“Saint Ives?” The bloody-nosed pilot burst out laughing—which was cut short when he swallowed a mouthful of the Potomac. No question, that nickname would be traveling around.
“Colby!” He could hear Ivy’s teeth grinding.
Very near the shore, they plowed into a raft of duckweed. In moments, their every surface was covered in the tiny tri-petal plants until they looked like they’d caught alien-green measles or something. Getting their feet down in the shallows, they waded the rest of the way to shore, raking handfuls of plants off their faces, hands, and clothes. At least they weren’t slimy, merely infinite in number.
He reached over and hauled handfuls of the water weeds out of Ivy’s hair, then wished he hadn’t. A man only got to handle a woman’s wet hair if they showered together. It was a shockingly intimate feeling—until she slapped his hands away hard enough to sting.
The one-armed pilot had a broken wrist, but they were all alive. As one, they clambered across the steel railing that the helo had flattened in its death roll and sat on the grassy bank facing the one-bladed protest of the otherwise submerged aircraft. A weekday morning crowd of thirty or so people kept a respectful distance.
The other two helicopters in the flight had been in the lead when theirs went down. One continued to base, but the other circled back and was descending to land on the lawn above the beach. The crowd was brushed back even farther as the five of them huddled to keep their backs to the blast of rotor-driven wind and grit. Rex ducked low in their wind shadow and closed his eyes.
As soon as the helo was down and the blast abated, Rex rose to his feet in front of them. He gave another shake, finding yet more water in his thick coat to spray in all of their faces. It was mixed with gritty sand and a jillion more tiny duckweed leaves.
A chorus of complaints sounded.
“Hey, you can’t get any wetter.”
As if to prove him wrong, Rex walked into his arms, licked him in the face, then gave himself a final shake.
At least, because this time Colby was hugging Rex’s head, most of the spray went sideways—into Ivy’s face.
“Good boy,” he whispered in Rex’s ear.
6
“Turnabout is fair play,” she warned Colby as they stepped off the Sea King helicopter that had fetched them across the narrow Washington Channel to Anacostia.
She was wet, dirty, had lost her cover, and could only hope that the dry cleaner could deal with the damage done to her uniform—dress blues were hideously expensive. Her return to Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling was far more ignominious than she’d imagined possible. For over seventy years, HMX-1 had never had a flight failure or other accident. They had the best service record in the world—and she’d been on the flight that had just ruined it with their plunge into the Potomac. Forever after, from this moment on, the Marines Corps would always have to say, “Zero mission failures…except this one time when the new White House Military Office liaison was aboard and—”
“What do you mean: turnabout is fair play?” She’d forgotten about Colby and Rex as they stood close beside her.
“Meaning, if you leave my side, someone actually may shoot you.”
“After being knocked out of the sky, I’m not in much of a mood to be shot. Guess I’m glued to your hip.” He offered her one of his teasing smiles. Two could play that game.
“Good thing we aren’t getting married or I might read something into that.” As she turned away, she caught an odd expression on Colby’s face. But by the time she turned back it was gone and the cocky dog handler was once more in place. Now it was her mind that was playing tricks on her.
“What’s your clearance?”
“I’m Lead Dog, or I was,” his face fell at that.
Surprise. Surprise. Colby Thompson had actual feelings. She almost ribbed him about it, but couldn’t get past the sad face.
“Which means what?”
“It’s not an official title, but it still has a lot of meaning inside the team. I was head dog handler on the White House grounds. They didn’t work for me, but if they had a problem, they came to me first and it was my job to solve it before it hit the Captain’s desk.”
“Which tells me nothing about your clearance.”
He flicked his badge at her, which had somehow survived the crash and their swim on its lanyard. “I’ve got armed proximity to the President status, just like you. Anything that isn’t code-word classified or eyes-only I have full access to, if I was dumb enough to want to read any of that crap.”
She had to respect that. It took over a year to get that clearance as she well knew; if you could get that clearance. Now that she thought of it, she remembered the FBI interviewing her about Colby some years ago in her role as friend (yeah, right) and neighbor (not by choice). It had taken all the kindness she could muster at the time to not shout “Hell no! Not him!”, figuring someone else they interviewed would take care of that. Apparently no one had and he’d made it in.
Ivy didn’t like being wrong, but looking up at the man beside her made it difficult to argue. If it was anyone other than Colby, she’d be respecting the hell out of him at the moment.
Had he been interviewed when she’d earned her clearance? Probably. She decided not to ask what he’d said. And definitely not what he thought about saying but hadn’t.
They weren’t authorized to move away from the Sea King, so she kept them standing out under the midday sun as they dripped. Even soaking wet, one didn’t just unbutton a dress jacket. You wore it or you went and changed. Spit and polish all the way down to your soul.
“HMX-1 has a split personality.” Ivy spoke up to fill the weird silence between them. Besides, split personality was the best way to describe what newbies were walking into here.
“Like you and your big brother?”
“Hey, he’s your best friend. I’m only related to him because we accidentally have the same parents.”
“Yeah. That and he’d kill someone with one of his chef’s knives if they even looked at you funny.”
She glanced at Colby but he didn’t seem to be joking. “Really?”
Colby just scoffed at her. “I made that joke about naming our kids after him and almost got a ten-inch Wüsthof up my nose.”
“Huh.” Reggie had never seemed like the protective type. More like the quiet, overly-serious chef, leave-me-alone type. Yet he’d always hung with Colby, which had never made sense to her in either direction, even if it had to them.
Colby and Rex were looking around the airfield. Rex shook himself again, but was thankfully out of water to shed.
“This used to be a big airport back in the day,” she explained. “The runways and hangars have all been filled in with office buildings now, except for this one hanger and the helo landing area.” Six helicopter-sized squares bordered in yellow-and-brown lines were painted on the bare concrete. All of them empty except for the bird that had just ferried them onto the base. Even now, a team was prepping it to tuck away into the hangar.
“You have your own dog team,” Colby was watching the team that first went through their rescue helicopter. “Guess they want to make sure I didn’t smuggle any explosives or bacon aboard on the thirty-second ride over from Hains Point beach.”
“Don’t even joke about explosives around here.”
Then they came over to inspect him. Rex took one sniff of the new dog and turned his head away.
“What was that?”
“Dogs have always confused Rex. He thinks he’s human and is never sure what to do about lower life forms except to ignore them.”
The Marine’s dog sniffed Colby with no interest at all before moving off.
Now that they’d been cleared, she led him toward the hangar.
“Split personality,” he reminded her.
“Right. Three bases, two classes of birds, two birds in each class. We keep White Tops based here for fast access to the White House, a few more over at Andrews, but our main installation is forty miles d
ownriver at Quantico.”
“Three airfields. Check. And you guys own the landing pad on the South Lawn since you chased away the Army and Air Force back in the ’70s. That makes four.”
“Okay, four.”
“Except that we at the Secret Service only set it up for you temporarily. Then we take it away and roll it into storage. So we’re the ones who control whether you have four or three.”
“Shut up, Colby.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She’d never really noticed what a great smile he had. Had he always? She tried to remember, but that all seemed so long ago.
They stepped through the open hangar door into the cool shade. Eight helicopters were stowed there. The tech team was fussing over the engine of one. Two others were being waxed. When she needed to check her uniform, she could see her reflection in the shine of any HMX-1 helicopter—except the one now crashed into the river. Despite that, at the moment she strongly suspected that she’d be smiling and didn’t want to be caught doing that by Colby Thompson. Bantering with Colby had always been fun.
“White Side and Green Side,” she focused once more on her introduction as she headed to a supplies shelf to find Colby some spare clothes. Size Marine large to span his chest and height.
“Couldn’t you just call that top and bottom of the helo? Why do you paint the helos two colors anyway?”
Ivy considered picking up a handy crescent wrench and going after him with that instead.
Colby loved messing with Ivy’s brain. He’d done it a thousand times growing up. She was just as focused and almost as serious as her older brother, which had made her an easy target. Reggie just shrugged off Colby’s best digs like a duck and rainwater, but Ivy’s revenge was always charmingly devious.
When Ivy had been trying to learn her single-digit addition and subtraction, he’d asked her what was “two minus three.” That had shut her up for a good long time. Later he’d asked her, “Why does swimming have a double m, but dancing only has one c?” And a myriad of other traps that he’d learned first by being three years older. Though in later years, she’d pulled ahead of him and he’d had to get more creative—like picking her up over his head and throwing her into the ocean right after she’d stretched out to sunbathe on the beach. Which he’d had to leave off doing as her martial arts skills had improved.
Of course he knew that the two colors of the helo wasn’t what she’d meant about White Side and Green Side, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.
Ivy skipped the teeth grind and went straight to malevolent glare just as he’d hoped.
And his would be a reasonable assumption to anyone who didn’t know better. Each of the helos was painted a glossy forest green except for the very tops, which were painted a white that reflected the errant sunlight beam coming in one of the high windows so strongly he was surprised that the crews didn’t wear sunglasses to work on that aircraft.
“White Side,” her voice sounded as narrow as her glare, “are the White Tops for transporting the President and other heads of state. Top secret clearance, with presidential special access or better, is required to even enter this hangar. We have a desperate time getting pilots and service personal because of how long it takes to obtain that level of clearance. Green Side are the civilian transport aircraft—which are painted all green. Here we’re White Side only. At Quantico, there’s a patrolled security gate between the two. They can’t even hand a part or a tool across the line because it might have been tampered with.”
Colby felt a bit of a chill and it wasn’t just because his soaking wet clothes were now cooling rapidly in the hangar’s shadowed interior. He wished he was standing back in the sunlight. It was a given that these guys were serious, but now maybe he understood the reaction of the crew chief at him even sitting for a moment in the President’s seat.
“White Side flies the Sea King and a modified Black Hawk called a White Hawk. We’re replacing the Sea Kings with VH-92 Superhawks, but those are still in testing for another few years. Green Side flies MV-22B Ospreys for missions like transporting the Press Corps and senior staff. They just retired the other aircraft.”
“Which makes it two sides, but one of them has three aircraft and the other only has one. Doesn’t seem very fair to me.”
“Shut up, Colby. This new anal side of you isn’t charming.”
“I’m completely charming. Just ask me.”
Ivy didn’t take the bait. Instead, she punched a finger at the floor close by a bathroom. “You. Sit. Stay.”
Rex’s look said, She’s talking to you, buddy. I’ve already got my butt on the floor. He’d sat down as soon as they’d come to a stop. Colby didn’t sit, but he did stay.
Two minutes later a woman walked out of the bathroom and Colby almost didn’t recognize her.
The wind-up-doll perfect Marine Corps major in her dress blues was gone. The white cover—as Marines insisted on calling their hats (which was probably now at the bottom of the Potomac or flowing out to sea)—was now a Marine-green garrison cap with its little ridgeline running front to back. Shoes to boots, trousers to camo pants, and the dress jacket with all of its ornamentation was now a USMC drab green t-shirt that clung tightly enough to show a perfect outline of her sports bra. In addition to her earlier sidearm, she now wore a KA-BAR knife almost as long as the thigh it was strapped to. A camo jacket hung loose off her shoulders, which also bore a small pack. If not for the wet dress blues in a plastic bag, he might have thought she’d done one of her parallel-world alternate-self things.
Protocol perfection had switched over to down and didn’t-mind-getting-dirty Marine.
“Well, that’s a relief,” he told her.
“What?”
“This Ivy Hanson I recognize.”
“Is this gonna be some crap about the past?” She waved him toward the bathroom to change.
“Absolutely!” Then, instead of explaining, he handed her Rex’s leash and went to change. It was easy to see the parallels between Ivy and the squadron she flew with—lovely but hard.
“So what are you on about this time, Colby? What’s this old crap you want to dredge up now?” She shouted through the door.
“Well,” he considered and decided what the hell, she could only kill him once. And if she busted in on him now, he’d be naked and who knew what interesting places that might lead. “Now that you’re dressed to get some work or ass-kicking done, just seems more like you.”
“I can kick your ass just fine in my dress uniform.”
“Don’t doubt it. But your dress uniform is so goddamn impressive that it distracts from the amazingly beautiful woman wearing it. Your working gear lets me see you clear as day.”
For once, she had no snappy comeback to that. Maybe he should try telling her the truth more often. Though he wished the door wasn’t separating them so that he could see her stone silent reaction.
The four of them stood in a line on the tarmac of the HMX landing field at Anacostia: her, Colby, Rex, and General Edward Arnson—commander of HMX-1.
“Well, that’s not something you see every day,” the general’s tone was certainly drier than she was, despite a change of clothes and two hours listening in on the debrief of the pilots.
One of the VH-60N White Hawks hovered above Anacostia. At the lower end of the cargo line, it dangled the battered Sea King helicopter it had just fished out of the Potomac.
“There goes our perfect no-accident record,” Ivy couldn’t believe that she’d been on the flight that had destroyed a seventy-year Marine Corps tradition.
“Don’t blame it on the Marines. Blame it on whoever was flying the F-14.”
She turned to Colby, as did the general. He clearly didn’t know what Colby was talking about either.
“It was odd.” He cocked his head much the way his dog would as he studied the descending helo—the helo they could have so easily died in.
They all kept a respectful silence as it came to rest on it wheels not twenty mete
rs away. Within seconds, the lines to the hovering White Hawk were released and a phalanx of mechanics moved in to see what had happened.
“Just before the impact—” Colby resumed.
“What impact?” She didn’t remember any impact, just something broke with a bang followed by an awful rending sound as the rear rotor ate itself.
“The F-14.”
“Colby! What are you talking about?”
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Could you do it in a less of your typically laconic manner?”
“Could, if you’d hush up some.”
She could see General Arnson on the other side, grinning down at her. He wasn’t much given to grinning in her experience. She bit down on her tongue—hard—to make sure she kept her silence. It wasn’t an easy thing to do around Colby. Something in him just made her want to keep poking at it to see what hid underneath.
“Just before we went down, I spotted an F-14 coming in fast from,” he hesitated and looked across the Washington Channel and the Anacostia River to where the helo had plunged into the river not a quarter mile away. “It came from our back quarter, out of the northwest.”
“I couldn’t have missed an F-14,” Ivy’s tongue ached from her hard-clamped teeth as she released it and blood flow resumed, reminding her why she’d been clamping down on it in the first place.
“You must be mistaken, son. I’d have noticed an F-14 in the corridor. It would have shaken us hard flying that low. I was standing in the hangar when you went down.” He nodded over to the big building behind them, which would have a clear view of the accident. “First I heard of it was a shout from Jake that something was wrong with the approach. Saw you spin in. There’s no way to miss an F-14. Besides, the military retired the last of those over a decade ago.”
“Maybe it was a bird, Colby.”
He looked down at her. “Unless seagulls have developed twin vertical stabilizers, glass cockpits, a four-missile array under the wings, and a steel-gray paint job, I’d say it was a might more likely it was a Grumman F-14 Tomcat. Remember, we built an awful lot of fighter jet and helicopter models together after we ran out of spacecraft. You still have those?”
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