An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

for that matter, didn’t belong. Every female Marine knew all it took was for one of them to fail and new policy would be written overnight to stall advances for women at least a generation. How many times had she been accused of martyrdom for the sake of advancing women in the Corps? Stone and her parents had warned against pushing herself too hard. “Think of Molly,” her mother had said after learning Chase was deploying with Armstrong’s regiment. And poor Molly, abandoned by two deployed parents, hadbeen shipped off to live in Virginia with her grandparents.
    Chase located North in the break room. Instead of a flight suit or cammies, he was dressed in a white T-shirt and his dress blue trousers with the blood stripe running along the outer legs. Blood stripes represented the bloodshed of Marines during the Mexican-American battle at Chapultepec in 1847. Only male officers and noncommissioned officers, meaning corporals and above, were permitted to wear blood stripes. A few women in the late Eighties petitioned the Pentagon for a uniform change, citing the male-only use of blood stripes as perpetuating the gender gap. Things like blood stripes hardly bothered Chase. Since there were no women atChapultepec, the men could have them as far as she was concerned, especially since the tradition of the blood stripes had extended to a mild form of hazing for newly promoted corporals—mild if you weren’t the one being kicked in the legs by your fellow Marines on promotion day. Officers didn’t participate in the hazing ritual, and what a shame. Over the years, she could recall a few she’d have liked to kick.
    North glanced down at the blue trousers, lifting his heels to check the length. “I was just making sure they still fit. I haven’t worn them in a year, you know.” The Marine Corps Ball to celebrate the Corps’s November Tenth anniversary was less than two weeks off. This year, Stone’s former squadron, HMH-464, was again hosting the event in its hangar. Last year, Stone had beenin charge of the ceremony.
    “What a difference a year makes,” she said, pouring coffee.
    “You can say that again.”
    “So …” she said, taking note of the length of his trousers and where they broke across the top of his foot, “they look regulation to me.”
    North was turning slowly for her inspection. “Yeah—guess I’ve gained back those ten pounds.”
    They chatted about their roles in the upcoming anniversary ceremony, about the cooling island temperatures, and about how quiet the morning had been so far, which was code for no calls from the media. She retreated to her office on the second floor with coffee and a resolve to clear her deskand to prepare for the staff meeting that would include funeral details for White and the others. Coming down the hall were Cruise and Martinez, engaged in a game of playful bickering over who had had the most stressful weekend. She heard North shout back from across the hall, “Hel- lo —have you people been living under a rock for the last forty-eight hours?”
    Among the letters on her desk were the usual requests from several seniors groups who wanted tours of the base, as well as a request from the Boy Scouts to use Marine Corps water trucks for their upcoming Jamboree, and a letter from Paramount Pictures requesting fifty Marines as extras in a movie shot. After an hour or so, she pushed from the desk, stretched her calves by flexing her ankles several times, and glanced out thewindow toward the quiet tarmac. From this height, she could see the entire southern half of Mokapu Peninsula. What this base lacked in grandeur to others, such as Camp Pendleton’s sprawling 197,000 acres, it more than made up for in breathtaking views of the Koolau Mountain range and the turquoise water that encircled the peninsula. She could also make out the rows and rows of helicopters that reminded her of giant grasshoppers that had crawled out of a B movie the night before when no one was