Plot
Major Wright leads a group of commandos in Nazi-occupied Denmark to meet up with informant Carl Ludwig, who is being followed by a German patrol. Ludwig is shot, and before he succumbs to his wounds, utters the phrase, "vierundzwanzig, zwanzig" (2420), which Major Wright does not understand.
Back in England, Major Wright, Major General Worden, Lieutenant Carol Campbell and a British Lieutenant Colonel meet in London to discuss Germans' plans for developing a Fourth Reich in the Middle East. SS General Kurt Richter has selected loyal and influential Nazis to be transported to Istanbul and plan to travel by train from Munich along the old Orient Express route through neutral Turkey. Major Wright is ordered to recruit twelve men from Forbes Road Military Prison for a suicide mission: prevent the train from reaching its destination and kill Richter's loyalists. They will be riding in Orient Express train car #2420.
Major Wright and Sergeant Holt train a new 'dirty dozen' who must take their first and last parachute training jumps at night due to time constraints. Hoffman is killed when his parachute doesn't open due to sabotage. On their final day of training, Wright reports his belief a traitor in the 'dirty dozen' is feeding information to the Germans. General Worden and the Colonel want to abort the mission, but Major Wright convinces them he'll find the traitor. Figuring the alerted Germans will wait for them at the drop zone, he orders the pilots to drop them in Skopje instead.
In Skopje, Major Wright and Demchuk meet the resistance leader Yelena Voskovic. The dozen and the resistance group successfully destroy a checkpoint to the railroad, but Munoz is killed. In Sofia, the group infiltrates the train at a bridge and searched the train cars for Richter's loyalists. Wilson and Porter are killed, Hamilton and Echevarria are wounded, and Demchuk seizes control of the locomotive. The loyalists are locked in car #2420 and Major Wright decides to hold them as hostages. The Germans attempt to block the train with a tanker car and Demchuck halts the train. D'Agostino is caught placing a grenade on the tanker and killed by Major Wright as a traitor. Wright attaches the tanker to the front of the train and they continue to Dranos, where they encounter a German roadblock.
Major Wright orders everyone but Richter's men to evacuate and the Germans attack the train. In the ensuing battle, Ricketts is mortally wounded and Mitchell and Demchuk are killed as the train plows through the roadblock. The German defenders are killed in the explosion, with Richter and the loyalists in car #2420.
Major Wright and the survivors rendezvous with a British submarine in the Aegean Sea and Yelena returns to Yugoslavia to join Tito's partisans. Major Wright and Sergeant Holt return to the UK with the survivors of the 'dirty dozen': Joseph Stern, Lieutenant Campbell, Joseph Hamilton, Fred Collins and Roberto Echevarria.
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