An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) Read Free

Chase had been stir-frying vegetables in the wok. She pressed a foot on the lever of the garbage can and tossed in the spines of red and green pepper. Ginger, sesame oil, and soy sauce were filling up the kitchen and making her eyes water. She had glared at Stone and nodded toward Molly, who was coloring in a book at the kitchen table, and Stone had dropped the subject until the next morning.
    Since their return from the Gulf, and onlearning six months later that Stone was headed back for a second tour, he had vacillated between an almost cavalier lack of concern for her and Molly to one of over concern. He had never been one to resent her status as a military officer, not like other husbands they knew with military wives. But nothing had been the same since they’d been torn apart for that year. Then again, few Marines on the base had returned from this war unscathed. Any hint of post-traumatic stress disorder grounded a pilot indefinitely. She had stopped attending the wives’ club events because the air was too thick with denial.
    Stone’s solution had been to drink—when he wasn’t scheduled to fly. Chase came to prefer the evil of his flying to the evil of his drinking. What had started witha beer or two every night led to his hitting the hard stuff they stored in the small cabinet above the refrigerator for the friends who used to drop by. During his first tour, Stone had lost his best friends when the 81 he was flying went down in a hard landing on the desert floor. His crew chief, Mouse, and copilot, Hammer, had been like brothers. The bird had bumped hard and flipped on its side, Mouse and Hammer’s side. Chase had tried often to talk to Stone about survivor’s guilt, but his eyes would dim. The one night she suggested he talk to a doctor, he had thrown a glass so hard into the kitchen sink that it shattered, sending glass clear across the kitchen. He had crunched across the shards on the way to the front door. How Molly had slept through it all, she couldn’t imagine. Maybe the poorchild had been so frightened, she just pretended to sleep.
    The way Chase had seen it, Stone would eventually fail the flight exam. His blood alcohol level would be too high, and then what? What scared Chase most was her fear about whether she’d still love Stone if he were grounded. More than anything, she hated the stigma of failure in any form, and she hated herself for thinking she might not have it within her to love him enough in his weakest moment.
    But on the morning of the media day, Stone had again tried to talk her out of flying with Major White. He had been guiding Molly out the door and to the car for the ride to preschool and whispering over the little girl’s head, “You’re really going to do this?” Chase had nodded and gone about buckling Mollyinto the backseat, breathing in the cloud of baby shampoo and mint toothpaste. When she straightened, Stone was still standing in the driveway behind her. Chase cinched her robe. “You do this to me every time you fly, you know.”
    “At least I have some control—” And he had stopped. Everyone knew helicopter pilots rarely survived a crash. In an Officers’ Club on a Friday night, drunken pilots might even joke about feeling expendable. Surprising how many people assumed that when a helicopter failed it simply rotored on down. Truth was, it fell with the aerodynamics of a grand piano.
    “White’s a good pilot,” Stone had stammered. Chase lifted on her toes to kiss him, but he turned away, muttering as he walked to the driver’s side of their Jeep,“You’ll be fine.”
    That morning, General Hickman hadn’t shown up for the flight. Neither had Colonel Farris, but the assistant secretary of the Navy was there to show the Pentagon’s support for the helicopter. Even a National AeroStar executive showed up. Hickman had pull when he wanted to use it.
    While the mechanics, copilot, and crew chief were making preflight checks that morning, reporters and their