A California senator is brutally slain. But that is only the beginning of the increasingly macabre murders of members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The CIA hire their termination specialist, Tyrone Quade, an ex-Weathermen infiltrator and current jailbird, to find the killer. Quade has to be pardoned from federal prison in Los Angeles, where he is doing time for blowing up a passenger jet--a charge he denies. In his search for the killer, he becomes a target for Mafia henchmen and a Colombian cocaine cartel, among others, and starts to doubt his own innocence and even his sanity as his investigation keeps spiraling him back to his alleged bombing of the jet. To his consternation, Quade discovers a covert trail that leads him to the upper echelons of the United States government, where an unholy alliance will do anything to prevent him from uncovering the truth.