On the 31st of January 2003, a huge four-engine Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane crashed just short of the poorly developed airstrip in the town of Baucau, Timor-Leste, killing all six crewmembers. The crash was briefly noted by the world press but never made headlines, nor would it have been likely to do so, because accidents like it happen all the time.

Cargo flights into remote and impoverished warzones on behalf of short-lived paper companies form a dangerous but essential underworld of the global aviation industry, bringing crucial supplies and humanitarian aid into some of the most desperate places on earth, while simultaneously supporting a shadow industry of arms trafficking, human smuggling, tax evasion, and other criminal enterprises. These flights crash with alarming regularity, but almost all of these accidents are never properly investigated and very little is known about them — sometimes basic facts such as the number of people killed, their identities, and even whether the crash happened at all are left up for debate.