Because they're in the risky business of recovering stolen aircraft, Gabriel Thibodeaux and Josie Blaine are no strangers to violence. When they're hired by Command Consultants, an alleged contractor to the US Government, to bring a Turkish Airlines' Boeing 737 back from Russia, it sounds like a no-brainer. Then they find out that the plane they have to recover is sitting on a Russian Air Force base.

The air base is also a computer center for the Ministry of Defense so the people from Command Consultants arrange for them to gain access to the base by using a cover as computer specialists. Once on the base both Tibby and Josie have to dodge very tight security. Using all of their covert skills they fly the plane out and consider their recovery complete.

They're barely wheels-up when they discover that there is an extra person on board the plane; they've been duped into smuggling out the "assassin chick", a political refugee. The next bombshell is right after they departed the air base several Migs on the base were blown up. The hits just keep on coming when they learn that they've been framed for the act of sabotage that could very well start a war.

They take cover in a safe house that proves to be not very safe. They also learn, the hard way, that Command Consultants was a front for a rogue diplomat's diabolical plot to extort millions from Russian and the US. With their pictures plastered all over European television, Tibby, Josie and the assassin chick have to escape eastern Europe, while eluding the FBI, the Russian Federal Security Service and a Turkish hit squad. The chase through several countries involves trains, planes, boats, furniture vans and a fuel truck that almost kills the assassin chick, whom they need alive. She's their only means of avoiding lifetime incarceration in a Russian prison.