What do you do when you inherit $330 million after taxes? If you're rancher Miles Waddell, you build a dream. A flat-topped mesa and a third of a billion dollars equals NIGHT ZONE, his astronomy-based theme park, complete with giant radio telescope, a bank of smaller scopes linked to a theater, five-star dining in a restaurant with retracting dome ceiling, hotel/resort, tram car to the mesa top, and narrow gauge steam locomotive to carry tourists from Posadas to the mesa. Waddell's dream begins to sour as two eco-terrorists make an opening statement by chain-sawing down powerlines that feed the development. One of the terrorists is killed by a bucking power pole, and left for dead by his companion. That incident is witnessed from 20 miles away by former Posadas Sheriff William K. Gastner, who sees a pair of headlights speeding from the scene. The crime is murder when the fleeing sawyer is stopped by a cop, and kills him in cold blood. Just hours later, Gastner digs himself in deeper when he stops to assist Sgt. Jackie Taber during an unrelated traffic stop, and that incident goes horribly wrong. The last one to pull a trigger, the now 74-year-old Gastner finds himself the focus of the District Attorney's investigation. Waddell's troubles with rumor-mongers and anti-government thugs continues, compounded byGastner's refusal to work security for him. A single bright spot is 13 year-old Francisco Guzman's piano concert. The prodigy's conservatory has scheduled a double concert in Francisco's home town of Posadas, and the timing couldn't be worse, with the aging, retired lawman in the epicenter.
