From its riveting start in the night skies of Afghanistan to it's stunning end in the recent Paris terrorist attacks, Mike Bond's bestseller, Assassins is an insider story of the last 30 years of war between Islam and the West. A US commando, a French woman doctor, a Russian major, a British female journalist, a top CIA operator, an Afghani woman, and a Taliban warlord fight for their lives and loves in the dangerous streets and lethal deserts of the Middle East. Drop by parachute into the deadly mountains of Afghanistan, feel the passion of love when at any instant you both can die, experience the bone-chilling fear of an American agent in an Al Qaeda group and of women who face death every day, fight door to door in the bloody cities of Iraq, know the terror of battle inside a Russian tank – it’s all there, all real, in Assassins. Did the Saudis finance 9/11? Did GW Bush let Osama bin Laden escape Afghanistan and then lie about Weapons of Mass Destruction so he could invade Iraq? Did Obama’s decision to leave Iraq in 2011 lead to the rise of ISIS? It’s all there, all real, in Assassins.
An Evening in Paris
November 2015
IT WAS WARM for mid-November. They sat on the terrace of a little restaurant. Anyplace in France, she said, how wonderful the food, the delicious wine, the gentle harmony of others there for love, food, friendship, ideas, freedom, the joys of life.
They had been through the wars together, fallen in love amid the hail of bullets and thud of explosions in cities drenched with blood. Knowing, as the cliché put it, any moment could be their last.
It gave an intensity to love, that this person dearer to you than life itself could be extinguished at any instant. Someone you cherished so completely, composed of neurons, cells, muscles, bone, tissue and memories, could be blown apart, riddled with bullets, any second.
“I love you so much,” she said. “But I think I love you even more in Paris.”
“France does that to us all. What was it Hemingway said –”
“Paris is a moveable feast.”
“Yes, and we will happily feast, in whatever life brings us.”
“As you’ve said, to follow the path with heart?”
“Yes.” He caressed the back of her hand. “For us, the wars are over.”
“For us the wars will never be over. You know that.”
He looked out on the quiet street. “Let’s take time out. Then we decide.”
“Decide what?”
“Whether we keep fighting or run for cover.” He smiled at the thought. Not once in all these years had he ever run for cover. Nor had she.
“Your buddy Owen said that people like us, once we’re in, we can never get out.”
“Look where it got him. You want that?” Again he checked the street. It was automatic, this watchfulness. On the edge of consciousness.
He scanned the passing pedestrians – happy couples hand in hand, an old man with a wispy beard, a little girl walking a black poodle, an ancient limping Chinese woman, a kid on a skateboard.
But it worried him, this something; he wished he’d brought a sidearm, but Home Office didn’t want you carrying one here. And everything seemed so peaceful. He sipped his wine, the raw ancient roots of Provence…
A black Seat slowed as it came down the street. A grinning face full of hatred, an AK barrel aiming at them out its window, a blasting muzzle as he leaped across the table knocking her to the sidewalk and covered her with his body amid the hideous twanging hammer of bullets and smashing glass and screams and clatter of chairs and tables crashing and the howl of the Kalashnikov and awful whap of bullets into flesh as people tumbled crying.
It couldn’t be, this horror, he’d left it all behind.
Mike Bond is the author of nearly a dozen bestselling novels and an ecologist, war and human rights journalist, award-winning poet, and international energy expert. His work spans more than thirty countries across seven continents, often drawn from firsthand experiences in remote, dangerous, and war-torn regions. His novels are praised worldwide for their intricate plots, vivid settings, and explosive pacing. His reporting has covered wars, revolutions, terrorism, and major environmental crises.
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