If you want to use the combination of ORDER BY, CASE and UNION then you should use inner query for a solution without any headache:
SELECT * FROM ( SELECT Col_a, Col_b, 0 AS Col_c FROM table1 WHERE conditions UNION SELECT Col_a, NULL AS Col_b, Col_c FROM table2 WHERE conditions ) x ORDER BY CASE WHEN Col_a='Other' THEN 1 ELSE 0 END, Col_c