Tess Awakening (45 page)

Chapter 79

Amir was monitoring what the mercenaries
were doing, using the communications gear installed in his car. He
immediately recognized the signs of a rapidly faltering operation.
He cursed; his plan was unraveling in real time. Four men down.

“Kemal, start the car and rush to the house.”
He had enough of incompetent underlings. This time, he was going to
do the job himself. He would eliminate the resistance and wait for
Jake and Tess to show up so he could finish the job.

Kemal drove the SUV right through the closed
front gate, knocking it down and slid the vehicle behind the house
for cover. Amir grabbed an automatic rifle and rushed toward the
lone mercenary survivor who was under a barrage of fire by Carmen
and Nicola. Amir and Kemal aimed their automatic weapons at the
tree and fired towards its canopy. The tree top shredded, spewing
wood and leaves around it.

“That should take care of them,” Amir said
while walking toward the tree with his two men. They kept firing
for good measure but did not get any response from the shooters.
Then a shot cracked, and the last mercenary fell to the ground.
Amir and Kemal hit the dirt, trying to determine where the shots
were now coming from.

Carmen and Nicola had never planned to stay
on the tree. They knew that once the shooting started, the tree
would not have provided enough protection from gunfire. They had
jumped down and hid behind a bale of hay. Then they ran inside the
old barn building.

Amir could not see them, and kept firing
automatic fire every which way. Then Kemal saw movement around the
barn and sprayed bullets toward the shadows.

Nicola was hit. Carmen turned around and to
her horror saw him clutching his chest. Amir and Kemal continued
their nonstop firing, so she dragged Nicola into the barn. He was
still conscious, his hand on the wound, trying to stem the blood.
Carmen shot an automatic burst of bullets toward the men outside,
forcing them to take cover. She quickly made a compress using her
military fatigue shirt and used his belt to secure it to Nicola’s
chest. She asked him to hold it tight it against the wound.

Amir and Kemal resumed firing at the barn
with their automatic weapons. Carmen was reeling from the horror of
seeing her lover wounded, but quickly recovered; she steeled
herself and resolved to kill the bastards who did this. She just
needed to evade the hail of bullets directed at her. She fell to
the ground and started to crawl outside on her elbows. She had done
this at boot camp before.

Jake’s car arrived and Tess immediately
recognized that the place was the scene of a gun battle. She barely
waited for Jake to stop the car and jumped off with an automatic
rifle in her hands and started to fire at the two men who were
shooting. Amir and Kemal took cover behind rusty old farm equipment
and returned fire toward Tess. Bullets whizzed past her head, so
she hit the dirt, landing on her stomach. Now Amir saw his chance
to eliminate Jake, who was inexplicably still in the Land Rover,
apparently attempting to remove something from the back seat.
Probably looking for his weapon, Amir thought. He reloaded his
machine gun and sprayed the car with bullets.

Jake grabbed the baby and managed to get out
of the car which was being riddled by projectiles. He kept
clutching little Morgan, trying to protect him.

Now Tess stood up and resumed firing, forcing
Amir and Kemal to take cover inside the house. Carmen ran toward
her, wearing only pants and an olive green military bra. She now
looked like a Greek Harpy, vicious, cruel and violent, her hair
flying and her countenance terrifying. “They shot Nicola, Tess;
let’s get them.

Jake’s men arrived, and he handed the baby to
one of them. He then signaled to the other three men to follow him.
They saw that Tess and Carmen were firing at the house. He quickly
joined them. Tess gave him the bad news: “Jake, they shot Nicola,
he is in the barn. “

“I have already called the police and the
ambulance,” Jake said while loading his weapon. They looked around
for Carmen, but she had already managed to get inside the house,
taking advantage of a momentary lull in the firing. She correctly
assumed that the two men inside were reloading their weapons. She
barged in and shot Kemal in the leg. He screamed and dropped his
gun. Amir fired at her, but she dodged and fired back, missing him.
Amir then ran toward a large window and jumped out, shattering the
glass. He managed to roll outside, bleeding from several cuts.

“Hello, Amir.” Tess appeared behind him, her
gun pointed at his head. “You know what to do. Drop your weapon and
get your hands up behind your head.” Amir turned around and flashed
a smile. Tess took a shot and blew the rifle out of his hands. He
raised his hands in surrender.

Jake’s men surrounded Amir. Jake then rushed
inside to assist Carmen. He entered and saw Carmen standing over
the wounded Kemal. She saw Jake come in and extended her arm with
an open palm toward him, signaling him to stay away. She was no
longer a woman; she had turned into an avenging angel, a Valkyrie
like Tess, choosing the soldiers who were going to die in battle.
She was seething and wanted revenge. Kemal had shot Nicola, and she
was going to make him pay.

Deliberately, she drew her pistol from the
hip holster and shot Kemal in the knee. Kemal screamed. “It hurts,
doesn’t it?” Carmen visage was frightening. She fired another shot
and shattered his other knee. Then she shot his left arm, almost
severing it from his body. She repeated the performance on the
right arm. Then she stood above him and shot him in the head. Blood
spewed all over her. She put five more shots into his body,
discharging the clip of ammunition. She was now drenched in blood.
Jake was momentarily stunned but understood why Carmen had
unleashed her anger in this way. Nicola meant everything to
her.

Jake tried to bring her out of the house, but
she resisted, not satisfied that she had done enough damage.
“Carmen, we need to take care of Nicola. The ambulance and the
police are here.” Carmen snapped out of her murderous trance and
ran to the barn. The ambulance was in front, emergency lights
flashing. She ran inside and saw medics attending to Nicola. One of
them was on the cell phone, talking to the Hospital ER, requesting
immediate emergency surgery as soon as they arrived. Carmen went to
Nicola, but he was not conscious.

“How bad is he?” she asked the medic that was
working on Nicola.

“Pretty bad; if you hadn’t applied a compress
to his chest when he was first shot, he would be gone by now. He
has a collapsed lung.”

The medics heaved Nicola on a stretcher and
rushed him to the ambulance. Carmen insisted on going with them.
They put her on the front seat. She had the presence of mind to
apologize to the driver for smearing blood all over the
vehicle.

Jake went back outside, and the man who was
taking care of the baby approached him, blood on his chest and a
haunted look in his face. Jake did not wait for him to speak. He
ran to the Land Rover and picked up little Morgan in his arms. The
baby was listless. Oozing blood stained his little sweater. Jake
screamed, “No, no, no!”

Tess heard him and left her men in charge of
guarding Amir. She rushed to the bullet-riddled car and came upon
an awful scene: Jake holding the baby in his arms, sobbing.

She rushed to Jake’s side and took the child
away from him. The horror of holding her bloody son was
unfathomable. She kept touching the baby, lightly shaking him,
wanting desperately to wake him up.

Jake came to her and tried to embrace her,
but she angrily rebuffed his gesture. She was keening, holding the
baby to her chest, hoping against hope that he was still whole,
healthy and happy.

“Tess, a piece of shrapnel hit the baby when
Amir shot at the car.”

Tess froze. She was now frenzied with grief
and anger. She walked over to Amir, now flanked by two police
officers. She stopped in front of him, holding the bloody child in
her arms. Amir saw her approaching and his eyes opened wide, hardly
comprehending what she displayed in front of him.

“Well done, Amir. Is this what you wanted to
do?” Tess spoke to him through her tears. “You couldn’t have your
son and you would not allow me to have him, so you killed him? Are
you pleased now?”

Amir fell to his knees, the magnitude of what
he saw hitting him like a freight train. “It can’t be. My son is
just sleeping, he is fine!” He kept repeating the same phrase over
and over. He fell to his knees, his mind refusing to accept what
had happened. “I did not know he was in the car.”

Tess slapped him in the face, then she handed
him the dead baby. “Here is what’s left of your son, Amir. Smear
his blood on your face: Blood of your blood.”

Jake had recovered from his shock and
realized that Tess was now ready to unleash her anger on Amir. She
tore the dead child from Amir’s arms and handed him to one of the
men. Jake feared that she intended to kill Amir in front of the
police. He got behind her and tried to restrain her. She reacted
violently, tossing him aside.

“Now I am going to kill you, Amir.” She
approached him but was stopped by the two police officers aiming
guns at her.

“Stand back, Ma’am,” one of them said. Now
Tess wanted to kill everything in her path, and would have done so
if it weren’t for Jake restraining her with all his might.

“Tess, if you kill him now, they will charge
you with murder. It’s not worth it. Let the law handle this.” Tess
continued to struggle violently, through tears and despair, not
caring about the consequences of her actions. She just wanted to
see Amir dead regardless of the cost to her and her family. Jake
would not let her go, and the cops hurriedly took Amir away. They
both fell to their knees in the dirt, holding each other for dear
life, overcome with devastating grief.

Chapter 80

Amir was thrown in jail and was allowed one
call to his lawyers. He didn’t do it. The cops roughly shoved him
into a cell and locked it. He fell on the bench, staring at the
bars with a blank, lifeless look. He was horrified beyond reason.
He had killed his own son, flesh of his flesh, his heir, and his
pride. He emitted a loud cry of agony. This was not supposed to
happen. He thought that the child was still in New York with his
grandfather. He would have never shot at Jake’s car if he had known
that the child was inside. He now understood why Jake was
frantically rummaging on the back seat; he was trying to bring the
baby out the car, to evade his fusillade peppering the car. It was
his own shooting that killed the child. This was not supposed to
happen. All he wanted was to take the baby away so he could fulfill
the destiny that he had planned for him.

Jake and Tess had thwarted him again, but at
a tragic cost. Now his son was gone, and it was his own fault. His
obsessive desire to prevail against Tess at all costs backfired,
shattering his world. The full weight of his failure on all fronts
now weighed on him. He had lost Tess and his son. Life was not
worth living now. He stood up and started banging his head against
the iron bars, trying to punish himself for having created such
horror. He kept hitting the bars until the cops restrained him with
handcuffs and tied him to the bed. His head was a bloody mess.
Lying on his back, he continued screaming in a language nobody
understood. The depths of his guilt gnawed at his stomach and soul.
He continued to inveigh at nothing in particular until a medic gave
him a shot to calm him down. Amir finally passed out and was
transported to a secure area of the town’s hospital. He was
confined to the bed with straps and two guards were posted at the
door.

At the hospital, Carmen was still coated in
blood. The staff asked her to clean up and take a shower. When she
was done, one of the nurses brought her a set of disposable scrubs
to wear.

Carmen waited in the lounge until the surgeon
came out. He told her that Nicola was in critical condition, but
there was a good chance he would recover. She was immensely
relieved but still angry as hell. Nicola was the love of her life.
He had helped her come out of her shell, mitigating her hostility
toward the world; he had worked with her to help overcome the
traumas of her childhood and had loved her with gentle passion. He
was the only man in the world she trusted. She could not conceive
not being with him. She now was hopeful that the surgeon was right.
Nicola would get better, and they will have a life together.

She sat on a stuffed chair, finally calming
down. Her phone rang. It was Jake inquiring about Nicola. He also
told her what happened to the baby. Carmen almost went into shock.
She thought of Tess and became terrified about what the loss of her
child would do to her. Tess had relentlessly scoured several
countries to get the baby back, only to lose him in this awful way.
It was horrifying. Carmen held her head between her hands, crying
for herself, but mostly crying for Tess, her dearest friend who now
faced a grief that was hard to imagine.

She walked out to get some fresh air and ran
into two policemen. They were talking about relieving two other men
that were guarding a prisoner. Carmen perked up. She immediately
suspected that the prisoner was Amir. She went back into the
building and waited until a nurse opened the secure door. She
sneaked inside before the door closed automatically. The guards
were talking to the men that were relieving them and did not pay
attention to Carmen because she was wearing hospital scrubs,
assuming that she was one of the caregivers. Carmen slipped into
Amir’s room. She stared at him, his face bandaged, blood still
oozing through the gauze. A nurse walked in. “What are you doing
here, Miss? This is a secure area.”