Blacklist

by Tom Clancy

Characters

Blacklist again features Sam Fisher (Eric Johnson), a former Third Echelon Splinter Cell who is now the spymaster and commander of the newly installed Fourth Echelon. The game also sees the return of Fisher's old ally, Anna "Grim" Grímsdóttir (Kate Drummond), and new characters such as Isaac Briggs (Dwain Murphy) and Charlie Cole (David Reale). Several supporting characters from Conviction reappear, including Victor Coste (Howard Siegel), Patricia Caldwell (Mimi Kuzyk), and Andriy Kobin (Elias Toufexis), as well as interactive telephone conversations with Sarah Fisher (Victoria Sanchez).

Plot

Two years after Third Echelon is dissolved, Sam Fisher takes up work as a contractor for Paladin 9 Security – a private military corporation run by his friend Victor Coste. While assigned to a USAF base in Guam, terrorists assault the installation, executing its commander and killing hundreds of soldiers, while heavily injuring Coste. A faction known as the Engineers publicly takes responsibility for the attack, announcing it will launch a series of weekly "Blacklist" attacks on the United States until it recalls its troops deployed abroad. U.S. President Caldwell assigns Sam and his colleagues – tech expert Charlie Cole, CIA operative Isaac Briggs, and technical analyst Anna Grímsdóttir – in to the newly formed Fourth Echelon, a new top secret special-ops and counter-terrorism unit which operates out of a converted military cargo plane known as "the Paladin".

Fourth Echelon traces the weapons used in the Guam attack to arms dealer Andriy Kobin, a former target of Sam's operating in Benghazi. Through him, the group trace his buyers to Iraq, whereupon Sam learns that the Engineers' leader is Majid Sadiq (Carlo Rota), a former MI6 agent. Learning a Blacklist attack is targeting Chicago, Sam infiltrates the site of the attack and prevents the release of a biological toxin into the city's water supply. Fourth Echelon traces the supplier to Iran-affiliated mercenary broker Reza Nouri (Sam Kalilieh), whom Sam extracts from Paraguay before a team of Iranian Qods Force commandos can kill him. Nouri willingly supplies information that leads Fourth Echelon to finding evidence linking the Engineers as an Iranian outfit. However, while seeking further evidence to support this, from within the Qods Force headquarters in Tehran, Sam finds the Engineers falsely implicated Iran in the attacks, in order to raise tensions between the Iranians and the United States.

After successfully stopping another attack in Philadelphia, forcing the Engineers to increase their attacks to one per day, Sam and Briggs travel to the Guantanamo Bay detention camps when Fourth Echelon learns that Nouri is feeding false information to the CIA to reignite tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Their interrogation of Nouri reveals that Sadiq sought to distract the US government from an imminent attack on the Gulf Coast's fuel supply. Sam becomes forced to protect the Paladin when Sadiq sends groups out to attack Fourth Echelon, allowing the Engineers to use a hijacked tanker to assault the Sabine Pass LNG terminal. After defending the Paladin and combating the fire at the terminal, Sam learns that the attacks were aimed at forcing the US president to begin continuity-of-government procedures – Sadiq's goal was to steal government data files by arranging for their transfer to a secure bunker under the Denver International Airport, by having COG procedures activated by his attacks.

Against Caldwell's orders, Fourth Echelon infiltrates the bunker as Sadiq's sleeper agents take control of the facility and its personnel, including the Secretary of Defense. Before the Secretary succumbs to torture and yields to requests to transfer the files to Sadiq, Briggs kills him, but is promptly taken hostage along with several others as human shields. Sam, disguised as a hostage, helps Delta Force snipers to take down Sadiq's men, before incapacitating Sadiq after a fight, as he tries to escape using the Paladin. Sadiq boasts that he has already won, claiming that his death will lead the United States into war with nations that supported the Engineers, while his trial for war crimes will lead to the country's secrets being leaked. Sam opts to detain him, with Caldwell publicly concealing Sadiq's imprisonment by announcing his death. In a post-credits scene, while Fourth Echelon continues its operations, a recovered Coste joins Sam, as they prepare to interrogate Sadiq.

Co-op missions

Intertwined with the main plot, the co-op missions begin with Sam and Briggs infiltrating Kashmir. Finding a group of smugglers linked to the Engineers, Sam and Briggs discover intelligence connecting them to the Russian intelligence organization Voron, before they escape during a drone attack.

Following a lead to a friendly missile base in Bangalore, they find the Indian inhabitants dead and Voron agents stealing the warhead from a missile. Securing the missile and learning that the agents are led by a man named Cherski, Sam and Briggs escape as the building is destroyed and Indian authorities arrive. Unaware of Cherski's identity, Sam and Briggs track him to a Voron base in Chittagong and find him living in a nearby apartment. They breach Cherski's panic room and find two people; uncertain which one is Cherski, they begin interrogating both and learn about a secret base in Russia.

Sam and Briggs reach an abandoned naukograd, surviving a drone attack, and find a secure medical facility said to contain an OpSat (satellite uplink device used by Fourth Echelon operatives) with vital Voron information. Instead, the base contains a comatose man. Rescuing the man, Sam and Briggs narrowly escape as the base self-destructs and return the patient to the Paladin. Grim identifies him as Mikhail "Kestrel" Loskov and Kobin confirms his identity, noting that they have a history (detailed in Conviction). When he questions Kobin (who asks if Kestrel's gunshot wound has put him into a coma), Sam notes that no one had told Kobin how Kestrel had been incapacitated.