by Andres Mann
Jake looked at her with a resigned look on his face. “Well, how can one compete with that? Are you going to go back to him?”
“I don’t ever want to see him again.”
“Tess, I am sorry. I should not have asked you that question. You are honest, and I like a fool forced you to tear my heart apart. It’s an injury that I inflicted on myself. I must now bear the consequences. All I can say now is that I love you with all my heart, but I can’t live with the knowledge that you have been in the arms of that man.”
“That does not change how I feel about you, Jake.”
“Tess, I need to go now. I wish I could say it was nice to see you again. Stay safe.”
Jake stood up and walked away.
***
Back to their living quarters, Carmen witnessed Tess breaking down. The usually reserved, classy and confident tough pilot had her face swollen from crying. She sat on the floor, her arms hugging her legs, almost in a fetal position.
“Do I dare ask you what happened, Tess?”
Tess could no longer endure the pain by herself. She needed to talk to someone she trusted. She needed help and support. She shared her torment, disclosing everything that transpired. She talked about her surrender to Amir and her desire to do so in spite of hating him. She also expressed her nascent, elemental craving to nurture a child, but most of all, she regretted her betrayal of Jake’s trust.
Carmen, ever the realist, never trusted men even though she routinely enjoyed them when she needed to play. Basically, in her mind, with few exceptions, they are all pigs.
“Girlfriend, I understand that you messed up, but I wouldn’t get suicidal about it. You have two men that will jump over the cliff for you; I wish I had that problem.”
“Carmen, you don’t understand. I screwed up everything.”
“Yes, you screwed up, but not in the way you think. In my humble opinion, you are out of your mind, Tess. You have turned down a man that will buy you Chanel clothes and Ferraris. He has three mansions in Europe and a cute kid to boot, plus he worships you and according to you he is a world class screw. So he is a little strange, but I would definitely cut him some slack; there is no such thing as a perfect man or perfect woman in this world. So what’s the problem?
“I love Jake, and he doesn’t have a burning need to show off or dominate me, even if he could do so if he wanted.”
“Tess, get real. Jake is cute, but in my opinion, he is not competitive — in a commercial sense, so to speak. If I were in your situation, I would thank the Lord for his blessings and rush back to the rich guy as fast as you can and beg him to take you back. Just steer Jake in my direction. I am sure I could make him feel better,” she added jokingly.
Tess smiled at Carmen’s pragmatic and good-humored assessment of the situation. It was just like her, born of the hard world that she survived with talent, guts, and determination.
“Stop kidding, Carmen. I want to be with Jake. My only question is how I can get him to forgive me.”
“Tess, stew on this for a while. I am sure you will come up with something. From what I have seen, he is still nuts over you in spite of the fact that you enthusiastically screwed another guy. He will get over it eventually. He knows that there still plenty of mileage left in you. Some girls have all the luck.”
“I love him.”
“Well, I suggest you get with the program, then. Watch out though. From what I see, your visions of babies and puppies tell me that you are craving to get knocked up. Or maybe you already are. That will solve another of your problems. You will get your very own little girl with black eyes.
“Don’t be silly, Carmen. I never wanted kids, and I am not pregnant.”
“Tess, you get sick every morning. You spend a lot of time in the bathroom peeing. Your boobs are sore. You are cranky. I think you should get a pregnancy test.”
“Carmen. I am on the pill.” In any case, how about you, when are you going to settle down? You can’t keep running hot and cold guys forever,”
“Touché; I am going to wait until my boobs start dropping and my ass sags. Then I will retire, get me a nice, dull accountant, screw him real good and knock out a couple of kids. Pronto, mission accomplished.”
Tess smiled. “You know you are crazy.”
“It’s the only way to live, my lady. And, by the way, please pick up a pregnancy test kit at the PX.”
Chapter 33
Regrets
Amir was in a foul mood, sitting in his study with a glass in his hand.
He could not believe that he had failed to persuade Tess to stay. He had offered her everything. He had made love to her passionately. He had shown her every kindness. He had hoped that after their fantastic lovemaking, she would elect to stay and that the disclosure that Aara was his daughter would not change the desired outcome.
Amir was not a man to dwell in self-reflection, but this time he knew he had failed in conquering a woman for the first time in his life. Now he wanted Tess more than ever, but she was gone. He regretted his angry, abrupt dismissal of her in the garden, his inability to suppress his authoritarian bent. He could have been gentler, more aware, he kept saying to himself.
In his mind, he could still smell her scent and remember her poise and grace. He admired her intellect, how she descended down the stairs looking like a princess, how her playing the piano revealed a depth of feeling and turbulent passion that he rarely saw in other women. Above all, he remembered holding her in his arms, making love to her, delighting in her responses.
His sister Fadime repeatedly insisted they watch the videos she had made of their lovemaking. She found the scenes intensely erotic, invariably becoming intensely aroused, persuading Amir to make love to her. She soon realized that Amir was not actually making love to her; in his mind, he was making love to Tess. Fadime was not amused.
She was well aware that she and her brother had violated all conventions by engaging in an unnatural relationship but had delusions that it didn’t matter, that Amir would be her lover forever. She had never found a man that could fulfill her the way that her brother did. The fact that he had other women did not matter. He always came back to her, mutually partaking of the delicious forbidden fruit. But now Amir was different. He started to avoid her entreaties, locked in his study, brooding over his loss.
***
In the morning, Amir received four of his friends from Iraq, now ministers in the government, and a General. They brought news of the chaos in the country and talked about what they perceived the incompetence of the new government. After filling all the bureaucratic posts with Shiites, they started to fill the ranks of the reconstituted military, not with the most experienced and deserving officers, but with candidates whose chief qualification was political. The men saw only continued strife and war far into the future, and a threat to the existence of the country itself.
They discussed with Amir a report from a watchdog group in Europe, which stated that the government of Iraq is the most corrupt institution in the Middle East. It is between a “flawed democracy” and an “authoritarian regime.” The U.S. military in Iraq has not been able to prevent this corruption. There are manifest signs that post-Saddam Iraq was clearly not going to be the linchpin for a new democratic Middle East.
“The country is in dire need of competent leadership General, and we are asking you to return and run for one of the important government posts. Shortly after that, our faction would maneuver to offer you the top leadership position.”
Amir was not thinking of going back to Iraq anytime soon. Had Tess been with him, he would not have considered returning. But now he no longer had a reason to remain on the sidelines. Perhaps it was time to get back in the fray. Getting busy would take his mind off things.
The group planned for four days, at the end of which Amir agreed to return to Iraq on condition that he would be appointed General, the rank with most of the authority and responsibility. He made preparations to leave at once.
Befo
re departing, there was one more thing he needed to do. He retrieved the videos from the vault, went outside in the garden, and burned them in a barrel. Fadime would be furious, but he had come to abhor the tapes. They were no longer a record of his triumph over Tess, but a defilement of the bliss that he had shared with her during a sublime night of passion.
Chapter 34
Corruption
Jake was drunk in his bunk. He couldn’t believe that he had been so reckless to ask Tess a question that should have best been left unanswered, lest it disclosed what he was most afraid to hear. He recalled his mother telling him that everyone is entitled to their own secrets. Total honesty is not always good for relationships.
He could still feel the thrill of having her in his arms, of playfully romping in bed, the joy of sharing each other. His mood changed to anger. She did the same things with Amir and more. The thought of Tess passionately making love to Amir kept driving him crazy. The mental image of her willingly allowing the man to invade her body made him scream with primal despair.
His sense of loss broke his heart. He cried like a baby and punched the walls repeatedly with his fists until the knuckles bled.
The next day, feeling like crap, he rode in a Humvee to a field station. His assignment was to investigate a potential case of corruption. CIA analysts had detected messages from Al Qaeda indicating that they had received some sort of large payoff in American dollars from sources in the Iraqi government. The analysts had monitored coded messages between various terrorist groups, disclosing that factions were arguing on who would receive a piece of the pie.
Jake and his team planned the operation and proceeded to implement it. The key was finding a few individuals who either were involved in the transaction or who knew who did it. The team started contacting some of their sources. They dressed in local clothes and furtively met with reliable informers in and out of the Iraqi government.
Jake’s knowledge of Arabic enabled him to understand the nuances of what was being said. He had built up credibility with locals in his network, particularly government employees that disliked the rampant corruption among the ruling class. They had been in power less than a year and had already reverted to a culture of graft and corruption, feasting at the trough provided by American money.
The first clue surfaced when Jake found out that an Iraqi minister had been released after four months of terrorist captivity. Jake knew that Al Qaeda would release people only with the payment of a substantial ransom. This case appeared to fit the bill. He made further inquiries, coming to the conclusion that there seemed to be some connection back to the CIA.
He went back to Baghdad to talk with his boss, Paul Saunders. He presented what he knew and told him that he had trouble finding where the money had come from. Paul, who had his tentacles everywhere, disclosed that the cash came from the CIA. To Jake’s astonishment, he revealed that the CIA had regularly delivered suitcases of cash to keep the Iraqi government afloat. The convoluted trail of money evaded detection, and it was obvious that much of it went to line the pockets of people in the power structure to do with it what they willed.
Armed with this information, Jake made further inquiries and deduced that CIA cash, five million, had found its way to Al Qaeda. Essentially, the CIA ended up financing terrorist operations.
The obscenity of the situation sickened him. Rather than helping create a stable, democratic government, the U. S. was actually paying off a few individuals to have them go through the motions of good governance, thus creating an illusion of progress.
The inquiries of Jake’s team did not go unnoticed, and he soon detected that people were following him and his operations partner, Harvey Morris. Using the skills learned at the Farm in Langley, they evaded surveillance and turned the tables on their pursuers. Now they became shadows, trailing the three men to the gates of an elegant house outside of Baghdad. Jake called Central and found out that the house belonged to a current big shot government minister. It appeared that the ransom transaction originated here. He called the office with the information. They will take it from here.
They got ready to return to base. They had to traverse an open field, and they decided to do it one at a time. Harvey went first. Jake looked for activity from the house and started moving, crouching as low as possible as darkness approached. Then he heard shots. They had been discovered, and half a dozen men with AK-47s began to run toward them. Jake joined Harvey behind a boulder and they returned fire with their pistols. One of the attackers fell, but the rest kept coming and firing.
Jake and Harvey hit two more men and momentarily stopped their advance. Harvey got on the cell phone and asked for extraction. The request was relayed to the chopper units. The crews started the engines of a couple of aircraft and the pilots rushed to man the machines. Shortly after that, two gunships were on the way.
Tess and Carmen had been diverted to run one of the Black Hawks because they happened to be on the tarmac. They received instructions on flight and headed to the given coordinates. Arriving on site, they hovered and assessed the situation. The two CIA men were having a hard time holding back the onslaught of what now appeared to be a dozen men. Tess made a strafing run, but the looming darkness made it difficult to discern any effect of their fire. Making another run, Tess ordered Carmen to deploy a flare. The resulting flash illuminated the scene and they were able to fire at the attackers in preparation for landing.
Jake saw what the pilots were trying to do, and made for the aircraft with his partner behind him. The second chopper tried to keep the bad guys at bay by spraying bullets at them. Rushing toward the rescue helicopter, Jake suddenly felt like something had stabbed him, and he fell. Harvey saw him fall and tried to drag him into the aircraft. The crew rushed out of the chopper, helped Harvey inside, and heaved Jake in before a few more shots hit the fuselage.
The second helicopter released a hellish burst of machine gun fire, neutralizing the attackers.
The medics on board started to apply compresses on Jake’s wounds. He was in shock and didn’t feel any pain. Tess asked Carmen to take over and crouched in the rear of the craft. Her heart stopped. To her horror, she saw Jake bleeding, staring into space.
“Jake, Jake! Are you all right?” He opened his eyes, recognized Tess and passed out. The craft rushed back to base where an ambulance was waiting. They rushed Jake to surgery.
When he woke up in the military hospital, he didn’t know how long he had been under. His right leg was in a cast, and his torso was bandaged. An assortment of IVs protruded from his arms, and he had trouble swallowing. Not surprising, because he had a tube down his nose. A nurse came in, checked his vitals and the various screens in the room, and left. Jake tried to catch her attention, but couldn’t move.
He started to panic. He could not move. Nothing seemed to work. “If I am paralyzed, I don’t want to live,” he thought. He lost consciousness.
When he returned to consciousness, he could not focus his eyes until he recognized Tess’s face. ‘I am surely dead and in Heaven,’ he thought.
Then he felt a light kiss on his cheek and thought he heard “Hello Jake.” Tess was talking to him and took his hand into hers. Feasting his eyes on the one person in the word he wanted to be with, he passed out.
The next time he woke up, the tube down his nose was gone, and a doctor was checking his vitals. “You got shot up pretty bad, Colonel Vickers. You are lucky to be alive.
Jake croaked, “Will I be able to walk?”
“Yes, you will after your leg heals. But we have to pay attention to your left lung. You took a bullet there, and two of your ribs are broken. You must take it easy for a while.”
“The pilot that rescued me, Major Turner, is she coming back?”
“I will call her and tell her that you will be fine.”
That’s not what Jake wanted to hear. What he really needed to know is if Tess would come and see him again. The morphine took hold, and he went to sleep.
Chapter 35
Reminiscences
Amir’s plane landed in Baghdad. A small convoy transported him to a house in the Green Zone that would be his residence. Shortly afterward, he went to the Iraqi Army Headquarters to receive his new commission as a General. He then attended various briefings to bring him up to date on recent events.
The situation had not changed much since he last read updates in London. The Government was dysfunctional, beset by severe problems that originated with the dismissal of Sunni government workers at the end of the war. The Shiites that replaced them, for the most part, did not have the experience to perform much of the work. It would take quite some time for things to normalize.
The insurrection was raging, and the newly reconstituted Army had neither the experience nor skill to be effective at present. A lot of the fighting fell on the Americans, who were now anxious to quiet things down so that could go home. The proud, capable Iraqi Army that he knew no longer existed. Many of the officers were political appointees and had little or no experience in leadership.
Amir’s initial job was to prepare competent senior officers to serve in the General Staff. This required the definition and implementation of a lot of training.
Amir brought energetic leadership and expertise to the task, at the same time laying the seeds to serve his personal agenda. His real objective was to maneuver himself into the top leadership in government. To achieve that, he needed to assemble a group of loyal followers beholden to him that would eventually participate in the takeover.
He wanted to select candidates that he had previously worked with, but he had many constraints. He was not allowed to use any of the previous Sunni officers that had been demobilized after the war. This in effect eliminated a large pool of tested and reliable leaders. The pool of candidates available to him not only needed to be trained, but also evaluated as potential loyal supporters.