A virus similar to Ebola & Lassa is discovered in Africa in 1969. 25 years later, it resurfaces - and Col. Sam Daniels of the U.S. Army is sent in to investigate it. When he returns he warns his boss, Brigadier-Gen. Ford, of the lethal nature of the virus and wants to put out an alert. Ford, who had been one of the men who first dealt with the virus, insists the virus is contained and unlikely to show up in the U.S. What neither man knows is that the host - a monkey - has been brought into the U.S. by freighter. Through an under-the-table bribe, a young man gets the monkey out of the animal-testing lab it was bound for. Soon, the man is infected - and Col. Daniels' ex-wife, Dr. Keough - now with the CDC - is called into Boston when the young man is brought to a hospital in critical condition. Dr. Keough discovers that the man has died from the virus, and at the same time - on the other side of the country - a new outbreak is starting in a little California town. A quarantine is set up to stop the virus from spreading, while Ford's boss, the sinister Major-Gen. McClintock, has his own agenda in mind - to harness this lethal bug for use as a bioweapon. With the President about to order a fuel-air bomb to be dropped on the little town to stop the outbreak, Daniels must find a way to unravel McClintock's sinister plan...—Derek O'Cain