Read Online Tess Awakening by Andres Mann - Free Book Online

demanded.
    “They took her with them in the helicopter,
General.” Kemal, still on his back, raised his arm to protect
himself from another blow. The General kicked him.
    “Why am I cursed with eunuchs like you?” Then
he kicked him again.
    Amir turned on his heels and went up the
stairs and back to his suite to get dressed. He would not admit it
to himself, but he had cared for Kejal. She was cold as ice,
stubborn and resentful. He broke her spirit and forced her to serve
him and to come to his bed whenever he fancied it. He actually
enjoyed her hostile and contemptuous passivity. It reinforced his
sense of domination — to impose on her body at will, without a
pretense of affection and foreplay. He was conscious of her silence
and stillness when he possessed her, relishing in the thought and
feeling that he was merely using the defeated to bring himself
pleasure without the need to reciprocate. Yet, he became used to
her presence and started to enjoy her beauty and elegance. He
eventually had hoped to reach an understanding, where she would
accept that what happened to her family was not such a clear-cut
situation. Now she was gone because of some illiterate incompetents
and — that treacherous American whore. It’s my fault, he reflected.
I should have ravished the bitch on the spot, without the
superficial pretense of seduction.
    He swabbed the head wound, put on his
uniform, donned his leather belt with the holstered weapon, and
proceeded to clean up the mess outside. In quick strides, he
surveyed the damage, ordered the dead buried, and sent the wounded
to the nearby hospital, hoping it was still standing.
    After reordering the compound, he called a
staff meeting in his office.
    In short order, his top commanders, in from
the front lines, assembled around a long table, along with Abdul
Tek, the Fedayeen group leader assigned to Amir’s unit.
    Amir sat at the head of the table and
demanded a tactical update. A Colonel summarized the situation. The
British had taken Basra. The Americans were racing through the
desert with incredible momentum, destroying anything that stood in
the path. It was obvious that they were headed for Baghdad, and
that there was not much that the Iraqis could do about it.
    The rest of the officers agreed with the
assessment and turned to Amir for guidance, orders or any insight
that would give them hope.
    Amir remained silent. ‘This is a replay of
the first Gulf War in 1991, only worse,’ he thought. At the time,
Amir had commanded a tank unit. He felt proud to be a member of the
world’s fourth largest Army and proud of his battalion of
Russian-made T-55s. They were effective weapons — a fact proven by
several victories over the Iranians in 1980.
    However, during the Gulf War, the Iraqis had
severely underestimated the effectiveness of the Coalition field
forces led by the Americans.
    In a very short period, 100 hours, the enemy
pressed the ground attack with surprising speed, unleashed enormous
firepower and pursued the Iraqi forces against disintegrating
resistance. Most Iraqi Army units surrendered, were destroyed or
retreated. Many of the retreating units abandoned their equipment
as they fled toward Basra.
    In a desperate attempt to slow down the
enemy, some elements of the Republican Guard engaged in several
battles with the Coalition forces. However, without a central
command, these remaining elements had to operate independently and
could no longer conduct cohesive operations.
    Amir’s unit made a valiant attempt to buy
some time for other units to retreat. He and his men tried to fight
the Americans, but the guns of his tanks did not have the range of
the enemy’s Abrams tanks and weapons. All of the rounds fired from
Amir’s aging T-55 tanks fell short. The attacking American units
rained hell on the Iraqi positions, destroying 61 tanks and 34
armored personnel carriers of the Medina Division in less than one
hour. At the end of the battle, Amir lay wounded outside