3
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THE CID RENDEZVOUS point was located in a building on the outskirts of the city.
Removed from the area of the fiercest fighting, the location made a suitable meeting place. Not because the building wouldn’t draw much attention—as the city fell into ruin, few structures stood out anymore, not even the ones in the city’s center—but because the constant threat of cluster bombings within the city proper tended to put a damper on long conversations.
Drebin’s M4 at the ready, Snake stepped inside.
Sunlight filtered through the cloth roof of the courtyard at the core of the five-story building. Any traces of life had long since gone.
I told Snake that the meeting point was on the top floor, and he started up a staircase decorated with colorful arabesque tilework.
Snake climbed one flight of steps. Then another.
He gritted his teeth, and I knew his ankles, his knees, his hips, all of his joints were crying out in agony. Snake was beset by old age and all its maladies—including osteoarthritis, arteriosclerosis, aortic stenosis, and a slowed healing process.
Normally, a person has decades to adjust to the gradual deterioration of the human body with age. Snake had to confront it over a period of years.
By the time he reached the last flight of stairs, he was breathing heavily. Muscle suit or no muscle suit, five flights of stairs were no easy feat for the body of a seventy-year-old.
I suggested he take a break, but he ignored me. With great effort, he made it to the top and exited to the roof. I bit my lip. Snake was fighting a battle between his body and the world, and there was nothing I could do to help him.
Once out in the open air, we saw that this was only half the roof—another partial floor occupied the remaining space. Taking care to walk silently on the balls of his feet, Snake stepped inside and into a room littered with empty bottles of liquor, formerly a bar. Snake passed through and saw his destination.
His rifle trained in front of him, Snake carefully pushed open the door to the room. Thankfully, the hinges were mostly free of rust, and no squeak broke the quiet. Through the crack in the doorway, Snake peered into the room. It seemed empty.
Just as he set foot inside, Snake sensed someone behind him and turned.
From behind the doorway stepped a soldier, armed and with his gun pointed at Snake’s head.
“Drop your weapon!”
The soldier’s voice sounded young.
Snake glimpsed the man’s weapon out of the corner of his eye. It was trembling.
He was reminded of an incident on Shadow Moses. It was just like when Snake had first met Meryl. She resisted alone against the rebel FOXHOUND unit—maybe she was trying to live up to the memory of the man she believed to be her father, the Gulf War hero. When she saw Snake, she didn’t know if he were friend or foe, and she’d held a trembling FAMAS at his head just like this man was doing now.
Snake dropped his Operator, raised his hands, and turned to face the soldier.
“Don’t move!”
The man’s voice was as shaky as his gun. Snake couldn’t help but grin—this really was just like before.
“You haven’t even taken the safety off, rookie.”
“Careful, I’m no rookie! I’m a ten-year vet!”
Snake deliberately flicked his eyes to the safety on the soldier’s XM8.
Lacking the confidence to see through Snake’s bluff, the young man nervously glanced at the side of his rifle. The safety was off, but he didn’t have time to bask in satisfaction. By then, the veteran Snake had already made the young man pay the price for letting his guard down.
Snake grabbed the XM8 and yanked the rifle forward. The young soldier lost balance, and Snake connected his elbow to the man’s face. He hooked his leg around that of the soldier and, still gripping the rifle, sent him flying to the ground.
CQC—short for close quarters combat—was the hand-to-hand fighting style developed during the Cold War by The Boss and her disciple, Naked Snake, aka Big Boss. Snake had mastered it.
Not one second after he had dropped his guard, the soldier was staring up the barrel of his own rifle.
This was a ten-year veteran? How the hell had he ever survived that long?
“Don’t move!”
Now another gun was at Snake’s head.
Snake’s eyes moved up the ridiculously large barrel of the gun to find, with no great surprise, a Desert Eagle. The weapon was tremendously powerful for a handgun, but if a weaker female attempted to fire it one-handed, the recoil would probably snap the bones in her wrist.
But the voice that now spoke to him was definitely that of a woman.
“CQC … a real Big Boss, huh?”
Snake kept the XM8 pointed at the soldier on the ground as he eyed the woman with the Desert Eagle. She wore a balaclava, which hid all of her face except for her eyes.
“Lower your weapon!” she ordered. “Slowly now. I wouldn’t try anything funny if I were you.”
Snake noticed that there was more pointed at him than this woman’s peculiar choice of a firearm. Two laser dots held steady on his chest.
Judging from the gear worn by the woman and the younger soldier, the two were likely with the CID special ops unit. No matter where the battlefield, Americans stood out. Then Snake noticed the emblem sewn onto the woman’s combat chest harness.
A sharp-eyed fox holding a combat knife in its mouth.
“FOXHOUND?” Snake said.
The woman’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, but soon a look of surprise washed over her.
“Snake?”
She lowered her weapon and pulled off her mask, revealing a familiar face. She had grown up since Shadow Moses, and no youthfulness remained in her appearance. Only her chic hairstyle was unchanged.
Meryl Silverburgh.
Colonel Campbell’s so-called niece who had fought alongside Snake on Shadow Moses Island.