The Gulag

"Drop it!" "Soap?" "Price? This belongs to you sir." "Who's Soap?"

- Captain MacTavish, Captain Price and Worm

The Gulag is the tenth mission in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 campaign. You play as Gary "Roach" Sanderson as you and the rest of Task Force 141 storm the gulag, an old prison. This mission is phase two of The Only Easy Day...Was Yesterday.

Walkthrough
You start the mission on a MH-6 Little Bird, as you and the other Little Birds move closer and closer to The Gulag while F-15s destroy a SAM Site on a nearby ridge. As your Little Bird flies over The Gulag, snipe the soldiers on the towers. Your main concern are the enemies armed with RPGs, but they should be easy to take out. Once the towers are taken care of, the helicopters land and you will fight enemies on foot. There are several enemies on the higher floors, but a Little Bird will help clear them out. Walk through the courtyard until you reach the prison entrance. It is a good idea to replace your M14 EBR since everything beyond this point is almost exclusively close-quarters fighting.

Fight your way to the control room, as Ghost unlocks the doors in front of you. Descend down the corridor until you reach a circular room with a weapons rack. Enemies will encircle you, so stay crouched and avoid as much gunfire as possible until Ghost unlocks the door ahead. Grab a riot shield and follow Soap down the hall. Soap will reach a rappel point, where you can swap out the riot shield for another weapon. Follow Soap into a dark hallway and equip your night-vision goggles. At the end of the hall remove them and follow Soap to a pipe room. Wait until he throws his flash-bang and take out the enemies behind the pipes. On the other side of those pipes, there is a hallway with three enemies behind a right turn. It is easiest to roll a grenade or flash-bang under the pipes down to their level in order to get past them. There will be a breaching position up ahead; plant the charge and kill as many enemies as you can in the bullet-time slow motion sequence.

In this first chamber, there will be some enemies on the floor, and some above you on either side. The latter are hidden behind the walls but can be spotted by their laser sights. Advance to the second chamber once you have cleared out the first, and several shielded enemies will run at you. If you still have your M4A1 Grenadier, or simply grenades, use them to take out the shielded enemies. You do not have to completely clear the last room; simply kill enough enemies to safely run past them and jump into the hole in the floor. Follow Soap to the final breaching position, where Prisoner 627, (Captain Price) is being kept.

After the brief cutscene, follow your squadmates to safety. If you run ahead of them, its very easy to get lost and killed by the falling debris. When prompted, approach the zip line and attach your cable to be airlifted to safety. Then sit back and watch the Navy bombard the Gulag to oblivion.

Trivia

 * Even though you left the oil rig in the mission The Only Easy Day...Was Yesterday sitting on the right side of the chopper that brings you to The Gulag, in the beginning of The Gulag, you sit on the left side of the chopper.
 * All the Task Force 141 troops will have MP5Ks
 * You can see one OpFor sniper attack you before you enter the gulag but after you land.
 * Regardless of how much you shoot the man Price is strangling, he will remain alive until Price finishes strangling him.
 * As a possible nod to the SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo series, one of the TF141 members that assists in this section has the callsign "Sandman", the same name of a SEAL team member from the series.
 * After the destruction of the third tower, just before landing, MacTavish and Ghost complain to Shepherd about the "Yanks" bombing the gulag too early. However, when MacTavish can be seen to the right of the player during the latter half of the conversation, his lips are not moving.
 * Ghost's complaint about the yanks being their supposed allies foreshadows the end of the game where Soap has to fight Shadow Company.
 * When the player reaches Captain Price, Soap hands him the pistol Price gave him to kill Imran Zakhaev in "Game Over" saying, "This belongs to you sir."
 * Price has a rifle to the player's face before the reunion. When he's given the pistol, the rifle suddenly hangs off his arm. This may be due to the fact the game engine does not render weapon slings.
 * No matter how many Task Force 141 members are with the player and MacTavish before they breach the final wall, it will always be Worm only after breaching.
 * When Price calls MacTavish by his nickname, Soap, Worm asks "Who's Soap?"; MacTavish never told the other soldiers his nickname.
 * Ghost was featured in the trailer as the soldier running on the left of the squad in the tunnel, probably to hide the fact that Price runs in that position in the actual game. Also Ghost is seen carrying an AK-47 just like Price does as they leave the tunnels.
 * It appears that MacTavish fires his flare from his M203 grenade launcher. This is accurate, as the M203 is capable of firing various types of rounds. He most likely fired an M662 Star Parachute, used in signaling and illumination.
 * The Special Ops mission "Breach & Clear" is based on the shower rooms in the gulag.
 * The shower room is an homage to the movie The Rock when the Navy SEALs enter from the sewers, and are ambushed by soldiers from an elevated position.
 * Soap apparently pulls the M1911 he gives back to Price out of nowhere, as he can be seen with an M9 in his thigh holster throughout the level. It's understandable that he may have been keeping it with him beneath his clothing for a good luck charm or as an emergency weapon he can rely on more "personally."
 * After the F-15's strike the Gulag too close to the helicopter and MacTavish tells Shepherd to have the fighters cease fire, Shepherd says that "One man in a gulag doesn't mean much to the Navy at this point." However, the Navy does not fly F-15s: only the Air Force does. Further more, the F-15 is not capable of carrier catapult launches. The only way this would be possible is if a Pacific region U.S. Air Base scrambled the jets. This is actually quite possible, though, since the Kamchatka Peninsula (where the Gulag is located) is well within range of Yokota Air Base in Japan. As for why Shepherd only refers to the Navy, it may be because the Navy were the ones overseeing the operation, even if the Air Force was involved, as well.
 * On the helicopter, MacTavish says "All snipers...standby to engage", but he does not raise his sniper rifle.
 * It is unclear how Price is able to hook up to the SPIE rig. A harness and carabiner are needed, neither of which are things Price should have on him, having been a prisoner just minutes ago.
 * Although nearly all of the Russian troops in the Gulag are wearing cold-weather gear, the soldier that Captain Price is strangling is wearing the same gear as the Russian troops who invaded The United States.
 * The F-15 pilots incorrectly say "Fox 3" when they fire the HARM air-to-ground missiles. "Fox 3" is only used by NATO pilots when firing active radar guidance air-to-air missiles which would imply that the pilots had fired AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles. The correct brevity code for firing HARMs would be "Magnum".
 * The explosion at the end of the level is likely the bomb that was in the room the SPIE rig came into.
 * Just before you breach the shower room, if you have a riot shield it will disappear.
 * This is the only mission that Soap will say something like "Roach is down!" or "Roach!" when you are killed. He only does this because he is scripted to do so at the end of the level, when Roach is knocked out by the fallen debris.
 * After the player leaves with Captain Price, a enemy will spawn behind the team if the player follows them to the end of the hallway. The enemy is unarmed and seems wounded and won't spawn if the player waits for him.
 * After the corridor to the helicopter collapses if you still have your sniper rifle you can zoom in and see a Russian soldier; if he survives the falling rocks he walks forward and sits down.
 * At the end of the level, it seems that the helicopter pilot spotted the flare that MacTavish fires almost instantaneously, because the flare was fired only a second ago. This is made even more implausible considering the scene takes place in slow-motion.
 * The level is set two hours after the raid on the oil rig.
 * This is the last level in which Roach and Soap are seen fighting together. Soap only speaks over your comms in Contingency and goes with Price to Afghanistan in Loose Ends.