by Mike Bond
The tears poured again from his eyes, down his cheeks and neck. He couldn’t stop them. “Oh Jesus fucking Christ.”
“I begged her to stay with us, stay with us. The look in her eyes...” Isabelle was crying too, trying not to choke. “When I saw she was going I told her I’d always be with her, always love her, and if there is another side I’ll meet up with her there when I come...”
They sat in silence for a while. “We can’t go back to Argentina,” he said.
“Of course not.” She squeezed his hand. “Our battle is here.”
“I’m meeting Max tomorrow. We’re going to build a stronger link between Home Office, the Russians and the French –”
“Obama’s not going to like that.”
“He’ll be gone soon, thank God.”
“I’ve talked to London. They want me here.”
“Londonistan...”
“Maybe we can stop that, turn it around?”
“The Islamic State of the former Great Britain?”
“Jack, we have to do what we can.”
Early day was turning the eastern sky blood red above the still-dark buildings. He thought of the hundreds of horribly injured in Paris hospitals, the frenzied doctors and nurses, the agonized families.
No way they could return to Patagonia. Life is too short and we have to do what we can to make a better world. For those who live to protect others, to protect a free way of life, to defend life itself, there is never retirement, never the option to walk away. We can walk away when we’re dead. Not till then.
There is no greater humanity, it was clear, than to protect life. To protect liberty and justice, to fight for the good. To seek out evil and annihilate it, wherever it is found.
It didn’t matter that evil is hard to define.
You know it when you see it.
He’d always sought the path with heart, the greatest good. Risked his life so many times for peace, so that everyone could live in happiness. In peace.
But now he understood it once again: when enemies attack you, peace is a dream.
And combat is the path with heart.
THE END
The first chapter of
HOLY WAR
The best-selling novel from Mike Bond set in the wars of Lebanon and Syria, and the politics, love affairs, and arms deals behind them.
An American spy, a French commando, a Hezbollah terrorist and a Palestinian woman guerrilla all cross paths on the deadly streets and fierce deserts of the Middle East.
The Battle of Beirut is worse than Hell, an irrational maelstrom of implacable hatreds and frantic love affairs, of inconceivable terrors and moments of ecstasy, of screaming bombs, exploding shells, crashing buildings, sniper battles, and deadly ambushes. Neill, a war correspondent on a secret mission for Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency, is trying to find Mohammed, a Hezbollah terrorist leader who might stop the slaughter and destruction, if only Neill can find him.
André, a French commando, is also looking for Mohammed, to kill him in revenge for the death of his brother, blown up with over 400 US Marines and French paratroopers by Hezbollah. For Rosa, a remorseless and passionate Palestinian guerrilla, Mohammed is one of the few hopes for her people, and she will give her life to protect him. And for lovely Anne-Marie, André is the only one who can save her from Hell.
Based on the author’s own experiences in the battles of Lebanon, Syria and the Middle East, Holy War has been praised for its portrayal of war and its journalistic and political realism, and for its evocative descriptions of men and women caught in a deadly crossfire.
“One of the best reads of 2014... A fast-paced, beautifully written, heart-breaking thriller.” – NETGALLEY REVIEWS
1
THE TROUBLE’S Sylvie, Yves decided. How she’s never happy with what I am, what I’m doing. Wants me home.
He stretched in his army cot, twisting his back to let the muscles flex up and down his shoulder blades. Shards of sharp blue through the sandbagged window. Another lovely day in the lovely Levant. Red-golden sun through the pines, the green hill sweeping down to the sea. Incense of cedars, salty cool wind, warm earth; promise in the fragrant air, the buzzing insects, the gulls crying over the waves.
Off duty. Luxury of nowhere to go and nothing to do. Nowhere to go but a sandbagged perimeter and sentried corridors, maybe a quick trip to town in an armored car, the machine gun nervously scanning, the driver watching through the hot slit for an RPG, some mad kid with a Molotov. Vive la France, damn you, for sending us here...
He rolled out of his cot and ambled down the corridor to the WC. Why do all urinals smell like Beirut? Ask the philosophers, he decided, the ones with all the answers. Yawning, scratching his overnight whiskers and under his arms, he wandered to the officers’ mess, found a dirty cup and rinsed it, clamped fresh espresso into the machine, drew up and pulled down the handle, two streams of black gold dribbling into the cup.
Makes you feel better already. He filled the cup to the brim and stood by another window, peering through chinks in the sandbagged concrete blocks at the day growing bright blue. Sylvie would still be in bed, the Paris light gray through the blinds. He imagined waking beside her, her lovely sleepy smell, the roughness of her morning voice, the smoothness of her skin.
In Normandy, Papa would already be out in his garden, watering, picking on the weeds, Mama taking fresh brioches out of the oven, Papa coming in with a handful of onions and leeks, taking up his coffee cup in his big fist. André on maneuvers somewhere, playing at war. Trying to get stationed back here, where there’s plenty of war. But none for La France, for the UN Multinational Force, impartially observing the slaughter. The United fucking Nations: you want to murder each other, we’ll pay to watch.
He made a second cup, loitered back to his cot and slipped into his thongs, tossed a towel over his shoulders and headed for the showers. A thunderclap cracked, the floor lurched, shivered, the thunder louder. Christ, we’ve been hit, he thought, dropping the cup. He raced to his cot, snatched his FAMAS, the explosion shaking the sky, men yelling now, down below.
The earth was shaking, an earthquake; he raced up the stairs to the roof, smashed into a sentry coming down. “It’s the Marines,” the sentry screamed. “They’ve been hit! A bomb!”
From the roof he couldn’t see the U.S. Marines’ compound to the south, just a great billowing dark cloud. He raced downstairs to the radio room. Chevenet, the communications chief, was crouched speaking English then listening to the headset as he loaded his rifle. “A truck,” he said, “somebody drove up in a truck. The whole building. The whole fucking building!”
Yves sprinted down the corridor and down the stairs. “Battle stations!” he screamed. “Battle stations!” Pumping a round into the FAMAS he dashed across the lobby into the parking area. Dark smoke filled the sky. “They hit the Marines!” he yelled to the sentries at the gate. “A big truck!”
A Mercedes truck, the kind used to collect rubbish from the embattled streets of Beirut, geared down and swung into the parking lot, snapped the gate barrier and accelerated toward him. A ton of plastique inside it, he realized, fired from the waist exploding the windshield but the driver had ducked, the truck’s grille huge in Yves’ face as shot for the engine now, the distributor cap on the right side, the plugs, the fuel pump. It was too late, the truck would have them. His heart broke in frantic agony for the men inside, the men who would be trapped, crushed to death, the Paras, fleur de la France, his beloved brothers. The universe congealed, shrank to an atom and blew apart, reducing him to tiny chunks of blood and bone, never to be found.
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