Brink of Chaos Read Free

full-time personal manager for Joshua Jordan was a job that Ethan, a former Air Force pilot like his boss, had never trained for. How could he? His job was just as improbable as the way that their lives had intersected. As Ethan watched the crowd slowly wind its way to the exits he thought about how, having once served under Joshua’s command at an air base, they had been brought together again years later. This time through a chance meeting on a plane with Joshua’s daughter, Deborah. Sure, there was some heartbreak, the way things ended between Ethan and Deborah. But it did bring Ethan face-to-face again with a man he hadadmired like few others. Joshua had his own take on that, saying that the two pilots had been brought together “by divine providence.”
    But that was what made them different too. Ethan just couldn’t buy into Joshua’s newfound faith. The “God thing” wasn’t Ethan’s thing. Not that it diminished Joshua in his eyes. After all, any guy who had been strung up from hooks by Iranian tormentors until his shoulders were dislocated, then beaten with rods and electrocuted — an experience like that could radically change anyone who survived. The way that Ethan saw it, religion was simply what got Joshua through the experience.
    Ethan now strode up to the dais and shook hands with the pastor. Joshua was chatting with the pitching marvel, Jin Ho Kim, who had just presented him with the winning baseball from the game he had pitched that day.
    Joshua spotted Ethan and flagged him over. He introduced him to the pitcher. Motioning to Ethan, Joshua couldn’t help mentioning his background to Jin, “This is my assistant, Ethan March, who knows something about pitching, by the way. Before joining the Air Force, he tried his hand on the mound in a triple-A ball club in America.”
    “Oh, you pitcher?” Jin Ho Kim exclaimed with a bright smile. “Have a good fastball?”
    Ethan blushed. “Yeah, well, Mr. Jin, I had a pretty good fastball. Except for one thing —”
    Jin jumped in. “Problem with control?”
    Ethan laughed loudly. “Exactly! Problem with control.” Ethan was the only one who got the joke. His desire for control was the one thing that drove him onward more than anything else. But the reckless abandon that typified much of his life, the risk-taking, the broken rules at one Air Force base after another — didn’t that seem to undermine his obsession in trying to control his own future? It was pretty funny that the one thing that dashed his dream for a big-league career was that very thing — a problem with control. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t so funny.
    “I know one thing,” Joshua said, pointing to Ethan, “he turned into an excellent pilot.” Then with a smile Joshua added, “And I ought to know. He was one of my rookies at an airbase in Florida. He set a few flying records.”
    Ethan silently thanked his lucky stars that Joshua had too much class to mention his several trips to the brig for bar fights with a couple of Marines and his failure to get clearance before taking out a few new test planes.
    Joshua looked at the baseball he had received from Jin Ho Kim and tossed it over to Ethan. “Let’s see if you still know how to handle one of these.”
    Ethan caught the baseball with ease.
    “Okay,” Joshua said, “you’d better show me the way out.”
    “The side door,” Ethan told him quietly. “Less likely to be ambushed by the press.” The two men moved toward the exit.
    In the rear of the sanctuary, still hanging back as the crowds trailed out, stood two men. One was an Australian newsman. The other was a stone-faced Han Suk Yong, with forged media credentials hanging from his neck. He stared at Joshua and Ethan as they passed through a side door into an adjacent hallway. The Australian reporter was watching him. “You’re a newbie, right?”
    Han gave him a funny look but kept eyeing the doorway.
    “A rookie reporter, I mean.”
    Han nodded a little