the story of the soldier, the bearded convenience store owner from the previous game, shows him fighting a war against the soviet union in hawaii alongside jacket in 1985, prior to the first game's events. america appears to be losing this fictitious war, with cities and islands falling to the soviet red army. the soldier's elite commando unit has been engaged in a campaign of deep penetration harassment against russian fortifications and supply depots, however their increasingly detached and psychologically troubled colonel appears to be losing his grip on reality as the war proceeds, volunteering them for increasingly desperate and dangerous missions while ruminating on their likely impending deaths and the loss of the war. their last assignment involves besieging a heavily guarded power plant controlled by the russians. as they make their way into the building, the soviet commander in charge of it, having apparently gone insane, murders the plant's technicians and begins a meltdown on the main reactor before shooting himself in the head. the soldier saves jacket's life during their escape attempt, after a booby trap explodes and severely injures two members of their unit including jacket, but later dies in 1986 during a nuclear strike on san francisco which decisively terminates the war, revealing his appearances in the previous game to be jacket's comatose hallucinations.