On Your Mark

by M. L. Buchman

  There was something odd about the cane. It had tarnished metal on the tip and rose in a long taper, wider at the top than the tip by at least an inch. The carved handle looked like old deer horn, handled so often that it had been burnished smooth. Rather than having a flat top to rest one’s palm on, as an invalid’s cane might, it curved slightly. More like a handle if one were to hold it horizontally.

  “Yes, an elegant piece,” Miss Watson didn’t even glance toward it.

  She had a disconcerting way of never looking at what she was discussing.

  “Jim Bowie was nearly killed by this sword cane during a duel on a sandbar in the Mississippi. Instead, he killed the man who stabbed him in the chest with it. It was because of that fight that he purchased a large knife from a blacksmith—a knife that was popularized as the Bowie knife. The knife came after the fight, despite the popular story. He also was a spy for the Americans against the Mexicans before he was ultimately killed at the Alamo.”

  “Can I see?” Dilya set down her cup.

  “May I see. And yes.” At Miss Watson’s nod, Dilya stepped forward and picked up the cane.

  “Just tug sharply, dear.”

  Dilya yanked on the handle and a foot and a half of bright steel slid out of the scabbard. It caught the red light off the Tiffany lamps until it looked as if it dripped with blood.

  Miss Watson offered her pointers on how to hold and wield a sword. As Dilya practiced them, Reese noticed that Miss Watson’s attention was on her, not Dilya.

  Tell me what you know but haven’t spoken aloud, Miss Carver.

  Reese swallowed hard. Now it felt as if Miss Watson was a telepath placing her words directly into Reese’s head.

  She knew that she missed Jim Fischer and Malcolm. She shouldn’t—not for how briefly they’d been together—yet she did. It was impossible that this unknown woman would be discussing that.

  Therefore the topic, as it had tediously been all week, was the attack on the First Lady’s Motorcade. Others were still debating between accident and attack, but she knew it was the latter. She also knew…but that was ridiculous.

  Miss Watson smiled. “Yes, we know things even though there is no way for us to know them. That is the power of being a woman. You must learn to trust your instincts in life just as you did on the track. Tell me about the attack.”

  “I don’t know your clearance.”

  “I should think that these walls speak for themselves,” Miss Watson waved her teacup in a small circular motion that included far more than the unusual parlor in the deep subbasement that she occupied, perhaps even more than the White House itself. “But I don’t care for such trivial items as what occurred. I already know all of that. I’m far more interested in what you know, but that others have not yet been willing to confront.”

  “It was a test.” Reese hadn’t known that for a fact until she said it aloud. But now that she’d given it a voice, she knew it was true.

  “Oh my,” Miss Watson stared down at her tea with pursed lips. “I had feared as much.”

  “A test of what?” Dilya paused halfway through a lunge with the blade.

  “Of…” Reese didn’t like the answer on the tip of her tongue. “Of Motorcade security. I have to tell Harvey. We have to lock it down harder.” The realization slammed into her like a physical blow. She was halfway to her feet when Miss Watson held up a restraining hand. “What?”

  “There is a question that you haven’t asked yet, but which any of these women now hanging as memories on my wall would think of immediately.”

  Reese sat back and thought hard about what that might be. She even gave herself some time by eating the first chocolate. The deep flavors of strawberry and mint on a dark chocolate substrate almost served to distract her.

  Almost.

  “There is a hard-learned lesson by women of…” Miss Watson looked momentarily uncomfortable, “…my profession. Sometimes, an enemy’s action is done to better understand our reaction.”

  Reese thought of racing, and it made perfect sense. There were times when you teased at a move, perhaps a couple times without executing it, to set up an opponent to be too slow to react when you finally did drop a gear to jump down to the inside of the track and take the lead from them. She’d done just that several times, but with a stock car. To do it with a Presidential Motorcade…

  “But what did they learn?” Dilya slid the sword back into its cane scabbard and scooped up her third chocolate.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Miss Watson looked directly at Reese as if she knew the answer.

  Dilya also looked at her for a long moment, then her eyes widened as if she too knew the answer.

  Well she certainly didn’t know it herself. The only thing they would have learned was…about Reese’s driving. She was the latest unknown factor to be added to the Presidential Motorcade. Had they been trying to test her…or remove her?

  She’d suddenly lost her taste for chocolate.

  Malcolm had done his typical stellar job on the training course. His sniffing score was at the top of the charts, and for a medium-sized dog, he’d done incredibly well on the agility course. For an hour he’d jumped over barriers, ducked and run through winding tunnels of plastic pipe, slalomed through stick gates like legs of fifty people in a crowd—all around proving that at four years old he was still a young dog in top form. Another half hour of attack training. Just because he was a “friendly” dog meant to be working among the public didn’t mean he couldn’t be dangerous when needed. Then a second run at an altered explosives course while they were both tired.

  “I sometimes suspect your dog of cheating,” Jurgen grumped as he signed off on the score sheet.

  Jim looked down at his springer spaniel.

  Malcolm gave back his best innocent look as if he knew exactly what they were talking about.

  “Did you place all the explosives yourself?” Jim took a guess.

  “Damn straight!”

  “Wearing gloves?” Jim smiled.

  Jurgen scowled down at Malcolm for a long couple seconds, then cursed when he figured out the drift of Jim’s question.

  “You little, four-legged sneak.”

  Jim burst out laughing. “Malcolm did a double find. He went after the explosives. And for the ones that were hardest to find, he went after the scent that the earlier ones had in common: you.”

  “That’ll teach me.” Jurgen offered a hard laugh, then thumped Malcolm on the ribs a few times to show that there were no hard feelings.

  With his high scores, Malcolm had earned them an afternoon off.

  Jim thought about hanging around until he saw what was next on Jurgen’s agenda when a truck rolled up with a fresh load of ten dogs from Vonn Liche Kennels. Ten dogs tagged as candidates for the Secret Service’s intense standards. He’d thought it could be fun, until he saw that they were all for the ERT.

  The Emergency Response Team dogs were the toughest animals in the service: Dobermans, German shepherds, and Belgian Malinois. Driven, dangerous, and, after the long drive from Indiana, they would be a particular handful.

  With thinly veiled excuses, which Jurgen saw right through but let him get away with, Jim and Malcolm made good their escape and climbed back into his pickup to head out.

  The kennels and the bulk of the dog training area were in the farthest corner of RTC. Then there was the mock town, an area of tightly convoluted back roads for driver training, and then the main driving area for skid and turn training. The last was an open area of pavement a quarter mile long and a football field wide. If no one else was running, maybe they’d let him sign out a vehicle. Watching Reese on the videos, he’d learned more than a few tricks and wanted to give them a try. His job was no longer behind the wheel, but that didn’t stop him from wanting to do it on occasion.

  He pulled up beside the long line of battered Suburbans, Chevy Impalas, and Ford Tauruses that were used for agent’s driver training. Once they were retired from the field, they were
used and abused here. After they were truly worn out, they were repurposed once more for demolition derby training. That was a skill he was fine without learning—how to use another vehicle to bounce off for a change of direction or to shove into an assailant’s path. Jim just wanted to try that high-speed drift.

  Even as he opened his truck’s door, he could hear the hard squeal of tires as someone worked the pavement on the other side of the garage. He rolled down the windows halfway and left Malcolm asleep on the front passenger seat. He’d earned his rest and the cool February day wouldn’t bother him any. Jim tossed a light blanket over him anyway so that just his nose was sticking out.

  After shrugging on his sheepskin jacket against the cool day, he walked around the end of the garage. Three guys were standing on the swatch of brown grass that separated the back of the main garage from the open stretch of pavement. They weren’t doing anything, just watching.

  Focusing downfield, he saw only one car on the big open area. It was one of the Beast limousines. The Presidential Motorcade only used three limos at a time: the President’s and the two Spares. But the Secret Service actually owned twelve. Some were for backups when one or another was rotated into service. Others were for this.

  The lone driver raced the car straight at them from the far end. With less than two hundred feet to go, the car slammed sideways into a four-wheel drift.

  Before it even came to a stop, the rear tires smoked in reverse. With a hard cut, the driver was headed back the way they’d come, back end first. He could hear the engine clawing up against redline before the driver threw in the inevitable J-turn. A hard crank of the wheel. Rather than holding the sideways skid, they let the car drift around until it was headed nose-first down the field and the engine was gunning ahead in drive with almost no loss of speed despite the flip.

  Jim strode up beside the guys watching. He’d expected to see Ralph McKenna out there taking one last set of spins before retirement, but instead he was standing here with the two head trainers. They all stood with their arms folded over their chests, just watching.

  “Hey, guys.”

  “Hey, Jim,” Ralph was the only one who glanced away from the driver long enough to identify him.

  “Thought that’d be you out there.”

  “Technique’s wrong,” Arturo, the head trainer observed. “Ralph always hit the turn at five thousand RPM.”

  “That was fifty-five if it was a day,” George, his assistant, added in.

  “It was six flat. Hard against the redline,” McKenna finished the conversation.

  “Who…” But then he saw it. He’d watched the video a hundred times of Reese sliding the Suburban sideways at high speed to make it through the gate of the Downtown Manhattan Heliport. She’d judged it with such nicety that she’d barely scraped the driver’s door, fitting the big vehicle through an opening only a few feet wider than the Suburban itself.

  He got it now. She was slamming the monstrous limousine through the same maneuvers. There was a reason they called it “The Beast.” With all of its armor and defense system, it was eighteen feet long, six feet high, and weighed in at eight tons—over twice his pickup with a full load. And she was making it spin and dance like it was a turbo-charged hotrod.

  On the next run, she slammed it through a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin, a full time around.

  “Now why would she do that?” George mused aloud.

  Jim glanced at Ralph and saw the small smile there, so he kept his mouth shut.

  Reese did it three more times until she could nail the final direction every time.

  On the next spin, when she was halfway through and facing away from them, he saw a pair of canisters shoot out of the front and blast out a cloud of smoke as she continued her turn.

  “Is that tear gas?” The wind was drifting their way.

  “Normally,” Arturo growled. “Just smoke canisters for training here.”

  “She laid them down as a blind to anyone following rather than to clear a crowd blocking the way,” McKenna said almost reverently. It was clear he’d never thought to do it himself.

  Jim felt an itch. That was Reese Carver at the wheel. And it was clear that she was angry at something. She was slamming The Beast around like it was part NASCAR racer and part demolition derby.

  “Anyone willing to bet a twenty she has another trick up her sleeve?”

  They all turned to look at him for a long moment, then looked away.

  “Aw, c’mon guys. Easy money.” Even making clucking chicken noises didn’t get him a taker.

  As if Reese could overhear their conversation, she started her next—and he’d bet final—run from the far edge of the pavement.

  What if instead of going into a drift to turn ninety degrees as she had at the heliport gate, she first wanted to blind those following her?

  She gunned toward them from the far end of the field. For a quarter mile, she let the lumbering Beast gather as much speed as it could.

  Then just as the guys were starting to get nervous, wondering which way they’d need to dodge and run, Reese slammed into a spin.

  When her car was turned exactly one-eighty—with its rear end facing them—she launched another pair of smoke canisters out the front. Because they were standing on her side of the smoke screen, they could see the car continue to spin until it was headed off to the left at speed—a three-quarters turn nailed perfectly on dry pavement.

  If it was a T-intersection, the attackers might barrel straight through the smoke screen and crash into the end of the road. If it was a through-intersection, they might race straight through and across the intersection in hot pursuit.

  Either way, the Beast wouldn’t be there. Masked by the smoke screen of the tear gas canisters, she’d be gone in an unexpected direction. Sideways.

  There was an awed silence among the observers as Reese continued down the narrow side road she’d entered. Then with one more hard thrum of the engine, she came racing toward them backwards before flipping the car through a final J-turn and coming to a stop close beside them.

  Reese sat there holding the wheel and staring at him as he started applauding.

  Reese would rather Jim wasn’t here. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be at the White House, walking his precious fence line with his precious dog doing their precious sniffing. He—

  She wanted to pound on something. Or someone. Jim was fast becoming a candidate as he led the applause.

  How the hell had she gotten in this trap?

  Miss Watson was right—it all somehow fit. Reese had been the target in New York. And for that to happen, it had to be an inside job. Which meant that she could trust no one! Once again she was out on the track all alone and no one to turn to.

  She eased off the brake and, letting the idling of the big diesel engine put the car back into motion, drove along the small access road to the garage. She parked it by the other vehicles and turned off the engine.

  A figure came up on the other side of the five-inch ballistic glass to open her door. She waited for Jim to fail. The Beast’s doors didn’t open by merely pulling on a handle—then any fool could run up and do it. One of the closely held secrets of The Beast was how to open its heavy doors from the outside.

  But the door swung open anyway.

  Ralph McKenna was standing there. He’d driven this car for a decade so of course he knew its tricks; he’d probably helped design them. The others were standing back a bit.

  She popped her belt and clambered out, taking the hand that Ralph offered because she didn’t trust her knees with how they were shaking. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t stress. She didn’t know what it was, but it was there and she didn’t like it. She was such a mess that she should tell them here and now that she couldn’t be the President’s driver. Stagecoach—as the Beast was known whenever the President was aboard—was one rung of the ladder too high.

  Ralph was no longer holding her hand, he was shaking it.

  “
When it comes time to put me in the ground, Carver, I want you driving the hearse. That way I know that I’ll get to where I’m going.”

  “Not for a long time, McKenna.” If the best driver in the Service told her that, it meant that she couldn’t walk away. Damn it!

  “Not a chance. I’ve got a cottage and a sailboat waiting for me in the San Juan Islands up in the other Washington. Time for me to go home. I know The Beast and his passengers are in the best of hands.”

  A double dare. Definitely no way out of it.

  Arturo and George came up and shook her hand as well. “I can’t see putting that in the standard training. I don’t know if either of us could even do that move, never mind teach it to the poor hombres who come through here. Nice, Carver. Seriously nice.”

  Triple dare. Crap! All she’d done was drive. It was all she wanted to do. She didn’t like whatever was messing with her knees.

  Then they moved off and there was only Jim.

  “Where’s Malcolm?” She still wasn’t ready to talk to him. She’d treated him like crap since New York and she wasn’t ready to deal with that either.

  “In the truck, sleeping off a hard morning of training,” he hooked a thumb toward a big Dodge pickup with a crew cab and a short bed. Meant the thing was all for show because the bed wasn’t big enough to haul anything. And it looked that way too, immaculately clean as if he spent the weekends polishing its glossy black surface.

  On cue, Malcolm stuck his head up over the window sill and gave her a welcoming woof before disappearing out of sight once more.

  “Can I buy you lunch? Know a good spot about ten minutes away. Great roast beef sandwiches. Beer if you’re done for the day.”

  She was so done. Somehow he knew that she didn’t want to talk about her driving. In the last five days she’d forgotten how easy it was to be around Jim Fischer. He never pushed her when she didn’t want to talk.

  “Fine.” Her Pop would slap her butt a hard one for that kind of manners. “Thanks, that’d be great.” A little better.