A More Perfect Union

By: James Greer

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Deputy Claudia Jean (Cici) Onofrio is going into work one beautiful Colorado afternoon believing her biggest problem is deciding whether to stay at mostly rural Arroyo County Sheriff’s Office, or move to an urban department in the Denver metro area. She’s wrong. Cici is built to be a police officer. Tall, strong and athletic, she has a deft touch with the citizens and an engaging personality. After five years on the job she is comfortable, appreciated by her boss and well-liked by her peers. Still, approaching twenty-seven, a fundamental question hounds her – have I found a job, or a career? Marine Lieutenant Kevin Cross watched his best friend die in Afghanistan. The orders he receives, to take over a platoon guarding intelligence assets at Buckley, seem to mean he will see no more combat assignments in his career. When an armed drone crashes, killing the teenage occupants of a pickup truck, he oversees the initial military response. The deputy he meets there will soon turn his tidy, foot-lockered world upside down. He receives new orders, to accompany her on a mission to discover who might have brought the drone down. Federal officers of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives call for help serving a search warrant at a farm. When Cici and Kevin arrive, there is only silence. And bodies. One of Cici’s coworkers and all of the ATF agents are dead. Shooting erupts, automatic weapons fire from the farm house, directed at them. Trapped, they call for assistance, which materializes in the form of a Predator drone from nearby Buckley Field. One Hellfire missile from under its wing ends the gun battle. The powers that be order Cici to forget, which they enforce through Kevin. The President urges stricter gun laws in the aftermath of the murders, enflaming some of Colorado’s rural population. More shootings occur, including an ambush that wounds Cici; she and Kevin barely escape with their lives. After a team of elite FBI agents is killed martial law is declared in the state’s eastern farmlands. That’s when things go badly wrong. Some members of Cici’s department quit, refusing to assist Federal troops arriving to restore order. Others reveal their membership in a fringe group of constitutionalists and openly engage in acts of violence against government forces. Law enforcement as Cici knows it disappears, the rule of law on the verge of collapse. Kevin takes command of a platoon with a very simple task – search door-to-door, and impound privately-owned firearms under an emergency public safety edict. He requests Cici as his liaison to what is left of the Arroyo County Sheriff’s Department. She reminds him that, although he must follow the orders he is given, she can leave whenever she wants to. Nothing has prepared Cici to handle the decisions she faces. Stay, and she is assisting the US military in dozens, maybe hundreds of searches that, at any other time, would violate the constitution. Leave, and she turns her back on the citizens she swore an oath to protect. It doesn’t help that she is slowly developing feelings for Kevin. Nothing goes as she had planned.