
   Metal Gear Solid Previous Story Transcript (From Metal Gear Solid 2)
   Transcribed by Rob McGregor (mcgregorr@xtra.co.nz)
   Last Update - 22/11/01

---

-  Introduction
   ------------

A group of people I know (especially those from Europe waiting for the 
game as well as a few people wishing to quote areas of it for others) 
have been waiting for this to appear online, and so it's taken one simple 
minded idiot with a lot of time on his hands to write this all down. 

Many thanks to HellRaiser <Nemesis@neo-tokyo.org> for his help with this, 
getting the capture I could work with, it wouldn't have been possible 
without him :) 

I hope you find it helpful especially if you were waiting for someone to 
be bothered to write it all out. :)

With going back through Nastasha's book I'm thinking that some people 
might like to see a glossary of terms added to this document for 
reference once I'm fully finished. Some of the abbreviations are used 
over and over and some words even I didn't know the meaning of and 
needed to look up. 

Thanks to all the people who've e-mailed me saying thanks for the 
transcript or even offering to help out. I really appreciate it :)

Hello to all the guys at MetalGear.net and Metal-Gear-Extreme.de who've
helped me along with my interest in the Metal Gear series, and to those
who've let me take a break from working on New-Blood.com to indulge 
my interest in writing this out. I'm sure I'll get right back to work
on the site as soon as I finish this. 

---

-  Legal
   -----

Seeing as I really have nothing to do with writing this text, and mealy
transcribing it to people, I don't want to claim anything but recognition
of the time and effort I spent to do so.

If people wish to include this for other guides, though I have no idea 
why, they may do so as long as they credit the fact I spent a few hours
writing this all out.

---

-  Update History
   --------------

19/11/01 - First Edition. Includes File #1 - Book Review, File #2 - 
           Conspiracy File, and the first 20 pages of File #3 - 
           Nastasha's book.

22/11/01 - Second Edition. Includes 124 more pages of File #3. 
           I had hoped to add more, but couldn't due to time restraints.
           I'll continue to update this file as I have free time in
           the coming week. Suggestions to add the brief histories
           of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake from in Metal
           Gear Solid are also being considered.

---

-  Previous Story Contents
   -----------------------

1.  The New York Mirror
     [11 Pages - Complete. A review of Nastasha Romanenko's book on the 
      Shadow Moses incident. This also appeared in the MGS2 demo with Zone 
      of the Enders.]

2.  The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses
     [129 Pages - Complete. A book about one slightly crazy UFO fanatic's 
      uncovering of Nastasha's book from a disc sent to him, and the events 
      that happen when he tries to follow the truth of the Shadow Moses 
      incident.]

3.  In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth
     [324 Pages - Incomplete. Nastasha's book in its entirety. Though this 
      transcript of it is currently incomplete. I will finish it shortly.
      Current status - under 200 pages left to go.]

---

-  The New York Mirror 
   -------------------

Page 001| "In the Darkness of Shadow Moses:
        |                        The Unofficial Truth"
        |
        |
        |
        |                Author: Nastasha Romanenko
        |                Reviewed by George Franklin
        |
        |
Page 002| Some topics in the recent American past have
        | the immediacy and power that still engage
        | our collective imagination. Names like, "The
        | Grassy Knoll," or "Roswell," roll off our tongue
        | with deliberates reserved by most other 
        | nations for holy lands. With this new non-
        | fiction account from Nastasha Romanenko,
        | Shadow Moses -- the scene of a nuclear siege
        | two years ago -- is set to join their ranks.
        |
Page 003| Official history states that the takeover of
        | a nuclear weapons disposal facility on a
        | lonely outpost in the Fox Islands, Alaska was
        | the work of a radical right-wing group. Their
        | demands for the release of group members
        | incarcerated in federal penitentiaries were
        | never met, and the incident was speedily
        | resolved by the successful deployment of a
        | commando unit. B.S., the author asserts.
        | Romanenko says that she served as an advisor
Page 004| to the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, and
        | deconstructs what she claims to be a cover-up
        | story by the government with precision.
        |
        | According to the author, Shadow Moses Island
        | was nothing less than the U.S. Army's testing 
        | grounds for a top-secret weapon known as
        | Metal Gear REX, an all-terrain bipedal tank
        | with advanced nuclear capabilities. As for
        | the facilities takeover, Romanenko alleges
Page 005| that it was the U.S. military's own shadowy 
        | "wet-works" force, known as "FOXHOUND,"
        | that staged an armed insurrection in a bid
        | for REX's possession.
        |
        | The government responds to this crisis by
        | sending in a lone operative, a former FOX-
        | HOUND member known only by the code name
        | "Solid Snake," into Shadow Moses.
        | His infiltration is aided by a remote mission
Page 006| control team consisting of an unidentified 
        | "Colonel Campbell." a FOXHOUND medical chief
        | "Naomi," a radar and electronics expert "Mei
        | Ling" (supposedly a teenager), and the author
        | herself. Once on the island, "Snake" joins 
        | forces with Metal Gear's developer-turned-
        | prisoner "Otacon" to eradicate the weapon of
        | mass destruction.
        |
        | Among the other remarkable characters that
Page 007| make an appearance in Romanenko's expose 
        | is another FOXHOUND commando, a revolver-
        | virtuoso called "Shalashaska" a.k.a. "Revolver
        | Ocelot." One of the most controversial 
        | allegations in the book deals with this
        | figures connection to a disavowed Russian
        | militia led by a "Colonel Gurlukovich,"
        | Romanenko paints a bleak picture of a
        | thousand-strong, highly disciplined army 
        | with nuclear weaponry operating covertly
Page 008| within the American border. Even more
        | irresistible to conspiracy scholars and 
        | students of recent history is her thinly
        | veiled suggestion that the whole affair
        | was planned from the beginning by certain
        | forces inside the U.S. government.
        |
        |
        |
Page 009| The U.S. Army and the usual suspect of 
        | federal agencies have issued a statement 
        | denouncing the book as a complete fabri-
        | cation. However, with a number of detailed 
        | eyewitness accounts that back up the author's 
        | assertions cropping up daily on the Web, the 
        | denials serve more to enhance the book's 
        | growing reputation. "Shadow Moses" is an 
        | engrossing read for casual and serious 
        | readers alike, and promises to involve
Page 010| readers in a meaty debate over the truth
        | of the matter for many years to come.
        |
        | Excerpted from the literary review column
        | "All Booked Up", The New York Mirror
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 011| (Advertisement for MGS/MGS VR Missions)

---

-  The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses 
   -------------------------------------------

Page 001| The Shocking Conspiracy
        | Behind Shadow Moses
        | 
        | by Gary McGolden
        |
        |   The island of Shadow Moses lies due north
        | of Alaska's Fox Islands, deep in the Arctic
        | Circle. Above one of its rocky cliffs stands a
        | cabin normally used for meteorological
        | surveys, and it was here that I found myself,
Page 002| seated on a chair with my hands bound behind
        | my back and a burlap sack covering my entire
        | head. A blizzard rages outside, and the cabin
        | was a dark, silent patch somewhere inside the
        | storm. I could sense at least four men around
        | me.
        |   They had been interrogating me for what 
        | felt like hours now.
        |   The burlap sack is pungent with the traces
        | of coffee beans. In the biting cold of the cabin,
Page 003| images of Brazil come to me unbidden; alleys 
        | coiled through with vivid, untended profusion
        | of flowers, children with skin like frothy
        | chocolate, sunshine capable of burning out
        | the cornea, erupting between palm fronds.
        |   I can feel my sense starting to fail.
        |   The man in the front of me asks for the 
        | second, or the hundredth, time.
        |   "I'm going to ask you again. What's in the
        | optical disc?"
Page 004|   "Told you, I don't know. I just found it,
        | okay?"
        |   "You're lying, you bastard!"
        |   A fist explodes into the pit of my stomach,
        | bringing up a peanut butter sandwich of many
        | hours ago along with the rusty taste of blood.
        | The relentless beating and numerous knife 
        | cuts of the past hour have my whole body
        | screaming with pain, but I refuse to tell them
        | what they wanted. I had too much invested at
Page 005| this point, too many days of dangerous
        | investigation into the story of a lifetime. There
        | was no way I was going to give it all up at
        | this point.
        |   "That's enough."
        |   A voice spoke up from somewhere in the
        | back of the cabin.
        |   "We have the disk back. Just get rid of him
        | so we can get out of this place."
        |   Even in my current sorry state, I was still a
Page 006| journalist. He had said, "We have the disc
        | back." That meant that my hosts were the 
        | original owners of that optical disc. The last
        | piece of the puzzle was in it's place; I knew
        | beyond a shadow of doubt that everything
        | recorded on the disc was true, and that the
        | conspiracy I had suspected did in fact exist.
        |   At that moment, I heard a window shatter.
        |   The raging storm outside seemed to gain
        | entry to the cabin in an instance, and I heard
Page 007| thin screams from the captors that encircled
        | my chair. The next second, they had already
        | fallen heavily onto the floor.
        |   The brief confusion ended before I regained
        | enough presence of mind to even panic.
        | Whoever was now here, whatever had
        | happened, my tormentors were obviously out
        | of commission. But now I could hear measured
        | footsteps approaching across the floor.
        |   If this person had just saved my life, who
Page 008| was it? Or was I about to share the others'
        | fate? The footsteps came to a halt in front of
        | me, but strangely enough, I did not feel any
        | sort of a presence nearby.
        |   The burlap was slowly lifted from around
        | my head, pulled off by an unseen hand. The 
        | stinging night air cooled my face, and my
        | eyes gradually regained focus in the darkened
        | room.
        |   And I could finally see who it was that stood
Page 009| before me.
        |   Just out of the sight of most of its citizens, a
        | massive conspiracy determines the working of
        | this nation.
        |   Weapons of mass destruction secretly
        | developed by the military.
        |   Super-soldiers re-engineered into war
        | machines through genetic manipulation.
        |   A killer virus that only targets specific
        | individuals with deadly accuracy.
Page 010|   Tanks that walk rather than roll, and carry a
        | nuclear payload.
        |   A covert organization, the third and the
        | most powerful political party, my encounter
        | with which landed me in this chair in the
        | Alaskan winter...
        |   All of these are a part of the truth I found
        | sealed within the optical disc, and I intend to
        | share what I have learned in the pages to
        | follow. That includes everything I now know
Page 011| about our government, and the secret arena
        | where an even greater power pulls the
        | strings. This is the truth many have glimpsed
        | but never dared to talk about.
        |   Everything detailed in this book actually 
        | happened, and after I lived it, my world was
        | no longer the same safe place I knew. Neither,
        | I promise, will be yours if you have the
        | courage to keep going.
        | 
Page 012| It all began a month ago --
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 013| THE POSTMAN RINGS
        |   A month before my dramatic escape from
        | death on Shadow Moses, I was having late
        | breakfast in my apartment in New York.
        |   Ever since and alien abduction episode in my
        | childhood, I'd been plagued by a 
        | persistent ringing in my ears.
        |   A large patch of mud was my undoing. 
        | I slipped, fell and was knocked unconscious.
        | When I came to, it was already dawn.
Page 014| Later, I was trying to see the bump on
        | the back of my head in the mirror when I saw
        | "IT" instead. A small hole, about the size of a
        | pinprick, had been made behind my ear. You
        | learn a little something when you watch as 
        | much TV as I did. There was no doubt that I
        | had been abducted by a passing UFO, and
        | had spent the hours while unconscious with
        | alien beings! Unfortunately, no one in the
        | area recalled seeing a UFO, and not a single
Page 015| person had the sense to listen to my story. I
        | realize now that this was the day I decided to
        | uncover truth for a living, and become a
        | journalist.
        |   But back to the present day. It turned out
        | that the ringing wasn't in my ear, but from the
        | doorbell. The thing shrieked somewhere south 
        | of a baritone bat sonar, barely within the
        | range of human hearing. Blame the mangling
        | it took from a particularly displeased visitor.
Page 016|   Outside the door was the mailman, and in
        | the mailman's hand was a thick manila
        | envelope. On the envelope was a label,
        | addressed to me.
        |   A letter bomb!
        |   I pressed my ear against the envelope and
        | concentrated hard. But not a tick from the 
        | thing. Of course, no one uses analog watches
        | in bombs these days. That's why they call it
        | the Digital Age. In fact, why would there even
Page 017| be a watch in a letter bomb? The point is that
        | the unlucky recipient opens it, and the bomb
        | goes off. Which means that it's actually the
        | completely silent envelopes that are
        | dangerous. I knew that opening that flap
        | would send my eggs to the big omelet in the
        | sky, but you don't get to be an investigative
        | journalist for thinking inside the box.
        |   I tore through the bottom of the envelope
Page 018| instead.
        |   *Riiip*
        |   No!
        |   The contents of the suspicious envelope
        | dropped to the floor with lightning speed!
        |   In this world, you can never be too careful.
        | Let this be a warning to you, readers: when
        | circumstances compel you to open an
        | envelope from the bottom, turn it upside down
        | first. As a rule, I discovered, objects fall
Page 019| down, and this is what happened to the 
        | contents of my lethal envelope, straight down
        | into a half-eaten depth of a delivery pizza
        | forgotten on the floor. I don't recall when
        | exactly this food item arrived on these 
        | premises, but the thing was definitely a
        | museum piece by now.
        |   Fortunately, it wasn't a bomb but an optical
        | storage disc, now liberally smeared with
        | peanut butter. This disc was the kind that
Page 020| comes in a clear plastic casing, through which
        | the rainbow sheen of the circular unit shone.
        | I gazed into it awhile, thinking of the UFO from
        | that fateful day.
        |   Anyway, I fished the optical disc out, noting 
        | the lack of a label. A quick wash at the sink 
        | got rid of the crud it had accumulated.
        |   The disc was drying by the window as I 
        | hunted through the now-harmless envelope 
        | for clues. A single sheet of Xerox paper was
Page 021| stuck to the inside and it read:
        | 
        | "From the desk of MAX SMITHSON, Editor-in-
        | Chief, MEGASURPRISE magazine
        | 
        | I'm mailing you this optical disc that was sent
        | to the edit department. It's right up your alley,
        | see if you can turn up something more. We'll 
        | do a book if you get enough stuff together.
        | This is your chance for a comeback, so don't
Page 022| screw it up."
        | 
        |   Max is an old friend, and used to manage 
        | most of my book deals way back when. We
        | hadn't seen each other much since I gave up
        | writing. Not that that he has the right to tell me
        | about comebacks and screwing up, but I find 
        | myself growing excited by the prospect of
        | writing another book. But there was a 
        | problem, and it was a big one.
Page 023|   How the hell was I going to get the disc's
        | content?
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 024| THE SHOCKING TRUTH WITHIN
        |   My next-door neighbor is a starving college
        | student, and I hit him up for the use of his
        | computer now and then. I banged on his door
        | and screamed repeatedly until he scuffled up
        | to the door half-asleep. Once inside, I made a
        | beeline for the piece of junk and stuck the
        | disc into the drive. The icon appeared on the
Page 025| display with a gentle whir. The file name read:
        | "In the Darkness of Shadow Moses".
        |
        |   But an urgent click on the icon only brought
        | up an error message. What nefarious scheme
        | was this!? What secret encryption was
        | preventing me from accessing the data!? I
        | clicked again and again with the same result,
        | and started to gnaw on the keyboard in 
        | frustration. The starving student come running
Page 026| over, wailing about his equipment. He typed in
        | some moon-man language, avoiding patches
        | of my spit, and a frighteningly cheerful
        | application startup screen appeared on the 
        | display. Then lo and behold, I finally laid my
        | eyes on the dense mass of text, the contents
        | of the disc!
        |   At the very top it read: "'In the Darkness of 
        | Shadow Moses' by Nastasha Romanenko"
        |   The starving student was being scholarly
Page 027| and trying to read the text over my shoulder.
        | I knocked him out with a punch to the solar
        | plexus and devoured the file's content. It was
        | like a blow to the head with a frozen tuna; my
        | brain was reeling from the shock. The file was
        | fill of wild stuff: top-secret conspiracies,
        | incredible genetic experimentation, cold-
        | blooded military deployment of classified
        | weapons. This was the most incredible
        | stuff I had ever come across.
        |
Page 028| THE UNOFFICAL FACTS
        | ACCORDING TO THE DISC
        | Most readers should be aware of the series of 
        | strange military actions involving an island 
        | father north of Alaska's Fox Island, some 
        | two years ago. The island was called Shadow 
        | Moses, and received a series of well-
        | documented but never-explained visits of 
        | obvious significance. USS Discovery, an Ohio 
        | class ballistic missile submarine, was ordered
Page 029| away from its designated training area and
        | was confirmed offshore of Shadow Moses
        | Island. It joined an E-3C AWACS that had 
        | already and suddenly been deployed to the 
        | area, with none other than Jim Houseman, the 
        | National Security Advisors, aboard. Sixteen 
        | hours later, 6 F117 Night Hawks with full a 
        | payload took off from the Galena AFB for 
        | Alaska. 
        |   Various theories were placed into circulation
Page 030| by the media at the time. Some journalists
        | insisted it had been a foiled invasion
        | attempt by a foreign state, other suspected a
        | coup d'etat by a part of the U.S. military. I
        | myself wrote an opinion piece for a magazine
        | explaining that Shadow Moses was the Ellis
        | Island for the "Greys." This diminutive grey
        | race is after all the most famous of our alien
        | neighbors, notorious for having secret bases
        | all over planet Earth.
Page 031|   But according to this file, we had all been 
        | off our marks.
        |   What had instead unfolded on Shadow 
        | Moses was the most major terrorist incident
        | in history, and apocalyptic scenario born out of
        | a government-developed superman project
        | and a doomsday weapon of the same origin.
        |   On that fateful day, the nuclear weapons
        | disposal plant on Shadow Moses had suddenly
        | been seized by an irregular operations squad
Page 032| called "FOXHOUND", aided by a group of
        | next-generation super-soldiers. And what
        | they threatened was no less than a nuclear
        | strike against the mainland United States!
        |   So how is it that we're still alive?
        | Apparently we have a man known only as
        | "Solid Snake" -- an his solitary infiltration
        | of the disposal facility -- to thank for i.t
        |   Believe it or not, this is only the tip of
        | the iceberg as far as the Shadow Moses incident
Page 033| is concerned. This disc contains many more
        | horrifying facts such as a major government
        | conspiracy, a classified weapon described 
        | as a "walking nuclear-capable tank", and
        | advanced genetic manipulation projects. Many
        | of these hidden dealings were discovered by
        | Solid Snake as he carried out his mission, and
        | it is now my job to relate these facts to you
        | the readers.
        |   But it is still a little too premature to do
Page 034| so? The content of the disc may after all be
        | nothing more than fiction, or even a delusion.
        | After all, who exactly is this Nastasha
        | Romanenko?
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 035| IN SEARCH OF NASTASHA ROMANENKO
        |   A quick search of the Web turned up a few
        | illuminating facts about this elusive writer.
        | Nastasha Romanenko was at one point with
        | the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). At the
        | time of the Shadow Moses incident, she
        | appears to have been a freelance military
        | analyst, having already resigned from the
        | Agency. Nuclear and weapons technology
Page 036| would certainly be right up her alley, and in
        | the disc she states that she took part in Solid
        | Snake's mission support. Her exact role was
        | as a member of NEST (Nuclear Emergency
        | Search Team), providing field expertise via
        | the radio. Her intimate involvement in the 
        | mission giver her a complete and clear grasp
        | of the facts surrounding the case despite the
        | government's successful cover-up.
Page 037|   A look at Romanenko's curriculum vitae and
        | body of papers makes her anti-nuclear stance
        | more than obvious. That, along with all the
        | other facts about this person, suggests that
        | unless she suffered a sudden chemical
        | imbalance or is plotting a second career as a
        | Hollywood screenwriter, Nastasha Romanenko
        | does not indulge in expounding conspiracy
        | theories for its own sake.
        |   All very interesting. So where is Nastasha
Page 038| Romanenko now? I decided to give Global
        | Elements Inc., the book's publisher a call.
        | Below is a complete transcript of the 
        | conversation.
        |
        |   Me: "Hello. Listen, you leftover carnival
        | prize, what do you know about a woman 
        | named Nastasha Romanenko?"
        |   Whoever it was: "Hey, your village called.
        | They want their idiot back. And watch
Page 039| your language, freak." Click.
        |
        |   Clearly, they're hiding something. Why else
        | the abrupt response and the hasty hang-up?
        | I was on the trail of something important.
        | Something dangerous. If the content of the 
        | disc was true, this Nastasha Romanenko was
        | definitely the Woman-Who-Knew-Too-Much.
        | Her life would be in danger, and she must
        | either have gone to ground or was already
Page 040| dead. That brief telephone conversation spoke
        | volumes: there was contract out on her life!
        | If this was the price of speaking the truth as
        | described in that disc, the picture was 
        | complete. But was everything she wrote really
        | true?
        |   I went back to my apartment and packed a
        | bag. I was headed for Shadow Moses.
        |
        |
Page 041| THE COLDEST PLACE
        | I took a plane out to the northernmost
        | domestic airport and went to see my cousin
        | John-Dee.
        |   John-Dee is a hardcore Alaskan and a big-
        | eye tuna fisherman. When I asked him to drop
        | me off at Shadow Moses Island during one of
        | his trips out to sea, he turned pale and a
        | nervous tick started up at the corner of his
        | eye.
Page 042|   "Shadow Moses? Are you nuts? All the
        | other guys say the place is crawling with the
        | military. If you get even close to the shore
        | they shine these huge searchlights in your
        | face, and some of my buddies even got
        | interrogated once!"
        |   I felt the sudden chill of fear along with a
        | certainty that I was on the right track.
        |   "You're a wuss, you know that? Try being
        | abducted by a UFO, that'll teach you what's
Page 043| really scary."
        |   "I got a family, you know? I'm not about to
        | go messing around with The Man!"
        |   "OK, you get me as close as you can then.
        | I'll swim the rest of the way."
        |   "Swim? You're gonna turn into frozen tuna
        | treat."
        |   "Don't worry about that. I have an idea."
        |   We sailed out for Shadow Moses Island that
        | day.
        |
Page 044| THE TRIP TO SHADOW MOSES
        |   It was colder than the dairy section and the
        | boat pitched like a subway derailment on
        | caffeine. I shook constantly from the cold,
        | retched peanut butter into the sea, then
        | downed some more to keep warm. A few days
        | passed in this pleasant fashion until John-
        | Dee, drawing lines on his charts, turned to
        | me. 
        |   "I'm sorry man, but this as far as I can
Page 045| go. If you really want to do this thing, you're
        | going to have to find your own way."
        |   There were at least 20 miles to Shadow
        | Moses according to the charts. But John-Dee
        | was already a blubbering wreck, and I didn't
        | have the heart to strong-arm him. I steeled
        | my nerves.
        |   "It's okay. Help me get ready."
        |   The plan was brilliant. I'd gutted a super-
        | size tuna and stuffed some inflated balloons
Page 046| inside, along with a small oil lamp to keep the
        | interior toasty. I would cover the length of my
        | body with the fish and dog-paddle my way to
        | the island. Any oxygen shortage could quickly
        | be remedied thanks to the balloon, and my
        | landing would appear to be nothing more than
        | a large dead fish swept ashore. All I had to do
        | was slip out of the tuna undetected and
        | investigate the hell out of the place.
        | Absolutely brilliant.
Page 047|   I bore the fishy stink of the tuna skin with
        | proper journalistic aplomb and walked to the 
        | edge of the ship's deck. The Arctic wind was
        | numbing even through the wetsuit, but I bade
        | John-Dee a hearty farewell and jumped into
        | the sea. But right then, disaster struck!
        |   Actually it was the tuna spine. Its bony
        | mass conked me hard on the back of my head
        | from the force of the landing. I tried to right
        | myself, but I was jammed tight against the
Page 048| balloons. The tuna started to sink rapidly, and 
        | I kicked my legs wildly as about a gallon of 
        | seawater rushed into my lungs. To add insult 
        | to injury, the lamp fell over, shedding its 
        | cover. I could feel the heat of the exposed 
        | flame dangerously close to my face, and smell 
        | the singed hair. This is why I hare traveling. 
        |   But after what felt like hours, I found myself 
        | ashore on Shadow Moses Island.
        |
Page 049|   Let's take a moment here to review what
        | happened on the island on that fateful day.
        | Romanenko's disc provides a complete 
        | answer.
        |   Shadow Moses was no ordinary weapons
        | disposal facility, but served as a secret
        | military training ground among other things.
        | On that day, the wetworks commando unit
        | known as FOXHOUND and the next-generation
        | Special Forces group were conducting joint
Page 050| exercises.
        |   FOXHOUND is an "irregular" squad of elite
        | soldiers, equipped and armed to the teeth
        | with the latest technology. There were longtime
        | -- and strictly behind-the-scenes -- players
        | throughout recent history, engaging in
        | sabotage, selective assassinations and other
        | covert military operations. Wherever the
        | United States could not officially intervene,
        | whether it was a civil war, regional unrest or
Page 051| other types of low-intensity conflict, 
        | FOXHOUND was there. It's unlikely, however,
        | that an average citizen has ever heard of them
        | before; these commandos remain a top-secret
        | government project.
        |   And then there's the next-generation
        | Special Forces unit. This is a cutting-edge
        | anti-terrorist force newly organized to cope
        | with terrorist incidents specifically involving
        | weapons of mass destruction typified in
Page 052| nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare. They
        | drew heavily from former mercenary ranks,
        | and are on a diet of rigorous VR training
        | guided by the FORCE 21 concept. The result is
        | combat capability, which is rumored to
        | surpass even those of the Delta Force and 
        | DEV GRU (formerly known as Seal Team 6).
        | Most frightening of all, these soldiers have
        | supposedly been manipulated at the genetic
        | level to increase their combat performance.
Page 053|   They were the purebreds among the dogs 
        | of war, and they turned on their masters with
        | a surprising demand. Having seized the
        | civilians that were on hand, they demanded
        | that the government turn over to them the
        | body of FOXHOUND's founder and combat
        | genius, the so-called "Big Boss." The
        | government had 24 hours to comply or
        | a nuclear strike would be initiated. But what
        | would motivate them to make such a demand,
Page 054| and how did they intend to make good their
        | threat of a nuclear launch?
        |   With these questions still unanswered, the
        | government decided on a seemingly reckless
        | course of action. For this daunting task of
        | stopping a nuclear strike and freeing the
        | hostages from the clutches of these ultimate
        | soldiers, they sent in a single man. His name
        | was Solid Snake -- no other than a former
        | member of the now-renegade FOXHOUND and
Page 055| a legend among mercenaries for single-
        | handedly bringing down the fortress cities of
        | Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land.
        |   Your reaction is probably one of incredulity.
        | "Just one guy?" You may wonder. "They
        | decided to gamble the future of the entire
        | world on a single mercenary?"
        | I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment.
        | But there is more to this mission than meets
        | the eye, as I was later to discover.
        |
Page 056| SOLID SNAKE'S REMOTE SUPPORT TEAM
        |   Snake was delivered to the island by USS
        | Discovery, an Ohio class ballistic missile
        | submarine. He may have been the lone field
        | operative, but there was a distinguished
        | mission control team in contact with him by
        | radio.
        |   The overall control of the mission rested
        | with Colonel Roy Campbell aboard the USS
Page 057| Discovery. As a former commander of
        | FOXHOUND and Snake's CO during the 1999
        | Zanzibar Land standoff, he was forcibly called
        | out from retirement to deal with this latest
        | crisis. 
        |   Also aboard the Discovery was Dr. Naomi
        | Hunter, a genetic engineering expert with the
        | commercial biotech firm ATGC Inc. She was in
        | charge of FOXHOUND's gene manipulation
        | program.
Page 058|   Mei Ling, the architect of the mission's state-
        | of-the-art radar and communication systems, 
        | was the third team member. Apparently
        | something of an engineering wunderkind, she
        | developed this next-generation communication
        | technology while still as student at MIT. At the
        | time of the mission, she may have still been in
        | her teens.
        |   McDonnell Miller, a former FOXHOUND
        | survival instructor, was the only land-bound
Page 059| member of the mission control team. Unlike
        | the other four, Miller was working out of his
        | home in Alaska at his own request.
        |   Lastly, Nastasha Romanenko, the author of
        | "In the Darkness of Shadow Moses," rounded
        | out the team as an expert on nuclear and
        | other weapons of mass destruction.
        |
        |
Page 060| WHAT TERRORIST ACTS
        | WERE COMITTED HERE?
        | THE HOSTAGES AND WHAT THEY TELL US
        |   The first task faced by Solid Snake upon his
        | infiltration of Shadow Moses Island was the
        | rescue of the hostages. Two of the captives in
        | particular were considered top-priority, but 
        | neither survived the mission. Though Snake
        | successfully freed both men, they died
        | suddenly in an identical manner. At the time, 
Page 061| the mission control team tentatively attributed
        | the deaths to heart attacks -- a diagnosis
        | that was to prove starkly incorrect.
        |   The first hostage was Donald Anderson, the
        | head of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research
        | Projects Agency), the R&D body of the U.S.
        | Department of Defense. The organization is
        | responsible for planning and overseeing the
        | development of new weapons technology.
        |   The other VIP hostage, Kenneth Baker, was
Page 062| the president of ArmsTech, one of the largest
        | and most powerful defense subcontractors in 
        | the country. 
        |   An overseer of the U.S.'s war technology
        | and a powerful arms producer don't just
        | happen to meet in an out-of-the-war military
        | outpost. No one reading this account can fail
        | to realize that these two had no business in a
        | nuclear weapons disposal plant. And since
        | neither Anderson nor Baker was in the habit
Page 063| of enjoying winter picnics, Romanenko's
        | assertion that there was a new weapon
        | secretly being developed on the island rings
        | all the more true. According to her, there was
        | indeed such a weapon, and it was close 
        | enough to completion to warrant a field test.
        | But what exactly was this new weapon?
        |
        |
Page 064| THE MOTHER OF ALL WEAPONS
        |   Metal Gear. I'm not sure it's a term that 
        | many of you have heard. I know it only as a 
        | kind of a journalistic urban legend while I was 
        | still a beat reporter. It was a phantom bipedal 
        | tank that moved with unprecedented speed 
        | across difficult terrain such as mountains, 
        | desert and swamps, firing nuclear warheads 
        | from locations that were previously 
        | impossible. Once this weapon rolled off the
Page 065| assembly line, nuclear strikes could be made
        | from almost any adverse terrain, and the
        | tactical nuclear map for the whole world 
        | would be rewritten.
        |   This nuclear-capable bipedal tank is said to
        | have lurked in the wings of both Outer Heaven
        | of South Africa and Zanzibar Land in
        | Central Asia. One theory holds that the
        | development had progressed to a working
Page 066| prototype stage, but the weapon never
        | materialized on the world arms stage. In a
        | strange coincidence or a casual connection, it
        | was none other than Solid Snake who saved
        | the world from the threat of Metal Gear during
        | both incidents.
        |   But history does indeed repeat itself, and
        | the specter of Metal Gear rose once again --
        | in the state-of-the-art weapons development
        | program of Shadow Moses Island. 
Page 067|   When I reached this point in the narrative,
        | I suddenly checked myself. Wasn't Metal
        | Gear's time effectively over? Ever since the
        | collapse of the Soviet Union late last century,
        | the idea of mutual assured destruction and
        | the arms race to maintain this dangerous
        | status quo had been fading into obsolescence.
        | The START2 treaty signed by both
        | superpowers had already started to chip away
        | at the nuclear stockpile even back then.
Page 068| In fact, the disposal facility at Shadow Moses
        | had been built to disarm and temporarily store
        | many of these same warheads. With the very
        | idea of nuclear weapons under serious
        | scrutiny, why would the military invest in the
        | development of a nuclear-capable tank?
        | Or was there something more to this
        | weapon?
        |
Page 069| THE NATURE OF THE BEAST
        |   Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you
        | Metal Gear REX, the newest of its kind. 
        | Almost forty-five feet in height, equipped with
        | Vulcan cannons and laser array and shielded
        | by a cutting-edge composite armor, rendering
        | the unit practically impervious to even HEAT
        | (High Explosive Anti-Tank) warheads. And I
        | haven't even gotten to the truly scary part of
        | this thing.
Page 070|   The crown jewel of this Shadow Moses
        | Metal Gear was its rail gun technology. The
        | gun was designed to fire nuclear warheads
        | clear of the atmosphere, where they would
        | automatically align themselves to the target
        | and ride the optimal trajectory back down to
        | Earth.
        |   "So what?" you may think. "There's a big
        | fat missile flying in from the sky. Who cares
        | where it came from? Just shoot the damn
Page 071| thing down." But here's the catch: You won't
        | be able to find any of REX's warheads, let
        | alone shoot them down. Don't believe me?
        | The facts bear me out.
        |   Normally, ballistic missiles go through four
        | phases from launch to impact. The first is the
        | boost phase, which consists of the time
        | between the missile's launch and the point at
        | which it leaves the atmosphere and exhausts
        | its supply of rocket propellant. Following the
Page 072| burnout, the rocket enters the post-boost
        | pause that concludes with the separation of
        | the reentry vehicle that contains the warhead.
        | The third stage is the midcourse phase, in 
        | which the reentry vehicle separates and 
        | achieves a controlled descent back into the 
        | atmosphere. The warhead's reentry into the 
        | atmosphere and its arrival at the target mark 
        | the fourth and terminal phase. 
        |   Current missile defense systems are
Page 073| alerted to incoming ballistic missiles by
        | detecting the rocket burn during the missile's
        | boost stage. However, Metal Gear's missile
        | technology employs a rail gun rather than
        | conventional rocket propulsion to achieve
        | boost-stage acceleration. As a result, there is
        | nothing for existing missile defense systems to 
        | detect.
        |   The rail gun's effectiveness is nothing short
        | of amazing, with a range of over 3000 miles,
Page 074| rivaling that of mid-range ballistic missiles.
        | It reliably homes in within 170 feet of the
        | target 50% of the time, placing it in the same
        | class as high-end ICBM's. The ability of a
        | Metal Gear to conquer virtually all terrain
        | means that the rail gun can launch a stealthy
        | nuclear strike from almost any spot on the
        | globe.
        |   This invisible attack would make it 
        | impossible for anyone to pinpoint the origin of
Page 075| a given missile even in the event of a strike.
        | Without a clear aggressor to retaliate against,
        | the concept of mutual assured destruction falls
        | apart. Without the fear of MAD, the existing
        | rules of nuclear non-engagement would no
        | longer apply.
        |   It also wouldn't matter if the whole world
        | knew that a nuclear missile would be launched
        | from Shadow Moses Island; the missile 
        | defense system was helpless against the new
Page 076| breed of ballistic missiles. This was exactly
        | what the terrorists counted on in unleashing
        | Metal Gear REX and its all-powerful nuclear
        | weapon against the world.
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 077| WHAT I FINALLY SAW INSIDE THE FORTRESS
        |   Anyway.
        |   I trudged through the cave, sweating under
        | the weight of my trusty tuna. Soon, the rocks
        | gave way to smooth walls and a row of bright
        | lights. I had finally arrived -- this was no
        | doubt the cradle of insurrections, that military
        | facility which Solid Snake so brilliantly
        | penetrated, the eye of the storm that
        | threatened to engulf the world!
Page 078|   Fortunately, there was not a soul to be
        | seen. I could, however, hear a faint cry
        | amidst the whistle of the wind.
        |   "Gary, help me -- "
        |   I couldn't believe my ears. How could
        | anyone on a remote island that I'd never
        | visited know my name? I took a good
        | cautious look around and saw a familiar
        | figure among the steel pillars in the corner.
        | It was -- John Dee!
Page 079|   My cousin, who'd so carelessly pitched me
        | overboard into the subzero water only few
        | hours ago, was now sitting on the ground, tied
        | to a post. What had happened?
        |   "Help, Gary -- "
        |   I trotted over to where he was calling
        | pathetically, the tuna heavy on my back. He
        | smiled weakly when he saw me.
        |   "What the hell happened to you, John-
        | Dee?" I asked, crouching down next to 
Page 080| him.
        |   "I dunno. Right after I let you off, this black
        | helicopter came around."
        |   "A helicopter?"
        |   "Yeah. A kind of squarish black one. The
        | next thing I know, I'm tied up here... Gary, 
        | why're you still wearing that fish?"
        |   Was there more to this as I'd suspected?
        | Who was responsible? The military? Or that
        | mysterious group mentioned in the disc, the
Page 081| one whose authority outstrips even that of the
        | President of the United States?
        |   My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden
        | gunfire. I instinctively pulled the tuna over me
        | again.
        |   "Gary, you gotta help me! Untie me, will 
        | ya!?"
        |   Where was the shooter? The bullets were
        | wildly ricocheting off the posts, making it
        | impossible for me to pinpoint the origin.
Page 082| If I stayed put, I was dead meat. What should
        | be my next course of action?
        |   "Untie me, man! Gary!"
        |   "Don't call me Gary! I'm just a tuna!" I 
        | started to run, dodging bullets and sprinting
        | up the stairs. I was unstoppable, speeding
        | away like a gazelle in a large fishskin.
        | Farewell, cousin John-Dee. There are
        | responsibilities greater than your safety that I
        | must shoulder. Mine is a high and lonely path.
        |
Page 083| SOLID SNAKE VS. THE ARMY OF DARKNESS
        |   Let's take this moment to review Solid
        | Snake's footsteps. The nuclear weapons
        | disposal facility that he had infiltrated was
        | crawling with terrorists, and engaging the
        | enemy was unavoidable. This was a
        | battlefield, no mistake about it.
        |   Snake's progress had been impeded at
        | every step by the patrolling squads of super-
        | "genome soldiers," and such formidable
Page 084| FOXHOUNDs as Psycho Mantis, the master of
        | psychokinesis and mindreading, the chameleon
        | -like Decoy Octopus, the chaingun-wielding
        | giant Vulcan Raven, and Sniper Wolf, one of
        | the best marksman in history. The following is
        | a profile of individuals whose involvement with
        | the government conspiracy seems to be the
        | most intimate. The information should help
        | make the terrifying truth about this case
        | more clear.
Page 085| - Revolver Ocelot
        |   An ex-Spetznaz, also known as
        | "Shalashaska." After the collapse of the 
        | Soviet Union, he found lucrative contracts 
        | as a mercenary in conflict-ridden regions
        | throughout the world. His activities led to his
        | recruitment by the U.S. government, and 
        | his entry into FOXHOUND. As his code name
        | indicates, he is a brilliant marksman whose
        | preferred weapon is a revolver.
Page 086|   Ocelot challenged Snake when he came
        | looking for Kenneth Baker, the President of
        | ArmsTech Inc. But the battle never reached
        | the conclusion Ocelot wanted due to the
        | sudden intrusion of the stealth camouflage-
        | clad cyborg-Ninja. The Ninja's sword cut a
        | deadly arc right through Ocelot's right arm,
        | and Ocelot retreated in agony.
        |   The Russian sharpshooter also served as a
        | liaison between his terrorist band and a
Page 087| Russian militia led by the renegade Colonel
        | Gurlukovich. According to FOXHOUND leader
        | Liquid Snake's master plan, the Russian militia
        | would join them on Shadow Moses after the
        | nuclear strike had been launched. They would
        | then commence and all-out assault on the rest
        | of the world from their safe retreat on the
        | island. With nuclear missiles that could neither
        | be detected nor defended against, over a
        | thousand first-class Russian soldiers, next-
Page 088| generation genome commandos and the
        | combat skill and tactical cunning of
        | FOXHOUND, this new army's objective was
        | nothing short of World War III.
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 089| - The Ninja
        |   The mystery figure equipped with a
        | reinforced exoskeleton and stealth camouflage
        | confounded Snake as well as the terrorists
        | with his superhuman strength and agility. His
        | interest seems not to have been what was 
        | happening within the facility; evidence
        | suggests that he was there solely to engage
        | Snake in battle. It was through such an
        | encounter that Snake realized the identity of
Page 090| the Ninja.
        |   His name had been Gray Fox, and he was
        | supposed to have been killed by Snake, his
        | best friend. This may seem surprising, but the
        | dead coming back tom life is a fairly routine
        | occurrence. There are examples throughout
        | the world to prove the fact. When a Roland
        | Grace's grave was relocated in 1952, there
        | were deep gouge marks discovered on the
        | inside of the Hungarian farmer's casket lid.
Page 091| It looked as though the dying man had tried to
        | claw his way out of the coffin. On a brighter
        | note, a Japanese man called Jin-emon
        | Natakama walked out of a stalactite cave in
        | 1914, a full ten years after he had gone
        | missing while exploring the same cave. His
        | family was doubly astonished to discover that
        | he had apparently not aged a day since they
        | last saw him. All this makes complete sense to
        | me, and it should to you as well in a moment.
Page 092| Two words: pyramid power. I have no doubt
        | that Gray Fox was forced to undergo the same
        | revival process by military scientists in the
        | course of their horrific genetic experiments.
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 093| - Liquid Snake
        |   I know exactly what you are thinking as you
        | hear the name of the man who led the Shadow
        | Moses uprising -- and my answer is yes.
        | Solid Snake, our hero, and Liquid Snake are
        | none other than twin brothers.
        |   They are not, however, twins in the usual
        | sense. This is yet another manifestation of the
        | U.S. military's dangerous love affair with
        | genetic engineering. The two Snakes are
Page 094| fighting machines created through the
        | so-called Project "Les Enfants Terribles"!
        |   The rumors that the government is 
        | attempting "mass-production" of super-
        | solders are numerous and persistent. Just the
        | other day, I came across something called
        | "D-People-E-O," a humanoid combat droid.
        | Development on the outer shell had gone off
        | without a hitch, but the unit had to have a
        | human being inside to function, which
Page 095| decreased its utility somewhat. The military
        | finally realized the fact late in the game, and
        | pulled the plug. There was also a plan to use
        | a well-known psychokinetic's DNA material to
        | breed an army of gifted soldiers.
        | Unfortunately, someone pointed out that there
        | is indeed no spoon -- at least not in a normal
        | combat situation.
        |   Solid and Liquid Snakes, however, were 
        | successfully created from their "father" Big
Page 096| Boss' genetic material. They were literally
        | born to be extraordinary soldiers, and it was
        | no surprise that when they finally met, the
        | result would be a titanic confrontation.
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 097| WHAT I SAW ON THE ROOF
        |   I hauled myself and the tuna up the steps,
        | dodging the invisible sniper. The spiral
        | staircase seemed to go on forever. Just as I
        | was about to give up the climb, I saw the exit
        | to the roof.
        |   I pulled open the door and lurched into the
        | faintly lit gloom. The subzero wind felt
        | soothing on my overworked body. I laid the
        | tuna down and sat down next to it, trying to
Page 098| catch my breath. The enemy may purse me
        | even here, but I had nothing left in me to run
        | with.
        |   I pulled out my hip flask of peanut-butter-
        | and-bourbon, and took a long swig. The fiery
        | liquid slid down my throat, hot and thick.
        |   Peanut butter is my Waterloo. When I was a
        | kid, I was a wuss who couldn't eat peanut
        | butter like other red-blooded children.
        | One day, I decided to confront this weakness
Page 099| of mine, and put myself on a peanut butter
        | overload; anything I put in my mouth had to 
        | have peanut butter on it. I piled the stuff on
        | everything from chilidogs without onions --
        | my favorite dish -- to spearmint gun to my
        | first girlfriend's lips.
        |   The inevitable result was that I came to hate
        | peanut butter. If I didn't much like it before, I
        | now loathed it with abandon. If I could gather
        | the entire world supply of peanut butter and
Page 100| dump it in the Bermuda Triangle, I would.
        | As it is, all I can do is eat as much of the 
        | stuff as I can. Peanut butter, I will always hate
        | you. 
        |   How does that song go?
        |   "And I-ai-ai will always hate you-u-U-u"
        |   No, that's not it.
        |   "Will always -- "
        |   It must be another song I'm thinking of.
        | Can't remember. Snow is starting to coat my
Page 101| shoes.
        |   Where was my tuna? Oh, there it is, right
        | next to me.
        |   Bright light in my eye. Now I remember
        | what day it is -- June 24th. The anniversary
        | of my UFO abduction. Why am I so sleepy?
        | And what is that sound?
        |   It was a chopper. A squarish black one, and
        | it was coming closer.
        |
Page 102| FOXDIE --
        | THE SECRET ASSASSINATION VIRUS
        |   If you recall, I wrote that the two hostages
        | -- the DARPA chief Donald Anderson and
        | ArmsTech president Kenneth Baker --  died of
        | a heart attack while they were being rescued
        | by Solid Snake. The actual cause of their
        | death, however, was a specially engineered
        | assassination virus called FOXDIE.
        |   FOXDIE is a retrovirus that kills only a
Page 103| select people; its development was passed
        | onto Naomi Hunter from her predecessor.
        | Once FOXDIE find its way into its target's
        | system, the person dies almost immediately.
        | It's practically a viral equivalent of
        | spontaneous human combustion.
        |   Dr. Hunter had injected Solid Snake with
        | this virus, and as he unwittingly made contact
        | with his targets one by one, they fell prey to
        | the retrovirus' power. But the decision to
Page 104| infect Snake was not hers -- that order in fact
        | came directly from the Pentagon!
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 105| THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT'S GOAL
        |   The true object of the DOD was to
        | selectively assassinate the perpetrators of the
        | terrorist uprising. All Snake had to do was to
        | come into contact with the targets; the mission
        | objectives he was actually given --
        | namely to stop the nuclear launch and rescue
        | the hostages -- were nothing more than a
        | smoke screen. By simply sending Snake in as
        | a disease vector, the Pentagon stood to
Page 106| reclaim their expensive investments,
        | Metal Gear and the bodies of the genome
        | soldiers, with little risk of damage.
        |   The Pentagon also believed that FOXDIE
        | would successfully cover up the incident by
        | the virtue of its lethality. However, Naomi
        | Hunter's reengineering of the virus cast grave
        | doubts on the reliability of FOXDIE itself. Even
        | though the nature of her manipulation was
Page 107| unknown, the Pentagon decided to take
        | extreme measures to counteract this 
        | development.
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 108| THE BOMBER ON THE HORIZON
        |   Alarmed by the news of Dr. Hunter's
        | tampering, the then-Defense Secretary Jim
        | Houseman personally took over as the 
        | mission's commander and headed for Shadow
        | Moses on an AWACS. Around the same time, a
        | bomber took off from a base in Galena, 
        | Alaska, carrying a payload of surface-piercing
        | B61-13 tactical missile. The Defense
        | Secretary had decided on a more direct
Page 109| approach to cover-up.
        |   Fighting nuke with nuke -- it was a
        | rationale that smacked of a return to the arms
        | race, and Snake was furious. He had already
        | succeeded in destroying Metal Gear REX, and
        | the terrorist incident was over for all intents
        | and purposes. Was a nuclear air strike to be
        | his prize for accomplishing all this?
        |   As it turned out, the air strike never
        | happened. Somebody had countermanded
Page 110| Jim Houseman's orders. You may think that
        | the only person with the authority to override
        | the orders of the Secretary of Defense was his
        | commander-in-chief, the President of the
        | United States. But like most things in this
        | account, the truth is far from obvious. The
        | hand that stopped the nuclear strike was that
        | of a shadowy secret society!
        |   But what kind of a group is it whose power
        | outstrips even that of the American
Page 111| Presidency?
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 112| THE FACE OF THE ENEMY
        |   When I came to, I was sitting in a weather
        | station cabin with a burlap sack on my head
        | and my hands tied behind my back. So this is
        | the way it ends, I thought dimly. I haul myself
        | all the way out to this pimple on the Arctic
        | and died at the hands of an invisible
        | executioner without finding out a thing.
        |   One of my captors moved in closer and
        | started to rummage through my inside chest
Page 113| pocket. I cursed inwardly; this was where I
        | carried Nastasha Romanenko's disc, the entire
        | account of the Shadow Moses inside! My
        | policy is, the best way to ensure that
        | something doesn't get stolen is to have it with
        | you at all times. Clearly, I needed to
        | re-evaluate that one.
        |   The man easily found and seized the disc.
        |   "What is this?" He demanded.
        |   "Whatever it is, it's worth more than you."
Page 114| I responded with as much menace and dignity
        | as the burlap on my head allowed.
        |   "Well, well, that is something..."
        |   What followed was both highly tedious and
        | painful, and nothing of great significance was
        | said until that electrifying statement, "We have
        | the disc back."
        |
        |   We've now come full circle since the start if
        | my account, and caught up to the point where
Page 115| it originated. it was unclear how the disc had
        | gotten to Max Smithson at MEGASURPRISE, 
        | but my captor's words indicated that the disc
        | had originally belonged to them. Either that,
        | or they were the ones who wanted it the most
        | urgently. I took my courage in my hands and
        | opened a dialogue with them.
        |   "You, you guys happen to be that secret
        | society whose power outstrips even that of the
        | American Presidency? Answer me, you
Page 116| artificial coloring on a cheap drugstore candy
        | cane!"
        |   This had the exact effect I'd hoped for, 
        | namely to send them into a violent fit of rage.
        | I must have hit pretty close to home. The
        | contents of the disc were as good as verified
        | -- this was indeed the secret society whose
        | power outstripped even that of the American
        | Presidency! In my delight, I hardly paid
        | attention to the obscenities that were being
Page 117| screamed at me, nor to the distinct sound of a
        | gun being pulled out of its holster.
        |   It was then that the cabin suddenly erupted
        | into controlled chaos. It seemed only seconds
        | from the time the window was smashed in to
        | the moment I realized that my captors had
        | been decimated and I was alone with my 
        | savior.
        |   Who was this human whirlwind? I was
        | ready to lose my lunch from the curiosity and
Page 118| the terror. I could taste the peanut butter in 
        | my mouth, I could hear the enigma walk up to
        | me, and lift the burlap sack off my head.
        | I concentrated on the hammering of my heart
        | for a moment, then slowly looked up.
        |   There was nobody there.
        |   I could see nothing, sense nothing. But
        | someone was untying the ropes biting into my
        | wrists. Invisible hands place themselves on
        | either side of my head in a strange parody of
Page 119| a coronation. They deftly removed the
        | bandanna I had earlier fashioned into a clumsy
        | bandage for my bruised head; the faded
        | piece of cloth was not my own, but a flotsam
        | found on the beach. I reached for the unseen
        | figure with my shaking hands, but with one
        | quick flick of the bandanna, it was gone.
        |   But there were more surprises to come.
        | As I gingerly moved my stiff body, I felt an
        | unfamiliar bulk against my chest, and
Page 120| discovered the precious optical disc,
        | miraculously recovered. Not only that, but
        | there were enough backup copies to fill me
        | with awe and pop the stitches on my flimsy
        | pocket.
        |   I thought of my mysterious savior:
        | possessed of superhuman fighting ability,
        | invisible, and capable of burning discs in an
        | instant. There was only one possible
        | explanation.
Page 121|   He had to be an alien, probably the little
        | gray kind.
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
        |
Page 122| LIFE AFTER SHADOW MOSES
        |   And so I came in from the cold to my hole
        | of an apartment in New York, my trusty tuna
        | beside me. The landlord mentioned that my
        | neighbor, the starving student, had gone
        | missing recently. It could be that I was nosing
        | around the wrong information from his
        | machine. if I ever see him alive again, I should
        | apologize.
        |   I am currently banging out this manuscript
Page 123| on an antique typewriter. This is the truth as
        | described on the optical disc, and as
        | elaborated and verified by my own
        | experiences on that fearsome island.
        |   As this account draws to a close,
        | my thoughts dwell more and more on
        | Nastasha Romanenko, the woman who risked 
        | everything by recording the facts of the
        | incident onto this disc. I think it was her way
        | of giving voice to the victims of this mission,
Page 124| the casualties of nuclear weapons throughout
        | modern history, and to all the lives disrupted
        | and damaged by an elaborate government
        | conspiracy. Her will was passed onto a
        | counterculture journalist in New York City --
        | that's me --  and the truth is now out there for
        | all to see, just as she dreamed. Readers, the
        | responsibility to disseminate the facts of the
        | Shadow Moses incident is now yours.
        | What will YOU risk to know the truth?
        |
Page 125| PUBLISHERS AFTERWORD
        |   This nonfiction work was based on the 
        | factual account written by Nastasha 
        | Romanenko, a military analyst who allegedly 
        | took part in a secret mission to counter a 
        | terrorist incident on Alaska's Shadow Moses 
        | Island. Her account was published in its 
        | original, unabridged form as "In the Darkness 
        | of Shadow Moses" after the successful 
        | publication of this volume.
Page 126|   Gary McGolden, the author, is a journalist 
        | and a nonfiction writer who is best known for 
        | his past bestseller, "The Telekinetic Powers 
        | of the Lock Ness Monster - The True Energy 
        | Source of UFOs". The details of McGolden's 
        | adventures on Shadow Moses remain 
        | uncorroborated, but there are serious doubts 
        | as to his tuna-aided landing on the island. 
        | There is in fact ample evidence that he was 
        | swept out to another small island several
Page 127| miles south of Shadow Moses and failed to
        | realize that fact.
        |   McGolden has seemingly vanished into thin
        | air following his manuscript's arrival at our
        | humble offices. While this has been a source 
        | of great pleasure to our accounting 
        | department, I sincerely hope that this
        | notoriously fickle but talented writer is hard at
        | work on a follow-up to this volume.
Page 128|   Though certain aspects of the book require
        | further fact-checking, this alone should not
        | dissuade you of the veracity of many of its
        | main assertions, nor should you dismiss the
        | contents of Nastasha Romanenko's disc 
        | outright. Instead readers should approach
        | this account with an open mind and a sense of
        | adventure, much as Gary McGolden did when
        | he first received the disc in the mail.
        |   I should note, however, that Gary was
Page 129| mistaken about one thing. I never mailed him
        | that disc.
        |
        | Max Smithson, Editor-in-Chief
        | MEGASURPRISE Magazine
        |
        |
        |
        |

---

-  In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth
   -----------------------------------------------------

Page 001|   I dedicate this book to the casualties of	
        | Shadow Moses as well as to all those who 
        | suffered the tyranny of the nuclear weapons
        | -- and to Richard Ames.
        |
        |
        |		      Nastasha Romanenko
        |
        |
        |
Page 002| PROLOGUE
        | Shadow Moses Island: XX XX N, XX XX W 
        |   Even the local fishermen rarely venture to
        | this outcropping of land. Yet the incident of
        | all incidents took place on this remote isle,
        | north of Alaska's Fox Islands. A number of
        | confirmed facts undermine the U.S. govern-
        | ment's denial of the entire affair. Among those
        | are the sudden appearance of the Ohio-class
        | nuclear submarine USS Discovery off Shadow
Page 003| Moses, far away from its designated position,
        | and an official record that shows that a
        | squadron of six fully-armed F117 Nighthawks
        | departed from Galena Air Force base for
        | Alaska a scant sixteen hours later. In another 
        | possibly related event, and E-3C AWACS on
        | emergency deployment to the Alaska area is
        | said to have had none other than the then-
        | National Security Advisor Jim Houseman as
        | its on-board VIP.
Page 004|   What exactly happened on Shadow Moses?
        |   There was no lack of rumors to account for
        | this series of unusual military activities: an
        | armed incursion, a coup attempt by a branch
        | of the military and other theories made its way
        | to the public table. I can state unequivocally
        | that none of them came close to the truth.
        |   What actually took place was the single
        | greatest terrorist incident in modern history.
        | It was an act of political violence on a scale
Page 005| the world had never seen, a blow that
        | threatened to send the Damocles' sword
        | of nuclear warfare into a free-fall. Most
        | significant of all, the attack stemmed from
        | several so-called 'Black Projects' which
        | the U.S. government had been conducting
        | in top secret, away from public scrutiny.
        | 
        |   I have in my hand two optical discs. One
        | contains the entire record of events that took
Page 006| place on Shadow Moses Island that fateful
        | day; the takeover of a nuclear weapons
        | disposal plant by an armed group. Other
        | key points of this incredible record are:
        | - The identification of the perpetrators as
        |   the government's own genetically-enhanced
        |   next-generation commandos and a covert
        |   special forces squad, FOXHOUND, with a
        |   long dark history of secret intervention
        | - The existence of one Metal Gear REX, a
Page 007|   bipedal nuclear-capable tank whose deve-
        |   lopment was one of the most classified
        |   projects of all time
        | - The discovery of a massive government
        |   conspiracy
        | - The activities of a former FOXHOUND
        |   operative who single-handedly took on this
        |   daunting situation and averted the crisis, a
        |   man who is known only by his code name:
        |   Solid Snake
Page 008|   The other remaining disc holds the details
        | of Project FOXDIE, a massive cover-up, which
        | the U.S. government planned and executed in
        | order to prevent exposure. There are, after
        | all, forces within the U.S. government who
        | seek to maintain the military power structure
        | established in the last century, and will not
        | hesitate to resuscitate the terror of nuclear
        | arms in order to achieve that end.
        |   My intent is to expose their activity, and
Page 009| the entirety of the Shadow Moses Affair, 
        | through this book. Only then can we hope
        | to free the coming generations from the
        | damnosa hereditas of the 20th-century
        | nuclear arms race.
        | 
        | 
        | 
        | 
        | 
Page 010|   I looked up from the mass of documents at
        | the sound of the doorbell. On the monitor in
        | front of me was a half-finished status report
        | on the resurgence of nuclear arms
        | development in a certain Middle Eastern state.
        |   The UNSCOM (United Nations Special
        | Commission) had officially requested a survey
        | by the UN weapons inspectors, and had been
        | refused entry; tensions were once again
        | running high in the Gulf. As a military analyst
Page 011| whose specialty was nuclear arms, I was
        | under contract from a think tank to produce a
        | study of the situation. It was due the day after
        | the next, and interruptions were definitely not
        | welcome. I ground out my cigarette in the
        | ashtray and stepped out of the study.
        |   All visitors to my house are checked via
        | a surveillance camera and then let in through
        | the heavy gate. The property itself is 
        | surrounded by a high wall. It may seem like
Page 012| overkill for a beach community, but security is
        | a necessity in greater Los Angeles, if only to
        | keep out the legion of swimsuit-clad tourists.
        |   However, there was nobody to be seen at 
        | the gate. It was either a prank, or the camera 
        | was malfunctioning.
        |   Reluctant to investigate but feeling unsettled
        | nevertheless, I headed back to the study and
        | sat back down at the computer to continue my
        | work. Just then, someone spoke behind me.
Page 013|   "You always were a little careless."
        |   I spun around, kicking my chair over. There
        | was a man standing at the entrance of the
        | study, slouching in a well-tailored suit.
        |   "Richard!"
        |   He caught my eye and grinned. Ignoring my
        | surprise, he strolled into the room, gazing
        | around at the pile of books and papers.
        |   "And still as disorganized as ever."
        |   He shrugged his shoulders in a familiar
Page 014| gesture, triggering a wave of memories laced
        | with bitterness.
        | 
        |   Richard Ames and I were married, once
        | upon a time. We were both young, and
        | working for the DIA (Defense Intelligence
        | Agency). We spent much of our brief marriage
        | in disagreement over virtually every issue, and
        | just as I come to realize that our union was
        | a mistake, he disappeared from my life. 
Page 015|   A while later, I received the paperwork for
        | divorce from his lawyer. There was a generous
        | alimony offer involved, which I refused. Not
        | only did I find the thought of owing him
        | anything intolerable, I also wanted to prove
        | that he was not the only one who could walk
        | away without an explanation. The divorce was
        | finalized without us ever meeting face-to-face,
        | and we were legally strangers once again. In
        | the fire years since, I quit the DIA and became
Page 016| a freelance analyst. I had not seen Richard at
        | all, nor even heard of his whereabouts.
        | 
        |   "How did you get in here?" I demanded.
        | After all, attempting to scale the wall or force
        | the front door would immediately trigger the
        | security system. But he refused to be ruffled.
        |   "If you're going to use a flimsy lock like that,
        | may as well not bother. I'd recommend a more
        | professional security setup."
Page 017|   "Does the term 'breaking and entering' mean
        | anything to you, Richard?"
        |   "You know law isn't my field of expertise,"
        | he replied nimbly and peered over my
        | shoulder at the report on the computer
        | display.
        |   "Radio isotope projectile separator...
        | uranium-235 production feasibility for high-
        | speed gas centrifuge... This must be about
        | that Middle East nuke development. Look like
Page 018| your career is going well. That's great."
        |   I pushed Richard aside and asked him flatly.
        | "What do you want?"
        |   He took a step back and regarded me with
        | a slightly mischievous smile.
        |   "What, you afraid I came back to give us
        | another chance?" He let the silence linger as
        | if to relish my reaction. Then, suddenly formal,
        | he continued, "It's an official request from the
        | DIA."
Page 019|   He place a folder on the desk. "I'm asking
        | for your cooperation as a member of NEST."
        |   NEST stands for Nuclear Emergency Search
        | Team, a group that operates on the Depart-
        | ment of Energy budget. It was established in
        | 1974 to provide technological support to the
        | FBI in areas of intelligence, investigation, site
        | securement, damage containment, and medical
        | response during incidents involving criminal
        | threats of nuclear weapon use. Call it a band
Page 020| of experts on nuclear terrorism, if you will.
        | NEST consists of independently contracted
        | scientists from federally funded research
        | entities like Los Alamos and Lawrence
        | Licermore, and military specialists from groups
        | dealing with nuclear arms issues. I happen to
        | be one of the latter group.
        |   Richard was opening the file folder. "You've
        | heard of Shadow Moses Island, I assume."
        |   I nodded assent. I had indeed heard of the
Page 021| remote place, north of Alaska's Fox Islands.
        | Though it was hardly public knowledge, the
        | island was home to a nuclear weapons
        | disposal facility
        | 
        |   According to the terms of the START2
        | (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), the total
        | number of tactical nuclear warheads owned by
        | the U.S. and Russia were reduced to some-
        | where between 3000 and 3500 in the later
Page 022| decades of the twentieth century. The outcome
        | was a massive number of warheads in need of
        | disposal when there was already a shortage of
        | storage space for radioactive materials. As a
        | result, warheads had to be kept somewhere
        | before they could be dismantled and their
        | radioactive elements extracted for long-term
        | storage. The Shadow Moses facility was the
        | answer. It was the crystallization of the forces
        | of nuclear proliferation, political engineering
Page 023| that gives preference to delaying a solution
        | rather than producing one and a hidden
        | military agenda to preserve what it could of
        | the old nuclear stockpile.
        | 
        |   Richard took out several photographs from
        | the folder and handed them to me. They all
        | appeared to be satellite captures of the
        | nuclear weapons disposal plant on Shadow
        | Moses Island, perhaps acquired from the NRO
Page 024| (National Reconnaissance Office). There were
        | multiple human figures around the building
        | structures.
        |   Richard broke the silence.
        |   "The disposal plant was seized by terror-
        | ists." I looked up sharply at the news, but his
        | next words left me speechless.
        |   "And the ringleaders are FOXHOUND
        | members."
        | 
Page 025|   An "irregular" team of the best commandos
        | the military has to offer, armed with cutting-
        | edge technology. That was FOXHOUND. The
        | best of the best, and completely unknown to
        | the public they ostensibly serve. Their function
        | was to intervene in the kind of low-intensity
        | conflicts the U.S. could not officially touch.
        | They were the shadow soldiers of numerous
        | regional conflicts and civil wars, shaping
        | history with sabotage, selective assassination
Page 026| and other covert acts of war.
        | 
        |   Richard had more to say. "It's not just 
        | FOXHOUND that's involved in this. FOXHOUND
        | was conducting joint exercises with the next-
        | generation special forces, and they're a part
        | of the takeover as well."
        | 
        | The next-generation special forces is
        | an aggressive anti-terrorism squad deployed
Page 027| to counter acts of political violence involving
        | weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear,
        | biological and chemical warfare methods. The
        | combat philosophy is derived from the one
        | used for Force 21, and most of the recruits
        | come from a mercenary background. The men
        | are intensively trained in VR environment, and
        | their combat capability is estimated to be well
        | beyond even those of Delta Force or the Night
        | Stalkers. While the government categorically
Page 028| denies the accusation, there are persistent
        | rumors that the men have been genetically
        | enhanced to increase tactical advantage.
        |   FOXHOUND and the next-generation special
        | forces. They were without a doubt the most
        | skilled group of fighting men produced by the
        | U.S., and they had hijacked a nuclear arsenal.
        | Richard had more bad news.
        |   "There are also civilian hostages involved.
        | Two of them happen to be the DARPA chief,
Page 029| Donald Anderson, and Kenneth Baker, the
        | president of ArmsTech, Inc."
        |   The Defense Advanced Research Projects
        | Agency is the research satellite of the U.S.
        | Defense Department, charged with planning
        | and leading the development of new weapons
        | technology; AT happens to be one of the top
        | three defense contractors in the country.
        | There is no such thing as a coincidence, 
        | especially the kind that involves the head
Page 030| of those two organizations meeting in an
        | out-of-way nuclear weapons disposal plant.
        | I decided to be direct with Richard.
        |   "There was something going on in that
        | 'disposal' facility, I take it? Let me guess --
        | a demonstration of a new weapon."
        |   "How should I know? Shadow Moses is also 
        | a prime Northern Lights observation locale,
        | you know." Whatever Richard knew, he wasn't
        | telling. But his evasiveness only confirmed my
Page 031| suspicions. Whatever was going on, this was
        | no ordinary terrorist incident. With that in
        | mind, I moved onto another point.
        |   "What are their demands?"
        |   "They want a body. Not just any corpse
        | though -- they want FOXHOUND's founder,
        | Big Boss. Legendary soldier, best fighting man
        | of the twentieth century, the whole works."
        |   "His body? Why would they want something
        | like that so badly?"
Page 032|   "No idea, but unless they have it within 24
        | hours, they'll launch a nuclear strike," Richard
        | glanced at the watch coolly, "So we have 
        | about 19 hours."
        |   "You don't seem too worried."
        |   "The DOD is already working on the
        | situation."
        |   Just as I'd suspected. Richard always has a 
        | plan in place and the machinery in motion
        | before opening up to someone else. All he
Page 033| asks from others is approval after the fact.
        |   "Shadow Moses is completely locked 
        | down. We had to rule out deploying an entire
        | assault team. Instead, we're inserting a single
        | operative to free the hostages and prevent
        | the nuclear strike."
        |   "Impossible."
        |   "Possible -- for Solid Snake."
        |   Solid Snake...! The former FOXHOUND, a
        | legend among mercenaries for single-handedly
Page 034| bringing down the fortress cities of Outer
        | Heaven and Zanzibar Land. Yes, with Solid
        | Snake in the picture, there was a possibility of
        | success. But still...
        |   "USS Discovery, an Ohio-class nuclear
        | submarine, is already in place with Snake
        | aboard."
        |   So the plan was already a go. I looked
        | Richard in the eye and held his gaze.
        |   "And what do I have to do with all this?"
Page 035|   He grinned. "Snake may be a legend, but he
        | knows jack about nuclear weapons. Which is 
        | why I'm asking you to be a part of mission
        | support. We'll have you set up in no time."
        |   Right on cue, two men started to move a
        | large piece of hardware, apparently communi-
        | cation equipment, into the study. Richard
        | nodded towards the bulky load.
        |   "I'd like you to be available to Snake for
        | consultation via satellite linkup."
Page 036|   As soon as the equipment was in place, an
        | engineer type started to make adjustments. I
        | could see another group of men setting up a
        | satellite dish in the backyard. They were all in
        | civilian clothes, but not a few of them had the
        | build and the oddly-fitting jacket that marked
        | them as armed military personnel. Clearly,
        | refusal was not an option.
        |   But there was still something that puzzled
        | me. NEST has a small investigative team, SRT,
Page 037| on standby at all times for immediate 
        | response. They were stationed at Nellis AFB in
        | Las Vegas, just over in Nevada. Clearly, they 
        | were the natural choice for this assignment.
        | And if not the SRT, the DIA also had a number
        | of qualified nuclear weapon specialists. 
        | Richard had started to direct his men on
        | where to set up the equipment, but I inter-
        | rupted him.
        |   "Why me?"
Page 038|   He turned and answered without missing
        | a beat.
        |   "I need people I can trust. There's too much
        | at stake."
        |   It was a lie. The Richard Ames I knew
        | trusted no one. But it was clear that whatever
        | the reason, he did not intend to tell me.
        |   "It's a good thing I was in. What would you
        | have done if I weren't?"
        |   "You have to be somewhere. We would have
Page 039| located you."
        |   "I'm sure you would have."
        |   "So are you in?"
        |   I took a deep breath. "Of course."
        |   I don't enjoy being a pawn, especially
        | Richard's, but I had no intention of standing by
        | while nuclear terrorism was in progress. A 
        | nuclear strike takes an untold number of lives,
        | all in a blink of an eye, Adults and infants, 
        | women and men, it kills indiscriminately. If
Page 040| there was a chance that I could do something
        | to stay the hand on the nuclear button, I had
        | to do it.
        |   "So everything is set..." Richard slapped a
        | fist into the other palm.
        | 
        |   "Insertion was a success. Snake is on
        | Shadow Moses." Richard walked into the
        | study with the update he'd just received from
        | one of his men.
Page 041|   The study was almost unrecognizable,
        | thanks in part to the racks of communication
        | hardware. Cables snaked across every square
        | inch of available space, and engineers and DIA
        | agents were coming and going in controlled
        | chaos. The place looked like what in now 
        | was -- a temporary mission control room. 
        |   Richard laid a hand on my shoulder.
        |   "You should be hearing from him soon.
        | You're clear on how to use the radio?" I
Page 042| nodded assent.
        | 
        |   While the engineers were busy setting up
        | the equipment, I had been briefed on its use
        | as well as the mission.
        |   Snake had been delivered to the general
        | area of Shadow Moses Island by USS
        | Discovery, and Ohio-class nuclear submarine.
        | He was then ejected from the submarine on a
        | swimmer delivery vehicle (SDV), which he
Page 043| abandoned once within the range of under-
        | water listening devices located near the
        | disposal plant. He would swim the rest of the
        | way, in the freezing cold Bering Sea water.
        | This last leg of the insertion struck me as
        | nothing short of suicidal until I learned that
        | Solid Snake was outfitted with a state-of-the-
        | art sneaking suit and had been injected with a
        | compound designed to prevent the onset of
        | hypothermia. In addition, while Snake would
Page 044| be the only field operative involved, he would
        | be in radio contact with a support team during
        | much of the mission.
        |   The members of this support team drew
        | from a wide range of backgrounds. The
        | mission control officer was Colonel Roy
        | Campbell, who would remain aboard the USS
        | Discovery. I knew him by reputation alone. He
        | was a former FOXHOUND commander, and
        | Solid Snake's CO during the quelling of the
Page 045| 1999 Zanzibar Land uprising. He had retired
        | soon after, but from the looks of things, he
        | had been called out of retirement for this
        | mission.
        |   Dr. Naomi Hunter, a genetic engineering
        | expert on a temporary assignment from the
        | gentech giant ATGC, was also on the team.
        | She had apparently been leading the bio-
        | engineering program for FOXHOUND. Richard
        | matter-of-factly confirmed that both FOX-
Page 046| HOUND and the next-generation special forces
        | had been undergoing genetic manipulation to
        | enhance their combat capability. I have a diffi-
        | cult time grasping what we have come to --
        | modifying a person's essential genetic struc-
        | ture for the sake of creating a better soldier.
        |   Also aboard the Discovery was Mei Ling, 
        | the inventor of the new radar and communi-
        | cation system deployed for this mission. She
        | was something of an engineering wunderkind,
Page 047| an MIT student who managed to turn the
        | current protocol of secure communication
        | completely on its head.
        |   The last of the support team was McDonnell
        | Miller, a former survival instructor for FOX-
        | HOUND. Unlike the rest of us, he had
        | volunteered his services upon receiving news
        | of the incident on Shadow Moses. Like myself,
        | he was working via satellite linkup from his
        | home in Alaska.
Page 048|   The five of us were more than equipped to
        | support Snake from our respective areas of
        | expertise, but Snake was still the lone field
        | operative and the mission was a desperate
        | one. Despite that, Richard maintained that this
        | was the most workable plan produced by the 
        | DOD situational analysis. In hindsight, perhaps
        | I should have suspected something then. The 
        | signs of a conspiracy were there, cleverly
        | disguised as it was in a seemingly reckless
Page 049| mission plan. But we failed to see it, and both
        | Solid Snake and I were to regret out folly
        | bitterly.
        | 
        |   "It's time Nastasha," Richard called out as
        | the call signal came on. The line was already
        | live as I nodded to him and took my position.
        | I could feel myself growing keener, more on
        | edge.
        |   "This is Nastasha Romanenko. Good to meet
Page 050| you, Solid Snake."
        |   "You the nuke expert that the Colonel was
        | talking about?"
        |   The voice that responded over the radio
        | was, above all things, calm. Here was a man
        | operating alone out of a deeply hostile terri-
        | tory, and I could sense nothing resembling
        | tension or impatience in his tone. Instead, it
        | was as level and unruffled as someone
        | answering a routine telephone call at their
Page 051| office desk. Impressed, I continued on.
        |   "Correct. If you have any questions about
        | nuclear technology, all you need to do is ask.
        | My department is military analysis, so I should
        | be able to provide support with weapons
        | information as well. I was called into this
        | mission as a Nuclear Emergency Search Team
        | (NEST) consultant, and I'd like to emphasize
        | that my cooperation was freely given. I have
        | no intention of allowing any nuclear strikes on
Page 052| my watch, let alone the rogue kind. Let me
        | work with you on this one."
        |   "...You get to the point fast, don't you?"
        |   "There's a missile that's about to fly. A
        | nuclear strike can never be someone else's
        | problem, and I'm not good at standing around
        | twiddling my thumbs... Not that I can do little
        | more than advise in this case."
        |   That fact was all too obvious. Snake was the
        | one who was putting his life on the line in
Page 053| Alaska, and I was safe and sound in California.
        | All I could do was talk over the radio.
        |   Snake's voice became less abrupt. "It may 
        | not seem like much, but it's enough. No one's
        | asking you to come out here and fight. That's 
        | my job... Anyway, Nastasha, I'll be counting
        | on your help."
        |   It was strangely comforting voice, a voice
        | that inspired trust.
        |   "Same here." As I answered, I resolved to
Page 054| myself to do everything in my power to help
        | him complete this mission.
        |   "The nuclear weapons disposal plant on 
        | Shadow Moses dates back to 2002. It was 
        | built solely for the purpose of temporarily
        | storing nuclear warheads slated for 
        | disposal..." I started to brief Snake on the
        | background of the disposal facility, running
        | through the points he needed to know.
        | 
Page 055|   My first short exchange with Solid Snake
        | ever, I was beginning to understand why he
        | was called the man who "makes the 
        | impossible, possible." The icy clam in the
        | face of insurmountable difficult, the absolute
        | confidence, made it suddenly seem possible
        | that he would pull off this deadly mission.
        | He had the power to make me believe.
        |   I grew conscious of Richard's gaze.
        |   "What?"
Page 056|   "Oh -- just that you have a kind of glow
        | about you when you're working. I like it."
        |   "A glow? Funny, you used to call it
        | workaholism in the past. You found it very
        | unappealing, I recall."
        |   "Time flies. People change their minds."
        |   "It's called nostalgia. You'll dislike it again
        | soon enough."
        |   "Perhaps..."
        |   Richard continued to look at me.
Page 057|   Solid Snake certainly managed to live up to
        | his reputation. He adroitly wove his way 
        | through the enemy's patrols and infiltrated
        | the nuclear weapons disposal plant, where he
        | made contact with Donald Anderson, the 
        | DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects
        | Agency) director. Throughout the mission, we
        | had radio monitoring capability over Snake's
        | every movement thanks to his internal nano-
        | machines. It was through this access channel
Page 058| that I learned a shocking fact.
        |   Donald Anderson -- discovered in solitary
        | confinement by Solid Snake -- confirmed that
        | the terrorists had full nuclear capability, and
        | that Shadow Moses Island was the site of a
        | field exercise for Metal Gear.
        | 
        |   Metal Gear. The very mention of that name
        | sent me reeling. It was the ultimate weapon, a
        | nuclear-capable bipedal tank that could
Page 059| launch a rapid and accurate nuclear strike
        | from virtually any terrain, from mountains to
        | marshlands to the desert dunes. It could
        | bestow the dubious privilege of initiating a
        | mission strike from sites that were previously
        | out of the question as launch locations. For
        | that very reason, analysts had long predicted
        | that if brought to fruition, Metal Gear techno-
        | logy would rewrite the tactical map of the
        | world.
Page 060|   The are speculations that this Unholy
        | Grail of weapons development was being
        | pursued late last century in the South African
        | fortress state of Outer Heaven, then in the
        | ultra-nationalist sovereignty of Zanzibar
        | Land in Central Asia. One source went so far
        | as to claim that a working prototype had been
        | produced, but the weapon never made it onto 
        | the world military stage; instead, it was
        | destroyed by a special forces operative. The
Page 061| squad in question was FOXHOUND, and the
        | operative was a man codenamed Solid Snake.
        | I briefly wondered if it were some strange
        | quirk of fate that had brought Snake into this
        | latest incident, but I knew Richard too well.
        | Snake had to have been called in because of 
        | his past battles. Whoever had planned this
        | mission had been thorough, and the more I
        | realized the fact, the less I liked it.
        | 
Page 062|   A few years ago, I interviewed a high-
        | ranking DOD official and led the conversation
        | to the subject of Metal Gear. His response at
        | the time was that the U.S. had very little
        | interest in developing a weapon like Metal
        | Gear (not that he officially admitted that such
        | a thing as the Metal Gear existed - on a 
        | purely a hypothetical level, IF such a techno-
        | logy were available). With the collapse of the
        | Soviet Union, nuclear arsenals built to
Page 063| enforce the idea of mutually assured
        | destruction had lost its justification, and the
        | deterrent argument was losing ground. In the
        | current "multilateral world order rife with
        | smaller regional powers" as he put it,
        | development priority lay with cruise missiles
        | and smaller weapons with lower lethality that
        | could be carried by stealth bombers.
        |   He also went on to note that Metal Gear, 
        | with its affinity for rough terrain, would be
Page 064| extremely difficult to discover and destroy.
        | Hence, it was the perfect nuclear strike
        | system for rogue states. He was deeply 
        | concerned that if such non-democratic
        | sovereignties were to get a hold of Metal Gear
        | technology, the resulting upset in the balance
        | of military power would lead to a massive
        | rupture in world order. It was a fear that I
        | myself shared.
        |   An artifact of the Cold War. The devil's
Page 065| candy, created by nuclear proliferation. That
        | was what Metal Gear seemed to be. So why 
        | was this weapon, a cutting-edge technology
        | that was politically long-obsolete, being
        | developed once again on American soil? It 
        | was possible that the Defense Department
        | wanted to restore last century's nuclear
        | strategy to the national agenda. Or did this
        | new Metal Gear have something that set it far
        | apart from Metal Gear as I knew it?
Page 066|   Anderson had more to say. Metal Gear's 
        | launch key consisted of two separate pass-
        | words, one held by Anderson himself and the
        | other by Kenneth Baker, the president of
        | ArmsTech. Anderson's own password was
        | already in the terrorists' hands, and he feared
        | that the same was true for Baker's. A
        | renegade FOXHOUND psychic, codenamed
        | Psycho Mantis, had literally read Anderson's
        | mind and obtained the key.
Page 067|   The bottom line was that the terrorists
        | could activate Metal Gear and launch the
        | missile whenever they pleased. The worst-
        | case scenario had come true.
        |   However, Anderson revealed that there was
        | still a way to prevent the nuclear strike.
        | Kenneth Baker alone had the emergency
        | override key that could be used to reenter the
        | launch code and cancel the missile launch.
        | Even if the terrorists had already completed
Page 068| preparations for a strike, the override would
        | reverse the process.
        |   His only hope now riding on obtaining the
        | override key, Snake attempted to leave the
        | cell area with Anderson in tow. We heard the
        | terrible cries over the radio at the same time
        | Snake did. Anderson had suddenly started to
        | clutch at his own chest in agony, and before
        | we could even recover from our initial shock,
        | he was dead. Dr. Naomi Hunter, monitoring
Page 069| the situation from onboard USS Discovery,
        | tentatively diagnosed the cause of death as a
        | heart attack.
        |   Snake walked out of the cell alone in search
        | of Kenneth Baker, leaving behind what had
        | until recently been Donald Anderson, chief of
        | DARPA.
        | 
        |   "All right, what exactly is going on here?"
        | I confronted Richard as soon as I confirmed
Page 070| Snake's safe departure.
        |   "You know the situation. There was a Metal
        | Gear field exercise being conducted on
        | Shadow Moses. FOXHOUND and the next-
        | generation commandos were in charge of the
        | exercise, and now they're threatening to use
        | the Metal gear to launch a nuclear strike."
        |   "Apparently, I didn't know about that
        | particular situation."
        |   "If you say so."
Page 071|   I glared at Richard, but he didn't turn a
        | hair. He knew as well as I did that I could
        | not abandon the mission. Even if I did
        | refuse to cooperate further, there was an 
        | entire group of DOD personnel around me 
        | that would not permit that to happen. I
        | briefly closed my eyes and brought the
        | recent events into focus again.
        |   "What happened to Anderson? Why is he
        | dead?"
Page 072|   This time, I could see a trace of a reaction
        | in Richard's eyes.
        |   "It's hard to say from our end. Naomi thinks
        | it was a heart attack but -- I'll have his
        | medical records pulled just in case." He
        | turned and left the study, presumably to give
        | orders to that effect.
        |   The sounds and the voices being broadcast
        | from the radio told me that Snake was moving
        | deeper into the complex in search of Kenneth
Page 073| Baker.
        | 
        |   Snake found the ArmsTech president in one
        | of the underground levels. Kenneth Baker was
        | bound to a steel girder along with multiple
        | packets of C4 explosives. Before Snake could
        | free Baker, he came face to face with the
        | originator of this trap: a FOXHOUND operative
        | called Revolver Ocelot. It seemed that he had
        | anticipated Baker's rescue attempt upon
Page 074| receiving news of Snake's arrival.
        |   According to Naomi Hunter, the former
        | director of FOXHOUND's genetic manipulation
        | program, Revolver Ocelot is a former
        | Spetznaz. He moved into OMON (Otryad
        | Militsii Osobogo Naznacheniya, the Interior
        | Ministry riot squad, AKA Black Berets) and
        | the SVR (the Russian Foreign Intelligence
        | Service) -- a successor to the KGB's First
        | Chief Directorate -- after the collapse of the
Page 075| Soviet Union, but was unable to adapt to the
        | new regime and dropped out. He cut a swath
        | through the world's hot spots as a mercenary
        | before being recruited by FOXHOUND. As his
        | codename indicates, Ocelot is a master
        | marksman with a marked preference for 
        | revolvers. 
        |   We could hear the gun battle between
        | Snake and Ocelot over the radio. Ocelot was
        | using an antique Single Action Army revolver
Page 076| against Snake's SOCOM pistol. The first Single
        | Action Army Revolver was manufactured in 
        | 1873. A small number of them are still in
        | production today, but strictly for collectors
        | and antique weapon fanciers; using this out-
        | moded weapon for live combat is unheard of.
        |   But Ocelot seemed to invest the vintage gun
        | with diabolical powers. He would purposefully
        | fire against walls and the floor, weaving a
        | tight web of ricocheting bullets around Snake,
Page 077| gradually hamming him in. All we could do
        | was silently monitor the battle. However,
        | Snake was slowly but surely gaining the upper
        | hand by dodging the ricochets and exploiting
        | the revolver's lengthy reload window. Finally,
        | just as Snake was about to deliver the 
        | decisive blow, an explosion rang out.
        |   "My hand!" Ocelot's scream came a second 
        | later, followed by more explosions.
        |   "What the hell is going on!?" Richard
Page 078| cried.
        |   The controller in charge of the data sent in
        | by Snake's nanomachine started a running 
        | commentary.
        |   "We don't know yet, I'm seeing a life sign
        | other than those of Snake, Ocelot, or Baker."
        |   Explosions continued to boom out over the
        | radio.
        |   "The unidentified fourth subject is knocking
        | down girders. No sign of firearm use! What-
Page 079| ever it is, it's moving fast!" The controller's
        | voice rose with excitement. "The speed is well
        | above anything a human being should be able 
        | to handle."
        |   The situation was chaotic. I could make out
        | Ocelot's voice through the roar of collapsing
        | metal.
        |   "Stealth camouflage! Someone left a job
        | only half done... As for you -- we'll continue
        | this later!"
Page 080|   It seemed Ocelot had left the area.
        |   The explosions went on one after the other
        | as girders crashed to the ground. In the midst
        | of the collapse, Snake confronted what we 
        | could only guess was the fourth life sign.
        |   "Who are you?"
        |   "I'm like you... I have no name."  
        |   It was not human, but an artificial machine
        | voice that answered. In spite of the metallic
        | tones, there seemed to be in that voice an
Page 081| unspeakable pain. Baker's labored groans
        | could be heard over the conversation.
        |   "You have a reinforced skeleton -- !?"
        |   Suddenly, the possessor of the metal voice
        | let loose an animal howl. The shattering
        | scream set the communication speakers
        | screeching, and I instinctively covered my
        | ears to shut out the maddened sound.
        |   The cry went on and on, then cut out as
        | abruptly as it had begun. In the ringing
Page 082| silence, the controller's voice floated out, thin
        | and hollow.
        |   " -- the fourth subject has disappeared."
        |   The words brought us out of a state of
        | shock.
        |   "Can we track him?"
        |   "Negative. He's vanished, no traces."
        |   "Collect as much data as you can."
        |   "I have the full results on information
        | relayed by the nanomachines. There's an
Page 083| electromagnetic pattern that resembles a
        | stealth camouflage signature."
        |   "Stealth camo and reinforced exoskeleton..."
        | Richard muttered, deep in thought.
        |   "Not everything is happening according to 
        | plan, I take it?" I inquired with some
        | sarcasm.
        |   "It's within acceptable deviation. The
        | mission will go on as planned."
        |   For a split second, his eyes betrayed his
Page 084| disquiet; then he quickly recovered his
        | characteristic arrogance. "You just concen-
        | trate on your job."
        |   Snake had called the fourth life sign the
        | "Ninja." I could not help but wonder about the
        | identity of the name's bearer, and what it was
        | that accounted for the superhuman abilities he
        | had just demonstrated.
        |   Far away on Shadow Moses Island, Snake
        | was attempting to raise the shaken Kenneth
Page 085| Baker back on his feet. We could hear Snake
        | asking him about the nuclear launch code,
        | knowing the answer even as he spoke. Baker
        | painfully acknowledged that he had volun-
        | teered the information. He arm hung broken
        | and useless by his side, presumable Ocelot's
        | handiwork.
        |   According to Naomi Hunter's intelligence,
        | Revolver Ocelot had served as a Special
        | Interrogations Consultant in the Soviet gulags
Page 086| during his days with the Spetznaz. In other
        | words, he was an expert in torture. There was
        | no way that the weapons technology
        | executive, an untrained civilian, could with-
        | stand the techniques of coercion developed in
        | the cells of Lubianka. We now had con-
        | firmation that the terrorists possessed both
        | launch keys. The situation was more desperate
        | than ever.
        |   Baker's response to Snake's queries about
Page 087| the emergency override key was almost as
        | grim. He had entrusted a soldier, a woman who
        | had refused to join the mutiny, with it while
        | they had been sharing the cell. I caught
        | Snake's sudden murmur.
        |   "The Colonel's niece?"
        |   The "Colonel" was presumably Campbell,
        | and Snake seemed to know something I
        | certainly did not. I stole a glance at Richard
        | but his expression was as closed as ever. He
Page 088| no doubt had known from the outset about the
        | presence of Campbell's niece on Shadow.
        |   Snake was pressing Baker, asking him
        | whether there was a way to stop the launch
        | without the override code. The executive gave
        | him a name: Dr. Hal Emmerich. If it were
        | indeed the case that the launch codes were in
        | hostile hands and the strike sequence had
        | been started, it stood to reason that the only
        | person who may know of a way to cancel the
Page 089| launch was the chief of Metal Gear's develop-
        | ment program.
        | As Snake promised to search out Emmerich, 
        | Baker handed him a single optical disc. It
        | contained, he said, all the data from the
        | training exercise.
        |   What exercise data? He had to be referring
        | to the Metal Gear exercise. I saw Richard
        | raise his eyebrow sharply.
        |   Baker, oblivious to the frenzy of speculation
Page 090| he had remotely set off, continued.
        |   "There's no need to feign ignorance. You
        | were sent to retrieve this, and we both know 
        | it."
        |   I was now even more puzzled than ever. If
        | Metal gear was being developed on Shadow
        | Moses, surely the research data was backed 
        | up somewhere outside of the ArmsTech lab.
        | Not only that, but why would the president of
        | the company have been carrying the data
Page 091| himself? I was apparently not alone in my
        | disconcerntment. Snake took the disc, obviously
        | uncertain. It was clear that he, like myself,
        | had not been briefed on the existence of the
        | disc. 
        |   The disc safely out of his hands, Baker's
        | tones became pleading.
        |   "You have to stop them. If the truth got out,
        | AT would be finished -- I would be
        | finished -- "
Page 092|   "But Metal Gear technology is already a
        | known factor."
        |   "The core technology is, but that's not -- "
        | Baker trailed off, suddenly pale with pain. "Oh
        | God, what did you do to me...?"
        |   We could hear hid labored coughing as he
        | gasped out.
        |   "It can't be... That thing. Damn Pentagon
        | bureaucrats... I get it now... You son of a -- "
        |   He tried to lunge at Snake, but reeled back
Page 093| in a fresh wave of pain. Still clutching his chest,
        | he fell down, dead. It was too similar to the
        | last moments of Donald Anderson's life, and
        | the fact had not escaped Snake. He was
        | immediately on the radio with Campbell.
        |   "Colonel, you'd better be listening real well.
        | This one dropped dead too."
        |   Snake demanded an explanation, but neither 
        | Campbell nor Dr. Hunter could provide an
        | adequate one. Snake was clearly dissatisfied,
Page 094| but Campbell directed Snake to cooperate
        | with his niece, Meryl. The only way left to
        | prevent a nuclear strike was to obtain the
        | emergency override key, and the key was in
        | Meryl's hands. Snake walked away from
        | Baker's body in search of the elusive
        | commando.
        | 
        |   Kenneth Baker had been colluding with
        | Donald Anderson, the DARPA chief, to secretly
Page 095| develop a new Metal Gear on the govern-
        | ment's co-called Black Budget. My later
        | investigations revealed that regular payments
        | in the tens of thousands of dollars had been
        | made to the corporate account of a firm for
        | which Anderson's wife ostensibly acted as a
        | consultant. The ArmsTech payoff into this
        | dummy company had started several years 
        | ago. The total amount is difficult to estimate,
        | but there is little doubt that Anderson had
Page 096| been bribed to the tune of an astronomical
        | sum.
        |   Even the government Black Budget had 
        | limits, however. I recalled a rumor from some
        | years before the Anderson payoff started. The 
        | CNO (Chief of Naval Operations) at the time
        | had a classified pet project, and the scuttle-
        | butt was that it involved the construction of a
        | completely new type of battleship. Just what
        | kind of a ship was never revealed, since the
Page 097| entire program fell apart after the CNO
        | suddenly passed away. The unexpected death
        | coincided with ArmsTech's launch of the Metal
        | Gear development program. The Black Budget
        | earmarked for the CNO's little project must
        | have been freed up by his death; the question
        | was whether it had been freed up for
        | allocation to the new Metal Gear development.
        | The manner of the CNO's death was officially
        | ruled a suicide, but I could not help recall the
Page 098| theories to the contrary that had made its
        | rounds back then.
        |   Whatever the background, Anderson and 
        | Baker's deaths could not be a coincidence.
        | Anderson's dying words included a reference
        | to the Pentagon, and I was certain that there
        | was more to it than met the eye.
        |   "So now Baker is dead as well. Are you 
        | looking into his medical records too?" I asked
        | Richard.
Page 099|   "We'll do that. Just as a precaution." He did
        | not seem particularly disturbed. "It may have 
        | been for the best, anyway. Having to babysit a
        | senior citizen with a broken arm sure wasn't
        | going to help Snake with his mission."
        |   "You haven't changed a bit, I see."
        |   "What?"
        |   "That bad-boy act of yours. You only talk
        | like an insensitive jerk to divert attention from
        | something. I wonder what you're hiding?"
Page 100|   Richard turned away.
        |   "Nothing. There's nothing to hide."
        | 
        |   Having successfully made radio contact with
        | Meryl, Colonel Campbell's niece, Solid Snake
        | agreed to put off a rendezvous with her in
        | favor of rescuing Dr. Hal Emmerich, the chief
        | of Metal Gear development. He reached that
        | lab just as the Ninja was attempting to attack
        | Dr. Emmerich, and the two fighters
Page 101| immediately squared off.
        |   Snake and the Ninja launched into a silent
        | hand-to-hand combat, a balletic exchange of
        | blows that seemed almost to serve as a 
        | private dialog. The fighting seemed intermo-
        | nable to us as we followed over the radio, but
        | just as in the last encounter, the Ninja
        | suddenly let loose an inhuman howl, and
        | vanished into the maelstrom of its ragged echo.
        |   It was our second encounter with the Ninja,
Page 102| and we were as in the dark about him as
        | ever. But Snake had recognized something
        | during their battle, and he raised Campbell on
        | the radio.
        |   "It's Gray Fox -- the Ninja is Gray Fox. I'm
        | 100% sure."
        |   "That's impossible. You took him -- in
        | Zanzibar Land -- " We could hear the
        | perturbation in Campbell's voice.
        |   Naomi Hunter suddenly cut in.
Page 103|   "Yes, he was supposed to have been killed.
        | But he wasn't."
        |   Dr. Hunter revealed that her predecessor at
        | the helm of FOXHOUND's genetic treatment
        | program, one Dr. Clark, had been conducting
        | human testing. Gray Fox, the alpha soldier of
        | FOXHOUND and the only member allowed the 
        | FOX designation, was the subject. After he
        | had been shipped back from Zanzibar Land
        | mortally wounded, his superior physical
Page 104| abilities and combat skills had marked him as
        | an ideal test subject for genetic manipulation
        | and skeletal reinforcement experiments. He
        | was listed as killed in action, but kept alive in
        | a lab.
        |   I could not help but note with some surprise
        | the emotional tone in which the normally
        | collected geneticist described these events.
        |   When Snake asked why she had not volun-
        | teered the truth of the Ninja's identity earlier,
Page 105| Naomi had only a terse reply.
        |   "It was classified information."
        |   According to records she had seen, the 
        | subject -- Gray Fox -- had died in an acci-
        | dental lab explosion two years ago. I turned to
        | Richard.
        |   "Is this true?"
        |   "What's true?"
        |   "The accident in the lab."
        |   "It's true. The cause of the explosion was
Page 106| never determined. Dr. Clark died in the
        | accident, and the only remains they could find
        | of Gray Fox were fragments of the reinforced
        | skeleton."
        |   "So Naomi wasn't the only one who knew
        | about this and didn't say anything."
        |   "It was classified information," Richard
        | mimicked.
        |   Snake secured Dr. Emmerich after the
Page 107| Ninja's departure. Amazingly enough, the
        | engineer had believed Metal Gear to be a
        | portable tactical missile defense system,
        | rather than a nuclear-capable tank. It was a
        | peculiar irony that the chief developer himself
        | had been unaware that the project was one of
        | offense, rather than defense.
        |   On discovering that he had been deceived,
        | Dr. Emmerich volunteered his expertise to
        | Snake. He mentioned his grandfather's
Page 108| involvement in the Manhattan Project, and the
        | ethical termoil the man had carried with him
        | to the end of his days as a result. Ironically
        | enough, the older scientist's son, Hal 
        | Emmerich's father, was born the day the
        | atomic bomb had found Hiroshima.
        |   "Three generations -- sometimes I wonder
        | if nuclear warfare is out personal albatross,
        | an inherited pathology."
        |   We could hear the pain and the regret in
Page 109| Dr. Emmerich's voice. He seemed genuinely
        | upset that the technology he had developed
        | purely for the furthering of knowledge and
        | betterment of mankind had been exploited for
        | weapons development. 
        |   You may call me harsh, but I felt little
        | sympathy for him. Technological and scientific
        | innovation need not have direct bearing on
        | nuclear or virological research to contribute to
        | the making of weapons of mass destruction.
Page 110| After all, the Ninja was born of genetic engi-
        | neering and cybernetic research, which could
        | easily have healed a civilian rather than
        | improved upon a solider. A scientist cannot
        | pleased naivet to the practical products of their
        | own research. The consequences must be
        | anticipated, and the ethical burden of a newly
        | developed technology must ultimately rest
        | with the individual researcher. I wondered if
        | Dr. Emmerich would ever realize that onus.
Page 111|   Freed from the laboratory where he was
        | being held, Emmerich cloaked himself with a
        | stealth camouflage of his own making and
        | promised to keep out of sight. With the stealth
        | camo, he could easily evade the terrorists'
        | surveillance.
        |   His rescued charge safe, Snake departed 
        | for a rendezvous with Meryl.
        | 
        |   Snake's objective was to meet with Meryl
Page 112| and re-enter the launch code using her over-
        | ride key, outwitting the FOXHOUND psychic
        | Psycho Mantis all the while. To this end, he
        | headed towards the hangar where Metal Gear
        | was being stored. 
        |   The best laid plans... Meryl was ambushed
        | on the way by the FOXHOUND sharpshooter
        | Sniper Wolf. Snake, attempting to rescue the
        | wounded commando, was himself captured.
        |   He was taken to the terrorist command post
Page 113| still unconscious, stripped of all his gear.
        | However, his cochlea-implant radio passed
        | unnoticed, and we could hear the terrorists'
        | conferring about the incapacitated operative.
        | We gathered from their talk that the prepera-
        | tions for the nuclear launch were complete.
        | Richard was unusually intent on identifying the
        | individual terrorists in the room. From the
        | voices involved in the conversation, we
        | confirmed the presence of Sniper Wolf,
Page 114| Revolver Ocelot, and the leader of this
        | uprising himself, Liquid Snake.
        | 
        |   What little I knew of Liquid Snake was
        | troubling, and it came entirely from a slim file
        | folder Richard showed me just prior to
        | mission commencement. The man with the
        | same designation as Solid Snake was
        | recruited into FOXHOUND after Solid Snake's
        | departure from the unit. His fighting skills
Page 115| were formidable, and he quickly rose to
        | leadership position in FOXHOUND's field
        | operation team. His real name, place of origin
        | and other information remained classified.
        | Only a single photograph accompanied the
        | documents, and I had not be able to contain
        | my astonishment at the sight of it.
        |   "It's not a mistake. That IS Liquid Snake,"
        | said Richard, echoing my thoughts.
        |   "But -- how?"
Page 116|   The face in the photo was the spitting
        | image of Solid Snake.
        |   "I wouldn't know. But once the two Snakes
        | run into each other, something may come out."
        | His words were noncommittal, but Richard's 
        | tone spoke volumes.
        | 
        |   And now, the two Snakes -- Solid and 
        | Liquid -- had indeed come face to face. But
Page 117| Liquid had little to say.
        |   "So long, brother." He called out before
        | turning and walking away. The voice was full
        | of hatred, but there was also something in it
        | that seemed to confirm and gleefully
        | anticipate another meeting. Why this was so
        | was as mysterious to me as the reason he
        | called Solid Snake "brother." I would not find
        | out the truth until a little later.
        |   What awaited Snake after his brief
Page 118| encounter with Liquid was Ocelot's KGB-
        | tested "interrogation" techniques. Ocelot
        | apparently had no interest in extracting
        | information, but rather appeared to be
        | enjoying the acts of torture for their own
        | sake. Snake's ragged gasps echoed from the
        | radio in the silence of the control room.
        | The heart rate and other physiological data
        | transmitted by his nanomachines graphically
        | demonstrated the extent of his suffering.
Page 119| All we could do was listen and wait.
        |   After Ocelot was done, the battered Snake
        | was taken to a cell. Campbell soon established
        | radio contact with him, but Snake had some
        | hard questions for his former CO instead.
        | He had realized that Metal Gear was a nuclear
        | delivery system, and for once, Campbell was
        | at a loss for an answer.
        |   "So you did know about this all along..."
        | Snake rasped out bitterly.
Page 120|   Campbell continued to be silent. It was all
        | the confirmation Snake needed.
        |   "You should have told me."
        |   "...I'm sorry."
        |   "Pawns don't need to know, is that it?
        | You've changed." Campbell had no rebuttal to
        | Snake's barbs.
        | 
        |   According to Campbell, even the President
        | had apparently been unaware of the existence
Page 121| of Project Rex until the day before. To make
        | matters more complicated, he was due to
        | meet with the Russian president the following
        | day for the formal signing of START3.
        |   The treaty stipulated further reduction of
        | the nuclear arsenal, picking up where START2
        | left off. The agreement would reduce the 
        | number of Russian and American tactical
        | ballistic missiles to somewhere between two
        | thousand and twenty-five hundred, and the
Page 122| signing was a historic event that had been
        | made possible by long and arduous process.
        | If the fact that a new nuclear weapon was
        | being developed by the United States were
        | made public, there was a significant chance
        | that the signing would never take place.
        | Worse still, the loss of confidence in
        | America's commitment to non-proliferation
        | could create international turmoil.
        |   The government clearly had every
Page 123| reason to keep the situation under wraps,
        | and there were ample indications that the
        | terrorists had counter on the fact. The 
        | timing of this takeover as well as the
        | twenty-four hour deadline said as much.
        |   Campbell continued to plead his case with
        | Snake.
        |   "Snake, you've got to stop them."
        |   "Sing it to someone else."
        |   "You're the only hope we have."
Page 124|   "All right then, tell me what this new war-
        | head is about."
        |   "I told you, I don't know."
        |   "I don't believe you."
        |   "..."
        |   "If the situation is so desperate, why don't
        | you accept their demands? Give them Big
        | Boss' body. It's just a corpse."

---

To be continued... 200 pages to go.
