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

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Intel Items
Intel No 24 (1/4 Intel) Before entering the arch gate with 2 red lights. Second floor, facing South-West.

Intel No 25 (2/4 Intel) Inside "Control Room", where Ghost is using the laptop.

Intel No 26 (3/4 Intel) On 2nd sub-level, North-East, in cell "327".

Intel No 27 (4/4 Intel) After finding prisoner 627, turn North-East, on top of a desk.

Walkthrough
The player starts the mission on a MH-6 Little Bird helicopter, as you and the other Little Birds move closer and closer to the gulag (a Russian word for a remote prison camp) while F-15s destroy a SAM (surface-to-air missile) site on a nearby ridge. As your Little Bird flies over the gulag, snipe the soldiers on the towers. Your main concerns 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.

Eventually the player will come across a control room, and Ghost will take control. The player will fight their way counterclockwise around the Prison while Ghost unlocks the doors in front of you. Descend down the corridor until you reach a square room in the center of the prison ring that contains 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 (unless you want bullets all over your body) 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. He is seen choking one of your enemies, and then immediately rams him into Roach.

Price/Prisoner 627 then points his gun at Roach, but then Soap points his gun to Price's head before they both realize their true identities. After this scene, the U.S. Navy will start bombing the area. Quickly follow your squadmates to safety. If you run too far ahead of them it's very easy to get lost and killed by the falling debris. At some point, you are to turn around (you can see an enemy running too but and follow a different path while the debris chases you. You all reach a dead end, and Roach gets knocked out. When he comes to, Soap shoots a flare into the sky and a SPIE rig (zip line) is lowered down by a waiting helicopter. When prompted, approach the SPIE rig and attach your cable to be airlifted to safety. Then sit back and watch the Navy bombard the Gulag to oblivion.

Trivia

 * At the start of The Gulag, Hornet Two-One is a MH-6J Varient, which does not have missile pods. Later on it becomes an AH-6J Varient equipped with missile pods.
 * In the opening cutscene there are three Litte Birds but when you start there are four.
 * If you stand too close to the Little Bird at the start of the level, it will kill you while taking off.
 * On the previous level, there were three people on the Little Bird, including Roach. At the start of the mission only Roach and MacTavish are on the left side of the Little Bird.
 * The Russians running on the walls of the Gulag at the beginning of the level look something like the Ultranationalists in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
 * 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, possibly to get a better sniping position.
 * Almost all the Task Force 141 troops will have MP5Ks.
 * You can see one OpFor sniper attack you before you enter the gulag.
 * As with any single-player and Spec Ops mission, regardless of whether you pick up another undamaged riot shield in this mission to replace a bullet-damaged one, you'll still end up with an damaged riot shield. Also, if you die with a damaged riot shield that was damaged before the last checkpoint, the riot shield will be completely undamaged upon respawning.
 * Regardless of how much you shoot the guard that Price is strangling, he will remain alive until Price finishes strangling him.
 * In a possible nod to the SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo series, one of the TF141 members who 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 castle 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.
 * There are gas tanks on the towers which you can snipe to eliminate most and possibly all of the hostiles.
 * 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 holds 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.  Even if Worm is not with you, he will always appear eventually.
 * 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 Marines from an elevated position.
 * It is possible 'Worm' was killed when the Navy bombarded to Gulag, as you can hear him scream as he is engulfed in fire on the SPIE rig.
 * It appears that Soap did not know that Price was Prisoner 627, as he asks in a questioning tone if it really was Price. This is odd, as it makes it seem that a full-scale attack was waged to save an unknown man. However, Shepherd did know Price was Prisoner #627 and kept Soap in the dark.
 * 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. However on the mission "Cliffhanger", as you are about to approach the first two Russians soldiers, if you are to the right of Soap you are able to see a holstered M1911 on Soap's thigh, although this may not be the same M1911 that Soap hands over to Price, as it could just be part of Soap's apperance in "Cliffhanger".
 * After the F-15s 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 U.S. Navy does not fly F-15s: only the Air Force does. Furthermore, the F-15 is not capable of carrier catapult launches. The only way this would be possible is if a U.S. Air Base in the Pacific Region scrambled the jets, which is actually quite possible because 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 was 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 own sniper rifle.
 * 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 urban camo that the Russian troops invading the United States wear.
 * The F-15 pilots incorrectly say "Good tone, Good tone. Fox 3, Fox 3" when they fire the HARM air-to-ground missiles. Both of these sayings are incorrect. "Good tone" is used by NATO pilots only when firing heat-seeking AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, referring to the tone that sounds in the pilot's headset indicating that the missile has a lock. Similarly, "Fox 3" is used by NATO pilots only when firing active radar-guided 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 caused by the bomb in the final room the player left before the SPIE rig was dropped to rescue everyone.
 * Just before you breach the shower room, if you swap out your riot shield it will sometimes sink thorugh the floor and be unobtainable again.
 * 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, an 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. Thereafter, Soap only speaks over your comms in Contingency and goes with Price to Afghanistan in Loose Ends.
 * When you are forced to grab a riot shield in the armory, take a look at the two other TF-141 members. One of them can be seen with his riot shield as though it were stuck to the barrel of his gun. During this time he is firing like normal as if he doesn't have a riot shield. However, this glitch is only for a moment.
 * It is also the first level where Roach and Price are seen fighting together.
 * When Price is strangling the Russian soldier, if you attempt to stab Price at the last moment, you will be able to see your gun for a second when you are knocked down.
 * There is a SPAS-12 in this mission that has snow camo and an alternate firing sound, much like the M1014's.
 * When the team is waiting for the SPIE rig, Worm pushes Soap's head out of the way of falling debris.
 * Oddly, after Price strangles the Russian soldier, if you look around the room after he knocks you to the ground, the Russian is nowhere to be found.
 * The part where Roach and Mactavish wait for Ghost to open the cell door is similar to the part Soap, Griggs, and Price wait for Gaz to open the door in No Fighting in the War Room, in that both Ghost and Gaz don't appear in the action and only their voices are heard at the time. It is also similar because both teams have to wait until the door is opened.
 * At the end of The Gulag, if you don't hook onto the SPIE rig, Soap, Price, and Worm will leave you behind and you will die.
 * The scene were you have to fight in the Gulag's showers is very reminiscent to a mission in the game Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow with the protagonist of this game stating "I'm stuck in this Gulag" making it possible that the level was inspired by this mission. it is also similar to the film, The Rock when a group of seals get mowed down in the showers.
 * On the F-15's is the abbreviation IW4, which could be a reference to Modern Warfare 2 being Infinity Ward's fourth game or possible reference to Modern Warfare 2's game engine, IW 4.0.
 * Soap seems to be carrying a lot of weapons in this level. In the beginning on the Little Bird, he starts off with the M14 EBR. When they land, he is seen with an M4A1 Grenadier with a Red Dot Sight. When they reach the armory, he grabs the Riot Shield and the MP5K.And when they escape from the Gulag, he is seen with an M4A1 Grenadier with an ACOG sight.
 * After passing through the smoke on the little bird, it is possible to see another little bird firing at the tower in front of Roach. The pilot at this time says "Guns, guns, guns. Guns, guns, guns."
 * During the Reveal Trailer, Ghost is the placeholder or was to be in Prisoner 627 (Cpt. Price)'s position on the SPIE rig.
 * The F-15's at the beginning of the level have the Jolly Roger insignia on the vertical stabilizer. This is the insignia for VFA-103 a Navy carrier based squadron which flies F/A-18F Super Hornets, Not F-15's
 * No matter where you stand,the scraps will always hit you.
 * The Russian that Captain Price is strangling cannot be killed. Also, if you shoot him, the bullets will not go through him and hit Price.
 * You do not actually have to pick up a riot shield in the armory. If playing on easy mode, you can survive just by claymore-ing the door and sitting/lying down in the corner with your gun.
 * It is possible to take a shortcut at the end of the level by running straight to the 2nd extraction point.
 * This mission features the rare White Tape Camouflage.
 * When at the armory, if the player keeps looking at MacTavish, they will see what appears to be a riot shield spawn directly in his hand.