Roy's Independence Day

by M. L. Buchman

  “You’re never going to be Chris Kyle with a record number of kills, neither am I for that matter, even though I’m probably as good a shot.”

  Roy leaned back to think about it, but didn’t have a chance as Kee parked and they carried their rifles—she toted an unmarked case, battered and scuffed with hard use—through the back door of the hangar. There were a dozen helos parked in here.

  As his eyes adjusted from the bright light outside, he could start to see details. Like the fact that every one of them was painted in the distinct green and white of the President’s aircraft. These were the Marine One aircraft and their cohort of flying guard ships. That meant—

  “Well, looky what the cat dragged in,” General Edward Arnson strode up in Marine Corps fatigues and a dark blue t-shirt with USMC emblazoned across his broad chest. He nodded to the rifle cases, “Mr. Docent showing his true colors.”

  “Um, yes sir.” Roy didn’t know what else to say. He’d kissed this man’s daughter and had been hoping to do so again. Looking at General Arnson, he wondered if he’d still be alive by the end of the day, never mind achieve the impossible and find out something “nice” about Adams and Belfour.

  “Show some pluck, son,” Arnson slammed a sidefist into Roy’s arm hard enough to rock him sideways. “Gonna need it if you’re going after my girl. Ain’t me you need to be worrying about.”

  And Roy would believe that after hell froze over and cactus trees grew in Vermont.

  “What can we do for you today, Kee?” The general’s rough affability softened when he addressed the hard-edged Stevenson.

  “I called in. Frank Adams wants me to take Beaumont here aloft. Do some target work.”

  Which was news to Roy despite half an hour in her presence. He’d done some shooting from helicopters…and been lousy at it. Anything beyond a few hundred yards was impossible to nail because of the vibrations and air currents. As a sniper he thought about breath, pulse, wind, temperature, and could even account for the Earth’s spin on long shots. But with no stable platform, it was almost impossible to make a clean shot. From a helicopter, it was a challenge just to keep the target anywhere in the scope.

  “Beaumont, huh,” Arnson was inspecting him again.

  “Yes, sir, Secret Service Agent Roy Beaumont.” So Sienna hadn’t told her father anything about him yet. Was that a good sign or a bad one? At the museum it had been easy to see how close they were. Maybe they didn’t discuss personal matters? Or—

  “Seems a hole just opened up in my schedule. What do you want to start him in?”

  And Roy knew he was screwed.

  “Let’s start him in a Hawk, General. Don’t know if I can trust him yet to not drop his gear off a Little Bird.”

  “Hey!” But they both ignored him and turned to the Hawk and began chatting about a “young scamp” named Dilya, who was apparently the First Child’s part-time nanny. Roy was struck by how little thought he’d given to all that went on inside the building he’d spent so many hours lying on top of. It was just…the White House.

  “Jeezum Crow!”

  Both Arnson and Stevenson turned to look at him.

  He just shook his head and they turned back to their conversation. Here he was as shallow as a mud puddle on a D.C. summer day and he was interested in the National Security Advisor, one of the most highly connected power players in the entire D.C. scene? She was responsible for wrangling the Joint Chiefs, intelligence, and cabinet secretaries into some form of agreement and he was responsible for…peeking through a rifle scope.

  Roy tuned back into Kee Stevenson’s conversation to escape quite how small he suddenly felt.

  “…I tell you that Beat and Frank understand my kid way better than I do. I’m half tempted to put a bow on Dilya and stuff her under their Christmas tree this December.”

  Roy nearly tripped on the flat concrete trying to catch up with the conversation.

  “Too bad you love her so much,” General Arnson commented dryly.

  “Yep. Too bad,” Kee Stevenson may have actually smiled, but if she did, it disappeared as fast as it had arrived.

  “Take me about ten minutes to get the bird prepped,” the general peeled off toward the cockpit.

  “Take me about the same with this cargo,” Kee led him to the big open door in the side of the helicopter.

  Roy couldn’t believe he’d just missed exactly what Sienna had asked him for. He might be way down the ladder from the NSA, but it didn’t mean he didn’t want to try for her.

  He’d never met anyone like her.

  # # #

  Sienna knew it wasn’t Roy on the roof the moment she arrived at the White House. The one atop the West Wing tracked her briefly and then swept away to look elsewhere. The one on the Residence barely hesitated as his sightlines swept by her.

  She had learned the rhythm of the overwatch changeovers and just happened to be passing by the Secret Service room in the West Wing basement when the relief snipers headed aloft. No sign of Roy.

  It was a stupid, schoolgirl thing to do—one that she’d never done as a schoolgirl—but she found an excuse to catch the next shift change as well. She spotted a Latino sniper headed out—one who she could easily imagine being the infamous Fernando, introducing Roy to his “cousins” all over D.C.’s worst bars.

  Before she could move in to ask about Roy, the Secretary of Defense stepped up to spread more of his officious misogyny all over her. It took a couple of hours to prove that, just perhaps, she knew more about how USAFRICOM mishandled black ops force requests than he did.

  It was an example of asymmetric warfare with him; she couldn’t bring the big hammer to such a small battle and expect to win. While it would be far easier to simply slap the facts upside his head, that would lose all of the future battles. Instead she did the whole pretend-that-he-knew-more thing until she could finally transform her idea into his. It almost made her nauseous. Thankfully, she’d already briefed the President on precisely this problem, so at least he would know the true source of the solution.

  Lunch wasn’t an option, as she and the Assistant NSA had to tackle Egypt’s most recent problems with the falling revenue at the Second Suez Canal. The plunging price of oil had made it cheaper for cargo and oil vessels to travel around the Cape of Good Hope rather than pay the high tariffs at the canal. The Catch-22 was that Egypt needed to pay off their canal building bonds. If they defaulted on those loans, then there was an even bigger headache coming to an already unstable government.

  By the time she next managed to look at a clock, Roy was already a couple hours off shift.

  And he hadn’t thought to come by her office to at least say good evening or offer to get her some dinner.

  He had all the consideration of…of…the Secretary of Defense!

  Well wasn’t that a disappointment! She rested her elbows on her desk and massaged her forehead.

  A knock on her door had her jerking her head up so quickly that her neck almost seized up.

  “You—” But it wasn’t Roy who she was going to set straight about the right way to treat a woman you had kissed as if you had invented the concept personally.

  Instead the head of the PPD, Frank Adams, was standing in her doorway.

  “Evening, ma’am.”

  “Good evening, Frank.”

  “Are you okay, ma’am?”

  She slumped back in her chair, “I look that bad, huh?”

  Frank offered a puzzled smile, “Someday some woman will explain to me how to step around that question without getting slaughtered.”

  “Not a chance. I did a pinkie swear at birth to never reveal trade secrets.”

  “Should have known. You just look like it’s been a hard day and I’m guessing that your blood sugar floored out a while back.”

  “Good guess.”

  “Go home, Ma’am. Get some
sleep or you’ll never make it past the first month.”

  Sienna eyed the piles on her desk, the long list of unread e-mails, several bearing unread attachments which would lead to unread…

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Trust me,” Frank offered a friendly smile and she did her best to return it.

  “I just wish—” And there was no way she was going to mention Roy to his boss.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Nothing, Frank. And it’s Sienna to you?”

  “Not going to happen, Ma’am. But I will tell you as a matter of, shall we say, general interest, Agent Beaumont is out for special training. He’s not on the grounds today or tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” and that popped the balloon of her blood-sugar fueled anger at him.

  “Matter of fact, I expect he’s hurting worse than you are. If that makes you feel any better, Ma’am.”

  Sienna returned Frank Adams smile, “It might, Agent Adams. It just might.”

  # # #

  In the first five minutes, Roy had gone through a dozen stages of frustration until he became sure that he truly didn’t know anything. Not one single little…

  It had started when Kee Stevenson had told him to pull out his first-choice weapon. They were sitting side by side on the 60’s cargo deck, their feet dangling just inches off the immaculate concrete floor of the HMX hangar.

  The Black Hawk UH-60, when upgraded and painted with the President’s green-and-white livery, was dubbed a White Hawk. Even the escort craft that never carried the President, like the bird they sat in now, was armor and weapon heavy. They also carried flares to distract incoming missiles and enough spotting and surveillance equipment to pin down the enemy from much farther away than most craft.

  But it was still the same sized craft as any 60. As soon as he swung the forty-six inches of his JAR up out of the case, he snagged the tip of the barrel on the fifty-two inch high ceiling of the cargo deck.

  “Lesson one about helos,” Kee spoke in a drill sergeant monotone. “Never have a weapon too long to swing inside your available space. Pack that beast away. Pull out your second choice.”

  He pulled out the Heckler & Koch PSG1A1.

  “The HK is a better choice for helicopter work because it’s eight inches shorter with the stock folded so you snag it less until you’re ready.” Kee flipped open her own battered rifle case and slipped out her own weapon.

  He hadn’t known that’s what she shot with. And that explained the odd look she’d given him when he’d selected it as his second choice. It had been a consideration that maybe, just maybe, this fool of a White House counter sniper was worth her time if he selected the same weapon she used.

  “Bought this myself.”

  Roy was having a serious case of rifle envy. It was the exact same model as his own, and yet it was a wholly different weapon. She had the Schmidt & Bender 3-27, seven thousand dollars worth of scope he’d been dying to try out, but that wasn’t it either.

  Kee’s rifle was well used; it had seen a lot of very hard miles and it showed. The polymer stock was worn smooth just where her cheek would rest. Every single finger position was outlined by wear-use. How many shots did that take to happen?

  There was a shine to a weapon that was perfectly maintained but had run through so much service. And it had a new barrel. That meant she’d run about ten thousand rounds through the last one and had to replace it recently. How many barrels had Kee Stevenson worn out?

  Roy shot a lot to keep up his skills, but it was all range work. Kee’s rifle was a weapon of war.

  “To successfully snipe from a helo, you have to add several factors to your shot. First let’s talk about isolating yourself from rotor vibration.”

  Roy was too well trained to need to fire prone. He constantly worked his way through the positions from lying flat to standing without even a tree on which to rest the rifle in order to retain his shooter’s flexibility. Kee started him through variations of sitting firing positions that he’d never considered.

  “If your tailbones are on the metal deck, you may feel more stable and connected, but what you’re actually doing is transmitting the cargo deck vibrations into your skeleton. Roll back on your ass just a little more.”

  He did, and didn’t like the unfamiliarity of the position.

  “That’s it. If it feels all wrong, then you’re getting it right. Keep working that until it feels normal. Any time you sit anywhere for the next few weeks, I want you off your tailbones.”

  “Now, let’s start talking about pilot factors. You’ll never get to fly with the best pilot ever, Major Emily Beale.”

  “Why not?”

  “Bitch retired to fight wildfires and have children. Go figure. When she flew it was like you were sitting on bedrock. She could hold a helo so still it might have been built right there in the sky. Fly with Lola Maloney and she’ll fish you across the entire sky—she flies like she’s dancing.”

  “She any good?”

  “Chief pilot of 5th Battalion D Company.”

  “I meant as a dancer,” he said it because the 5D wasn’t the stuff of myth, they were the stuff of legend. If this Lola was chief pilot for them, she was one of the best pilots alive, anywhere. And that Kee flew with the 5D…no wonder she was one of the best snipers going. Their standards were stratospheric.

  Kee eyed him closely. It was hard to tell with her narrow eyes, but she probably rolled them at him before she sighed. “Lola’s a damn sight better than you, white boy. And you want a hot lady like the NSA, you better start taking lessons.”

  Roy decided that in the future, he’d keep his mouth shut.

  General Arnson announced he was ready—Roy had been peripherally aware of the general preflighting the White Hawk. In moments they were aloft and Roy decided Arnson flew like he hated Roy. He aimed for the air pockets and slid sideways almost as often as he flew straight ahead.

  Or maybe he was just messing with Roy.

  Which with the way his day was going wouldn’t surprise him one bit more than a dairy cow on the front stoop.

  Kee clearly enjoyed proving he didn’t know shit about his own specialty as a sniper. Frank Adams was the bastard who’d sent him to this punishment in the first place. A punishment General Arnson clearly enjoying handing out.

  And Sienna Arnson was so far out of his reach that—

  Well, this had better be the day his life bottomed out, because if it went lower, he didn’t want to know about it. Then just as they were flying into the shooting range, General Arnson called out evasive maneuvers and twisted the helicopter through a complete sideways roll.

  Roy almost lost himself and his weapons right out the open cargo bay door; might have if not for the monkey line attached to his flight vest and the helicopter’s door frame.

  The general’s laugh attested that Roy had a lot more to worry about than just Sienna’s opinion.

  Chapter 4

  “They spent Day One busting me down.”

  It was Tuesday night and Roy had showed up with a bouquet of dahlias, take-out Chinese, and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia—announcing “Authentic Vermont ice cream” as he’d pulled it out—just on the chance of her being in the building and having a free moment. Sienna forgave him every one of her evil thoughts from the prior night, told her secretary to shuffle her schedule for an hour, and closed her office door against the outside world.

  The Chinese food had cooled off halfway, and tasted fantastic. The ice cream had warmed just enough that it didn’t break the plastic spoon as she kept dipping into it. The flowers kept drawing her eyes almost as often as Roy’s strong face. It was so expressive. And somehow it had been transformed over the last two days.

  “I should have seen it as it was—classic training tactics. Break down all assumptions and habits so that they can then build up new techniques wit
hout tripping over the old. But being just a dumb jerk from the woods, I didn’t see it until just this afternoon.”

  “What happened this afternoon?” Sienna didn’t even bother correcting the dumb jerk comment. He struck her as naïve only about himself. Now he was more sure of himself and also seemed more certain that he was living who he wanted to be more than any man other than her father. He had a real need to protect and serve that he’d found a way to express as a sniper. A sniper who had impressed Frank, Beatrice, and Kee in addition to herself.

  “Shot eight of ten in the black at five hundred meters from a hovering helo. Five of ten moving at fifty knots at three hundred meters.”

  The way he said it told her that was pretty spectacular. “What did Kee Stevenson have to say?”

  “She stated I: ‘had promise’.”

  “She what! Why that stingy, cheapskate—”

  Roy held up his chopsticks to stop her. “No, seriously, it’s okay. Kee is so incredibly good that it may have been the highest praise I’ve received since the day Frank Adams allowed me on the White House team. She taught me to do things I’d been taught were impossible. But she found a way around them, I think she developed half of the techniques herself. It was just incredible.”

  And there was the change. It was like when a soldier achieved a hard-won promotion. There was a new confidence. And since his easy surety of himself had been what first attracted her to him in the museum, the impact was now doubly strong.

  “However,” Roy continued as he fished out another piece of massively over-breaded, deep-fried, and sauced piece of General Tso’s chicken—did he normally eat such things?

  She could feel herself gaining weight just watching him. Sienna had stuck mostly with the twice-cooked beef in snow peas and the Cherry Garcia which sort of defeated her own argument.

  “I appear to have failed miserably on another front,” his sad expression looked like only partly a put-on.

  “What was that?”

  “My personal quest,” he was watching her intently.