Final Storm by Mack Maloney Read Free Book Online Page B

the American flag.
    Hunter had carried it with him ever since, an act that for the past few years under the New Order, was punishable by death. This had never deterred him though, and it had come to be an authentic good luck piece for him.
    Not so the photograph he always kept wrapped inside the flag. This was the well-worn picture of his estranged girlfriend, Dominique.
    As it was, he hadn’t been able to look at it in two months …
    “These proceedings will come to order!”
    A hush fell over the jam-packed Dome stadium as the Chief Justice of the American Provisional Government, using an elaborate public address system, gaveled the trial open.
    Hunter looked around the place, still amazed that the event would draw so many people, or that it was happening at all. In front of him, at the southern end of the Dome, a stage had been erected. The most prominent feature on it was the dark wooden jurist’s bench behind which the panel of five judges would sit. Before them were two long wooden tables—one for the 12-man team of Government prosecutors, the other for the defendant and his seven attorneys.
    Behind these tables was a small gallery of assistants, aide-decamps and general go-boys. Behind them was a succession of three raised platforms, each one crammed to the max with TV cameras, wires, lights, generators, editing machines, and large, dish-like microphones. A massive spaghetti-twirled bank of wires—easily five thousand of them—stretched back from the TV platforms, up the Dome’s center aisle and out the front door, where more than half of them were attached to the virtual forest of TV satellite dishes located outside next to the arena.
    Back inside, over the judges’ bench was a huge TV screen, once so popular with the Syracuse fans, especially those way up in the cheap seats. Now, the people in the back would look to this screen to show them what was going on.
    There were security personnel everywhere. An entire battalion of the famous Football City Special Forces was on hand—600 battle-tough veterans. They were responsible for security outside the Dome. To accomplish this they were armed with everything from M-1 tanks to Roland SAM systems. No fewer than 20 of their assault helicopters were airborne at any given moment, ready to spot and deal with any kind of external problem that might disrupt the trial.
    Security inside the arena would be provided by 500 members of the famous US Marine 7th Cavalry, the unit formed by the late Captain John “Bull” Dozer, and a 250-man contingent of Republic of Texas Rangers.
    High above and looking down on it all would be three separate flights of fighter planes—F-20s, A-7s, and a few F-5s—providing a CAP over the entire city.
    It would be a jury trial.
    The 36 individuals empaneled had been picked from all over the continent by a re-charged Social Security computer. They would consider all the evidence to be given, as would the judges. They would decide on whether the ex-VP was guilty or innocent of high treason. And if the verdict was guilty, they would also-decide his sentence.
    Off to one side of the jury box was another small gallery. This was the witness seating, and this is where Hunter, Jones, Toomey, Wa and at least one hundred other people were sitting.
    Beside this gallery, and right next to the judges’ bench, was the docket in which the witnesses, and eventually, the defendant himself, would offer testimony.
    “We will now begin with the prosecution’s opening statement,” the Chief Justice boomed over the PA system.
    Dr. Leylah, the pretty woman psychologist who had hypnotized Hunter and the others, took the stand, cleared her throat and began to speak:
    “The primary concern of these proceedings is the war itself, the war which the prosecution hopes to prove was a direct result of treasonous acts committed by the defendant while he held the second-highest position in this country’s government.
    “We have conducted more than two hundred