Goodbye Paris Read online

  Big City Press

  CRITICS' PRAISE

  Snow

  “A captivating story of three friends on opposing sides of a betrayal ... a well-paced tale with intricate storylines.” — Kirkus

  “An action-packed adventure, but also a morality tale of what happens when two men who should know better get entangled in a crime from which they can’t escape.” — Denver Post

  “More than just a thriller, Snow lights up the complexities of American culture, the tensions of morality and obligation and the human search for love and freedom, all of which makes it clear Bond is a masterful storyteller.” — Sacramento Bee

  “A complex interplay of fascinating characters.” — Culture Buzz

  “Exploring the psyche and the depths of human reasoning and drive, Snow is a captivating story.” — BookTrib

  “An action-packed thriller that wouldn’t let go. The heart-pounding scenes kept me on the edge of my seat.” — Goodreads

  “A simple story at its heart that warps into a splendid morality tale.” — Providence Sunday Journal

  Assassins

  “An epic spy story ... Bond often writes with a staccato beat, in sentence fragments with the effect of bullet fire. His dialogue is sharp and his description of combat is tactical and detached, professional as a soldier’s debriefing. Yet this terseness is rife with tension and feeling ... A cohesive and compelling story of political intrigue, religious fanaticism, love, brotherhood and the ultimate pursuit of peace.” — Honolulu Star-Advertiser

  “An exhilarating spy novel that offers equal amounts of ingenuity and intrigue.” — Kirkus

  “Packs one thrilling punch after the other ... A first-rate thriller.” — Book Chase

  “Powerful, true to life, and explosive ... The energy is palpable and the danger is real ... A story that could be ripped right out of the headlines.” — Just Reviews

  “Bond is one of America’s best thriller writers ... You need to get this book ... It’s an eye-opener, a page-turner ... very strongly based in reality.” — Culture Buzz

  “Riveting, thrilling ... so realistic and fast-paced that the reader felt as if they were actually there.” — NetGalley

  “The action is outstanding and realistic. The suspense flows from page to page ... The background is provided by recent events we have all lived through. The flow of the writing is almost musical as romance and horrors share equal billing ... I wish everyone could read and understand this book.” — Goodreads

  Killing Maine

  (A Pono Hawkins Thriller)

  FIRST PRIZE FOR FICTION, 2016, New England Book Festival: “A gripping tale of murders, manhunts and other crimes set amidst today’s dirty politics and corporate graft, an unforgettable hero facing enormous dangers as he tries to save a friend, protect the women he loves, and defend a beautiful, endangered place.”

  “Another terrifically entertaining read from a master of the storytelling craft ... A work of compelling fiction ... Very highly recommended.” — Midwest Book Review

  “Quite a ride for those who love good crime thrillers ... I can’t recommend this one strongly enough.” — Book Chase

  “Bond returns with another winner in Killing Maine. Bond’s ability to infuse his real-world experiences into a fast-paced story is unequaled.” — Culture Buzz

  “The suspense, mystery, and intrigue will keep you on the edge of your seat.” — Goodreads

  “Bond tackles many important social and environmental issues in a fast-paced, politically charged plot with a passionate main character. Killing Maine is a twisting mystery with enough suspicious characters and red herrings to keep you guessing. It’s also a dire warning about the power of big industry and a commentary on our modern ecological responsibilities. A great read for the socially and environmentally conscious mystery lover.” — Honolulu Star-Advertiser

  “Sucks in the reader and makes it difficult to put the book down until the very last page ... A winner of a thriller.” — Mystery Maven

  “Another stellar ride from Bond; checking out Pono’s first adventure isn’t a prerequisite, but this will make readers want to.” — Kirkus

  Saving Paradise

  (A Pono Hawkins Thriller)

  “Bond is one of the 21st century’s most exciting authors ... An action-packed, must read novel ... taking readers behind the alluring façade of Hawaii’s pristine beaches and tourist traps into a festering underworld of murder, intrigue and corruption.” — Washington Times

  “A complex, entertaining ... lusciously convoluted story.” — Kirkus

  “Highly recommended.” — Midwest Book Review

  “A rousing crime thriller – but it is so much more ... a highly atmospheric thriller focusing on a side of Hawaiian life that tourists seldom see.” — Book Chase

  “An intersection of fiction and real life.” — Hawaii Public Radio

  “An absolute page-turner.” — Ecotopia Radio

  “An unusual thriller and a must-read.” — Fresh Fiction

  “A complex murder mystery about political and corporate greed and corruption ... Bond’s vivid descriptions of Hawaii bring Saving Paradise vibrantly to life.” — Book Reviews and More

  “Saving Paradise will change you ... It will call into question what little you really know, what people want you to believe you know and then hit you with a deep wave of dangerous truths.” — Where Truth Meets Fiction

  Holy War

  “An action-filled thriller.” — Manchester Evening News (UK)

  “This suspense-laden novel has a never-ending sense of impending doom ... An unyielding tension leaves a lasting impression.” — Kirkus

  “A profound tale of war ... Impossible to stop reading.” — British Armed Forces Broadcasting

  “A terrific book ... The smells, taste, noise, dust, and fear are communicated so clearly.” — Great Book Escapes

  “A supercharged thriller ... A story to chill and haunt you.” — Peterborough Evening Telegraph (UK)

  “A tale of fear, hatred, revenge, and desire, flicking between bloody Beirut and the lesser battles of London and Paris.” — Evening Herald (UK)

  “If you are looking to get a driver’s seat look at the landscape of modern conflict, holy wars, and the Middle East then this is the perfect book to do so.” — Masterful Book Reviews

  “A stunning novel of love and loss, good and evil, of real people who live in our hearts after the last page is done ...Unusual and profound.” — Greater London Radio

  House of Jaguar

  “A riveting thriller of murder, politics, and lies.” — London Broadcasting

  “Tough and tense thriller.” — Manchester Evening News (UK)

  “A high-octane story rife with action, from U.S. streets to Guatemalan jungles.” — Kirkus

  “A terrifying depiction of one man’s battle against the CIA and Latin American death squads.” — BBC

  “Vicious thriller of drugs and revolution in the wilds of Guatemala.” — Liverpool Daily Post (UK)

  “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 (UK)

  “Bond 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 (UK)

  The Last Savanna

  FIRST PRIZE FOR FICTION, 2016, Los Angeles Book Festival: “One of the best books yet on Africa, a stunning tale of love and loss amid a ma
gnificent wilderness and its myriad animals, and a deadly manhunt through savage jungles, steep mountains and fierce deserts as an SAS commando tries to save the elephants, the woman he loves and the soul of Africa itself.”

  “A gripping thriller.” — Liverpool Daily Post (UK)

  “Dynamic, heart-breaking and timely to current events ... a must-read.” — Yahoo Reviews

  “Sheer intensity, depicting the immense, arid land and never-ending scenes ... but it’s the volatile nature of nature itself that gives the story its greatest distinction.” — Kirkus

  “One of the most darkly beautiful books you will ever read.” — WordDreams

  “Exciting, action-packed ... A nightmarish vision of Africa.” — Manchester Evening News (UK)

  “Unrelenting in its portrait of the modern African reality.” — Mystery File

  “A powerful love story set in the savage jungles and deserts of East Africa.” — Daily Examiner (UK)

  “The central figure is not human; it is the barren, terrifying landscape of Northern Kenya and the deadly creatures who inhabit it.” — Daily Telegraph (UK)

  “An entrancing, terrifying vision of Africa.” — BBC

  “From the opening page maintains an exhilarating pace until the closing line ... A highly entertaining and gripping read.” — East African Wild Life Society

  Tibetan Cross

  “Bond’s deft thriller will reinforce your worst fears ... A taut, tense tale of pursuit through exotic and unsavory locales.” — Publishers Weekly

  “Grips the reader from the very first chapter until the climactic ending.” — UPI

  “One of the most exciting in recent fiction ... An astonishing thriller.” — San Francisco Examiner

  “A tautly written study of one man’s descent into living hell ... a mood of near claustrophobic intensity.” — Spokane Chronicle

  “It is a thriller ... Incredible, but also believable.” — Associated Press

  “A thriller that everyone should go out and buy right away. The writing is wonderful throughout ... Bond working that fatalistic margin where life and death are one and the existential reality leaves one caring only to survive.” — Sunday Oregonian

  “Murderous intensity ... A tense and graphically written story.” — Richmond Times

  “The most jaundiced adventure fan will be held by Tibetan Cross.” — Sacramento Bee

  “Grips the reader from the opening chapter and never lets go.” — Miami Herald

  ALSO BY MIKE BOND

  NOVELS

  Snow

  Assassins

  Holy War

  House of Jaguar

  The Last Savanna

  Tibetan Cross

  Pono Hawkins Thrillers

  Saving Paradise

  Killing Maine

  POETRY

  The Drum That Beats Within Us

  Goodbye Paris

  A Pono Hawkins Thriller

  Mike Bond

  Big City Press

  New York

  Big City Press, New York, NY 10014

  Goodbye Paris 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.

  Copyright ©2019 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 written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published in the United States by Big City Press

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Bond, Mike – author

  Goodbye Paris/Mike Bond

  ISBN ebook: 978-1-949751-03-1

  ISBN paperback: 978-1-949751-02-4

  Cover and book design by John Lotte

  Author photo by ©PF Bentley/PFPIX.com

  www.MikeBondBooks.com

  for Peggy

  How many cities have we destroyed, whose inhabitants lived in ease and plenty?

  — The Koran

  Silence in the face of evil is itself evil ... To not speak is to speak. To not act is to act.

  — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

  — George Orwell

  If you want peace, prepare for war.

  — Publius Vegetius

  Contents

  Critic's Praise

  Also by Mike Bond

  GOODBYE PARIS

  Two more Pono Hawkins Thrillers:

  Excerpt from Saving Paradise

  Excerpt from Killing Maine

  About the Author

  The Great Deep

  IT ROSE FROM THE DEEP, a huge wall of roaring green that blotted out the sky and smashed me under, whacked my surfboard into my head and punched the air from my lungs.

  I was going to die.

  Cold water choked my throat. My surfboard pulled me deeper, tugged down by the undertow of this monstrous wave.

  My lungs filled with water, my body screamed for air. I snatched at my board leash, trying to unhook it before it pulled me to the bottom.

  After years of cheating death now it had me.

  All your life does flash before you – a bullet in Afghanistan, an RPG in Iraq, a girl’s naked thigh, Pa walking through the door in Hawaii with a banana clump on his shoulder, a schoolbook never read, Ma shaking a burnt hand before the stove, Mauna Kea’s vast tree-thick slope, the billion stars, the frothing water taking me down down down ...

  Not so bad, death. Silent. Alone. The bubbling depths not unfriendly, just uncaring.

  The great deep. It doesn’t matter if you’re here or not, but now you’re here you’re going to stay.

  End over end I spun in its succulent whirl, ever deeper, collided with sharp rocks at the bottom, ripped a knee spurting blood and my brief fear was sharks, but why worry about sharks when I’m dying and who cares who eats me?

  My last air unfurled like a pearl necklace toward the surface so far above – you could barely see its light – what a joke this life, to pretend it’s real when all that’s real is death.

  War Zone

  LIKE A LONG-DROWNED sailor I rose to the top. Must have unleashed the surfboard. Amazing to think this, that the brain still works when the body’s dead.

  A wave sloshed over my head and I went under again. Something hard yanked me up, punched my gut – shark?

  A surfer, bearded and long-haired. Dragged me up on the beach. Salt-blurry faces peering down.

  Blue sky. I was alive.

  What did that mean?

  —

  FLASHING LIGHTS all over the place. People I didn’t even know squeezing my hand. So lucky to be alive.

  Plastic thing over my face. Trying to choke me. Silly, when they saved my life to now try to kill me.

  I leaped up and tore off the oxygen mask. Surrounded by a wall of people. “I’m fine,” my voice rasped. “Let me be!”

  Guy in a white uniform with badges took me by both arms. “Look, bro, you not fine.”

  “I’m fine.” I tried to get out of his grasp but he was a big guy, Tahitian, the linebacker type. I peered at the badge on his chest. Some kind of medic – for a moment I feared I was back in Afghanistan and got hit and Bucky had run through bullets to save me.

  Roar of the ocean. No ocean in Afghanistan. “I’m fine.” Whatever happened, and I had no idea what, I was okay. I checked the sun, huge, low and orange on the foam-flecked horizon. Time to go home for sunset drink. The
time every day when I and the three women I lived with would all sit on the lanai, smoke a joint or two. Lexie and I would drink Tanqueray martinis, Erica Russian vodka, and Abigail some kind of Australian rosé the color of her fiery auburn hair.

  “Gotta go,” I said.

  The huge Tahitian medic sat me down. The way you swat a fly. I realized I was not as tough as usual. Something had made my knees weak, and my right shoulder, once injured by a bullet in Afghanistan, kept slipping out of the socket.

  “So who the fuck are you?” I said to the medic, trying to be nice.

  “Hey, bro,” he smiled, “you almos’ drown.” He pointed to where the bearded surfer stood bent over, hands on knees, vomiting on the sand. “That brother, he save you.”

  “Surfer dude,” I said, my voice rough with salt water. As if no further explanation was necessary.

  And it wasn’t. Surfers, like my own Special Forces, or the Rangers, SEALS, Marines, 82nd Airborne, Foreign Legion, Spetsnaz, GIGN, Israeli Defense Forces, and all those other fine military clans, take care of their own.

  As all we humans should do.

  —

  THEY FINALLY let me go. The ambulance blared off; I waved at the other well-wishers apparently upset over my pending death and seemingly delighted, as I was, that I was alive.

  I found my board, which someone had brought ashore, and my backpack, and had the good sense to call the house, as I couldn’t find the damn rental van and couldn’t remember if I had driven it there in the first place. Of course Erica answered. The most ferocious of the three, maybe because she’s a lawyer and bills you for every second, one way or another. But they were all fearsome, each in her own way.

  Erica showed up in the rental van I thought I’d had. “They just called us,” she snapped, tossing my board on the roof and giving me a smack upside the head. “Who you think you are, taking on that wave?”

  I struggled to figure out what she was talking about. “Oh yeah,” I said. “That wave.”

  “Yeah,” she growled, reaching across to click my seat belt. “That wave.”