"Steamin' Jesus..." Soap and Rodolfo ran closer to the wall, trying to see where Price's helicopter had landed. "Captain...?"

Lone Wolf stood rooted to the pavement, her hand trembling over her mouth. "John, do you copy...?"

"Maverick, do you copy?" Rodolfo waited in agonizing silence for no response and he gritted his teeth. "Graves, that fucking bastard..." He scrambled for the top of the wall, only reaching it when Soap boosted him up. "Let's end this motherfucker."

Soap reached up and clasped Rudy's hand, pulling himself up the wall. "His warpath ends here. Ghost-"  

Ghost grabbed Lone Wolf's arm and gestured with his head toward the crash. "You two go. Find Graves, and don't let him leave this place alive."

"What about you?" asked Soap.

"Price and the Pilot need help if they survived that crash. I'll take care of it; you two finish this."

Soap gave him a hopeful nod when he did a double take, hearing a loud snort from across the arena. "What the hell...?"

"That's not ours..." Rodolfo quickly sprang off the wall and took for cover.

"Holy shit, Graves brought a fuckin' tank!"

Ghost's eyes widened. "He what?!"

Lone Wolf turned back for him. "Do you need to stay here with them?"

He swallowed hard, feeling a wave of nausea at the peril waiting for Soap and Rodolfo, but he shook his head no less. "I'm coming. Let's go find that crash!"

She kept stride with him, reloading as she went. "Did Soap and Rodoflo find Graves?"

"They found him all right..."

"That bad?"

Ghost briefly glanced back but kept his pace. "They'll be fine, Rudy and Soap know what they're doing.

"Looks like the hunters are getting hunted now, huh? Ain't that a kick in the ass!"

Soap barely missed a round from the tank as it crumbled a cement beam like a pastel. His stomach sank as he reloaded, knowing his bullets would do nothing to that armour. Two Shadows approached, blocking his way out of the building in the center of the arena. He downed one, but struggled with the second as they tangled hand-to-hand. He felt the soldier's knife just miss his throat mic and he jammed his knee into the Shadow's stomach, doubling him over. Soap thrust his own knife into the back of his neck and moved him out of the main floor. As he tucked the body away he saw a bright orange box, dulled by the beige dust that had settled across its top. Curious, he popped it open, careful to watch the doors around him in case Graves saw his back was turned. 

Fuck yeah. There was C4 and a detonator inside. "Rudy! There's explosives in here?"

"Por supuesto- of course. This was our training area, we did everything in here. There should be some RPG's in here too, we can use that on the tank."

Soap carried one block of C4 on his vest, a second in his hands. He waited at the corner of a door for the tank to roll by, and Rudy came up behind him. "Rudy, head for the top deck, keep an eye out for me."

"On it." Rodolfo was quickly up the stairs when Soap heard a loud hiss. An RPG. "Rudy, you good?"

No response.

Shit. He clutched the polymer in his hand tighter and ran out after the tank, staying low to stay out of range of the muzzle. He pressed it to the side armour and hauled ass to get out of the way. As he did, the tank fired, blistering the wall beside him.

"You can't hide forever, y'know." Graves teased.

"Neither can you." Click.

The back end of the tank exploded and belched a black cloud. It hurried out of Soap's eyesight to the opposite side of the arena, and when he looked back at it, the muzzle was facing him.

"It's strange that we haven't seen any Shadows out here yet..." 

Ghost scanned each street and alley as they went, huffing to himself as he noticed the same. "They either haven't caught up yet, or they've already beat us to the bird."

"God, I hope not..." 

A shot shattered a brick past her and Lone Wolf quickly motioned Ghost to cover. "Where is he?!"

"Got eyes on him, down the alley on the left."

TAT-TAT!

One Shadow fell only to be replaced by three more. Ghost gunned down two and Lone killed the last. She reloaded and was already fighting to steady her breaths. "We need to get to the crash now! They're going to overrun it before we can even get there!"

Ghost outran her, dodging and weaving through the streets. Another shot missed his ear, and another still bit the dust at his feet. "Fuck. Lone, we need to fan out! You go right, I'll go left, let's meet at the helicopter. Go!"

They parted ways and Ghost slid to a kneeling position behind a dumpster. Shot after shot tore the walls of the pitiful receptacle to shreds; if he stood up to fire back, he'd surely meet the same fate. He yanked the pin off a grenade and held it for a few seconds before rolling it across the uneven pavement. A Shadow screamed an alarm, but not soon enough to warn his mates. They were rent to bloody smears in an eruption of orange and black, and he dashed out between the bodies.

"Lone, I've got five Shadows down. What's your status, over?"

"Copy, Ghost," she replied. "Just took out a couple myself, but I've got more closing in. Looking for a place to lose or double back on them, over."

"Copy. Keep me posted, and don't get your ass killed! Over and out!"

"You and your Mexican buddies fucked with the wrong Ohm-bray, MacTavish." The tank wheeled 'round and fired again where Graves thought he had seen movement.

Soap stuck his head out from a shipping container far from the last target. "Then why don't you come on out and we'll talk about it, hombre?"

Graves gritted his teeth so hard on his Nicorette that his com picked up the sound. "You think this is a game, son? You wanna play war??" He chuckled raggedly to himself. "Then let's play fuckin' war, chee-co-s." 

He was about to run out to the tank when his feet scraped on the dust, his eyes snapped onto movement from the center building's rooftop. A Shadow with an RPG on his back held Rodolfo over the edge, dangling precariously over the ground. "Rudy!"

"One of you dip-shits needs to die last," Graves jeered. "Who's it gonna be?"

"Soap, don't take your eyes off the fight!" Rodolfo choked. "Take care of Graves! Don't let him go!"

He was frozen in place, torn between saving his friend and going after the enemy. But at the recollection of Ghost putting his team first, his gaze shifted back to the roving tank. "Go fuck yourself, Graves..." As it turned toward him, Soap charged forward and slammed the C4 onto the front armour plate, laying perfectly flat and shielding his face as it rolled over the top of him. 

"You got a healthy disrespect for authority, Soap. I like that about you!" 

"I respect authority," he retorted. "I just don't respect yellow traitors like you." 

KA-BOOM!

Instantly, the Shadow on the roof dropped Rodolfo, and Soap shot him in the head, sending him over the side with the Sergeant. Both landed and Soap scrambled to his side. "Rudy! Talk to me, hermano..."

Rudy coughed, clutching his ribs and spitting a mouthful of blood. "Been worse." His eyes widened and he staggered to his feet. "Move, he's coming back!"

As they got to cover Graves took out another chunk of concrete. "For someone who wants to come out and talk, you sure hide a lot." A smile crept into his voice. "Just like that asshole with the mask! What's he got to hide from anyway?"

"You talk a lot of shite for a coward who has to cover up everythin' he does!" Soap snarled. "If nothin' you're doin' is wrong, why do you have to hide in the Shadows?"

"The Shadows gave me a place to show my real potential; the Army could never do for me. I saw a brighter future for our country- a stronger military, and I chased it! I'm not hiding, I shed my old skin."

"Like a fuckin' snake," he purred, skidding into another building and popping open another orange container. 

"Like a fucking soldier, son!"

As he loaded up with more C4, he was grabbed by the back of the neck and thrown to the floor. Before the Shadow could come down on him, Soap let loose a hail of gunfire into his face, dropping him nearly headless to the ground. "All I hear is that you had to make your own li'l army," he huffed. "Because you couldn't hack it in the real one! The one that would have never let you get away with somethin' like this."

Graves' chuckle over the com left a chill in the two Ghosts when he finally dignified them with a reply. "Who do you think made me?"

Ghost felt a wave of relief, finally seeing the bent rotor blades of the helicopter. "Lone Wolf, I'm at the crash site! Where are you, over?"

"Right here." She was frantically looking over her shoulder, nodding when she was sure she had no other Shadows on her tail, and began looking through the wreckage.

He held his tongue, but it wasn't looking good. Windows were shattered, the sides of the craft were crumpled, and the smoke that hung low over them was quickly choking them out. "Fuck, Lone. I can't see a damn thing through this. Do you see anything?"

She was heaving bricks and stones out of the way of the other door, but her panting soon faded to desperate cries. "Come on... Come on, Price, where the fuck are you?!" 

"Lone-"

"I'll die from the smoke, I don't care, I have to find-" She broke down in a fit of coughing, blindly reaching through the debris for anything. Something rough like canvas brushed her fingertips and she clutched at it. "Wait... Wait, I found something!" 

"Lone Wolf..."

She yanked it free and fell back, horrified to see only Price's hat with a crimson smear on its edges in her hands. "Fuck... Fuck! Damn it!"

"God damn you, do you listen when your fucking name is called?!" She turned back to Ghost, fury and despair glinting in the brimming tears in her eyes, and his hand was stretched out to her, palm down. "I found them..."

Her blood ran cold. "You found them, or 'you found them...'?"

Soap swiped a stream of blood that was flowing into his eye, burning every time he blinked. "You're gonna hang for this, Graves."

"Please, knock this honor bullshit off, Johny. I'm gonna be sipping tequila, forgetting where I buried your ass in the desert in a week! You think I'm bluffing??"

"I don't doubt you would, but you're not as determined to kill me as I am to kill you."

Rodolfo gunned down a final Shadow closing in on Soap. "Hit the engine compartment! You'll at least slow him down!"

"Hey- Rodolfo!" Graves turned the muzzle toward the building he was in and rolled slowly closer. "You think Uno--Quat-roh--Uno are your am-ee-goss? They'd drop you like a bad fuckin' habit, brother. They're helping you today, but tomorrow, they'll be trampling your ass in the sand when their command orders it. Com-pren-day??"

Rudy traded a glance with Soap, pressing his mouth into a grimace. "Sounds familiar, Commander..." His brows settled low on his dark eyes and he leveled his rifle with the muzzle of the tank. "But regardless of what they'll do tomorrow, I trust 141 with my life after they saved it time and time again. Can you say the same?"

KA-BOOM!

The fuel combusted with the final C4 and with it, the tank crumpled like a tin can. Soap stepped around the ruins and fell to his knees in front of Rodolfo, who was quick to pick him back up onto his feet. "Soap... Soap! You okay, amigo??"

"Fine... I'm fine..." He swiped another trickle of blood away and looked back at the flames, tapping into the com. "He's dead... Graves is KIA..."

"You did it. Brought a gun to a tank fight and won." Rudy's smile showed in his eyes. "You're impressive, carnal."

As they breathed off their exhaustion Soap grabbed his shoulder. "You didn't believe what he said, did you?" 

"Not for a minute."

He nodded, smiling to himself. "Soap to Ghost, how copy? How's Price?"

"Angry," he replied. "Lost a good cigar in the crash. Pilot's good too."

Rodolfo sighed wearily. "Madre Maria...- Mother Mary..." He pulled Soap toward the exit of the arena. "Alejandro, base is secure. Graves is dead, we're on our way to you. What's your location?"

"Hangar 5," he replied. "We've got Valeria."