Objectives:

1. Secure the bank
2. Investigate the crash site
3. Go to Extraction Zone
x. Avoid Civilian Casualties

Difficulty: Elite

For this mission I chose to split my soldiers in 3 teams of 2:

Team Alpha Team Bravo Team Charlie
2 riflemen 1 Sniper 1 support
1 rifleman 1 rifleman

GR mission have the habit of being full of surprises even if it's not the first time you play the mission. Somehow, bad guys have the ability to sneak behind you or to appear where in your previous attempt ... there was nobody. So, even if you follow this walkthrough, by all means keep your eyes open. As I had to re-play this mission twice in order to get it right in some places I found bad guys where in the first mission I found no resistance.

This is simply my interpretation of this mission. The beauty of GR is that two people would not play the same mission the same way and still complete the mission succesfully, including the bonus objectives, without casualties.

One more note is that I never trust the AI to do my job. I trust the AI to back me up. My general approach to a mission is to move my teams into position manually, by selecting the leaders and walking to an area that has good visibility, with a good cover and that I know the AI can defend, if left to its own means. Simply directing the AI to clean up a building without doing it yourself is asking for trouble.

Step 1: Securing the deployement zone.

The mission begins with the team deployed in an alley to the south of the operation area. You
can see the deployment zone, marked with a red circle in the map below.

Move immediately by positioning your teams so that they can cover as much area as possible. The way I did this is displayed in the map to the left. I positioned one team at the top of the stairs facing the street corner to the right. One other team in the middle facing the wall and the walkway and the last team (the sniper team) all the way to the left so that they could cover the whole length of the street to the east.

2 bad guys will come walking around the street corner to the right and the rightmost team should have no problem taking them out. Make sure you set all your teams on recon so that they don't start shooting right away. The 2 guys walking down the street are far apart from each other and you will see the second one only after a little while that the first one appeared. Try to wait until both of them are visible so that you can take them out with two quick shots.

After this you can start repositioning you teams. Move the sniper team to the east and up the street all the way to the corner and well hidden from the front side of the bank building (make sure that they are well hidden, there's plenty of bad guys at the front door).

Step 2: Clearing the bank building.

Move one of the teams up to the right corner and use a grenade launcher to take out one of the snipers in the upper window of the bank. Make sure you do this by leaning to the right and not by stepping in full view.

Also you don't need to fully see the sniper,
you just need to put a grenade in the
window opening. The grenade will explode
in the room behind him, taking him out.

At this point everyone's attention will
be diverted to the right side of the
building, so the sniper team you sneakily
moved to the left side (you didn't let
the bad guys spot them, right??) is
now free to peek around the corner.
Have the sniper take a good look at
the left top window of the bank building.

The other russian sniper is there and you can easily take him out. Make sure you back the sniper away and to safety before you switch to the other teams. You will have some work to do and this work will require your full attention.

Move one of the teams on the right all the way to the corner of the bus parked on the right of the street, in the area indicated with a green "A" in the map above and make sure to be quick about leaning around that bus and mowing down everyone that is at the entrance of the bank.

You can see from the picture to the right above that the bus offers good cover and good visibility on the bank entrance. You should do it with a Support Specialist if you selected one (as I did) and you have to also be mindful of bad guys that could come up from the street indicated with a blue "B".

At this point it's safe to move the sniper in the open so that he can cover the street and the Bank entrance in case someone else decides to poke out of it as you can see in the picture below.

Once you cleaned the street move the support team to the "B" area.

As you can see in the picture to the right there are two parked cars down that street. You can have the support specialist lie down on the street to cover the corner and the underground parking lot exit (some bad guys could come out from there. As quickly as you can move your free team (sniper is busy covering the bank street and the support team is covering the parking lot street), to the bank entrance.

There are two guys in the bank, both in the upstairs floor. The way I got rid of the first one was to lean around the bank door and plant a grenade on the top walkway on the opposite side of the room, against the wall. You then walk inside (after you make sure that the bad guy is effectively dead) and you put another grenade against the wall to your right (upper walkway again). That clears the bank.

Step 3: Clean the streets to the Embassy.

Now move the team out of the bank and quickly get to the support team postion. Carefully clean the entrance of the parking lot. There's usually one or two guys down there. One of them might be waiting at the entrance or right down by the first column, inside the lot. You can use night vision to help you spot the bad guys but make sure to deactivate it quickly after you are done and you come out from the other side.

After you clean the parking lot, move the team to the other entrance of the underground parking lot.

Step 4: Clean the Embassy.

Move the support team around the street corner outside instead and you will have a good view of the embassy as you can see in the picture below.

In red you can see the areas where most of the guys are located. Make sure to kill them before they get down the stairs. While up top they are sitting ducks but once on the streets it will be harder to hunt them down.

At the same time move your team out
of the parking lot on the other side
indicated with the green "A" in the map
to the right. There are a few bad guys in
the plaza in the open. Make sure to
eliminate them all.Work your support team
close to the embassy entrance
(after you clear the plaza). There should
be 2 bad guys, one on each entrance of the
embassy gardens (red Xs in the map to the left).
I used grenades to take out the closest one
(behind the entrance closest to me) and I quickly
sidestepped (from the outside) and spotted the
second guy against the farther entrance and took
him out too.

Step 5: Getting to the Crash site.

At this point you have to carefully move your teams up to where the helicopter crash site is. You have to be careful about taking out the baddies in the streets but more than anything else you have to be careful about moving the
support team up north and to the right of the map and then make sure you clean the building circled in red in the map below. In order to accomplish this you have to:

1 - move the team following the red path.
2 - at the end of the path there is a door.
that door leads upstairs.
3 - Carefully work your way on the upstairs floor all the way to a corridor where you will find a T-intersection with bad guys hidden to the left and to the right.
4 - once you clear the upstairs area you can use the windows to do some target practice with the rest of the bad guys in the street.

After you have done all this you can move the other teams along the green and yellow path drawn on the map. Again, be extra careful about the bad guys around here, they are particularly tough and attentive.

Step 6: Run for your life!

At this point all bad guys should be dead and map should be empty but mission is not over yet. You have to go check the wreck and if you do that tons of bad guys will appear out of nowhere. So move 2 teams back to the top of the embassy with the command map and on the double (assault mode and fast).Then after they are almost there, move the last team to the wreck and as soon as the mission objective is accomplished run for your life!

Follow the yellow path back through the alleys and back to the embassy and once you get there make sure that all your team mates are on the Helo pad as in the picture below.

Do not linger as plenty of bad guys and TANKS are coming for ya. If you are a tough guy you can stay and if you have an AT support guy you can have fun trying to kill the tanks. I managed to do it and survive with the whole team except for one guy ... one of the AT guys I brought along.

Mission Complete.