After a ruthless faction seizes power in Washington Carlton Berg a bureaucrat for the State Department runs off with the new regime's top secret enemies list. Unfortunately for Carlton the chase has come to an end in a police station in the Ozarks town of Lodus. With a pair of DHS agents on the way Carlton's last hope is in the people around him: an unsympathetic police chief an ambivalent administrative assistant and fellow prisoner Tanya Shepke...