Tracking… Found
Sgt. Gary "Roach" Sanderson
Task Force 141
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1,700 ft. A.S.L
"We're sorry. All lines are busy at the moment. Please hang up and try to call again later."
"I can't get anyone on the horn." Ghost said
"The Russians must've copied the ACS module. Got the key to every lock in America." MacTavish said
"And they're killing a thousand Americans for every dead civilian in Moscow. Looks like we're all out of friends." Ghost said
"I know a guy. Let's find a payphone. They still exist?"
"All we got outta Rojas is that the only guy Makarov hates worse than Americans is locked up in a gulag."
"It's all we got. If this con's the bait to catch that psychopath, let's hang him from a tree."
It didn't take long for MacTavish to find a pay phone. It was right around the corner. When he realized he didn't have any coins, he walked back over to us. He rifled through Rojas's pockets and found a couple twenty-five centavo coins. After that, MacTavish walked back to the payphone and used it to talk to someone that had what vaguely sounded like a Russian accent. Why would MacTavish be talking to anybody that was Russian? When he came back, I he was looking a little relieved.
"One of my old contacts is en route. The LZ is on the other side of the market. ETA thirty minutes." MacTavish said
"Sir, the militia's closing in. Almost two hundred of them, front and back." Ghost said
"We're gonna have to fight our way to the LZ. Let's go!"
"What about Rojas?"
"The streets'll take care of him."
"Works for me."
We started to run up a hill towards the LZ. I could hear the hostiles up ahead and got ready for the firefight. I had already tossed my ACR aside because of the fact that I was out of ammo for it. I pulled up my UMP and aimed for the hostiles.
"Nikolai! We're at the top of the favela surrounded by militia! Bring the chopper to the market, do you copy, over?!" MacTavish yelled
"Okay my friend, I am on the way!" Nikolai said
"Let's do this!" Ghost yelled
We started to engage the hostiles that were coming from all over. They were on the ground, they were on the roofs of huts and on the roofs of multi-story buildings. They were fucking everywhere. I didn't know where to shoot first. I looked for cover, and found it in a small brick building in the center of the square we were fighting in. I watched as Desert moved forward to start shooting, but she was shot in the chest.
"Shit!" I yelled, dragging her behind cover with me
I looked her over, but she was just breathing really heavy, looking down at her chest. Thank god, she wasn't hit. Her carrier caught it.
"You good?!" I asked
"Yeah!" She said
We continued to shoot at hostiles, but that was kind of interrupted by a technical bursting through the gate at the far side of the square.
"Technical comin' in from the south!" Ghost yelled
"Thanks for the info, MOTO!" I yelled back
I popped out of cover and sprayed the technical, hitting the driver and the gunner.
"We got another technical! Take it out!" MacTavish yelled
I hadn't seen this one. This guy was smart, because he stayed parked near the gate. I took cover as the bullets sprayed near me. I wasn't too keen on being sawed in half today. I moved around to the other side of the building, and shot the gunner in the head. I pulled back as a spray of bullets hit the brick in front of where my face had been. Why couldn't these guys get the hint that we were elite operatives who were just going to plow right through them? After another couple of seconds, the others had cleared out their side of the square.
"Head through that gate! Keep pushing to the evac point!" MacTavish yelled
We all moved forward and went through the gate. We entered an alley, and at the far side, a group of militia ran past. We ran around the corner and were immediately shot at. I dodged the fire and took cover behind a small shed. I tossed a frag around the corner and waited for it to explode. When it did, we moved into a grassy field with a lot of useless junk in it. We continued to kill the militia in the field, up to the point where they were all dead or running for their lives.
"Let's go! Let's go! We've gotta push through these streets to the market! Watch for flanking routes!" MacTavish yelled
We moved up another hill and out onto another street. I saw an open door to an apartment and moved inside. I cleared the bottom floor before moving upstairs. I was now up to the roof and taking cover, getting shot at again. I dove to the edge of the roof and started to crawl over to the corner of the building where I'd be able to hit the shooters more effectively.
"Roach! Lay down some fire on the intersection!" Neon yelled
"I'm kind of busy over here!" I yelled back
Why did I have to get ordered around all the time? Why couldn't someone yell at Ghost or Hazard or Desert? It made no damn sense. When I felt the fire on the other side of the brick stop, I popped up and threw another grenade. If I didn't get unpinned from where I was, I was going to die. And that wasn't going to go well with me because the whole point of being called Roach was that I was hard to kill.
"Desert! Hit those guys across the street! Second story window!" I yelled
"Roger!"
I waited until the bullets stopped hitting the wall I was hiding behind before tossing a grenade behind where the militia were taking cover. I started to move forward and shot any militia that were up the street.
"Heads up! Alley on the left!" Hazard yelled
Well that helped. I turned to the left and shot the militia that were down there. We kept moving up into another field and killed the militia that were surrounding us. This wasn't good. I looked down the street we had come from and saw more of them coming up here.
"Guys, we better get out of here, quick!" I yelled
I started to pick up the pace, moving into the market. It was almost time for Nikolai to get here. If we didn't hurry up and move through this market, then we were going to lose our opportunity to get the hell out of here. I slowed up a little, waiting for the squad to catch up. I didn't really feel like getting caught out here all alone and dying. But I guess that was going to happen anyways. As I moved back to take cover, I was hit in the face with the stock of an AK. I looked up to see a man pointing the barrel of his gun in my face. Not something I liked to look up and see. I cringed away, not wanting to watch the man in front of me end my life. I closed my eyes and waited for the bullet to my head. I heard the shot, but the weird thing was, I never felt the bullet enter my head. I opened my eyes and looked up. All I saw was Desert standing over me with her Desert Eagle pointed at the guy's head. She put her gun away and held her hand out. I grabbed it and she helped haul me to my feet.
"Thanks." I said
She just nodded and we continued to move through the market. Nikolai was going to be here any second. Right as I thought this, I heard the chopping of a helicopter's propellers.
"There's Nikolai's Pave Low! Let's go! Nikolai! ETA twenty seconds! Be ready for immediate dust-off!" MacTavish said
"That may not be fast enough! I see more militia closing in on the market!" the Russian known as Nikolai said
"Pick up the pace! Let's go!"
We started to move through a couple of houses trying to get to an open lot that held a small football field. When we got out there, Nikolai's helicopter was being fired at from all directions. There were RPGs flying through the air and small arms fire was hitting the fuselage.
"It's too hot! We will not survive this landing!" Nikolai yelled
"Nikolai wave off, wave off! We'll meet you at the secondary LZ instead! Go!" MacTavish said
"Very well, I will meet you there! Good luck!"
As Nikolai flew his bird back into the sky, we cleared the area of any hostiles that could be of any problem to us.
"Come on! We've got to get to the rooftops, this way!" MacTavish shouted
We all ran for the roof of a hut that was lower than all the others. When we got there, Ghost kicked off of a hot water heater and climbed up onto the roof, then scoop up Hazard. Showoff. I just took a running start and hauled my fat ass up there. I had to start working out more when I got back to base. When I got up, I saw everybody running, but I didn't see Desert. I looked back down and saw her struggling to get onto the roof. I ran back and slid down to grab her arm. After she took it, I pulled her up and we set off at a sprint to catch up with everybody else.
"My friend, from up here, it looks like the whole village is trying to kill you!" Nikolai said
"Tell me something I don't know! Just get ready to pick us up!" MacTavish yelled angrily
"We're running out of rooftop!" Ghost said
"MOTO!" I screamed
"We can make it! Go, go, go!"
We watched the others jump off the edge, and we were just going to have to have faith and do the same. I felt Desert grab my hand, and we pushed off the roof together. But one of us didn't push hard enough. I felt it as soon as we were airborne. I slammed into the roof of a hut below that the helicopter was parked on, about to pick us up. The only problem was that Desert wasn't on the fucking roof. I grabbed onto the ledge, but she was dragging me down. MacTavish tried to make it over to me, but he was too slow. Just as he tried to grab my hand, I slipped. Together, Desert and I fell twenty feet to the ground below. I guess it wasn't a hut after all, more of a two story building. That's when I hit the ground and blacked out. When I woke up, I could see a lot of militia closing in on our location.
"Roach! Roach! Wake up!" I heard MacTavish yelling
"Roach! We can see them from the chopper! They're coming for you, dozens of 'em!" Ghost said
"Roach! There's too many of them! Get the hell out of there and find a way to the rooftops!"
I looked around and saw Desert on the ground next to me. I shook her until she woke up. Come on… wake up! We had to go, NOW.
"What? What's going on?" She asked, waking up
"Desert, we have to go! Come on, RUN!" I shouted
I pushed her to her feet and together we ran into the building we fell off of. We ran through a store, through a couple unfinished rooms, then down a set of stairs, then back up another set of stairs. Then through an apartment, up one more flight of stairs, then finally out onto the roof. Oh, and did I mention the angry militia that was shooting at us the entire time this was happening? No? Oh, my bad. We jumped down onto the roof and continued to run towards the helicopter.
"Roach! We're running on fumes here! You got thirty seconds! Run!" MacTavish said
Following his instructions, we ran down a tiered roof, then turned right and continued to run along the edge of a roof, a chain link fence preventing us from falling off. Up ahead were two more members of the militia, but I didn't have the time to pull out my G18 and shoot at them. Instead, I just ignored them, turned right and slid down a slope, through a window. I got a piece of glass in my arm, but I just kept running. The crunch of glass told me that Desert was right on my ass. I saw the chopper ahead, a rope ladder dangling from it.
"Jump for it!" MacTavish yelled
Shit. My jumping skills were Oh for Two right about now. I screwed the jump up outside the Russian base, almost falling to my death, and now I had screwed up the jump to the rooftops. I've heard the whole 'Nobody makes the first jump' thing, but I haven't made either. And if I screw up here, I'm free falling for a thousand feet before I even touch the treetops. But I couldn't think about that. I had to keep going, so when my feet ran out of room to run, I jumped. I was weightless for a few seconds, but then I grabbed onto the rungs of the ladder. I had made it. I looked below me and saw that Desert was on the rung right below my feet. I started to climb, so that I could get into the helicopter and not be dangling two thousand feet above the ground. When I got in there, I saw that Ghost and Hazard were sitting down and MacTavish was helping me in.
"Nice jump, Roach." He said
I walked over to an open seat and sat down, finally looking at the glass in my arm. I had nicks on my face from when I had fallen and the window. By now, it was so full of holes, it would've made Swiss cheese jealous. I saw Desert sit down next to me and put her head against the wall of the chopper.
"That was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life." She said
"It's in my top five." I muttered
"How? What else have you done that's so dangerous?"
"Well let's see. Just this week, I've almost fallen down a frozen mountainside, I've infiltrated an enemy base alone with only the Captain for sniper support, I've snowmobiled down a steep slope dodging trees, and used said snowmobile to jump across a thousand foot deep chasm. So yeah, top five."
"Shit. How the hell do you do that and keep going?"
"You just don't think about it until it's over. That's how I made the jump to the chopper. I thought I wouldn't make it the first time, so I didn't make it. The second time I did less thinking and more doing. It's really simple to do something when you don't think so hard about it."
"Huh. Who knows, Roach? You might teach me a thing or two."
"Stick around, Desert, and you'll learn plenty."
"Liz."
"Come again?"
"Call me Liz when we're not on mission. It feels weird to be called Desert all the time."
"Alright. I guess you've earned the right to call me Gary."
"Your name's Gary?" She said, laughing
"Yeah. I don't know what the hell my mother was thinking when she cursed me with such a name. At least it isn't Skyler. That's the worst name ever."
She laughed even harder at this, and I felt like Desert and I were going to be close friends by the time we were through with Makarov. Now all we had to do was get that prisoner out of the Gulag, and we'd be one step closer to finally killing the prick.