At dusk on July 17, 1996, on a deserted Long Island beach, a man an a woman engage in adulterous sex in front of a video camera. Suddenly a terrible blast lights up the dark summer sky. TWA Flight 800 has just exploded in midair with 230 souls on board, and the video camera has recorded the last moments of the doomed airliner. Five years later, the government has declared the crash a result of mechanical failure. But John Corey, an ex-NYPD detective who is now a contract agent with the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force, is persuaded by Kate Mayfield, his wife and task force partner, that the case deserves a second look ...