Plot
Outside a church celebrating an Eastern Orthodox baptism in Pale, Bosnia, the Bosnian Serb Finance Minister, a moderate pushing for peace in the ongoing Yugoslav Wars, is murdered.
At a missile base in Kartaly (Chelyabinsk Oblast), Russia, ten Soviet nuclear warheads that belong to a SS-18 Satan ICBM are loaded onto a train for transport to a dismantling facility. However, Russian Army General Aleksandr Kodoroff, along with a rogue Spetznaz unit, kills the soldiers on board and transfers nine warheads to another train.
Kodoroff then activates the timer on the remaining warhead and sends the transport on a collision course with a passenger train. The 500-kiloton warhead eventually detonates, killing thousands of civilians and delaying an investigation of the incident.
The detonation attracts the attention of the US government. Dr. Julia Kelly, head of the NSC Nuclear Smuggling Group, believes that Chechen are behind the incident.
Former US Army Ranger and Special Forces turned Military Intelligence Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Devoe interrupts her briefing to suggest that the incident was staged to hide the hijacking of the warheads. A call to Devoe's friend and Russian counterpart, FSB Colonel Dimitri Vertikoff, adds reliability to his theory, and he is assigned as Kelly's military liaison.
Kelly and Devoe secure information about the terrorists' hijacking operation through an Austrian trucking company that works as a front for the Russian Mafia. They meet Vertikoff in Vienna and assume identities to visit Shummaker, who organizes the Russian trucking.
After Devoe tortures Shummaker for information, he and Kelly leave the building and get in Vertikoff's car. They are chased by Shumaker's men, who kill Vertikoff while he is offering a bribe. Devoe shoots at the attackers and drives away but finds he and Kelly are being followed. Another chase ensues, followed by a crash, but Devoe and Kelly escape.
Information from the trucking company says that the nukes are going to Iran via Azerbaijan. When US spy satellites place the truck in a traffic jam of refugees in Dagestan, Devoe uses a ruse to identify it. This information is passed on to Russian authorities, hoping to stop the transfer to Iran. The Russian military stops Kodoroff at a roadblock, but he and his men kill the soldiers.
Devoe leads an airborne Special Operations team from a U.S. base in Turkey to stop them. Denied entry into Russian airspace, one of the three Special Ops helicopters is shot down by a Russian missile, but the remaining two manage to locate Kodoroff's truck. Firing missiles which disable Kodoroff's truck, they then engage in a gunfight, killing Kodoroff and securing the warheads. However, interrogation of the group's surviving member, a U.S.-educated Pakistani nuclear scientist, reveals that one warhead had been sent off with an operative before the truck was intercepted.
The information from the trucking company leads IFOR to a Sarajevo address. Inside is a video cassette of Dušan Gavrić, a Bosnian who disclaims allegiance to any particular faction in the Yugoslav Wars, but blames other countries for supplying weapons to all sides in the conflict. Kelly's further analysis of the trucking company documents suggests that Gavrić intends to bomb a meeting at the UN headquarters in NYC. Gavrić arrives in Manhattan with the Bosnian diplomatic delegation, having replaced the murdered Finance Minister.
Gavrić intends to avenge the death of his wife and daughter, who died in Sarajevo during a sniper attack. He and his brother are later found by Devoe and Kelly. When his brother is killed by Devoe, a wounded and enraged Gavrić flees into a parochial school. Devoe and Kelly confront Gavrić, who commits suicide, knowing that the bomb is set to go off in minutes.
With only seconds to spare, Kelly manages to remove part of the bomb's explosive lens shell and stop the primary explosion from establishing critical mass within the plutonium core. The primary explosives detonate, wrecking the church, as Devoe and Kelly dive out of a window. However, Kelly's efforts prevent it from causing a nuclear explosion.
Kelly later is seen swimming laps in a pool. Devoe stops by and asks her out for a drink, which she accepts.
