VIRTUOUS MISSION

Snake had a compass built into the watch he wore on his wrist, but he didn't need it. In Russia, the sun rose in the east same as it did anywhere else on Earth, though he was willing to bet there were some politicians west of the Iron Curtain who didn't believe that. The factory where Sokolov was being held was north, so he started that way.

Despite his training, his mind whirled. Hearing The Boss's voice for the first time had briefly dislodged that single-minded focus he had attuned over the years, and he knew he had to get his mind back on track. Now was not the time to be dwelling on the past.

Still, though, it was hard to forget. The shadows of his past . . .

He'd been an observer at the Castle Bravo H-bomb detonation on Bikini in 1954. Snake was a soldier through and through, fresh from his tour of duty in Korea, and a lot of ambitious young recruits had, well, collected bomb blasts in those days. A lot of men he'd served with tried to get themselves assigned to observe the nukes. They all thought it was fun. Castle Bravo was the only one Snake took part in, but it was more than enough for him.

It had been an awe-inspiring sight. Castle Bravo, the biggest yield ever measured for a nuclear detonation. Snake hadn't known it then, but later he'd found out that the yield was supposed to be five megatons, but instead it turned out to be nearly fifteen, amounting to an explosion equivalent to fifteen million tons of TNT. The blast had been twelve hundred times more powerful than the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The fireball itself had been four miles wide.

The carrier they'd been aboard was a good distance away from it, but with the explosion being much larger than the safe area the Los Alamos eggheads had calculated, a lot of them got a significant dose of radiation. This horrendous whitish substance had rained down from the sky-they later learned it was calcium precipitated from the vaporized coral thrown up into the air. But that substance had brought with it something much more lethal. He'd heard the horror stories, of his fellow soldiers dying of various cancers and infections from the fallout. Snake himself hadn't shown any symptoms, but he suspected that the nasty effects of Castle Bravo would crop up sooner or later.

Two weeks after Castle Bravo, after he'd been subjected to a series of rigorous decontamination procedures, he'd first been introduced to The Boss. She was a legend, a myth, a name whispered among recruits like a ghost story. He could hardly believe his luck when she'd selected him to be her apprentice. Together, for the better part of a decade, they trained together, honing his skills as finely as a virtuoso musician tuned his instrument.

Under The Boss's tutelage, Snake learned everything there was to know about combat, weaponry, survival, espionage, infiltration techniques, even conversational mastery of foreign languages. Snake would never have considered himself a brilliant student, but The Boss inspired something in him that was more than loyalty-it was devotion, a single-minded hunger to cling to every word she spoke. Get it right the first time, The Boss had always said-and the young soldier had learned to follow that credo as he would the word of God. He could think of nothing worse than being forced to repeat a chore, a task, while The Boss paced in the background, a stern taskmaster and absolutely unforgiving. "The world is never forgiving," she had told her apprentice. "Best you learn that now." Snake had spent hours upon hours standing motionless against a wall, contemplating the things she taught him. He had learned how to focus utterly on a goal . . . how to get it right the first time.

It was more than a devotion between master and student, though-there was something else, something deeper, that seemed to course between them like electricity in the blood. Snake would have died for her, he had no doubt of that, and he never once questioned if she would do the same for him.

Then came June 12, 1959. The day that she had left, without a word. He could not ask questions and expect answers, not from his superiors, but in his heart he wondered, and over the next few years, in the completion of his duties across the globe, he tried to do things the way The Boss would want them done. Even two years ago, when he crossed paths with Zero and joined the major's fledgling FOX unit, he tried to replicate that connection within himself. And-

A beautiful green-feathered bird flitted across his sight from one tall tree to another, singing out a thin musical call. He tensed, and his mind snapped back to focus. One false step, and the jungle would finish him. There could be trip mines, claymores strung between trees that would blow him apart.

He froze in mid-step as he heard movement to the side-footsteps coming toward the meadow. He scrambled behind a tree just in time to avoid being spotted as two shadowy silhouettes emerged into view.

He could barely discern the men's features, as their faces were swathed in black balaclavas. But he did see without a doubt that they carried guns. Rifles. Their chests also bristled with green bulbs he immediately recognized as grenades. The men pointed their weapons downward as they patrolled, but Snake could see their fingers caressing the triggers.

Snake hunkered back behind the tree and pressed the codec. "Major, I've spotted two enemy soldiers."

"They're probably KGB troops," Major Tom responded, "sent to guard Sokolov."

"AK-47s and grenades. Pretty heavy firepower."

"Snake," the major warned, "your presence in Soviet territory is already a violation of international law. We can't let the Kremlin find out that the CIA and the American government are involved. Contact with the enemy is strictly prohibited."

Yeah, figured as much. Snake studied their movements. If he'd had a rifle of his own, it would be easy to pick them off from here.

"Don't engage them in battle either," Major Tom added, as though he could hear Snake's thoughts through the codec. "This is a stealth mission. Got that?"

Snake grunted in affirmation, switching off the codec. The major was right. The whole point of the mission was to sneak through the forest without being spotted. The success of the whole operation depended on it.

He crouched low, skirting along the edge of the meadow, keeping himself hidden in the overgrown tangle of weeds that carpeted the clearing. The grass was excellent cover; it came up to the soldiers' waists, and they waded through it slowly. Snake never took his eye off of them. Even though they were clearly dawdling, not really expecting any enemy opposition, he didn't want to take any chances. When he slipped back into the jungle, he allowed himself a momentary pause, a sigh of relief, then he continued on.

Slogging through the underbrush, ducking under the branches and creepers and vines, Snake longed for a machete, something to make his journey through the jungle easier, but that would be far too loud for a stealth mission. He did his best to stifle any grunting as he made his way north. Water stood in puddles on the rocky ground. Thin mahogany trees with twisted trunks and smooth bark protruded in all directions, swallowed by flowering weeds and thorny shrubs. Ferns brushed Snake's legs, sprinkling droplets of water from frequent rainstorms.

After a while, Snake paused to rest beside a tall gray-barked tree. He waited for a few minutes while his stamina returned, then he trudged on, gun and knife still at the ready.

It wasn't long before he heard thunder, and he glanced up. The clouds in the sky were starting to gather, but he realized that the thunder had not come from above. Not only that, it was continuing on, a low rumble that Snake gradually realized came not from a storm but from a river. He pressed on.

The thunder grew, the air trembled, and when Snake finally saw its source it all clicked into place. The river was at the bottom of a canyon, hundreds of feet deep and twice that in breadth, that split the forest in a great crack. Snake scanned the canyon, and spotted a thin line spanning it, about a quarter mile to the left. A rope bridge. Snake also saw movement along the rope bridge. He squinted, and could make out four distinct shapes on either side of the bridge.

Snake cursed. He hardly had a chance of crossing the canyon unseen now, if that bridge was the only way to get across. He edged along the jungle, masking himself in the dense foliage as he crept closer to the bridge. The men on the bridge were dressed identically to the ones he'd snuck past before, in black balaclavas and carrying AK-47s. Bad news all around.

He scanned the clotted trees, low palms, the dense vegetation hanging from the branches. He then paused, fixating on a bulbous object about the size of a soccer ball, hanging from a branch directly above the mouth of the bridge, where two of the guards idly stood. Despite the thunder of the river below, Snake could hear a low hum, and he smiled. It wasn't humming. It was buzzing.

Snake raised the MK-22. He trained the barrel on the orb, squeezed off a shot. No one heard the low thud of the silencer, no one saw the hornet's nest blow apart. The low hum suddenly grew to an annoyed crescendo, and suddenly the two guards began to scream. No words, just screams. They dropped their weapons and flailed about, writhing in agony as the hornets sought them out. The soldiers mindlessly staggered back, stumbling blindly onto the bridge. The two guards at the far end of the bridge turned and started hurrying towards them, shouting in Russian.

Snake took a bead and squeezed. One of the soldiers jerked back as Snake's tranquilizer round caught him square in the chest. He stood where he was for a moment, then toppled face-first on the wooden slats. The other soldier heard the impact and turned, staring at his fallen comrade in confusion as Snake took aim again. This shot took the soldier in the neck, and he smacked at the wound in pain and surprise. Perhaps he thought he'd been stung by one of the angered hornets. When the round's contents hit the man's bloodstream a second later, his body slumped forward and he, too, fell.

The shrieking soldiers were howling now, and had fallen to their knees. They were rolling, squirming in pain, forgetting that they were on a rickety rope bridge hanging precariously over a canyon. Both men tumbled off the edge and plummeted silently out of sight. Snake didn't even hear the splashes.

He waited for a moment. He'd killed men before, certainly, but it was something you never got used to. Even though he hadn't directly slain them in battle, he had caused their deaths as surely as if he'd put a bullet in their heads. But there was no time to dwell on that now, if he ever would.

He rose to his feet and made his way to the bridge. The hornets were clearing, their angry horde dissipating in search of a new home. Snake picked up one of the soldiers' fallen AK-47s and slung it over his shoulder. He didn't intend to use it, not unless he had to.

He made his way along the bridge. It swayed as his weight added to it, the wooden planks sagging underfoot. Many of them were rotting, and more than a few had fallen away. Snake chanced a glance downward. The river was hundreds of feet below, a roaring deluge that seemed never-ending. He tore his gaze from the river and pressed on, careful to step over the bodies of the men he'd drugged, though not hesitating to kick their rifles over the edge into the void.

When he reached the other side he glanced back over at the still forms on the bridge. If he was lucky, he'd retrieve Sokolov and have already made it to the extraction point before they even stirred. The Hushpuppy's rounds packed quite a punch.

He set off again into the jungle. Snakes dangled from branches, looking at the intruder with cold eyes. Snake remembered what the major had said about possibly having to dine on them in case he was stranded here.

He had been moving for no more than five minutes before he saw the glint of metal through the trees ahead. He slowed his pace and crept closer, leaning against a tall tree and fishing the small pair of field binoculars tucked in his jacket.

He raised them to his eyes and looked out at the ancient, decaying ruin that had once been a factory. Gray clouds hung in the sky, casting the site in a cool gloom, as the rusting edifices towered like hulking shapes in a storm.

The shadow of the factory was like an afterimage on the eyes. Snake scanned the area. There was movement amongst the weathered structure-a lot of it. He carefully picked out a half dozen black-garbed soldiers patrolling the factory's perimeter. If Sokolov was indeed held captive here, he was under pretty solid guard.

His codec squeaked, and he tapped his ear. The major's voice chirped, "Snake, have you reached the abandoned factory at Rassvet yet?"

"Yeah." Snake wrinkled his nose. "This place is a dump."

"Can you see any sign of Sokolov?"

Snake squinted through the binoculars. "Not from here. The security here's pretty tight. There are sentries posted around the perimeter." I wonder how many are inside, he thought but didn't add.

"Then your objective-Sokolov-is inside the factory itself. They should be holding him in a room in the northeast sector."

"The northeast section. Got it."

"Be careful. Your mission is to bring back Sokolov alive. He must not be exposed to any kind of danger."

"Right." Snake moved to switch off the codec.

"There's one more thing, Snake."

Snake tensed. The last thing he wanted to hear was a new development in the mission. "You mean there's more."

"No." The major's voice softened. "It's just . . . when you get to Sokolov, I want you to tell him something from me."

"And that is?"

"'Sorry for being so late.'"

Snake smiled despite himself. So the old hardass had a heart, after all. "Is that all?"

"Yes."

"Understood. Beginning my approach to the target."

He skirted the treelike, looking for a possible point of egress. He didn't have to look far; the walls had rusted through in places. One particular spot had a gaping hole more than large enough for a man to climb through. Snake readied the MK-22, trained it on a passing soldier nearing the gap. He took the man down and scrambled out of the trees, crouch-running towards the hole. When he got there, he glanced about, preparing for gunfire. None came. He hadn't been spotted.

Snake took a moment to get his bearings. If Sokolov really was being held in the northeastern section of the factory, he'd have to take out any guards along the way. The Hushpuppy had over two dozen rounds left, so he wasn't worried about that. What did trouble him was being spotted before he could knock them out. He didn't much fancy using a tranquilizer pistol against a squad of Kalashnikov-wielding Reds.

Snake navigated through the ruined factory. It was more than dilapidated; it was crumbling before his very eyes. Some of the damage looked like the harsh Russian weather, but a lot of it looked like someone had shelled the hell out of the place. He wondered if Rassvet had ever been invaded by the Germans during World War II, or if Stalin's men had used the factory for target practice. And-

His thought broke off when he saw a guard standing between two stacks of crates. There was a battered gray door behind him. Snake realized he had damn near walked right into the guard's line of sight. The sentry looked alert, too, which troubled Snake. That meant that whatever was behind that door was worth guarding.

Snake thought for a moment. He couldn't shoot the guard, not from this angle. If he tried and missed, the guard would turn and open fire. Then the whole mission would go to shit. Snake wasn't willing to risk the element of surprise.

Then an idea crossed his mind. Snake bent down and picked up a ragged chunk of brick from the rotting wall. He reared back and lobbed it. It bounced off one of the crates with a loud smack, startling the guard. He looked in its direction, swinging his rifle toward it, and Snake took his chance. He sprang forward and seized the guard's mouth with one hand, tilting his head back and baring his throat. With the other hand, he pressed his knife to the man's neck.

Da svidanya, Snake thought as he drew the blade across the soldier's throat.

The soldier opened his mouth, but only a low wheeze escaped as his lifeblood gushed out of the new mouth Snake had made in his gullet. Snake felt the man's body go limp in his arms.

Snake wiped the blade on the corpse's tunic and turned his attention to the door the soldier had been guarding. The northeast door . . . this must be it.

He reached for the handle and jiggled it. Unlocked. He heard movement on the other side. And something else, too.

Muttering.

Snake braced himself and opened the door. He slipped inside and closed it behind him.

The room was bare, save for a few utilitarian lockers, an old wood stove in the corner, and a moth-eaten cot. The floor was planked with wood going green with age. A window streaked with mildew threw dappled light over the room. The man he'd been sent to find was huddled in the corner of the room, in front of the stove. Smoke was belching from the stove, where a healthy fire was crackling. Nikolai Stepanovich Sokolov was busy cramming papers into the blaze, feeding it like an engineer stoking a locomotive. He was so preoccupied he didn't hear Snake until the soldier was almost beside him.

"You must be Sokolov," he said in perfect Russian.

The scientist squealed and looked up. He hadn't looked well in the dossier picture Zero had shown him at the Pentagon brief, but his time in captivity had made him look like a living ghost. Sallow-faced, gaunt to the point of starving, his glasses smudged and his face haggard, Sokolov looked more like a refugee from a concentration camp than a world-renowned rocket researcher. What little bit of hair he had was unkempt, graying. His wide, strikingly blue eyes blinked in owlish surprise.

"Are you one of Volgin's men?" There was something in Sokolov's voice. Fear, yes, but also disdain. Before Snake could answer, the scientist seized a double handful of papers and stuffed them into the fire. "You'll never get it from me!"

Snake shook his head. "I'm a CIA agent," he said. "I've come to escort you to the other side of the Iron Curtain?"

Sokolov froze. He stared at Snake doubtfully. "You're . . . CIA?"

"I was sent by Major Zero. The man who got you out two years ago."

A light flickered in Sokolov's eyes. "Zero . . ."

"I have a message from him."

"What is it?"

"He said to tell you, 'Sorry for being so late.'"

Sokolov chuckled, a hollow, raspy sound. "Did he now?"

"What does it mean?"

"It means," Sokolov said, rising to his feet, "that he's a man of his word. But we've got no time for this. You have to get me out of here before they arrive."

"Who's 'they'?"

"Colonel Volgin."

"Volgin?"

"Yes." Sokolov's eyes narrowed. "Colonel Yevgeny Borisovitch Volgin of GRU. You in the West know him as 'Thunderbolt.'"

Thunderbolt? Snake's brow furrowed. "Never heard of him."

"He's a member of the army's extremist faction," Sokolov explained. "A man who seeks to seize control of the motherland. Ever since the Cuban Missile Crisis two years ago, Khrushchev has been pursuing a policy of peaceful coexistence with the West. Despite resistance and criticism from hawks in the army, and the provincial authorities, Khrushchev has managed to suppress the opposition so far." Then Sokolov shook his head sadly. "But the failure of his agricultural policies has put him in a precarious position. And on top of that . . . the tragedy last November."

Snake knew what he meant immediately. "President Kennedy's assassination."

"Precisely. In a sense, Khrushchev has lost his biggest partner, and his power base is rapidly crumbling away. A certain group is plotting to use this opportunity to seize power by rallying the anti-government forces, overthrowing Khrushchev, and installing Brezhnev and Kosygin in his place. The mastermind behind this plot is Colonel Volgin of the GRU." Sokolov spat out the name like it tasted bad. "He has control over another secret weapons research facility much like this one-OKB-eight-one-two, known as the Granin Design Bureau-and is using it to further his plans. But that is not enough to satisfy him. Now he is plotting to seize the secret weapon I have been developing here and use it as leverage in his bid for power." He swallowed. "The intelligence says that they are going to make their move during the test."

Snake mulled over what Sokolov was telling him. "Then the soldiers outside . . ."

Sokolov nodded. "Exactly. They wouldn't need that many men use to keep me inside. Their orders were to prevent Colonel Volgin from capturing me. Even if it meant killing me in the process, or so it would seem." The scientist lurched forward, seizing Snake's arm. "Volgin will come, I'm sure of it. You must get me out of here before then."

Snake put a hand on the scientist's bony shoulder. "Leave it to me."

Sokolov nodded. Then he smiled. "By the way, your Russian is superb. Where did you learn to speak it?"

"From my mentor."

Sokolov arched an eyebrow. "Is that so? America truly is a frightening country."

"Having second thoughts?"

Sokolov shook his head fervently. "No. I have no love for this place. Let's go."

Snake nodded. He turned away from the scientist and placed a hand to his ear. "Major, do you read?"

"Loud and clear, Snake."

"Sokolov is safe with me. He's doing fine. No injuries. Borderline malnutrition, but that's it."

He heard a sigh of relief on the line. "Good work, Snake," Major Tom said. "Now hurry up and get Sokolov to the recovery point. We'll rendezvous with you there."

"Roger that."

"What about the sentries?"

Snake sighed. "I had to kill one of them," he said. "There was no other way. But no one will know we were involved. No one else spotted me."

"I see." There was a tinge of disapproval in the major's voice.

"What about The Boss?" He'd hoped to hear her thoughts on the mission at hand.

Major Tom hesitated. "We . . . we lost contact with The Boss some time ago."

Snake stiffened. "What happened?"

"Relax," the major replied. "It's probably just a weak signal. Just hurry and get Sokolov out of there."

The connection ended, and Snake turned back to Sokolov. The scientist blinked at him and Snake nodded. "Come on," he grunted.