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 Davy 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, Major 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. Sokolov also requested that his family also defect to America. The man in charge of the operation was David Oh, a British-originating CIA member. The CIA successfully managed to sneak Sokolov's family over the Berlin Wall, and then Sokolov himself, although Sokolov himself ended up exhausted from traveling over 500 miles during the two-week journey and was checked into a hospital to recover.

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 immediately. 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. U.S. and Soviet forces went on alert for an all-out nuclear war. Frantic negotiations were conducted through the U.N.'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 U.S. had to make a deal. Most official records will say that the U.S. 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, serving absolutely no strategic values for both sides. 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, including an increased amount of tests at Semipalantisk in February of 1964. However, a mole (who was in contact with The Boss via her own "intelligence channels") within the Soviet Union reported some details about the weapon, including the fact that it is nearing completion. 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. Thirty thousand feet above Pakistan, Snake launches himself from a special ops Combat Talon aircraft emblazoned with the U.S. flag and performs the world’s first ever HALO (High Altitude-Low Opening) jump. 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. However, a guard is standing near the bridge, making it difficult to go through undetected. Snake notices through his binoculars that a Hornets nest lies directly above the soldier and decides to shoot it down. After crossing the bridge, Snake sneaks his way around the KGB guards, through the rubble exterior and into a cabin towards the back of the perimeter, and confronted Sokolov (who was in the middle of burning classified documents, presumably documents relating to the new weapon), letting him know he wasn't an enemy but was sent instead to rescue him. Sokolov told Snake about how Russia wasn't doing too well due to the assassination of Kennedy, which, combined with the poor growing season and stagnant economy, was getting sick of Krushchev's regime and a certain faction is making plans to overthrow him. He also revealed one of the people behind the conspiracy: a GRU Colonel by the name of Yevgeny Borisovitch Volgin, who is also the man who was preparing to steal Sokolov, along with his weapon. Volgin was looking to pull Khrushchev from power and install Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksei 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 killed by Ocelot and summoned his Ocelot Unit, part of a rogue GRU faction intent on capturing Sokolov for Volgin. Ocelot attempted to kill Snake by using a Makarov technique that involved ejecting the bullet by hand, but the gun jammed at the last moment. Snake, seizing the opportunity, used 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 commanded The Boss to kill Snake, which she attempted to do by breaking his arm and throwing him off the bridge (yet secretly knowing full well that he would survive the fall).

Snake did indeed survive, and tended to his wounds with the help of Para-Medic. He briefly saw The Boss in a squadron of five prototype Hind-A gunships transporting the Shagohod away from Sokolov's research facility. Volgin's troops had also captured a female KGB officer named Tatyana. Volgin, after he and Ocelot speculated that she may be Sokolov's lover, decided that she was "a fine catch," and discovered that she had a Kiss of death in her possession. He then did something that no one could have predicted, by testing one of the Davy Crockett launchers and completely wiping out the OKB-754 research facility. Snake witnessed the resulting explosion, while he was being extracted via the Fulton Recovery System. The launching of the warhead led Kruschev to believe it was the US who fired the nuke, since the AC-130 Combat Talon was picked up on radar within Soviet air space. As a result of the international controversy that insued, Naked Snake was also detained by the military for any possible involvement in The Boss's defection and awaiting possible execution.

Debriefing

Although in official records the mission was a failure, it was in actuality a success, since The Boss's defection was intended. This allowed for the creation of a follow-up mission, in which other more sinister objectives could be accomplished, other than the recovery of Sokolov. The revelation of this devious plan was given to Naked Snake by EVA, shortly after said mission, and further elaborated upon by Gene, six years later, the latter of whom also knew the identity of the man responsible for both the Virtuous Mission and Operation: Snake Eater. But in 1974, it is revealed that Coldman, while he was still the CIA Director, was the person who had planned for everything relating to The Boss's "defection" and later death as well as Naked Snake's mission to Tselinoyarsk.