The game begins with Walker, Adams and Lugo aboard a helicopter piloted by Adams, flying over a half-buried Dubai. Other helicopters begin to chase them, which Walker attempts to dispatch with the helicopter's minigun. However, a sudden sandstorm causes the helicopter to crash in the desert.
The story jumps back to the beginning, with Walker, Adams and Lugo traversing the storm wall through to the outskirts of a mostly-buried Dubai on foot. They come in contact with a group of hostile armed survivors speaking in Farsi, referred to as "insurgents", who have captured a squad of 33rd soldiers. Contradicting his orders, Walker elects to follow the insurgents and try to find out what has happened in the city. Throughout most of their journey, the team hears broadcasts on homemade speakers by the Radioman (Jake Busey) a.k.a. Robert Darden, a former journalist turned DJ who was once embedded with the 33rd in Afghanistan and now speaks on their behalf.
As the journey progresses, the squad finds evidence of what had happened in Dubai over the preceding months, indicating that after the failed evacuation, the 33rd returned to Dubai as an occupying force and committed atrocities against the civilian population with the intent of maintaining order. Aggrieved by this, elements of the 33rd staged a coup d’etat against Konrad in protest, forming the exiles. The CIA has been organizing the insurgents to attack both Konrad’s loyalist 33rd and the exiles for unknown reasons. Although there is now clear evidence against Konrad's virtue, Konrad once saved Walker's life in Kabul during the war, which inclines him to trust Konrad.
The team attempts to peacefully intervene when they come across refugees being rounded up by loyalist 33rd soldiers. However, the soldiers mistake them for CIA operatives and begin a firefight, resulting in the team having to kill fellow American soldiers, much to their dismay. As the 33rd retreats with a number of civilian prisoners, Walker insists on investigating further in hopes of evacuating survivors and finding Konrad. The team learns that a CIA agent, Daniels, has been captured by the 33rd and is being interrogated. Arriving to rescue Daniels, they are ambushed by the 33rd and discover that Daniels is dead and that it was a trap set for Gould, another CIA agent. Gould arrives with a band of insurgents, allowing the team to escape. Gould is captured and killed, but the team learns that they may get more information at a location called the Gate. Arriving at the Gate, which is heavily guarded by the 33rd, the team, disregarding Lugo's objections, uses a mortar loaded with white phosphorus to attack the 33rd. After the fire clears, the team learns to their horror that the 33rd were only providing shelter for civilians for their own safety in the coming battles, all forty-seven of whom have been killed by the white phosphorus rounds. Walker vows revenge on the 33rd, claiming that the 33rd had forced him to fire the phosphorus. For more details, please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spec_Ops:_The_Line
