Undisclosed safe house

Presumably somewhere in Russia

One day after the events of the Estate

Lt. Simon "Ghost" Riley

"Well, that's just great..." I remarked, throwing the piece of paper into the nearby fireplace before staring into it for a few seconds.

"What?" Archer asked. He was sitting in the corner, cleaning his rifle, his ghillie suit in storage for the moment

Without the ghillie suit, Archer wore standard clothes and vest of the Task Force, except in green instead of blue like him. The man's head was shaved clean, and he was generally smiling despite the situation.

"This letter is useless. It's just another casualty report of the Estate, this time without our names." I replied, picking up my cigarette out of the ashtray next to me. It was already filled with cigarettes from either me or Helo, who also smoked, and this one was surely fill it up enough that we'd have to empty it soon.

"Well, that's not new. It took them two days to realize we hadn't died, right? That just means they're slower than we thought." Archer replied.

"It also means that they'll be labeling us as outlaws soon, just like Soap and Price." I'd reverted to calling MacTavish Soap again.

"At least we know they're alive." Roach interrupted. He'd been sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, staring at a picture of I didn't know what.

"But for how long?" I asked. Those two could handle themselves, but they were out there alone. Given, they were with Nikolai, but that was all they had at the moment.

"If I know MacTavish, He'll find a way." Roach commented, standing up and pocketing the photo. I still wondered what it was, but I didn't ask.

Blowing smoke, I turned to Roach and Archer, and asked, "So, what's the plan now? Shepherd tried to kill us, Makarov is probably where Tavish went, and we have no leads to anywhere else."

"That boneyard... What did they say about it? Shepherd and Makarov's forces would be fighting each other and they would slip in during the fight?" Roach was on to something.

"That was a day ago, Roach. That place is probably rubble by now, or at least littered with bodies." Archer answered, shaking his head.

"It's the only lead we've got, and what are we supposed to do? Sit here while MacTavish and Price end this by themselves? Hell, as far as they know, we're dead..." Roach replied. I saw his point. We were sitting here deciding what to do, and Price and Soap were probably with Nikolai, about to kill Makarov or Shepherd.

"If you think that's our only option, they why the hell not? I'll get Crown and Toad, we'll go in half an hour." Archer ended it right there, standing up and walking out of the room.

"This will lead to nothing, you know. Those two are already gone from there, hell they may be killing Makarov now." I said to Roach.

"Maybe, but would you rather not do shit and speculate on what would have happened if we didn't go?" Roach answered.

"The only thing we can do now is go there..." I replied.

"The only easy day truly was yesterday, wasn't it?" Roach asked.

"Got that right..." I replied, blowing smoke towards him and flicking the cigarette into the ashtray.

Boneyard

1 Hour later. 1404/2:04 P.M.

Lt. Simon "Ghost" Riley

Search for Price and Soap

"Fuck... This really was a massacre." Toad commented.

I, Roach, Toad, Crown, and Archer had rappelled down from the helicopter and down into the boneyard, where we'd found loads of bodies waiting for us from both sides, not the garb of Price or Soap.

"At least those two aren't anywhere in it..." Roach commented, moving forward slowly.

For all we knew, there were clean-up teams sweeping the area. I'd seen the use of Juggernaut armor in some places, mainly the way a man I'd stepped on was wearing it, an M60 underneath him with a Thumper on his back.

"Juggernaut armor? How do we tell which side has this? I've never seen Shepherd of Makarov use them..." Crown commented, checking the armor.

"Forget it, we're here for Soap and Price..." I said, moving forward to catch up to Roach.

We continued in that line for a while, Roach and I in front, Crown in the middle, Toad and Archer on rear security.

I was carrying an M4A1 with a red dot sight for no particular reason. I'd assumed we'd meet minimal hostility and just grabbed the nearest weapon.

"Halt." I suddenly said.

"See the wire too?" Roach asked. I nodded and slowly moved over to it.

"Damn, it's motion controlled, have to blow it or go around." I said. The wire came with sensors above and below it as well, so we couldn't go over or under it.

I moved back and shot it, covering my face as dirt blew up at Roach and me.

"Clear, let's go." Roach said, moving forward again.

In a few minutes, we reached an an airstrip of some kind, where it looked like it had been sued recently.

"Toad, Crown, check the left side, Roach go right, Archer and I will continue down the strip." I ordered, watching the men follow the orders.

"Ghost, I've got more bodies. Confirm 5 K.I.A. All Shepherd's men." Roach spoke into my headset.

"I've got blood, broken glass too. Looks to be from a vehicle, as there are no windows here. Possibly a jeep." Archer suddenly said.

On the ground in front of him was a patch of blood with broken glass in and around it.

"Why the hell would they go down the runway to escape? Unless..." I left the thought unfinished. It could have been retreating forces of Shepherd or Makarov, but it could also have been Soap and Price, one of them hitting glass on a jeep somehow.

"Helo, this is ground team, we're heading back to extract." I said into my headset.

"Helo confirms, ground team extracting. Head to exfil Bravo, exfil Alpha is overrun and they look to be heading your way." Helo's voice entered my ears, and I cursed under my breath.

"Must be a clean up team, how fast are they moving?" I needed to know, the more time we had, the better.

"Looks like an ETA of about thirty seconds, a group of fifteen on thermal sensors. My ETA is about fifteen seconds, so set up a perimeter before they get there." Helo cut off, leaving us to set up the perimeter quickly.

"Roach, Crown, Toad, exfil point Bravo, fifteen plus hostiles inbound!" I yelled, getting up and sprinting over to the end of the strip, Archer just behind me.

With six seconds to spare form Helo arrving, we were in a defensive circle, Me in front, Archer to my left, Toad on my right, Roach standing behind my left, Crown ready to boost men in.

"Go, go, go!" I yelled as Helo arrived, and Crown cupped his hands to boost Roach in.

"Toad, Archer, go." I said, and Crown boosted them up in that order.

"Incoming!" Roach yelled, followed by the sound of a flashbang going off and my hearing leaving me, making me helpless for a few moments.

"Go!" Crown yelled, his hands still held out for me to step up into the helicopter with.

I did so, and turned to pull him up, grasping his right hand as a man came up behind him, holding a deadly grip on Crown's throat as we began ascending.

"Get off him, you bastard!" I reached down to pull out my usp .45 with my left hand, as Crown's hand started slipping.

"Let go of him!" I yelled again, this time firing the usp point blank into the assailant's arm, causing him to cry and and loosen his grip enough for Crown to breathe.

"Fucker!" He exclaimed, his left hand letting go of the bottom of the helicopter to pull out his knife and plunge it into the man's side, letting go of the hilt as the man's grip slipped even more.

The assailant was now barely holding onto Crown's foot as Crown continued slipping out of my hand, the fall now enough to kill him.

"Sayonara, bitch." Roach spoke suddenly, a bullet entering the man who was about to fall anyway.

"Crown, you okay?" I asked, pulling him into the helicopter.

"Give me a few minutes and I'll let you know..." He gasped out, sitting in one of the helicopter's seats.

Safehouse

Half an hour later

Lt. Simon "Ghost" Riley

"That was a dead end..." I commented when we were back in the safehouse.

"Not to mention we nearly lost Crown..." Toad said solemnly, blowing smoke. He was a smoker like me, but didn't smoke as much. He only did in times of distress, or so he told me.

"It may not have been a total loss." Roach said suddenly, producing a map, a pair of dogtags, and a radio recording.

"Got it off one of the dead bodies." He explained.

Toad, Roach, and I looked at the map and the dogtags which belonged to a H. Davis. The recording was from him as well, and was mostly garbled with the only words understandable being, Afghanistan, desert, and safehouse.

"That's where we'll find Shepherd... Or someone who knows where he is." Roach said at the end of the recording, pointing on the map to an area circled in red, with unreadable words underneath it.

"What kind of idiot circles the location on a map?" Toad asked.

"One that works to our advantage." Roach replied, folding the map up.

"We've got to go soon, otherwise our window will close and they'll realize we've gotten our hands on something." I said, stubbing my cigarette in the ashtray and moving to the door.

"Be ready in ten minutes, we can end this thing with Shepherd now." I said.

Afghanistan

Thirty-seven minutes later.

Lt. Simon "Ghost" Riley

"Holy shit..." Roach muttered.

The thing he was muttering about was the boat chase going on on the river that led to a waterfall next to us, with two men in the one near the back, they appeared to be chasing the first boat, which was getting dangerously close to the waterfall.

"They're going over..." Archer muttered. He'd aimed through his scope attempting to get a line of sight of any of the men, but the helicopter's and the boats' movement made it nearly impossible to stay steady.

John "Soap" MacTavish

Same time

"Go back! Go back!" Price yelled, trying to help me turn the boat as we tried to prevent falling down the waterfall. It didn't work.

In the two seconds chance I got to think before blacking out, I thought that this was ironic. We'd survived a variety of places, people, operations, and bullets, and now we were going to die from a waterfall so close to our goal.

When I came to a few moments later on sand, the boat ruined next to me to my left, Shepherd's boat nowhere to be seen.

I managed to stumble forward after getting up, finding the ruined helicopter that we'd shot down earlier, one survivor stumbling around like me. I left him to die by himself, no use dirtying my knife with someone who would die soon anyway.

I reached a rusted out car and stopped to catch my breath, and then Shepherd came out of nowhere and punched me, knocking me to the ground and proceeding to punch me as I lay there, my knife in my stomach now.

"Get off of him!" Price's voice came into my ears right before he tackled Shepherd, the two oft hem fighting it out while I watched in a daze, trying to grasp the knife and pull it out.

Lt. Simon "Ghost" Riley

Same time

"Kill him, Archer!" Roach yelled, barely able to keep his finger off of his own trigger while cheering for Archer to pull the trigger.

"Shit... I can't hit them like this, we'd be better off to go up and beat the shit out of him with Price..." Archer muttered, dropping his view.

We were still in the helicopter, hovering a little bit above and to the left of the fight, which it appeared Shepherd was winning.

"Rappel, go!" I yelled, grabbing the rappelling rope as the hatch covering it opened. I hooked it to my belt and slid down, unhooking it as soon as I touched the ground.

"Shepherd, your time has come!" Roach yelled, sprinting towards the enemy who'd tried to burn us to death.

Captain John Price

Same time

"Shepherd!" Was all that I heard as Shepherd continually punched my face, causing bruises, cuts, and blood to come out.

"Your time has come!" Who was that? It sounded familiar, but it couldn't be who I thought it was. Those two had been killed by Shepherd, their bodies burned, just as they finished their operation.

Shepherd was suddenly off of me, and I was looking over at Soap, who had a man crouched over him, helping him pull the knife from his body.

"Shepherd, you asshole! You bastard! You betrayed us and tried to have us burned!" It was who I thought it was. Roach was crouched over Shepherd, beating the shit out of him while Ghost stood nearby with an M4A1 aimed at his head.

"Ghost...?" I managed to cough out, attempting to reach towards him.

"Price. It's alright, you're not dreaming." That wasn't Ghost's voice. I turned my head the other way, and saw a man with an Intervention sniper rifle crouched next to me, trying to help me sit up.

"Soap..." I mumbled.

"Soap's going to be fine, but we need to go, or he may bleed out because of that knife. You've got to get up, Price!" The man said urgently, grabbing my hand and pulling me up.

He supported me, helping me stumble over to a nearby hovering helicopter, a smaller one that looked to be Nikolai's nearby.

I then heard a gunshot from the direction of the others, followed by a single word, "Bitch."

Lt Simon "Ghost" Riley

Forty-five minutes later

"Get me your most trusted man!" Price yelled. Soap was bleeding out on the table, Roach looking out of a nearly destroyed window as forces came towards us, firing at the windows.

"Fuck, to think we came here on Nikolai's suggestion..." I muttered, looking down the hallway. It was out only way out of here, and I wasn't going to let it get taken.

"This is going to be a long day..." I muttered again, as a man stumbled through and injected a liquid into Soap, making him groan in pain and then go limp, not groaning or clutching his wound anymore.

"Alright, let's go!" Price yelled, moving towards the hallway.

So now we have to save Soap. I'm up for it, Roach is still with us, Crown and Toad are with Helo in the event we need support, and Archer's on roof security, he'll be sniping as we go.

God, I could use a smoke right now and I bet Price could too.