Metal Gear Solid: Guns of the Patriot Read Online Free PDF Page B

find any new customers among the rebel assault force, seeing as they were all dead, their corpses awash in the blowing sandstorm.
    Indeed, order had seemingly been restored to most of the city ruins. Snake took a drag of his cigarette. The rattle of gunfire had gone silent, and the low, unnerving roars of the Irvings were absent. Between the buildings, Snake could see a column of advancing PMC armored vehicles—made in the USA—and no signs of rebel resistance.
    But the rebels hadn’t lost this battle yet—they’d only gone underground to fight with guerrilla tactics. Here and there, Snake caught glimpses of rebel fighters scurrying through the streets.
    He followed after them and soon found himself at what seemed to be an underground headquarters. Tailing the soldiers wasn’t difficult—not for Snake at least. He hid in the shadows and sized up the gathering forces. The rebels had suffered heavy losses, but still had barely enough numbers to pull off one more attack.
    Snake considered that the attack at the city gates might have been a diversionary ploy to sneak in this force. The labyrinthine corridors underneath the city were filled with the injured and the dead, but as Snake passed by the command room, he noticed commanders preparing to regroup their forces.
    “Are you all right?”
    Snake turned. Behind him was the Mk. II. Controlling the robot remotely, I’d been following Snake for some time. With its stealth camouflage engaged, the machine was practically invisible.
    I spoke through the live video feed on the Mk. II’s flip-out screen. “I’ll be watching you with the Mk. II.”
    “Sounds like you’re keeping cool,” Snake said, “while I’m out here in the middle of a hot zone.”
    “Hey, I’ll be with you in spirit. Anyway, because you had to dress up as a militiaman, I had the Mk. II bring you some goodies.” I opened the Mk. II’s storage port and withdrew the Solid Eye. “Starting with this. Put it on your left eye.”
    “Looks like an eye patch.”
    Snake strapped the Solid Eye over his eye. The patch was black, angular, and loaded with sensors. With the Solid Eye on, I thought Snake looked just like Big Boss. Even Snake’s father, the original, the legendary Big Boss, didn’t complete all of his missions unscathed. He’d lost his right eye in a Cold War op and from then on wore an eye patch.
    “It’s an all-purpose goggle,” I explained, “that displays radar images and other data in 3D. You can also switch it over to light-amplifying night vision or enhanced magnification.”
    Snake pressed a switch on the side of the Solid Eye, and a data overlay appeared across his vision. The Eye’s software gathered pictures from hundreds of tracking points and extracted 3D locational data from the various viewpoints. Data could be transmitted from the Gaudi and displayed in 3D space. The image displayed in the Eye was not a virtual reality created from scratch, but rather an augmented reality.
    The rebel forces continued to pour into the stronghold. Some of them were injured, but the majority were still at full strength.
    “It looks like they’ve got the government’s PMC troops beat,” I said. “At least in numbers.”
    “And this is their home turf. Praying Mantis is playing psychological games, announcing their victory from the skies, but the real battle is yet to come.”
    “You miss your AK, don’t you?”
    “Jammed. I had to dump it. I tried appropriating some of the PMC’s SCARs, but even with their safeties off, their triggers were locked.”
    “It’s practically raining bullets out there, and you made it all the way here unarmed?” He really did make the impossible possible. “Snake, the PMC soldiers are using ID guns.”
    “ID guns?”
    “The locks on ID guns are only disengaged when they recognize the nanomachine ID inside a soldier’s body. Anyone not possessing nanomachines keyed to the System, or anyone who is keyed but not authorized to use that weapon, won’t