America’s most feared terrorist is locked inside Colorado’s Supermax prison. But, it’s hard to keep a bad man down. A new time of chaos begins. Is Commander Brian McCarty up to the challenge? If so, at what cost? Who will suffer the heaviest consequences?
Michael Sinclair sits on the edge of his concrete bed, refusing to consider suicide, estimating the time of day, making sure he knows what month it is. He’s been in solitary confinement at Colorado’s Supermax prison for nearly a year.
There are one hundred and sixty-eight hours in a week. He’s allowed out of his silent cell for three of them.
When he arrived, he was instructed on the rules, told his permanent schedule and what to expect; informed he’d essentially be treated like a wild beast.
The few brief times Sinclair is let out of his cell, moved from one tiny cage to another, he’s chained: wrists, waist, and ankles. Otherwise, he’s locked down tight in total silence.
He hasn’t heard a human voice since that first day.
Sinclair is the most infamous of the prison’s inmates. He orchestrated a time of chaos in America. His crimes included the assassination of America’s first female president and an attack at the National Cathedral that killed a number of Washington’s senior leadership. He nearly provoked the nation into war with the wrong enemy and almost brought down the next president, Nathan Cahill.
He’ll never see other prisoners, but knows he’s in with El Chapo, Zacarias Moussaoui who planned the 9/11 attacks, Terry Nichols the Oklahoma City bomber, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and the very worst of the world’s most deranged, dangerous criminals.
Ten o’clock at night Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, he’s silently escorted to a darkened pit resembling an empty swimming pool, then into an outdoor cage, not much larger than his cell, where he can walk ten long steps in one direction or thirty-one steps in a tight circle under constant supervision. It’s supposed to pass as exercise and is carefully situated so prisoners can’t tell where they are in the facility.
A guard on the ground and two armed sentries in towers watch his every shackled step, as do two video cameras. His movements are bathed in an intense glare from a spotlight overhead.
He can’t see the stars.
For the remaining one hundred and sixty-five hours, he’s held in an oppressively quiet soundproof 7-by-12 cinderblock cell about the size of a standard bathroom. A narrow slit of a window, 4 inches wide by 42 inches high, lets in a pencil-thin shaft of natural light. It’s situated so that, even if he was tall enough to look out, all he’d see is the wall of another building.
He can’t see the sky.
No one escapes Supermax. It’s the Alcatraz of the Rockies, the most secure detention facility ever built.
Kevin Kelley, Author 