Flower of Destiny Read online

  Nadia glanced at the oversized map mounted on the Visitor Center’s outside wall.

  Herman’s talk would be starting shortly. Right in the center of the park at the Capitol columns. Unless she had some brilliant idea, she could walk over there and…

  The Capitol columns.

  They weren’t a building.

  But if most of the Arboretum’s major donors were there…

  Nadia was off the mark faster than her yellow Lab as they sprinted to the southeast.

  12

  Herman couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. Not only was the crowd going to be standing room only, despite the Parks Department filling the whole courtyard with chairs, but the trio strolling toward him around the Ellipse made his throat go dry.

  He knew that the First Lady Anne and her brother, Vice President Daniel Darlington III, were from a major Tennessee farm. The Darlington Farm was at the center of the Slow Food movement in the South and had become a major research center. Of course they’d be major donors, but he’d never thought about that before.

  No sign of the President’s limousine, so he was spared that, but the Darlingtons and the Second Lady were more than enough to turn him into a gibbering idiot.

  “If you can talk to a woman as amazing as Nadia, Herman Finegold, you can talk to these people.” He sounded less convincing to himself than he’d have liked. But he stepped forward to greet them.

  13

  Nadia spotted the black suits and trademark movements of the Protection Detail as they spread around the National Capitol Columns. Off to the side were three of the SUVs.

  Things were definitely escalating.

  A pair of them came off the northeast corner to intercept her path of approach. Not wanting to be shot, she slowed enough to identify herself.

  Toni was panting hard, as was she. Not good.

  The agents scanned her badge, then nodded. One circulated away, but a female agent remained at her side.

  Her normal job was pre-event site safety. She actually had very little interaction with the protection details.

  “What’s up, sergeant?”

  Nadia recognized the blonde agent from somewhere. She was hard to miss, bubbly, long blonde hair, and all the curves that Nadia had never developed herself…Detra Willand, the head of the First Lady’s Protection Detail.

  Not good had just become bad. Unbelievably bad.

  “Intel of an attack somewhere in the Arboretum at an unspecified time today.”

  Detra glanced around. “Here?”

  “Unknown. We’ve checked the perimeters of every building and walked most of the parking lots before I remembered that the only event in the Arboretum today is this one.”

  “We have to clear the site.”

  They were whispering as they came through the columns behind the podium and raised platform. Herman had already started his talk. In the very first row, close by the foot of the raised platform, sat the three members of the Executive Branch.

  Some part of her registered a laugh from the crowd. Herman was doing well.

  It was a relatively stark setting. Close-set paving stones formed a slightly irregular fifty by hundred-foot open area. Every ten feet around the perimeter stood a massive sandstone column. Each sat on a cubic plinth roughly four-feet high. The great round columns rose three stories to massive, ornately carved capital headpieces.

  So, there wasn’t much of anywhere to hide anything.

  The chairs were just folding metal.

  After talking it over, Herman had even decided against using a lectern of any sort. He simply had a stool for a bottle of water and his tablet. She could see that he was in the rhythm of his talk because, despite all of his initial fears and massive preparation, he wasn’t looking at his tablet at all.

  Which only left…

  They’d paused at the rear edge of the platform. Toni sat abruptly and looked up at her.

  Nadia knelt down to apologize to her dog for pushing her so hard, but then Toni looked at the platform again—under the platform.

  The she whined.

  Nadia squatted lower.

  In the darkness, under the two-foot risers, something glinted.

  The platform legs were painted dark, but something else was under there that wasn’t.

  She flicked on a flashlight and the first thing she spotted was a cell phone. With a wire coming out of it.

  “Detra.” Nadia had to grab the agent’s arm and pull her down to squat beside her.

  She didn’t have to say a word. Detra unleashed a foul curse.

  “If we try to clear the site, the triggerman could be anywhere in this twenty-acre meadow—or in the crowd if they’re a suicider.”

  Detra nodded. “If we give any sign at all, they might trigger it. I’m surprised they haven’t yet.”

  Nadia glanced over the edge of the platform, then pointed at the back of the crowd.

  “Media,” Detra agreed. Some poor stringer was going to get the story of their lives, if they survived. “They’ve got a van, so they might be doing a live stream. The triggerman wants to make sure there’s some good footage first.”

  “How long?”

  Detra shrugged. “Minutes?”

  Which matched her own assessment.

  Detra squeezed her arm. “I’ll get as close as I can to the First Lady and the Second Family. Try to give me some warning if things go wrong.”

  Nadia nodded her agreement. They were already past making choices, and there wasn’t time to second guess or even be afraid.

  If anyone was going to disarm the bomb in time, it had to be her.

  Detra rose slowly and strolled casually around the platform. Just another Secret Service agent circulating.

  “Blieb,” Nadia ordered Toni to Stay. Nadia wanted to send her away, send her to safety. But couldn’t think how to do it.

  Instead, she called Baxter to connect her to the bomb squad, and crawled under the platform herself.

  14

  Herman really wished Nadia was here to see what they’d created. The crowd was laughing at all the places they’d built in amusing moments. The First Lady had heckled him twice with charming but perceptive comments that had led him to explain an aspect of preservation that neither he nor Nadia had thought of.

  He’d definitely have to get a tape of this from the TV guy in the back to show to her later.

  A glance around showed that people weren’t only standing along the columns, but even craning their necks around them to listen in. Out in the meadows, visitors to the arboretum were coming closer to see what was happening.

  As he strode the stage, he spotted Toni directly behind him.

  No sign of Nadia, but he couldn’t imagine one being here without the other.

  He started in on a story of the expedition in 2001 that had retraced Harriman’s 1899 expedition. They had returned with a vastly different picture from the remote wilderness, and occasional devastation of the Yukon Gold Rush, that Harriman’s team had witnessed and cataloged a century earlier.

  As he described some of the changes that the Herbarium researchers were unraveling from those two sets of samples, one of his favorite projects, he glanced back again.

  Toni was staring fixedly—under the back of the platform.

  What could Nadia possibly be doing under there?

  Then he felt a slight thump through the soles of his shoes. Too soft to be heard, but easily transmitted through the wood.

  If she was under the platform, and thumping on something, that meant—

  On the verge of shouting for everyone to run, he spotted the First Lady’s protection agent.

  She was looking straight at him.

  Detra then made a patting motion with both hands, then flipped one in a circle telling him to keep going. She was standing very close to the First Lady. Two other agents stood just as near the Second Family. All three ready to…jump in front of the blast!

  The only thing that Herman remembered from the rest of the talk
was when Detra nodded happily and gave him a double thumbs-up.

  He glanced behind him. Nadia now sat on the pavement behind the platform with an arm around Toni’s neck. Her smile told him that everything was going to be alright.

  15

  Spring had been a long time coming, but Herman had been right, it was worth the wait.

  The cherry blossoms viewed from the National Capitol Columns were truly magnificent. It seemed as if the entire park was in bloom.

  It might have looked odd, but she didn’t care. In her white wedding gown, she and Toni had made a full patrol of the area just before the ceremony. Nothing blowing up today.

  On that eventful Memorial Day, they’d even caught the triggerman. With guidance over the radio, she’d gotten the phone disconnected from the bomb.

  Then she’d settled in to wait.

  She’d banged her head hard against the underside of the platform when the phone buzzed sharply in her hand just moments later. She’d never told Herman that she could indeed be so startled, despite all of her training.

  When the bomber made the call to trigger the bomb, the NSA had been waiting. They’d immediately traced the caller’s location and Detra’s people had taken him down hard with no one in the crowd any the wiser.

  “We did good that day, girl,” she told Toni in her best squeaky voice. Toni didn’t seem to think that balanced out the white lace collar she’d been forced to wear for the ceremony. But her impatience was cured by a couple biscuits of her latest addiction, the Blue Wilderness treats that Herman had continued to spoil her with.

  “Y’all sure did rock it,” Detra agreed. “Almost as much as you’re rocking that awesome gown. I’ve got to get me one of those someday.”

  “You’ll need someone to go with it.” Nadia looked down at her wedding bouquet. Herman had it made from the exact same genus and species of daisy that he’d shown her from the Harriman expedition. She’d definitely found the right man.

  “Nah. Too much trouble. I just want the cool gown.” And they shared a laugh together.

  The two of them had become good friends over the last year; good enough for Detra to be her maid of honor. Detra had tried to recruit Nadia to the protection details, but she’d stuck with the Uniformed Division. She liked working mostly alone on the pre-event patrol too much to give it up. That was one battle she’d won.

  “You’re going to do even better today,” Detra announced with easy confidence.

  Nadia nodded. Much to her surprise, she was. Despite almost being blown up, Herman had shone that day…and every day since for her.

  The music began.

  Finegolds had streamed in from all over DC and Maryland. And they’d held the wedding on a Monday so that all of her own family could attend en masse.

  Yes, everything was perfect as she headed up the stairs from the reflecting pool to the fountain at the heart of the National Capitol Columns.

  When she’d crested the last step, and could see past all of their friends and family, she spotted the one battle she’d lost.

  Parked in a line at the base of the Ellipse, just waiting to serve up the wedding reception feast, stood a line of shining Food Truck India trucks.

  Off the Leash (excerpt)

  If you liked this, you’ll love the White House Protection Force novels!

  Off the Leash

  (excerpt)

  “You’re joking.”

  “Nope. That’s his name. And he’s yours now.”

  Sergeant Linda Hamlin wondered quite what it would take to wipe that smile off Lieutenant Jurgen’s face. A 120mm round from an M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank came to mind.

  The kennel master of the US Secret Service’s Canine Team was clearly a misogynistic jerk from the top of his polished head to the bottoms of his equally polished boots. She wondered if the shoelaces were polished as well.

  Then she looked over at the poor dog sitting hopefully on the concrete kennel floor. His stall had a dog bed three times his size and a water bowl deep enough for him to bathe in. No toys, because toys always came from the handler as a reward. He offered her a sad sigh and a liquid doggy gaze. The kennel even smelled wrong, more of sanitizer than dog. The walls seemed to echo with each bark down the long line of kennels housing the candidate hopefuls for the next addition to the Secret Service’s team.

  Thor—really?—was a brindle-colored mutt, part who-knew and part no-one-cared. He looked like a cross between an oversized, long-haired schnauzer and a dust mop that someone had spilled dark gray paint on. After mixing in streaks of tawny brown, they’d left one white paw just to make him all the more laughable.

  And of course Lieutenant Jerk Jurgen would assign Thor to the first woman on the USSS K-9 team.

  Unable to resist, she leaned over far enough to scruff the dog’s ears. He was the physical opposite of the sleek and powerful Malinois MWDs—military war dogs—that she’d been handling for the 75th Rangers for the last five years. They twitched with eagerness and nerves. A good MWD was seventy pounds of pure drive—every damn second of the day. If the mild-mannered Thor weighed thirty pounds, she’d be surprised. And he looked like a little girl’s best friend who should have a pink bow on his collar.

  Jurgen was clearly ex-Marine and would have no respect for the Army. Of course, having been in the Army’s Special Operations Forces, she knew better than to respect a Marine.

  “We won’t let any old swabbie bother us, will we?”

  Jurgen snarled—definitely Marine Corps. Swabbie was slang for a Navy sailor and a Marine always took offense at being lumped in with them no matter how much they belonged. Of course the swabbies took offense at having the Marines lumped with them. Too bad there weren’t any Navy around so that she could get two for the price of one. Jurgen wouldn’t be her boss, so appeasing him wasn’t high on her to-do list.

  At least she wouldn’t need any of the protective bite gear working with Thor. With his stature, he was an explosives detection dog without also being an attack one.

  “Where was he trained?” She stood back up to face the beast.

  “Private outfit in Montana—some place called Henderson’s Ranch. Didn’t make their MWD program,” his scoff said exactly what he thought the likelihood of any dog outfit in Montana being worthwhile. “They wanted us to try the little runt out.”

  She’d never heard of a training program in Montana. MWDs all came out of Lackland Air Force Base training. The Secret Service mostly trained their own and they all came from Vohne Liche Kennels in Indiana. Unless… Special Operations Forces dogs were trained by private contractors. She’d worked beside a Delta Force dog for a single month—he’d been incredible.

  “Is he trained in English or German?” Most American MWDs were trained in German so that there was no confusion in case a command word happened to be part of a spoken sentence. It also made it harder for any random person on the battlefield to shout something that would confuse the dog.

  “German according to his paperwork, but he won’t listen to me much in either language.”

  Might as well give the diminutive Thor a few basic tests. A snap of her fingers and a slap on her thigh had the dog dropping into a smart “heel” position. No need to call out Fuss—by my foot.

  “Pass auf!” Guard! She made a pistol with her thumb and forefinger and aimed it at Jurgen as she grabbed her forearm with her other hand—the military hand sign for enemy.

  The little dog snarled at Jurgen sharply enough to have him backing out of the kennel. “Goddamn it!”

  Keep reading at fine retailers everywhere:

  Off the Leash

  About the Author

  USA Today and Amazon #1 Bestseller M. L. “Matt” Buchman started writing on a flight south from Japan to ride his bicycle across the Australian Outback. Just part of a solo around-the-world trip that ultimately launched his writing career.

  From the very beginning, his powerful female heroines insisted on putting character first, then a great adventure. He’s sinc
e written over 60 action-adventure thrillers and military romantic suspense novels. And just for the fun of it: 100 short stories, and a fast-growing pile of read-by-author audiobooks.

  Booklist says: “3X Top 10 of the Year.” PW says: “Tom Clancy fans open to a strong female lead will clamor for more.” His fans say: “I want more now…of everything.” That his characters are even more insistent than his fans is a hoot.

  As a 30-year project manager with a geophysics degree who has designed and built houses, flown and jumped out of planes, and solo-sailed a 50’ ketch, he is awed by what is possible. More at: www.mlbuchman.com.

  Also by M. L. Buchman

  * also in audio

  Thrillers

  Dead Chef

  One Chef!

  Two Chef!

  Miranda Chase NTSB

  Drone*

  Thunderbolt*

  Condor*

  Ghostrider*

  Romantic Suspense

  Delta Force

  Target Engaged*

  Heart Strike*

  Wild Justice*

  Midnight Trust*

  Firehawks

  Main Flight

  Pure Heat

  Full Blaze

  Hot Point*

  Flash of Fire*

  Wild Fire

  Smokejumpers

  Wildfire at Dawn

  Wildfire at Larch Creek

  Wildfire on the Skagit

  The Night Stalkers

  Main Flight

  The Night Is Mine