J.K. KELLY

At the airport in Amsterdam, Chris Boone, a retired Marine and covert operator for the CIA, takes a moment between connecting flights to admire fresh tulips on a flower stand. There, an elderly French woman suggests that his girlfriend or wife will love them. “Long gone.” Perhaps your mother? “Gone, too.” Frustrated, the woman suggests a sister. He laughs. “She’d just ask what I’d done now…” 

Eight people wait in line for a ride on a restored B-17 at an airshow in Palm Springs. Once in the air, as the pilot, Pat Monaghan, makes an announcement, one of the tourists, Mark Childress, brushes past the people standing in the waist gunner positions and quickly moves to the cockpit. There, Pat sees the barrel of a pistol pressed hard against the co-pilot’s neck. Minutes later, the plane lands at an abandoned airstrip in the desert. The crew and passengers are moved to a passenger van, made to surrender their phones, and told to drive back to Palm Springs without contacting anyone, or the co-pilot’s wife cutting the grass, and another passenger’s father out walking the dog will be shot dead.

Posing as passengers, an experienced pilot and co-pilot remained on board the B-17, and once the gunmen are back on board, the plane takes off. Under darkness, the B-17 lands at another deserted airfield and taxis into an abandoned airplane hangar. German-born Diane Fleming stands beside a weeping ninety-year-old man in a wheelchair, a duffel bag full of cash at her feet...