Off the Leash

by M. L. Buchman

  “Perhaps,” her tone was drier and grittier than under-conched cocoa. “But before you depart, I would ask you to consider one question. What boundaries stop you, Mr. Andrews?” Then she picked up her knitting and he knew he was summarily dismissed.

  He got out while the getting was good.

  Chapter Three

  Thor eyed her strangely.

  “Give me a break.” Linda’s feet were riveted to the sidewalk. But there was no explaining to a dog that the broad green lawn and white stone building on the other side of the stout fence was anything more than a giant park specially designed for dogs to go pee in.

  Even as she stood there, gawking through the black iron fence at the White House like any other tourist, a USSS dog team came working along the sidewalk. Before she could see their dog, it was easy to spot the handler: six feet of strapping immensely fit male in the black uniform and jacket of the Uniformed Division. Dark sunglasses despite the recent sunrise.

  She envied the thin leather gloves protecting his hands. She’d found a battered pair of fingerless shooter’s gloves in her gear, but they didn’t keep her hands much warmer. Her last duties in Africa and Fort Benning, Georgia, hadn’t called for anything more. DC’s bitter winter was contending with fall evenings in Vermont and she’d forgotten how cold those were.

  But rather than a proud German shepherd parting the crowd like a plowshare, a handsome springer spaniel nosed his way out of the crowd, swinging a little left and right to check the air swirled about by the few early morning joggers. It was still too early on a chilly morning for tourists and protestors to flock to the White House fence, but the dog team was already on duty.

  The handsome dog handler stopped in front of her wearing a big smile.

  “First day? I know the look. Still feels that way every time I look at the place.” He turned to his dog. “Gute Hund.” The dog immediately relaxed its vigilance and came over to meet Thor.

  “Uh, yeah. Guess so.” Linda wondered if she could sound any lamer.

  “Malcolm,” he nodded toward the spaniel presently trading butt sniffs with Thor. “I’m Jim.” Maybe he was okay despite his looks—it took a true dog handler to introduce his animal first.

  “Thor. I’m Linda,” and she wasn’t going to get tagged with being lame. “One word about his name and you’ll find yourself on your ass real fast.”

  Jim held up his warmly gloved hands palm out.

  “Just sayin’,” she put on her nicest tone.

  “Hey, we floppy-eareds gotta stick together,” again the unexpected genuineness of his smile. “Though Thor is kinda the extreme example I’ve seen.”

  “Floppy-eareds?”

  “Friendly dogs. PSCO—Personnel Screening Canines Open Area. You’ll see. The Emergency Response Team and the other behind-the-scenes dogs, they get the big muscle. We get the total sweethearts,” the last he spoke in happy dog, squeaky pitch to Malcolm, who thumped his short tail against Jim’s leg.

  It made her like him even better—again the sign of a true dog handler. Maybe the world wasn’t all made up of Jerk Jurgens. Or handsome chocolatiers.

  “Well, gotta go. We got bad guys to catch. Go see the captain, he’ll get you off on the right foot. See ya down the fence line. Later, Thor. Such,” he told Malcolm, who instantly headed forward into the thickening morning crowd along the fence line. Jim waved at her and moved off. She half wondered if he even remembered her name. Then she caught him glancing back…and she knew the timing: calculated to let him check her out, then glancing away fast when he knew he’d been caught.

  Fine. Whatever.

  A second UD officer separated from the crowd and followed Jim and Malcolm. He didn’t have a dog; instead he had an AR-15 assault rifle slung across his chest. Teams of two.

  She headed to the gate and showed her temporary ID to the guard inside the entrance’s security hut. He scanned it, looking back and forth between her and the screen a couple of times before returning it. Then he waved her toward the metal scanner and she just rolled her eyes at him.

  “What?”

  “Collar, leash, handcuffs, sidearm, utility knife, taser, spare magazines…should I keep going?”

  He leaned forward and looked down over the counter. “Oh. Didn’t see your dog down there.”

  She held up the badge again, which said Secret Service K-9 on it rather than pulling out a baton and cracking him smartly on the head. She was learning patience.

  “Right. Okay. But that’s a temporary. Can’t let you on the grounds while armed without an escort.” Before she could think what to say, he was on the phone. It only took a moment. “You’re expected. You can go through, but wait by the door.”

  She walked through the metal detector, which squealed in several nasty tones but, as no one shot her, she kept moving. She walked down a short hallway watched over by an attentive looking agent behind a tall counter made of louvered metal.

  Thor swung aside and came to a halt as he sniffed at the screening.

  “You’re screwing up my job,” the agent grumbled.

  Linda tried to figure out how.

  Thor was wagging his tail. The same way he had when he’d met Malcolm the springer spaniel along the fence line.

  Then she felt it and looked up. Warmth! She raised her hand, the one not holding Thor’s leash, closer to the source. It felt so good. A fan was blowing a slow waft of warm air down over her. It was…oh! Just enough to drive the air down and through the louvers along the counter. An EDT—Explosives Detection Team—dog would be on the other side of the louver beside the disgruntled agent.

  “Tell him that Thor says hello.”

  “She,” the agent looked down at his own dog, out of sight behind the counter, with a growl deep in his throat.

  And apparently some of the White House handlers were closely related to Jerk Jurgens.

  Linda tapped her thigh and led Thor out of the entry screening hut. Outside the air was fresh and the sun bright. She didn’t mind the cold as much as she had earlier. Until she tucked her fingertips under opposite armpits and realized they were chilled to the bone.

  Captain Baxter—by his shield and name badge—came up to her and held out a hand. “Sergeant Linda Hamlin. That like the Pied Piper of Hamelin or like Linda Hamilton in Terminator?” Naming her for the movie star was not one of her mother’s kinder acts—not that her mother was known for that particular trait.

  “Neither, sir.” She had been named for Linda Hamilton, but for her role in Beauty and the Beast so Linda could properly deny any association with Terminator. An unfortunate similarity in looks that she’d never been able to live down made it even worse. She managed not to clench her jaw, but considered seeing just what attack skills had been taught to Thor.

  The captain continued blithely on as he guided her toward the West Entrance to the White House, unaware of just how close she’d come to unleashing some wholly inappropriate response. “So, Jurgen finally found someone willing to give the little scruff ball a chance.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Assessment?” He asked it just a little too casually. Was he messing with her? Or did he know things she didn’t and this was some sort of test?

  “His acuity is exceptional. Good-natured, yet deeply trained to the handler-dog bond. Whoever trained him I suspect is highly qualified. Though I understand he’s the first dog from a new kennel.”

  “Stan Corman. Navy SEAL, retired.” The captain made a chopping motion with one hand against the biceps of his other arm. “Lost his dog and his arm at the same time. The two of them saved my life a couple years before that. Got out while I was still in one piece and came on board here. He landed at some place in nowhere Montana named Henderson’s Ranch. I owe the man a chance and then some.”

  So, she’d done something right in accepting Thor. Wouldn’t that just tick off Lieutenant Jurgen.

  Through the foyer, again the badges cleared by security, and down a long hall crowded with rushing people.

 
; Her nerves, which had bolted her to the sidewalk outside the fence line, blew up so high that she was amazed the White House roof didn’t go with them. She was inside the bubble of the Commander-in-Chief. To her right were the doors to the Situation Room where any number of her last ten years’ missions had been authorized. The Navy Mess.

  While she gawked, the Vice President strode in chatting with the White House Chief of Staff as if it was a normal, everyday occurrence. She was so out of her depth. Only Thor’s light pull on his leash kept her moving forward at all.

  At the far end of the hall, Captain Baxter led her through a door labeled United States Secret Service. This at least felt familiar from her training. The craziness on the other side of the door? She’d be perfectly happy to never cross the fence line again. She and Thor would patrol the streets, and the people in here she’d just leave to do whatever people in here did.

  The Secret Service Ready Room was packed with desks along the walls—about half of them occupied. At one end was a briefing area that could hold twenty or so agents, at the other were two glassed-in offices barely big enough to hold a desk and a chair each.

  In one sat an agent with light brown, close-cropped hair. He was a few inches shorter than Clive and about half his size… Now why was she thinking about the chocolatier? She shook her head to clear it. The agent punched at a keyboard as if he was trying to kill it. The sign beside his office door didn’t even bear a name, just PPD—Presidential Protection Detail.

  Baxter led her into the other office marked UD—Uniformed Division.

  He jabbed a finger at the lone chair as he closed the door.

  She sat. Thor lay down at her feet.

  Dropping into his own chair, Baxter slapped a hand on a file thick enough to be her entire personnel file and then some.

  “All of this true?”

  “Not having read it, sir, I wouldn’t know.”

  “Commendations coming out of your goddamn ears, Sergeant. If you brought this to me, I’d have chucked it in the trash because I’d know one thing for certain—that you were a lying suck-up, forging shit to get near the President.”

  “Sir.” Linda didn’t know what else to say. She hadn’t been some superstar, just a woman trying to play it dead clean in a man’s world.

  “Number of female dog handlers qualified to fight with the 75th Rangers: one. Number of female dog handlers in any branch of the military with not one, not two, but three medals for valor including a Bronze Star—all with the V for “in combat” on all three: one. Clearance Top Secret with SCI and SAP.”

  And Linda hoped that she’d never see another thing like it. Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Programs information was always a nightmare.

  “Seventeen of your actions over the last five years are redacted so that even I can’t tell what the hell you were doing. You care to tell me?”

  “No, sir.” She wasn’t at liberty to do so, no matter what his clearance.

  “Good girl.”

  Okay, not girl. Not even woman. Soldier! Training in silence was all that let her keep the comment inside. Besides, only seventeen of her missions redacted? That meant that a number of her missions were so highly classified that they weren’t in her file at all—at least not the version made available to the Secret Service.

  “What in the name of all that’s holy and the US Army are you doing in my office?”

  “Reporting for duty?” What kind of a trick question was that?

  Baxter stared at the closed file for a long moment before looking back at her. “Draw me a map, Hamlin. US Rangers to US Secret Service. How did you get here?”

  “There was a flyer in my DD 214 discharge packet. USSS K-9 team recruiting. Be all your dog can be. Sounded like me.”

  He barked a short laugh. “I like it. But we don’t do that. We don’t have flyers.”

  “Well, someone put it there. Looked better than going back to Vermont.” Throwing herself naked into the Potomac in January looked better than that.

  Baxter harrumphed. Then scowled at Thor, who had lain down at her feet.

  “Damned if I know what to make of it. We get good men applying for this job, a lot of them.”

  He didn’t emphasize men, so she kept her thoughts to herself.

  “Most of them straight out of college with some nutso ideas about glory. Takes forever to straighten them out and some we never do. That’s not you.”

  “That’s not me,” Linda agreed.

  “A woman with a decade of service and half of it with the 75th Rangers,” he mused to himself. “I’ll be damned.” Without further comment, Baxter leaned over his desk and slapped a hand against the wall.

  While they were waiting for whatever response, he dug a bright-brass USSS Uniformed Division badge out of his pocket and tossed it to her. She pinned it to her uniform’s left lapel, taking only a moment to rub her thumb over the embossed image of the White House and the small blue plaque at the bottom with “Sergeant” etched into it.

  A moment after she had it affixed, the door opened and the agent from the PPD office next door stepped in and closed the door behind him.

  “This her?”

  Baxter just nodded.

  Her what? Linda didn’t have time to be more than puzzled by the remark.

  “Hello. I’m Harvey Lieber, Senior Special Agent in charge of President Zachary Thomas’ protection detail.”

  “Linda Hamlin,” she’d have stood if there was room, but there wasn’t.

  “Out of the friggin’ blue,” Baxter grumbled.

  “And?”

  Baxter eyed her. “Jurgen doesn’t give anyone top marks. I keep him out at Rowley to scare the ego out of all the rookies, even the agents back for refresher training who are getting too cocky. He gave them to her, though. I told you about Stan Corman sending me a dog.”

  “That?” Lieber looked down at Thor, who began batting a front paw in his sleep as if chasing a rabbit.

  Linda hoped it was a little field bunny, because he wasn’t all that much bigger than a jackrabbit.

  “That,” Baxter agreed.

  “Should do nicely.”

  Linda twisted around to get a better look at him, but it didn’t tell her anything.

  “Can you be presentable?” Agent Lieber looked down at her.

  She waved a hand at herself. This was how she came. In uniform with her hair and teeth brushed.

  “I mean in a high-end social crowd. Not asking if you’re pretty—that’s obvious and irrelevant, though not a bad thing in this situation. Asking if you know how to behave.”

  “My mother wishes I did.” Mom had always been pushing her into the political events in Montpelier, Vermont—as if it was Albany, New York, or some other much larger and more important state’s capital. Was she supposed to become a conniving politician like her mother, whose ethics had nothing to do with reality and everything to do with partisan stratagems and counterattacks? Or was she supposed to become like her father, teaching at University of Vermont, Burlington, because of all the coeds who flocked to handsome poli-sci professors whenever his wife was off to Montpelier?

  “Which means you know how, you just hate it. Couldn’t care. Your call, Baxter. First Family flies out in an hour, I can’t deal with this right now.” And just that fast he was gone.

  “What the hell?”

  Baxter raised his eyebrows.

  “Sir.”

  Clive went through his morning routine on autopilot.

  The Chocolate Shop was so small that it was a good thing there was a coat closet between it and the main kitchen. The twenty-foot-square room was immaculate and, with all of the counters and equipment, left little space for anything extraneous like his coat.

  The conching machine ground happily away in the corner, smoothing and heating the chocolate to uniformly distribute the cocoa butter throughout. It’s background hum always made him feel as if everything was okay. The dark chocolate required three days of conching. It had taken some re
al magic to squeeze the machine into his tiny kitchen, but the results were absolutely worth it.

  He studied several of the sketches he’d taped on the face of the spice cabinet. He peeled away the chocolate cake he’d made for Christmas and the white chocolate and strawberry streusel from New Year’s Eve. He liked to think of it as clearing the decks for what came next. Many other surfaces had neat rows of images that inspired him, but the spice cabinet was only for the actual desserts he was going to make and he never repeated.

  He unlocked the pantry and main chocolate storage cabinet that kept everything at fifty degrees. His supplies were all in place.

  A peek inside his smaller storage cabinet, which he left at sixty degrees and never locked, said that the overnight damage hadn’t been too severe. He made a point of leaving “extra” confections there, which were frequently raided when the staff had to work late. He made a mental note to keep the level of truffles a little higher and form the chocolate bars smaller. Apparently people felt too guilty taking the larger chocolate bars when raiding his kitchen. He took a few minutes with a hot knife to cut them neatly into halves and thirds. He lay a small bet with himself as to how many would survive another night.

  Of course whenever Clive caught a “thief,” he took deep umbrage and soundly berated the individual—it was the only time he unleashed his father’s brogue. “An’ what makes ye think that ye deserve such snashters, you blaggard?” And the like. Lasses, of course, were treated more kindly. It came out half drunken-Scot and half pirate-captain—all in good fun.

  The “public” cabinet was a good testing method for new creations. He’d leave several options, and often discovered that one had been completely cleared out and another barely touched. Last night had been an even fifty-fifty, so nothing new to learn there. He found that disappointing, he’d rather thought his lavender-brushed honey truffles would be more popular than the vanilla-cream-filled extra-dark bonbon.

  “Back to the drawing board, lad.”

  Which reminded him of yesterday’s sketch. Drawn, but now he’d have to write out the process of execution.