the weapons they used as a down payment
for the delivery of the new nuclear weapon Rivermore National Labs created.
All of their communications data was stored in the computers they used. After
I hacked into their systems, I made a copy of all the data on the machines using
a few disks I had left over from my old lab."
Snake closed his eyes, "You think Liquid and Ocelot, or the Spetsnaz, have
something to do with that hacking?"
Emmerich shook his head, "There's more. A couple of people got murdered
in a town in Colorado, not far from a government installation built within a
mountain. I didn't think much of it when it came up while I was browsing around
a few secure lines on the net, but I took notice to it when it came up again
a few times a bit later. They sent a FOXHOUND operative down there, and FAST
has been monitoring that town and that base with very keen eyes. Not many people
know of this, but just a few hours ago there was a break-in at the facility.
Some very sensitive data was stolen, but I couldn't figure out what it was.
Very important data from what I can tell. Professional job. I'm sure this has
something to do with Spetsnaz and Kimmle. FAST has been going nuts over the
past ten hours. Liquid and Ocelot must be involved as well."
Snake shook his head. "Great," he sighed, "find out more about
this base. What's in it? What could be there that they would want to steal?"
Emmerich nodded, "I've been looking for a while but none of my sources
have turned up anything yet. All we can do is wait."
***
Location Unknown: Somewhere in Nevada
***
"RNL employee ID retinal scan confirmed. You are cleared to enter." A man removed his face from the retinal scanner, picked up his briefcase, and stepped through the doorway as the metal door retracted into the wall. Through the bars of a small ventilation shaft, the man could be seen walking down a long sterile looking hallway before the door shut swiftly behind him. Crawling further down the ventilation duct and hanging a left where the duct split, the man could be viewed holding up a personal area network card in front of another metal door. The door slid open, and the man stepped through, placing the card in his pocket. After wiggling out of the duct system, crawling into a small maintenance access tunnel, and again peeking out from a small vent opening, the man could be seen descending a set of stairs and bearing left down another hallway. Climbing down a ladder within the maintenance tunnel and peering through the one way mirrored window in the tunnel's access door, the man could be witnessed strolling into a small conference room and setting his briefcase down at the foot of the table, the door to the room clicking shut behind him. Again venturing into the vast network of cooling and heating ducts would lead to the conference room where the man pulled a few notes out of his briefcase and passed them to a pair of gentlemen already within the room. The secret operative hidden within the ventilation shaft silently spied on their conversation with a tiny directional microphone.
Looking down at a small report and a few graphs, a husky gentleman in a smoky
gray suit chortled, "Well, everything seems to be in order. All VR testing
results have come back and they're all successful trials."
The man who had been spied on during his entrance to the conference room added,
"Yes everything checks out. We can continue to phase two at any time."
"That dreadful business on Shadow Moses really set this project back a
while," the husky man sighed.
"Yes well we won't be making the same mistakes twice. The government did
a damn good job of covering up the incident. We could have run into a lot of
trouble from the UN."
A third man wearing a black suit who sat at the far end of the table smiled,
"Very good gentlemen. I'll take these reports down to communications immediately
and have them sent out as soon as possible. Ah, I'll need the data disk as well
Jenkins."
Jenkins passed the disk to the husky man in the gray suit who sat at the middle
of the table, and he passed it to the man in the black suit, who immediately
pocketed the disk for safe keeping and gathered all of the files in a manila
folder. "Congratulations. Jenkins, you can have your team leaders relay
the message that all the engineers and scientists can have a week off. After
that, we will most likely start working on the automated assembly line and begin
mass production."
The three men exchanged smiles and handshakes before leaving the conference
room. The hidden fourth-party switched off his directional microphone, and pressed
his hand to his ear, contacting his commanding officer with his Codec device.
"This is Falcon, do you read me?" The mysterious figure within the
ventilation shaft spoke into his Codec.
"I read you Falcon, what do you have to report?" a heavy Russian accented
voice responded.
"It's just as you said, they've completed the device and are ready for
mass production," Falcon reported.
"Very good then," the Russian voice said approvingly. "How is
security?"
"Tight," Falcon quickly responded. "Retinal scans, PAN cards,
access codes."
"Can you handle it?" the Russian voice questioned.
"I think so. The access tunnels seem to stretch all around the base. They're
probably installing new devices and laying fiber-optics year-round. I shouldn't
have much trouble disabling the security from there."
"Alright. Disable their security grid, I'll have a helicopter standing
by. Contact me when you are ready."
"Copy. Falcon out."
Terminating the connection, the enigmatic man known as Falcon crawled out of
the heating duct and began to explore the access tunnel system, navigating his
way around with his unlicensed Soliton radar device and following the marked
fiber optic wiring along the wall.
***