As Director of the CIA, Charlie Donnegan all but begged the former oval office occupant to turn him and his people loose on the terrorists.  He was so damned tired of seeing Americans assassinated and American installations destroyed around the world and that woos of a president insisting on following international law to bring them to justice, at times, Charlie actually considered ridding the country of the weak-livered asshole.  If he were president, he’d show them how to deal with the terrorists.  No quarter and no mercy.  That’s all the cowardly bastards understood.

As the war in Vietnam wound down in 1974, Colonel Charlie Donnegan was pissed that the US lost the war.  He was pissed at the government for their inefficiency in running the war.  A ranger battalion  commander and, despite the rest of the military pulling out of Nam, Donnegan left a large group of volunteers behind in Nam to hurt the enemy as best they could, wherever they could.

While his men attacked targets of opportunity in and around Vietnam, Charlie advanced in rank, then resigned, with a new job as assistant director of the CIA.  After the Director was killed by a hit-and-run driver in DC, Charlie was elevated to director.  But, that wasn’t the end of his plans.  Eventually, he ran for president and, knowing a lot of secrets about a lot of people in and out of government, he won handily.  Now, he was in charge.  Screw the rest of government.  Screw congress and the International Community.  He was going to get rid of these fucking terrorists any way he could!

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Walter Herndon, the Director Charlie Donnegan hand picked to succeed him, reluctantly went along with the president’s plans, even though it worried the hell out of him.

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Arnold Johnson, Arnie to his men, was a former company commander under Charlie Donnegan.  Totally devoted to doing “the colonel’s” bidding, Arnie had no compunctions about killing man woman or child to carry out the orders of his former commander.  Arnie and some thirty of the survivors from the rangers left in Vietnam at the end of the war by Charlie had lived for years in the mountains of New Mexico, waiting for whatever tasks the new president assigned them.

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His name had been Robert Daugherty in the army, but now, as a plant at the CIA to keep an eye on things for the president, his name was Joseph Barger.  He would play an important role in keeping the president informed of the goings on with the director, who Charlie really didn’t feel he could trust completely.

Joseph Barger,  a former drug runner,  joined the army to escape being killed by rival drug dealers.  After Vietnam, Charlie groomed him to a point where he could easily be mistaken for a Harvard graduate or a corporate executive.  

After successfully taking out a number of foreign targets, Arnie and his men begin assassinating others he disagrees with, like Senators.  He blames the assassinations on foreign terrorists.  Joseph Barger is assigned to St. Louis as an employee of First Star Electronics, a CIA owned company.  Also, a woman agent acts as his wife.  She has two children and they seem a typical upper-middle-class family, living in St. Charles, a St. Louis suburb.  But, something doesn’t go as planned.  Joseph not only falls in love with her, he falls in love with her two young children.

When Joseph and an old partner fly supplies and drop them to Arnie and his men in South America, they are supposed to die from the poison put in the coffee thermos aboard the plane.  Arnie is unaware that Joseph doesn’t drink coffee.  But when his co-pilot friend dies, Joseph figures out he was murdered.  He parachutes from the plane, allowing it to fly into the ocean off the coast of Mexico, then it becomes a race to get Betty and her kids out of harm's way.

Because Joseph doesn’t die as he was supposed to, Arnie now perceives him to be the enemy, and he must kill Joseph at any cost.  Even Arnie, although he is about as insane a killer as one would find, doesn’t realize the president is totally mad.  Also, he doesn’t realize the president’s ultimate plan is to take over the country as a virtual dictator.

When Walter Herndon, CIA Director, finally figures out Charlie is behind the domestic killings,  he, too is the enemy and must be eliminated.  An attempt on his life is unsuccessful, but he doesn’t know whom to trust.  After running to a small town in Arizona to hide with Betty and the children, Joseph Barger contacts the director, believing he can be trusted.

When Arnie’s men find Joseph and Betty, it is only through Joseph’s determination to protect her and the children and some plain dumb luck that they survive.  Walter Herndon, Joseph and another trusted agent are all that stands between the president being found out and, consequently, his succeeding in all his grandiose plans.  Congress is on the verge of signing off on legislation to give him dictatorial powers to combat the supposed terrorists operating within the country.  They are about to declare the Constitution null and void until the violence is halted.

On the president’s orders, every law agent in the country is looking for Walter Herndon and Joseph, but they manage to reach Joseph’s sister’s house in Virginia to hide out temporarily.  This is where they hatch a plot to stop Charlie.  There is no way to fight him legally or with words, so they decide they have but one option.  The President must die!