The Road to Outer Heaven
Chapter 9: Suhn and Steele
By, Frank Hunter

The elevator reached B1 quickly and thankfully no one got on, but it took almost a full minute to reach B2. The ride was silent; Fox stared straight into the closed doors and Snake knew better than to try and draw up meaningless conversation if it hadn't been provoked. But he was unsure about why the ride took so long, and a little anxious to feel the elevator slow to a stop. When it finally did and the doors slid to the sides, he understood.

The soldier they'd interrogated hadn't been exaggerating; B2 was a full sized and fully functional underground hangar. Snake stepped off the car and looked around in awe, and for what was seemingly the first time of the night, Fox looked unsure of himself. The entire hangar seemed to be an enormous construction project, and right in the middle, between the stacks of girders and tools, metal sheets and boxes upon boxes of ammunition, stood two gigantic metal feet. These feet, though not yet connected to any body the soldiers could see, still managed to tower over them on their own.

"What…what the hell are they building?" Snake asked and Fox just cut a hand in front of his throat in an irritated "silence" gesture. According to Mark, the base's commander was residing somewhere on this level, and there was no need to alert him to their presence.

Striding further into the hangar, the two men began to examine the construction materials. Most of it was solid metal, and looked like it would be molded into armor plating. Snake had seen similar armor attached to tanks out in the field. The ammunition also implied that this room might actually be an underground tank hangar, but then there were those feet; feet which could only belong to a monster but did not seem to yet support him. They did not know what to make of those, since neither of the men had seen anything like it before.

Getting a little lost in the maze of girders and steel, Snake stumbled onto something else that made his heart stop. Fighting the urge to yell for Fox, he went back through a couple of the twists and turns he had taken, found his mentor, and gestured for him to follow back to what he was looking at. Upon catching a glimpse, Fox's eyes went wide and Snake felt that, if he was inclined to speak, he would have found himself without words.

The warheads which lay on the platform Snake found were enormous and not standard military equipment by any stretch of the imagination. Though the writing on their exteriors was in Russian, there was no doubt in either of the men's minds what they were. Those warheads were nuclear. And there were six of them. Snake again fought off the urge to ask what would probably be a fruitless question.

Just then a loud slam echoed through the hangar, and a small light clicked on, on the opposite side of the room. Fox collected himself with some effort, and gestured to Snake to follow him swiftly and quietly away from the nuclear warheads, back past the mammoth feet, and toward the new sound and light source. As they drew closer, whispered voices could be heard, and turning a few more corners around metal girders and boxes of springs and gears, they saw the source of the sound. It was the base commander and his bodyguard. Both were huddled over a table, both with their backs to the two soldiers. On the table was a long piece of equipment that Snake could not quite discern between their two forms, and a number of scattered papers. The blueprints…

Fox led them just outside of their cover, drawing his Z88, taking aim and prompting Snake to do the same. Waiting just a moment once both of them had the commander in their sights, he spoke his first words since entering the elevator.

"Don't move."

Commander Steele did not so much as flinch, but his bodyguard, quick as lightning, drew her own pistol and trained it on Gray Fox. The two men cocked their weapons in return.

"What exactly do you think you're doing down here?" Steele asked them.

"That dossier there," Fox replied, in control of the situation as completely as Snake had come to expect from him. "Turn it over to me."

The commander chuckled a bit. "More mercenaries from Outer Heaven are you?" He turned around to face the two men. Snake tightened the grip on his pistol but Fox didn't seem phased by the motion at all. "Are you even aware of what your leaders would do with Metal Gear were it still in their possession?"

Thoughts of the nuclear explosives in such close proximity to them came to Snake in an instant. "And you think you're more capable of handling a weapon like that?" Fox asked. Snake knew that he still had no real comprehension of what this "Metal Gear" thing was, but Fox seemed all too willing to play the commander's game.

"We don't need to handle it, son, we are in possession of these plans," he patted the desk behind him, "for our own safety, and that reason alone. We have them so Outer Heaven does not."

"Hah," Snake let out a small laugh. "You expect us to believe you're afraid of an island nation as small as Outer Heaven?"

Steele regarded Snake with a look of frustration and confusion. "Perhaps you didn't hear me. We are not afraid of the nation, boy, we are afraid of their weapon…of that." He pointed behind them, but neither man turned around or even moved their crosshairs from the target in front of them. The bodyguard, Suhn, would not risk pulling the trigger on one of the two while both still had their sights set on her commander. She knew it would be too difficult to take them both out quickly enough without losing him.

"We are building it," Steele continued, "to counter the threat that Outer Heaven is posing to the future, not just of our great nation but to all nations of the world."

"This nation isn't yours anymore," Fox told him. "Your bigoted party was ousted from power, you don't have this responsibility."

"Bigoted?" Steele both seemed to ask and muse. "You think this is about the squabbles the NP has had with South Africa's current leadership, don't you?" Steele seemed to have put it together, and Snake raised an eyebrow. That's exactly what Big Boss had told them it was about. But now, being faced with the situation as it was, that did not seem to be the case. The commander did not seem to be an irrational maniac. "This is beyond such petty infighting," he said.

"What do you mean when you say 'threatening the world,'" Fox asked.

"You really are mercenaries, aren't you? Doing the dirty work for your employer but not even being told why. Trust me when I say this, son: you do not want to return these plans to your bosses."

"We will carry out the job that was assigned to us," Fox told the commander, still keeping the fact that they were actually employed by the United States a secret, "and you will give us that file."

"No, boy. I will not hand the world to Outer Heaven on a platter because some soldier-for-hire needs to prove how big his dick is." He looked at Suhn. "Take the blueprints back to the safe."

Snake thought he saw the faintest smirk cross the girl's face just before she opened fire on the two of them. Her first shot was a deliberate miss, aimed directly between Snake and Fox so that both of them would be thrown off guard. The following shots were better aimed and forced the soldiers into a retreat behind the mess of girders and pipes which filled the room. When her clip was empty, Suhn threw the pistol to the floor, scooped the folder and blueprints up off the desk into a hastily collected pile under her right arm. In an instant she took off at a sprint down a corridor off to the side of the desk. Fox was right on her heals, moving at a speed that Snake could barely fathom. He yelled back to the rookie only two words before he disappeared down the same corridor. "Watch him!"

Snake was only just recovering from Suhn's attack as Fox's superior reflexes carried him down the hallway. Stepping out from behind his cover he attempted to level his pistol at the commander again, but was met with a great surprise. Steele had taken this opportunity to pick up the piece of equipment that had been hidden behind him on the table, and now Snake saw clearly what it was. It was an RPG-7 rocket launcher, and it was being pointed right in his direction.

"Watch this," Steele taunted him, and grinned as he fired the weapon. Oh hell, Snake thought, and took a dive to the ground back behind the shelf which had given him cover before. The rocket slammed into it, scattered metal parts everywhere pelting Snake with little bits of shrapnel, and caused the heavy fixture to begin to tip over. Snake noticed the falling equipment with just enough time to roll out of the way. He caught a glimpse of the commander reloading the weapon through the settling dust and smoke, and jumped behind a new shelf to hide himself from view.

"I gave you a chance to let it go," Steele yelled to him. "You should have taken it. I would sooner destroy all of this than let you take it back to Outer Heaven."

He began an advance into the maze of girders and armor, and Snake began a retreat back toward the giant metal feet.