Cliffhanger (mission)

"Break's over, Roach. Let's go."

- Captain MacTavish

 is a campaign mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It features Captain "Soap" MacTavish and Sgt. Gary "Roach" Sanderson of Task Force 141 on the cold mountains of Kazakhstan.

Walkthrough
The level begins as your character, Gary "Roach" Sanderson, and "Soap" MacTavish are on a ledge on the side of a mountain. After a fighter jet flies overhead you and Soap start climbing a wall of ice with ice picks. There is a harrowing moment when a fighter jet flies overhead, nearly dislodging Soap from his position on the cliff. Once at the top you and Soap jump a small gap. You don't make it and nearly fall to your death when Soap grabs your hand at the last moment, saving your life. Soap brings you up, and you climb up the rest of the mountain. The two are then seen moving up to a fuel depot. They simultaneously take out enemy troops and move up to the fuel depot. You then infiltrate the airbase and proceed to the fuel depot, killing people as you go along at your discretion, as you can sneak by enemies using the cover of the blizzard and the usefulness of the heartbeat sensor. You will then plant C4 on the fuel depot and travel to the hanger that Soap is in to destroy a crashed satellite. If you do this without alerting or killing any guards you will receive the achievement "Ghost". When you and Soap go in the hanger, a guard walks by and Soap beats up and stabs the unfortunate guard in the neck with his knife. He tells you to go upstairs and get the documents. When you come back, you hear Major Petrov telling you to surrender or he will kill Soap, so you detonate the C4. There is a huge explosion and you and Soap fight out of the airbase and go down a hill where Soap takes out an oncoming enemy snowmobile with his ice picks. You and Soap then get on the snowmobiles and escape while shooting enemies, racing down a really steep hill and jumping across a gorge to get to the LZ where Kilo Six-One is waiting.

Enemy Intelligence

 * Intel number four is near the entrance of the base; to your right is a tower with a ladder and scaffold; watch out for the enemy patrol and climb the ladder to find the laptop.
 * Intel number five is easy to miss; just before regrouping with soap, there is a building where welders can be seen working on a MiG through a window. Smash one of the windows and a laptop is on the other side.
 * Intel number six is very easy to miss, as it is found during the snowmobile chase. At the point where the path splits off to the left or right, head for the trees in the middle and veer right. Drive over the laptop to pick it up.

Trivia

 * The name of this level is ambiguous: it refers to Roach hanging on the side of the cliff, about to fall, and also the hangar in which he and Soap retrieve the ACS module.
 * The scene with Roach being rescued by Soap pays homage to the game's prequel, in which Soap was rescued by his commander Captain Price before falling to his death, slipping out of a helicopter he leaped into in the level Crew Expendable.
 * On Veteran difficulty, the player will need to hold down both triggers to keep their hold after the first jump, as opposed to any other difficulty, where no buttons or triggers need to pressed or held down.
 * Some weapons in this level feature the Arctic Camouflage on them due to the subzero scenery around them.
 * The player is able to reload their Glock 18 on the snowmobile with one hand while driving away from enemies with the other.
 * This level was the first level of the game revealed; played by Infinity Ward's Jason West back at E3 2009.
 * Time Trial and Race are Special Ops missions based off of this level, where the player must race on a snowmobile to a finish line.
 * If one compares the E3 demo for this mission to any leaked footage, many things are changed. For example, while in the hangar, during the E3 demo, Soap tells Roach to get the DSM. However, in the released version, Soap tells Roach to get the ACS module. Also, the voice for Soap in the E3 demo is different to the audio in the same leaked footage. A more noticeable difference can be heard when Major Petrov his guards find Soap in the hangar. In the E3 demo, Petrov's voice is much calmer and his accent is slightly weaker. In the leaked footage, Petrov sounds much more angry, and speaks in a slightly stronger accent than in the E3 footage.
 * If Roach isn't close enough to Soap when he gets captured, Soap won't tell him to activate Plan B and he will be shot.
 * If the player lets go of the ice picks after Captain MacTavish rescues the player, instead of the usual quote, the words "Hold on for dear life" appear on the screen.
 * When Soap tells the player to meet him, and the player gets seen on the way and leads them to the area where Soap is, he will comment, "Brought some friends with you?"
 * If the player get on the snowmobile and just so happens to hit Soap with it when driving off, they will get the message "MacTavish was run over.".
 * When the player is close to jump over the giant gap at the end of the level, they will hear the music from the level Crew Expendable of the first Modern Warfare, when Soap was about to jump into the helicopter.
 * In the hangar, after detonating the C4, the player can pick up a FAMAS rifle that has the same "white tape camouflage" as the FAMAS available in the Museum level.
 * On lower difficulty settings, This level can be completed without taking any hit markers or even injuring anyone.
 * Some of this can be like All Ghilled Up in Call of Duty 4 because you don't have to shoot any one the first half.