Chyornaya Peschera Cave
Mission Time: Day 2
1127 Hours
The dark was crammed with sounds, all of them echoing, amplified. He could hear himself shuffling along. There were strange gurglings and whistling sounds. His wounded hand was held out before him, searching, groping for anything.
When his scrabbling fingers finally found slimy cave rock, he peered beyond the range of the slowly burning ember of his cigar. He could hear the faintest chuckle of running water. Some stream, maybe. Hadn't they said something about an aqueduct?
Snake felt his way around a corner, one hand trailing over damp rock, and suddenly water was running over his boots. He took another step, grimacing at the smell of the place.
His codec chirped, and Sigint's voice filled his ears. "I did some digging on the Cobras," he reported.
"What'd you find out?"
"Not much. A lot of what I've found has been redacted so much, they practically ran out of ink to black it out. I've seen fortune cookies with more information than what these documents can tell me."
Twenty years later and the government's still keeping a tight lid on its most valuable resource in the war, Snake mused. "Anything you can tell me?"
"Well," Sigint replied, "it sounds like the Cobra Unit's members' names came from the specific emotions they each carry into battle."
"Emotions?"
"Yeah. For unbearable torment: The Pain.
For true oblivion: The End.
For infinite rage: The Fury.
For absolute terror: The Fear.
And for unsurpassed bliss: The Joy."
"The Joy?" It didn't sound like a particularly imposing name for one of the most renowned warriors in human history.
"It's another name for The Boss," Sigint informed him. "Because of the joy she feels in battle, I suppose."
Snake wasn't surprised. He'd seen how relaxed The Boss seemed when she was on the field of combat. How graceful, composed, almost at peace. The Joy... maybe it wasn't that far off the mark.
"During the war, she had a partner," Sigint went on. "A Russian called The Sorrow."
"Sorrow and Joy?"
"They say there couldn't have been a more perfect pair."
Snake had never heard The Boss talk of her former comrades-in-arms. She'd been a cipher, as mysterious and enigmatic as the Sphinx, and what her protege had been able to glean from her past had been snippets, snatches of rumor and myth culled from other soldiers. And-
Something tore his attention away. A sound. Many sounds. The dusty beating of wings-many wings, fleshy wings. Bats. He suppressed a shudder. He'd always hated bats.
As if she could hear them over the codec, Para-Medic's voice filled his ears: "Snake, be careful. That cave is inhabited by vampire bats."
Snake pressed his lips tightly together. The tenebrous flapping sent a crawly feeling up his back. "Got it."
"Speaking of bats-"
"Just save it," Snake hissed.
"What?"
"I know you're just going to talk about vampire movies," Snake grunted in a low, hurried voice. "Attack of the Vampire Doughnuts or Dracula Versus the Space Hippos or something like that..."
"Actually," Para-Medic said hesitantly, "I was going to say that bats are known to use supersonic waves to sense their surroundings. Like sonar."
"Oh."
There was a long pause, and then Para-Medic's voice returned, sounding both timid and knowing.
"Snake, do you really hate vampire movies?"
"Do I what?"
"Just now, you sounded like you really hated them."
"Oh." He flinched as he felt the wind of one of those wings near his face, and he swiped a hand at it.
"Well, no one really likes them, do they?"
"Some people do."
"Like you?"
"Yeah." Her voice took on a dreamy tone, the way it did when she regaled about the countless films she'd seen. "They're fascinating, you know? Like the movie Dra-"
"Don't say it!" His voice echoed, re-echoed, and he heard an outraged squeak from somewhere overhead.
"Why not?"
"Just don't."
"Are you afraid?" Para-Medic wheedled. "You are, aren't you? Afraid of vampires."
Snake scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous."
The end of the cigar was guttering now, and as Snake took another step in the darkness, he felt his left boot come down on something that snapped dryly like a dead branch. He looked down, and saw that what he'd stepped on wasn't a branch. It was a bone. He was standing right over a bundle of bones, held in some vague shape by tattered rags. A grinning skull leered at him in the dying light.
It's easy to get lost down there. It's happened before.
And someone had. This poor soul, probably someone who had been sent on patrol long ago, maybe during the war, who had taken a nasty tumble, fallen, dragged himself in the darkness while yelling for help, only no one heard him and he'd ended up here-
He shook his head, then saw that the last of his cigar was almost out. Almost out. Almost-
An idea seized him. He bent down, snatching up the longest of the dusty bones. A thighbone. He also ripped some of the chunks of cloth hanging from the ribs, wound it around the knobbed end of the femur. He touched the cigar to the cloth, hoping it would ignite. It did. The fire caught, grew. It wouldn't last long, but maybe it would be enough to see a way out.
He saw there were two tunnels, forked about twenty feet beyond the pile of bones. He was unsure which one to take. One would lead him out of here, the other to a dead end.
Fuck it, he thought, and he hurried down the tunnel on the right.
. . .
The last of the cloth burned away about five minutes later, but Snake realized by that time that he didn't even need it. Now there was some dim light ahead. Not much, but he could make out the next four feet in front of him, and as long as he could keep doing that, he was home free. The water he was sloshing through was placid, but all of that was going to come to an end fairly soon: there was a steady hollow roaring not too far ahead. It grew louder, rising to a one-note bellow.
He made the turn and saw he was standing in a culvert, one that spilled out into a large antechamber. The light was marginally brighter. Snake looked up and saw a large hole about fifteen feet overhead.
Sunlight filtered down, revealing a large pool of water that was almost clear, enough so that Snake could see fish squirming and flashing beneath the surface. There was a rock outcropping almost directly beneath the hole. And there was a figure standing on that outcropping.
The man was bloated, fat, wearing a tight-fitting black uniform over his bulk. He wore a loud wasp-colored vest over it. His face was swathed in a black balaclava, but Snake could tell the man was looking directly at him.
Snake stepped to the lip of the culvert. The water was a good five feet below. The man standing on the rock raised his hands, and his voice sounded as dry as the bones in the cave.
"The new blood lives!" He sneered at Snake. "Though not for long."
Snake tossed aside his makeshift torch and trained the .45 on the fat man's chest. The man did not flinch or cringe back, only rubbed his hands together in gleeful anticipation.
"We are the sons of The Boss. And I am The Pain." He giggled. "I will guide you to a world of anguish beyond your imagination."
He held up a hand, and suddenly, it seemed to disappear in a thick dark cloud. Snake's brow furrowed, and then, suddenly, something materialized seemingly out of nowhere in the fat man's grip. A Thompson submachine gun.
Snake tensed himself, preparing to put three in the big man's chest . . . but then he heard it. That terrible, high-pitched droning sound. And suddenly, his vision began to cloud as a great wave of maddened hornets descended upon him.
"Let's get started!" The Pain cackled.
Snake had no choice. He sprang from the culvert almost blindly, hitting the water just as the first stabs of agony bristled his skin. The droning became a distant whine, but he became aware that somehow, the hornets were following him into the water. Like lemmings, he thought crazily, killing themselves as they tried to kill him.
A thunderous yet muted chatter sounded off then, and Snake saw several silver streaks rip through the water a foot to his left. Unlike the hornets, .45-caliber bullets couldn't drown, and they would follow him.
He kicked madly as The Pain poured lead down after him, and Snake saw a large fish suddenly burst in a blooming red cloud. He had to find defilade, had to find some kind of cover.
The gunfire ceased, and Snake's burning lungs couldn't keep him underwater anymore. Hoping that he wasn't in the fat man's sights, he shot up from the surface, taking a huge gasp of breath and chancing a glance at the cove.
The Pain was watching him, the Thompson poised. "Found you!" he cackled gleefully. "Found y-"
Snake took his chance. He fired once, hoping there would be no misfire. But the Colt was true, and The Pain's laughter turned into a roaring grunt as the bullet took him in the shoulder. He triggered off a blast, missing Snake by inches, but Snake saw that the bloody wound was being patched over already by dozens of hornets.
What the hell are they doing? Healing him?
He hoped to God that whatever his relationship or power over the insects were, it didn't extend that far.
Snake plunged back into the water, his mind whirling. What did he have that could take down The Pain and his hornet brood? The Colt seemed to have little effect. The knife would be useless unless he could get close to the fat man. What-
His mind lit up. He hoped that what he had in mind hadn't been rendered useless by the water.
The Pain watched from his perch, the Thompson trained on the shimmering shadow of the CIA man. He'd gotten off a lucky shot, but even know his children were hard at work staunching the blood flow. His children. He'd displayed an unnatural predilection to bee husbandry as a boy. When he was a child, two neighborhood toughs had cornered him when he was walking back to his farm, and had started to give him one hell of a beating when one of them started to yelp. Then the other. And the boy had seen them swatting fearfully at their exposed flesh, at their faces, their eyes. Bees had come. Bees that had come from their hives and crannies, to sacrifice their lives for the boy with blood on his chin and bruises puffing over his cheek. The bullies had run, but one of them had lost an eye and the other had spent a month in the hospital because he'd had a severe allergic reaction.
Somehow, the boy had known he had been responsible. But he felt no guilt. Only glee.
Bees became his obsession, his raison d'etre. Wasps were better. They had smooth stingers, so they didn't rip their guts out when they tried to pull them out. But hornets, they were the best. They were merciless, ruthless. The boy idealized that. And they seemed drawn to him, willing to be directed by his bidding. And soon, when the boy was grown, he sought to use his talents for gain.
And for him, gain meant pain.
He'd joined the Army. The Depression was on and it had been the bastion for anyone too poor or shiftless to make a decent go of it, but The Pain wanted to use his skills. He sensed war was on the horizon, and he figured that a man with his talents would not be rebuffed. And he was right. Uncle Sam had taken an interest in his unique credentials, and soon after that The Boss herself had come to him, offered him a place on a squad she was putting together, a special squad that would rid the world of America's enemies. And so they had.
At the time.
Only now The Pain was fighting for another side now, and he often found it incredible that his allegiance had swayed so much from his original intent. Loyalty to The Boss was more concrete, more real, than loyalty to any country or national idea. The CIA man, the new blood, he didn't understand that. He was torn between his devotions, to the country that employed him and the woman who had shaped him. It was a shame that he had to die, but The Boss had told him it must be done, and-
And something landed between The Pain's feet.
He looked down. It was a small black canister, with Cyrillic stamped alongside the cylinder. The Pain's eyes widened and with a mighty roar, he kicked the grenade away.
It exploded in midair. The Pain felt a hot rush strike him in the face, knocking him off-balance. Dozens of his hornets dropped to the ground, slain by the shockwave. And The Pain's world suddenly became dipped in hot fire. But there was only smoke. No fire, but the heat was there and the burning was there.
The Pain roared again. It was a smoke grenade, one of those white-phosphorus devices. The boy was clever, far cleverer than he'd given him credit for. He-
The Pain's face seemed swathed in acid. He grunted and clawed at the balaclava, which was starting to char in places. He ripped it off, exposing his bloated, suppurating, scarred face. Pustules oozed all over it. Even though the wasps and hornets had still followed his will, The Pain could not suppress their deepest primal instincts to sting and to kill. He was not immune to their fury. And some had turned on him time and again. His face was almost unrecognizable now, just a lowering shelf of blisters and scars over the eyes, which constantly streamed tears down his ruptured face.
The smoke was blistering, clinging to everything like a deadly cloud. And The Pain couldn't see the figure climbing from the water, a figure with a knife clamped between his teeth like a pirate.
Snake stayed low, like a barracuda. He watched The Pain claw his balaclava away and even in the haze, he almost froze. The Pain's face was a bloated ruin. It was cracked, every inch of flesh scarred and re-scarred with welts. His beetle-like eyes glittered like oil spots beneath the savaged crag of his brow. No wonder he kept his face hidden.
He moved forward, and The Pain saw him. He swung his Thompson up.
"Bastard-"
Snake seized his knife and lunged. He threw his weight against the other man's bulk, feeling the man's hot breath against his face. He brought down his other hand in a judo chop, knocking the Tommy gun from the man's grasp.
The Pain made despairing sounds, at first confused, then angry, then desperate. Snake spun in a single fluid movement. The Pain staggered back, but Snake was quicker. He thrust the sharp tip at an angle downward, and buried the knife to the haft in the Pain's gut, right beneath the ribcage.
The Pain's eyes opened wide in shock. He flailed his hands and tried to speak, but could only gurgle helplessly as a crimson geyser spouted from his midsection.
Spattered in blood, Snake jerked the knife back out. He considered plunging it into the man's neck, just to be certain. But the dark fountain gushing from The Pain's belly made him sure. He was reminded of a book he'd read as a boy, Moby Dick, and how Ahab had known he'd made a kill when his harpoon had drawn black blood.
The Pain clapped a hand to his gut, trying to stave off the flow. His suppurating face had suddenly drained of any malice or rage. Now there was only agony, a terrible and almost innocent agony. Tears still ran down his face, but these were the genuine article, no crocodile tears this time.
"The pain," he moaned. "The pain. The pain."
He staggered back, and Snake took a step back, almost as though he knew what was coming next. The Pain collapsed to his knees, and he tore his hands away from his gushing wound and threw them up in mad supplication.
"THE PAAAAAAAIN!" he thundered. "THE P-"
His final scream was drowned out in a sudden, earsplitting blast that seemed to bloom like a fiery flower from The Pain's own chest, and a great fireball erupted, consuming the Cobra and sending out a shockwave that struck Snake hard in the chest and flung him back bodily into the drink. He hit the water hard, barely clinging to consciousness and to the .45 in his grip.
He kicked to the surface, gasping for breath, as debris rained down all around him. Blackened chunks of cloth and equipment and dead hornets and what was probably The Pain himself. The rock itself was smoking, a large chunk of it having been obliterated along with The Pain himself. There was a suspicious dark stain there as well.
Son-of-a-bitch suicide-bombed himself, he thought crazily, treading water.
In any case, the path out of the cavern and to the swamp aqueduct was clear. He paddled toward the other end of the pool slowly, almost leisurely.
He hauled himself out of the water, and hunkered down to take a breather. He put a hand to his ear, keying the codec.
"Major? Come in."
There was a watery burbling sound, and then Zero's voice came in briskly. "Snake? Report."
Snake unsheathed his pack and started taking out some of the medical supplies. "I ran into one of the Cobras. The Pain. I took him down, but..."
"But?"
"He exploded."
"Did he now?"
"You don't sound surprised. Why did he explode like that?"
"It's all part of the legend of the Cobra Unit," the major replied. "Sigint can explain."
There was a pause, and then Sigint's cool, casual voice came on. "Yeah. The Pain triggered a microbomb."
"A microbomb?" Snake repeated.
"Yes," Sigint said. "During World War II, the Cobra Unit was used for the nastiest kinds of wet works, the kind that could never be let out into the open. Their missions were so top-secret that not only were they forbidden to be taken prisoner, they couldn't even leave their corpse behind. Because of this-or so the legend goes-they carried a microbomb with them on all of their missions in case they needed to commit suicide. Surgically implanted. Sort of like an explosive cyanide pill. It was essentially a dead man's switch. I always thought it was just a rumor. Didn't expect it to be actually true."
Snake hissed as he applied stringent to one of the bubbling sores on his arm from the hornets.
"But why would they be carrying bombs this time around?" Sigint mused. "It's not like they're in hostile territory."
"Maybe they're ready to die," Snake suggested.
"Ready to die?" Sigint asked, confused.
"Yeah. They've got no unit to go back to. Not even a country."
"So they've got no place to die except the battlefield, huh?"
Snake nodded. "Yeah. No turning back for them. I wonder if The Boss feels the same way."
The codec switched off, and then Snake keyed it again. "EVA? You there?"
"Snake!" EVA's voice sounded tinged with worry. "Did you run into The Pain?"
"Yeah." He looked over at the smoldering cove. "I took him down. But it was tough."
EVA breathed a long sigh of relief. "How did it feel to fight one of The Boss's comrades?"
"What are you getting at?" Snake asked suspiciously.
"I just want to know what it's like to have fought a member of the legendary Cobra unit, that's all."
Snake grunted. "What you want to know is if I can really face The Boss, is that right?"
"Well . . . that, too."
"Don't waste your time worrying about me," Snake said. "I'll get the mission done."
"I certainly hope so."
"So the exit of the cave is up ahead?"
"Right. Go to the end of the cave and you'll come out in an aqueduct overgrown with mangrove. This leads to the Ponizovje swamp."
"Got it." Snake rose to his feet. He threw one final look back at the smoking crag of rock, and he couldn't help feeling a tinge of regret. The Pain had been a renowned warrior, and Snake felt that it had been almost too easy. Had The Pain wanted to die? Or maybe The Boss was leading him into a trap, to lull him into a false sense of security?
Snake checked the .45, reloaded it. There was only one way to find out.