In the Weeds Read online

  In the Weeds

  a White House Protection Force romance novel

  M. L. Buchman

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  1

  It was still confusing. Major Ivy Hanson—recently promoted to White House Liaison to Marine Corps HMX-1 squadron—didn’t match the woman inside her head. She brushed the cool metal of her golden oak leaves and they were definitely on her shoulders: not captain, major. For the tenth time she double-checked that the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor insignias on the collar points of her Marine Corps dress blues were fully upright.

  They were.

  She really had to calm down about this. She was a Marine—though at the moment it felt as if that was the only thing she knew for certain.

  The VH-3D White Top helicopter eased out of Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, gaining altitude slowly. The President’s helicopter—which would be designated Marine One if he was aboard—was a strange, anachronistic beast of a machine.

  For years Ivy had flown one of the newest helicopter types there was: the massive and highly innovative MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor. And now she was aboard the President’s vintage helicopter: a fifty-year-old machine that was somehow maintained into a far more perfect condition than her prior ride. The ancient White Top also carried more armor than her MV-22B and was far more luxurious. Instead of the sharp bite of hydraulic oil and unrelenting reek of jarhead sweat, the cabin smelled of lemon furniture polish and fine leather. Which, to a former combat pilot, was wrong on so many levels that it was better not to think about it.

  Despite the soothing, air-conditioned, and well sound-insulated environment keeping the heavy load of rotor noise at a comfortable distance, her nerves continued flying sky high just as they’d been ever since she’d gotten dressed this morning.

  There was a feel to dress blues that no amount of wear or dry cleaning could remove. From the steam-ironed pants’ crease to its brass buttons to the gold of her major’s oak leaves on her shoulder boards, blues were something special—somehow other. The stiff collar reminiscent of the high leather collar that had earned them the nickname “leathernecks” over two centuries ago was a badge of honor every Marine wore proudly. She always felt stronger, more powerful in her dress uniform. And far taller than she was—which was especially neat as at five-four she didn’t come up to most Marines’ shoulders.

  Her full flight gear from her eight years piloting the MV-22B Ospreys came a close second as her favorite clothing, but there was a small and very egotistical part of her that loved the dress blues: all of her service ribbons on display, her aviator wings flying high above them—the Corps in all its righteous glory. No ceremonial sword today, but hers was so short to match her frame that she always felt a little foolish when she brandished it. She was fine without her sword.

  But she was sitting in the observer’s seat rather than the pilot’s. That too was intensely disorienting.

  A glance aft didn’t reveal thirty Marines loaded for bear or a 155 mm howitzer ready to unleash havoc thirty kilometers past wherever she dropped it. Instead it revealed the President’s armchair, another facing his, and a long bench seat for six aides. Directly behind the President was a seat for his personal aide. And at the back corner, just aft of the rear door, was one last seat for the head of the Presidential Protection Detail. At the moment, Ivy was the only person in the cabin other than the Marine Corps crew chief who sat in the seat closest behind the pilots.

  She was seated sideways, instead of facing ahead. Coming at her new assignment sideways was okay, as long as she got there.

  Because it was exactly where she wanted to be.

  Rex always wanted to be somewhere else and constantly hauled at his leash to prove it.

  Colby guided him down the South Lawn of the White House, leaning back against the leash’s pull. His German shepherd was on the hunt for any hint of explosives and he was one hard-charging canine Secret Service agent.

  Rex cracked him up.

  He treated sniffing for explosives as if they were the most important thing in the world, which was exactly what he’d been trained to do. The joke was that he was a dog. EDT—Explosive Detection Team—dogs didn’t really care crap about explosives. They just knew that they got a treat if they found some or checked a whole area and found none. Rex was super smart about everything except his treats—which had almost flunked him out of the Secret Service’s dog school. It had taken Colby a lot of work to teach him that giving false positives didn’t earn him more goodies.

  Colby scanned the grounds. Two floppy-eared dogs working the outside of the fence line, checking on tourists. From here he could make out two of the three vans that housed ERTs—Emergency Response Teams of dog and handler. The handlers would be watching everything using binoculars through the tinted windows, ready to release their dogs if needed. Those dogs made Rex look mild by comparison. An ERT dog would go after explosives, but that wasn’t their primary job. They trained to take down fence jumpers—hard. He traded waves with another ERT team strolling the close perimeter around the White House itself.

  He and Rex had risen to the top of the puppy pile, earning them the informal title of Lead Dog. Colby had come to enjoy wrangling the various handlers and types of dogs. But his favorite were times like this, when it was just him and Rex checking it all out.

  The one thing he’d never let go of as he moved up the ladder was the South Lawn patrol. They’d been doing it together for the last four years of the six they’d been working together. He’d gotten Rex when he was two years old and they trained together, then started over at the Capitol. For a while they’d been loaned out to different teams: the Speaker, the home of the Vice President, and visiting dignitaries.

  Four years ago they’d made the grade and been advanced to the White House. Now they both had the routine down. Zigzagging back and forth, they crisscrossed any possible path the President could take from Marine One to the White House. Every line from the South Portico of the Residence over to the outside door of the Oval Office.

  Even though Colby knew it was just a training flight coming in this morning—he didn’t bother telling Rex or taking it any less seriously. Though this flight would be a pain. Some new honcho was coming in on a free ride and their undue pride was always hard to swallow, but Colby timed it just like normal anyway. He and Rex worked their way down the lawn until they arrived in the landing zone itself at the same time as the groundskeepers. They were rolling out the trio of two-meter aluminum disks to protect the lawn by making temporary landing pads for the helicopter’s three landing gear.

  A quick sniff by Rex to make sure that someone hadn’t jumped the fence in the night—undetected by patrols, rooftop snipers, or the array of motion sensors—to plant a bomb under Marine One’s landing pads. It was all clear and the big red disks with their white crosses at the center were flopped into place. Fast work with a tape measure assured the guys that they’d dropped them spot-on to match the helicopter’s undercarriage. A quick glance at the spacing told him they were expecting one of the VH-3D Sea Kings rather than a VH-60N White Hawk, the only two types of aircraft authorized to land on the White House lawn.

  “Hey, one of these days, you should set them up for something huge like a Chinook or maybe a tiny Little Bird and see what those flyboys do.”

  “You want to piss off a Marine Corps pilot, I’ll leave that to you.” Jonesy, the head of the groundskeepers, grinned at him. He also kept a watchful eye as his crew pinned down two six-inch-by-twenty-foot strips of canvas in an L-shape that wo
uld give the pilots their centerline and final nose position.

  “Hell hath no fury like a pissed-off jarhead,” Colby agreed.

  “Ain’t that the truth, bro. You up for poker on Friday?”

  “Sure. I need some easy cash.” He guided Rex in an expanding spiral around the helicopter’s landing zone until they reached the trees.

  “Too bad you still owe me twenty from last week,” Jonesy called.

  Colby pretended he hadn’t heard as he guided Rex through the last lap of the spiral.

  Nothing to report, boss, Rex’s expression said as he looked up at the end of it.

  Colby lobbed a couple of treats and Rex snatched them out of the air with sharp snaps of his big jaws.

  He gave Rex the hand sign to relax. He couldn’t see the inbound helo yet, but if they were on time, they’d be here in two more minutes. And one thing could be said for Marines, they were always on time—no matter what was in their way.

  Today’s flight was only three miles. But those three miles were along the most highly-engineered, regulated, and secure flight route in the country. Which might be exactly why Ivy liked it so much.

  For every pilot who made the grade to fly to the White House, hundreds applied. The posting was considered the highest honor for a Marine Corps flyer. These were the very best pilots in the entire Corps, meaning the best in the world—no matter what any other unit thought.

  She’d always dreamed of being a Marine One pilot—a member of the most elite flying team anywhere. But she’d found something even better. Only one flight officer at a time made it to being the HMX-1 liaison to the White House Military Office.

  And that was her.

  Newly promoted Major Ivy Hanson. A field grade officer. Her parents had nearly died with pride, especially Mom. One more rank and she’d be the same grade as Lt. Colonel Marina Hanson (retired).

  The pilots were hers—not to command, that was still General Arnson’s billet—but she would be assigning all of their missions.

  Starting today.

  From the White House!

  In charge of all operational planning for the unit. She’d tell them where and when she needed heliborne assets and General Arnson would make sure that they delivered every single time.

  She kept her breath under strict control, because she was a Marine and never showed nerves or doubts. The overwhelming excitement was harder to keep hidden. She was a professional and that’s all her team would ever see. But she could hear her heart pounding louder than the muffled rotors. And the adrenaline was almost as sharp at the back of her throat as the lingering hints of the half-burned kerosene from the cold engine start.

  Once off the tarmac at Anacostia-Bolling Air Base, they turned due west. A quarter of a mile across Hains Point—the southern tip of East Potomac Park—to the middle of the Potomac River.

  “Any problem, Captain?” She called forward to the pilot. It was weird that the sound insulation was so good she didn’t even need an intercom headset. There was something intrinsically wrong with that; it hardly felt like a helicopter at all.

  “Why do you ask, Major?” She knew Walters well enough to hear the amusement in his voice.

  “Your rate of climb is below simulator profile. Just wondering if there’s a reason.”

  “No reason that I can think of, Major.” But neither did he begin to climb more rapidly.

  The crew chief pointed out the side window. She turned and looked down at the island below just as one of the two decoy helicopters—Presidential helos typically flew in packs of three, constantly shuffling places to keep the President’s actual position hidden—flew by them even a little lower.

  The thirty-six holes of Hains Point Golf Course covered this entire end of the island. They were low enough that she could see the main rotor’s downwash blow away one golfer’s hat and another’s umbrella. They passed so close that she could see players shaking their little putters at them as their balls were rolled about the green. At least that explained why the pilots chose to fly so low. In addition to the rough and sand traps, this particular golf course had the occasional air hazard.

  It reminded her of the day she’d found out that Drill Sergeant McKinnon, much to her surprise, wasn’t a sadistic asshole. Or perhaps that he wasn’t just a sadistic asshole. On graduation night from Officer Candidate School, she’d spotted him drinking quietly in the back of a Marine bar while her class was whooping it up in the front. He’d waved her over. She could still feel the nerves that had shaken her as she crossed the room, but it was one of what she’d come to think of as McKinnon’s Laws.

  Being a Marine doesn’t mean that you’re not afraid. It means that you don’t give a damn if you are.

  Once she sat, he’d looked at her a long time in silence, but she’d waited him out until he’d finally acknowledged her with a nod of what actually looked like satisfaction.

  “You’re gonna be one hell of an officer, Second Lieutenant Ivy Hanson. So let me tell you all the things you’re going to want to do wrong.” And they’d talked right through last call; she’d still been on her first beer after many of her classmates were facedown on the floor and being shoveled out the door.

  Another of his laws was: You’re going to want your people to behave perfectly. They’re Marines, so they will when it matters. Don’t sweat the small stuff. They’ll respect you for letting them be human. But you draw the line and don’t let anyone cross it. Ever! Or they’ll run right over you.

  Batting down golf balls with a twenty-million-dollar helicopter struck her as small stuff. But they already knew that General Arnson expected them to land inside a ten-second window every time—even on a training flight like this one—and that she’d expect no less. The Army’s Night Stalkers said plus or minus thirty seconds in any battlefield, and they delivered. But these were the fliers of Marine One and nobody kicked ass like the Corps.

  Across the golf course and over the Potomac, they finally reached the mission profile’s altitude. There was nothing like the DC skyline from five hundred feet.

  Colby glanced up at the snipers on the West Wing roof.

  Two of them had their rifles aimed high and due south. With their spotter scopes, they were always the first to see the approaching helos. By their very steadiness, he knew the guys had picked them out. That placed the helos out over the Potomac and just turning north.

  He wondered how the Marine Corps pilots felt, knowing they were in the sights of the snipers. Wouldn’t be his first choice, but they were Marines, so what did he care?

  Four years—more importantly four DC springtimes—and he still wasn’t used to working here. The Presidential Park was stunning this time of year. The new-mown grass smelled rich with May sunshine. The trees were all leafed out, but still brilliantly green—the darker shades of summer were a month away yet. The morning breeze was out of the west, from over the vegetable garden. Nothing much to smell from that quarter yet, just lots of green shoots; though there was a hint of chlorine from the freshly refilled swimming pool. The Rose and Kennedy Gardens lay to the north of his current position so he couldn’t smell them even though they were already rich with lush flowers.

  Perfect season to take a girl for a walk through them, except he didn’t have a girl since Elsie had given him the heave-ho. And escorting a congressional secretary around the White House grounds like it was good place to bring a date wasn’t exactly the best idea…no matter what Elsie had thought.

  Just as well. Rex had never liked her much, which should have told him something a lot sooner than 20-20 hindsight. Rex was happy now because he’d gotten back his spot on the couch. And Colby was done with clubbing, never a big hit with him anyway, and was back to his ESPN and action flicks. He knew it was a stereotype, but anything was better than pounding sound systems among bodies so tightly packed together that they were indistinguishable—when the whole point of going in the first place was to “be seen.”

  “Need to find us some girls, boy.” Not that Rex had the an
atomy to care about those anymore.

  Colby wasn’t sure how much he himself cared either.

  Elsie had been fun, and watching her dance never failed to fire up his libido. Too bad that was all she’d fired up. They’d been good together in bed, but not much heat otherwise—either good or bad. They hadn’t fought often, but they hadn’t done the whole close-couple thing either.

  He looked aloft and spotted the trio of helos as tiny black dots. That placed them even with the Pentagon.

  Colby still felt the thrill every time. It didn’t matter if it was the President himself or an empty training run, there was something majestic about watching them approach that he’d never tire of.

  This time they’d told him to there was a sole passenger for him to escort to security. Captain Baxter—the head of the Secret Service Uniformed Division for the White House—wasn’t big on extra words, like who the hell Colby was meeting. Just some officious official who’d finally earned enough rank to con a ride on the helo. He would be so totally full of himself after the HMX-1 ride that Colby suspected he’d want to unleash Rex on the pompous jerk by the time they had crossed half the lawn.

  Colby backed off from the three landing disks and watched the helos come in.

  Ivy couldn’t decide where to look. The crew chief was grinning at her, but it was impossible to be blasé about the ride or the amazing view.

  There were a few days that particularly stood out in memory: her first ever solo in a Bell UH-1 Huey, four combat missions that she wished she didn’t remember quite so accurately in her nightmares, and a few others. She knew today would join those.

  Once they were at altitude past the golf course, the flight had smoothed out as a serious focus took over. She checked the time mark on the dash when they crossed above the Arland D. Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge. Just five seconds early for this particular profile—her kind of flight.