While flying over Indonesia the unthinkable happens, the Qantas 747 flying between Sydney and London is shot down by an Indonesian fighter jet. The plane comes down in the rugged jungle on the island of Sulawasi, but for the survivors, the ordeal is far from over. Reaching the crash site soon after the crash is a unit of Indonesian soldiers, but they're not there to render assistance to the stricken survivors.

Joe Light was one of the passengers on board the plane and was one of the few survivors. He's a city boy, a software engineer who creates computer games and is blessed with many skills. Surviving in one of the most inhospitable jungles on the planet is not one of them. He, along with a fellow survivor are going to have to adapt to their surroundings extraordinarily quickly if they are to survive this ordeal. Furthermore, it so happens that Light holds a vital key to many of the events that take place.

The Indonesian government, controlled by the military, refuse all offers of help from other countries, going as far as to cast doubt over whether the plane even came down on Indonesian soil. They profess no knowledge about how the plane might have come to crash but promise to notify the Australian government if and when the plane is found. Although extremely suspicious, the Australian government have no proof that the Indonesians are hiding anything, and so are powerless to act.

At least, officially.

When intelligence begins to come through, it becomes clear the Indonesians have been lying. Satellite images of the crash site clearly show the wreckage lying on a ridge, not hidden somewhere in the jungle as suggested. NSA reports speak of unusual communications around the time of the crash and suspicious military deployments have started taking place in Indonesia. Finally, the Australian government gets the word that there may be survivors at the crash site and that their lives could be in grave danger.

This is where Sergeant Tom Wilkes and his team of SAS soldiers come into play. Their mission is to drop into the jungle, locate and rescue the survivors, locate and retrieve the plane's black boxes and, if necessary, deal with any opposing force. It's the kind of gloves-off covert operation that Wilkes and his men are specially trained for, and it's the kind of full-on action that thriller readers lick their lips over.

As with all action thrillers the emphasis in on the action and this story moves along decisively with a vast array of spine-tingling moments. From the crash-site itself to the narrow escapes through the jungle of Sulawasi, the planning in Jakarta and the mobilisation of Wilkes' men, the highlights come at regular intervals.

Underneath the more obvious hectic moments in the story lies the more subtle motivation behind why the plane was shot down in the first place. Rollins inserts the revelation of the grander Indonesian plan gradually, slowly allowing the full ramifications of what Wilkes and his men, and for that matter, Australia are up against should their mission fail.

I've always enjoyed thrillers of epic proportions, particularly those that maintain a high level of credibility and this slots straight in as an exciting and fast-paced page turner. At times you feel a bit inundated by the bewildering number of acronyms and abbreviations as the military jargon is bandied about with wanton abandon. But Rollins circumvents this to some degree by supplying a long reference guide at the front of the book which I found myself turning to on a regular basis. Rogue Element is a techno-thriller fan's delight and should serve as a catalyst to track down Rollins' second book, Sword of Allah.