With the USA mired in the Vietnam War, Gene Ryack (Mel Gibson) is a renegade pilot hired by the CIA to risk his life, airlifting supplies under-cover to indigenous forces battling the communists.

Gene is sticking around just long enough to complete a personal gunrunning deal that will let him retire in comfort. However his plans go astray when he is thrown together with new recruit Billy Covington (Robert Downey Jnr); young, rebellious and whose maverick flying has just lost him his job.

Gene and Billy find themselves involved in an international conspiracy where their lives, and hundreds of others, depend upon their triumph in this covert war.