Crash Dive: An Alex Hawke Story Read Online Free Page A

Still. He is missing part of his right leg, from the knee down. It is the result of an IED the Taliban had left waiting for him beside the road to Kabul. He’d been promised a prosthetic, but there was a very long line of amputees ahead of him.
    He thought little of the wound. He had seen countless horrors far worse. He was one of the lucky ones. He was alive. He had come home safely to his family. He had done his duty. He was a proud man, proud of his service and what he’d done for his country, though he would never, ever, let you know it. His father had never talked about his war. Neither would he.
    “I like my cane,” the Marine told people. “It has many other uses, you know. You can scare cats with it, stuff like that.”
    Aurora, unable to sleep because of an impending adventure, has had her father reading to her for hours. She hasn’t yawned once, Christopher thought, pulling another book from her shelves. Not once! With her flouncy red curls and cornflower-blue eyes, she was a picture-perfect child.
    Christopher Marley once told his wife, Marjorie, that when the great gardener finally clipped all the inferior roses in the great garden, he came up with one perfect bud and he named it “Aurora.” It was the kind of thing he said from time to time, the kind of thing that endeared him to his wife of ten years. Not to mention his legions of loyal readers.
    Christopher, a famous writer of children’s books before duty and country had called, turned the page of the picture book.
    “Ooh, Daddy, what a lovely palace! Who lives there? Can I live there someday? Become a real princess?”
    “Well, most likely not. You’ll see it for yourself when we get to Orlando tomorrow, but I can tell you now even though it’s a great secret. That palace is the home of Cinderella and—”
    “Cinderella? She’s so beautiful.”
    “Indeed. As I say, it’s her palace, but she has many guests living there as well. Including a certain mouse, your favorite mouse in the whole wide world.”
    “Remy? In Ratatouille ?”
    “Remy was a rat, darling, not a mouse. Otherwise they would have called the movie Mouseatouille . Which they didn’t.”
    Aurora laughed and pursed her lips, thinking this over.
    “Not Mickey?”
    “Yup. Mickey Mouse himself.”
    “Mickey Mouse. The real Mickey Mouse. Lives in that very palace with Cinderella? Inside.”
    “Correct.”
    “And we’re going there. To that exact palace. Tomorrow.”
    “We are.”
    “Oh, Daddy, I want to hug you. I’m so excited . . . can we meet Mickey? Go to his house? See his room and everything?”
    “I should think so. He does live there, after all.”
    “Well. We’ll just walk up to his door and knock on it, won’t we, Daddy?”
    “Or maybe he’ll be out playing and we’ll go say hello. I hear he is just about the most popular mouse in Orlando and—”
    At dinner the night before he shipped out, he had made a solemn promise to his family. When he got home he was taking them all to Disney World for a grand holiday. Three whole days. In bed later that night, he’d asked his wife to honor his promise in his absence. No matter what. And there were times, lying in a rocky roadside ditch, bleeding out, when Sgt. Chris Marley, USMC, had believed he’d never set foot (he still had one, anyway) inside Disney World. He still remembered Aubrey, his son, who had pumped his fist and shouted, “Disney World? Space Mountain, bring it on!”
    “Daddy! Wake up! You fell asleep reading!”
    Aurora, her eyes gleaming, looked up at him and said one word freighted with reverence.
    “Mickey.”
    A t that moment the door swung inward and a small, familiar-looking boy of eleven (he was Aurora’s older brother) stood there holding a very beat-up red duffel bag with a big black L above a pair of crossed lacrosse sticks. It was the one his dad had used at Lawrenceville. The boy’s name was Aubrey. He was an auburn-haired boy, with great handsome eyes that he would grow into