Tom is a skilled executive jet pilot working for an obnoxious boss. When threatened with the sack for cancelling a charter when the senior pilot freezes during a near miss, almost killing them all, he resigns and purchases a struggling charter company. Sinking all he has into the venture, he struggles to build the company, while his relationship with his cabin attendant girlfriend is falling apart. When Tom foils an attempt on the life of one of his new customers, saving his crippled plane from an on-board explosion and seemingly unrecoverable loss of control, he becomes the target of the would-be assassin. Recovering from the attempt on his life, he is approached by the CIA to fly a defecting scientist from Iran under the guise of a charter flight. Against his better judgement he accepts the mission and transfers to England for intensive low level flight training at the Mac Loop. Surviving an engine failure and crash, he re-evaluates his commitment to the mission. Deciding to continue with the mission, he flies into Iran. On the flight out, he declares an emergency, and drops below radar height, landing at night on a country road to affect the pick up of the defecting scientist and his family. For the next three hours, he must fly at low level, avoiding searching aircraft. Discovered, and fired upon, his aircraft is badly damaged and crashes in Saudi Arabia. Tom is trapped in the burning wreck, convinced he is about to die. Drifting in and out of semi-consciousness he is aware of the medical team fighting to save his life. Recovering sufficiently to leave hospital, he returns Stateside and begins a long and painful struggle to fully recover and fly again.

Autorentext

Robert Roughton's background is in corporate management with Australian and multinational corporations in the electronics industry. In addition to managing his own software company providing specialized support to corporations including one of the world's largest emergency medical support corporations and several multinational banks he is currently a customer technical support manager with a major multinational consumer electronics corporation.

His academic achievements include a Master of Management, MBA and Master of Arts (Writing)

Robert has a deep interest in flying, and accumulated several million air miles in the course of his career. Being a very frequent customer on several airlines, he has been invited into the cockpit on several occasions, including a memorable sideslip landing at Singapore Changi in severe weather. Yes! The Captain really does say "I have the aircraft" when he takes control from the First Officer at the last moment.

His flight experience at the controls includes light planes and a helicopter, and he has used his observations and knowledge of cockpit and airport procedures, plus the technical aspects and flight characteristics of the various aircraft in Natanz to ensure the in-flight action is true to life.

He has been on aircraft that have suffered an engine out during takeoff, an in-flight engine fire and a wind sheer incident at Dallas Fort Worth, plus dozens of inevitably bumpy sideslip landings and go-arounds at Wellington, New Zealand.

His first book, Natanz combines his interests in aircraft and politics and is particularly relevant to current Middle East politics.

His second book, Love Betrayed explores teenage love, betrayal and suicide.

Robert's latest book Scrivener V3 for Windows is a visual tutorial on the program he uses in all his writings. This book explains how to get the most from Scrivener from first jottings to self publishing in multiple formats on all the popular author platforms. This book will be released alongside the Scrivener V3 Windows release, now anticipated for late 2020.