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sure if shewere spared because she was the only woman on his staff or the most junior in rank. At the other major bases—Lejeune in North Carolina and Pendleton—her peers were at least two ranks higher. In fact, she’d assumed her new role by default when her boss, Lieutenant Colonel Silvers, finally received his first set of orders to Iraq. Silvers had been stuck in Hawaii, as he put it to Chase, while everyone else was already on their second or third tour of combat duty. “Why, even you’ve been over there,” he’d said the day she reported for duty on Oahu. “The whole damn thing’s going to be over before I get my chance.” She wanted to ask what newspaper he’d been reading or what television news show he’d been watching for the past five years. There was nothing glamorous about dodging land mines,snipers, insurgent attacks, or suicide bombers. Silvers eventually got his way and off he went, leaving behind a wife and a twelve-year-old son.
    At first Hickman resented her. Even told her as much during their first face-to-face meeting.
    “You might as well know,” he’d said, looking her up and down while she stood before his desk at attention, her eyes fixed on the taxiing Cobra gunship helicopter she could make out through the window behind him, “you’ve got two strikes against you. I don’t like women in the Marines Corps and you’re too inexperienced for this job.”
    She could have advocated for herself on both counts. After a year in Iraq where she was embedded as an escort to news crews wanting to hang with various infantry unitsfrom Fallujah to Baghdad, she’d proven herself under the toughest, most primitive conditions. With Hickman, it was the same old game. Never mind the documented success within her service record, she was still a woman. It was okay with her. If she could earn Armstrong’s respect, she could earn Hickman’s.
    In a way, she pitied Hickman. Word had it his second star was out of reach. Had the drinking rumors made their way stateside, or had they been following him around for some time, forgiven for an exemplary combat record? With the pressure of possible retirement upon him, Hickman as commanding general of Marine Corps Base, Hawaii, seemed little more than a sad, lame duck.
    Still, he hadn’t let up on Chase formonths, not until the undeniable success of the 81 media dog-and-pony show during which Major White had been the pilot. To show his appreciation Hickman had called a surprise formation of his staff officers one Friday afternoon in his office and presented Chase with the Navy Commendation Medal, her second in six short years of service.
    Since then, it seemed she could do no wrong. Hickman had readily approved all of her plans for the upcoming spring open house to which the public would be invited, had even thrown his weight around a few DC offices via telephone to secure her a commitment for the Blue Angels. She learned he’d eventually called the director of Public Affairs in DC to sing her praises. Each Thursday, he read the Hawaii Marine cover-to-cover and relayed compliments through Major O'Donnell.
    She glanced at her watch. Thanks to the pushed up meeting, she’d miss her chance at a noon run. “Better get to headquarters,” she said to Cruise, and gathered her purse and keys.
    Twelve miles northeast of Honolulu, the base was home to about nine thousand Marines and swallowed nearly all of Mokapu Peninsula that connected to the mainland near the cities of Kaneohe and Kailua. Mokapu in Hawaiian means sacred land. The peninsula was sacred to Hawaiians for its rich military history, dating all the way back to the mid-1700s when it was believed that the sheer cliffs of the volcano Ulupa were used as part of the reconnaissance effort to shield torcheswhile relaying information back to lookouts on Mokapu. Many of the earliest inhabitants to the Hawaiian Islands, from as far back as the thirteenth century, were buried on Mokapu. When King Kamehameha moved the