Background. I have already discussed my purpose for writing this novel, and publishing it with white-hot urgency in June 2014, barely three months after the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370. On this page, I will discuss the operative premise of the novel. I have learned that spoilers do not necessarily spoil the reading enjoyment of someone who understands the importance of a novel, so I will hold back on nothing.

Three-Lemma Theory. A dilemma is a problem with two possible paths to choose toward the resolution of a problem; reminiscent of Robert Frost's famous, poetic Road Not Taken. In this case, we have a Tri-Lemma, or three-way problem. We must choose from one of three categories of explanations for the disappearance of Flight MH370: (1) accident; (2) sabotage including pilot suicide; (3) hijack for a purpose. Since the talking heads on media since March 2014 have preferred to talk about the less imaginatively challenging lemmas #1 and #2, I began to wonder about #3. More to the point, I grew urgently concerned at the prospect that if we were not hearing about a terrorist hijack, maybe that lemma would not be sufficiently explored. The consequences of such a failure would be almost unthinkable—but unfortunately nothing is unthinkable in light of the ferocity, hatred, capabilities, and high level covert support of the ongoing terror wars across the western Asian and North African regions, primarily at the hands of Islamic extremists. Shi'a and Sunni alike are locked into a fight to the death with no holds barred, supported by the kind of princely arrogance, human depravity, and sectarian smugness we saw over past centuries among Christian factions engaged in a very similar Human Condition in Europe.

My What-If Thought Experiment. Not to be confused and dismissed with conspiracy theories, my thought experiment is a reasonable extrapolation upon events almost too unreasonable for consideration—except that the unthinkable and unreasonable clearly happened. At this writing (30 July 2015) nobody has an idea any better than this expostulation upon Lemma #3, so it would be a crime not to consider it seriously (or anything better that may come along).

Brief Outline of Plot (Part 1: Hijack). There will be a more detailed timeline elsewhere shortly. Briefly, plane takes off from Kuala Lumpur. Last contact is over the Gulf of Thailand, at which point the plane makes an inexplicable, unplanned left or westward turn. Spoiler: the hijackers want to fly it to Africa, where they will weaponize it and use it as a terrible bomb to destroy the Vatican, or Haifa, or a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. Note: in my scenario, the passengers all die due to purposeful decompression of the cabin, a fate that would take three or four minutes at most as their lungs froze into ice (I know; sorry; dreadful; but we must consider it).

Brief Outline of Plot (Part 2: Refueling in Myanmar). At a point roughly west of Thailand, the aircraft disappears from radars. The common assumption, based on a final ping or two hours later, is that it flew due south and fell into the ocean west of Australia. My assumption is that the plane flew north into the Bay of Bengal and landed somewhere on one of many islands to refuel. It was just fueled for Beijing, not a full load, and could not have made the trip to Africa, except on a full tank. Plane lands (in my fictional scenario) on Ramree Island off Myanmar, or Burma. At that point, while trained ground crew refuel it from a tanker vessel, another crew takes the black boxes on board a plane and flies them south as a deception or diversion. Within an hour, with the bodies dumped, the plane takes off heading due west south of India and the Maldives Islands.

Brief Outline of Plot (Part 3: West to Africa, over 2,500 miles). Of all the published data points I considered, the most plausible seemed to be a report from a fisherman in the Maldives. Along with other villagers including a school teacher, this man claimed, at about the right time, to have seen a plane matching the description of MH370 flying low and very loudly, going due west. (About glib and questionable debunking of these sightings, and of the presence of two possible Iranian state terrorists on board, see my comments here.) I would assume that the first glitch in the terror plan was that they were unable to re-pressurize the interior. That forced them to fly low, as described, and strangely loud. From the evidence now available in July 2015, it appears that the plane went down somewhere between the Maldives and Madagascar. Pieces would have traveled west on the great counter-clockwise main gyre of the Indian Ocean.

Brief Outline of Plot (Part 4: Africa and Beyond). Evidently, assuming any of this thought experiment is true, the terrorists failed in their mission and the plane went down. No matter what happened or didn't happen, the scenario I outlined in Vanished: Flight 777 must be taken very seriously. The less it is considered, the more likely that it will come to pass. That would amount to criminal negligence on the part of those authorities who are responsible for guarding public safety and well-being in the face of more than a half century of ferocious, unscrupulous, fanatical attacks on innocent lives around the world whose only crime is not to agree with savage Islamic cave dwellers.

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