Several years after a bitter retirement from the Air Force, former fighter pilot Colin Pearce has found a second career: flying Gulfstream and Falcon business jets as a daily contractor. Between the constant travel and his extensive single-malt Scotch whiskey collection, he manages to keep the demons of his past where they belong. It’s a lucrative, solitary existence and that’s the way he likes it. But then he takes a phone call while making a connection in the Atlanta airport and his life changes forever.

The call leads Pearce to a dark corner of a nearby hotel bar, where he finds himself across a table from two CIA operations officers, one of whom looks oddly familiar. Over the last year, they’ve been following the activities of a mercenary F-16 unit, which has been conducting bombing raids for hire all over the world. Now, thanks to an informant on the inside, the CIA has solid intelligence on an upcoming strike that could have devastating global consequences. But their informant has gone silent and they want to recruit Pearce to infiltrate the unit and stop the strike.

Pearce accepts the task, more for personal reasons than patriotism. He has lived his life by a single creed: “I’d rather be lucky than good.” And he knows that if he is to survive this time, he’ll have to be very lucky indeed.