Chapter 1

Six Years Later…

Wednesday, June 16

Karakoram Mountains, Pakistan

6:58 am Greenwich Mean Time, 12:58 pm Local

As brothers they were bound by blood, and as brothers they were sworn to kill.

Alashir was the elder of the two, his name given in honor of a legendary 17th-century Baltistani king who vanquished an entire people and commandeered a vast mountain territory in Northern Pakistan. His younger sibling was called Shahazim, in memory of a proud rebel who had killed sixteen Kashmir separatists during the war of 1947, before being felled by a bullet to the head. Both were tribal heroes whose glory and infamy had grown through the decades, totemic lore that inspired the mountain folk to fill the high valleys with resounding songs of conquest and death. Their discordant wails and melodious chants served as grand yet tragic reminders of victory and darkness for all those who dwelled in the deep shadows of the Karakoram Range, where eternity came swiftly and unexpectedly from all corners.

The two men had been watching the small band of hikers since the first hint of daylight slid over the ridge to the east. Alashir had spotted them first, although he’d actually smelled the thin trickle of smoke that spiraled up from their smoldering fire at first light. The trio of ajanib had spent the night in a makeshift camp beside the river three thousand feet below in the narrow valley; from there it was a trek of five hours up the precipitous trail that had been carved out of the side of the rock wall. If one was swift.

Alashir and Shahazi were swift, but these three trespassers clearly were not. How easy it would be to slash the throats of the two men who walked in the lead, then take the head of the lazy straggler as a prize. They had collected many such trophies in Syria and Iraq during their days with the Salafi jihadists but, now that the ideological climate had changed, they had returned to the land of their birth and were waiting for the political tide to turn. Afghanistan was next.

“Kaffir ko mout,” Alashir proclaimed as he handed the binoculars to his brother. Death to the infidels.

“Khilafat zindah raho,” Shahazi replied with disdain as he spat on the rocky trail. Long live the caliphate.

Monica Cross pressed tightly against a shard of granite that jutted from the edge of the cliff. To her left the craggy wall seemed to rise forever into the deep blue umbra; on the right it seemed to drop forever to the dark valley floor below. She dared not look.

The trail was hardly more than a yard or two wide. Every tentative step along the crumbling moraine taunted her with the threat of death, and reminded her just how uncertain life truly was. The mountain peaks seemed to stretch forever into the heavens, up where the gods must live. Earlier that morning, when she had stood at the bottom of this valley and glanced upward toward the lightening sky, she thought they might never make it to the top.

Monica was already drained from this morning’s hike. After a tasteless breakfast of trail mix and reconstituted citrus drink, she and her companions had set out on foot again for another long trek. Smug and imperious, the two men quickly outpaced her with speed and indifference borne of cultural misogyny. Good, she’d thought: the less contact I have with either of them, the better.

She was mostly thinking—fuming—about Branson Dahl, the travel writer who had a reputation as a conceited and arrogant womanizer. Monica had met him just once before this trip, two weeks ago when they were introduced at the offices of Earth Illustrated magazine in New York. Within ten minutes he had shamelessly revealed himself as an intolerable narcissist with only two apparent interests: himself and anything in a skirt. #MeToo to the max. He’d made it quite clear he was delighted they would be spending a week together in search of the perfect photographs to illustrate his cover story on the majestic beauty of the mighty Baltoro Glacier.

When she had arrived at the Islamabad Serena Hotel four days ago, she had found a handwritten message from him inviting her to dinner. Intrigued by the prospect of tasting some of the local cuisine, she was dismayed to find the schmuck had ordered braised Turkish lamb cutlets to be served in his room, along with a bottle of Dom Perignon and eleven roses. Even more appalling was how the king-sized bed had been turned down and a single rose—the last of the dozen—was set on what she presumed was to be her pillow.

“I trimmed my beard for later,” he’d explained in a soft, confident voice as he popped the cork on the champagne. He was the sort of man many women would find attractive: tall and tan, rugged features, crystal blue eyes—coarse, blond hair, square chin and firm jaw—a Robert Redford type. That night he was wearing a hotel bathrobe loosely—very loosely—cinched around his waist. “The sensation on the skin is to die for.”

That was the end of the evening, at least as far as Monica was concerned. After her hasty retreat to her own room she called down and ordered herself a plate of batata harra—spicy fried potatoes—and a pot of black tea. Then she read an Alafair Burke novel until she was too tired to keep her eyes open.

Now, three full days later, Dahl remained ruffled by Monica’s rejection, and was doing his best to let it show. “You’re going to have to bust some serious ass if you expect to keep up,” he’d taunted her three hours ago as he and Ahmed set off on the trail. “See you at the top.”

By late morning she had covered just three miles of this stark, barren terrain. Her thighs ached and her feet burned. She longed for a shower. She imagined one now as she set one foot in front of the other: hot water flowing from chrome faucets, lathering real shampoo into her hair, drying off with a soft microfiber towel. Other amenities came to mind: food cooked in a real oven, chilled chardonnay in a glass, clean underwear. It all seemed incredibly distant now, and as she trudged up the track her mind raged with the agonizing events of the last six months.

Top of the list was Phillip. He had been her husband, her lover, and her best friend. He’d just turned thirty-six when the car he was driving skidded on a patch of black ice on the New York State Thruway, three days after Christmas. Now he was dead.

Monica tried to suppress the dull throb of pain she feared would linger long after his touch faded from her memory. Her chest tightened and her eyes grew moist, a common symptom that she hardly even noticed anymore. Her world had been cleaved in two by his death, and the waves of numbness continued to wash over her as regularly as the ebb and flow of the tides. She felt like a beach that had been laid bare after a torrential storm, exposed for all to see. And now, as she picked her way up the steep mountain trail in one of the most remote locations on the planet, one hundred and seventy days after his death, she remained awash in the familiar sense of total desolation and loneliness.

His memorial service had almost filled the Unitarian Church on Lexington Avenue, and was defined by fond memories, generous tears, and heartfelt laughter. Monica had held herself together just long enough to make it home to their condo on the Upper West Side, where the silence and emptiness caused the dam to overflow as soon as she closed the door behind her. Her sister Kathleen had dropped by later, but insisted she couldn’t stay the night. Around midnight she found herself alone with amorphic shadows in the corners of her mind and eventually, after all the tears had drained away, she had slipped down the hall and crawled into her own bed. It was twice as large as it had seemed just a week before, and there she had burrowed under the duvet her husband had hated, until she’d dry-sobbed herself to sleep.

She hadn’t wanted to go on this photoshoot, not in the beginning. It would be her first field assignment out of the country since the accident, and she thought it might be too much, too soon. A lingering vulnerability made her feel on edge, and her usual self-confidence seemed on the verge of cracking. But Kathleen had convinced her she needed to break out of her cocoon, while her editor, Arnie Kelso, had patiently eased her anxieties about traveling to a distant land. Reluctantly she had said “yes,” and over the ensuing days her misgivings turned to anticipation. She’d boarded the plane at JFK with a renewed sense of adventure, convinced it was the start of a new chapter in her life.

Now she lowered her weary body onto a rock and massaged her right leg. The muscle was really tightening and she could feel the stiffness working its way up to her knee. She wiggled her toes inside her stiff hiking boots and shrugged her backpack off her shoulders. She looked up, saw the glow from the sun etched on the distant peaks towering above this mountain pass, casting off a deep, gilded glow that gave this range its name: Spine of Gold.

That’s when she heard it: a short squeal ahead of her on the trail, followed by an empty silence. And it was in that silence that she felt the sudden grip of unspeakable fear.

Ahmed was the first to die.

Alashir lunged from behind a crag of rock and drove his eight-inch blade through the guide’s ribs and into his heart. Instinctively the guide’s hands went up to his chest, clutching at life as it gushed from the wound. His mouth opened wide, gasping for one last breath as mortality greeted him forever.

To his credit, Branson Dahl managed to utter the most pitiful of screams before Shahazi’s knife slashed him across the throat, the curved edge slicing deep into the vertebral venous plexus just above his C-2. Somehow, he was still alive when his assailant nudged him over the precipice, waiting until somewhere below a dull thud echoed up the granite wall.

The two brothers embraced each other, comrades in arms who had killed many men in their call for jihad. Then they turned and, without uttering a word, quietly made their way down the trail to confront the straggler who clearly was the weakest of the three.

They covered the distance with such stealth that Monica barely caught a flicker of motion. Alashir came into view first, knife clenched in his fist. Tall and muscular, his frame carried power and a lot of bulk. His skin was dark and leathery, and what she could see of his face was haggard and cruel. She restrained her instinct to run; on this trail she wouldn’t get far.

Then Shahazi came into view behind him, and her fear turned to raw terror.

He, too, carried a knife in his hand, and a sneer on his lips. He raised the blade above his head and charged at her with a ferocious snarl. Acting on sheer instinct, Monica pressed her body against the rock wall and kicked out with both feet, dodging the blade and hitting him squarely in the stomach, hard and unexpected. He uttered a loud grunt and toppled backwards, his hands flailing outward as he released his grip on the knife. He managed to grasp a rock at the edge of the trail, but it came loose and he disappeared over the side in a torrent of screams that faded into the depths below.

Alashir froze as his brother tipped out into nothing. Then his eyes filled with fury and he lunged for her, wrapping his arm around her neck and yanking her off her feet.

In an instant Monica was pinned on her back against the rocky trail, staring into the hardened eyes of her attacker, which were dark and penetrating, projecting a thirst for blood and revenge. A menacing grin crept across his face as he raised his knife, the midday sun glistening off the jagged blade as he held it over her. The grip on her throat tightened, and a wave of panic engulfed her as she felt an overwhelming certainty that she was about to die.

Then the eyes blinked in shock, the darkness in them turning to a look of disgust as he realized he was wasting his time on a mere woman. What was this whore doing here on this trail, in this treacherous corner of the world? Monica sensed the hesitation in his eyes and, without thinking, wrapped her fingers around a stone lying on the ragged path. Gripping it tightly, she brought it down against the side of his skull and heard something crack. Blood gushed from his left ear, but she wasted no time as she shot the heel of her fist into his nose.

Alashir howled in pain and anger as his head jerked backward. Monica flexed her hips and thrust him off her, narrowly escaping the razor-sharp blade as it slashed down and glanced off a chunk of granite. She scurried out of his reach and saw that his nasty grin was back, a deep scowl etched in his eyes as he snarled something under his breath.

Monica couldn’t comprehend what he was saying, nor did she wait for him to finish. She lashed out with her foot and kicked him in the teeth, the sudden impact causing him to lose his grip on the knife. It went skittering across the narrow trail, and she retrieved it just as he clawed his way to his feet. She held it in front of her with two hands and made an awkward slashing motion, trying to look as menacing as she could while not revealing the terror that was gripping the deepest recesses of her mind.

The man growled something else, then lunged at her again. They both hit the ground hard, the impact causing her to let go of the knife as he grabbed her hair. He jerked her head with such force that she thought her neck might break, which clearly was his intention, if he didn’t strangle her first.

But Monica had not done all that yoga and tai-chi over the last few months for nothing. Following Phillip’s death her doctor had suggested she refocus her mental and spiritual energies, leading her to sign up for night classes at a studio on Amsterdam Avenue. She’d almost given up after the first week, but had convinced herself to give it a month. Then another month, and another. Not as useful in a fight as Tae Kwon Do or Aikido, but over time she learned about the spiritual energy of the ching, ch’i, and shen, and how yin and yang reflected perceived opposites in the phenomenal world: light and dark, cold and hot, soft and hard. Good and bad, life or death.

Now, as she lay pinned on the mountain trail, the only mobile part of her body was her left leg. She raised it up around his shoulder and gave it a quick jerk, then twisted her body sideways, rolling to the very edge of the trail. She felt the earth disappear beneath her, and again she was seized by panic. With one hand she clung to a crag of granite; with the other she clawed at the hands that now were trying to choke the life out of her. The grip on her throat was tight, but she was able to slip her fingers around one wrist. She dug her nails in and felt his hold loosen, but she knew it would tighten again if she let go.

Monica summoned all her strength and arched her body, trying to thrust him off her. She managed to wriggle to her right, to the very edge of the trail, when she felt something hard under her back. At first, she thought it was another rock, but then she realized it was the knife. If only she could get a hand on it, she might be able to jab it into his mouth.

Problem was, Monica would have to either let go of his wrist or the rock that was keeping her from tumbling over the edge of the cliff. She took a gamble and released her grip on the granite shard and grabbed wildly for the knife. She snaked a finger around the carved bone handle and pulled it close to her chest. Then, wrapping her fingers around it tightly, she jabbed the tip against the nearest point of flesh that was not her own, and pushed.

It happened to be his left ear, the one she had already hit with the rock. The blade pierced his tympanic membrane, penetrated the vestibule and the cochlea, then slipped into the opening through which the nerve endings were connected to the brain. The external acoustic meatus.

At that point Monica felt his choke hold let go.

At the same time, she felt the weight of her own legs pull her to the edge. Her attacker’s now-limp body lay draped over her arm, his dead weight all that kept her from slipping away. She dropped the knife and grabbed at the ground as her arm began to slide out from under his lifeless form. Her fingers tried to find purchase, but there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to keep her from going over the side. She felt gravity grip her mercilessly, and then she was gone.

The drop seemed like an eternity but actually lasted no more than a second. She landed some twenty feet below the trail on a rocky outcropping, twisting two ribs on impact. An instant later she began to tumble down the steep hillside, bumping and bouncing over boulders that had been deposited there by melting ice eons ago, and supplemented when the trail had been carved out of the cliff.

When she finally hit bottom, she bounced off yet another rock, and a rivulet of blood opened in her scalp. Her left ankle had become twisted on the way down, and several of her fingers seemed to be dislocated from the force of impact. She lay there on her back a moment, looking up at the pale blue sky above, wincing at the agony of her ribs pressing against her lungs.

Monica inhaled several more ragged breaths, then glanced up at where she imagined the trail must be—a hundred yards, maybe two hundred above her? It seemed impossible that she had tumbled this far and survived. A sharp spasm gripped her chest, and she tried shifting her body again, a motion that instantly was followed by another slice of pain.

It was somewhere in between these bouts of torment that she noticed the shards of glass and scraps of metal scattered about. At first, they didn’t strike her as odd or out of place, because the drop and her injuries had momentarily disoriented her. But as she came to terms with the steady throbbing that racked her body, the reality of where she was began to sink in. She was stranded on the side of a mountain in the middle of northern Pakistan, her body awash with pain, not a living soul within miles. She had just killed two men who seemed to have come from out of nowhere and attacked her, and she had no doubt that her traveling companions —Branson Dahl and Ahmed Javid—were dead, as well.

And, scattered around her, were the remains of what seemed to be a long-ago plane crash. Twisted pieces of fuselage, fragments of broken windows, and shredded luggage were strewn across the mountain ridge. To Monica’s right lay the contorted cabin of an airplane, the cockpit crushed by the impact, wings and engines sheared clean off. And, protruding through the open doorway, the remains of a man who—by the look of things—had been dead for a very long time.

She was too tired to scream and, besides, it just wasn’t in her. She felt a little lightheaded and realized she was hyperventilating, confused and on the verge of shock. No one knew where she was, and the trail sure as hell wasn’t a major thoroughfare to anywhere. It was a good path for horses and goats and, obviously, jihadist rebels dressed in smelly camo, if that’s who those bastards were.

She glanced around, thinking the body of her first attacker had to be down here somewhere, hopefully farther down the hillside, and preferably dead. She tried to straighten her legs, but the throbbing in her ankle was almost unbearable—same thing with her ribs—same thing with everything, it seemed. She blinked back the burning pain and checked her body for signs of blood. There was a little, mostly from scrapes and gashes on her arms and legs, and her scalp; but nothing major, no serious artery leakage. Good news: she wasn’t going to bleed out.

The flipside was, she was dead if she didn’t do something soon.

But what? She was a good forty miles from the closest village, a tiny outpost that sold produce and spices and, oddly enough, bootleg copies of American CDs. The nearest hikers were probably days behind her, and moving at a snail’s pace. She’d abandoned her backpack and cameras up on the trail, where one of her assailants now lay dead. Maybe some traveler would stumble across them, wonder what had gone down here and peer over the edge. Maybe they would spot her at the bottom of this rocky cliff, along with the wreckage of a private aircraft.

Damn. What had she stumbled upon?

The sun was directly overhead now, just past noon in northern Pakistan, about fifty miles east of the Afghan border and west of China, with the disputed territories in between. Over the past few months a half-dozen militants had been killed in the area during a spate of infighting, something the consular officer at the U.S. embassy had repeatedly pointed out the day before yesterday when he’d tried to dissuade them from making this trip. Not safe for a woman to travel, a lesson that had been confirmed just a few minutes ago. Not safe for anyone, actually.

“Rebels are crossing through that region every day,” he had warned her. “They will kill you as soon as look at you.”

Monica took a moment to flex her feet. The pain in her ankle was excruciating, but she could move it. She slowly pushed herself up and tried to put weight on it…not much at first; just enough to see if it got any worse. She took a step forward, and when it didn’t collapse, she did it again. Each one of them was agonizing, but she couldn’t just remain where she was. Plus, she was morbidly intrigued by the wreckage and the remnants of the dead body in the doorway. Her years as a photographer flying in and out of wildfires and floods and earthquakes had steeled her against the sight of death and destruction and, while she was facing her own mortality, she was curious about this mangled plane that somehow had ended up on the side of this mountain.

And whoever else might be inside.

She made it halfway to the doorway near the rear of the aircraft when her ankle seized up in a fit of pain. She was wearing her good pair of hiking boots, and she could feel her ankle swelling against the leather uppers. She wiggled her toes, then made a circular motion with her foot to test the flexibility of her ankle. Not good, she thought, possibly broken after all, dammit.

It took her a few more minutes, but she eventually made it to the open hatch. The corpse she had seen from a distance turned out to be no more than a skull with a mandible, a withered torso, and one intact arm. The other arm had either been torn off in the crash or carried off by a hungry carnivore; maybe both.

The body carried the tattered fragments of a men’s dress shirt; faded blue, with a collar that one time had been white. Much of his flesh had been chewed away over the passing years by mountain-dwelling mammals, and both of his eyes had been removed, probably at the pleasure of the same creatures of prey.

It didn’t require a forensic investigator to determine cause of death, given the pair of holes in his forehead, centered just an inch apart.

Whatever had brought the plane down, this man—body, corpse, cadaver, whatever he was—had been shot prior to impact. Twice, in fact. Execution style.

What the hell happened here? Monica wondered. Who was this guy? Where had this plane come from, and what was it doing here in the middle of nowhere?

A flicker of motion to her left caused her to freeze as a shadow slid out of the periphery of her vision. Someone—something—was here with her, just a few yards away. Had her first assailant survived his plunge into the maw of death just as she had, and now was coming to finish her off? Or had she just seen the ghost of one of passengers who had died in the crash? She dared not move, dared not say a word.

Then she heard a bleating sound, and she ventured a slow, careful look to her left. Monica had read Branson Dahl’s article, which explained that wild sheep inhabited the high mountains to the east, while ibex and markhors lived along the steep, craggy cliffs. She released a shallow breath of relief when she saw a mountain goat munching on a tuft of grass at the nose of the wrecked plane, chewing with a calm indifference to her presence. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back with a relaxed sigh, her heart now pumping on overdrive as it poured adrenaline through her veins.

Under different circumstance she might have laughed, but the horror that engulfed her wouldn’t allow it.

When she opened her eyes again nothing had changed. The goat remained where it was, casually grazing on his lunch. It took a step closer, took another bite. Step, bite. Step, bite.

The cadaver in the doorway, however, wasn’t going anywhere.

Taking care not to disturb his repose, Monica edged her way into the gloomy fuselage. She found herself in the back of the plane, where there was yet another body belted into one of the rear seats. Remnants of a floral print dress and lace collar told her this passenger had been a woman and, like the man in the open hatch, she also had received two bullets just above the bridge of her nose.

Monica felt her mouth go dry and pressed back a wave of nausea. She tried not to think who the dead woman might have been—how she had come to be on this plane—and instead turned her attention to the forward part of the cabin. All but one of the windows had fractured upon impact, and a thick film of dust was everywhere. She waited a moment for her eyes to adjust to the subdued light, then glanced around the crumpled fuselage.

There were eight seats, four on either side of a narrow aisle that had been made even narrower by the force of impact. They had been crafted from what appeared to be plush leather that had shredded upon impact, tufts of padding scattered about. Hungry carnivores had definitely been in here, devouring everything that was carbon-based and grabbing the rest to line their nests. Some of the seats had twisted around to face sideways, and Monica found more bodies buckled into three of them.

That made five in all.

She carefully edged her way toward the front of the plane, pausing briefly to inspect each victim as she went. Each one shared the same telltale mark of two holes in the forehead, same placement and spacing as the man in the doorway and the woman she’d found sprawled across the rear seats. Each of them had been murdered while they were strapped into their seats. Except for the one in the doorway, who might have been moving about the cabin when he’d been killed, then maybe dragged to the door by a predator.

In any event, all of them appeared to have been killed prior to the crash.

Monica attempted to stand, but the crushed ceiling prevented her from straightening fully upright. Remaining in her hunched position, she turned her attention to the cockpit, wondering if the same fate had befallen the captain of this ill-fated flight.

There was no forward door on this plane, just a flimsy curtain that could be pulled closed to separate the pilot and first officer from the rest of the passengers. It was hanging from its runner in shreds, the ragged marks of sharp claws telling her all she needed to know. She gingerly pushed it aside and found that the nose of the aircraft had been flattened upon impact, the windscreen exploded into thousands of glass jewels. The instrument panel had been pancaked inward against the twin side-by-side seats, apparently with such force that it would have brought instant death to anyone who might have been sitting there.

But both seats were empty; no pilot, no copilot. Which might offer an explanation of who shot the five passengers of this plane. Or, maybe, who the corpse in the doorway was.

It was then that she noticed a metallic emblem affixed to the bulkhead wall to her left, a simple line of stylish lettering that read:

King Air 350 XER

Monica was no expert on airplanes, but she knew from her travels that a King Air was a turboprop rather than a jet. Which meant that, as nicely appointed as it may have been in the past, this was no high-end private aircraft leased by rock stars and celebrities. They traveled in Lears and Citations, enjoying their champagne wishes and caviar dreams. This plane probably had been on a charter flight and had lost its way, coming down in the mountains of northern Pakistan.

With each of its passengers shot in the head. Double taps.

Acting purely out of professional curiosity, she pulled out her cell phone. The screen had cracked during her tumble down the cliffside, but the camera function seemed to work. The small lens was nowhere near the quality of the professional gear she’d left up on the trail, but it was good enough in a pinch. She snapped a photo of the empty cockpit, then turned back to the main cabin and took another, and then another, and another.

By the time she finished, she’d captured several dozen images of the plane and its deceased occupants. Once again, she wondered how long ago this had happened, what had brought the aircraft down. There were no signs of fire, which was odd unless the plane had run out of fuel. Yes; that fit the storyline that was beginning to form in her head. Someone—the pilot, maybe—had murdered all the passengers, then had bailed out. That would explain why the cabin door was missing. She knew it was near impossible to unlock a hatch at cruising altitude, but what if it had been opened before the cabin had pressurized? Could the aircraft have continued on a pre-set course until the tanks were empty, then come to earth here in the remote mountains of northern Pakistan?

The big question was why? Why had the pilot killed them all, then jumped? The twisted wreckage was not just the aftermath of a tragic crash; it was the scene of five premeditated murders. Who were all these people, and why did they all have to die?

As Monica slipped her phone back inside a pocket of her hiking vest, she noticed a black briefcase that appeared to have been dented from being tossed about the cabin. At first glance she thought it was one of those expensive metallic carry-ons sold at pricey specialty stores. Upon closer examination, however, she realized it was made from—what was that material called? Carbon fiber; that was it. A label affixed between the latches read:

EQUINOX

It seemed to be an equipment case, and its two combination locks were sprung, probably from the force of the crash. Inside were two layers of gray egg-crate padding, on both the top and bottom. Matching compartments for a four-by-six rectangular object had been cut into both halves of the foam, but whatever had been wedged in there now was gone. The protective packing had partially granularized from the elements, and she saw marks where tiny teeth had chewed some of it away. That’s when she found the adhesive label that read, “EMF shielding guaranteed to block up to 99% RF radiation.”

Monica had seen those very words on the vinyl bag in which Branson Dahl had kept his laptop computer. This was back in New York, before the ill-fated night at the hotel in Islamabad and, when she had inquired about it, he’d said—like the smug little shit he was—“you’ve never heard of a Faraday bag?”

Determined not to let his egotism mess with her nerves, she’d Googled the term later. Learned that a Faraday bag was designed to block electromagnetic fields, preventing the penetration of wireless signals or radiation and thus protecting whatever was inside from digital theft. For the average traveler, this meant data on passports and credit cards was safe from hackers and identity thieves. This carbon fiber case, however, was a different matter, and it appeared someone had gone to great lengths to protect whatever had been inside.

Which easily begged any number of questions: Why had all these people been killed, and where was the pilot? What information was on the object that had been housed in this case? What was it doing on this plane, and who brought it on board? And, probably most important of all, where was it now?