The commercial airliner had been flying above the Atlantic for nearly two hours when the captain’s voice suddenly came through the speakers and silenced almost three hundred passengers.

“If there is anyone aboard with fighter-pilot experience, please identify yourself to a member of the cabin crew immediately.”

People exchanged confused, frightened looks.

No one could understand why a passenger jet traveling from New York to Madrid would suddenly need a military pilot.

And absolutely no one suspected that the quiet woman sleeping beside the window in seat 8A might be the only person on the aircraft capable of helping them survive.

The overnight flight had started normally.

The cabin lights had been lowered, passengers were watching movies or trying to sleep, and the dark Atlantic stretched endlessly beneath the aircraft.

In seat 8A sat thirty-eight-year-old Laura Vance.

She wore an ordinary green sweater with a blanket across her legs and a closed book resting in her hands.