Controlling

Rob Silvers pretty much has it made. He has a great future in his career as an air traffic controller, and a beautiful girlfriend named Jewels who he is destined to marry. At thirty-nine years of age, however, he, along with eleven thousand other controllers, is fired during the air traffic controller strike of 1981.
He immediately bounces back from this setback, first taking a job as a flight instructor, and later working his way up to the position of captain for a major airline. Mandatory retirement at age sixty looms, however, which is a problem because Rob has spent most of his and Jewels’ retirement savings paying for increasingly complex training to advance his flying career.
Then an old air-traffic-controller friend, who was also fired, makes him a proposition: a one-time flying job that is way outside the bounds of legality, but one that pays well into the six figures. Rob hesitates at first because he knows Jewels would never agree to such a crime.
Rob’s friend then ups the ante by announcing that Rob’s share will be more like several million dollars. Rob’s moral conscience does battle with his practical need to provide for his and his wife’s retirement comfort, and the result is predictable.
He sets off on a path of intrigue and deceit to complete this hijacking, while keeping his activities secret from his wife. But, when Jewels discovers her husband’s criminal activity she threatens to leave him. Rob then faces the prospect of losing the woman he loves.
Due to the increased vigilance as a result of the recent hijackings of 9-11, a massive manhunt is mounted to find and catch the man behind this masterful crime. Interest in this case goes all the way up to the office of the President of the United States.
In the exciting, page-turner conclusion Rob must use all of his wits to stay ahead of the law and, at the same time, win back his wife. And what about the fortune?