Lockout

Over the Atlantic in the dark of night, the electronic brain of Pangia Airlines Flight 10 quietly and without warning disconnects all the cockpit controls and reverses course on its own. The crew of the huge Airbus 330 at first senses nothing, the flight displays still showing them on course to New York. But with puzzled passengers reporting stars on the wrong side and growing alarm over the sudden failure of all their radios—not to mention armed fighters pulling alongside to force them to land—the confused pilots discover that Flight 10 is streaking back toward the hyper-volatile Middle East, and there is nothing they can do about it.

An alphabet soup of federal agencies struggle for answers. Messages fly between Washington and Tel Aviv as suspicions grow about a plot to spark a nuclear war. The presence of a hated former head of state in first class fuels fearful speculation. As time and fuel run low, flying at full throttle toward a hostile border, Capt. Jerry Tollefson and First Officer Dan Horneman have to put their personal animosities aside and risk everything to wrest control from the electronic ghost holding them—and perhaps the world—on a course to certain disaster. And in the war room in Tel Aviv, the interim Prime Minister of Israel grapples with a horrifying choice between three hundred airborne lives and the probability of millions more casualties . . .