Roy's Independence Day

by M. L. Buchman

  Which seemed only fair after what he’d done to her. Now Paris was approaching far too quickly, so she turned back to her work.

  She was pleased to notice that it took Roy a fair amount of time before he started breathing normally again.

  Chapter 8

  Roy looked out the window at the hangar and grimaced.

  He’d specifically set up their landing at a remote hangar at Paris-Orly. It was supposed to have a grand total of two agents and two unremarkable cars.

  “Wow!” Sienna was looking at him. “Who just got on your bad side? I’m guessing their life expectancy has plummeted in the last five seconds.”

  “Good guess,” he gestured out the window and she looked. A line of five black Citroën DS5 sedans were waiting for them, looking like a school of sleek racing machines ready to eat alive anyone who got in their way. A cloud of motorcycle police were waiting as well.

  By the time the plane halted, he wouldn’t have been surprised if a marching band trooped in. At least there weren’t any reporters.

  “Stay!” He pointed to Sienna in her seat and clambered out of the plane as soon as the steps were down. A line of very formally dressed Frenchmen and women organized themselves by the cars.

  “This is for me?” Of course Sienna hadn’t stayed put. They were going to have to talk about that.

  “No. It’s for some other National Security Advisor.”

  “Oh. Right. New to the job, I keep forgetting. I guess this is my show. So, you stay.” She made it funny, then trooped forward with her two-ton briefcase in tow.

  A man dressed in recognizable protection department suit came up and handed over his ID. “Jankowski. This is Chen.” Per standard, because they were overseas, the two were Diplomatic Security Service people—close enough to being the foreign version of the Secret Service to work just fine.

  Kristian Jankowski, the DSS three-year man was a sturdy Pole, just like his name, with a Brooklyn accent mostly erased. Sandy blond hair kept reasonably short.

  Mabel Chen, he’d stick with her last name, was a tiny Chinese woman who was too slender to be wearing a shoulder holster. But her small purse swung heavy so he’d trust to her six years in the DSS that she knew how to get to her weapon when necessary. He handed back their IDs.

  “You two aren’t exactly low profile.”

  “What did you expect?” Chen asked with a distinctly Midwestern accent, “a couple of suave Frenchmen in natty suits? This is Paris in the 21st century, we fit in just fine. At least I do. Jankowski has a wife; she’s like some crazy mix Italian-Jewish-mother from Scotland. It makes him certifiable. Which now that I’ve said it, makes him fit in just fine as well.”

  “And I’m loving it,” Jankowski put in. “Gotta find a man for you, Chen.”

  “Like that’ll solve my problems.”

  “Or a woman,” Jankowski was perfectly amenable.

  Chen ignored him. “How about you, Yankee Boy? You on the loose? What are you doing after we deliver your package to somewhere safe?”

  Roy chose to follow Chen’s lead and ignore her comment as the best course of action. But he liked the easy back and forth between her and Jankowski. It told him that they had been together a while and worked well as a team.

  “Couldn’t you have been even more visible?” He changed the subject.

  “Sure,” Chen nodded, her long dark ponytail fluttering in the light breeze. “We’re in France. We could have hired some mimes or something. Why? You gonna be an asshole about it?”

  “No,” Roy looked down at her, way down. If she broke five feet it would be a miracle. “I’m gonna be an asshole about this goddamn parade instead of my requested two vehicles.”

  Sienna was busy doing a glad hand with all sorts: some in military uniforms, others in a slightly more elegant version of Washington-dulls to mark them as governmental uniforms.

  Chen pointed. Behind the cavalcade sat a pair of sedans: a newish blue BMW X5 SUV and an older gray Mercedes C-Class that no one would ever mistake for an executive vehicle. About as nondescript as a man could desire.

  “Shit!”

  “Tell me about it,” Chen groaned. “We had the site pretty well checked out—hangar secure, scouting the area—then they rolled in sirens and all.”

  “Okay, not your bad. Let me grab our bags. I have a couple cases Customs is going to take their time with.”

  “I got it for ya,” Jankowski went and collected the bags that the pilot had unloaded.

  “We sure aren’t doing crap else with all this going on,” Chen finished for him.

  Normally Roy could fit a week of gear into a small knapsack. He hated that now he had suits, shirts, and dress shoes. At least Sienna traveled about as lightly as he did, except for the briefcase she had consumed during the flight. He had watched in fascination as she went through it all—literally all.

  She made few notes, mostly she read, but then she’d suddenly jump back three folders and double-check some fact, often without having to hunt for it. Her memory must be photographic. No, or she wouldn’t have to look back. Pattern recognition. He’d wager that she remembered which folder, roughly where in the stack, and the general look of the page she wanted.

  With different training, how good a sniper would she have been? Very, was his guess.

  With different training could he be the NSA? There was a complete laugh.

  He moved up to the group at the same moment that a customs officer put in an appearance.

  “Passports please?” He asked in lightly accented English.

  Once Sienna’s had been barely glanced at and stamped, Roy handed over his along with his Secret Service ID, and the list of weapons and ammunition he was transporting into the country. The official glanced at the list, inspected Roy for a moment, then signed the customs release with a flourish and stamped his passport.

  “I will ask that you try to refrain from shooting anyone while in France, the paperwork is enormous,” he winked.

  Roy winked back, though he didn’t feel like it.

  “We’re in this car,” Sienna sounded a little breathless from all of the attention.

  “Hold on a moment.” Roy doubled back to his DSS team. “What’s your frequency?”

  Chen told him.

  He turned on his radio, set the frequency, and shoved in his earpiece. “Got me?”

  “Five by five, Yankee Boy.”

  “Okay,” he took the handgun case from Jankowski. He holstered his own Glock 21 at the shoulder, dropped his backup into his ankle holster, and slid the Glock 43 for Sienna into his back holster. He took two magazines for each and dropped them into his pockets.

  “You expecting that kind of trouble?” Chen had sobered.

  “Nope. Just like to be ready for it when it shows up.” He also took the rifle broken down in its soft case so that it looked like little more than a tourist knapsack. He stuffed the other three magazines for each sidearm into the pack’s side pockets and gave them back the empty handgun case. “Don’t follow. Take some other route.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want our two vehicles identified with these,” he waved at the line of black Citroëns. “But be close enough that I can call you.”

  They nodded and he went to sit beside Sienna in the deep leather of the Citroën DS5. The whole way into the center of the city with Sienna and whoever else it was in the car—he hadn’t bothered to pay any attention to introductions yet—he felt like a bug on the road. Any moment a big-ass windshield could come along and they’d be flattened.

  The police drove like maniacs, performing maneuvers he wouldn’t have risked on a closed training circuit, never mind in Paris traffic. The steady, “Bee-boop! Bee-boop!” of their sirens was really getting on his nerves. When they roared up to the roundabout encircling the Arc de Triomphe they actually closed the busiest road he’d eve
r seen for the flashing instant it took the motorcade to surge through the intersection.

  He kept his silence through security into the governmental center where they’d be holding the meetings.

  They had a metal detector, but on flashing his Secret Service ID, he was waved through the detector which offered a shrill burp of complaint but was ignored.

  He made it up to the fifth floor conference room. It had those crazy high French ceilings with curlicues and ornamentation that probably went back to some dead emperor. It would clearly be the working space for their meetings, but for now it was a reception complete with liveried waiters bearing trays of alcohol and hors d’oeuvres.

  When one of the ministers asked him how the flight was, he couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  # # #

  “What the hell is wrong with you people?”

  Roy’s shout almost made Sienna flip the flute of champagne she’d just been handed into the French President’s face.

  There was a sudden stunned silence.

  Sienna had never seen Roy mad and it was a terrifying sight. He’d said that he didn’t get riled much and she now knew that was a good thing. She wanted to cower, and his ire wasn’t even aimed at her. He had grown until he was more imposing than Frank and Beatrice combined. How could she have considered life with this man when she didn’t even know he was capable of such raw…fury.

  It was clear by the pin-drop silence that everyone was as shocked as she was.

  That meant that it was up to her to tame the unexpected beast in their midst.

  She sidled up to his side, almost reached out, but on second thought pulled her hand back, remembering how hard he had grabbed her when roused from a sound sleep.

  “Roy?” She tried to make her voice soft and soothing. Instead it acted like a trigger.

  “You!” It was clear he was addressing the entire room and wasn’t going to be soothed until he’d had his say.

  Protocol would suggest a shrug of apology to the President, but Roy had never struck her as being irrational. She would give him the benefit of the doubt and just pray he didn’t destroy US-French relations in the meantime.

  “You ask the National Security Advisor to come to Paris because you are tired of being targets. Good! She’s glad to help. France has been a good ally. Then you make that show at the airport—not to mention the drive here—as if to tell every single terrorist that an exceptionally high-value target has just arrived in Paris. A protection detail I could have been managed with three agents will now require twenty or more.”

  Sienna hadn’t even thought of that. And he was absolutely right. His words to Madame Ambassador at the White House Residence had stuck with her as she’d reviewed all of the briefing reports on the flight over. They’d colored her thinking, forcing her to dig deeper…but not deep enough.

  “Sir,” Roy turned to General Dumont dressed in his full military dress uniform complete with gold braids dangling from shoulder to chest and the red band around his billed cap. “I’m sure that you, like the United States, train your soldiers not to salute when in the field because it draws a sniper’s target on the officer’s chest.”

  Dumont nodded carefully.

  “So why did you draw one on the American National Security Advisor? If there had been a single photographer there, I would have put her on the plane and sent her right back home. We move the President in public because we have no other choice; his profile is too high. But with all of your pleasant show you are sending flyers to every terrorist: ‘Here are my most valuable assets. Hit them, please.’ ”

  Again the shocked silence,

  Roy scrubbed at his face. “My apologies for the tone of my outburst,” then he looked about the room before continuing more calmly. “But no apologies for my words. You have made my job here harder, that’s fine. It’s my job and I’ll do it. You have endangered an honored guest. I’m sure that she was briefed on the dangers before she accepted the President’s request to act as his NSA.”

  Sienna nodded confirmation. But all of the Secret Service’s briefings on varying attack scenarios, including issuing her a pass to the White House bunker in case of attack—a particularly rare item—hadn’t brought the message home as clearly as Roy’s tirade.

  “But I ask you to consider, is this clusterf— Is this fiasco typical in your protection plans for your own people and your own country? If they are, it’s time to wake up and start thinking. If you need another example: I’m a complete unknown to you. I stepped off a plane and waved a badge any decent forger could have made in a few hours.”

  Then he unholstered his sidearm and thumped it down on the fine wooden table, that probably dated back to the seventeenth century, hard enough to make everyone wince. Then he pulled a second one from his back waistband and thudded it down beside the other.

  Five magazines followed, including one for his ankle piece though he didn’t reach for that. He noticed the fifth magazine of .22s and slipped that one back into his pocket without comment. He didn’t touch his knapsack that she hadn’t seen him wearing before, which made her wonder what it contained.

  “Enough rounds to shoot everyone in this room twice. Five of you would get shot three times if I don’t miss. Any takers? You trusted me with no more reason than you wanted to believe that friends of your country were getting off an unmarked plane. This time you got lucky. Next time maybe you won’t. Wake up people.”

  # # #

  “Way to start my meeting off with a bang, Roy.”

  “Glad to help,” he still sounded gruffly angry as he led her down a corridor she hadn’t recalled traversing on the way to the conference room six hours earlier.

  Their entire arrival had been overwhelming and elegantly French from the shining motorcade to the ornate décor including statues, murals, and paintings they’d passed enroute to this room. It had been thrilling…until Roy unloaded both verbal barrels on them.

  The reception had collapsed before it started. When talk resumed, it was already focused on the topic of her visit. Soon they had cleared the waiters out of the room and were discussing existing security strategies over empty champagne glasses and trays of abandoned canapés.

  Now, Roy was leading her into some nether region of the building that still had carpeting, but it was thin and there was little else going for the decorations.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not where they expect,” and she heard the smile in his voice.

  “Which is?”

  “There are a dozen agents waiting in the garage: four vehicles, black Ford Explorers with tinted glass, very hard to miss.”

  “But you said—”

  “There is a police escort up on the street waiting to guide them to your hotel room at the Hotel Raphael Paris.” He yanked open a door, cursed soundly at the occupant when he discovered it was an office. Sienna only had a moment to see her wide-eyed alarm before Roy slammed the door shut again.

  She pointed to the next door down the hall clearly marked Sortie.

  “But—”

  “Where, my apologies to both you and the Raphael, you won’t be staying.” He entered the stairwell as if it was a room-clearing target rather than deep inside a highly secure governmental center.

  “I won’t?” She had to scramble to keep up with him as he descended the five flights of steel stairs. At a small door, a lone security guard sat at a metal detector waiting for anyone to actually use this entrance at eight at night. He looked bored to death with his obscure outpost in the labyrinthine building.

  Roy merely waved at him as they exited without even turning so that his face would be seen. It seemed rude, but she did the same. Two people exit quietly. Wholly unmemorable.

  “You won’t. The caravan will arrive at the hotel and I wish I could see how long it takes whoever is watching to determine that no one is getting out except for Service
agents.”

  There were two cars parked at the curb—neither one a black-and-tinted SUV. Roy escorted her into the backseat of the first one then slid in beside her.

  “Beaumont! Where are you taking me?”

  “Mabel here,” he hooked a thumb toward the Chinese driver who couldn’t possibly be named that, but kept his attention outside the car, “highly recommends a small hotel in the fifth district.”

  Sienna turned to look at the second car. It was following them, but not too closely.

  “No,” Roy admonished her. “Don’t do that. It draws attention to the other vehicle.”

  “Oh? And you trying to look out every window at once isn’t just as obvious?”

  “She’s got you there, Yankee Boy,” the driver said in alarmingly familiar American. Perhaps she could be named Mabel.

  Roy leaned back with a sigh. His only other concession to her being right was a soft curse of, “Crap!”

  Chapter 9

  Roy, Sienna decided, was a very tricky man.

  She’d been afraid that after his tirade he was going to turn her into some kind of prisoner. She’d never been to Paris with a beau and had looked forward to seeing some of the world’s most romantic city together.

  But he didn’t lock her up. Quite the opposite.

  “They’re expecting a redheaded beauty with a phalanx of guards hitting the high end of Paris’ offerings. So put on a blouse and nice slacks then tuck your pretty hair under a scarf. The four of us are going out to dinner as two cheerful couples.”

  And they had. Sienna would bet that her dinner in a classic French street-café with three Secret Service agents had been far more enjoyable than a meal with the ministers she’d spent the afternoon and evening with. The only oddity to the meal had been when Roy seated her, he set her with her back to the Place de la Sorbonne where the sidewalk café was half tucked under the trees and his own back to a wall.

  “Wouldn’t I be safer if it was my back to the wall?”

  He’d eyed her in a way that said she just might end up that way later—they did have connecting rooms. “Field of view. Yes, your back is to most of the crowds. However, that means I have a broad view of anyone who may be coming at you. Chen is watching east and Jankowski west. We’ve got you covered.”