A Russian mole discovers that scientists in the U.S.S.R. have developed a lethal serum that instantly kills anyone exposed to it. He steals a vial of the serum and contacts his friend Archangel for help in escaping the country with his family. Archangel dispatches Hawke and Santini for the rescue effort, but Airwolf can't handle that much passenger weight -- unless all her armaments are stripped leaving the supercopter defenseless.

Hawke meets a mercenary who claims to have information regarding his missing brother. When they part company, Hawke loses consciousness in his helicopter and crashes. When he comes to, he finds himself in a hospital. The medical staff inform him that he has been in a coma for the better part of a year. His friends, Archangel and Dom, were killed on a POW camp raid, but in the process, their heroism helped rescue Hawke's brother Saint John. Believing that his "mission" is over, Hawke reveals the location of Airwolf to his captors, then discovers that it has all been an elaborate ruse and he has inadvertantly turned over the super copter to a group of foreign conspirators.

When a professional group of thieves steal a batch of thermonuclear detonators, which can cause mass destruction if they fall into the wrong hands, Archangel has reason to suspect that the robbery was an inside job, and sends Hawke and Santini to use Airwolf to track down the detonators before they can be used by the criminals. Meanwhile, while Hawke and Dom are busy tracking down the detonators, a man arrives at Santini Air asking Caitlin to give him flying lessons, and soon strikes up a romance with her – but unbeknown to her, he is actually an ex-F.I.R.M. employee who was the inside man on the robbery, and now plans to use her in a trap to get his hands on Airwolf, which he intends to use to fly the detonators out of the country with...

The families of one of String's friends from Vietnam are kidnapped along with Dom and Caitlin by people seeking revenge against those who destroyed their village during the Vietnam conflict.