Read An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) for Free Online Page B

rumors, though. If they were true, he’d been living undercover with the tribes for nine months. He was Hispanic with dark hair, dark eyes, and a deep olive complexion. She tried, unsuccessfully, to picture the clean-shaven major as a renegade with a thick black beard, in Muslim clothing, and on horseback.
    She pulled her chair from the table andsat on the edge, prepared to jump to her feet when the XO called the room to attention for the general. She fiddled with her pen, aligning it next to her notebook so that she could appear busy. Her mind wandered back to Major O'Donnell. They’d first met in Qatar where they both worked for Armstrong, who, thanks to wartime, had risen from colonel to major general in less than three years. Two Silver Stars for bravery had also elevated Armstrong to legend status. Anyway, O’Donnell had shown up at the airport to greet her and Stone when they’d arrived on the island. “Aloha, Skipper!” he’d shouted, causing a group of Japanese tourists to turn and stare. “Welcome to the Rock.”
    By the time the XO called the room toattention, every officer had found a chair and now urgently pushed from the table to stand for Hickman. The general was an inch or so shorter than Chase when she was in high heels. She had little difficulty imagining that his patrician features and combat pilot swagger had elevated him to quite-a-catch status in his younger years. Now, his drinking had taken its toll, bloating his face, like her father’s had been getting before he’d been scared sober. Did everyone need some sort of metaphorical fall or crash to enact a significant change of direction? Had Stone? He’d started drinking heavily after learning he was headed back to the Middle East for a second tour. Her father, apparently, had needed one, his wake-up coming the night he had crashed into a car loaded with teens on their way to the seniorprom. No one had been seriously injured, but the crash had been enough to compel her father into sobriety. What about Hickman? Would a fizzling second star do it?
    Hickman walked to the front of the conference room. “As you were,” he commanded, and Chase and the others settled into chairs. His gaze shifted around the room, perhaps gauging the temperature of his staff officers, eyes lingering a second longer over the empty chair belonging to Major O'Donnell. Hickman listened intently to the intelligence brief from Colonel Figueredo, to the training updates from the G-3, and to a report by the G-4 regarding the need for a new roof at the enlisted club. Major Sims spoke about a new directive from headquarters that required his Marines on thegate to carry live ammo in their pistols again, at least during the recent heightened security alert. Sims turned to Chase. “But none of that’s for release!”
    She felt her face grow hot under the sudden attention, and she hoped she wasn’t blushing before everyone. Figueredo, who was seated beside Sims, was staring at her. “Roger that, sir,” she said and was about to set her pen on the table beside the notepad when she decided that to do so would signal submissiveness.
    Next up was a lieutenant who was filling in for the JAG officer and nervously reporting on the status of the upcoming court-martial of the Marine lance corporal who had been sitting in the brig for the past nine months on charges of sexually assaulting another Marine’s wife in the parking lot ofthe enlisted club. The husband was in Iraq. The lieutenant stumbled through his report so that Chase was torn between looking him in the eye as a show of solidarity and looking to her notepad to allow him to save face.
    She hadn’t time to act on either when Hickman turned his attention to her. “So what’s the buzz on Saturday’s crash, Captain Anderson?” The dismissed lieutenant crumpled into his chair.
    Chase felt her body rise a bit in hers. “We have confirmations from both local media and wire services for the memorial service tomorrow,