An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) (34 page)

“I see. Hickman decided it was time to eliminate me?”

Sims didn’t answer; he pushed her up the path.

“Guess you’re not afraid of running into the night marchers.”

They’d reached the steepest part of the trail so far. The Falls were almost deafening now, but Sims was close enough to her that she could detect that his breathing was heavy and labored, much more than hers. Come to think of it, she’d never seen him on a run. He’d pulled up to lean across a boulder. “Are you always this chatty?”

She told him the Hawaiian legend about the chiefs and warriors marching in a ghostly procession to the sea each night through this valley. Sims hardly appeared rattled.

“We’re almost there,” he said and pushed her up the path that eventually opened to the pool—what Hawaiians referred to as the Bottomless. The moon was directly above the pool and reflected light up from the pool and off the sheer face of the cliff beside it so that it appeared as if someone had suddenly flipped a light switch upon their entry. At the top of Sacred Falls, the rushing cascade of white water glittered under the moonlight. The ground was less rocky, but nonetheless muddy and squishy, and she had to pick up her feet to keep them from sinking underground. Sims had released his hold on her arm, and was pushing the shovel into the ground, testing for spots.

“You’re not a cold-blooded killer, Major. Melanie Appleton’s death was an accident. Even the Honolulu Police haven’t ruled it anything but a suicide at this point.”

Sims was walking around the bank of the pool. He’d left the shovel upright in the mud not too far from her. She was leaning against a boulder and rubbing her taped wrists against the rough surface of rock. There was little circulation left in her arms to gain the amount of force she needed, but several times, she managed to rub so hard that the friction of heat compelled her to shift the angle. She nearly cried out with joy when she felt the widening of space between her wrists and then her eventual freedom. Sims was oblivious. He’d been walking away from her. When he turned back, she thought he seemed to be weighing whether he should kill her and bury her in this muddy bank beside the pool or just drown her and leave. She was closest to the shovel, but she needed the element of surprise. Sims still had a pistol. She’d get one chance with the shovel. Just one.

When he turned from her to gaze back down at the trail, she used the moment to bring her arms to the front of her body, hugging herself, attempting to regain her circulation. By the time, Sims was facing in her direction she’d returned her arms behind her back.

“Major Sims,” she called out.

He held up a hand. “Shhh…”

Now she’d heard it, too. Was it a sliding rock? Another landslide on the way like the one that killed the Mother’s Day tourists in 1999? She followed his gaze to the top of the cliff.

Then the night air was suddenly cut with “Chase!”

It was Joe Figueredo.

Sims had broken into a run toward her, but Chase had surprise on her side and ran with the shovel, swinging it like a baseball bat. The shovel landed so hard against his ribs that the bones in her hands felt as if they’d all been broken. She heard him groan, watched him sink to his knees, clutching his side, and then he was climbing back to his feet. She didn’t have the strength left in her arms, or hands for that matter, to take another swing at him, so she took off running, but her right foot got stuck in mud, and she twisted an ankle on the way down. She screamed for Joe, and his name reverberated in echoes off the cliff. Sims was coming toward her, his pistol drawn and pointed at her head. She gripped the shovel and prepared for the right moment, the only moment she’d have.

Just then, a dark figure bolted out of nowhere. Joe and Sims, who had almost been upon her, straddling her and blocking out the moon, went down in an almost comic tumble, leaving Chase with a clear view of the moon once again.

She scrambled to sit upright and lifted her swelling right ankle out of the mud. The two figures were grunting and rolling dangerously close to the edge of the pool. Sims was now on top, delivering blows, but Joe’s hands were around Sims’ neck. Chase grabbed the shovel. Could she deliver the blow before Joe lost his grip on Sims?

Steadying herself on one foot, she swung the shovel. She was too weak. The blow to his shoulder was little more than an irritant to Sims, who freed himself from Joe and came after her. There was little ground between Sims and the black pool behind her, but she was eating it up, hopping backward as fast as her body would allow.

Sims was coming at her with both hands to either strangle her or force her into the pool. Joe appeared in view over Sims’ left shoulder and raised the shovel. Chase dropped to her knees and closed her eyes as the thud of metal met bone. But when she opened her eyes, Sims was struggling back to his feet.
Impossible,
she thought. But Sims lost his balance in the mud, and with his arms flailing for something solid against the airy nothingness, he disappeared into the pool.

“No!” Chase screamed and started into the pool to save Sims.

Joe grabbed her. “What are you doing?”

“Molly,” she screamed. “He knows where Molly is.” She fought against Joe’s hold to reach Sims. Joe wasn’t letting go of her.

“It’s okay, Chase,” he said, stripping off his jacket to put around her, “Molly’s at home. Safe. North found her, asleep, probably chloroformed, under a tree in the chapel parking lot.” Chase collapsed against his chest.

Halfway down the rocky trail, with Joe carrying her, they were met by the spotlights and bullhorns of Okamoto and his officers.

CHAPTER 20

C
hase took leave for the rest of the week and kept Molly out of kindergarten during the flood of news coverage. Reporters were blasting their home phone for interviews that Chase finally grew too tired to grant. Eventually, she unplugged the phone. Only Paul Shapiro had her cell phone, and he’d called twice: the first time to report he was back on the island, the second call on the Saturday morning of the Marine Corps Ball. He filled her in on the progress of his investigative reportage about Hickman.

“This may be your Pulitzer,” she said, removing the dry cleaning tags from her dress blues while Molly, curled up in Stone’s recliner in the den with her dolls, was asleep despite the obnoxious canned laughter from cartoons, an abandoned bag of white powdered doughnuts on the floor beside the chair.

“You know…” Paul said, “it’s always been about bringing some justice to Melanie’s death.”

“I know, Paul.” She’d invited Paul and Detective Okamoto and his wife to join them for the Marine Corps Ball. “See you tonight.”

The hangar at 464 had been transformed. Gone were the aircraft and the carts of mechanic’s tools, and in their place dozens and dozens of round tables with red tablecloths and gold floral centerpieces that also included miniature flag sets with an American flag and a Marine Corps flag.

Marines in dress blues, men and women, mingled among their dates and spouses, making introductions to their friends and presentations to their commanding officers above the music that was being provided by the base band from one corner of the hangar. The first face she recognized was Major O’Donnell’s. He was standing by the bar beside a woman she guessed to be his wife, and O’Donnell’s face broke into a wide smile. He held up his beer as a wave. However, as North was first to point out, there was an unusual somberness in the air. The unraveling of the conspiracy as well as the conspicuous absences of General Hickman and 464’s Colonel Farris appeared to have shaken more than a few.

Yet there were still the women who had spent hours in preparation at hair salons for elaborate updos, who were dressed in elaborate floor-length gowns, some strapless, some asymmetrical, some off-the-shoulder, others in glittery sequins or flowing chiffon. Chase’s staff had encircled her the minute she appeared in the large open doorway. Cruise, Martinez, and North were in dress blues. This was the first time she’d seen them since that night, though she’d talked by phone to them every day. Now they were peppering their boss with questions until she finally held up a hand. “For now,” she said, tucking the script she was about to read between her arm and body, “let’s just enjoy our anniversary.”

On Monday, she would have to face the media regarding the allegations against Hickman, Farris, and Sims. No doubt, she’d have to answer awkward questions about Stone’s involvement in the cover-up, even about her own kidnapping. But for one night, exactly two weeks since Tony White’s crash, she wouldn’t think about all that: not about how she’d answer the Corps’s official position on the 81 or about how these current allegations would impact National AeroStar and future defense contracts or about the Corps’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy on homosexuality. She thought of Kitty White and her children. Like the Marines who died with Tony, she and the children, even Chase and Molly, had become collateral damage.

An arm slipped around her waist, and she turned to face Joe Figueredo. His dress blue coat was heavy with medals, anodized, and as bright as his smile. “Happy Birthday, Marine,” he whispered in her ear. “Save me a dance later.” He shook hands with Sergeant North, and she watched the colonel disappear in a sea of Marine dress blues.

Paige and Samantha suddenly appeared on either side of her. Defiant Samantha, in the same long-sleeved black gown she’d worn the year before, was lovely. “I saw that,” she said, referring to Joe, and winked.

And Paige—she looked ethereal in white. “You look so good in your dress blues,” she said and hugged Chase. “I think I’m jealous.”

“Me, too,” Samantha teased and embraced Chase.

When trumpets signaled the onset of the ceremony, Chase slipped her hands into white gloves and walked to the front of the hangar. She had the sensation of floating through a red, rippling sea of blood stripes. So much history to be proud of. Too much history to let a few bad Marines ruin it, she decided, as she stepped up to the podium.

EPILOGUE

“Ma’am, he’s on.”

“Coming.” Chase stuffed her lipstick back inside her purse and eased past Sergeant Cruise who was holding open the door to the ladies’ restroom and led the way back to the tiny holding room outside the Senate Chambers.

“He looks good,” Cruise added and was about to jump ahead of Chase to open the door to the holding room when the door swung open. Sergeant North ushered them in.

Chase settled into the middle upholstered chair between her two sergeants. She hadn’t expected the hearings to really get started on time, especially on a Saturday morning, but here they were. For three days, she’d been coming in like this, never knowing for certain when she or Joe would be called.

“Have I missed anything?”

“Just the opening gavel, ma’am,” North reported. “That, and they’ve turned the camera on him twice already.”

Sergeant Cruise added, “He looks calm, ma’am.”

“Yes, he does.”

The camera had cut from the senator who was reading a prepared opening statement to Joe. Chase’s heart picked up speed. Yes, he did look good this morning, despite whatever jet lag he must be suffering. He sat tall and impressive in his dress uniform with a chest full of combat medals and shooting badges. His steady hands poured water from a pitcher into a glass. He took a sip. The camera cut back to the senator whose escalating voice addressed concerns about what the American government owed its military men and women.

Another camera on Joe. His palms now flat on the folder before him, the one that contained the statement she’d helped to prepare. Joe was about to reveal the worst side of the Corps, the side she hadn’t thought existed six months ago. She still wanted to think of herself as an idealist, or at the very least, an optimist, but given what she’d discovered about her leaders, remaining optimistic was a challenge.

Joe was detailing his investigation, about how at the root of it all, was a machine that should be the most powerful helicopter in the world but that was also, sadly, flawed and dangerous, made more so by the dangerous, ruthless men who had hidden problems that the manufacturer might not ever be able to fix. Joe was testifying, but this was as much Stone and Tony White’s day in court as it was Joe’s.

For a while it had seemed nothing would happen beyond the conspiracy, attempted murder, and kidnapping charges against Hickman and Farris. Someone in JAG, or higher, had tried to hold out until the investigation team ruled on Tony White’s crash to determine whether it were true that alcohol had played a factor. But the crash investigation board refused to be rushed. In fact, the results were still forthcoming. Paul Shapiro was first in line for them behind Kitty White and the other families.

Because of the media pressure, JAG had been forced by headquarters in DC to move forward. She and Joe had helped the N.I.S. secure enough evidence against Hickman and Farris. As for Sims, it had taken divers nearly a week to recover his body, and in this length of time, the old Hawaiian legends about the demon in the bottom of the pool at Sacred Falls had resurfaced. As Okamoto told Chase a few weeks later, his wife had walked around for days with an
I-told-you-so
demeanor.

O’Donnell’s statement about what he knew had helped, of course, and eventually Farris’s guilty plea was what sank Hickman. Farris was sentenced to ten years and received a bad conduct discharge. Hickman’s combat record hadn’t been able to exonerate him from this public level of humiliation. Instead, he’d retired quickly and quietly to some small town in Louisiana where, in the words of the great General MacArthur, he attempted to “fade away.” But the charges eventually caught up with him, and he too was facing prison. Chase suspected the heavy swing of Armstrong’s influence there.

To this day, the only media to know of Stone’s role in the cover-up, and of the blackmailing, was Paul Shapiro, and he’d chosen to omit that detail from his string of stories for the
Honolulu Current
that had included the original release of the charges, profiles on Hickman, Farris, Sims, and Tony White, interviews with retired 81 pilots—those praising the helicopter and those denigrating it—and even a feature on National AeroStar that included interviews with executives who had been cleared of any conspiratorial wrongdoing. Paul had also omitted mentioning that Tony White had been gay.