DEPARTURE

In a race against the clock, an air marshal searches for a brilliant missing engineer who may be a lone wolf terrorist.

On his flight back to Los Angeles from a visit with his goddaughter in Texas, air marshal and sometime investigator Seth Walker saves flight attendant Amelia from a threatening drunk passenger. Before he can even get home, Walker, who narrates in a punchy first person, is buttonholed by FBI Special Agent Melissa Cooke and Tony Tranh of the San Francisco Police Department. The feds have recently been monitoring the movements of Iraq native Anah El-Amin, 26, who fled Saddam’s regime during the first Gulf War and now works as an engineer for the influential company Magnet. Walker rightly asks why make so much fuss about a single engineer. The reason: The vice president is making an unannounced trip and could be a target. El-Amin’s boss, Ajit Singh, seems concerned at first but turns unconvincingly nonchalant when Walker presses him. Intermittent flashbacks describe a second case from five years earlier, with Walker barely escaping with his life. Video helps the team track El-Amin to the San Francisco airport. Emptying the airport could allow him to escape with the crowd, so a methodical search begins, with time running out before the veep’s arrival. Cooke, meanwhile, questions El-Amin’s family, who seems genuinely ignorant of anything unusual in his behavior. An explosion, multiple shootouts, and an unexpected abduction help to answer all questions and lead to a final confrontation with a criminal mastermind.

Reid’s third Walker yarn is a by-the-minute thriller, with roller-coaster action and authentic airport atmosphere.