 Lieutenant Colonel Austin Travis leads an unsuccessful Special Forces raid on a Chechen mafia safe house in Italy to recover a stolen Soviet nerve agent, DZ-5, during which one of the commandos is killed, and the nerve agent is found missing, leaving the mission a bust.Three months later, Oceanic Airlines Flight 343, a Boeing 747-200, leaves Athens, Greece, bound for Washington, D.C., with over 400 passengers onboard including U.S.Senator Mavros.