Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot by Project Itoh Page B

called out, “S-see you, Snake!”
    Snake returned a smile. He would be gone for at least several days—several days without having to endure her fried eggs. I looked at Sunny, watching Snake reach the edge of the tarmac, and I thought, We’re something like a family, aren’t we .
    We weren’t really a family, of course, but at that moment, I felt at peace.
    If only everything could have stayed like that.
    I shook my head. What was I thinking at a time like this? Snake was about to enter another battlefield.
    Using an ID Campbell had provided, Snake passed through customs and immigration. He climbed in the four-by-four and headed up into the mountainous region on the other side of the border. Just a few years ago, the high altitude wouldn’t have been a problem for Snake, but with his aged lungs Snake was having trouble adjusting to the low oxygen.
    Fortunately, he’d have time to adjust—the mountains were quite far. But as the elevation increased, Snake only seemed to become worse off. He rarely spoke, and the occasional bead of sweat rolled down his cheek.
    “Snake,” I asked over the codec, “how are you holding up?”
    Snake, as reluctant as ever to discuss his body, simply asked, “What’s our current situation?”
    I sighed. “Rebel guerrilla units are advancing on the base of the government PMC troops. The building appears to be Liquid’s safe house. According to Naomi’s data, she’s being held prisoner inside the compound.”
    I sent a satellite image of the compound through the Solid Eye.
    “That’s where she is?” he asked.
    “Assuming Naomi’s data are correct. According to satellite imagery procured by Mei Ling, the facility where Naomi is being held is to the north, along a mountain road. I’m sending the location to your map.”
    Snake hadn’t heard that name in a while. “Mei Ling?”
    “Yeah.”
    Along with Colonel Campbell, Mei Ling was part of Snake’s wireless support team during the Shadow Moses Incident. Back then, she was still a teenager, but now, nine years had passed, and she was a grown woman.
    She’d become the captain of the USS Missouri , a battleship from the time when giant turrets were still the backbone of naval power. Missouri had a long and storied history (including serving as the setting for a Steven Seagal movie), but with the advent of carrier fleets, the expensive and inflexible battleship-class vessels became obsolete. Although cannon power attacks on coastal areas remained in sporadic use through the Gulf War, Missouri was retired as an aged soldier, no longer of use to the modern era, in the following year, ’92. The rest of the battleships would meet the same fate by the mid-nineties.
    Now the seas were dominated by frigate-class ships and cruisers powered by the mighty Aegis system.
    After its decommissioning, Missouri was sent to Hawaii to live out the rest of its years as a tourist attraction, but after its museum contract expired the ship was recommissioned and used for virtual training. Rather than actual combat training, the goal seemed to be getting the sailors acclimated to seamanship aboard an analog vessel.
    In short, everyone involved with the Shadow Moses incident had either become fugitives or had been sidelined into nonessential dead-end appointments. The same had happened to Meryl. She was wasting away in some desk job when Campbell pulled some connections in the army to place her within the PMC inspection unit—an assignment considered extremely dangerous even for the CID.
    “Otacon,” Snake said, “I just saw a PMC armored truck. I think I’m not far from Pieuvre Armement patrols. I even saw some giant billboard advertisements for them. ‘Arms of the Octopus, Arms for Your War!’ ”
    “That might sound appealing if you were desperate. But in the fog of war, even eight arms aren’t enough.”
    Even some nonsense name like Octopus Armaments takes on an elegantly feminine quality when said in French. Pieuvre Armement. Personally,