A joint team of MI6 agents and CIA officers, led by senior agent Noel Bisset, are in Buñol, Spain, during the La Tomatina festival, chasing Russian arms dealer Viktor Gradov. Gradov outsmarts them, and his men kill Bisset’s team and acquire a link to ECHELON, the global surveillance program used by the Anglosphere intelligence alliance Five Eyes.
Meanwhile, Sam Clarke, the UK Prime Minister, receives a state visit from the newly elected United States President Will Derringer, a former action movie star. The two do not get along, and a public argument breaks out in front of the press, after which their respective aides Quincy and Bradshaw convince them to fly to the upcoming NATO summit in Trieste together aboard Air Force One to present a united front to the world.
During the flight, Air Force One is shot down by Gradov’s terrorists. Clarke and Derringer escape using parachutes but are stranded in Belarus and presumed dead by the rest of the world. Realizing that someone in their inner circles has betrayed them to Gradov, the two hitch a ride to Poland with a friendly Belarusian lady and seek shelter with CIA officer Marty Comer in Warsaw. Gradov’s men, led by assassins Sasha and Olga, attack the hideout, and Comer is shot in the head. Clarke and Derringer escape with the help of Bisset, who survived Gradov’s attack in Spain.
Bisset tells Clarke and Derringer that the NATO summit has been derailed due to Gradov’s hacker Hammond breaking in to the Echelon and leaking national security files to the public. Derringer also learns that Clarke and Bisset were in a relationship prior to Clarke running for office. The three embark for the summit in Italy by train, where they are attacked by another of Gradov’s assassins. Hammond, tired of being forced to work for Gradov, kills the assassin but is mortally wounded. He instructs the trio to go to his former office in Zadar, Croatia, to find out who betrayed them. They locate old chat logs that implicate Derringer’s aide Bradshaw. They are again attacked by Gradov’s assassins, and Clarke is seemingly killed in an explosion
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