Flight of Black Angel

Plot

Captain Eddie Gordon, a United States Air Force academy graduate, is an aggressive pilot whose intensity in training exercises causes many students to quit and nearly kills one in a head-on collision. His flight instructor, Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Ryan, urges restraint without success. After his birthday party in Las Vegas, Eddie murders his brother and parents as part of a long-planned religiously motivated scheme. The next morning, he forces Captain Melissa Gaiter at gunpoint to arm his IAI Kfir C1 with live ordnance, a radar-jamming pod, and a tactical nuclear weapon.

When she refuses to load the nuke, he kills her and swaps serial numbers with a dummy bomb to trick the crew. Colonel Bill Douglas learns of the triple murder while the exercise is underway. Eddie ignores orders that his plane is considered shot down and kills unarmed students. Matthew tries to persuade Eddie to land, then lures him toward surface-to-air missiles, but Eddie destroys the SAMs, Matthew's plane, and the runway.

Matthew ejects. Eddie lands in Garrison, Utah, hides his jet in a barn, and takes a vacationing family hostage. Nuclear expert Harvey Glatman claims the nuke is safe because disabling the fail-safes would expose Eddie to lethal plutonium, but Matthew argues Eddie does not care about his own life and has 36–48 hours to use the weapon. Eddie works on the nuke, suffers radiation exposure, and his health declines.

He and hostage Valerie Dwyer go to a hardware store; she writes their location on a traveler's check, but the clerk misses it. She then persuades Eddie to visit a drug store for his symptoms and repeats the note, which the pharmacist notices.

Cast

Peter Strauss plays Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Ryan, and William O'Leary plays Captain Eddie Gordon. James O'Sullivan appears as Colonel Bill Douglas, Michele Pawk as Valerie Dwyer, and Michael Keys Hall as Richard Dwyer. K. Callan and Ben Rawnsley portray Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, with Rodney Eastman as Bobby Gordon. Marcus Chong, Jerry Bossard, Patricia Sill, Kim Robillard, James Henriksen, Ed Williams, Michael Gregory, and Scott Menville also appear. Comic book publisher Dennis Mallonee has an uncredited role as the pharmacist, and John D. Brancato, credited under the pseudonym Henry Dominic, has a cameo as a clerk.