Area 7

PROLOGUE

It had been his last request.

To watch the inauguration ceremony on television.

Sure, it had delayed the trip to Terre Haute by an hour, but then — so the powers-that-be at Leavenworth had reckoned — if the condemned man's last request was reasonable, who were they to refuse him?

The television threw a flickering strobelike glow onto the concrete walls of the holding cell. Tinny voices came from its speakers:

"…do solemnly swear…"

"…do solemnly swear…"

"…that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States…"

"…that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States…"

The condemned prisoner watched the television intently.

And then — despite the fact that he had less than two hours to live — a smile began to spread across his face.

The number on his prison shirt read: "T-77."

He was an older man, fifty-nine, with a round, weather beaten face and slicked-down black hair. Despite his age, he was a big man, powerfully built — with a bull neck and broad shoulders. His eyes were a bottomless unreadable black and they glistened with intelligence. He'd been born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and when he spoke, his accent was strong.

Until recently, he had been a resident of T-Wing — that section of Leavenworth devoted to inmates who are not safe among the general prison population.

Two weeks ago, however, he had been moved from T-Wing to Pre-Transit — otherwise known as the Departure Lounge — another special wing where those awaiting execution stayed before they were flown out to Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary in Indiana for execution by lethal injection.

A former civil war fort, Leavenworth is a maximum security federal prison. This means it receives only those offenders who break federal laws — a class of individuals that variously includes violent criminals, foreign spies or terrorists, organized crime bosses, and members of the U.S. armed forces who sell secrets, commit crimes or desert.

It is also perhaps the most brutal penitentiary in America.

But in that peculiar way of prisons the world over, its inhabitants — men who have themselves killed or raped — have, over the years, developed a strange sense of justice.

Serial rapists are themselves violated on a daily basis. Army deserters are beaten regularly, or worse, branded on their foreheads with the letter "D." Foreign spies, such as the four Middle Eastern terrorists convicted of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, have been known to lose body parts.

But by far the most ferocious treatment of all is reserved for one particular class of prisoner: traitors.

It seems that despite all their own crimes, all their own atrocities, the American inmates of Leavenworth — many of them disgraced soldiers — still profess a deep love of their country. Traitors are usually killed within their first three days in the pen.

William Anson Cole, the former CIA analyst who sold information to the Chinese government about an impending Navy SEAL mission to the Xichang Launch Center, the epicentre of China's space operations — information which led to the capture, torture and death of all six SEAL team members — was found dead in his cell two days after he had arrived at the prison. His rectum had been torn from repeated violations with a pool cue and he had been strangled, hog-style, with a bed leg tied across his throat — a crude simulation of the Chinese torture method of strangulation by bamboo pole.

Ostensibly, prisoner T-77 was in Leavenworth for murder — or more precisely, for ordering the murder of two senior Navy officers — a crime which in the U.S. military carried the death sentence. However, the fact that the two Navy officers he'd had killed had been advisers to the Joint Chiefs of Staff elevated his crime to treason. High treason.

That — and his own previous high ranking — had earned him a place in T-Wing.

But even in T-Wing a man isn't entirely safe. T-77 had been beaten several times during his short residency there — on two occasions, so severely that he'd required blood transfusions.

In his former life, his name had been Charles Samson Russell and he had been a three-star Lieutenant General in the United States Air Force. Call-sign: Caesar.

He had a certified IQ of 182, genius level, and as such he had been a brilliant officer. Methodical and razor-sharp, he'd been the ultimate commander, hence his call-sign.

But most of all… patient, Caesar thought now as he watched the flickering television screen in front of him.

The two men on the screen — the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the President-Elect — were finishing their duet. They stood in gray, wintry sunshine, on the West Portico of the Capitol Building. The new President had his hand on a Bible.

"…and will to the best of my ability…"

"…and will to the best of my ability…"

"…preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God."

"…preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God."

Fifteen years, Caesar thought.

Fifteen years, he had waited.

And now, at last, it had happened.

It hadn't been easy. There had been several false starts — including one who had made it to the election as a vice-presidential candidate, only to lose in a landslide. Four others had made it to the New Hampshire primary, but then failed to secure their parties' candidacy.

And of course, you always had some — like that Woolf fellow — who would quit politics before they had even begun to truly explore their presidential potential. It was an extra expense, but no matter. Even Senator Woolf had served a useful purpose.

But now…

Now, it was different…

Now, he had one…

His theory had been born out of a very simple fact.

For the last forty years, every American president bar two has hailed from two very elite clubs: state governors and federal senators.

Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon were all senators before they became President. Carter, Reagan, and Clinton were all state governors. The only exceptions were George Bush Sr. and Gerald Ford. Bush was a member of the House of Representatives, not the Senate, and Ford's rise to the Presidency stands in a category of its own.

But, as General Charles Russell had also discovered, men of influence were also men of extremely unpredictable health.

The ravages of their political lifestyles — high stress, constant travel, chronic lack of exercise — often took a great toll on their bodies.

And while getting the transmitter onto the heart of a sitting President was nigh on impossible, given the narrow source of American Presidents — senators and governors — getting it onto a man's coronary muscle before he became President wasn't out of the question.

Because, after all, a man is just a man before he becomes President.

The statistics for the next fifteen years spoke for themselves.

Forty-two percent of U.S. senators had had gallbladder surgery during their time in office, gallstones being a common problem for overweight middle-aged men.

Of the remaining fifty-eight percent, only four would avoid some sort of surgical procedure during their political careers.

Kidney and liver operations were very common. Several heart bypasses — they were the easiest operations during which to plant the device — and not a few prostate problems.

And then there had been this one.

Halfway through his second term as governor of a large southwestern state, he had complained of chest pains and labored breathing. An exploratory procedure performed by a staff surgeon at the Air Force base just outside Houston had revealed an obstruction in the Governor's left lung, detritus from excessive smoking.

Through a deft procedure involving state-of-the-art fiber-optic cameras and ultra-small wire controlled surgical instruments called nanotechnology, the obstruction was removed and the Governor told to quit smoking.

What the Governor did not know, however, was that during that operation the Air Force surgeon had attached a second piece of nanotechnology — a microscopic radio transmitter the size of a pin-head — to the outer wall of the Governor's heart.

Constructed of evanescent plastic — a semiorganic material which, over time, would partially dissolve into the outer tissue of the Governor's heart — the transmitter would ultimately take on a distorted shape, giving it the appearance of a harmless blood clot, thus masking it from discovery by any observation techniques such as X-rays. Anything larger or more regularly shaped would be detected on an incoming President's first physical, and that just couldn't be allowed to happen.

As a final precaution, it was inserted into the Governor's body "cold" — unactivated. The White House's AXS-7 antibugging system would detect an unauthorized radio signal in an instant.

No.

Activation would occur later, when the time was right.

As usual, at the end of the procedure, one final operation was performed: a fine-grained plaster mold of the Governor's right hand was made.

It would also be necessary, when the time came.

The guards came for him ten minutes later.

Cuffed and chained, General Charles "Caesar" Russell was escorted from his cell and taken to the waiting plane.

The trip to Indiana passed without incident, as did the somber walk to the injection room.

The record would later show that as he lay spread eagled on the injection table like a horizontal Christ, his arms and legs bound with worn leather straps, the prisoner refused to take the last rites. He had no last words, no final expression of remorse for his crimes. In fact, throughout the whole pre-injection ritual, he never said a word at all. This was consistent with Russell's post-trial actions — indeed, his execution had been fast-tracked because he had lodged no appeals of any kind.

The military tribunal that had sentenced him to death had said that so heinous was his crime, he could never be allowed to leave federal custody alive.

They had been right.

At 3:37 p.m. on 20 January, the grim procedure took place. Fifty milligrams of sodium thiopental — to induce unconsciousness — was followed by ten of pancuronium bromide — to stop respiration — and then, finally, twenty milligrams of potassium chloride to stop Russell's heart.

At 3:40 p.m., three minutes later, Lieutenant General Charles Samson Russell was declared dead by the Terre Haute county coroner.

Since the general had no living relatives, his body was taken from the prison by members of the United States Air Force for immediate cremation.

At 3:52 p.m. - twelve minutes after he had been declared officially dead — as his body was being rushed through the streets of Terre Haute, Indiana, in the back of an Air Force ambulance, two electroshock defibrillator paddles were applied to the dead General's chest and charged.

"Clear!" one of the Air Force medical personnel yelled.

The General's body convulsed violently as a wave of raw electric current shot through his vascular system.

It happened on the third application of the paddles.

On the electrocardiogram monitor on the wall, a small spike appeared.

The General's heartbeat had resumed.

Within moments, it was pulsing at a regular rhythm.

As General Russell well knew, death occurs when the heart is no longer able to deliver oxygen to the body. The act of respiration — breathing — oxygenates a person's blood, and then the person's heart delivers that oxygenated blood to the body.

It was the supply of reoxygenated blood coursing through Russell's arteries that had kept him alive for that crucial twelve minutes — blood that had been biogenetically crammed with oxygen-rich red cells; blood which during that twelve-minute period had continued to supply Russell's brain and vital organs with oxygen, even though his heart had stopped beating — blood which had been supplied to the General during the two transfusions that had been required after his unfortunate beatings at Leavenworth.

The military tribunal had said that he would never leave federal custody alive.

They had been right.

While all this was happening, in a stark empty cell in the Departure Lounge at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, the rickety old television remained on.

On it, the newly crowned President — smiling, ecstatic, elated — waved to the cheering crowds.

They found the first one at O'Hare in Chicago, sitting inside an empty hangar at the farthest reaches of the airfield.

A regulation early morning sweep with an electromagnetic reader had revealed a weak magnetic signal emanating from the suspect hangar.

The hangar had been completely deserted, except for the warhead standing in the exact center of the cavernous interior space.

From a distance, it looked like a large silver cone about five feet tall mounted on a cargo pallet. Up close, one would recognize it more easily as a conical warhead designed to be inserted into a cruise missile.

Wires sprang out from its sides, connecting the warhead to a small upwardly pointed satellite dish. Through a clear rectangular window set into the warhead's side, there could be seen a luminous purple liquid.

Plasma.

Type-240 blast plasma.

An extremely volatile quasi nuclear liquid explosive.

Enough to level a city.

Further investigations revealed that the magnetic signal that had been detected inside the hangar was part of a complex proximity sensor array surrounding the warhead. If anyone stepped within fifty feet of the bomb, a red warning light began to flash, indicating that the device had been armed.

Lease records revealed that the empty hangar belonged to the United States Air Force.

Then it was discovered that according to the airfield's log books, no Air Force personnel had set foot inside that hangar for at least six weeks.

A call was made to USAF Transportation Command at Scott Air Force Base.

The Air Force was vague, noncommittal. It knew nothing about any plasma-based warheads at its civilian hangars. It would check with its people and get back to O'Hare ASAP.

It was then that reports came flooding in from around the country. Identical warheads — all of them surrounded by magnetic proximity sensors; all with fold-out satellite dishes pointing up into the sky — had been found inside empty Air Force hangars at all three of New York's major airports: JFK, La Guardia and Newark.

And then Dulles in Washington called.

Then LAX.

San Francisco. San Diego.

Boston. Philadelphia.

St. Louis. Denver.

Seattle. Detroit.

Fourteen devices in all, at fourteen airports across the country.

All armed. All set. All ready to go off.

All they were waiting for now was the signal.