Flight

The Flight is a new political thriller by former Los Angeles Times prize-winning journalist Sergei Loiko, author of the bestselling Airport. The novel is based on a dark tragedy of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the downing of the Malaysian passenger liner with 298 people on board over eastern Ukraine in the summer of 2014. The main character Sergei Alyokhin is a former corrupt Russian cop, who quietly lives under a false identity in L.A.'s Marina del Ray, on a $2 million-dollar boat. Meanwhile his family - beloved wife Lena and two young daughters - live in a lavish apartment in London's Hampstead, also under different identities. He hasn't seen them for three long years since he busted the cargo transport of a most powerful mafia syndicate in Russia and fled with its $62 million. In his late years of a senior police officer career, Alyokhin got entangled in the syndicate's criminal activities such as prostitution, gambling, drug trafficking, and money laundering. Threatened by the FSB (the Kremlin formidable special security service, the dreaded KGB successor) operatives and investigators, the syndicate decided to relocate its multi-million-dollar cash box to the neighboring Estonia. The only survivor of a sudden dramatic shoot-out that leaves several syndicate men dead, including the powerful and ruthless mafia don's only son, Alyokhin flees the country. He resolves to never return to Russia where the soil burned under his feet as the mafia's aggrieved boss, nicknamed Booker for his passion for reading fiction, swore to find the fugitive wherever he might be, get the syndicate's money back, and avenge his son's death. In a deadly race across countries and continents Alyokhin always managed to stay a step ahead of the killers' pursuit. Until, that is, he settled down in LA where he believed his trace got cold. He arranged for his wife and daughters to finally reunite with him at a luxurious island resort in Thailand. They board the doomed plane and perish with the other 295 passengers and crew. Determined to find out who killed his family and why, Alyokhin, a former homicide investigator aka Bulldog, returns to Russia. To get to the crash site, he volunteers to join the ranks of pro-Russian gunmen organized, funded and armed by Moscow in eastern Ukraine where Russia leads a bloody war against its neighbor and former Soviet republic. In the process of investigation Alyokhin makes an unlikely pact with an ambitious and fearless U.S. journalist Jane Ashley. They help each other to survive, outsmart and shake off those who want to kill them, and uncover the truth. As their investigation takes them to unexpected places and the highest echelons of power in Russia, the reader is kept on edge and intrigued by various plot lines that cross and intertwine in this page-turner of a political thriller.