Ray Breslin manages an elite team of security specialists trained in the art of breaking people out of the world's most impenetrable prisons. When his most trusted operative, Shu Ren, is kidnapped and disappears inside the most elaborate prison ever built, Ray must track him down with the help of some of his former friends.

When Russian neo-nationalists hijack Air Force One, the world's most secure and extraordinary aircraft, the President is faced with a nearly impossible decision to give in to terrorist demands or sacrifice not only the country's dignity, but the lives of his wife and daughter.

When a kindergarten teacher takes her 16 students hostage and makes a set of demands, it not only rattles the Mumbai police and the city but also sends shockwaves through the country and its leaders as the motive behind the hostage situation is unearthed.

Follows the largest prison uprising in US history, conducting dozens of new interviews with inmates, journalists, and other witnesses.

A family of clowns have a daring rescue plan.

A former police colonel robbed a bank. He believes that this is the only way to prevent the illegal export of gold, which goes through a channel controlled by the mafia.

Masked figures with machine guns march into the secondary school in Karatas, take the pupils hostage, and execute one of them. They make no demands. Silent terror is their modus operandi. Seeing as the army will take two days to arrive due to a snowstorm, maths teacher Tazshi decides to assemble his own assault team: his ex-wife, the gym teacher, the cowardly school principal, an alcoholic night watchman, the village idiot, and an incompetent chief of police.

On September 6, 1970, militant Palestinians hijack a fully occupied Swissair plane. After weeks of negotiations, the Federal Council capitulates, gives in to the terrorists' demands and releases three Palestinians imprisoned in Switzerland.