Paul Watkins is an American pilot stationed in the Middle East, who is taken away from his normal duties of protecting the skies to show an actor everything he needs to know about being a pilot in the Air Force. The actor, Tom Slade, is about to start filming an Air Force movie and wants to "get the feeling" for the part. When Watkins takes Slade for a ride in an F-16 fighter, some other American jets are attacked and the pair comes to the rescue. However, it does not go according to the plan.

Retired Lieutenant Commander Quinton McHale spends his days puttering around the Caribbean in the old PT-73 selling homebrew, ice cream, and swimsuit calendars. He's brought out of retirement when his old nemesis turned the second best terrorist in the world, Major Vladikov, takes over the island of San Moreno and starts building a nuclear launch silo on it. With help from his old crew and hindrances from Captain Wallace B. Binghampton, who sank a cruise liner a while back, McHale tries to put Vladikov out of business.