Tess Awakening (40 page)

Jake was annoyed. “Gentlemen, you had Saddam
Hussein running the country with brutality and an iron hand. Do you
really want a smarter replica of him in General al-Saadi?”

After a lot of discussions and hand-wringing,
the men decided that it was imperative to arrest Amir and his inner
circle as soon as possible. The only question was how and when.
Timing was critical; they had to catch Amir and his principal
officers just before the activation of his takeover. He was
planning to commit treason, and there might be repercussions that
would rock the still weak Iraqi government.

The devil was in the details, and Jake went
through how Plan B would work. The group worked through the night.
The people of SRD would prepare to fly ten helicopters at a
moment’s notice because no one trusted the Iraqi fliers. Just
before Amir executed his plan, his headquarters would be surrounded
by tanks, armored vehicles, and troops. The key conspirators would
be seized and locked up in a new secure prison that had just been
completed. A panel of judges would make sure that the detentions
were legal. After that, the law would run its course.

The plan hinged on Major Nizar Hamdani’s
signal that the coup was about to start.

***

Amir found out that Tess and Jake were back
in Iraq, and his spies told him that they the Americans were hard
at work training Iraqi pilots and mechanics on the new equipment.
He thought that the presence of Tess and Jake in Iraq signaled
either arrogance or stupidity. Just because he had not identified
them as his assailants to the authorities, it didn’t mean that he
would forgive them for what they did to him. He looked in the
mirror, his face healing but still ravaged. He needed all his
faculties to direct the coup, so he was not using pain pills. To
suppress the pain, he just had some brandy.

He thought that he had finally got over Tess.
Her flying at his face with her combat boot was an image that he
repeatedly saw in his dreams. Often he woke up in a sweat. He kept
seeing Tess’s murderous cold eyes looking at him with contempt. She
actually enjoyed ravaging his face and hurting Fadime. Plus she
took back his son and tried to take Aara as well.

Amir wanted revenge. The only reason he had
not released the videos of their lovemaking was to protect Fadime.
She was scared to death that Tess would make good on her promise to
return and crush her to a pulp. Amir was now biding his time.
Sooner or later he will release the videos for the world to see,
and he will have the satisfaction of destroying her reputation and
her family; the shame would be too much to bear. He just needed to
neutralize Tess and Jake so that they could not get back to Fadime.
He planned to send his sister to disappear in Buenos Aires after
she recovered from her injuries. He would have preferred a little
town in the Amazon, but Fadime could not live without the
conveniences of a metropolitan city: shopping, theater, restaurants
and, of course, new Latin lovers. It’s the least he could do for
her for trying to help him with the children.

He was not sure that Tess and Jake were in
Iraq solely to train the troops. He believed that by now she would
have given up her quest to take Aara from him. In his mind,
retrieving her son should have been enough for her. The problem was
that Tess never quit when she had an objective to pursue. Likewise,
Amir was going to attempt once more to get his son away from her,
fully aware that doing this now meant killing her.

In the middle of his brooding, Kemal and two
other officers walked into his office. Kemal broke the news.
“General, we have a traitor in our midst. He has been spying on us
for months and he has passed information to the Americans about our
plan.

“How do you know this?” Amir asked.

“One of the government ministers, Kasim
Qureshi, disclosed that he and others have met with the Americans
and were briefed on our conspiracy. He said that the government is
planning to move against us.”

“Why should we trust Qureshi?”

“Because he has given us the name of the
mole.”

“Interesting,” said Amir. “Tell me what you
know.”

“The traitor is Major Nizar Hamdani.”

“Bring him to me.”

In less than five minutes, Amir’s men seized
Nizar and brought him in front of Amir.

“Major Hamdani, I am very disappointed that
apparently you have betrayed the confidence of our group of
patriots. Would you care to comment?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,
General. I have worked hard with the other officers to assure the
success of our operation.”

“I am sure you worked hard; unfortunately,
you also passed information to the Americans who in turn alerted
the government. Now it looks like they are ready to stop us. So, I
just need to know who you are working for.”

“I am working for you, General. I am
committed to the cause.”

“This is getting tedious,” Amir lighted a
cigar. “Now, I am sure that you want to avoid discomfort, so, make
things easier on yourself and tell me who the Americans that you
are working for are.” To reinforce his demand, he nodded. One of
the men punched Hamdani in the stomach, followed by a punch to the
face.

The man doubled up in pain, and it took a few
minutes for him to be able to speak. “I will tell you nothing! You
enslaved and caused the death of my cousin Kejal and her family and
this is my revenge!”

Amir took a puff from the cigar. “All right,
now we have the motive for your treachery; you still need to tell
me who are the Americans you work with.”

“I will tell you nothing!”

Amir looked annoyed. “Kemal, I don’t want any
noise here. I have a headache. Please take the man away and ask him
politely to reveal the names of his employers.”

“Yes, General.” Kemal and two other officers
dragged the man outside. It didn’t take long to extract the
information.

Kemal came back into Amir’s office. “Hamdani
turned over the plans to Jake Vickers and Tess Turner.”

“Thank you, Kemal. Now leave.”

Amir put his hands together, digesting what
he had learned. ‘I should have known. Tess and Vickers came back
here to take me down, but they have miscalculated. There are still
people in the government that crave strong leadership. Of course,
the politicians’ primary interest is to safeguard themselves; it
is, nevertheless a very useful legitimate selfish goal.’

He called Kemal in. “We are going to move up
the schedule by one day. Also, send me the commander of my
helicopter squadron; I need to talk with him.”

Chapter 67

Jake discussed the plan for the day of the
anticipated coup by Amir.

He was still under the impression that the
coup would start on Friday at Midnight. At 11:30, Tess and Carmen,
in a Mangusta chopper along with eight helicopters manned by the
Iraqis would take to the air, fully armed with guns and missiles.
They were to hover at a distance from Amir’s headquarters to avoid
suspicion and fly in as soon as his troops started to move. Once in
place, they would move toward the massing soldiers and prevent them
from leaving the compound. They would use force if necessary.

Jake and Nicola would operate their own
Apache gunship bristling with weapons. Ten Iraqi choppers would
support them. They were to fly to the staging area of Amir’s
helicopter squadron. Their mission was to prevent the insurgents
from taking off.

Everything seemed to be in place. Much
depended on close coordination and communication, so the task force
composed of a dozen helicopters flew to a remote part of the desert
to rehearse their runs. The crews went through the combat protocol,
taking care that their radio communications appeared routine; just
a training exercise. After two hours of mock battle, they landed in
turn, the chopper blades stirring sand up in the air.

Working inside a tent, Jake and the Iraqi
squadron commander reviewed the exercise, corrected some flight
paths on paper and held a briefing with the pilots. Tess and Carmen
stayed in the air, perfecting their flying skills on the
Mangusta.

In the middle of the meeting, Jake and the
Iraqi fliers heard the roar of helicopters approaching. They
assumed it was just a routine exercise by other Iraqi units until
the aircrafts made a sudden turn toward them. Jake and the other
pilots ran out of the tent, only to face a blistering volley of
bullets from the attacking choppers of Amir’s squadron. The other
pilots hit the dirt, but two of them were hit. The attackers now
fired at the helicopters on the ground and hit three of them, which
burst into flames. The attack was well coordinated, half of the
attackers firing at the stationary choppers, and the rest spewing
machine gun fire against the crews.

Jake realized that his group was in danger of
getting annihilated. They were taken by surprise and the options to
resist the attack were diminishing by the minute. If they could not
get to the remaining choppers and take off to fight the enemy, they
would all die.

Suddenly, Jake understood what had happened.
He had not heard from Nizar Hamdani this morning. He must have been
caught by Amir and his men had made him talk. The attacking
helicopters kept firing. There was not much cover to hide behind
and several more Iraqis were hit.

Suddenly, one of the choppers in the air blew
up. Jake instantly knew that Tess and Carmen had engaged the enemy.
He saw their Mangusta coming toward the other helicopters, firing
all their weapons.

Tess took advantage of the surprise, flew
behind two more of Amir’s choppers and Carmen raked them with her
machine guns. One caught fire and fell to the ground, where it
exploded. Next they fired a missile at the second helicopter and
blew it up in the air. Amir’s squadron commander ordered his
remaining helicopters to engage the attacker, but that was the last
thing he did. Carmen fired another missile, hitting the chopper on
the tail rotor. The machine fell to the ground and disintegrated on
impact. The women had an uncanny mental connection between
themselves, instinctively reading each other’s mind, synchronizing
their actions without the need to talk.

Amir’s remaining helicopters now were in hot
pursuit of Tess and Carmen. Tess wanted to help Jake and the other
pilots get back into their aircraft, so she lured the attackers
away from the beleaguered parked choppers by accelerating away from
the area. This was a chance for Jake to run to his chopper with
Nicola. They rushed to the aircraft, started the engines and took
off. Once in the air, an enemy aircraft shot a missile at them.
Nicola deployed his countermeasures. The hot flying decoy diverted
the missile; it had missed them by a few feet.

The remaining Iraqi government pilots also
managed to get back to their helicopters and lifted off to meet the
enemy. The battle in the air continued. Tess and Carmen now turned
into birds of prey. The attacking pilots were no match for their
flying skills. Tess kept rapidly changing altitudes and maneuvering
her craft in unexpected ways to confuse the enemy pilots. Working
in unison with Carmen, they could have been Indians circling a
caravan. Carmen’s fire was deadly. Another chopper went down.

Jake engaged a chopper as well, and Nicola
fired a missile that brought it down. Then they saw that Tess and
Carmen were in trouble. Two of the enemy helicopters had managed to
get behind them, firing all weapons. Jake banked his chopper,
turned to meet the aggressors and Nicola fired a missile. The
target exploded in the air.

The remaining government choppers were now
heading to engage the remaining enemy crafts. Amir’s men now
recognized that the battle was lost. They turned and fled. They did
not know that if they had continued to give battle, they might
actually have won. The government choppers were almost out of fuel
and could fly only for twenty minutes before they would have had to
land.

Tess and Jake were also low on fuel and
landed away from the smoking debris on the ground. Several choppers
were still burning. Men had been killed or wounded, smoke and
swirling sand creating a picture of hell. The two couples jumped
from their aircraft and ran into each other’s arms. They had
survived the encounter, but it was very close.

The Iraqi commander came over to them. “It’s
obvious that General al-Saadi moved up the takeover plan. We must
tell the Army what is happening.”

“I believe that the al-Saadi made Major
Hamdani talk and got him to disclose what we were doing here, so he
set a trap. If hadn’t been for the women taking the initiative, all
of us would be toast.”

The squadron commander asked, “What now?”

Jake scratched his head. “I am sure that Amir
moved up the start of the coup. We need to alert the government
assets to confront his troops.”

“Our units expected to deploy on Friday; I am
not sure that can be mobilized so soon.”

A junior officer ran toward them. “Colonel,
we alerted Army headquarters on the radio and they dispatched
aircraft to intercept the enemy helicopters. They also said that
they have started to deploy troops and tanks to capture
al-Saadi.”

“I guess they were better prepared than I
thought,” the Colonel said. “Mr. Vickers, you and your people
probably saved Iraq today.”

“I wouldn’t rest on our laurels Colonel;
al-Saadi is not finished yet. We need to go after him now.”

“Government helicopters will be here shortly
to pick us up.”

Chapter 68

The Iraqi government deployed troops,
security forces, and tanks into several Baghdad neighborhoods in
the Green Zone, the secure area where many government buildings,
the military headquarters, and the U.S. Embassy were located.