Mike Bond Bound. Mike Bond

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      MANDEVILLA PRESS

       Weston, CT 06883

      Holy War is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, companies and/or organizations is entirely coincidental. Initially published in a slightly different form as Crossfire, by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING PLC, London.

      Copyright © 2014 by Mike Bond

      All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      Published in the United States by Mandevilla Press

      Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to quote from the following: “Dust N' Bones”, Guns N' Roses, Warner Chappell Music Ltd.,

      “Hells Bells”, AC/DC, Young/Young/Johnson, J. Albert & Son Pty., Limited

      A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran, Mandarin, London

      LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

      Bond, Mike

      Holy War: a novel/Mike Bond

      p. cm.

      ISBN 978-1-62704-014-3

      1. Islamic Terrorism – Fiction. 2. Lebanese War – Fiction. 3. Israel – Fiction. 4. Hezbollah – Fiction. 5. Middle East – Fiction. 6. Palestine – Fiction. 7. Arms Trade – Fiction. I. Title

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Cover photo © Shutterstock

      Author photo © PF Bentley/PFPix.com

      Cover design: Asha Hossain Design, Inc.

      Book design: Jude Bond @ BondMultimedia.com

      Printed in the United States of America

      www.MikeBondBooks.com

      for Jude, Lucas, and David

      God is well able to effect his purpose,

      but the greater part of men do not understand.

      −Koran, XII

      Ye lust, and have not: ye kill,

      and desire to have, and cannot obtain:

      ye fight and war, yet ye have not.

      − James, IV

      Time's short your life's your own

      And in the end we are just dust n' bones.

      − Guns N' Roses

      Beirut was a paradise when I first arrived there as a very young man. The golden sun and brilliant sea, the ancient streets, the hubbub of cultures, the food and wines, the tanned and sensual young women, the perfume of many million flowers, the pine hills and cold white peaks, all imbued it with a near-sacred substance. This, I felt, is a place where all peoples come together, vibrant with history, wisdom, lust, and delight.

      It was soon a battlefield of smashed buildings and bloody streets, its Phoenician treasures blasted, its forests and vineyards burned, its people huddled in bombed-out basements or sniping at each other from shattered windows, hating, killing, raping, pillaging. I survived by luck, by tricks, even in dark places where discovery was death. Everywhere I lived is gone, every good friend is dead. I refuse to let them die, to see it gone, without a testament, a memory.

      As the years went by, broken-hearted by Beirut, I tried to understand – why do we war? Now, after having covered wars on three continents, I can find no answer beyond the experience itself. What I mean is this: only when we have lived war do we hate and know it well enough to make it stop. For in every country, every city, neighborhood and family, Beirut is waiting.

      If everyone could live Beirut, I thought, we might war less. If I could tell one small true story of Beirut, let the reader fear the bullets, crouch beneath the thundering bombs in airless cellars as the concrete floors come crashing down, see loved ones die, grope for passion and belief amid terror and death, that it might make a difference.

      Every book must be a failure because it fails to say so much. Today fiction withers because it is too literary, and ceases to be relevant. But if we are to learn we must do so through the heart, not through the mind – a book that does not touch the heart conveys no experience at all. If readers turn away, we need look no further than ourselves.

      Like many people I still live Beirut every day, every night, and will probably the rest of my life. I have tried in Holy War to tell its story.

      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 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 СКАЧАТЬ