Chapter Text
8 YEARS, 11 MONTHS, 10 DAYS
Cyprus, 26th of February, 1984
Nurse Alexandra Pikrammenos went through the same routine she had gone through in the last eight years. Read through the report of the day shift, check the medication chart, have a brief chat with some of the day shift nurses before they went home, back to their husbands, their children.
Nurse Pikrammenos had none of that. She had chosen the night shift and had been placed in this hospital in Cyprus for very specific reasons. With no husband waiting for her at home, the high salary she had been offered to accept a rather odd job with unconventional demands where she was supposed to nod and smile and ask no questions had sounded more than just a little tempting. Taking care of patients that kept a few secrets to themselves while she was paid royally to never wonder who they were or why they were here … she could do that. She had done it for eight years now and she would happily do it for another eight.
According to the day shift, it was a day like any other, nothing of note had occurred during the day and unless a sudden medical emergency materialised out of thin air there was nothing unusual predicted for the night shift either and Pikrammenos happily went after her work as she did every day.
The Dhekelia SBA Memorial hospital had a respectable size and Pikrammenos was far from the only nurse on duty at night but given her special assignment, she spent most of her shift in one specific wing of the building. Looking after the same handful of patients every day but paying specific attention to the patients in room 13.
There had been a lot of commotion over the two men in this room. They had been here as long as Pikrammenos herself had been here and with the questionable surgeries she had seen scheduled for one of them she could only imagine they were the reason she was here and why they paid her so much to ensure she would never ask even a single question about what transpired in this hospital.
She had never once learnt their names, only single letters to keep the two apart (B on the right, V on the left), nor did she have any clue how they had ended up in a military-run hospital in Cyprus. And if everything went according to plan she knew she would never find out. She was convinced she did not want to anyway. Better to keep out of whatever this was. It was nothing she wanted any part of.
It did not stop her from wondering anyway though. The right side of the room was always filled with flowers, to a ridiculous degree. She had heard a lot of complaints from the day shift over how often they were asked to accept these huge flower deliveries with instructions to set them up around the man’s bed. Someone out there seemed very concerned for him.
She had spotted two blonds at his bedside over the years. The first, a woman with long hair and a charming smile, had only shown her face a handful of times in the first year. She had not returned since that time. The second, a man whose hair was getting longer and acquired more grey in it every time she saw him, had returned frequently for eight years. He didn’t say much, usually he only briefly thanked her or her colleagues for watching over his friend and then spent his time reading to him. Sometimes he spoke to him in English, sometimes in Russian. Pikrammenos usually tried not to disturb him.
The man on the left however never got any visitors. She almost felt bad for him. There had been days where she had sat down for a minute or two on a quiet day to read him the news, offer him some company even though she knew it would make no difference considering his state. It felt wrong to her to see him almost forgotten like this. What did a man have to do to end up alone in a hospital with no company but the doctors and nurses who were paid to watch over him?
The man on the right had woken up a few days ago, a very shocking moment for the day shift when he had started making some noise out of nowhere after almost nine years of silence. Pikrammenos still dutifully watched over him at night as he recovered but he rarely seemed to sleep well. Gone were the nights of peaceful sleep with nothing but the noise of the machines and the buzzing of the lights.
He talked in his sleep. About many things, mentioning random names and words that Pikrammenos had no context for.
She tried not to listen. It was none of her business.
She had encountered him wide awake a few times during her nightly rounds but never talking much, only refusing any medication to help him sleep and asking for a cigar. She wasn’t sure how often they had had to explain to him that the Dhekelia SBA Memorial hospital had a policy that forbade smoking while inside the buildings and that in his state, no sane staff member would allow him to smoke anyway.
But while the man on the right seemed to slowly recover and get back to living his life, the condition of the man on the left had still not changed.
Tonight was no different.
She wasn’t supposed to move anything, but it made her sad to see one side of the room so clearly taken care of while the other was undecorated and ignored. She moved to pick up one of the vases from the right side of the room and placed it on the nightstand next to the bed on the left. One vase wouldn’t be a big deal, right? It wasn’t like the man on the right had appreciated the flowers much after waking up. He had seemingly tried his best to ignore them.
She was about to leave and see after the few patients left on her list as she heard a groan from behind her. Turning to face the bed, she wasn’t sure if she had heard right. Over eight years of silence and suddenly a sound? She could have easily imagined it. The radio was turned on, the machines were making noise as they did every day, the idea that she had just misinterpreted any of these sounds was not far-fetched. But it was her job to check these things so she stepped closer, just to make sure. She imagined the nurse who had discovered the awakening of the man in the other bed had felt similarly.
“Can you hear me?” she asked, not expecting a response.
As she leaned in close to observe the patient, his eyes moved. Could he - was he actually awake? Then, another groan, this time she was sure she had heard it. He was indeed awake. In theory she knew exactly what she was supposed to do once the man woke up but being confronted with the situation so long after nothing had happened was somewhat unsettling.
A doctor , Pikrammenos thought, I need to notify a doctor that their patient has woken up . She rushed to the door, faintly aware she had accidentally pushed something heavy off the nearby table as she rushed past but not stopping to check what it had been. She had two things to take care of now: Notify a doctor about the change in their patient … and make a phone call.
She had no idea who she was calling, she had only been given a number eight years ago with strict instructions to call as soon as the man in the left bed woke up, no further information on who she was contacting or why.
She did have one more instruction given to her though. One specific line she was supposed to pass on now.
“V has come to-”
Durand line, Afghan side, 11th of March, 1984
They only had to make it a little further. As soon as they crossed the line into Pakistan they would be fine, the job would be done and hopefully they had caused enough of a ruckus to get Cipher’s attention. He had discussed this operation with Ocelot a while ago. They had dubbed it plan Lebbaeus, after St. Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes. The name had been Ocelot’s idea. He had very much reflected Kaz’ own sentiment with that suggestion.
“If he wakes up, you get the boss out safely while I cause enough trouble far away from Cyprus that Cipher can’t ignore me. Hopefully by the time they figure out they’ve been deceived Snake is long gone. Get him to mother base as quickly as possible no matter what happens.”
“They’ll be after you in no time. What’s your escape plan?”
“Can’t have one if I want to keep the boss safe. I can’t return to mother base unless I manage to shake them off first so I’ll just have to hope and see.”
Ocelot set his glass down on the table, eyeing Kaz with mild concern. “They’ll kill you if we don’t send you back up.”
“I’ll be fine. We need to focus on the boss.” Kaz, who had broken out his old Kiseru for the first time in years for their little celebration, blew smoke in his partner’s direction.
“Promise me you’ll bring him back home in one piece when he wakes up.”
“Miller-”
“I can’t be there in person so you need to promise me this. I’ll never ask for another personal favour ever again. So do this one thing for me.”
“Fine, I promise but you better be careful. He needs you as much as he needs me.”
I can only hope that’s true, Kaz thought.
Now it was time to put that plan to the test. If Kaz and Ocelot had miscalculated their operation then Snake was in more danger than he had been in years. Kaz wasn’t religious, but he still prayed that if any higher power existed, they would grant him this one wish of getting Snake home safely. That was all he wanted. He would accept death if it meant Snake would get the chance to come home and enact their revenge, take back what was rightfully theirs.
“Visibility’s getting worse, commander!” one of his men shouted from up ahead. He had taken Diamond Dog’s very best, mostly old friends from MSF times, with him to ensure that even if they were cornered or cut off, they would be able to fight Cipher off as long as possible, keep them busy, make sure they would stay far away from the boss. He’d hate to lose these men but they had all known the risk they were taking when they had signed up for Diamond Dogs.
Kaz had not told them they were playing the bait for Snake’s safety.
The job Kaz had secured for this purpose had gone off without a hitch. He was sure Cipher had already heard about the whole thing. He was counting on it. All they needed to do now was keep whoever Cipher would send busy and they would be out in the clear.
Things had gone shockingly well so far.
But the sudden change in weather felt like a bad omen to him. Sandstorms came and went in the area, they had braved a few of them out in the open before but he could feel the temperature drop almost instantly. This wasn’t just another sandstorm.
“Everyone, closer together, stay in visible range!” he ordered. He had a bad feeling about this.
“Coyote, come in, what’s the status up ahead?” Coyote, or Howling Coyote as his full code name went, was their point man, scouting the area ahead of them to ensure they weren’t blindly running into trouble. He had gone silent since the sudden mist had set in. Kaz was reminded of that horrible day in Colombia when Snake had taken out his entire unit before taking him prisoner. That disaster had started similarly with their point man suddenly going silent before they were ambushed by Snake and his men. Kaz had asked him about it months later. It had struck him as strange that he had never heard the gunshot he assumed had taken his man out before they had surrounded the rest of his unit. Snake had laughed at his question back then, told him he had never shot the guy. Too messy, too noticeable. “What else did you do then?” Kaz had asked him in confusion, finding himself annoyed he had not managed to figure the solution out himself.
“I snuck up on him and cut his throat,” Snake had answered calmly. Kaz had accused him of lying, there was no way the man could have snuck up on the guy like that, he was too aware of his surroundings, could spot a threat a mile away. But Snake promised he had been honest with him and Kaz had no choice but to believe it. When he finally got to watch the man in action from the sidelines, he knew Snake had told him the truth. It was one of the dozens of times that Kaz had been confronted with the pure skill his new boss possessed. And it served as a reminder of how hopeless it was to try and get away from him.
Thankfully for him, his pointman wasn’t dead this time around. Just confused. “Coyote here, I see … no, it can’t be.”
“Spit it out, soldier,” Kaz demanded, growing more tense every second as the mist around them got progressively worse. He could barely see two metres ahead of him anymore.
“Sir, I see … I see skulls in the mist,” the man reported and then fell silent. Kaz tried to ask for clarification but got no response in return.
This was going worse than the mission in Colombia had.
But he had learnt since then. He yelled at his men to get into formation and prepare for an enemy attack. Something was out there and it was heading straight for them.
Skulls, what on earth did Coyote mean by that?
They had barely managed to scramble into formation when something came raining down from the sky, loud and hard. “Hail, sir!” someone yelled but Kaz knew that was impossible. Hail, here, at this time of the year … no. This was no simple hail storm.
Something large hit his back. He turned to see what it was just to be overcome with a feeling of nausea the moment he identified what had hit him.
It was a part of a human leg.
He had no time to react as one of his soldiers on his right screamed and then, like Coyote, fell silent. Then a scream on his left, he heard others around him calling out to each other but one by one their voices too disappeared.
He cursed the fact his sight had gotten so bad over the last years. Between the mist and his own vision problems, Kaz felt blind in the middle of a battlefield. The enemy was picking them off one by one and he could do nothing but watch. He couldn’t shoot in this mist without risking to hit his own men and he hadn’t even caught a glimpse of their attackers yet while they seemingly decimated his unit in seconds.
And then all of the sudden Kaz found himself in utter silence.
This is how I die, he thought. Ocelot, you better keep your damn promise.
???
[Transcript of a phone call recorded just outside Ormidia, Cyprus]
“I’ve got a report from my Soviet contacts. They caught Miller in Afghanistan.”
[Response inaudible]
“No, no word on how just yet.”
[Response inaudible]
“He won’t talk, you know that but his time is running out quickly. I give him 12 days. Maybe less. The Soviets are pretty upset with him.”
[Response inaudible]
“Are you sure? We don’t know if the Phantom will be ready for this. Miller could die. We still need him.”
[Response inaudible]
“No, of course. You’re right, this will be the perfect training exercise for him. I’ll get him to Afghanistan as soon as possible.”
[Response inaudible]
“I don’t think he will take it well. Miller tends to hold grudges, but you know that already of course. We’ll need to figure out the right time to tell him the truth.”
[Response inaudible]
“Of course. I’ll be there, just as promised.”
[Silence]
“Good luck, John.”
[End of transcript]