The inaugural flight of Emirates Airlines new Boeing 797 departs from Kuala Lumpur at midnight bound for Brisbane carrying a select crew and only twenty one passengers, all invited celebrities. Three hours into the flight the passengers are awakened to news that the aircraft has been hijacked. They are debating storming the flight deck when the aircraft crashes into the Timor Sea near a small island. The aircraft breaks up but a few souls survive, a German LPGA star, a Brazilian formula one champion, an Australian tennis star, a retired Japanese diplomat, an Emirates executive, an Irish martial arts star, two American movie stars, an American businessman and a young Malay woman who was one of the flight attendants. They struggle ashore and other than two in desperate need of medical care, the wait for rescue may be like a vacation in paradise until one of the survivors tells them rescuers will not know where to look because the hijacker flew below radar for hundreds of miles and evidence points to the emergency locator transmitters being disabled. Instead of paradise they discover the island is used by ruthless pirates. The survivors have come ashore without so much as a pocket knife to defend themselves from the pirates and an enemy that even the pirates fear, Abu Sayyaf, the terrorist group responsible for the hijacking. When two survivors are murdered, the young Malay names the island Pulau Mati, island of death.