Post by Valas Hune on Aug 3, 2006 18:17:04 GMT -5
Courtesy of Imperator of GameFAQs...
==========================================================================
"The New York Mirror"
==========================================================================
“In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth”
Author: Nastasha Romanenko
Reviewed by: George Franklin
Some topics in the recent American past have the immediacy and the
power that still engage our collective imagination. Names like, “The
Grassy Knoll,” or “Roswell”, roll off our tongue with deliberateness
reserved by most other nations for holy lands. With this new nonfiction
account from Natasha Romanenko, Shadow Moses – the scene of a nuclear
siege two years ago – is set to join their ranks.
Official history states that the takeover of a nuclear weapons
disposal facility on a lonely outpost in the Fox Islands, Alaska was the
work of a radical right-wing group. Their demands for the release of group
members incarcerated in federal penitentiaries were never met, and the
incident was speedily resolved by the successful deployment of a commando
unit. B.S… the author asserts. Romanenko says that she served as an
advisor to the Nuclear Emergency Search Team and deconstructs what she
claims to be a cover-up story by the government with precision.
According to the author, Shadow Moses Island was nothing less than the
U.S. Army’s testing grounds for a top-secret weapon known as Metal Gear
Rex, an all-terrain bipedal tank with advanced nuclear capabilities. As
for the facility’s takeover, Romanenko alleges that is was the U.S.
military’s own shadowy “wet-works” force, known as “FOXHOUND” that staged
an armed insurrection in a bid for REX’s possession.
The government responds to this crisis by sending in a lone operative,
a former FOXHOUND member known only by the code name “Solid Snake,” into
Shadow Moses. His infiltration is aided by a remote mission control team
consisting of an unidentified “Colonel Campbell,” a FOXHOUND medical chief
“Naomi,” a radar and electronics expert “Mei Ling” (supposedly a
teenager), and the author herself. Once on the island, “Snake” joins
forces with Metal Gear’s developer-turned-prisoner “Otacon” to eradicate
the weapon of mass destruction.
Among the other remarkable characters that make an appearance in
Romanenko’s expose is another FOXHOUND commando, a revolver-virtuoso
called “Shalashaska” a.k.a. “Revolver Ocelot.” One of the most
controversial allegations in the book deals with this figure’s connection
to a disavowed Russian militia led by a “Colonel Gurlukovich.” Romanenko
paints a bleak picture of a thousand-strong, highly disciplined army with
nuclear weaponry operating covertly within the American border. Even more
irresistible to conspiracy scholars and students of recent history is her
thinly veiled suggestion that the whole affair was planned from the
beginning by certain forces inside the U.S. government.
The U.S. Army and the usual suspect of federal agencies have issued a
statement denouncing the book as a complete fabrication. However, with a
number of detailed eyewitness accounts that back up the author’s
assertions cropping up daily on the Web, the denials serve more to enhance
the book’s growing reputation. “Shadow Moses” is an engrossing read for
casual and serious reader alike, and promises to involve readers in a
meaty debate over the truth of the matter for many years to come.
Excerpted from the library review column “All Booked Up”,
The New York Mirror.
==========================================================================
"The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses"
==========================================================================
The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses
by Gary McGolden
The island of Shadow Moses lies due north of Alaska's Fox Islands,
deep in the Arctic Circle. Above one of its rocky cliffs stands a cabin
normally used for meteorological surveys, and it was here that I found
myself, seated on a chair with my hands bound behind my back and a burlap
sack covering my entire head. A blizzard rages outside, and the cabin was
a dark, silent patch somewhere inside the storm. I could sense at least
four men around me.
They had been interrogating me for what felt like hours now. The
burlap sack is pungent with the traces of coffee beans. In the biting cold
of the cabin, images of Brazil come to me unbidden; alleys coiled through
with vivid, untended profusion of flowers, children with skin like frothy
chocolate, sunshine capable of burning out the cornea, erupting between
palm fronds.
I can feel my sense starting to fail.
The man in the front of me asks for the second, or the hundredth, time.
"I'm going to ask you again. What's in the optical disc?" "Told you, I
don't know. I just found it, okay?"
"You're lying, you bastard!"
A fist explodes into the pit of my stomach, bringing up a peanut butter
sandwich of many hours ago along with the rusty taste of blood. The
relentless beating and numerous knife cuts of the past hour have my whole
body screaming with pain, but I refuse to tell them what they wanted. I
had too much invested at this point, too many days of dangerous
investigation into the story of a lifetime. There was no way I was going
to give it all up at this point.
"That's enough."
A voice spoke up from somewhere in the back of the cabin.
"We have the disk back. Just get rid of him so we can get out of this
place."
Even in my current sorry state, I was still a journalist. He had said,
"We have the disc back." That meant that my hosts were the original owners
of that optical disc. The last piece of the puzzle was in it's place; I
knew beyond a shadow of doubt that everything recorded on the disc was
true, and that the conspiracy I had suspected did in fact exist.
At that moment, I heard a window shatter.
The raging storm outside seemed to gain entry to the cabin in an instance,
and I heard thin screams from the captors that encircled my chair. The
next second, they had already fallen heavily onto the floor.
The brief confusion ended before I regained enough presence of mind to
even panic. Whoever was now here, whatever had happened, my tormentors
were obviously out of commission. But now I could hear measured footsteps
approaching across the floor.
If this person had just saved my life, who was it? Or was I about to share
the others' fate? The footsteps came to a halt in front of me, but
strangely enough, I did not feel any sort of a presence nearby.
The burlap was slowly lifted from around my head, pulled off by an unseen
hand. The stinging night air cooled my face, and my eyes gradually
regained focus in the darkened room.
And I could finally see who it was that stood before me.
Just out of the sight of most of its citizens, a massive conspiracy
determines the working of this nation.
Weapons of mass destruction secretly developed by the military.
Super-soldiers re-engineered into war machines through genetic
manipulation.
A killer virus that only targets specific individuals with deadly
accuracy. Tanks that walk rather than roll, and carry a nuclear payload.
A covert organization, the third and the most powerful political party,
my encounter with which landed me in this chair in the Alaskan winter...
All of these are a part of the truth I found sealed within the optical
disc, and I intend to share what I have learned in the pages to follow.
That includes everything I now know about our government, and the secret
arena where an even greater power pulls the strings. This is the truth
many have glimpsed but never dared to talk about.
Everything detailed in this book actually happened, and after I lived it,
my world was no longer the same safe place I knew. Neither, I promise,
will be yours if you have the courage to keep going.
It all began a month ago –
THE POSTMAN RINGS
A month before my dramatic escape from death on Shadow Moses, I was having
late breakfast in my apartment in New York.
Ever since and alien abduction episode in my childhood, I'd been plagued
by a persistent ringing in my ears.
A large patch of mud was my undoing. I slipped, fell and was knocked
unconscious. When I came to, it was already dawn.
Later, I was trying to see the bump on the back of my head in the mirror
when I saw "IT" instead. A small hole, about the size of a pinprick, had
been made behind my ear. You learn a little something when you watch as
much TV as I did. There was no doubt that I had been abducted by a passing
UFO, and had spent the hours while unconscious with alien beings!
Unfortunately, no one in the area recalled seeing a UFO, and not a single
person had the sense to listen to my story realize now that this was the
day I decided to uncover truth for a living, and become a journalist.
But back to the present day. It turned out that the ringing wasn't in my
ear, but from the doorbell. The thing shrieked somewhere south of a
baritone bat sonar, barely within the range of human hearing. Blame the
mangling it took from a particularly displeased visitor. Outside the door
was the mailman, and in the mailman's hand was a thick manila envelope. On
the envelope was a label, addressed to me.
A letter bomb!
I pressed my ear against the envelope and concentrated hard. But not a
tick from the thing. Of course, no one uses analog watches in bombs these
days. That's why they call it the Digital Age. In fact, why would there
even be a watch in a letter bomb? The point is that the unlucky recipient
opens it, and the bomb goes off. Which means that it's actually the
completely silent envelopes that are dangerous. I knew that opening that
flap would send my eggs to the big omelet in the sky, but you don't get to
be an investigative journalist for thinking inside the box.
I tore through the bottom of the envelope instead.
*Riiip*
No!
The contents of the suspicious envelope dropped to the floor with
lightning speed!
In this world, you can never be too careful. Let this be a warning to you,
readers: when circumstances compel you to open an envelope from the
bottom, turn it upside down first. As a rule, I discovered, objects fall
down, and this is what happened to the contents of my lethal envelope,
straight down into a half-eaten depth of a delivery pizza forgotten on the
floor. I don't recall when exactly this food item arrived on these
premises, but the thing was definitely a museum piece by now.
Fortunately, it wasn't a bomb but an optical storage disc, now liberally
smeared with peanut butter. This disc was the kind that comes in a clear
plastic casing, through which the rainbow sheen of the circular unit
shone. I gazed into it awhile, thinking of the UFO from that fateful day.
Anyway, I fished the optical disc out, noting the lack of a label. A quick
wash at the sink got rid of the crud it had accumulated.
The disc was drying by the window as I hunted through the now-harmless
envelope for clues. A single sheet of Xerox paper was stuck to the inside
and it read:
"From the desk of MAX SMITHSON, Editor-in-Chief, MEGASURPRISE magazine
I'm mailing you this optical disc that was sent to the edit department.
It's right up your alley, see if you can turn up something more. We'll do
a book if you get enough stuff together. This is your chance for a
comeback, so don't screw it up."
Max is an old friend, and used to manage most of my book deals way back
when. We hadn't seen each other much since I gave up writing. Not that
that he has the right to tell me about comebacks and screwing up, but I
find myself growing excited by the prospect of writing another book. But
there was a problem, and it was a big one. How the hell was I going to get
the disc's content?
THE SHOCKING TRUTH WITHIN
My next-door neighbor is a starving college student, and I hit him up for
the use of his computer now and then. I banged on his door and screamed
repeatedly until he scuffled up to the door half-asleep. Once inside, I
made a beeline for the piece of junk and stuck the disc into the drive.
The icon appeared on the display with a gentle whir. The file name read:
"In the Darkness of Shadow Moses".
But an urgent click on the icon only brought up an error message. What
nefarious scheme was this!? What secret encryption was preventing me from
accessing the data!? I clicked again and again with the same result, and
started to gnaw on the keyboard in frustration. The starving student comes
running over, wailing about his equipment. He typed in some moon-man
language, avoiding patches of my spit, and a frighteningly cheerful
application startup screen appeared on the display. Then lo and behold, I
finally laid my eyes on the dense mass of text, the contents of the disc!
At the very top it read: "'In the Darkness of Shadow Moses' by Nastasha
Romanenko."
The starving student was being scholarly and trying to read the text over
my shoulder. I knocked him out with a punch to the solar plexus and
devoured the file's content. It was like a blow to the head with a frozen
tuna; my brain was reeling from the shock. The file was fill of wild
stuff: top-secret conspiracies, incredible genetic experimentation,
cold-blooded military deployment of classified weapons. This was the most
incredible stuff I had ever come across.
THE UNOFFICAL FACTS ACCORDING TO THE DISC
Most readers should be aware of the series of strange military actions
involving an island father north of Alaska's Fox Island, some two years
ago. The island was called Shadow Moses, and received a series of
well-documented but never-explained visits of obvious significance. USS
Discovery, an Ohio class ballistic missile submarine, was ordered away
from its designated training area and was confirmed offshore of Shadow
Moses Island. It joined an E-3C AWACS that had already and suddenly been
deployed to the area, with none other than Jim Houseman, the National
Security Advisor, aboard. Sixteen hours later, 6 F117 Night Hawks with
full a payload took off from the Galena AFB for Alaska.
Various theories were placed into circulation by the media at the time.
Some journalists insisted it had been a foiled invasion attempt by a
foreign state, other suspected a coup d'etat by a part of the U.S.
military. I myself wrote an opinion piece for a magazine explaining that
Shadow Moses was the Ellis Island for the "Greys." This diminutive grey
race is after all the most famous of our alien neighbors, notorious for
having secret bases all over planet Earth. But according to this file, we
had all been off our marks.
What had instead unfolded on Shadow Moses was the most major terrorist
incident in history, and apocalyptic scenario born out of a
government-developed superman project and a doomsday weapon of the same
origin.
On that fateful day, the nuclear weapons disposal plant on Shadow Moses
had suddenly been seized by an irregular operations squad called
"FOXHOUND", aided by a group of next-generation super-soldiers. And what
they threatened was no less than a nuclear strike against the mainland
United States!
So how is it that we're still alive? Apparently we have a man known only
as "Solid Snake" -- an his solitary infiltration of the disposal facility
-- to thank for it.
Believe it or not, this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as the
Shadow Moses incident is concerned. This disc contains many more
horrifying facts such as a major government conspiracy, a classified
weapon described as a "walking nuclear-capable tank", and advanced genetic
manipulation projects. Many of these hidden dealings were discovered by
Solid Snake as he carried out his mission, and it is now my job to relate
these facts to you the readers.
But it is still a little too premature to do so? The content of the disc
may after all be nothing more than fiction, or even a delusion. After all,
who exactly is this Nastasha Romanenko?
IN SEARCH OF NASTASHA ROMANENKO
A quick search of the Web turned up a few illuminating facts about this
elusive writer. Nastasha Romanenko was at one point with the DIA (Defense
Intelligence Agency). At the time of the Shadow Moses incident, she
appears to have been a freelance military analyst, having already resigned
from the Agency. Nuclear and weapons technology would certainly be right
up her alley, and in the disc she states that she took part in Solid
Snake's mission support. Her exact role was as a member of NEST (Nuclear
Emergency Search Team), providing field expertise via the radio. Her
intimate involvement in the mission gave her a complete and clear grasp of
the facts surrounding the case despite the government's successful
cover-up. A look at Romanenko's curriculum vitae and body of papers makes
her anti-nuclear stance more than obvious. That, along with all the other
facts about this person, suggests that unless she suffered a sudden
chemical imbalance or is plotting a second career as a Hollywood
screenwriter, Nastasha Romanenko does not indulge in expounding conspiracy
theories for its own sake.
All very interesting. So where is Nastasha Romanenko now? I decided to
give Global Elements Inc., the book's publisher a call. Below is a
complete transcript of the conversation.
Me: "Hello. Listen, you leftover carnival prize, what do you know about a
woman named Nastasha Romanenko?"
Whoever it was: "Hey, your village called. They want their idiot back. And
watch your language, freak." Click.
Clearly, they're hiding something. Why else the abrupt response and the
hasty hang-up? I was on the trail of something important. Something
dangerous. If the content of the disc was true, this Nastasha Romanenko
was definitely the Woman-Who-Knew-Too-Much. Her life would be in danger,
and she must either have gone to ground or was already dead. That brief
telephone conversation spoke volumes: there was contract out on her life!
If this was the price of speaking the truth as described in that disc, the
picture was complete. But was everything she wrote really true?
I went back to my apartment and packed a bag. I was headed for Shadow
Moses.
THE COLDEST PLACE
I took a plane out to the northernmost domestic airport and went to see my
cousin John-Dee.
John-Dee is a hardcore Alaskan and a big-eye tuna fisherman. When I asked
him to drop me off at Shadow Moses Island during one of his trips out to
sea, he turned pale and a nervous tick started up at the corner of his
eye. "Shadow Moses? Are you nuts? All the other guys say the place is
crawling with the military. If you get even close to the shore they shine
these huge searchlights in your face, and some of my buddies even got
interrogated once!"
I felt the sudden chill of fear along with a certainty that I was on the
right track.
"You're a wuss, you know that? Try being abducted by a UFO, that'll teach
you what's really scary."
"I got a family, you know? I'm not about to go messing around with The
Man!"
"OK, you get me as close as you can then. I'll swim the rest of the way."
"Swim? You're gonna turn into frozen tuna treat."
"Don't worry about that. I have an idea."
We sailed out for Shadow Moses Island that day.
THE TRIP TO SHADOW MOSES
It was colder than the dairy section and the boat pitched like a subway
derailment on caffeine. I shook constantly from the cold, retched peanut
butter into the sea, then downed some more to keep warm. A few days passed
in this pleasant fashion until John-Dee, drawing lines on his charts,
turned to me.
"I'm sorry man, but this as far as I can go. If you really want to do this
thing, you're going to have to find your own way."
There were at least 20 miles to Shadow Moses according to the charts. But
John-Dee was already a blubbering wreck, and I didn't have the heart to
strong-arm him. I steeled my nerves.
"It's okay. Help me get ready."
The plan was brilliant. I'd gutted a super-size tuna and stuffed some
inflated balloons inside, along with a small oil lamp to keep the interior
toasty. I would cover the length of my body with the fish and dog-paddle
my way to the island. Any oxygen shortage could quickly be remedied thanks
to the balloon, and my landing would appear to be nothing more than a
large dead fish swept ashore. All I had to do was slip out of the tuna
undetected and investigate the hell out of the place. Absolutely
brilliant.
I bore the fishy stink of the tuna skin with proper journalistic aplomb
and walked to the edge of the ship's deck. The Arctic wind was numbing
even through the wetsuit, but I bade John-Dee a hearty farewell and jumped
into the sea. But right then, disaster struck!
Actually it was the tuna spine. Its bony mass conked me hard on the back
of my head from the force of the landing. I tried to right myself, but I
was jammed tight against the balloons. The tuna started to sink rapidly,
and I kicked my legs wildly as about a gallon of seawater rushed into my
lungs. To add insult to injury, the lamp fell over, shedding its cover. I
could feel the heat of the exposed flame dangerously close to my face, and
smell the singed hair. This is why I hate traveling.
But after what felt like hours, I found myself ashore on Shadow Moses
Island. Let's take a moment here to review what happened on the island on
that fateful day. Romanenko's disc provides a complete answer.
Shadow Moses was no ordinary weapons disposal facility, but served as a
secret military training ground among other things. On that day, the
wetworks commando unit known as FOXHOUND and the next-generation Special
Forces group were conducting joint exercises.
FOXHOUND is an "irregular" squad of elite soldiers, equipped and armed to
the teeth with the latest technology. There were longtime -- and strictly
behind-the-scenes -- players throughout recent history, engaging in
sabotage, selective assassinations and other covert military operations.
Wherever the United States could not officially intervene, whether it was
a civil war, regional unrest or other types of low-intensity conflict,
FOXHOUND was there. It's unlikely, however, that an average citizen has
ever heard of them before; these commandos remain a top-secret government
project.
And then there's the next-generation Special Forces unit. This is a
cutting-edge anti-terrorist force newly organized to cope with terrorist
incidents specifically involving weapons of mass destruction typified in
nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare. They drew heavily from former
mercenary ranks, and are on a diet of rigorous VR training guided by the
FORCE 21 concept. The result is combat capability, which is rumored to
surpass even those of the Delta Force and DEV GRU (formerly known as Seal
Team 6). Most frightening of all, these soldiers have supposedly been
manipulated at the genetic level to increase their combat performance.
They were the purebreds among the dogs of war, and they turned on their
masters with a surprising demand. Having seized the civilians that were on
hand, they demanded that the government turn over to them the body of
FOXHOUND's founder and combat genius, the so-called "Big Boss." The
government had 24 hours to comply or a nuclear strike would be initiated.
But what would motivate them to make such a demand, and how did they
intend to make good their threat of a nuclear launch?
Continued below...
==========================================================================
"The New York Mirror"
==========================================================================
“In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth”
Author: Nastasha Romanenko
Reviewed by: George Franklin
Some topics in the recent American past have the immediacy and the
power that still engage our collective imagination. Names like, “The
Grassy Knoll,” or “Roswell”, roll off our tongue with deliberateness
reserved by most other nations for holy lands. With this new nonfiction
account from Natasha Romanenko, Shadow Moses – the scene of a nuclear
siege two years ago – is set to join their ranks.
Official history states that the takeover of a nuclear weapons
disposal facility on a lonely outpost in the Fox Islands, Alaska was the
work of a radical right-wing group. Their demands for the release of group
members incarcerated in federal penitentiaries were never met, and the
incident was speedily resolved by the successful deployment of a commando
unit. B.S… the author asserts. Romanenko says that she served as an
advisor to the Nuclear Emergency Search Team and deconstructs what she
claims to be a cover-up story by the government with precision.
According to the author, Shadow Moses Island was nothing less than the
U.S. Army’s testing grounds for a top-secret weapon known as Metal Gear
Rex, an all-terrain bipedal tank with advanced nuclear capabilities. As
for the facility’s takeover, Romanenko alleges that is was the U.S.
military’s own shadowy “wet-works” force, known as “FOXHOUND” that staged
an armed insurrection in a bid for REX’s possession.
The government responds to this crisis by sending in a lone operative,
a former FOXHOUND member known only by the code name “Solid Snake,” into
Shadow Moses. His infiltration is aided by a remote mission control team
consisting of an unidentified “Colonel Campbell,” a FOXHOUND medical chief
“Naomi,” a radar and electronics expert “Mei Ling” (supposedly a
teenager), and the author herself. Once on the island, “Snake” joins
forces with Metal Gear’s developer-turned-prisoner “Otacon” to eradicate
the weapon of mass destruction.
Among the other remarkable characters that make an appearance in
Romanenko’s expose is another FOXHOUND commando, a revolver-virtuoso
called “Shalashaska” a.k.a. “Revolver Ocelot.” One of the most
controversial allegations in the book deals with this figure’s connection
to a disavowed Russian militia led by a “Colonel Gurlukovich.” Romanenko
paints a bleak picture of a thousand-strong, highly disciplined army with
nuclear weaponry operating covertly within the American border. Even more
irresistible to conspiracy scholars and students of recent history is her
thinly veiled suggestion that the whole affair was planned from the
beginning by certain forces inside the U.S. government.
The U.S. Army and the usual suspect of federal agencies have issued a
statement denouncing the book as a complete fabrication. However, with a
number of detailed eyewitness accounts that back up the author’s
assertions cropping up daily on the Web, the denials serve more to enhance
the book’s growing reputation. “Shadow Moses” is an engrossing read for
casual and serious reader alike, and promises to involve readers in a
meaty debate over the truth of the matter for many years to come.
Excerpted from the library review column “All Booked Up”,
The New York Mirror.
==========================================================================
"The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses"
==========================================================================
The Shocking Conspiracy Behind Shadow Moses
by Gary McGolden
The island of Shadow Moses lies due north of Alaska's Fox Islands,
deep in the Arctic Circle. Above one of its rocky cliffs stands a cabin
normally used for meteorological surveys, and it was here that I found
myself, seated on a chair with my hands bound behind my back and a burlap
sack covering my entire head. A blizzard rages outside, and the cabin was
a dark, silent patch somewhere inside the storm. I could sense at least
four men around me.
They had been interrogating me for what felt like hours now. The
burlap sack is pungent with the traces of coffee beans. In the biting cold
of the cabin, images of Brazil come to me unbidden; alleys coiled through
with vivid, untended profusion of flowers, children with skin like frothy
chocolate, sunshine capable of burning out the cornea, erupting between
palm fronds.
I can feel my sense starting to fail.
The man in the front of me asks for the second, or the hundredth, time.
"I'm going to ask you again. What's in the optical disc?" "Told you, I
don't know. I just found it, okay?"
"You're lying, you bastard!"
A fist explodes into the pit of my stomach, bringing up a peanut butter
sandwich of many hours ago along with the rusty taste of blood. The
relentless beating and numerous knife cuts of the past hour have my whole
body screaming with pain, but I refuse to tell them what they wanted. I
had too much invested at this point, too many days of dangerous
investigation into the story of a lifetime. There was no way I was going
to give it all up at this point.
"That's enough."
A voice spoke up from somewhere in the back of the cabin.
"We have the disk back. Just get rid of him so we can get out of this
place."
Even in my current sorry state, I was still a journalist. He had said,
"We have the disc back." That meant that my hosts were the original owners
of that optical disc. The last piece of the puzzle was in it's place; I
knew beyond a shadow of doubt that everything recorded on the disc was
true, and that the conspiracy I had suspected did in fact exist.
At that moment, I heard a window shatter.
The raging storm outside seemed to gain entry to the cabin in an instance,
and I heard thin screams from the captors that encircled my chair. The
next second, they had already fallen heavily onto the floor.
The brief confusion ended before I regained enough presence of mind to
even panic. Whoever was now here, whatever had happened, my tormentors
were obviously out of commission. But now I could hear measured footsteps
approaching across the floor.
If this person had just saved my life, who was it? Or was I about to share
the others' fate? The footsteps came to a halt in front of me, but
strangely enough, I did not feel any sort of a presence nearby.
The burlap was slowly lifted from around my head, pulled off by an unseen
hand. The stinging night air cooled my face, and my eyes gradually
regained focus in the darkened room.
And I could finally see who it was that stood before me.
Just out of the sight of most of its citizens, a massive conspiracy
determines the working of this nation.
Weapons of mass destruction secretly developed by the military.
Super-soldiers re-engineered into war machines through genetic
manipulation.
A killer virus that only targets specific individuals with deadly
accuracy. Tanks that walk rather than roll, and carry a nuclear payload.
A covert organization, the third and the most powerful political party,
my encounter with which landed me in this chair in the Alaskan winter...
All of these are a part of the truth I found sealed within the optical
disc, and I intend to share what I have learned in the pages to follow.
That includes everything I now know about our government, and the secret
arena where an even greater power pulls the strings. This is the truth
many have glimpsed but never dared to talk about.
Everything detailed in this book actually happened, and after I lived it,
my world was no longer the same safe place I knew. Neither, I promise,
will be yours if you have the courage to keep going.
It all began a month ago –
THE POSTMAN RINGS
A month before my dramatic escape from death on Shadow Moses, I was having
late breakfast in my apartment in New York.
Ever since and alien abduction episode in my childhood, I'd been plagued
by a persistent ringing in my ears.
A large patch of mud was my undoing. I slipped, fell and was knocked
unconscious. When I came to, it was already dawn.
Later, I was trying to see the bump on the back of my head in the mirror
when I saw "IT" instead. A small hole, about the size of a pinprick, had
been made behind my ear. You learn a little something when you watch as
much TV as I did. There was no doubt that I had been abducted by a passing
UFO, and had spent the hours while unconscious with alien beings!
Unfortunately, no one in the area recalled seeing a UFO, and not a single
person had the sense to listen to my story realize now that this was the
day I decided to uncover truth for a living, and become a journalist.
But back to the present day. It turned out that the ringing wasn't in my
ear, but from the doorbell. The thing shrieked somewhere south of a
baritone bat sonar, barely within the range of human hearing. Blame the
mangling it took from a particularly displeased visitor. Outside the door
was the mailman, and in the mailman's hand was a thick manila envelope. On
the envelope was a label, addressed to me.
A letter bomb!
I pressed my ear against the envelope and concentrated hard. But not a
tick from the thing. Of course, no one uses analog watches in bombs these
days. That's why they call it the Digital Age. In fact, why would there
even be a watch in a letter bomb? The point is that the unlucky recipient
opens it, and the bomb goes off. Which means that it's actually the
completely silent envelopes that are dangerous. I knew that opening that
flap would send my eggs to the big omelet in the sky, but you don't get to
be an investigative journalist for thinking inside the box.
I tore through the bottom of the envelope instead.
*Riiip*
No!
The contents of the suspicious envelope dropped to the floor with
lightning speed!
In this world, you can never be too careful. Let this be a warning to you,
readers: when circumstances compel you to open an envelope from the
bottom, turn it upside down first. As a rule, I discovered, objects fall
down, and this is what happened to the contents of my lethal envelope,
straight down into a half-eaten depth of a delivery pizza forgotten on the
floor. I don't recall when exactly this food item arrived on these
premises, but the thing was definitely a museum piece by now.
Fortunately, it wasn't a bomb but an optical storage disc, now liberally
smeared with peanut butter. This disc was the kind that comes in a clear
plastic casing, through which the rainbow sheen of the circular unit
shone. I gazed into it awhile, thinking of the UFO from that fateful day.
Anyway, I fished the optical disc out, noting the lack of a label. A quick
wash at the sink got rid of the crud it had accumulated.
The disc was drying by the window as I hunted through the now-harmless
envelope for clues. A single sheet of Xerox paper was stuck to the inside
and it read:
"From the desk of MAX SMITHSON, Editor-in-Chief, MEGASURPRISE magazine
I'm mailing you this optical disc that was sent to the edit department.
It's right up your alley, see if you can turn up something more. We'll do
a book if you get enough stuff together. This is your chance for a
comeback, so don't screw it up."
Max is an old friend, and used to manage most of my book deals way back
when. We hadn't seen each other much since I gave up writing. Not that
that he has the right to tell me about comebacks and screwing up, but I
find myself growing excited by the prospect of writing another book. But
there was a problem, and it was a big one. How the hell was I going to get
the disc's content?
THE SHOCKING TRUTH WITHIN
My next-door neighbor is a starving college student, and I hit him up for
the use of his computer now and then. I banged on his door and screamed
repeatedly until he scuffled up to the door half-asleep. Once inside, I
made a beeline for the piece of junk and stuck the disc into the drive.
The icon appeared on the display with a gentle whir. The file name read:
"In the Darkness of Shadow Moses".
But an urgent click on the icon only brought up an error message. What
nefarious scheme was this!? What secret encryption was preventing me from
accessing the data!? I clicked again and again with the same result, and
started to gnaw on the keyboard in frustration. The starving student comes
running over, wailing about his equipment. He typed in some moon-man
language, avoiding patches of my spit, and a frighteningly cheerful
application startup screen appeared on the display. Then lo and behold, I
finally laid my eyes on the dense mass of text, the contents of the disc!
At the very top it read: "'In the Darkness of Shadow Moses' by Nastasha
Romanenko."
The starving student was being scholarly and trying to read the text over
my shoulder. I knocked him out with a punch to the solar plexus and
devoured the file's content. It was like a blow to the head with a frozen
tuna; my brain was reeling from the shock. The file was fill of wild
stuff: top-secret conspiracies, incredible genetic experimentation,
cold-blooded military deployment of classified weapons. This was the most
incredible stuff I had ever come across.
THE UNOFFICAL FACTS ACCORDING TO THE DISC
Most readers should be aware of the series of strange military actions
involving an island father north of Alaska's Fox Island, some two years
ago. The island was called Shadow Moses, and received a series of
well-documented but never-explained visits of obvious significance. USS
Discovery, an Ohio class ballistic missile submarine, was ordered away
from its designated training area and was confirmed offshore of Shadow
Moses Island. It joined an E-3C AWACS that had already and suddenly been
deployed to the area, with none other than Jim Houseman, the National
Security Advisor, aboard. Sixteen hours later, 6 F117 Night Hawks with
full a payload took off from the Galena AFB for Alaska.
Various theories were placed into circulation by the media at the time.
Some journalists insisted it had been a foiled invasion attempt by a
foreign state, other suspected a coup d'etat by a part of the U.S.
military. I myself wrote an opinion piece for a magazine explaining that
Shadow Moses was the Ellis Island for the "Greys." This diminutive grey
race is after all the most famous of our alien neighbors, notorious for
having secret bases all over planet Earth. But according to this file, we
had all been off our marks.
What had instead unfolded on Shadow Moses was the most major terrorist
incident in history, and apocalyptic scenario born out of a
government-developed superman project and a doomsday weapon of the same
origin.
On that fateful day, the nuclear weapons disposal plant on Shadow Moses
had suddenly been seized by an irregular operations squad called
"FOXHOUND", aided by a group of next-generation super-soldiers. And what
they threatened was no less than a nuclear strike against the mainland
United States!
So how is it that we're still alive? Apparently we have a man known only
as "Solid Snake" -- an his solitary infiltration of the disposal facility
-- to thank for it.
Believe it or not, this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as the
Shadow Moses incident is concerned. This disc contains many more
horrifying facts such as a major government conspiracy, a classified
weapon described as a "walking nuclear-capable tank", and advanced genetic
manipulation projects. Many of these hidden dealings were discovered by
Solid Snake as he carried out his mission, and it is now my job to relate
these facts to you the readers.
But it is still a little too premature to do so? The content of the disc
may after all be nothing more than fiction, or even a delusion. After all,
who exactly is this Nastasha Romanenko?
IN SEARCH OF NASTASHA ROMANENKO
A quick search of the Web turned up a few illuminating facts about this
elusive writer. Nastasha Romanenko was at one point with the DIA (Defense
Intelligence Agency). At the time of the Shadow Moses incident, she
appears to have been a freelance military analyst, having already resigned
from the Agency. Nuclear and weapons technology would certainly be right
up her alley, and in the disc she states that she took part in Solid
Snake's mission support. Her exact role was as a member of NEST (Nuclear
Emergency Search Team), providing field expertise via the radio. Her
intimate involvement in the mission gave her a complete and clear grasp of
the facts surrounding the case despite the government's successful
cover-up. A look at Romanenko's curriculum vitae and body of papers makes
her anti-nuclear stance more than obvious. That, along with all the other
facts about this person, suggests that unless she suffered a sudden
chemical imbalance or is plotting a second career as a Hollywood
screenwriter, Nastasha Romanenko does not indulge in expounding conspiracy
theories for its own sake.
All very interesting. So where is Nastasha Romanenko now? I decided to
give Global Elements Inc., the book's publisher a call. Below is a
complete transcript of the conversation.
Me: "Hello. Listen, you leftover carnival prize, what do you know about a
woman named Nastasha Romanenko?"
Whoever it was: "Hey, your village called. They want their idiot back. And
watch your language, freak." Click.
Clearly, they're hiding something. Why else the abrupt response and the
hasty hang-up? I was on the trail of something important. Something
dangerous. If the content of the disc was true, this Nastasha Romanenko
was definitely the Woman-Who-Knew-Too-Much. Her life would be in danger,
and she must either have gone to ground or was already dead. That brief
telephone conversation spoke volumes: there was contract out on her life!
If this was the price of speaking the truth as described in that disc, the
picture was complete. But was everything she wrote really true?
I went back to my apartment and packed a bag. I was headed for Shadow
Moses.
THE COLDEST PLACE
I took a plane out to the northernmost domestic airport and went to see my
cousin John-Dee.
John-Dee is a hardcore Alaskan and a big-eye tuna fisherman. When I asked
him to drop me off at Shadow Moses Island during one of his trips out to
sea, he turned pale and a nervous tick started up at the corner of his
eye. "Shadow Moses? Are you nuts? All the other guys say the place is
crawling with the military. If you get even close to the shore they shine
these huge searchlights in your face, and some of my buddies even got
interrogated once!"
I felt the sudden chill of fear along with a certainty that I was on the
right track.
"You're a wuss, you know that? Try being abducted by a UFO, that'll teach
you what's really scary."
"I got a family, you know? I'm not about to go messing around with The
Man!"
"OK, you get me as close as you can then. I'll swim the rest of the way."
"Swim? You're gonna turn into frozen tuna treat."
"Don't worry about that. I have an idea."
We sailed out for Shadow Moses Island that day.
THE TRIP TO SHADOW MOSES
It was colder than the dairy section and the boat pitched like a subway
derailment on caffeine. I shook constantly from the cold, retched peanut
butter into the sea, then downed some more to keep warm. A few days passed
in this pleasant fashion until John-Dee, drawing lines on his charts,
turned to me.
"I'm sorry man, but this as far as I can go. If you really want to do this
thing, you're going to have to find your own way."
There were at least 20 miles to Shadow Moses according to the charts. But
John-Dee was already a blubbering wreck, and I didn't have the heart to
strong-arm him. I steeled my nerves.
"It's okay. Help me get ready."
The plan was brilliant. I'd gutted a super-size tuna and stuffed some
inflated balloons inside, along with a small oil lamp to keep the interior
toasty. I would cover the length of my body with the fish and dog-paddle
my way to the island. Any oxygen shortage could quickly be remedied thanks
to the balloon, and my landing would appear to be nothing more than a
large dead fish swept ashore. All I had to do was slip out of the tuna
undetected and investigate the hell out of the place. Absolutely
brilliant.
I bore the fishy stink of the tuna skin with proper journalistic aplomb
and walked to the edge of the ship's deck. The Arctic wind was numbing
even through the wetsuit, but I bade John-Dee a hearty farewell and jumped
into the sea. But right then, disaster struck!
Actually it was the tuna spine. Its bony mass conked me hard on the back
of my head from the force of the landing. I tried to right myself, but I
was jammed tight against the balloons. The tuna started to sink rapidly,
and I kicked my legs wildly as about a gallon of seawater rushed into my
lungs. To add insult to injury, the lamp fell over, shedding its cover. I
could feel the heat of the exposed flame dangerously close to my face, and
smell the singed hair. This is why I hate traveling.
But after what felt like hours, I found myself ashore on Shadow Moses
Island. Let's take a moment here to review what happened on the island on
that fateful day. Romanenko's disc provides a complete answer.
Shadow Moses was no ordinary weapons disposal facility, but served as a
secret military training ground among other things. On that day, the
wetworks commando unit known as FOXHOUND and the next-generation Special
Forces group were conducting joint exercises.
FOXHOUND is an "irregular" squad of elite soldiers, equipped and armed to
the teeth with the latest technology. There were longtime -- and strictly
behind-the-scenes -- players throughout recent history, engaging in
sabotage, selective assassinations and other covert military operations.
Wherever the United States could not officially intervene, whether it was
a civil war, regional unrest or other types of low-intensity conflict,
FOXHOUND was there. It's unlikely, however, that an average citizen has
ever heard of them before; these commandos remain a top-secret government
project.
And then there's the next-generation Special Forces unit. This is a
cutting-edge anti-terrorist force newly organized to cope with terrorist
incidents specifically involving weapons of mass destruction typified in
nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare. They drew heavily from former
mercenary ranks, and are on a diet of rigorous VR training guided by the
FORCE 21 concept. The result is combat capability, which is rumored to
surpass even those of the Delta Force and DEV GRU (formerly known as Seal
Team 6). Most frightening of all, these soldiers have supposedly been
manipulated at the genetic level to increase their combat performance.
They were the purebreds among the dogs of war, and they turned on their
masters with a surprising demand. Having seized the civilians that were on
hand, they demanded that the government turn over to them the body of
FOXHOUND's founder and combat genius, the so-called "Big Boss." The
government had 24 hours to comply or a nuclear strike would be initiated.
But what would motivate them to make such a demand, and how did they
intend to make good their threat of a nuclear launch?
Continued below...
