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 out the Russians on the towers. Your main concern is 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 you 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 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

 * Strangely, Price will attack you even when you should be wearing IFF Flags (British, American etc depending on what nationality you take Roach to be), clearly showing you aren't Russian, although this could be him losing his sanity during his years incarcerated in The Gulag.
 * 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.
 * No matter which Task Force 141 member/s is/are with the player and MacTavish before they breach the final wall, it will always be Worm after breaching.
 * When Price calls MacTavish by his nickname, Soap, Worm asks "Who's Soap?"; showing that 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.
 * Strangely, most of the Task Force 141 troops that land with the player in the beginning start mysteriously disappearing as the level progresses, possibly indicating many did not survive the assault.
 * It appears that MacTavish fires his flare from his M203 Grenadier.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * In the trailers, Ghost is alongside Soap and Roach when the tunnel collapses, however, in game, the character changes to Price. There is no mention as to how Ghost got out of the Gulag. It is most likely that he simply went out the same way the team went in, being extracted by helicopter from the courtyard.
 * 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." Strange, because the Navy doesn't fly the F-15. Only the Air Force does. Further more, the F-15 is not designed for Carrier catapult launches. The only way this would be possible, is if a Pacific region U.S. Air Base scrambled the jets.
 * All Task Force 141 soldiers are still wearing their amphibious suits from the last mission. This is interesting as they are probably still a little wet from their entry to the Oil Rig, and it is probable that the temperature is around zero, if we take into account the kind of uniforms the Russians are wearing as they defend The Gulag.
 * On the helicopter, MacTavish says "All snipers...standby to engage", but he does not raise his sniper rifle himself.
 * Although nearly all of the Russian troops in the gulag are wearing cold-weather gear, the soldier Captain Price is strangling is wearing the same gear as the Russian troops who invaded America.
 * The "Fox " codes only be used when fighter pilots lunch Air to Air missile. But the F-15 pilot says "fox3" when lunchs HARM missile.