Chapter Text
As the convoy pulled up to Alejandro’s base, he breathed a sigh of relief. Safe at last. The Shadow stationed at the front—Shadow? Ghost made a mental note—waved Graves’ car through before stopping theirs.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Alejandro seemed to have a similar take on the matter. “What’s this?” he prodded, intonation icy as he made his way ever-closer to where the Americans were now parked on the other side of the barrier.
“This is the immediate future.” Graves clutched his rifle, nearly pointing it towards Vargas’ chest as he spoke. “Step away from the gate.”
“What?” Soap questioned, bewilderment apparent on his face. He moved over near Alejandro, almost confronting the man. Ghost stayed back, surveying his surroundings as the gears in his head started turning wildly.
“You heard me.”
Alejandro snorted. “Are you crazy? This is my base.”
“It’s not a base.” If words could kill, the condescending, almost infantilizing way that Graves droned on would be a mass murderer. “This is a sizable covert facility, and I admire it. So, I’m taking it. You boys have been relieved! Thank you for your service.”
“No, no no. I don’t take orders from you,” Alejandro stammered, his reply just about covered by the whipping wind and dripping rain.
“Didn’t Valeria say that?” Alejandro looked back at Soap incredulously. Surely Graves wasn’t implying what he thought he was implying. Right? But then the gringo kept talking, and he just about lost it. “Now that makes me wonder what else I don’t know about your affiliation with a drug lord.”
The finger jabbing towards his chest was too much for Alejandro. “What the fuck did you just say to me, pendejo?”
“You’re out of line, Graves,” Soap rescued, the firm hand on his shoulder burning out Alejandro’s anger.
“Don’t do that. Don’t do that. No one needs to get hurt here.”
“Are you threatening us?” Ghost practically growled, the first sentence he’d spoken since this entire affair had started.
There was a hint of confusion in Graves’ eyes, as though he’d forgotten Ghost was even there to begin with. “Soldier, I don’t make threats. I make guarantees. So let’s not do this.”
Soap turned on his heels, so obviously done with the whole situation that he pulled what he believed was his final trump card. “I’m calling Shepherd.”
“General Shepherd sends his regards. He told me y’all wouldn’t take this well.”
The air stilled so fast that he could hear every individual intake of breath from the two Shadows behind him. It wasn’t even the first time a mission of his had gone awry. Ghost couldn’t count on both hands the number of betrayals he had personally experienced. And yet somehow, though, this one hurt so much more. Shepherd knew? He was in on this conspiracy? What about Price and Gaz… hell, even Laswell?
At that moment, something clicked internally.
“It’s your fault.” Ghost wondered aloud, talking seemingly only to himself.
“My fault?” Graves sneered. Soap glanced back and forth between the two of them, one nonchalant and the other holding back a faint twitch in his eye. He held his breath and moved a hand towards his gun, readying himself for a fight.
Ghost idly kicked a pebble, the small stone’s pinging tone as it struck against the side of an armored vehicle just barely enough to startle the Americans. “That’s why you want the missiles so bad. Alejandro and his men…” He trailed off, gesturing loosely towards the outpost. “…they’re nothing but your scapegoats.”
Graves made some sort of signal to his men, and the Shadows erupted from the shadows, all rushing to where Ghost still leaned somehow lazily alert on the back of the convoy, apparently unfazed. Guns cocked, their muzzles pointed towards his skull—his skull mask, Soap supposed—before the lieutenant uttered the three words that would change the trajectory of their lives forever.
“Take me instead.”
The phrase sent a chill down Soap’s spine. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Ghost?”
But the man in question barely spared a glimpse up at him, half-hidden eyes upturned as if apologizing for abject actions that hadn’t quite been put into motion yet—or perhaps, saying their quick, futile goodbyes.
It only took that split-second, however, for his legs to be kicked out from under him, knees collapsing under the weight of several Shadows all-too-excited for their turn to take down one of the legends. Ghost let out a surprised, involuntary grunt of pain, struggling for a moment against the guards who zip-tied his hands behind him before sighing, a long, frigid mark of acceptance.
Soap clenched his left fist, drew his right foot back, opened his mouth to shout something positively obscene, and was promptly knocked out by cold, hard steel pressing up against his temple. Alejandro nearly roared, going for his own gun until the colonel was met with the same treatment. The two men laid almost peacefully on the pavement, disturbed only by the sound of Phillip Graves’ indignant rage.
“Now who, exactly, do you think you’re talking to, Riley?”
Ghost flinched at the usage of his name, albeit almost imperceptibly, and a slow, dangerous smile crept its way across the opposing contractor’s face.
“I have half a mind to throw you in with the sicaria. Hell, I’d maybe even give her a Glock or two and tell her to go wild. Now that’d be fun to watch.” Graves paused, flexing his fingers as though he’d been ignoring their very existence, balled up into fists for the past several minutes. “But I want to know where you got that information from, and unlike you Brits, I will do anything to tie up loose ends.”
With every word Graves uttered, Ghost felt his eyes betraying him, widening ever-so-slightly until they near-quivered with terror.
“Let them go, and I’ll tell you everything.” His voice cracked on the last word, and Ghost silently cursed out every bloody God who would put him in this fucking situation again. “Soap, Vargas, and everyone else in that building.”
Graves was fully grinning now. “And how do you know that I’ll keep up my end of this bargain?”
“Because if you don’t, I will hunt you to the ends of the Earth, haunt you beyond it, and make it my personal mission to destroy anything and anyone that you have ever even thought about caring for.”
Graves faltered, his shocked swallowing of barely-present saliva far too loud against the barren silence of the Las Almas night. He turned around, flinging one hand in the air to gesture for his men to follow him with a now-unconscious Riley in tow. He strode towards the vehicle before remembering something that had lingered at the back of his mind for their entire conversation.
Chuckling lightly to himself, Graves ripped off the black mask of the prone man in front of him.
Interesting.