Bernadette Hale

A bomb on board an airliner has an altitude-sensitive trigger. Unless a ransom is paid, it will explode when the plane descends to land.

A cross-country airliner, whose passengers include a nuclear physicist, a rocket expert, and a mathematical genius, is drawn beyond radar range by an unknown, unbreakable force.

Clive Emerson is a young fugitive with a troubled past and a bleak future. When the law catches up with him, he’s taken into custody by U.S. Marshal Preston Booth and begins a long train trip across the American southwest back to prison. Though Booth takes a personal interest in the case when Clive insists upon his innocence, the young man ultimately resigns himself to his sad fate. But little does Clive know that the future waiting for him when the train stops isn’t at all what he expects.