Virtuous Mission

The Virtuous Mission was a disastrously failed CIA operation in August of 1964 that involved a deep insertion inside the Soviet Union. A FOX agent codenamed Naked Snake was deployed via the world's first HALO jump in order to rescue a Soviet defector, the weapons scientist Nikolai Stephanovich Sokolov. While Snake succeeded in locating and extracting Sokolov from his KGB guards, he was subsequently attacked and critically injured by a defecting American agent. Sokolov was then re-captured, and the GRU officer Volgin not only seized Sokolov's project, but also unleashed an American made Davey Crockett nuclear weapon on Russian citizens, creating an international incident.

The catastrophe of the Virtuous Mission was so extreme that the CIA considered executing both Snake and his commanding officer, Zero. They were saved only by the need for Snake to be re-inserted a week later in Operation Snake Eater.

Prelude

In 1962, A Soviet scientist by the name of Nikolai Stephanovich Sokolov wished to defect to America. Sokolov was one of the Soviet Union's foremost weapons developers and head of the OKB-754 Design Bureau. The CIA successfully managed to sneak Sokolov's family over the Berlin Wall, and then Sokolov himself.

However, on October 16, 1962, President Kennedy received word that the Soviets were in the process of deploying intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. The President demanded that the Soviets dismantle and remove the missiles. At the same time, he announced a naval blockade to prevent further missile shipments from reaching Cuba. But the Soviets didn't back down, instead placing their armed forces on secondary alert. Soviet transport ships carrying missiles continued on course toward Cuba. US and Soviet forces went on alert for an all-out nuclear war. Frantic negotiations were conducted through the UN's Emergency Security Council and unofficial channels to end the hair-trigger standoff. Finally, on October 28, the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba. And so the world avoided a nuclear holocaust. This incident became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.

But in order to get the Soviets to pull their missiles out, the US had to make a deal. Most official records will say that the US agreed to remove its IRBMs from Turkey and the Soviets would remove theirs from Cuba. However, the IRBMs deployed in Turkey were obsolete and the CIA were already planning on getting rid of them. The Turkey deal was a ruse - a cover story that was fed to the other intelligence agencies around the world. What the Soviets really wanted was the return of Sokolov.

Sokolov was returned to the Soviets and promptly taken back to his Design Bureau and forced to finish the weapon he had been working on. The CIA, convinced that this new weapon would dramatically shift the balance of power, ordered Naked Snake, an operative of the newly formed FOX Unit to be dropped into Tselinoyarsk to recover Sokolov. Performing the world’s first ever HALO (High Altitude - Low Opening) Snake successfully infiltrated Tselinoyarsk.

Close Quarters Combat

Snake had support from his commanding officer Major Zero (changing his codename to Major Tom for this mission) and FOX's medic Para-Medic via radio. However, there was one other person on Snake's support team: The Boss, Snake's old mentor who abandoned him five years before hand without any explanation. Glad to hear her voice again, Snake continued his mission.

Snake familiarized himself with the area, and later found the rope bridge that would bring him to Rassvet to meet Sokolov. Snake snuck his way around the KGB guards, through the rubble exterior and into a cabin towards the back of the perimiter, and confronted Sokolov, letting him know he wasn't an enemy but sent to rescue him. Sokolov told Snake about Yevgeny Borisovitch Volgin the man who was preparing to steal Sokolov, along with his weapon. Volgin was looking to pull Khrushchev from power and install Brezhnev and Kosygin in his place.

As Snake and Sokolov began to make their way to the extraction point, they were ambushed by KGB operatives and held at gunpoint. The KGB agents were then surrounded and killed by the Ocelot Unit being led by Ocelot, part of a rogue GRU faction intent on capturing Sokolov for Volgin. Snake, using his hand-to-hand CQC techniques, managed to disable all the Ocelot Unit members while Sokolov escaped.



Shagohod

When they reached the rope bridge Sokolov pointed to the top of a nearby mountain, where Sokolov’s Shagohod, a huge tank capable of firing a nuclear missile across large distances, was being tested. On their way over the bridge they were greeted by The Boss, only to find out that she had defected to the Soviet Union. Sokolov was captured by the Cobra Unit, and The Boss explained that Sokolov, along with a couple of Davy Crocketts (miniature nuclear shells) were her gift to her new hosts. Colonel Volgin himself joined The Boss and Snake on the bridge. Volgin demanded that The Boss kill Snake, because he had seen Volgin's face. She attempted this by breaking his arm and throwing him off the bridge, secretly knowing full well that he would live through the fall.

Snake did survive, and tended to his wounds with the help of Para-Medic. But then something no-one could have predicted happened. Colonel Volgin decided to test one of the Davy Crockett launchers, completely wiping out the OKB-754 research facility. The Fulton Recovery System was used to get Snake out of Tselinoyarsk. The launching of the nuke led Kruschev to believe it was the US who used the nuke as there was a US plane in Soviet air space, which was the AC-130 the members of FOX were stationed in.