Operation Swordbreaker

"Yo, does anyone else really don't get what the fuck were doin' here? I'm just saying bro. We suppose to be in Iran, not Iraq."

- David Montes

Operation Swordbreaker is the second mission of Battlefield 3's single-player campaign. In the mission, United States Marines undertake "pacification" operations in the Iran-Iraq region and attempt to restore stability to the region.

Arrival of the 1st Reconnaisance Battalion
Henry Blackburn, David Montes, and the rest of their squad are travelling in an LAV-25, and, over the radio, are ordered to dismount and locate a squad known to be searching for IEDs. Montes remarks on the state of the area, how "this part of the world get's fucked up all of the time", to which a squad-mate replies that he doesn't know. Blackburn and the squad follow Matkovic into a road-side bazaar, meeting up with Cole, their commander, who is standing beside a map of the area. He gives the squad orders to locate a missing unit that had been investigating a possible IED in the city, telling them to find the squad before the PLR.

Finding the Missing Squad
After their briefing, Blackburn's squad exits the bazaar, entering a garage. Matkovic kicks open a back door and the squad sprints down an alleyway, regrouping at a door at the end of the alleyway. Another Marine then kicks open that door, before the squad enters the building, with one Marine asking "What is this? A school?", to which another replies "Oh, that's right, they don't have schools where you come from."

The Marines then climb up a flight of stairs towards the exit, but a low rumble cuts them off, and the windows start to break. One Marine assumes that other Marines in the area were blowing up high-explosive ammo dumps, but another Marine corrects him, saying that the city 90 kilometres away from a fault line that causes regular tremors.

Blackburn's squad then rallies in an alleyway, closed off by a gateway. The squad takes cover as a PLR technical surges past, not noticing the squad. The unit then crosses a large street, with Blackburn and Matkovic taking a doorway through into a garage. Proceeding towards a car park for a large hotel, the squad are unnerved by the lack of civilians in the area.

Ambush in the Car Park
As Blackburn walks into the car park, a hidden enemy sniper shoots Chaffin, one of the Marines in Blackburn's squad. Blackburn then drags Chaffin to safety, and returns to the firefight, helping his fellow Marines by shooting the hostiles hiding behind the cars. After the PLR insurgents retreat, the squad regroups in the car park, but an RPG strikes a white car, with the explosion throwing Blackburn off of his feet.

Blackburn's squad then advances forward, taking out two RPG gunners in a building overlooking the parking lot, as well as PLR insurgents in the area. Once the PLR again retreat, Blackburn and his squad then go back into the garage, where a medic, Doc. Martin was trying to revive Chaffin. The squad, seeing that everything was fine, move into the building adjacent to the garage, but as they reach the top floor are attacked by the sniper, and are forced to sprint past several windows. Montes then sees three PLR soldiers enter the room from a stairwell, and Blackburn helps him gun down the insurgents.

Taking out The Sniper
After the Marines fight off an ambush inside the building, Blackburn follows the squad onto a rooftop cluttered with generators and air-conditioning units. Being cautious, the squad moves behind the machinery towards an open area of the rooftop, with Blackburn staying behind the machines, otherwise the sniper would fatally shoot him. The squad arrives at the final generator, and go prone, hiding behind a wall and moving into firing positions. Matkovic notes that he could use his AT4 rocket launcher, as the sniper was dug into a spider hole in the front of a hotel.

Giving Blackburn the AT4, the squad, on the count of three, two, one, gives Blackburn suppressing fire, pinning down the sniper while Black takes the shot, which rips apart the facade of the hotel. The explosion causes one Marine to remark "Good effect on target" in response. The squad then moves towards the other side of the roof top, where Blackburn, as the squad's designated marksman, and armed with a Mk.11 Sniper, is told to cover a party extracting Chaffin towards the staging area. Multiple PLR insurgents attempt to attack the party, from both street-level and from rooftops, but Blackburn's squad holds them off until the extraction team reaches the school alleyway.

Reaching the missing squad
After eliminating the sniper, the squad is unable to make it's way down through the building they were on, as the PLR were pushing in on them. Using a wooden plank, Matkovic and Campo cross to another rooftop, with Blackburn following. Montes crosses last, and kicks the plank off of the roof, blocking pursuit. The squad then makes its way down via the rooftops, and arrives at a large building beside the hotel.

Entering the building, the squad engages a group of PLR soldiers in the hallway, and find two members of the missing patrol. Confirming both as dead, the squad crosses out onto an open road, where they see a blackened HMMWV and the rest of the patrol, also dead except for one, who is wounded. Heavily exposed, the Marines once again get agitated by their position and the attention of the crowd.

Defusing the IED
As the squad continues to check on the members of the patrol, Matkovic notices a red wire leading from under a van into a building by the side of the street. Tasked with tracing the wire, Black crawls through a ventilation shaft and arrives in a basement, where he finds a detonator. Pulling a wire out of the detonator box, Black is set upon by an insurgent. Fighting in hand-to-hand combat, Blackburn knocks the insurgent out cold, and removes the final wire just before the IED explodes, cancelling the detonation.

Support for the Marines
After defusing the IED, and hearing gunfire outside, Blackburn is tasked to regroup with the Marines outside. As he moves outside into the street, Blackburn and his squad are tasked to clearout a bridge of PLR soldiers, while other Marines secure the street-level. Manning an M249, Blackburn is tasked with engaging the PLR as they advance down the street. As he pushes the insurgents back with gunfire, two AH-6 Little Birds arrive and open fire on two PLR Technicals. The Marines then pull back as a unit, and Blackburn's squad holds the flank as the Marines await extraction. Blackburn mans an abandoned Technical, using the KORD machine gun to hold off the PLR flankers.

However, as the Marines gain the upper hand, a huge earthquake rips apart the area, tearing up the road and causing a tall building to collapse towards Black and his squad, crashing into an AH-6 during it's fall. The screen blacks out, ending the level.

Trivia

 * When the player first exits out of the LAV-25, the Marines near the player are still using the pre-alpha M16 models, without the standard carrying handle, gasblock, and front ironsights. The Marines encountered afterwards are using the correct M16 models.
 * In the period between the interrogation cutscene ending and the beginning of the mission, the song "God's Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash can be heard playing, at first as the only sound clip, before being transitioned into a radio track in the LAV-25.
 * In the Fault Line trailers, the M4A1 has an ACOG with a Tactical Light attached to it, and the M240 has an EOTech Holographic Sight on it. This is not the case in the final game; the M240 is switched to a M249 with a ACOG sight and Bipod, and the M4A1 has a Holo sight with no Tactical Flashlight.
 * After the player has defused the bomb and returned to street, it's possible to hear the AH-6 Little Bird pilot saying " I got your position, I got your target, We're inbound hot", It's a possible reference to the movie Black Hawk Down, when Army Ranger Staff Sergeant Eversmann throws a flare in the building at night, and the AH-6 Little Bird operator says "I got your position, I got your target, We're inbound hot."
 * When the player has to take out the .50 sniper, the AT4 Blackburn uses to take it out says RPG instead of AT4. This is presumably because it used the same weapon data as the RPG-7, but the developers neglected to change the name.
 * The enemy sniper fought in the distant mall (where Blackburn needs to use the AT4 against him) is very powerful; he is very accurate, hits a longer distance, and can kill the player with just one shot when compared to the other enemy snipers encountered on Single Player mode. This is probably a developer onsight in order to provide a challenging tutorial of proning in order to avoid damage.
 * The wounded U.S. Marine found in the Humvee can actually be killed by the player without resulting in a Mission Failure, even if it is a Friendly Fire incident. It is probably because the NPC is scripted to disappear after Blackburn defuses the bomb.
 * Peds_on_the_street.jpggely enough, when the player is in the street near the wrecked Humvee, several civilians are seen standing on the middle area. They cannot be killed by the player and they disappear after the bomb had been defused.
 * The sniper that shot Chaffin most likely was not the same one that Blackburn's squad engages later on in the mission. This is due to the fact that a squadmate remarks on how the sniper is firing a .50 BMG round, which easily kills, mutilates and/or blows off body parts with a single shot. This could also be due to the developer overlooking this fact. Also, the player engages the sniper that shot Chaffin, being impossible for the sniper that was killed by Black to engage again.
 * There is a quick-time event involving dragging Chaffin to safety. If you press the wrong button each time a prompt appears, you mysteriously take damage for no reason.
 * This is the only level in BF3 where PLR looks like insurgents, rather than soldiers.
 * The dog near the beginning of the level can't be shot at since the fence in front of it blocks all bullets from coming through.

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