Alex Mason

Alex Mason is the main protagonist and playable character in Call Of Duty Black Ops. He appears in every campaign mission except for Numbers, Project Nova,and WMD.

Military Service
Mason was part of Operation 40, a Black Op which was to be the assasination of Fidel Castro. However, Castro and Dragovich knew of the plan, and a decoy was killed. Mason was captured by Dragovich's men, and sent to the russian labor camp Vorkuta.

In Vorkuta, Mason met Viktor Reznov. After months of planning, the two friends launched a riot in hopes to escape from Vorkuta. Mason made it to a train, but Reznov crashed the truck he was in and died in the explosion.

Mason was then sent to the Pentagon, and met with Secretary Of Defense Robert Macnamara, and President John F. Kennedy. Mason was briefed by Kennedy to stop the russian Ascension Group from testing missles in Balkanour. Masons team-member Weaver was compromised, but they rescued him later and blew up the missles.

Almost five years later, in 1968, Mason joined the SOG unit led by Frank Woods and was sent to Vietnam for the purpose of searching for covert Russian operations in Vietnam and Laos. After landing at Khe Sanh to meet up with Woods and the rest of his old unit, the hill of Khe Sanh comes under attack by NVA forces. Mason, Woods, and Special Agent Hudson repel the beginning of the attack before the SOG leaves for its mission.

In Hue City, they attempt to pick up a Soviet defector with vital information of Soviet involvement in the war. Inside a safe room, Mason believes he is reunited with Reznov, "the defector", although "Reznov" is a figment of his imagination and the real one died after Mason got on the train from Vorkuta (as though what Mason is seeing is Reznov's ghost acting as Mason's guardian angel who has been guiding and possessing Mason to carry on with his posthumous legacy). After collecting the intel, the team leaves Hue.

While heading north into Communist territory, Mason's helicopter is shot down but, spurred on by a hallucinated image of Reznov, he escapes the wreckage. Mason and the rest of the team silently enter a village where they sabotage Vietcong equipment. Afterwards, Mason clears out a "rat tunnel" and retrieve a Soviet operations book from Kravchenko's office. The tunnel begins to collapse and Mason barely escapes with his life.

The intel leads them to a Soviet cargo plane downed in Laos which was believed to be carrying some sort of biological weapon. Mason remembers stories Reznov had told him about a nerve gas called Nova 6, originally developed by Nazi scientist Friedrich Steiner, but commandeered by General Dragovich and reproduced by Daniel Clarke. After combat up the river to the crash site, the SOG team is set upon by both VC and Spetsnaz before making their way into the plane. There, they find the Soviets have already retrieved the cargo and were waiting for them to arrive in the valley below. After an explosive fight, the plane wreckage tumbles down a cliff and the team is taken prisoner by the Spetznas for the second time.

At a VC compound, Mason, Woods, and Bowman are forced to play Russian Roulette. Bowman defiantly insults his captors, prompting their Russian contact to club him to death with a pipe. Woods plays, choosing an empty chamber, whispering to Mason that the next one is loaded. Mason shoots the VC leader in the throat and takes his pistol, fighting out of the compound and killing the Russian. Woods and Mason commandeer a Hind and fly it to Kravchenko's compound, where they battle to his office along with Reznov and attack him. Mason is overpowered and Kravchenko begins to repeatedly kick him in the face, before being stabbed by Woods. In his dying breath, Kravchenko pulls the pins on his grenades, before Woods throws Kravchenko and himself out of the office window, leaving Mason the only, presumed ,survivor of his SOG team, the imaginary Reznov notwithstanding.

A letter in Kravchenko's office shows Steiner is overseeing Nova 6 operations on Rebirth Island in the Aral Sea. Mason infiltrates the island with imaginary Reznov at his side, stowing away in an empty crate being handled on the island. When the crane carrying the crate sets it down, they exit the crate and proceed with making their way to the labs, Mason kills a worker with his own Tomahawk and proceeds to hide in the shadow with Reznov to avoid a spotlight from an Mi-8 Hip, the pair move on until they see an armed soldier patrolling the area, Mason kills him with the Tomahawk after a brief struggle and takes his weapon. After proceeding some more, the 2 attempt to climb up the lab building via ladder, during which Mason dispatches of an enemy that looks down the ladder by pulling him down and taking his KS-23. They attempt to access the labs through the rooftops, when suddenly an explosion in the distance occurs, with the base going to full-alert. Mason tells Reznov that it is the CIA assaulting the island to take Steiner alive, the two pick up their pace to get to Steiner first, going down an elevator shaft, and breach the laboratories from there, carving through troops and scientists alike to get to Steiner. They eventually clear the facility out, and enter Steiner's lab. Steiner is contacting Hudson, desperately asking them to hurry up and extract him from the island, as Dragovich's men are executing personnel on the island, Mason then confronts Steiner, who is shocked that Mason has managed to reach him, Reznov than begins to beat and executes Steiner. Hudson and Weaver manage to make it to the lab, and try entering the lab from a window by shooting it, but it is bulletproof, forcing the pair to break it with a crate, but by the time they enter the lab, they are too late, as Mason witnesses Reznov shoot Steiner. After witnessing the events from Hudson's perspective, it is finally revealed that Reznov is a figment of Mason's imagination, and he is the one actually executing Steiner. As stated above, they break the bulletproof glass and enter the room too late, as Mason shoots Steiner in the head, and then he shoots Weaver in the arm when Weaver tries to apprehend him. Hudson then tackles and disarms Mason, Mason punches Hudson in the face, forcing Hudson to pistol-whip Mason, rendering him unconscious. With Steiner dead, they leave the island with Mason as their only link to the numbers, leading to his interrogation.

Following his apprehension by Hudson and Weaver at Rebirth Island, Mason is interrogated ruthlessly. With Steiner's death, Mason is their only link to the numbers station and the impending Nova 6 attack by sleeper agents in the capital cities of every state in the U.S. In addition, the President was prepared to launch a full nuclear strike against the Soviet Union in retaliation. If the numbers station could not be located and neutralized before Dragovich sent the signal to attack, World War III would break out.

After forcing Mason to relive his experiences leading up to the present date, Hudson had yet to learn anything from Mason. With DEFCON 2 declared, Hudson reveals himself to Mason out of desperation and removes his restraints. Mason knocks Hudson out and makes his way through the interrogation facility, remembering his brainwashing at Vorkuta, realizing that all of his encounters with Reznov after Vorkuta were imagined, as Reznov had actually died during the breakout, and finally understanding the meaning of the numbers broadcasts. After being subdued by Hudson, Mason explains that the numbers station is on the Soviet cargo ship Rusalka , which Mason had originally seen during his first meeting with Dragovich in 1961.

Mason, Hudson, and Weaver raid the Rusalka, located in waters southwest of Cuba. In the cargo ship's hold, they discover an antenna with a tether leading into the depths of the ocean. While a U.S. Navy fleet is en route to destroy the Rusalka, Mason insists on entering the submerged numbers station to kill Dragovich once and for all. After fighting through the numbers station as it comes under fire, Mason finds the console controlling the numbers broadcasts and attempts to deactivate it, but is knocked away by Dragovich. Hudson comes to Mason's aid, distracting Dragovich and allowing Mason to pull him down. Mason strangles Dragovich, then escapes the imploding numbers station with Hudson. With the station destroyed and Dragovich dead, the crisis is averted.

According to the unlocked Intel in the final mission, Mason never fully recovered from his brainwashing as he still hears Reznov's voice after killing Dragovich, making the CIA suspicious of Mason's actions. Weaver and Hudson became targets of suspicion as well for their association with Mason and their supposed complicity in gathering top secret information for Mason. Sometime in 1978, Mason's decision to chase an as of yet unknown lead led the CIA to deem him "burnt" and a threat to national security, along with Hudson and Weaver, who had escaped to South Africa with him. As of October 28, 1978, the CIA was making plans to form a joint task force with MI-6 in order to find and eliminate Mason, Hudson, and Weaver in what they dubbed Operation Charybdis. What became of the three after this operation was launched is so far unknown.