Year: 1988
Runtime: 93 mins
Language: English
Director: William Friedkin
No job is too secret, too tough, or too dirty. The Counter Assault Tactical (C.A.T.) Squad pursues a spy selling plutonium to the Sjambok, a racist South African paramilitary group building a nuclear bomb. The U.S. also hunts Sjambok with the covert spy plane Python Wolf. When a C.A.T. operative is shot down in South Africa, his squad leader launches a daring rescue to bring him home.
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Read the complete plot breakdown of C.A.T. Squad: Python Wolf (1988), including all key story events, major twists, and the ending explained in detail. Discover what really happened—and what it all means.
Bud Raines organizes the purchase of plutonium from a pair of smugglers. The C.A.T. Squad traces the smuggling to South African extremists. Special Agent Nikki Pappas is sent to contact Paul Kiley, one of the key people involved in the smuggling. She gains his trust and becomes his lover over a period of weeks. Her fiancé John Sommers is called in for Air Force Reserve duty. After taking aerial photographs they are targeted by a fighter plane that causes them to crash in the mountains of South Africa. The crew members parachute to safety but the radio operator is shot in the woods by extremists and the rest are imprisoned in a labor camp by Georg Bekker, the man seeking to obtain the plutonium.
Bud, Nikki, and Richard are told that the information about John’s disappearance in South Africa cannot be disclosed because it is part of a secret program known as Python Wolf. Richard breaks into the office of Highsmith, the head of the program, and collects recently shredded documents, which Nikki scans into a computer and reassembles. They show that Lt. Colonel Vincent Trask is calling the shots. Trask insists that there were no survivors of the crash.
Mr. Curtin informs Paul that Nikki is an agent and Paul stabs her to death. Richard and Bud follow Paul to a subway train where he is murdered by one of Mr. Curtin’s men. They pursue the killer and Richard is shot shortly before Bud captures the killer. Bud beats the killer into confessing that he was hired by Curtin, then he tapes Trask proposing destroying the labor camp to cover up the failed mission.
Richard is released from the hospital and confronts Jim about Trask’s plan, tricking him into saying that Trask is leaving that night. Bud and Richard take Trask’s plane and fly to the camp, where they find most of the prisoners already killed. Bud finds John upstairs in a barn beaten but alive.
Bekker attempts to steal plutonium from a nearby reactor in South Africa but Richard, acting as a worker named Mr. Kurtz, activates a meltdown alarm. Becker is unconvinced that there is actually a meltdown and shoots at Richard, who releases hot steam from a pipe into Becker’s face, causing him to fall into a giant transformer connection and die of electrocution.
Last Updated: November 25, 2025 at 11:28
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