It begins as a routine trip to South Africa. It ends in a nightmare for 400 passengers taken hostage. The hijacker is a beautiful pawn for an elusive figure-codename Caliph, whose campaign of terror has just begun. And the one man who rescued Flight 070 is the only man who can stop Caliph dead in his tracks.

His name is Major Peter Stride, commanding agent of a crack team of anti-terrorist operatives. He's used to doing battle-and winning. But when his help is sought by the mysterious widow of one of Caliph's victims, and his own daughter is kidnapped, Stride plunges into a darker and more personal war than ever before. A war that will take him across the oceans and continents, closer to a shocking betrayal...and closer still to a madman who has the power to destroy the world and who knows Stride's every move- down to what could be his last one...