The Night Is Mine

Chapter 12

12

The entrance to the White House reminded Emily of her first day of basic training: thoroughly daunting. Her father dropped her two blocks from the security gate to save him the hassle of waiting around for her clearance. She sent the duffel back to the house with his car.

A light rain shower filled the air with sparkling light, making the September sky glitter like gold. It was the first precipitation she’d seen since rotating to Southwest Asia two months earlier, other than a couple nasty nighttime blizzards in the Hindu Kush.

The guards at the gate eyed her carefully as she kept tilting her head back to catch the shimmering raindrops on her tongue like summer snowflakes.

Let them laugh. If they’d baked their backsides in the Afghan summer… only they weren’t laughing. Somewhere closer to a lethal scowl. Deadly at twenty paces. No weapons required. Suddenly she missed her flight helmet and the silvered, pull-down visor, perhaps mirrored enough to deflect their glares. Perhaps.

Of course, she’d been glared at by the best and could handle it, though these guys had been to the same school of scowl as Major Mark Henderson. He’d graduated top of his class, no big surprise. A mental image of him giving a graduation scowl instead of a valedictory speech nearly made her laugh.

One of the many Henderson legends told of a young lieutenant who’d mistakenly turned his back, thinking the Major was done chewing him out. The rumor of the scowl scorch-marks running up the lieutenant’s backside was still passed down pilot to pilot, and it was hard not to laugh at the man, though he’d apparently been a sterling officer ever since.

She shook her head sharply, scattering tiny raindrops in a sparkling arc from her damp hair. Why in the world was she thinking about the Major? SOAR was done with her, and she’d never see the man again. Good riddance. If only that thought didn’t feel like a knife to her gut. Did part of her secretly like Viper Henderson? That actually did cause her to laugh aloud. Maybe she didn’t want him, but her hormones clearly did.

The real White House checkpoint squatted at the end of a long, wrought-iron fence. Someone had dropped a single-wide trailer in the middle of the gate beneath a gorgeous beech tree. The trailer was unsightly on about thirty levels, right down to the off-beige color and the narrow, steel wheelchair ramps that were too steep to walk comfortably.

Four men in black suits cross-checked her ID in the computer, took a fingerprint, had her walk through a metal detector, made her check both her boot knife, not quite regulation but considered a necessity inside any zone, and the Swiss Army fold-up forgotten in her pants pocket. She’d handed over the sidearm, but forgotten about the backup piece which she also handed over.

They were less than happy.

She felt the same—half-naked without them. Not a good mental image in front of the four burly detectives. Agents. Blacksuits. Whatever they were.

Actually, only two set about the task of messing with her and the paperwork. The other two stood back with a decent spread between them. All they did was watch her. Even, the fastest shooter would be unlikely to take down both before one could respond.

They clearly didn’t know why she was here, bodyguard in disguise and not merely a chef. Female aviator brought in to do their job because they’d failed to protect the First Lady. She’d best keep that role to herself unless she wanted the blacksuits to truly despise her. And that nickname wouldn’t help either.

The briefing team had been in the dark as well. They had focused solely on her public role, a chef that the First Lady had used her influence to pull from the military because she’d been “cute” on CNN. The First Lady was notoriously whimsical, having her own lipstick-red limousine for example, and the story actually fit.

Captain Emily Beale now worked as a personal chef for the First Lady. No more, no less.

And it sucked. But being all the way down took most of the fight out of her. It made it easy to roll with each punch to her ego.

Name. Birth date. Fingerprints. Her military I.D. meant nothing here.

The summer rain raised the ante to actual rainfall, beating down on the tin roof. The trailer both felt and sounded like a pressure cooker.

Last place of service. Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Let them probe all they wanted; they’d hit a dead end at a P.O. box at SOAR’s main office in Michael C. Grimm Hall. SOAR never disclosed where its teams had scattered across the face of the globe. More than a few times, she’d answered a personal forwarded phone call while stationed in hell and gone, and talked as if she were looking out on the bluegrass fields. Out of habit, SOAR pilots always knew the weather and time of day at Fort Campbell for exactly such an occasion. Since joining the 5th battalion, she also tracked Tacoma, Washington. That was easier than Kentucky—when in doubt, cool and raining.

The sky darkened. A real DC-style thunderstorm rolling through. She’d forgotten what they sounded like when they pounded in.

Current commander?

President Peter Matthews, Commander in Chief, US Military Forces. Chew on that one, boys.

Were they pushing her for the fun of it? She probably had higher security clearance than all four guys in the trailer. Combined. Was more trusted by her country than they were. They might guard the country’s leader, she guarded the country’s security and, since becoming SOAR qualified, many of her darkest operational secrets.

Then they tried to confiscate her chef’s knives. The rolled, worn-soft leather bag was the only item she’d retained from her duffel. She’d spent most of a month’s salary on this set, and she wasn’t giving them over to any two-bit security guard. Okay. This was the White House. She wasn’t giving them over to any four-bit security guard.

Emily bucked her way up the chain of command until she faced Agent Frank Adams, rank unknown. He didn’t have the height or breadth of Big John Wallace, but it felt as if he did . They shared an African American heritage and not much else. Adams was clearly John’s evil twin. Every bit of gregarious and easy-going that John embodied had turned into serious-as-s**t plus a bad attitude. One that might put Mark Henderson in his place, truth be known. Though that might simply be the due to the soaking Adams had received crossing over from the White House in the midst of a cloudburst.

Well, she’d learned a thing or two inside the zone herself. She planted her feet at parade rest, her dress blues perfect—well, as perfect as they ever were on her. The military still didn’t know much about clothes on a female form, especially tall and thin. Her silver captain’s bars polished and vertical on her collar points. Her black beret square-on her head, insignia flash to the fore. Nonregulation hair bound back in a neat ponytail. The two-week-old, winged “Night Stalker” tattoo at the base of her spine well hidden, but she felt stronger for it being there beneath her hands clasped behind her back.

Mark had shown that she’d earned it, too, by how upset he’d been at losing her. Whatever snafu mangle she’d landed in, she had qualified to fly with SOAR’s Black Adders and had finally belonged. However briefly. If she’d hit the pinnacle of her career at twenty-nine, then she had. But she’d always have the marker of that achievement, that strength, rooted right at the base of her spine.

“I can’t cook without my knives. I’m supposed to be here to cook for the First Lady. If you must know, I’d rather be on the line with my crew, ramming my Black Hawk down an asshole terrorist’s throat, but since the Commander in Chief chose to give that the shaft, I’m here to cook. Now, you either let me and my knives out of this nuthatch of a single-wide, or I can about-face my butt out of here and you can explain my absence to the First Lady yourself.”

She bit her tongue hard. Keeping it in check had never been one of her strengths, but she’d be damned if she’d apologize. It had cost her rank more than once, which was fine by her. Too much rank, and they didn’t let you fly any more.

He looked pissed.

Royally pissed.

And this wasn’t an Air-Force-base security grunt; he was US Secret Service, the baddest asses in the whole world. Some argued they were more extreme than Special Operations Forces because they functioned right out in the open, no cover of night, no battle gear. Even the D-boys respected them. And Delta Force operators didn’t give respect to anyone who ranked less than several levels above incredibly amazing. Michael’s handshake and muted “Thanks!” after she dragged him off the cliff ranked as perhaps the highest compliment of her entire career. Right up there with Henderson’s, “Nice flight.”

In the blacksuit world, this guy might be the toughest of them all. Mr. Agent Frank Adams, Rank Unknown, looked it, with his rough features and big hands clenching and unclenching into surprisingly massive fists.

So okay, she’d apologize a little.

“Sir.”

But that was all he was going to get.