IMF team leader Dan Briggs assembles his team for the first time. The mission: to recover two nuclear warheads belonging to General Rio Dominguez from a hotel vault in Santa Costa. Jim and Willy sneak safecracker Terry Targo into the vault, who figures out how to get out. The team then captures Dominguez but Targo's fingers are broken in the attempt. With no other alternative, Briggs has himself and Dominguez put into the vault, and Briggs threatens to enter a random combination if Alicio doesn't tell him the code. Dominguez breaks. With the bombs defused, Willy takes the warheads out of the vault. Briggs remains behind and uses the information Targo gathered earlier to get out during a fireworks distraction set off by Barney. Briggs and the rest of the team make a desperate race for safety and get onto a plane heading to safety seconds before the military can catch up to them.

The IMF team goes in as a circus team to rescue Anton Cardinal Vossek, who is being held in the impregnable Seravno Prison. Vossek is the leader of the country's freedom movement, in rebellion against Colonel Scutari, and is awaiting a fake trial before execution. With the aid of circus acrobat Crystal Walker, the team must get Vossek out. To do so, Rollin fakes being a pickpocket so as to be arrested. Once inside Servano, he has to sneak through the prison and get Vossek out of his cell as a test run for the next day...only for the guards to interrupt at an inopportune moment.

Rollin manages to avoid the guards and escape, but Vossek is moved to a new cell in solitary confinement. Briggs comes up with a new plan and manages to relay it to the imprisoned Rollin. They manage to do so, and manage to rescue Vossek from the prison. With Barney providing distraction as a clown, the team manages to get Vossek over the border before Vossek's captors can catch up to them.

Prince Iben Kostas plans to use his money to finance a war. Infiltrating his casino, the IMF team goes to work: IMFer Andre (pretending to be Cinammon's husband) breaks the bank at roulette thanks to a not-so-portable computer worn by Willie underneath his tux. Andre then loses the money to Rollin as another gambler. Kostas tries to get the money back by playing against Rollin and cheating by using marked cards and tinted contact lens. However, Rollin has a similar pair of lens and also deals bad hands to Kostas. Finally Kostas antes up the 1.5 million in war funds, thinking he can't lose. Rollins tricks him, and the team must make a desperate escape.

Mobster Frank Egan kidnaps the daughter of Dan's friend and uses her as a hostage to force Dan and the team to break out a key witness, Augie Gorman, against him. After several failed ploys, Barney manages to contaminate Gorman's water supply inside the hotel safehouse where the police are keeping him. The team has taken over the hospital room and use a rotating examination table to switch Gorman for IMF member Steve (who resembles him). At the exchange, Egan tries to double-cross Dan, but the IMF team leader has a trick or two of his own to make sure things go smoothly and Gorman gets what's coming to him.

Rollin and Cinnamon go it alone to recover a reel of recording wire containing information on a chemical warfare project aimed at the U.S. The courier carrying it was killed by the enemy, and the wire is missing. The two fake a lovers' reunion and then Rollin slips out during a pre-recorded conversation. To duplicate the circumstances of the courier's demise as closely as possible, Rollin lets himself be discovered and then chased along the same route. He finds the wire, hidden in plain sight as part of a fence. He and Cinnamon plan to recover and smuggle out the wire the same way, but it is taken by a young boy looking for fishing wire. Rollin manages to recover it, and they send the wire out disguised as the wire on a balloon.

The IMF must get hold of a horde of Nazi gold through four young men, sons of Hitler's top aides, who are sent to Switzerland to meet for the first time and pool their parts of the ""puzzle"" together. One of the men, the only one known to them, is replaced by Rollin. Each has part of an account number, and the team needs to hypnotize and trick the bank manager into giving them the complete account # and then slip it to Rollin. The bank account contains an envelope with a microdot, which when combined with a slide in each man's pocket watch provides the location of the treasure. After seeing the other men's slides, Rollin fakes the loss of his watch, then he and the rest of the team head to the cemetary. Two of the men figure out the puzzle from their pieces and follow. In a gunfight Dan is wounded, but one of the men is killed and the other runs off rather then face Rollin's wrath. The gold turns out to have been made into a crypt, and is recovered.

Dr. Cherlotov, a scientist of an enemy power, failed to defect to the West when his wife did. Now that he has developed a cheap, effective anti-ballistic system, the IMF are ordered to get him out. Unfortunately, they find out that Cherlotov doesn't wasn't to defect: he merely wants to convince his superiors he is loyal and live out his life. The IMF smuggle in his wife Karen. Meanwhile, Rollin convinces Cherlotov's watcher and the security commissioner, Jankowski, to put Cherlotov under jail for suspicion. When Cherlotov realizes what his country does to other dissidents he agrees to defect, but Jankowski sees through Rollin's cover and tries to arrest them all.

Gangster Jack Wellman is moving syndicated crime into politics, killing off certain politicians and replacing them with men more sympathetic to the Syndicate. The team goes in as caterers. Cinnamon sneaks into Wellman's room, blows a hole in the wall, and inserts a fake safe. Meanwhile, Barney and Willy break into the real vault from the rear and steal the 4 million in profits that Wellman has tucked away, and which he is to split with his fellow mobsters at a dinner that night. They open the real vault and discover the money missing. Going upstairs, they find Cinnamon who claims to be Wellman's girlfriend, tells him she knew ""it"" wouldn't work, and reveals the fake safe. As Cinnamon and the rest of the team depart, the other mobsters tell Wellman to open the safe or they'll kill him, and don't believe his desperate pleas that he's never seen that safe before in his life.

Josef Varsh plans to put an American on trial on false charges, discredit the West, and gain power. Rollin, disguised as Dan, meets with a woman who sold out her boyfriend/Western spy. Meanwhile, Briggs himself is with the Deputy Minister, a rival of Varsh's and a reformer. Rollin-as-Briggs leaves behind evidence implicating himself, and Varsh has the real Briggs arrested. Kudnov, who knows Dan is innocent, insists that Varsh let Briggs go, so Varsh orders him killed. The IMF team makes the Deputy Minister vanish - now they have to get the Deputy Minister and the girlfriend into court to testify and make Varsh look foolish.

Henrik Durvard has taken over the country of Lombounda by military coup, and holds the natives in terror. He has obtained a diamond from the native miners, and the IMF are assigned to take it away from him. In London to auction the diamond, Durvard is approached by the team who offer to top all bids if they get exclusive rights to diamond production in Lombounda. Since Lombounda is not known for its diamond production, Durvard is suspicious. Eventually the team lets him figure out that they have a plan to use his country as a blind to distribute artificial diamonds that they claim they can manufacture. Durvard insists on being part of the scam, and forces the team to ""make"" a diamond from him using a piece off of the original stone. They do so, but when it comes time to fake the real diamond, the machine apparently overloads from the strain. The team slips the diamond out of the machine and leaves, as Durvard and the machine blow up.

An imprisoned member of the Nazi party, Herbert Raynor, is released from prison and is being flown (along with his daughter) to Puerto Huberra in South America, along with other Nazis. All of them are being flown there by an unknown benefactor. Briggs and Cinnamon take the Raynors' place.They and the others are introduced to Martin Bormann, now a bedridden invalid. Borman's secretary, Rudd, informs them that Bormann will lead the Third Reich to new glories. Dan ducks a murder attempt, breaks into Bormann's room, and finds that he is a mannequin with a voice provided by Rudd. Rudd has recorded tapes duplicating Bormann's voice, and the last tape will turn leadership of the party over to him. To stymie Rudd, Rollin dresses up as Bormann and is suddenly not so bedridden. Of course, Rudd knows Rollin is an imposter but can't reveal it without exposing his own ploy. "Bormann" gives orders that eliminate Rudd once and for all and end the threat posed by the Nazis.

A former prison guard, Sefra, has got hold of a supply of cesium 138, which explodes at temperatures above 70 degrees. Sefra plans to sell the sample and the formula from the closed-down prison base where he once worked. Rollin and Barney go in as a photographer and model respectively, and Sefra ""learns"" that Barney is a former prisoner returning for revenge. The team fakes a generator break down while Sefra beats Barney, and the cesium starts to heat up. Sefra has it taken to a nearby hospital refrigerator, where the IMF makes the switch. When Sefra discovers the missing jar, he forces Barney to show him the escape route which he supposedly used to escape. As Sefra makes his own escape, the IMF send the cesium sample toward him on a remote-controlled mini-tank, and it blows up, killing Sefra and making sure no one gets the formula or the sample.

Prime Minister Larya of Svardia is working to establish democracy, but is unaware that his personal protege, Deputy Premier Pavel, plans to set up a dictatorship. The team must persuade Larya of Pavel's plans. The IMF fakes a train ride for Larya, Pavel, and Pavel's aide Androv. They then fake a crash, put Androv and Pavel in a fake hospital, and tell them that Larya is dead. They immediately begin plans to eliminate anymemory of Larya and start arresting dissidents. Then the hospital wall slides away to reveal that Larya has heard the whole thing, and dismisses them both.

Enemy operative Kiri has kidnapped U.S. envoy Carl Wilson and has an imposter, Gort, who is impersonating him to discredit a U.S. trade agreement. The team have to rescue Wilson and foil the impersonation before Kiri kills Wilson. Cinnamon impersonates Wilson's niece while Willy kidnaps Gort and Briggs-as-Wilson takes Gort's place, pretending to be Gort. The team put Gort in an asylum and give him electro-shock to scramble his memories, then claim he is is a delusional accountant. Under the threat of more electro-shock, Gort tells them the full details of his delusion: that he's to kill an American official and leave Wilson to take the blame. Barney and Willy replace the unconscious Wilson at the reception with a drugged Gort set to look like a suicide, then Briggs-as-Gort-as-Wilson takes a shot at the official. Briggs returns and reveals that "Wilson" is actually Gort, who was in Keri's employ.

An American intelligence officer, Hughes, has defected to the enemy with the only copy of an encoded top-secret message. The IMF must get to him, get him out, discredit him, and recover the message before the enemy can get a cryptographer, Belson, to work on the message. Rollin takes Belson's place, and sets it up so that Ambassador Brazneck, in charge of Hughes, believes that Dan is going to buy the papers from someone in the embassy. Rollin-as-Belson works with Hughes to decode the message, then drugs him. Willy gets special agent Tina Mera, a contortionist and acrobat, into the embassy through a fake air duct. She uses a fake bed covering to make Hughes ""disappear"", then break into the vault and get the real message. With Hughes out, Briggs picks up the fake message from someone pretending to be Hughes, who has ""disappeared"" from the embassy. Tina returns, plants money on Hughes, and removes the fake disappearing bed cover. Brazneck believes Hughes has betrayed him and Hughes flees