Tess Awakening (3 page)

“Today I am merely Jake, at your
service.”

Tess put her bag down and crossed her arms.
“Are you sure that you are not going to try to keep me out of
trouble again?”

Jake smiled. “I wouldn’t dream of interfering
with a Black Hawk pilot with machine guns.”

One of the officers that had arrived in her
van approached them and suggested she check in. Tess picked up her
bag and waived at Jake. “We’ll let the bad guys worry about that
when the time comes.”

Jake waved back “Will I see you at
dinner?”

Tess smiled. “I will freshen up a little bit
and see you in 30 minutes.”

Once in her room, she angrily threw the
folder with the assignment orders on the desk. Sometimes she got
tired of the condescension and innuendos of privilege because she
was the daughter of a celebrated General, and even more annoyed
about having to deflect advances from men trying to get her
attention. At this time, men were the last thing that she needed.
She just wanted to do her job.

Tess had foreclosed on her father’s
profession, foreclosure being a psychological term that accounts
for so many doctors and lawyers being in the same family. She
committed herself to being a professional Army officer before fully
exploring other options to achieve a genuine sense of self. She had
committed to an identity too soon, but she wasn’t aware of it.

Due to her talent for music, her dad hoped
that she would take advantage of a scholarship that she was offered
to study piano at the Conservatory. He was less than pleased about
her choosing the Army, but could not overcome her strong will. The
Army was her choice, a reaction to observing her mother as the
dutiful Army wife, holding down the home front while her husband
was doing his duty all over the world. She had little to say about
her own needs for a life outside that context.

As a little girl, Morgan concluded that home
and hearth did not fit her view of the world, a world dominated by
men who wrote the rules and accrued the benefits. She considered
going into business, but could not stand the idea of putting up
with meetings, offices, and quarterly reports. The Army, on the
other hand, seemed to offer much more. A chance to advance rapidly,
to lead, to go to different places and to do good. She also
understood that the road ahead involved immense dedication, both
physical and mental, challenges that she overcame with relentless
will and talent. She qualified for West Point, graduating with a
degree in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Political Science.
She figured that ultimately, her career would lead her to
Washington or the Pentagon, so she might as well get a handle on
politics.

***

Tess changed into silk pants and blouse and
met Jake in the dining room.

She started the conversation. ‘You say that
you are in the military, but your hair is a little long.”

Jake smiled, “Touché. Do you feel that hair
length is that important?”

Tess shrugged her shoulders. “People have
accused me of being obsessed with the rules. Some have called me a
martinet. Perhaps they are right. I believe in discipline.”

Jake raised his drink; “To discipline,
then.”

The waiter came and Tess agreed to let him
order their dinners. Her companion proceeded to pick dishes with
the assurance of an accomplished gourmet. He went rapidly through
the menu and ordered. “Pâté de Campagne, prunes in crispy bacon,
scallops a la Provençal, duck confit with spiced pickled raisins,
short ribs with olives and herbs, and Crepe Suzette for dessert.
Also bring us a good bottle of Sancerre.”

While he was talking to the waiter, she
watched him appraisingly, wondering how much effort it took to
develop his marvelous musculature. It’s not that he was big; he
just sported well-developed, sinewy muscles that were obviously the
product of sustained professional training.

An officer walked into the dining room,
recognized the handsome couple, and approached their table. He
smiled. “What luck, my two favorite people!”

Major Dan Gardner, Jake’s best friend and
colleague and a good friend of Tess’s father. Tess now reported to
him.

Jake and Tess warmly welcomed him and asked
him to join them. “Delighted,” said the Major, and he pulled a
chair to the table.

A waiter came and Gardner ordered some
food.

“Well, are you prepared for the upcoming
festivities?” he inquired.

“We are ready as we can be,” responded
Jake.

Gardner agreed. “This time there are no holds
barred. We will go all the way to Baghdad and invite Saddam to be
our guest in a nice jail. The bastard is done.”

Tess asked, “Do you think we will be able to
find the WMDs? I understand that they are well hidden in many
locations.”

Jake responded. “I am not so sure that it
will be easy. We really have little evidence that they do exist.
The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection
Commission has gone so far as to say that there are few such
weapons left, if any.”

Tess followed up. “But isn’t the head of this
commission controversial? The Bush people are trying to discredit
him.”

Jake looked uncomfortable. “When dealing with
something so important, it pays to look at all sides of the issue.
The UN Commission has accused the U. S. and British governments of
exaggerating the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, to
strengthen the case for the war against Saddam Hussein. My task in
this conflict is to help find and neutralize the stuff, so I have a
particular interest in determining what the truth really is. We
can’t afford to approach the situation with the Italian concept of
‘Verita’.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked
Gardner.

Jake elaborated. “One significant problem in
Italian politics is the ambiguity of their concept of truth. Each
party has its own version of the truth, reflecting their own
position and interests, and they have a tendency not to budge, even
when faced with irrefutable facts. The net result is a chronic
inability to get things done. In our case, we can’t afford to have
several versions of reality. We need to proceed carefully and with
undisputed facts. I haven’t seen much credible evidence of Iraq
currently having many chemical and biological weapons. For sure,
they had them in the past, but now it looks that the sanctions
leveled against Saddam over the last few years might have persuaded
him to get rid of them. He possibly sent them to Iran.”

“That brings up a new can of worms,” Gardner
observed.

Tess added, “I guess that this will be
something that we might need to deal with in the future.”

Jake agreed. “You may be quite right.”

The group switched to mundane conversation
and finished dinner. They were very aware that holy hell would
start in a few days, and that they would be tested in ways that
could not be imagined.

Dan Gardner excused himself and reminded Tess
that there would a briefing in the morning to direct the first
operation of the squadron.

Jake and Tess entered the elevator and
proceeded to their rooms. Both of them were reluctant to part but
did not feel that it would be appropriate to do more than get some
rest before the morning. Jake said good night first, adding “Be
safe. I will be looking for you.”

“Good luck to you,” Tess responded.

Chapter 4

Jake was a member of the CIA’s Special
Activities Division (SAD) teams, composed of paramilitary
operations officers and Special Forces soldiers. This group had
entered Iraq, in July 2002, before the main invasion. Once on the
ground, they prepared for the arrival of additional U.S. Army
Special Forces to organize the Kurdish Peshmerga.

Due to Jake’s ability to speak Arabic, his
role was to coordinate local fighters. In Iraqi Kurdistan, the
joint team defeated Ansar al-Islam, a group with ties to al-Qaeda.
This battle also led to the capture of a chemical weapon
installation at Sargat; this was the only the only such facility
found in the Iraq war.

The full invasion of Iraq started with an air
strike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad on March 19, 2003. The
following day, mostly British coalition forces launched an
incursion into Basra Province from their massing point close to the
Iraqi-Kuwaiti border.

Once the fighting started, Jake and other SAD
operations officers succeeded in convincing key Iraqi Army officers
to surrender their units. SAD teams also worked behind enemy lines
to identify leadership targets and relayed the information to the
combat units that conducted air strikes against Saddam Hussein and
his generals. The strikes failed to kill Hussein, but they
effectively ended his ability to command and control his
forces.

As fighting raged, Apache helicopters from
Tess’s unit conducted numerous attack runs against Iraqi defenses
until they expended their ammunition and fuel.

The fighting was intense. Unlike most of the
Iraqi Army, the Republican Guard units put up a fierce resistance.
Due to taking heavy fire, 8 Apaches returned to their base damaged.
Repair teams had to pull unexploded RPG’s out of the skins of the
helicopters. Many pilots had been injured.

Major Gardner had maneuvered to pick up a
wounded Marine, but his chopper had been hit in the tail rotor by a
rocket-propelled grenade. Dan had tried to control the aircraft,
but it went into a spin and hit the ground very hard. The engine
block dropped into the fuselage, killing the four-man medical team
on board instantly.

Tess and her team landed close to the
stricken Black Hawk. A second chopper hovered to provide support.
Tess immediately went into action. “Take over the controls,” she
told her co-pilot. Once landed, she jumped out and ran with members
of her crew toward the smoking chopper. They reached the damaged
craft and tried to extricate the casualties.

“The pilots are still strapped into their
seats in the burning cockpit,” said Sarge. “They seem to be
unconscious.”

The rescuers grabbed fire extinguishers from
their own Black Hawk and tried to put out the fire. Aviation fuel
was spewing everywhere, and flares from the chopper’s
countermeasures used as defensive aids started to go off.

Tess and Sarge managed to pull the two
listless pilots from the burning aircraft just as armor-piercing
ammunition on board began to explode. Tess and her people ducked
until Sarge saw the gunner hanging out of his door on the side of
the aircraft. The wounded soldier was conscious and in distress. He
said calmly “My boots and safety harness are trapping me; my feet
are burning.”

Sarge crawled back into the blazing fuselage
to pull out the badly burned man, cutting off his boots to free
him. The gunner was a big man. It took all five of the crew to get
him out of the helicopter.

In the midst of the mayhem, Specialist Dario
Moretti, a young medic, saw that Dan Gardner had suffered a massive
head injury and had trouble breathing. “He won’t make it. He can’t
breathe.”

Tess ran to Dan, who was now prone on the
ground. “There must be something you can do, Moretti!”

The medic reached into his bag and removed a
scalpel. “I will try to do an emergency tracheotomy, Major.”
Another medic rushed over to assist. They quickly performed the
procedure in the midst of a surreal hell of fire, smoke and
explosions.

As they moved the wounded men back to her
chopper for transport back to the base, a dozen Iraqis ran toward
them from three directions. Tess quickly realized that her crew
would not be able to make it out of there. She signaled her
co-pilot to take off without them, but a burst of machine guns
disabled the chopper’s engine. Tess had no choice and ordered the
crew to surrender. “Raise your hands in the air; don’t give them an
excuse to shoot,” she commanded. The men wanted to resist, but Tess
saw that doing so would get them all killed, so she ordered them
again not to resist.

Chapter 5

The Iraqis soldiers surrounded the crew.

The men in the other choppers in the air saw
what was happening, but their aircraft were low on fuel and out of
ammo and were not able to interfere with the capture. They flew
back to base to organize a rescue.

Screaming Iraqis roughly herded the crew
toward a large compound. They put the wounded men into a vehicle.
Then they started to hit and kick the airmen to move them along.
Sarge reacted by slugging one of the captors hard, downing him. The
Iraqi soldiers ganged up on him, repeatedly hitting him with the
stock of their rifles.

The Iraqi sergeant in charge yelled at his
men. “Stop hitting the Americans. The general will decide what to
do with them.”

The group ran through smoke, haze and
explosions, dodging burning tanks and vehicles until they reached a
large compound dominated by a large house.

The Iraqis herded the prisoners toward a
complex of several buildings. They drove the vehicle carrying the
wounded men to a small infirmary. Specialist Moretti, the medic,
persuaded them to let him stay with the injured. The captors then
pushed the rest of the prisoners toward a building with barred
windows, apparently a jail of sorts, and unceremoniously dumped
them into a large cell. All, that is, except for Tess.

Two soldiers roughly grabbed her and started
to push her away from the rest of the captive group. The men tried
to put up some resistance but were beaten with rifle butts and
locked in the cell.

They tied Tess’s hands behind her and dragged
her unceremoniously into the large building. Trying to say focused,
Tess noticed that the structure appeared to be an old residence,
with beautiful pointed arches at the entrance, the theme repeated
on the ground level windows and the upper stories.