They are caught in an uprising led by high tech mechs that fire on anyone wearing uniforms. The next morning they both decide to take a borrowed SUV to Ground Zero. Coleman recounts the meeting on live television and retreats to Malich's side in New Jersey. While Malich is being debriefed at the Pentagon, Coleman is asked to participate in a right wing coup to correct the existing government. Suspicion then turns to Malich, as he had written the plans and was present at the attack.

It is later revealed the Vice President had been assassinated by a dump truck backing up into his limousine. Although they succeed in killing one of the men holding the launchers, the second fires and hits the south wall of the West Wing, killing the President, Secretary of Defense, and several others. Malich and Coleman come upon the attack in progress, and, after acquiring rifles, attempt to prevent the attack. The plans call for a stealthy underwater entrance into Washington, D.C., followed by a rocket launcher attack on the White House, relying on an inside informant to give the location of the President. Major Malich works at the Pentagon, where he writes the plans to find holes in American security, having no idea that they will fall into the wrong hands.

They are attacked and return fire, saving a village with only one civilian casualty and earning Captain Malich a promotion to Major. The book opens with Major Malich, a captain at the time, leading a Special Forces team in a town of an unnamed Persian-speaking country. A radical leftist army calling itself the Progressive Restoration takes over New York City and declares itself the rightful government of the United States. Army Captain Bartholomew Coleman, both former Special Forces officers, as America falls into a civil war after the assassinations of both the American President and Vice President.

It is the first of the two books in the Empire duet, followed by Hidden Empire with the video game Shadow Complex bridging the two. It tells the story of a possible Second American Civil War, this time between the Right wing and Left wing in the near future. Empire is a 2006 dystopian novel by American writer Orson Scott Card.

Xenocide by orson scott card