Holy War

by Mike Bond

  Death would be like morphine, better than sleep; only it could stop the pain.

  He forced himself to imagine what she had felt like, that last mini-second. Had she felt at all? He made himself believe she had. How could you not feel, to be blown apart?

  There was nothing after death and no way he would ever see her, be near her, feel her near him, hear her voice with its rough lovely tones. What, he kept worrying, had happened to her body? It drove him crazy to think of it lying in pieces in the street, the rats eating it.

  She and he would never have children and never grow old together; he did not mind for himself, he could stand anything. What he could not stand was that she had lost the gift of life; he had snatched it from her, murdered her.

  It was getting late. The Englishman sat immobile in his corner by the sink, waiting to die. Putting a good face on it though. Not a bad man, just silly, out of touch with himself, the world. And what about you? André said to himself. How much more out of touch can anybody be than you?

  Soon they'd come and take the Englishman away. Hang him by the neck till dead. Because someone had convinced him to carry a silly transmitter under his arm, and then they, or someone else, had tried to kill Mohammed. Everybody had wanted to kill Mohammed. He too. But what if Mohammed hadn't been the one who bombed Yves' barracks?

  Life is completely random; the only punishment for our crimes happens in our hearts. Just as I by losing Anne-Marie am punished for the crime of interfering, of vengeance, ignorance. Or maybe we just get punished accidentally, the way some people die in earthquakes or plane crashes.

  It did no good to think. That was simply trying to avoid pain. And pain is our only teacher, so thinking is a way of never learning.

  He did not care whether he ever learned or not. There was no reason to ever take a breath – just the body doing it, automatically. Anne-Marie, he begged, seeing her lovely face with its firm kind mouth and deep dark eyes, feeling her lips against his, her breasts, the long soft coolness of her skin, please help me dear Anne-Marie.

  65

  THEY CAME BEFORE FIRST LIGHT, an ugly hare-lipped long-bearded Hezbollah with the others who had beat him and André. “You've chosen?” asked the ugly one.

  “Goodbye,” Neill said to André, who stood uncomfortably. “Good luck.” Neill walked out of the door, light-headed.

  “This way,” one of the Hezbollah said, almost solicitously. As Neill turned, something smashed down on his shoulders and he fell, thinking as he dropped into unconsciousness, they've shot me, they've killed me here and now. It took forever, falling; there's nothing to it, he realized, being dead.

  André stood over Neill rubbing the sides of his hands where he had hammered them down on Neill's shoulders. “Just knocked him out,” he said in English, but the mujihadeen only stared, astonished, covering him with their guns. André pointed to himself. “I'm the one.”

  They did not seem to understand; he pointed at Neill, that they should drag him back into the room. Neill was beginning to move. André turned quickly down the corridor, the mujihadeen behind him.

  One of the mujihadeen pulled Neill into the room, ran out and shut the door. Neill heard the bolt drop and tried to stand; whatever had happened to his shoulders had numbed his whole body; his muscles were slack, would not work.

  As soon as he could he dragged himself to the door and pounded on it. His fist was heavy as a chunk of lead. No one came; there was no noise but the sparrows in the eaves. Slowly daylight began to sink into the room.

  He felt betrayed, cheated, elated, terrified it might be a mistake, that they would soon come for him, guilty that André had gone in his place. Once again he hadn't been a man.

  The numbness went away. He paced the tiny room, banged on the door. There was no air; he wanted to sing, laugh, weep. Dear André come back, he kept saying, knew he did not mean it. If you don't mean it, he told himself, shut up.

  The room grew brighter. He imagined André with the rope round his neck, being pushed off the chair, hanging in midair as the rope got tighter, tighter, arms lashed behind him, chest heaving, body screaming for air.

  Still no one came. He drank from the tap, threw up bile. He sat on the bed and tried to pray for André, give thanks. Dear Lord, I'm sorry, he said. That I didn't understand him. Didn't even like him. When he was better than I am.

  No, he wasn't. Neill paced again. If he was going to renew his life, he must stop tearing himself down. He’d kept the bargain. Gone out into that corridor ready to die.

  He fell asleep and woke wondering where he was, crushed with shame when he remembered what had happened. No, he reminded himself, you can't do that. I'm sorry, he told André. I'm so sorry.

  The last muezzin's call came and went. The door creaked open. Ahmed slunk in and put a plate of food on the bed.

  “What happened to him?” Neill whispered.

  “Gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Gone.” Ahmed swerved his head to see if the guards were watching. Their voices were further down the hall.

  “They killed him?”

  Ahmed shook his head: be quiet. “Some very top Hezbollah came and took him in a car.”

  “To shoot him?” Neill's stomach turned queasy at the thought.

  Ahmed shook his head, glanced at the door. The voices were coming. “They gave him back to France. Some big people there wanted him back.”

  Neill stood stunned, mouth open, unable to speak. “What,” he said finally, “about me?”

  “It was the will of God. In'salah.”

  The voices neared. Ahmed put his finger to his lips, stepped out. The door shut, casting the room in darkness.

  Neill ate the food mechanically. The darkness deepened. He paced, lay down, sat, went to bang on the door and halted mid-step. Would they kill him? After they'd let André go? It didn't seem possible.

  Should have remembered, the French never abandon their agents. Not like the CIA or MI6. That they'll abandon national policy to get back one man. Even if like André he wasn't an agent.

  I was the one, he told himself. Three times I lost the toss. Then I let him go to die. No I didn't. He surprised me. Maybe that's why they let him go. For his courage.

  If the French saved André won't someone save me?

  The night took forever, would never pass. I've always been here, he thought. In this room, the night. He looked out on life and it seemed he understood every little thing, why people war and do not love, why the world breaks down.

  Dear Lebanon, dear foolish humans – don't even realize that the love of war comes from the war of love.

  He felt like a god, a speck on the wall in a little blue room in the Bekaa, under the burning sun, the cold night. Time did not matter.

  Something fell from the ceiling, a piece of plaster maybe. It disturbed the sparrows; they cried and worried for a while, grew silent.

  He could say that if he got out of this he would be a different person, but it did not matter if he ever got out. Nothing mattered.

  Slowly light drained into the room, the blue wall and sink took shape, the low hunched door. It was like the gate of death, that door, the gate between our mother's thighs through which we fall into the world. Screaming, blind, terrified, not understanding. When do we ever change?

  Something had fallen in the corner, down from the ceiling, a little piece of pink-gray plaster. He bent down to pick it up; it was a baby bird, unfledged. He thought it was dead but in the warmth of his hand it began to move, turning its sightless eyes, its open beak, up to him, uttering tiny cries. He cupped it in his hands, warmed it with his breath, smiling to think how God had breathed life into the world. When it had revived he climbed up on the bed and raised it through the flue hole. The sparrows outside began to sing excitedly; he carefully laid it beside the top of the hole, his fingers fee
ling the warmth of the sun. When he removed his hand a sparrow was peering down the hole with little bright eyes.

  He would have to pick up where he'd left off. That was our only power in this life: determination. He would begin this day as any other, in meditation, the stretching, his long walk, the reflections on the Bible and the Koran, running in place, the poetry.

  The day passed as any other. After the muezzin's last call, Ahmed came with a plate of beans. He seemed sad and would not speak; Neill pressed him. “I fear for you,” Ahmed said.

  “They're going to kill me?”

  Ahmed said nothing, head averted.

  “When?” Neill said.

  “In the morning.” Ahmed glanced at the guard behind him, went out and closed the door.

  So that's it, Neill told himself. He wished he had asked Ahmed how they would do it. But he already knew.

  It was almost worse than death, this endless waiting. But isn't waiting for death what we do all our lives?

  Late at night he must have dozed, he dreamt he was walking along a beach when a flock of sparrows burst forth above him and some circled into a crown over his head and landed on it. He walked along the beach with Beverly and Edgar and Katerina, with the crown of sparrows over him, and one stayed on his head; he even lifted a small grass seed for the sparrow to eat. This is the one I saved, he thought.

  They crossed the end of the beach and went up into the trees. There was a house and a path of white stones between a spit of rock and ocean on one side and the beach on the other, and he thought how easy and perfect it would be to travel up this path of white stones in the sun.

  THE END

  The opening pages of

  House of Jaguar

  by Mike Bond

  Published by Mandevilla Press

  A tense, dangerous thriller of CIA operations and drug deals in Latin America, guerrilla wars, perilous night flights, environmental catastrophes and genocides, House of Jaguar is based on the author’s personal experience as a human rights journalist there.

  “Every page takes the reader rushing forward . Horrific ending, strong images last long after finished reading.” (NetGalley Reviews)… “Vicious thriller of drugs and revolution in the wilds of Guatemala. The climax is among the most horrifying I have ever read.” (Liverpool Daily Post)… “Tough and tense thriller.” (Manchester Evening News)… “Based upon Bond’s own experiences in Guatemala. With detailed descriptions of actual jungle battles and manhunts, vanishing rain forests and the ferocity of guerrilla war, House of Jaguar also reveals the CIA’s role in both death squads and drug running, twin scourges of Central America.” (Newton Chronicle)… "Grips the reader from the very first page. An ideal thriller for the beach, but be prepared to be there when the sun goes down.” (Herald Express)

  Shot down over the Guatemalan jungle with a planeload of grass, Vietnam War hero Joe Murphy gets caught in the country’s brutal Civil War and in an attack on a Mayan village by the Guatemalan Army and its CIA “advisors”.

  Badly injured, he escapes on a nightmare trek through the jungle, hunted by the Army, the CIA, and death squads. He is healed by guerrilla doctor Dona Villalobos, falls in love with her and tries to save her from the War’s widening horror of insanity, tragedy, and death.

  1

  THE MOSQUITO hovered, settled on his cheek; the soldier raised a hand and squashed it, his rifle clinking on his cartridge belt. “Silencio!” hissed the captain. Another mosquito landed, another; the soldier let them bite.

  From far away, beyond the wail of mosquitoes and the incessant chirr of nighthawks, came the snarl of an engine. “Positions!” the captain whispered. One by one the soldiers squirmed forward through wet grass to the jungle’s edge where the road glistened before them under the rising half moon.

  The engine noise came closer, a truck grinding uphill round a curve. The curve coming out of Machaquilá, the soldier decided. Not long now. He fiddled with a scrap of electrical tape wrapping the magazine of his Galil. Wings swishing, an owl hunted over the road.

  They won’t be expecting us, he told himself. They won’t be ready and we can kill them quickly and there will be no danger. The truck neared; he tasted bile in the back of his throat; his hands were numb with cold. If you don’t shoot they won’t see your rifle flash and won’t shoot at you.

  A beacon steadied on the treetops, fell on the road before him. A single headlight, the truck’s, was coming up the road. He chewed his lip and blinked his eyes to chase away mosquitoes, rubbed his bitten wrist on the breech of his rifle. But if you fire fast and hard you’ll help make sure they die at once and then they can’t fire back.

  The truck clattered closer, its headlight jiggling. Everyone will be shooting for the cab, the soldier told himself, so you must shoot into the back. “Hold your fire,” the captain called. Transmission wailing, stockboards rattling, the truck rumbled past and disappeared into the night, just another cattle truck driven too many thousands of miles over bad roads on bad gas. “Silencio!” the captain said. From the jungle a howler monkey screamed like a dying child.

  THE AZTEC eased down through five hundred feet, the jungle sliding under the wing like the floor of an immense dark sea. “I hate it when you do this,” Johnny Dio said. “Reminds me of that joke about the secret to safe flying is to avoid the ground.”

  Murphy trimmed one aileron, watched the altimeter till it steadied at four hundred, the plane bouncing and banging on rising waves of jungle heat. “It’s so flat here there’s nothing to fear, just the House of Jaguar at Tikal.” He slapped Johnny’s knee. “And it’s probably east of us.”

  “Screw you, Murph. You know exactly where it is.”

  “Unless the Mayans’ve built another one since we were here last.”

  “There could be some kind of goddamn radio tower, TV antenna … Even a big tree.”

  “That’s why we watch out. You and me.”

  “It’s so dark I can’t see a goddamn thing.”

  “Just as well. You’ll never know what hit you.”

  “Will you cut it out!” Johnny Dio shifted in his seat, fingers drumming his knee, his face glistening in the yellow instrument lights.

  “The way you don’t like this, Johnny, you should let me do it alone.”

  “My gig,” Johnny sighed. “My money.”

  “Mine too,” Murphy said softly, and saw Johnny smile at himself, as if for worrying. That if you had to be doing this, Murph was the one to be doing it with.

  “You’re right,” Johnny said, “to be packing it in.”

  Murphy stretched, rubbing his back against the seat. “It’s just habit, now. Got all the creature comforts I want.”

  “You don’t do it for money, Murph. It’s because you don’t have anything else.”

  The glimmer of Chetumal began to bloom to the south; Orion was sinking into the west, Scorpio riding a half moon in the east, the Yucatán below darker than a midnight sea, the stars above like city lights. Murphy rubbed his face, liking the raspy stubble sound, closed his eyes and massaged them with his fingertips, still seeing the instrument panel as if he could watch it directly from his brain, thinking of the lobsters he and Johnny had eaten in Merida − he shouldn’t have harassed the man because they were small – “estan cubanas,” the man had explained. And Tecates. When this was over he was going to come back down to dive, sit on the veranda and drink Tecates, lime and Tecates. He notched the yoke forward, the engine’s pitch deepening in the soggy air, the altimeter sliding down to three hundred, two hundred fifty. Light widened in the southeast. “Corozal,” he said. “Going under the radar.”

  “I swear you like it,” Johnny sighed. “You like this shit.”

  The jungle reached up, solid rolling waves of canopies with taller bare ceibas clawing up like drowned skeletons, down to two hundred feet, a hundred eight
y, tipping the wings now between the tallest trees. “One time in high school,” Murphy said, “I was in a class play. Only had to say one word: ‘No’. Can you imagine, I blew it? I got so afraid I’d say ‘Yes’ by mistake, that when the time came I couldn’t remember which it was and said ‘Yes’? Screwed the whole thing up. Or maybe I was supposed to say ‘Yes’ but said ‘No’. Can’t remember.”

  “You’re not the brightest bulb in the box, Murph. Always told you that.”

  A river’s great black serpent slithered under the wing, sparkling with starlight. “Río Hondo,” Murphy said. “We’re back in Guatemala.”

  “When we get out this time,” Johnny said, “I’m going to bag it too.”

  “Figured you were.”

  “I really like being with Sarah. She’s easy, she’s amazing. She loves me.”

  “All that counts.”

  “I really miss the kids, Murph. You were lucky, when you and Pam split, you didn’t have kids.”

  “Don’t know what I would’ve done. What’s Diana say?”

  “She won’t give them up, but if Sarah and I get married, she’ll let me have more visitations.”

  “Fuckin world,” Murphy said. The engines steadied, almost hypnotic, the jungle drifting closer, as if the Aztec hung suspended over the slowly spinning globe. Ahead the land steepened into towering ridges of black stone with jungle on their crests. Deeper into a box canyon the plane droned, its echo bouncing off the cliffs that narrowed toward its wingtips. An end wall of vertical stone hurtled toward them; at the last second Murphy slid back the yoke, powered the throttles and the nose lifted and the saddle swept beneath them and they floated easily into a wide valley under a bowl of stars.

  “Fuckin cowboy,” Johnny said.

  SEVERAL TRUCKS were coming. Not from Machaquilá but the south. The soldier wiped dew from his barrel with his hand, took a breath and held it, hearing his heart.