Chapter 6

Area Map.

Objective 1--Move into the palace and report any sightings of Al-Afad
The assault on Al-Afad’s stronghold is going to begin with a rather dicey battle inside a courtyard. There’s a guard stationed just beyond the CASEVAC, whom you can take down with bounding movement; if you don’t, he’ll run back into the courtyard and will be another thorn in your side during the ensuing firefight.

There are three elevated Zekes inside the courtyard, but they won’t all be immediately visible when you move your teams in. Fortunately, there are plenty of cover objects within the courtyard, and the snipers won’t be able to maintain cover for very long if you move your teams around, so you should be able to pick them off without too much of a hassle. Just remember to keep the cover between your team and the interior of the courtyard; you don’t want to sidle up to the walls until you get all three of the tangos. After you kill everything, a SITREP spot will appear.

After you move towards the east, you’re going to want to have the team that wasn’t involved in the cutscene to move up and take out the Zeke with a frag grenade. Afterwards, use your primary team to sweep around to the south until an elevated tango opens fire on them, then move the secondary team to the corner to their east, where they should have an open vector on both the elevated Zeke and one of his friends on the ground.

Objective 2--Locate the weapons cache, then report in
You don’t have very far to go to locate the weapons cache, but you will have to eliminate a few guards before you can get to it. One method of heading in will be to set up alpha team on the right side of the doorway heading into the little courtyard; they can take out the Zeke atop the pillar from there. Then, move bravo team into the courtyard and position them so that they are looking northeast around the corner from the pillar; this should trigger a couple of new Zeke appearances. While the northeastern tango is firing away at your bravo team, your alpha team will be able to take out the tango to the southeast; the bravo team will then be able to maneuver around the pillar until they get a clean shot at the other enemy.

One more tango is waiting for you through the northern passage, so duck behind the bench there and eliminate him. A SITREP appears, so use it and get back on track.

Objective 3--Rendezvous with the CASEVAC
There’ll be another tricky firefight to the north of the weapons cache. One of the enemies will be dug in pretty heavily behind cover, so you’ll need to engage him, then send another team to the west and flank him.

As you near the CASEVAC, you’ll come under fire from two distant tangos. They’re far enough away to be fairly inaccurate, and you’re pretty close to resupply, so use full-on suppression fire to get them ducking as you move your teams to the north. There’s some talk about going back and letting the two Rangers here snipe the enemies while you give them cover fire, but it’s not worth the (admittedly small) risk of getting your head blown off while you duck out. Instead, just head to the southwest and proceed on to your new objective.

Objective 4--Capture Al-Afad’s lieutenant
The route from the CASEVAC to Al-Afad’s lieutenant is uneventful and enemy-free, so double-time it to the objective marker. Unfortunately, the lieutenant will have been shot in the back by the time you reach him, and Al-Afad will be off mackin’ in his bulletproof Escalade, so you won’t have an opportunity to capture him. Unfortunately, the lieutenant will be alive, which means that one of your teams will have to carry him all the way back to the palace gates, where you began the level.

Objective 5--Carry the lieutenant to the CASEVAC

Now, if you’re absolutely insane, you can follow Al-Afad’s car along the long western road; there’s a really difficult set of enemy emplacements after the gates that he smashed through that’s very hard to get past without getting killed. The smarter thing to do is to just backtrack, and follow your footsteps allll the way back to where you began the level. It’s a long haul, of course, and there are a few new enemy placements along the way. These have been marked, along with any recommended deviations from the backtracking path, in blue on the map for this level.

Once you reach the CASEVAC, your team will be assigned to track down the crashed airplane that passed over your heads during the mission.