Ultimatum

"It's quite simple: Either we retake the launch facility, or we won't recognize the world tomorrow."

- Captain Price

Ultimatum is the seventeenth campaign level of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, where Captain Price and his team have to knock out a power station with the help of Staff Sergeant Griggs, who was captured earlier by Ultranationalist forces.

Plot
The team parachutes down to the starting point but realises that Griggs is missing and has triggered his emergency transponder. The team tracks his signal down to a small village. The team then systematically clears each building; when they finally find and rescue Griggs, the team makes their way to an electric tower, which Soap brings down with C4, disabling the power long enough for another team to infiltrate the nuclear facility.

Captain Price's team then fights their way into a group of buildings, separate, and then, encountering hostiles dropped in by helicopter along the way, meet up with the American sniper team. As they rendezvous, they witness the launching of two missiles from the nuclear facility; Imran Zakhaev's revenge for the death of his son. The missiles head towards the eastern United States - with causalities projected to be approximately 41 million.

Tips

 * When checking the houses, keep quiet so that the enemies in a nearby building aren't notified, preventing them and their dogs from attacking you.
 * The helicopters which you have to hide from can't actually see you even if you stand up and shoot at them.
 * When fighting the teams in the buildings, try and find suitable cover towards the sides of the courtyard.
 * The transport helicopters that you encounter at the outpost before you meet the sniper team cannot be destroyed with an M203, as is usually possible in previous levels. However if you stand underneath them, and hit them with a 40mm grenade shot directly on the underbelly just at the right time, usually just when the ropes are being dropped, then all the occupants will simultaneously die and drop from the helicopter.
 * When the trucks are coming at the end of the level, sprint up to them and throw a C4 block on each and detonate them, or use your M203 grenade launcher, it will kill all the enemies in those vehicles much faster.
 * It is also possible to bypass the troop transports altogether by simply sprinting past them.
 * When you reach the small village, and after you clear the first building, wait for Captain Price to say "Let's keep it quiet." Then follow him to the porch. Do not go past it. Now, when you come out of the door leading to the aforementioned porch, the right side of the porch has a thin metal plate. Face that and then ten meters in front of you is a small shack. Be silent, and take out your silenced USP .45, because it kills in one shot. Wait for the bad guy to come from behind the car and he will simply stride across your field of view. Shoot him. Then quietly, while crouching, exit the porch and basically crawl around to the right hand side of your house, until you see a portion of a guard behind a tree. Sneak up to the tree without alerting him, then lean around the tree and shoot him in the chest. With your powerful pistol you will take him out in one shot, and thus not alert anyone else, saving you the trouble of a fire fight before entering the house with Griggs in it.
 * Another way to do this without alerting the other guards, is to first shoot the Ultra-nationalist that is near the shack using the USP .45 or the M4A1 SOPMOD. Following that, go down and get to the side of the building you just came out. At your right should be another Ultra-nationalist. If you move fast enough, you can knife him before he can shoot and alert the others or just shoot him with your gun.
 * Yet another way to get past without alerting the others is to run up to the door after clearing the first building, wait for Captain Price to start talking, then quickly run back into the main room of the building and crouch on top of the table in the middle of the room. You can then use either your USP .45 or M4A1 SOPMOD to shoot the guards through the window, but remember to do it as quick as possible.
 * Another way is to set your Claymores next to the doors of the enemy houses after taking out the bad guy explained above, and go back to Captain Price, take out and grab an AK-74u, and fire a burst - the guards will leave the houses and if placed correctly the Claymores will eliminate most of them.

Enemy Intelligence

 * Laptop 26 is found in the courtyard in a motor pool building on the opposite side of the courtyard (if you get to the RPGs on both ground floors and rooftops you've gone to far). The laptop is in a small room in the back.

Famous Speech
This mission's starting video shows Imran Zakhaev's speech being broadcast. It has become somewhat popular among the community. It is also part of the opening video by Imran Zakhaev. The speech has been reproduced fully below:

"Our so called leaders prostituted us to the West... destroyed our culture... our economies... our honor. Our blood has been spilled on our soil. My blood... on their hands... They are the invaders. All U.S. and British forces will leave Russia immediately... or suffer the consequences."

- Imran Zakhaev

Trivia

 * The cutscene for this mission shows four soldiers in the squad (Soap, Price, Gaz, and Griggs). However, when the team forms up in the beginning, a random SAS operator will join you from out of nowhere. This is because 2 other squads go into the base aswell when they are wielding their way in.
 * When the player enters the house where Griggs is being held, they can hear a Russian calmly interrogating him. He will still remain calm if the player compromises the team before entering the house, which should have made him leave the house to see what was happening. This indicates that the player was supposed to be stealthy when infiltrating the village.
 * The soldier that interrogates Griggs sounds similar if not the same as the voice of Vladimir Makarov.
 * If you put on the cheat "Super Contrast" at the beginning, you can view the mission as if it were the morning.
 * When you rescue Griggs, Captain Price jokes that the reason that they rescued Griggs was because "...his arse had all the C4...", when clearly it was Soap who had and used the C4 to destroy the power lines.
 * During Griggs interrogation, the player might hear his reply to the Ultranationalist was his name, rank and service number. This is three of the four things a captured soldier is permitted (and trained) to divulge, the other being their date of birth, in response to any interrogation questions.
 * In real life, Zakhaev would most likely be unable to launch the missiles, as such a procedure requires authorization from a high ranking official, such as the Russian President, similar to U.S. nuclear launch protocols.
 * Two Topol-M missiles are launched from the silo. However, since the game takes place in 2011, the missiles should have been RS-24s, the replacement for the Topol-M scheduled to go into service with Russia in 2009. However, since the game came out in 2007, the developers had no way of knowing the missiles would be out of service by that time. It does seem that the launch area was a retired or abandoned facility judging from the dilapidated looks of the surrounding buildings.
 * While the Ultranationalists are interrogating Griggs, you can kill them before Price opens the door by shooting through the walls.
 * You cannot use or pick up Griggs' M249 SAW lying on the table beside him before you uncut him.
 * You cannot destroy the towers if you just throw C4 on it's base, you must plant the C4 in order to take it down.
 * When destroying the towers, you cannot stand under the tower as you detonate it.
 * If you plant one C4 on the tower and detonate it, you will see that it doesn't do anything to the leg of the tower. Now plant the other C4 and blow it. The tower leg with no C4 just breaks apart without anything being done to it because the other C4 was already triggered.
 * The player learns that Griggs' service number is 678452056.
 * When you enter the first house to find Griggs, upstairs there will be two guards; one sitting in a chair in the doorway and the other standing up in a doorway to the side. If you sneak around and knife the standing guard, the guard sitting in the chair, startled by the death of the other guard, will fall backwards out of his chair.
 * Furthermore, the standing guard in the first house smokes a cigar - sometimes, when you kill him, his cigar will still be floating in mid-air for a few seconds.
 * On the wire fences you can see many signs warning you about hostile dogs. The note reads: "This territory is guarded by military dogs" (translated from Russian).
 * This is the only level in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare that has any noticeable change in the time of day. From the start of the level to when you rescue Griggs the sun rises noticeably.
 * There's a rare glitch on this level. When you are searching for Griggs there is an Ultranationalist in the first house you enter with his back to you. If you wait for Price to attack him, and you knife the Ultranationalist at the same time neither blow affects him and he remains standing. Price and the others move on as though he's dead. You can run in front of him and shoot him and he still just stands there.
 * There is another glitch when you reach the base. The part where you encounter several unmanned BTR-80's, if you go in front of the first one and jump in between the wall and the tank, you will be unable to move for a few seconds.
 * There is a mistake in this level, when the sun begins to rise you can use your compass to see that it is actually rising from the north instead of the east.
 * In the cutscene, it shows a C-130 Hercules dropping Charlie Team and Bravo Team. Captain Price is heard saying "Green Light to HALO" (High Altitude Low Opening). But the cutscene shows them opening their parachutes after they leave the aircraft, meaning a HAHO jump (High Altitude High Opening). This may have been a mistake on the developers side.
 * When this mission ends, a cutscene is shown where a simulation of the missiles are launched. It uses a world map, and it pinpoints the launch of the missiles on the map, and labels it as "Altay Mountains" (from which they are launched in game). The missiles shown though are launching from the Caucasus Mountains (which was the location for previous SAS missions), while the Altay mountains are thousand of kilometers away bordering Kazakhstan.
 * After Gaz uses a can of spray to open the fence, he falls over in a slightly comedic fashion, the marine in War Pig uses the same animation to open the fence.
 * Oddly, this game is based of the Marines and SAS. At the end of this mission, however, Sgt. Scully and CW4 Smith come out of the tree-line. CW4 means Chief Warrant Officer 4. Chief Warrant Officers are not in the Marines, or SAS for that matter, but in the Army.