METAL GEAR SOLID:

SNAKE EATER

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book couldn't have been written without the brilliant work

and creative genius of Hideo Kojima and the rest of the

Konami team.

After the end of World War II,

the world was split into two - East and West.

This marked the beginning of the era called the Cold War.

During the Cold War, we lived in coded times

when it wasn't easy and there were

shades of grey and ambiguity.

- John le Carre

. . .

I am become death.

- The Bhagavad Gita

Pakistani Airspace

August 24, 1964

0530 Hours

The first light of dawn brought with it the promise of a storm and a shape that seemed to herald it.

It hurtled through cloud and air like an angel of vengeance, perhaps like the one prophesied to bring divine retribution upon whole civilizations by the peoples who lived far below.

This was no angel, though-not one of God, anyway. If anything, there was something slightly demonic about its appearance.

The craft bore two tubelike steel "horns," each one thirty feet long, angling from its nose. Its fuselage was painted a gunmetal gray, which blended with the cloud cover and the rapidly lightening sky almost flawlessly. Its multiple wing propellers thrummed as they cut through condensation. Other than a few blinking lights along the wings and the dull hum, the thing was a ghost.

It was a Lockheed Combat Talon, a converted C-130 that had been modified for the task at hand. It was a prototype of sorts, with only a half-dozen or so in existence. Along with the horns, the plane also had cables strung from the nose to the wingtips, with a larger one running directly beneath the fuselage itself. The crew called this main line a "sky anchor." But it was designed for something other than ballast.

The Talon was designed to carry an entire platoon of combat troops, but on this early August morning, it was manned by the barest of skeleton crews: a pilot and two crew chiefs. They were not alone, however. The pilot sat alone at the control panel, diligently monitoring the plane's vitals and keeping the craft on its proper course. Despite the monotony of staring at the night sky for the last fourteen hours, he was wide awake. It wasn't easy to get bored when you were flying through enemy airspace.

Behind him, in a small niche between the cockpit and the cargo hold, there were three of the plane's four passengers. Two of them sat at their own consoles, surrounded by blinking lights and electronics units. One of them was one of the crew chiefs, who monitored the status of the plane's equipment. The other was a woman in her mid-twenties, wearing a bombardier's jacket two sizes too big for her slight frame. With paper-pale skin and cheekbones like icebergs, she looked almost frail-until you looked in her eyes. They were fine, intelligent, with a spark of hungry curiosity. These eyes were fixed ahead, never betraying any sort of anxiety.

Behind these two, leaning against the bulkhead with arms folded, was an older man, wearing the insignia of a major. He was a lean man, fifty years old, tall but not burly. His stomach remained washboard flat. He moved with a spare grace, as if every exertion counted for something important. His chin was narrow, his eyes slate gray under heavy salt-and-pepper eyebrows. A bristling mustache rode his upper lip, and steel-gray hair lay neatly on his scalp. A scar furrowed down one side of his face. It was an old war wound, one he sported as proudly as he would a medal. Like everyone else in the cockpit-which he thought of as "Mission Control"-he wore an electronic headset.

"Approaching Soviet airspace," the pilot reported. "Commencing internal depressurization."

There was a hiss of air, startling loud in the confines of the cockpit.

"Equipment check," the pilot went on. "Arm main parachute."

The major unfolded his arms and stepped forward. He tapped his headset. "All right," he said, his voice clipped with a crisp British lilt. "Are you ready to go?"

"Drop zone still showing a high precious mass," the pilot replied. "CAVOK."

That last word was an acronym, meaning that they had good cloud cover. The major nodded. That was good news for the plane's cargo.

In the spacious cargo bay, the low hiss was drowned by the rumble of the plane's engines. The crew chief stationed there had already hooked up his oxygen mask. He glanced over at the plane's cargo: a single man, sitting on the bench on the far side. Unlike the others, he didn't have a headset. Instead, he'd been equipped with an experimental device called a codec, which was a tiny mechanism inserted in the man's inner ear, designed to stimulate the bones there so that there would be little feedback during the mission. He was hunched over, in olive-colored fatigues and a bulky pack on his back. He couldn't even see the man's head, with the raft of cigar smoke drifting in front of his face.

"Put out that cigar," the crew chief barked.

The figure hunched there didn't seem to hear-or if he did, didn't seem to care. The crew chief walked over and fiddled with some instruments. "Connecting oxygen hose to interior connector," he reported through his own headset.

"Roger that," the pilot's voice replied.

The crew chief turned back to the figure. There he was, still puffing on that cigar without a care in the world. "Put on your mask," he said.

Still no response from the man. He just sat there, blowing smoke like a dragon.

Does this pantywaist even know what he's doing? the crew chief thought, turning away from the man to continue his checklist.

The plane continued onward. It was now thirty thousand feet over the heart of Soviet territory-bad place for an American plane and its crew to be spotted. The dawn had caught up to the plane and the sun winked off its fuselage, though with the rather thick clouds swirling beneath and around them, it was highly doubtful that any enemy eyes on the ground would spot them. Same for any sort of radar activity.

"Approaching release point," the pilot said over the intercom. "Ten minutes to drop-off."

The major glanced at one of the monitors on the console. It showed a camera feed from inside the cargo hold. He saw the figure still hunkered there, the glow of a cigar in his mouth. He keyed his headset.

"Hey!" he barked irritably. "Are you deaf? He said put out your cigar and put on your mask."

The figure seemed to let out a sigh, with one final jet of smoke issuing from his nostrils. He tossed the still-smoldering cigar to the deck. The man seemed to glance in the direction of the camera, showing his face-which was streaked in black camouflage paint-and picked up the black oxygen mask hanging from his chest. He put the mask over his face and waited.

The hiss finally stopped as the pressure in the plane equalized.

"Depressurization complete," the pilot reported. "Checking oxygen supply. Six minutes to drop-off."

"Opening rear hatch," the crew chief in the cargo bay responded.

There was a whir of machinery, and one of the bulkheads suddenly shifted, and a gap appeared in the plane's wall. It grew wider slowly, letting in the first piercing rays of sun. The man in the fatigues looked towards it, his face completely blank behind the Army-regulation oxygen mask.

The crew chief looked at some of the readouts. "External temperature, minus fifty-four degrees Celsius. Two minutes to drop-off." He turned to the figure. "Stand up!"

The man rose to his feet. He was tall, over six feet in height and broad across the chest. The crew chief flinched a little as the man started toward him, and then he moved towards the ramp, which was still steadily cranking open like a crocodile's mouth.

The man stalked forward, doing his best to maintain his balance. The cold wind blew across him, cutting to the bone even through his thick jumpsuit. The shock of the cold numbed him; he knew it would be even worse in a few minutes.

"You'll be falling at a hundred and thirty miles per hour," the major's voice said calmly. "Try not to get frostbite from the wind chill."

I'll do my best, the man thought.

"One minute to drop-off," the pilot's voice reported.

His headset crackled and hissed, then he heard the major's voice again. "This is one for the history books. The world's first HALO jump."

Not that anyone will know about it, the man thought sourly. He took another step forward, grinding the cigar stub to ash under his bootheel. He could hear the countdown, and as the numbers ticked lower and lower, he steeled himself, ignoring the cold and staring at the lights over the open ramp entrance. One of them glowed red; the other was dead. Once that one went green, it was go time.

"Ten seconds to drop-off," the pilot reported. "Stand by."

The woman at the control panel exchanged a glance with the major. For the first time, there was a tinge of worry in her eyes. He did his best not to betray the same emotion in his own.

"Five."

The man braced his back, the wind whipping at his arms and legs.

"Four."

The man took a deep, slow breath.

"Three."

The man set his steel-like jaw.

"Two."

The man relaxed his fists.

"One!"

The red jump-light next to the young man's head suddenly flared a bright green. Go.

"Spread your wings and fly!" the major said over the codec. "God be with you!"

The man tipped forward, his arms and legs splayed. His boots left the cold deck of the ramp as he propelled himself into the first light of dawn thirty thousand feet in the sky, and he was gone.