In the Weeds

by M. L. Buchman

“Sure, just as soon as my eyes stop swimming.”

  McShea had them locked in moments later and they were quickly aloft.

  “Now we hold our breath.”

  The eight-minute flight was uneventful, but she couldn’t relax until they were on final approach to Harrington Lake—which was the name of the mansion, not the lake it commanded. The helicopter circled once over the big house, the luxurious lawn, and the lake shore. What she saw were the security checkpoints, the patrols, the Emergency Response Team van parked near the entry to the grounds.

  The Prime Minister’s country getaway lay northwest of Ottawa. The mansion sat by itself in the only cleared area along a quiet narrow road. Over three thousand acres of forest surrounded the lone residence. A few cottages and outbuildings, and a large vegetable garden dotted the clearing. The house faced a grassy beach and a stunning view of Lake Mousseau complete with a pair of boat docks. The lake itself was long and narrow, stretching out of sight between darkly green, towering conifers on steep shores.

  The three helos of the HMX flight settled onto the broad lawn in back of the house. The two overwatch Black Hawks circled above.

  Ivy watched carefully, but during the unloading, none of the Canadians appeared to notice that she and a Secret Service agent—without his cowboy hat—stepped out of one helicopter while a teenage girl led his dog out of the one the President had flown in.

  Under the auspices of trade negotiations, they had eight hours to wander the grounds.

  Ivy was at a loss of what to do with herself. It was late morning. A lone heron flapped lazily by overhead. A small contingent of Canadian geese had stopped off on their northbound journey and were fishing quietly along the shores of the lake. Otherwise, the wildlife had been scared off by the sudden invasion of two countries’ security forces.

  The President, Prime Minister, and their advisors had settled in comfortable chairs in the front garden. The house itself was a two-story colonial revival with steep roofs, generous windows, and a large sunroom topped by a balcony. It was very pretty, for a twenty-room “cottage.” For her and Colby, she’d prefer a cozy house where they were always in each other’s way. That’s how they’d both grown up: bedrooms for sleeping or teenaged pouting and a merry great room that always had puzzles, cats, cooking, and maybe a game on TV.

  She wanted that closeness again (though it had often irritated her as a teen—hence the pouting part of bedroom usage). And she did want it with a man like Colby.

  A man like Colby? Was there such a thing other than the original?

  Ivy watched him as she chatted with the flight crews. They’d staked out one of the docks closest to their helos to enjoy the sunshine. Their easy laughter had sent the geese farther up the lake for peace, so the only sound was the soft lap of tiny waves against the rocky verge.

  Colby circulated with the other dog teams, patrolling the perimeter.

  She could see him gathering up respect as he progressed, along with the occasional baggie of dog poo.

  The respect came naturally to the man. The sense of play from his boyhood was still there, but the rest of it was a hundred percent self-made. But it was a self-made that she completely recognized because it was so based in who he was.

  Now, if only he hadn’t instilled those doubts in her.

  She was a Marine. Five tours, ten years. It had earned her a role at the White House Military Office. Someday, it might even earn her the lead. Would she become as bitter and stodgy as Major General Markham and his two-minute-and-no-seconds welcome lecture?

  “What have you done to me, Colby?”

  He looked up at Ivy in surprise. “Nothing. You’ve been avoiding me all morning.”

  “No, I haven’t.” To prove her point—because she always had to—she sat down next to him on the grassy beach. She held a piled-high picnic plate from the spread the Canadians had set out for lunch that was at least as generously mounded as his own.

  “Sure you have. You’ve kept your pilots wrapped around you like a security blanket. So, what could I have done to you? Nothing. They would have sunk my body in the lake if they knew that I’d touched so much as a hair on your head. See,” he nodded at the nearby dock before forking up a maple-flavored meatball. “Even now they’re planning my demise should I even look at you inappropriately.”

  “I mean, you have me questioning my whole career.” She sounded grumpy, but bit into her chicken-avocado sandwich so she couldn’t be too upset.

  “Just trying to keep you on your toes, Ives. How did I do that?”

  She glanced up at the sky without looking at it. Glanced up as if…looking at space.

  “Oh. So go for it.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Colby.”

  “Can’t help it. Comes with the territory.”

  She shook her head and set down her sandwich. He knew the look. It had to be something bad to kill off Saint Ives’ appetite—she’d always been a hearty eater. Which was a good thing, because with her metabolism she needed to be or her blood sugar plummeted through the floor.

  With two fingers, he gave a meatball to Rex. Rex approved and licked his fingers completely clean. Then he picked up his own sandwich, trying to set an example for Ivy, but she wasn’t buying it.

  “It’s already passed me by,” her voice was the barest whisper.

  “You said that before, but you’re wrong.”

  “No. You are.” Of course nothing with Ivy was simple. She had a persevere-against-all-odds streak so wide that it was sometimes hard to tell it apart from stubbornness.

  “I’m not wrong, Ivy. You can do anything you set your mind to. You are five-foot-four and barely crack a hundred pounds. Yet you’re a highly decorated Marine Corps pilot. You qualified for HMX-1—which I have on the best of authority is almost impossible to get into. I know this because you told me yourself. And you’re so exceptional that a man of General Arnson’s caliber selected you to represent his outfit at the WHMO. Go ahead, tell me there’s something you can’t do.”

  She didn’t respond, but she started eating again, which he took as a good sign.

  The silence stretched out between them. Birds fluttered down to see if they were offering any treats. He tossed a twist of pasta salad out toward a red-winged blackbird, but Rex’s lunge for it spooked the bird away. A flock of black-capped chickadees settled for a moment but were gone before he could break off any breadcrumbs for them. Even after they finished and Rex had licked their plates clean, they sat quietly and watched the wind ruffle across the lake’s surface.

  “There’s one other problem,” Ivy said at length.

  “What’s that?”

  “Say I did go for the astronaut program or even volunteered for a Mars mission and was accepted. I’d be in Florida.”

  “I wasn’t a big fan of that heat wave, though the evening was nice enough. I’ll bet the winters are great. Seems all right to me.”

  “You’d be Washington.”

  Colby hadn’t thought about that. There was no way he could leave Rex to some other agent. Not even for Ivy Hanson.

  But that wasn’t the right answer either.

  Now he knew where her appetite had gone.

  A chill wind was making up along with the thick clouds to the south by the time the meeting wrapped up. The meeting had moved inside after lunch and the agents on the grounds were soon scrounging up jackets. The pleasant day had decided that May wasn’t quite done with winter yet. Weather services reported that the cloud ceiling was still acceptable for the flight back to the airport but that bad weather was moving in fast.

  Everything kicked into high gear.

  Crews were pre-flighting their helicopters.

  Tish stopped by to check in, wearing a massively oversized USSS jacket that one of the assault team must have loaned her. She confirmed that the Motorcade, which had traveled empty across Ottawa just in case they were needed, was ready to roll.

  Securi
ty agents from both countries gathered up their gear.

  Ivy had taken advantage of the quiet afternoon to log some flight time with Captain Juarez so that she could stay current. Circling above the Canadian lakes and forests had served as both a wide-area patrol and a bit of welcome distance from Colby.

  Once she was back at Harrington Lake, she’d sat alone out at the end of the farthest pier and no one had disturbed her except the waves starting to kick up in the contrary wind.

  She’d only ever wanted one thing: to be the best Marine Corps officer.

  And she’d achieved that in so many ways. She’d met her goals.

  So set a new one.

  It sounded like a McKinnon Law, but it felt as if it came from her.

  The problem was that she now wanted multiple things.

  She loved the Corps. There was a reason that there was no such thing as an ex-Marine—it was going to be a part of her forever.

  Colby had reawakened her dream of space. And he was right. She just might have a chance. Even her few days so far at WHMO would put an indelible stamp in her file that said she had the organizational skills to be of use as a mission planner, perhaps even a mission commander. And while an MV-22 Osprey might not be a jet, it wasn’t a helicopter either. It was an immensely technical hybrid that brought far more skills to the cockpit than the simple little White Hawk she’d just logged a couple hours in. That should look good as well.

  And she wanted one other thing. One that made the second dream impossible. She wanted Colby Thompson. Not for a night’s tumble. Not just for that. His mere presence brought a piece of her to life that she’d forgotten, or perhaps never understood. Ivy wasn’t used to being a woman as well as everything else. But also…

  She’d been happy as a Marine. It had fit her well.

  But Colby had brought her back to the feeling of pure joy. To a thrill that had made her want to tease him, to interact with him.

  But he was—

  But she was—

  She’d gotten nowhere but flying in circular orbits all afternoon that had insisted on looping back over themselves faster and faster.

  And now she was standing in the middle of the Prime Minister’s backyard all alone. If she didn’t hustle, she was going to miss her flight back and be stuck in the middle of nowhere during a chill downpour. The Motorcade had already rolled out, headed back across Ottawa. If you weren’t ready when the President was, you got left behind.

  Colby, Dilya, and both dogs were aboard one of the decoy birds.

  She wasn’t ready to face either of them.

  The President’s staff were already aloft in the second decoy.

  That only left her one option—Marine One. Thankfully, the President waved for her to hurry, so she clambered aboard just moments before McShea closed the doors.

  The only other person aboard was Harvey Lieber, seated behind the President.

  “Glad you decided to join us,” the President’s voice sounded hoarse.

  “Did the meetings go well?”

  He nodded as he leaned back tiredly in his seat. It made his cowboy hat, which Colby had once again returned when they landed, slide down over his eyes. The man wanted his privacy, that was his option, so she focused her attention out the window.

  Racing from the countryside back toward the airport under the edge of the darkening storm, the trees gave way to housing. Soon they were over thick suburbs with the city lights ahead. They were approaching the Ottawa River. Curiously, they passed over a sprawling golf course—though at a thousand feet up there was little chance of disturbing the few remaining golfers trying to finish a round before the storm hammered in. Darkly massive thunderheads marched in from the east—garishly lit by the last of the sunlight cutting in below the cloud cover to the west.

  Looking down at the golf course gave her both a shiver and a smile. Remembering the helo pilots messing with the golfers. And Colby and Rex taking a helicopter crash so professionally—dealing with a situation that threw untrained people into panic.

  Colby was highly trained. The Secret Service were at least as selective as the Marine officer corps—the Presidential Protection Details equivalent to Whiteside operations of HMX-1. Yet, Colby had made the grade. If ever there was a man to match her, impossibly it was her childhood nemesis. If ever there was a man to push her ahead, it was oddly enough the man who never pushed himself.

  She was a Marine.

  She wanted space.

  But she needed Colby. The woman that she’d almost lost, Colby had found and brought back from the brink. She could have ended up like General Markham—entrenched at the WHMO, bitter and old before her time. Colby would never let her get away with that. Just by being himself.

  Her escape from a similar fate had been so close. Now if only she could figure out—

  She didn’t see the attack coming any more this time than she had last time.

  16

  There was no crunch and cry of rending metal.

  A shattering crash sounded from the cockpit. Then a scream that could only be human as the helo lurched badly.

  Some body memory had Ivy diving into the cockpit even faster than Crew Chief McShea.

  The windshield was gone. Juarez was dead. He had to be with half of a model jet smashed into his chest.

  His copilot had his hands still on the controls, but he was screaming from a face half torn off by one of the model’s wings.

  She slapped the seatbelt release on Juarez and tried to yank him clear. He outweighed her by at least double. McShea reached over her shoulder and grabbed Juarez’s collar. With a single yank, he hauled the pilot across her lap and into the back.

  Diving into the seat, Ivy grabbed the controls. No time to move the seat forward or put on a seatbelt, she perched at the forward edge of the seat and stretched her toes out to reach the rudder pedals. The Captain’s headset was gone, so she took a moment to reach out and grab the one off the copilot’s head. The muffs thankfully cut off most of his on-going cries.

  The controls fought her as she struggled to gain control of the spinning helicopter.

  The copilot—why couldn’t she remember his name?—clutched his duplicate of her controls with a death grip.

  “McShea. Get him off the controls.”

  Rain and snow drove into her face, forcing her to squint. Combined with the cloud cover, it was so dark it might as well be night for all she could see.

  McShea made a grab at the copilot, but the man—Merton—didn’t let go. Instead, the controls jerked hard and almost flipped them onto their backs, driving the nose aloft. She slid back into the seat. Without her feet on the pedals, they spun in a hard circle counter to the spinning rotors.

  There was a sharp crack as McShea broke Merton’s arms with a powerful blow, then hauled him out of the way.

  Ivy struggled to right the aircraft. The centrifugal force of the spin was strong enough to slide her forward once she leveled out the nose. It was almost enough to fling her out the missing windshield, but she managed to regain control before that happened.

  The ground was—where?

  There. On the right. They were falling sideways out of the sky.

  She keyed the mic switch on the back of the cyclic control.

  “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is—” she shouldn’t identify that the President was in trouble “—HMX-1 going down.”

  “Roger that,” someone replied calmly. They’d know that she was past their help until she was down, so there was only silence on the airwaves. They could be calling in rescue and aid units on another frequency, but as long as she was in the sky, this frequency was now hers.

  She got them upright, but something else had been damaged and they rolled hard onto their left side. Each attempt to correct their position with the cyclic joystick between her knees was met with odd jerks and jumps. Linkages were broken or damaged.

  A glance at the altimeter. Three hundred feet. In the heart of the Death Zone.

  Except on the radio the
re wasn’t only silence.

  There should have been. The laser transmitter should be dead silent without input.

  A high-pitched tone warbled at the upper edge of her hearing, like a supersonic dentist’s drill.

  “Carrier wave. Someone tell Colby. Carrier wave!”

  17

  Colby could only watch in horror as Ivy’s helicopter pitched and rolled its way out of the sky.

  “Colby!” The pilot was shouting at him. “Colby!”

  “What?” He’d sat close beside the crew chief. That placed him near the cockpit.

  “Major Hanson said to tell you ‘carrier wave.’ That mean anything to you?”

  Carrier wave? For a moment it didn’t, then he remembered a discussion they’d had with one of the WHMO’s radio communication specialists. In an instant, he knew she’d used the radio.

  No, they—the bad guys—had been using the radio.

  And a carrier wave meant that the attacker wasn’t using some empty frequency, as their new protocols had peeled most of those away. Nor were they using a high blast of power to override the jamming on any one frequency. Instead, the attackers were using the primary communication frequency, but only using the very highest part of the signal as a carrier for their control commands.

  Communication hadn’t been the problem.

  Their problem had been identifying which of the three shifting helos was the actual Marine One with the President aboard.

  By launching that initial attack over the Potomac, they must have known that the Marines would eventually stumble on the idea of not letting Marine One ever transmit by radio. Instantly, its simple silence on the radio would identify which helo carried the President.

  But that meant—

  “Set your electronic countermeasures to broadband. Block all frequencies,” he shouted to the pilot.

  “Are you crazy? If I do, no one can communicate.”

  “Exactly! Including the attacker with his aircraft. Do it. Now!”

  The pilot snarled and made some adjustment to the radio console between the two pilot seats.