Swedish military intelligence officers Carl Hamilton (Peter Stormare) and Åke Stålhandske (Mats Långbacka) are ordered to eliminate a band of Russian smugglers on the Russian tundra. The smugglers possess a nuclear missile, a 1.5 megaton SS-20, "enough to turn Paris, Washington or New York to ashes". What they do not know is that the smugglers they have intercepted were only a decoy, while the real missile was shipped to Libya. Mike Hawkins (Mark Hamill), the film's antagonist, is an American former CIA officer working in Murmansk, who is also looking for the nuclear missile and joins Hamilton's team.