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

looking. In another hour or so, Marines would transform the tarmac into a complicated freeway system.
    God help her, but she did love helicopters. As the widow of a pilot, she would have been forgiven for thinking otherwise. Truth was, she probably shouldhave been the pilot, not Stone. Yes, he loved flying, but Stone had never gotten over his disappointment at not qualifying for jets. “I might as well be flying a cargo plane,” she’d heard him say too many times. He had failed the decompression chamber, as had most of his friends in flight school, and she’d been quick in those earlier, sweeter moments of their new life together to point this out. When she stopped to think about it, she figured she’d fallen in love with helicopters before she’d even fallen in love with Stone. Or maybe that wasn’t quite true. Maybe she had simultaneously fallen in love with both. Seven years earlier, Stone had been the pilot on her first flight. He was a captain and Chase a lieutenant, both stationed in Okinawa. Chase had pleaded her way through the difficult chain of command to cover alive-fire training exercise for Stars & Stripes that would have normally been assigned to one of the men in her office. The exercise was taking place on a remote island in the South China Sea. Captain Michael “Stone” Anderson was to fly her to the island. He had joked about never having flown a woman before and that if his helicopter were a Navy ship and he believed in all those ridiculous Navy superstitions about it being bad luck for the captain to see a woman on board, he would be compelled to dismiss Chase. Wasn’t she lucky? he’d teased. Chase had not been amused, although she had been intrigued.
    She’d studied Stone during his preflight check—the way he walked with command around the bird, climbing atop to check the upper rotor blades, hopping catlike to theground. A second or so after he’d disappeared into the cockpit, the top and rear rotor blades had begun to spin, slowly at first, like ceiling fans that had been turned from low to high.
    When the crew chief appeared in the doorway and waved her forward, Chase had run hunched under the blades—an instinct or maybe an imitation from all the war movies her father had taken her to see when she was young—and on reaching the side of the bird, she had tossed in her camera bag. The crew chief had grabbed her hand and swung her aboard as the bird teetered slightly off ground, causing Chase to lose her footing. Stone, in the cockpit and wearing a helmet and aviators so that only his mouth was visible, had flashed her a grin. Then the bird lifted, tail-first, and Chase had been aware ofa heady weightlessness, or rather recklessness, that felt very much like falling in love.
    The hangar doors at 464, Stone’s old squadron, were open, and a color guard detail of Marines, some in flight suits and others in digitals, were practicing the folding of an American flag. She guessed the Marines were the funeral detail, practicing for the memorial service. Chase had a flag, too, though she couldn’t recall where she’d stored it. Probably at the top of their closet above Stone’s uniforms, somewhere safe for Molly, if she wanted it one day.
    Just then, two Marines emerged from the cavernous dark hangar into sunlight. By the sudden rendering of salutes from the color guard detail, the two were obviouslyofficers. They were dressed in flight suits and looked at first as if they’d come outside to observe the flag-folding practice. But one officer motioned in the opposite direction, and the two began to walk west toward the parking lot, passing in and around the rows of pickup trucks and SUVs.
    Chase turned her attention back to the color guard, which had resumed its practice. The Marines suddenly stopped and began to stare in the direction of the two officers across the parking lot. She followed their gaze and had to press her cheek into the cold glass of the window. The two officers had stopped