An army lieutenant who's career was filled with honor and distinction has been reduced to a drunken stuper, who suffers from flash backs from his last campaign where an ambush left his squad helpless behind enemy lines. His squad was nearly wiped out by enemy fire the few who did survive the onslaught were captured for 5 months in a military prison where they were tortured for information. Later released from prison and returned to the U.S. he was discharged from the Army and sent into an early retirement without any choice. John is 37, jobless, alone and spending his military benefits on booze and cable television.
His spiral downward is interrupted by his ex-wife Emily Tate. Their marriage of eight years dissolved when Emily was caught by a family friend of John's having an affair with her coworker Peter Ellison. The two met at work, both being top level military cryptologists became infatuated in her husband's absence. She has come to John's apartment with sensitive information regarding an assassination plot against the president.
Lauren Montgomery is the first female president, nearly six months into her first term she has already made enemies both foreign and domestic. An intelligent and assertive woman takes no resistance when it comes to her national policy. Threats are an everyday part of being president and being the first female to take the highest office invites even more. Most may be from angry chauvinists and fanatical religious circles, but a threat from a North Korean source seems very credible and the attack is imminent.
Emily brings evidence to a disbelieving and very drunk John. Her honorable and courageous ex-husband is the only person she and Peter can trust when the evidence they have that shows the threat of assassination is not in fact from a military group in Korea but instead comes from the highest ranks of the U.S. government.
Senator Walter Everett and three star General James McGrath, old war buddies, who have spent their careers rising the ranks of politcal and military office, now are set on a mission, using the countries own resources and military muscle to stage the first coup in U.S. history. Their radical belief that a country in internal turmoil and significant military threat from several nuclear capable enemies is too much for President Montgomery and that their only choice is to step in by force and save the country from falling to the hands of international terriorist states.
Can Emily and Peter convince Johnathan desptite their history that they must take action to stop the elected madmen from killing the first female president and taking power of the country in the name of patriotism or will Johnathan and those closest to him fail to stop an event that will change the history of the country forever and may even end the U.S. as we know it?
