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发表于 2008-11-26 18:35:18
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19
THE LEVEL 6 PAN card opened the door to the maintenance building. Snake stepped inside, SOCOM ready, and was met by a wave of heart. It was as if he had just stepped into a sauna, although there was no steam in the air. The place was noisy, too, with the industrial rumbling of heavy machinery echoing throughout a vast area. The room was as large as some of the other gymnasium-size spaces in the Shadow Moses facility, but in this case Snake was at the top looking down at a cacophony of metal that was bathed in a warm orange glow. He stood on a grid platform from which catwalks extended in different directions. One led to a metal staircase on the left side of the room; the stairs descended to another level of catwalks, an so on, for what appeared to be four floors. The bottom of the expanse was a smelting pit full of yellow-hot molten steel. Snake spotted two genome soldiers in the northeastern corner of the lowest floor; behind them was a large door that led to what appeared to be a cargo elevator. That was where he needed to go.
Unfortunately, there were surveillance cameras and at least two, sometimes three, guards standing on every landing, all the way down. Given the angles involved, there was no surreptitious way to descend the stairs without being seen. He would have to find another way to the bottom, and that presented a challenge. There were at least two large lead pipes running vertically on every wall, and the western wall appeared to have narrow ledges at each level. Snake could visualize a route along one of the ledges, but it would be extremely hazardous. One slip, one misstep, and he would fall to molten death. Not only that, but the gigantic smelting arm-a mechanized lever that clutched, lifted, and moved heavy, hot objects-was rotating around the room. On each orbit, the “claw” came extremely close to the western wall. Snake counted the seconds of a single rotation and came up with the number 35.
It’s doable, but…
After quickly studying the rest of the room, he came to the conclusion that it was his only course. Still carrying the sniper rifle on his back, he darted across the platform to the catwalk that led closest to the western wall. To leap from the landing to the ledge on the wall, he needed a diversion. He dug into the pouch, removed a frag grenade, pulled the pin, and dropped the explosive. It detonated a few feet above the smelting pit. Snake stopped what they were doing to gaze at the blast, scratch their Snake had jumped to the ledge, but he struggled to keep his balance. There was nothing to hold on to, and the ledge was no more than a foot wide. It was a feat more suited to a circus performer accustomed to acrobatics and aerial derring-do.
Once his weight was stabilized, Snake took a deep breath and dared to look down at the soldiers. They hadn’t noticed him. He heard one man mutter that the molten ore in the smelting pit had bubbled up and popped. They went about their business, and so did Snake.
Step by step…Snake felt as if he were walking a tightrope without a safety net. The only difference was that he was navigating the ledge while standing against a flat wall, which made it all the more difficult.
He hadn’t moved ten feet when he heard a loud, cranking noise approaching.
The smelting arm!
He squatted in place, almost losing his balance again. The huge mechanical limb swerved over his shoulder and continued its orbit around the room. Snake took another deep breath, slowly stood upright, and resumed the crossing. It was a dizzying sensation. He never had encountered symptoms resembling vertigo, but for some reason the heat, the noise, and the dangerous height all contributed to an onset of light-headedness.
What do you expect? He asked himself. After all, he’d been on the move for well over twelve hours, had had very little rest, had undergone severe torture that literally had given a shock to his system, had eaten only the rations he’d brought with him, and had been a human punching bag several times over. It was a miracle he was alive, much less still standing.
Those thoughts might have demoralized an ordinary person, but for Snake they were incentives to stay the course. Master Miller had a saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough beat the shit out of everyone else.” Snake lived by that adage, and he hated to lose. He would finish the mission-successfully-or there would be no use returning to his home in the Alaskan wilderness.
The mechanical arm around again. This time, Snake ducked without thinking; after having been through the cycle once, he had no trouble adapting to it and building into his rhythm the anticipation of the machine’s approach.
Before he knew it, he was on the other side of the pit. His target all along was one of the thick pipes that ran vertically from the ceiling to the floor. It was roughly a foot in diameter slipped on his gloves, grasped the pipe with his legs and hands, and began to descend as if the pipe were a rope.
He was halfway down when a alarm blared throughout the steelworks. The guards on the various platforms jumped to attention and ran down the stairs to the bottom, gathered in a huddle, and then spread out around the smelting pit. They obviously were searching for something…or someone. But in separating, the guards left the space around the bottom of the pipe clear. Snake slid down without being seen, hugged the wall, and crept closer to the cargo elevator.
But they were waiting for him just beyond the other side of the pit. Four guards ambushed him, taking Snake completely by surprise. Two men grabbed him by the arms, and another forced him but was overpowered and outmatched. The soldiers pushed and dragged him closer to the pit with the intent to throw him into the molten-hot liquid.
It was time to fight dirty. Only in cases of extreme emergency did Snake resort to techniques, but he figured that all was fair when you were fighting for your life.
Snake twisted his body to the right and kneed the man holding his arm directly in the groin. The soldier let go of him, cried out in pain, and dropped to the floor. The freeing of his right arm allowed Snake to swing it hard at the man to his left, crushing the soldier’s Adam’s apple. Then, in the time it took to blink, Snake elbowed the man directly behind him in the sternum, crushing the bone and stopping the guard’s heart. Now unrestricted by the grasp of the ambushers, Snake turned and kicked the fourth genome trooper between the legs. The soldier froze in shock and pain long enough for Snake to pick him up by the arms and calmly toss him into the smelting pit. The guard’s scream quickly was extinguished by the lava-hot metal.
All that had taken approximately 4.8 seconds.
Snake considered disposing of the three other men in the same fashion, but he didn’t bother. He’d wasted enough time as it was, so he simply kicked the two conscious men in the head to send them to dreamland.
Thankfully, the cargo elevator was empty when the doors opened. Snake stepped inside and pushed the button to descend to the lower level.
“Snake!”
Master Miller was on the Codec. Snake answered and said,
“Hey, you know what you once said about-”
“Never mind that, Snake. I have something to tell you.”
“What?”
“Is this conversation secure?”
“Don’t worry. The monitor’s off. And we’re on the frequency you picked before.”
“Okay.”
“What’s up?”
“It’s about Naomi Hunter.”
Snake felt a shiver of dread. “What about her?”
“I was in the FBI, too, you know.”
“I didn’t know that,” Snake said, “but what’s your point?”
“Doctor Hunter’s story about her background…about her grandfather being an assistant secretary to Hoover in the FBI and then going undercover to investigate the Mafia in New York…?”
“Yeah? When about it?”
“It’s all a big lie.”
“How do you know?”
“J. Edgar Hoover was a racist, Snake. Doctor Hunter’s father was Japanese.”
“So?”
“Back then there wasn’t a single Asian investigator. Also, the undercover Mafia sting operations hadn’t started at the time she claims. And they started in Chicago, not New York.”
“But-”
“You better check it out. The DARPA chief and the ArmsTech president dying like they did, and that ninja…too many strange things are happening.”
“Are you saying that Naomi might be behind it?”
“I don’t know. Either that or she’s working with the terrorists.”
“I can’t believe it!” Snake rubbed his brow and shook his head. “Could it be?”
“If I find out any more, I’ll call. In the meantime, be careful!”
Miller sighed off, leaving a weary and mistrustful Snake alone just as the cargo elevator came to a stop. |
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楼主: fengmosn
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发表于 2008-11-14 22:26:27
