While demonstrating the capabilities of the new prototype supercopter codenamed 'Airwolf', Dr. Charles Moffet goes rogue, steals the chopper and kills almost all of the observers. At least one man -- Michael Coldsmith Briggs III survives. Briggs, codenamed 'Archangel' is the head of a covert organization called 'The Firm' and Archangel calls upon the one man in the world he knows that can retrieve the copter. The problem is Stringfellow Hawke is not only a loner, but a recluse as well. The amount of money the Firm is willing to pay for Airwolf's recovery is irrelevant. Hawke wants just one thing - the safe return of his brother, Saint John, who was captured during the Vietnam war and is evidently a POW.

In the midst of it's key part in delivering and collecting a leading American scientist to top secret sanctions aimed at cooling international tensions with Russians, Airwolf develops a seeming computer virus in it's systems, which periodically takes pilot control and makes it a potential killing machine in the air. The systems have been taken over buy a ""time-bomb"" left by the chopper's evil creator, Dr. Moffett, who has programmed it to begin the deadly behaviour if not given it a recognition code by him at that time. Hawke and Dominic must decide whether to let the Firm scientists try and work on the machine - risking having them snatching it back away from them - or to find another way to try and cure The Lady before completing their part in the sanctions, knowing that if they fail to completely cure it, they jeopardise not only international relations, but potentially hundreds of lives...