- For the track, see Recon by Fire (soundtrack).
- "With Laswell on overwatch, Price and Gaz infiltrate a cartel smuggling operation off the coast of Spain in search of enemy missiles."
- — Mission Briefing
Recon by Fire is the ninth mission featured in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.
Characters[]
- Kyle "Gaz" Garrick (playable)
- John Price
- Kate Laswell (P.O.W.)
- Johnny "Soap" MacTavish (cutscene)
- Simon "Ghost" Riley (cutscene)
- Alejandro Vargas (cutscene)
- Phillip Graves (cutscene)
- Shepherd (cutscene)
- Hassan Zyani (cutscene, P.O.W.)
- Ghorbrani (mentioned)
Plot[]
Soap, Ghost, Alejandro, and Graves set Hassan up for interrogation with Laswell and Shepherd via a video uplink. Although they ask him about what he's targeting and who he got the missiles from, Hassan gives no answers to their questions. Soon, Hassan became aggressive once Soap mentions General Ghorbrani to him. Although they can't kill or keep Hassan, Laswell found something from his phone and Shepherd orders the four to take Hassan somewhere and let him go.
With the data found from Hassan's phone, Price, Gaz, and Laswell head to Spain to investigate a place that the cartel are using as a smuggling front, which may contain the missiles. Laswell provides overwatch and exfil on a boat while Price and Gaz wear ghillie suits to stealthily approach on the mainland as they first neutralized two enemy snipers before they proceed. As they remain hidden or already eliminated all the guards, a container truck escorted by two troop transport trucks drives pass the two and as they move up, Price and Gaz drop down prone to let a small patrol walk by and then neutralize two guards ahead. The two move, and they see the trucks again before they let them go.
The two reach a ridge and located the main buildings, guarded by the cartel, that could potentially be storing the missiles. Price and Gaz proceed to eliminate the cartel from afar while they avoid killing any civilians. Once the area is clear, Gaz heads down, while avoiding or killing the hostiles approaching him, and reach the warehouses while Price stays behind and provides support. Gaz heads up the roof and deploys tear gas through the ventilation as the cartel comes out and are taken care by the two. Gaz found a container, but he only found drugs and guns inside it. After dispatching a five-man armored patrol, Gaz again uses tear gas through the second warehouse's ventilation and clears out more cartel members with Price. Although he didn't find a container inside the second warehouse, Gaz found schematics of an underground complex beneath the warehouse.
Gaz regroups with Price as the two proceed to another ridge overlooking the lighthouse. Much like the warehouses, the two pick apart the cartel from afar before Gaz once again heads down. Several guards approach Gaz as he goes prone and evades them or eliminates them. However, the guards aren't cartel members as Laswell suspects them to be Al-Qatala. Gaz clear all the outbuildings around the lighthouse before searching them, with the garage containing Russian cases and crates, and an office containing drugs and boxes. Once Price regroups with Gaz, the two search and found the tunnel entrance behind a washing machine. While the two head down and explore the underground complex, Laswell report several boats approaching her. After taking care of more cartel members, Price and Gaz reach to a cavern, where they only found a submarine docked near them. As the two see Laswell outside the cavern, the boats that are still approaching her are revealed to be Al-Qatala. Price and Gaz try to take out all AQ soldiers, but the enemies manage to capture Laswell and escape. With Laswell now a prisoner to AQ, Price and Gaz prepare to leave Spain and talk to Shepherd about the situation.
Weapon Loadout[]
| Starting loadout |
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| Found in level |
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| Unobtainable |
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Transcript[]
- Main article: Recon by Fire/Transcript
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The mission's name is a reference to reconnaissance by fire, a military tactic which seeks to determine enemy positions by using probing attacks against them, trying to draw the enemy into returning fire and exposing their concealed position.
- During the initial section of the level, the enemy snipers are modeled identically to the All Ghillied Up skin for the operator Grinch, from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
- Despite using a bolt-action rifle, Price handles his sniper rifle to fire semi-automatically.
- If the doors are opened while the player uses the snakecam, they will not get out of the snakecam's feed and the NPC cannot proceed into the building.
- Several vehicles can be seen with license plates featuring 2003 or 2009, those numbers are references to the release years of Call of Duty and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 respectively.
- Two different stories are said by Laswell and Price while describing an operation, depending on the dialogue options the player chooses. In one scenario, Price claims that he dressed someone up in a gorilla suit to distract a high-value target before they slipped on ice, forcing Laswell to grab him immediately. In the other story, Laswell claims that Price displayed a cardboard cow in front of the target's vehicle before detaining him.
- Before that conversation, Gaz asks how Price and Laswell met. Both answered that they met in a football/soccer match then recruited for an operation.
- Should the player choose to go loud and clear the area at the beginning of the mission, Price will comment on how Gaz has come "a long way from [his] day in the Police force", referencing the Piccadilly Circus attack in 2019.
- The "low crawl" sections in the mission are callbacks to the All Ghillied Up mission in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, with Price repeating some quotes said by MacMillan from those levels.
- The clothing that the Las Almas Cartel wears in this mission are the same clothes AQ wears in some missions like Countdown. Additionally, two solders in the cartel are the same found in Al Qatala
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