I’m In No Mood For Love Read Online Free Page A

with the sunglasses and started the SUV. He’dbeen in Boise for two days, having driven straight through from Seattle. If he could just get enough sleep—a good solid eight hours ought to do it—but even as he told himself that was what he needed, he knew it was a crock. He’d functioned on a lot less sleep, and had always done his job. Be it in sand or rainstorms—once, in southern Iraq, both at the same time—and had managed to complete his work and make his deadline.
    It wasn’t even noon, and the temperature in Boise was already eighty-five as he drove from the parking lot. He turned on the air-conditioning and angled it to blow on his face. He’d had a complete physical last month. He was tested for everything from the flu to HIV. He was in perfect health. There was nothing wrong with him physically.
    Nothing wrong with his head either. He loved his job. He’d worked his ass off to get where he was. Fought for every inch and was one of the most successful journalists in the country. There weren’t many guys like him around. Men who’d made it to the top, not by pedigree or résumé or a degree from Columbia or Princeton, but by what was in them. Yeah, talent and a love of the business had played a part, but mostly he’d made it by grit and spit and the hundred-proof determination flowing through his veins. He’d been accused of being an arrogant prick, which he figured waspretty much the truth. What bothered his critics most, however, was that the truth didn’t keep him up at night.
    No, something else was keeping him up. Something that had hit him from left field. He’d been all over the world, continually amazed by what he’d seen. He had reported on such diversities as prehistoric art in the caves of eastern Borneo to raging wild fires in Colorado. He’d traveled the Silk Road and stood on the Great Wall. He’d been privileged to have met the ordinary and the extraordinary, and had loved every minute of it. When he took a moment to look at his life, he was amazed all over again.
    Yeah, he’d experienced some bad shit too. He’d been embedded with the First Battalion Fifth Marine Regiment as they’d pushed three hundred miles into Iraq and all the way into Baghdad. He’d been at the point of the spear and knew the sounds of men fighting and dying right in front of him. He knew the taste of fear and cordite in his mouth.
    He knew the smell of famine and abuse, seen the flames of fanaticism burning from eyes of suicide bombers and the hopes of brave men and women determined to stand up for themselves and their families. Desperate people looking at him as if he could save them, but the only thing he could do for them was to tell their story. To report it andbring it to the attention of the world. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. When it got right down to it, the world didn’t give a damn unless it happened in their backyards.
    Two years before 9/11 he’d done a piece on the Taliban and the strict interpretation of Sharia under the direction of Mullah Muhammad Omar. He’d reported on the public executions and floggings of innocent civilians, while powerful nations—the champions of democracy—stood on the sidelines and did little. He’d written a book, Fragmented: Twenty Years of War in Afghanistan , about his experience and the inherent consequences of a world that looked the other way. The book had earned critical praise, but the sales had been modest.
    All of that changed on a clear blue day in September when terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, and suddenly people turned their attention to Afghanistan and light was shed on the atrocities committed by the Taliban in the name of Islam.
    A year after his book’s release, it hit number one on the best-seller lists, and he suddenly found himself the most popular boy in school. Every media outlet, from the Boston Globe to Good Morning America wanted an interview. He’d granted some, rejected most. He didn’t care for the