Roy's Independence Day

by M. L. Buchman

She’d remained coy about her name and he didn’t feel comfortable using her first name without permission, so he was stuck with the Goddess Aphrodite. He couldn’t remember if she was love or beauty or something else. The longer it lasted, the more certain he became that he’d gotten it wrong and never should have crawled out of bed this morning. But he did enjoy working with the kids and it was a nice change from sniper duty. Then Sienna Aphrodite had slipped into his sights with her knowing smile and lively eyes.

  Down the street, through the mirrored doors, and up to the front desk they’d talked mostly of the weather: the seasons of D.C., Vermont, and where she’d done most of her growing up near Marine Corps Air Station New River in Jacksonville, North Carolina. She was the first city girl he’d ever met who had thoughts beyond shops and parties and the status of this person versus that one.

  At the security desk, he moved in to vouch for her as a visitor. She slid her badge across the desk and it was as if he’d ceased to exist.

  “Greetings, Ms. Arnson,” Marlene, who usually greeted him with the sharp edge of her tongue, was all smoothness and silk to—

  “Wait! Arnson? That—” he pointed a hand helplessly toward the Air and Space Museum. “That was Brigadier General Edward Arnson?”

  “Yes,” she replied, deeply amused by some internal joke. “My father and I share that name.”

  “Shit!” He wiped at his forehead. “He’s—” Then he clamped down on his tongue. Both Marlene and Sienna were looking at him with amused expressions. “Notorious.” Notoriously strict and intolerant of anything that wasn’t absolutely perfect about the President’s protection. He and Frank Adams were two of a kind. Rumor had it that Arnson had turned down two promotions in order to remain in charge of the Marines at HMX-1.

  And Arnson didn’t limit his opinions to his helicopters or the Marines stationed aboard them. He’d never faced the man himself, but he’d heard stories and seen the shredded remains of USSS agents not living up to his standards.

  Sienna was still smiling at him, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sienna…Arnson.

  “Oh shit!”

  She laughed in his face.

  He had been briefed on her, he’d just never seen the photo of the new National Security Advisor. “You’re…” He stopped himself, but it was far too late.

  Marlene was going to be spreading this story far and wide. If he thought the ration of shit Fernando and Hank had unleashed on his head was too much, he was in for a blood bath now.

  He took a deep breath and looked down at her. National Security Advisor Sienna Arnson was awaiting his final reaction. But so was another woman, one he guessed was used to hiding deep in those liquid brown eyes.

  “I believe,” he drew it out just a little and saw the most tentative of smiles from the inner woman rather than the NSA. “I believe I promised my Lady Aphrodite a bit of shooting.”

  Her smile shifted. There was a distinct pause. Then, rather than going radiantly dangerous as it had on the first day when she was leaving the White House, it went soft and warm. That’s how he knew he’d made the right choice.

  In his peripheral vision he could see Marlene giving him a nod as if she didn’t quite believe what she was seeing—Roy Beaumont actually doing something right.

  He took Sienna’s arm and guided her down the marble and granite hall toward the basement range. Once she was a half step ahead of him, he turned casually and stuck his tongue out at Marlene.

  A dozen paces down the hall, Sienna asked quietly, “Did you enjoy doing that?”

  “I did,” he admitted. And would never again forget that the NSA missed absolutely nothing.

  # # #

  Roy led her down a long flight of stairs and through two sets of double doors, where they collected ear muffs and goggles before going through a third. The range had shooting bays separated by sound-muffled panels that also stopped ejected casings from pinging the next shooter along the line. Down a long, concrete tunnel there were ten targets hanging from wires. Some of them were a long way away.

  Saturday afternoon was apparently a quiet time on the Secret Service basement shooting range. There were only three other shooters in the ten lanes.

  The distance didn’t bother her, but she was less certain about the man. Her position as the National Security Advisor had only knocked him off track for a moment. And he might be the first person other than her parents to see her as herself rather than the NSA or “some woman.” She’d never, not until that moment in the Secret Service lobby, realized the difference herself. Yet when he had set aside her position and continued to treat her as the woman she’d been at lunch, her world had shifted just a little bit.

  They visited the armorer.

  “What do you shoot?”

  “A…handgun?” How was she supposed to answer?

  Roy sighed and took her hand. She couldn’t ignore the easy strength of his big hands as he assessed her own. And it wasn’t merely size he was interested in. He poked at muscles, flexed her fingers, even ordered her to make a fist around his two forefingers and squeeze hard before he turned back to the armorer.

  “Let’s try her on a Glock 43 slimline subcompact. I may be back for the 19 compact but I don’t think so. Five magazines until we see how she does.”

  “What? Think I can’t handle the big, bad gun?” What was she even doing here with him?

  “No, I think it will fit your hand better and give you better control. You have medium hands but very fine fingers. It will actually kick a little harder because it’s the same 9mm round, just less gun. I think you have the strength to handle that.”

  Okay, she was going to shut up now. He hadn’t taken offense at her sarcasm. He heard her mistaken assumption and had simply corrected it. Why now, when her life was crazier than it had ever been, had she finally met a decent guy? These were stolen minutes. For the next seven months, she didn’t have time for a guy, much less a decent one—jerks took less time to deal with even in a relationship. She was too busy, just like she’d been for the last—Sienna was not going to count the years.

  He led her over to one of the shooting desks between a pair of the sound panels.

  “Besides…”

  And she already knew that smile. Here came the next compliment wrapped up in a tease. Oddly, she was intrigued to know how he’d pull it off this time. Then, for the first time, he very deliberately looked down at her chest.

  “With your build, this is the weapon you’d want for a concealed shoulder holster carry.”

  “Are you saying my breasts are too small?” And then she knew that her unconsidered reaction was exactly the one he’d been counting on her having.

  “Nope. I’m saying they’re just about damn perfect and this is the gun to go with them.”

  Sienna didn’t want to be charmed. He was talking about her chest like…like…like no one else ever had. She couldn’t pin down what was up with Roy Beaumont. Then she could see him shift back into sniper mode. Almost like a cuckoo clock, this complete and total “guy” would stick his head out, tease her, and then duck away.

  “This is a Glock 43. There’s no safety as such. You—”

  “I’ve fired a Glock before.”

  “Okay,” and he backed right off. Even her father didn’t do that. Roy took her at her word. Maybe she was the one he was driving cuckoo.

  She checked the weapon was clear, loaded a magazine, and pulled the slide to chamber the first round. She could feel him watching her every move intently, but he made no comment.

  The target looked to be fifty feet out, a third of the way down the deep range. The outline of a man with two sets of bullseyes on him: one on the face, the other centered on the chest.

  The lane was clear.

  She raised her weapon and sighted down the iron sights through her dominant left eye and—

  “Hold it.” Roy stop
ped her before she could move her finger alongside the barrel onto the trigger. “Keep your finger off the trigger.”

  Which was exactly where she had it placed, alongside the barrel rather than through the trigger guard. Don’t touch the trigger until you’re ready to fire, one of her father’s lessons. And don’t draw the damn thing unless you intend to fire it. Another one.

  Roy then began to handle her. He kicked one foot to set her stance a little wider. Hands on hips to twist her slightly more to the side. He worked his way up her body and then out her arms making tiny adjustments. Sometimes he’d move something, like her elbow, back and forth until he was sure she could feel the difference.

  Last was her head. Without taking the least advantage, his fingers slid into her hair and shifted the angle of her head tilt ever so slightly. It was a gentle, intimate gesture. One she could easily imagine leading to other places that she hadn’t gone in far too long. Three years working the US Commands had elicited a lot of offers—very few of which had been even interesting enough to consider as she’d had so little time for extracurricular activities.

  “No, leave your shoulders where I put them. You’re raising them up again.”

  He left her to slowly find the position he’d set her in rather than laying his hands back on her and making the adjustments himself. She considered not returning to the initial position just so he’d have to put his hands back on her, which was too lame for words.

  Besides, she could feel when everything settled into the “right” position. There was a cleanness to it—at least it was the best word she could find.

  “Now, don’t hold your breath when you fire, just pause for a moment before each squeeze on the trigger. Go when you’re ready.”

  She liked the feel of the smaller Glock 43, the way the butt nestled neatly against her palm—once Roy was done adjusting her grip. She could feel the straight line of wrist, elbow, arm, and the solid support of her other hand cupped beneath the gun and her hand.

  Sienna considered showing off, firing a fast series of shots like those she heard battering away in other lanes, but something about Roy’s presence…she wanted to do her best. She squeezed off the first round.

  No comment.

  Another.

  A whispered, “Don’t adjust left, but think left. That will be enough correction.”

  She thought left and sent the rest of the magazine after the first two without eliciting any other comment—one per breath. There was a peace inside her as she made sure the weapon was clear and set it on the shooting desk.

  Roy pressed a button and the chart flapped backward as the overhead wire pulleyed it to them.

  “Nice shooting. Your father trained you well.”

  She did her best to ignore the two shots out in the five ring to the right. An eight, two nines with one just catching the edge of the bullseye, and one fully in the black of the ten. Ignoring the first two, it was one of the best groups she’d ever shot in her life.

  “He never taught me the sort of things you did,” she tipped her head and shifted her elbow to demonstrate.

  “Different weapon. He probably ran you mostly on his Sig Sauer P226. And the Corps teaches differently. I gave you the base position we start recruits in. You build stance variations from there.” And he lifted her empty gun, which looked silly in his big strong hands, and demonstrated a slow turn. The muzzle of the weapon never wavered that she could see, but his shoulders, hands, and head position shifted as he rotated from chin over his left shoulder to chin over his right. He then dropped to a squat and did the same thing, but the shifts were more dramatic.

  It was easy to forget that something so apparently simple as firing a sidearm was also so complex. He made it look easy. This was Roy’s specialty and he would be far more skilled in this arena than she was—or her father, which was hard to admit.

  “Besides, the P226 is a lot of gun with a heavy round and would require a slightly different stance. I’d wager you hurt here after shooting it,” he poked a finger into a shoulder muscle she knew all too well from past experience, “and the slide sometimes caught you here.” His fingertip drew a line of fire across the webbing between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Okay, Mr. Smarty Sniper. Show me your stuff.” She needed a moment to recover from the unexpected intimacy of him knowing things about her body that only she should know.

  She hit the “Out” button and sent the target flying back down-range. She didn’t stop at the fifty-foot mark.

  “Hey!”

  Sienna kept her thumb down on the travel control.

  “C’mon! I don’t have my rifle here,” he whined as it passed the hundred foot mark. She ran it right to the back wall at fifty yards.

  “Head shots only. And your grouping had better be at least as good as mine.”

  “Blindfolded with my back turned and no mirror?”

  “Maybe next time. This time I’ll let you off easy.”

  He set down her empty Glock 43 and pulled its much bigger brother out of his back holster—a Glock 21 that fired .45 cal rounds. There was a weapon that looked proper in his hands. The fearsome warrior now stood before her in all his lethal might. Damn, but it looked good on him.

  She stepped aside to give Roy room. He’d taken a minute or two to get her positioned.

  It took him less than five seconds. He just went…quiet. Not frozen, but so still she suspected a deer could walk right by him in his precious Vermont woods without being disturbed.

  The shots came impossibly close together. No, she caught the rhythm of the last few. She had fired once per breath, he was firing once per heartbeat.

  He stopped at six, which came all within the same caught breath for her. Then he punched the “In” button before dropping the magazine and clearing the chamber.

  “Same number of rounds to be fair.”

  The target arrived. Every shot was in or touching the much smaller black bullseye of the headshot except one.

  “What was that?” She asked before she could stop herself. One shot had hit two inches high in the center of the target’s forehead. The rest of his grouping would have fit easily inside the chest bullseye that she’d only managed to really hit once, and his was at three times the distance.

  “Number three,” he sounded ticked. “I typically drop the first two in the center of the chest and then shift for the head for the next two. I remembered a moment too late that I was already at the head and you had specified only head shots. So it went high. That high on the forehead, it might easily glance aside of the bone without penetrating the skull.”

  “That’s amaz—”

  Somewhere down the lane a series of shots rang out so fast she could barely separate them. It wasn’t machine gun fire, but it was impossibly fast. Either two per heartbeat or someone with the pulse rate of a hummingbird.

  There was a soft but heartfelt, “Damn it!” from the same direction.

  A few seconds later there was another impossibly fast barrage, this time without the curse.

  Two targets that had been against the back wall at the far end of the shooting gallery as Roy’s had, started winging their way forward.

  Roy leaned back to look down the gallery and then gathered up both of their weapons and the small pile of magazines. “C’mon. This should be good.”

  They arrived at the same time the targets did.

  Sienna focused on the targets first. One had a lot of holes in the black at the center of the chest, one through the neck, and the rest inside or touching the black of the head bullseye. The other had near perfect groupings in the two blacks without any strays.

  “Getting sloppy in your old age, Beat.” The speaker was looking over at the target with the neck shot. She was a short but very shapely woman with Eurasian features and a streak of bleached blond in her dark, chin-length hair.

  “Still a spine cu
tter, Kee.” The first shooter—who had apparently been the one to curse after her round—was an equally powerfully-curved woman with dark, dark skin and just the first hint of gray in her black hair. She tapped her stray shot with the tip of her handgun.

  Sienna had to swallow hard at the thought. These two women were shooting to make sure that the person wasn’t just stopped, but stopped dead. Just like Roy shooting chest then head. They were talking about cutting the spine to stop an assailant. She knew of this world, but not about it. No matter how much she’d studied, she’d never been in a war zone, never had to shoot a live person.

  Then a big, deep voice back down the gallery boomed out, “Who the hell shot this piece of crap?”

  Sienna winced just knowing someone had found her target.

  # # #

  Roy groaned. It shouldn’t be possible. It was Saturday afternoon for crying out loud.

  But when Roy looked, there he was as real as life. Frank Adams came striding up the line with his and Sienna’s chart flapping from one of his big hands.

  “That’s mine, I’m afraid, Mr. Adams,” Sienna admitted freely, showing not the least flinch of mortal terror. How did she do that?

  “I’m not talking about the chest. It’s obviously civilian and nice enough shooting for one. Wouldn’t take much to make you a decent shot if you can already do this, Ms. Arnson.”

  Of course Adams had known who the hot redhead was, even the first day on the roof. It ticked Roy off that the answer to the mystery woman’s identity had been glaring over his shoulder all week; not that Roy would ever have considered asking him.

  “I’m talking about this piece of crap,” Adams aimed a finger right at Roy’s high number three.

  “Was shifting for a head shot, forgetting I was already there.” It was an awful admission, because it meant he’d made a shot without thinking about it. But it was the truth, so he said it.

  Frank tipped his head down enough to look at Roy over the tops of his shooting glasses.

  Roy wasn’t sure what prompted him, maybe hoping for a laugh from Sienna. But for the second time in the same week, he talked back to the head of the Presidential Protection Detail. First he raised his right hand.