Heart of a Russian Bear Dog

  Heart of a Russian Bear Dog

  a White House Protection Force romance story

  M. L. Buchman

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  About This Book

  Alex Warren and his Russian bear dog Valentin arrive in Washington, DC to join the Secret Service Uniformed Division. A boss who hates him on sight rapidly becomes the least of his problems.

  Tanya Larina, Assistant Foreign Minister for Ukraine, has dedicated her life to maneuvering the Russians back out of Crimea. She has come to DC to sign a treaty with the American President as the first step in a long campaign.

  When Alex pulls protection detail for Tanya, it’s Valentin the bear dog who falls tail over paws in love with her on first sight. Can he convince Alex to follow his lead?

  1

  “Don’t you mind their sneers for one single second,” Alex Warren used his squeakiest high voice to cheer up his dog. The chill fog of his breath blanketed Valentin’s furry face for a moment.

  Valentin wagged his long tail slowly in agreement. Actually, being a dog, he would just be happy at the attention.

  Not a chance that his massive Caucasian shepherd cared about the group of US Secret Service handlers and their Malinois and German shepherds waiting for their turn. Valentin wasn’t the sort of dog to judge himself by others. Alex wished he could say the same for himself.

  The Secret Service K-9 test-and-training course at the James J. Rowley Training Center was the most impressive one he’d ever seen. Behind them was the main building which included classrooms, kennels, and interiors for room-clearing and explosives-detection practice. Out here in the bitter February cold of a rural Maryland sunrise, the exterior course spread out over an acre of ground. There were agility courses, obedience and communication tests, and, of course, attack-and-takedown training.

  And this was only the smallest corner of JJRTC where all DC Secret Service agents trained. This morning he’d come in past driving courses, an urban combat zone, and even a chunk of airliner fuselage and an old Marine One helo. He couldn’t wait to try those.

  No, Valentin wasn’t threatened by the other dogs at all. It was easy to understand why, as even the largest was barely half Valentin’s size.

  But the other USSS handlers were bugging the crap out of Alex.

  “Your Valentine looks like a rug, not a dog,” Lieutenant Carlton, never Carl, Tibbets called out. Alex had learned that rule about the Lieutenant in his first two minutes after joining the Washington, DC, team this morning. San Francisco suddenly felt very far away.

  “Val-en-teen. He’s Russian, not a greeting card,” Alex tried to stare the man down. But as they were both wearing sunglasses against the low, early-morning sun, it didn’t seem to work very well.

  “Valenteen. Yeah, right.” Carlton clearly hadn’t gotten his crème-filled donuts this morning. Instead he’d eaten a dose of nasty. Alex wondered if the guy had merely turned into an asshole or if he’d been born that way.

  Alex patted Valentin’s big head. He didn’t have to reach down at all; the dog’s head was waist high.

  “Valenteen! Ooo! Ooo!” Bethany Wilson called out in an overly prissy tone—one that still had her West Virginia twang behind it. “Y’all are going to have to say Valenteen’s Day next week or there’s gonna be a mess o’ trouble.” It earned her a laugh from most of the other guys. She was cute, funny, and a damn fine dog handler. She and her dog had been out to his old posting in San Francisco for a couple weeks last year. They never got together, but he’d certainly enjoyed her company. Her and her dog’s demonstrations of just how “next level” DC was in the Secret Service dog world had played a major role in his transferring here.

  Alex joined in the laugh easily. “Well, he was born on Valentine’s Day. So making it Valentin’s Day definitely works for him.”

  “Slow, big-assed piece of dogmeat who’ll never keep up with my Malinois. Can’t believe they let you two into the Secret Service at all.” Carlton was just looking for a fight, but Alex didn’t see any reason to give it to him.

  But he didn’t like it when someone insulted his sweet dog. He chose an underhanded jibe rather than a frontal assault.

  “You’re not like those hyperactive little Malinois fluffballs, are you?” Alex squeaked it to Valentin loud enough to earn a happy smile from his dog and some laughs down the line.

  Except from Carlton Tibbets—probably Junior, or the Third, or the Junior Third—who turned to face him, and snapped out “Asshole!” in a nasty tone.

  Before Alex could even think about reacting, Valentin spun on Carlton.

  His deep snarl silenced the entire line.

  The dog out on the course twisted to see what was happening, ran into a slalom pole, and tumbled to the ground.

  Carlton’s seventy-pound Malinois, Ripper, was the only one to step forward, bristling all the way down to his tail, ready for the command Fass—Attack!

  Carlton, however, stumbled back and fell on his ass. Too bad the February cold snap had briefly frozen the muddy field grass.

  No one else moved an inch.

  Valentin wasn’t called a Russian bear dog just because of his big square head. He and Alex weighed in at the same one-eighty—right at the top of his breed. His dog’s long, shaggy coat was a pure dark brown, that was rare, except for a light tan chest blaze. He looked like a not-so-small shaggy bear and sounded like a royally pissed grizzly.

  Alex called out the Russian command for Quiet, “Tiho.” Then followed it with a soft “Molodets” for Good Boy.

  Valentin silenced immediately but didn’t look away from Carlton for an instant—he ignored the still-bristling Malinois as if Ripper was a three-pound Pomeranian, which somehow seemed to piss of Ripper even more.

  Alex’s was the only dog he knew of in the whole US Secret Service that was trained in Russian. German and occasionally English was a Service dog’s normal command set.

  When he’d been paired with Valentin two years ago, he’d tried to point out to his parents that his degree in the Golden Age of Russian literature hadn’t been completely wasted. They hadn’t bought it. Up against their expectation of his joining the family’s law firm that dated back to the days of the California Gold Rush, he supposed they never would.

  Alex turned his back on Carlton, instead watching the German shepherd out on the course restart his run. After one low woof, that sounded more like a scoff of dismissal than a threat, Valentin did the same.

  JJRTC’s maples and oaks were still bare branch, so he could just hear the squealing tires from the defensive driving course a quarter mile to the west. The chill morning breeze carried just a hint of burning rubber as the Secret Service drivers skidded and spun their vehicles. Thankfully, the urban street for assault simulations that lay between them hadn’t kicked into gear yet, so he could also hear the early morning birdsong.

  “Hell of a first day,” Lieutenant “Jerk” Jurgen, the head of the dog center at JJRTC, sneered as he walked up. Alex had only been in DC forty-eight hours and on duty for only these last two, but already knew the nickname was deserved. “Where’s his goddamn leash?”

  “I don’t use one. We might weigh the same but a lot more of him is muscle than me, so the leash doesn’t do much. He obeys my voice commands.”

  Jurgen grimaced at him. But he did think to let Valentin sniff him before offering a pat—always a smart move with a Caucasian shepherd as the breed wasn’t noted for its friendliness to strangers. In fact, it
was a dog to be approached carefully by anyone not identified as immediate family by its alpha handler. One of the many reasons they made such good guard dogs.

  Jurgen gave Valentin time to make his own decision, and accept the gesture.

  The head trainer might be a jerk, Bethany had told him when he’d called for some coming-East and first-day advice, but he’s a very skilled jerk who loves his dogs far more than his people.

  Alex was good with that.

  Jurgen even squatted in front of Valentin and whispered to the dog.

  Alex had to lean in to overhear.

  “You would take on the lead ERT dog team on your first day. Good job!” He scrubbed his knuckles on the dog’s head before moving on.

  Alex glanced sideways at Carlton. The top Emergency Response Team? Shit! “Lead dog” might not be an official title, but no question DC was thick with hierarchy. If Carlton Tibbets and Ripper—as if someone named Carlton could possibly handle a dog named Ripper—were at the top, then it was more like Alex’s first day in hell. Carlton was going to heap all the garbage he could manage on him and Valentin as payback.

  The sun was a handspan above the horizon, but the temperature hadn’t cracked twenty degrees yet—a bitter rarity Bethany had assured him. A couple of the short-coated Dobermans looked plaintively at their Secret Service handlers as they puffed out steamy breaths.

  Valentin, however, was truly in his element. His shaggy coat was made for sleeping in snowstorms during a Russian winter. DC summers would be the challenge for him, in ways that a foggy and cold San Francisco summer could never be.

  But when the Secret Service had said there was an opening on the DC team, the two of them had hit the ground running. Actually, they’d had a great week-long drive across the country in Alex’s Jeep Wrangler, but same idea.

  He dug his fingers deep into Valentin’s soft undercoat to reassure himself and Valentin leaned against his thigh in response. They’d been the top of the dog heap in San Francisco. A much more informal world out there. Here they were the unknown, the outsiders. Chances were that after this morning’s introduction, he’d be bottom-rostered until the day he retired.

  Because hell, it was Washington, DC—the gold medal posting of the Secret Service. They’d done their “foreign” office time in the City by the Bay, and it was time to prove themselves. That he had no fear about.

  He might miss the California girls, but maybe not that much. The chill fogs of his family’s Nob Hill home and UC Berkeley were a far cry from Malibu bikini-land.

  If Alex could just not have to deal with Carlton Tibbets on his first day.

  Bethany ran her dog, a big German shepherd named Trixie of all silliness, into the course. Because, of course, you’d give a girl dog with a cutesy name to a pretty blonde. Jerk Jurgen had come by his nickname honestly—seemed to revel in it.

  Not that Bethany or Trixie appeared to care; they did a fine job of working the course. A combination of voice and hand signals, they were well on their way to one of the top scores of the day.

  Slalom through a line of spaced stakes to prove high-speed agility. Dive down into a twisting ten-yard by eighteen-inch tube at a full run. Exit at a full sprint, up a narrow walkway and across a six-inch wide bridge high over a water pool, and down a ladder on the far side. Clear a four-foot wall. Jump into a full-size pickup truck’s window and put a bite on the “terrorist” driver mannequin. Then over a six-foot wall and take down a live runner in a thick, heavily padded bite suit.

  That was just the first lap of the course.

  Later, more agility work.

  More bite work.

  It was all part of weekly retraining and periodic testing to make sure that all of the dogs were kept up to standards.

  It was also Valentin’s first chance to prove that he qualified.

  Today’s group was all attack dogs.

  There was some overlap. ERT dogs could find the most obvious explosives. And the sniffer dogs could attack—if they had to. Every dog here today, except Valentin, was a “pointy-ear”—breeds with sharply upright ears like Malinois, Dobies, and the big German shepherds that specialized in defense and attack. Sniffers were typically all floppy-eared. His dog was the only floppy-ear in sight.

  Alex walked Valentin up to the line.

  “Uh,” Lieutenant Jurgen looked doubtful for the first time. “Didn’t design this course with a Russian bear dog in mind.”

  “Let’s see how we do.” Alex knew Valentin’s ability even if the others didn’t. His dog looked like he lumbered along, but he was so big that he covered ground surprisingly fast.

  He was also smart as hell.

  Alex hadn’t been the only one watching Bethany and Trixie run the course.

  At the line he said softly, “Vperyod.” Forward.

  Valentin lumbered through the slalom line of stakes. They were so close-spaced that he had to take the time to turn almost ninety degrees for each passage, but he went through clean.

  The tunnel was tight but he made it—sparing Alex the image of having to slice open the heavy culvert pipe to rescue his dog. The narrow walkway and high bridge were no challenge for his sure-footed dog.

  Valentin took his “Baryer!” command and managed to Jump the four-foot wall with only a little difficulty. A hundred-and-eighty-pound dog was never intended to fly.

  Alex could hear Carlton and a few of the other trainers making jokes about Valentin facing the six-foot wall further down the course.

  Valentin glanced back to check in. Rather than calling aloud for an attack, Alex hand-signaled him to the truck.

  All of the other dogs had jumped through the truck’s window to put the bite on the mannequin. With his rear paws on the ground, Valentin simply rested his forepaws on the driver’s windowsill, stuck his big head in—and ripped off the mannequin’s head.

  That silenced the other trainers.

  “You can let him go around the wall,” Jurgen commented as Valentin dropped his head and charged the six-foot wall.

  But they’d come up with a tactic for that back in San Francisco.

  At a full charge, Valentine turned sideways at the last moment and simply threw his shoulder into it. The fence exploded in splinters flying in every direction.

  “Huh! Guess I’ll have to make that a little stronger,” was Jurgen’s only comment.

  Alex didn’t tell him that the San Francisco course builders had gone through five generations of fences before they found one stout enough to stop Valentin.

  The last task of the first lap of the course was to take down a “villain” in his monstrous bite suit.

  Alex almost forgot; the padding was meant to protect the trainer from the bite of “normal” attack dogs. At the last second he let out a sharp whistle.

  Valentin dug in his heels, slowing abruptly, and merely flattened the trainer. Rather than biting the trainer and risking the damage Valentin’s massive jaws could cause through even the bite suit’s padding, he simply sat on the trainer’s chest. His massive tail flapped back and forth over the man’s face mask, which probably made his helmet ring.

  There was a round of applause.

  Not from Carlton, of course.

  Valentine clearly wanted to play some more. He stared hard at Carlton for a moment to let him know when to be careful with his next comment, then called out “Aport!” Valentin stepped off the man in the bite suit, clamped his jaw on the shoulder padding, and trotted over, easily dragging the trainer with him.

  The others’ silence and Jurgen’s thoughtful grunt was a sufficient praise for Alex.

  2

  “This is utterly ridiculous!” Tanya leaned back against her desk with her arms crossed. “I have only just arrived in Washington.”

  “I have instructions from your father that if you refuse his order for your protection, I am to put you on airplane and send you home to Kyiv.” Ambassador Tomas Khomenko stood at parade rest precisely three paces away, as he usually did when he was unhappy with his duty. Even
in his advanced age, there was no taking the military out of the old soldier.

  “Tomas!”

  “Ms. Tatyana Ivanovna Larina.” The ambassador was being stiffly formal, another bad sign.

  “I can not go back. I have a treaty to sign.”

  “Yet, your father’s order stands.”

  “He is only the Prime Minister. I was appointed to be Assistant Minister of Foreign Relations by the President, and approved by Parliament.”

  Mostly independent of her father’s high position… Who was she fooling? But her appointment wasn’t more than a quarter his doing. A third? But by God, the other two thirds had been all her. And this treaty would prove that she fully deserved the appointment. As herself, not her father’s daughter.

  “What say does he have over my life?” Apparently the power to still make Tanya feel like a petulant child of twelve instead of a woman in the prime of her life. She could protect herself; she was a trained soldier after all.

  “Ms. Tatyana—” he sounded infinitely pained.

  “Tomas!” He was so old school. It was as if he hadn’t changed since the Soviet Union collapsed three decades ago.

  “As you wish…Tanya.” She didn’t know if it was a good or bad thing that he appeared to choke on using the short form of her first name. Or that it pleased her so much at the moment.

  “You’ve been Ukraine’s ambassador to the US since long before Father became the Prime Minister. You could ignore him.”

  “I could. But the President, he has confirmed this protection order.”

  Layno! Shit!

  “Tak. Yes. Fine. Bring in these American guards. I still do not know why I have need of them. I am very skilled.” Despite her family’s wishes, she’d served four years in the Ukrainian Ground Forces—joining the 95th Air Assault Brigade just before the War of Donbass. She’d been part of the historic strike four-hundred-and-fifty kilometers through Russian lines as they illegally grabbed the Crimea. Sadly, standing too close to a Russian tank she’d mined had cost her the use of her left ear and her service. But it had been beautiful watching the Russian tank die. Now she had a new way to serve.