Crude: Ukraine, Oil and Nuclear War a Geopolitical Thriller by Mike Bond Book Tour with Guest Post and Author Q&A

As global powers navigate fragile alliances, information battles, and volatile energy interests, Crude by Mike Bond positions its opening moments within that same high-pressure landscape. A nuclear alert sparks the broader crisis, revealing how fast political strain can escalate across borders.

A nuclear-attack alert blares across American screens, signaling the beginning of an international emergency. With tensions between the U.S. and Russia growing more dangerous, Rawhide Energy CEO Ross Bullock tries to warn the press that the country is being led into catastrophe. Instead, the media twists his announcement into political controversy, casting suspicion on his intentions. Then comes a devastating blow — an entire oil platform in the South China Sea is destroyed, killing hundreds. The destruction is too calculated to be random. As international pressure intensifies, Crude weaves together the worlds of intelligence, global markets, military risk, and political spin in a thriller shaped by the volatility of the present moment.

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. Learn more at his website.

Amazon: https://bit.ly/4ocGtKG

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214299686-crude

Excerpt:

1

B L O O D  I N  T H E  WAT E R 

The shark hit so hard he thought it was a ship keel out of the deep, its gritty hide rasping his thigh and its huge tail 

ripping a dive fin off his foot. He yanked a repellant tube from his divepack, fumbled and lost it, couldn’t see it in his

headlamp, faced the shark but it wasn’t there, was above him, to the left, below, grinning jaws. 

He dove, grabbing for the repellant, watching the shark. It attacked, feinted and dodged, the biggest tiger shark he’d ever seen.

His hand bumped the repellant, knocking it away. He grasped for it, trying to circle to face the shark, to stay upright despite

the missing fin. Don’t panic. 

The shark dove, then rose toward him, teeth glinting in his head‐ lamp. His wrist grazed the repellant, driving it lower.

He snapped on his Orca torch, looked around frantically for Two, but the other diver wasn’t there. 

Don’t panic. 

He sank deeper. His face touched the tube. He grabbed and squeezed it, repellant blinding his mask. The shark circled once,

slid into the depths.

The repellant faded. He coughed, realized he had spit out his mouthpiece. He shoved it in, gurgled water, coughed and spit it

out. His legs and feet were still there. The shark had just nicked him, tested him. Maybe it had smelled blood from when he’d

torn his knee climbing out of the sub. 

Or blood from someone else? 

Where was Two? 

The shark darted beneath him. He wanted to shine his torch at it, but that might attract it, anger it. He pulled in his legs and

yanked out a second tube. Black repellant spurted out. 

Don’t panic. 

One tube left. The rebreather thundered with his panting. Larger and larger, the shark nosed toward him through clouds of

repellant, crunching its jaws. 

He ripped off his divepack, the rebreather hissing, and smashed the shark’s snout. It dove, tail slamming him sideways,

swung round and began to circle him, closer and closer. 

Don’t panic. 

Faster the shark circled. With only one fin he couldn’t keep up; it would get him. He fired the last repellant. 

It clouded the water and he couldn’t see the shark, only felt the crush of water as it smashed past, couldn’t hear over his own

frantic gasps. Choking and crying, he shoved his arms back through the divepack straps, tugged up his legs against his body. 

Beyond his torch light the watery darkness expanded forever. Without Two, how could he finish? Should he return to the sub?

Maybe Two was already there, had abandoned the mission because of the shark? There’d been no message from the sub. 

The water grew colder, darker; he was sinking too deep. The repellant was gone. With tiger sharks, he remembered,

when there’s one, there’s many. 

His watch showed 38 feet. He couldn’t see the shark. Fish schooled past, fusiliers or jacks. 

01:52, the watch said. One hour left. If one diver didn’t reach the platform, the other had to do it alone. He turned to 347

degrees and began to swim, slowly kicking the one fin. 

Above him the black waves glinted with light. He ached to go up, but the shark would attack if he rose to the top like a dying

fish. He swam toward the light till it brightened the wavetops, then surfaced quickly to check his approach. 

Before him, a wide platform of brilliant lights towered ten stories into the night, a glittering city on pylons over the waves,

its gas flare blazing across the black sky. 

A school of barracuda shot like missiles beneath him. He checked his watch: 02:03. He sank back into the gloom and swam

northeast toward a huge metal strut descending into the sea. His first position – the southeast corner pylon. 

In the oily rushing darkness there was no sign of Two. For an instant, he wondered who Two was – on missions like this

you never knew the others’ names, you just had numbers. 

Waves roiled round the pylon, greasy and oil-turbid, slamming him against the barnacles and clams on the steel. Bounced

back and forth, he tried to set his course northwest at 320 degrees and almost swam into another strut of the pylon, so big it

took him half a minute to go around it. 

Fish struck his face – butterflies and angels and little trash feeders drawn to his headlamp. 

The platform’s light dissolved down through the oily water. 02:19. He sank below it, watching for the shark, for sea snakes

and scorpion fish. 

At the platform’s center, a huge cluster of four pipes descended straight down. They roared with the gas rushing up them

toward the platform above. 

Easy part now. He touched a pipe, then yanked back his hand. That gas comes out of the earth at boiling point. And a burn

attracts sharks just like blood. 

He was losing it, too worried about the shark, about Two. Don’t panic. 

Above him, waves lashed the pylons, fell back on themselves and raveled on. Oil streaked the surface, distorting the light

from the platform’s flare. How strange, he thought, to bore into the earth. Suck life from the past. And burn it in the sky. 

He dove down the pipes to fifty feet, where a great steel ring clamped the four pipes together. The bolts on each flange were

big as his head. He unslung the divepack and took out a heavy package. It was solid, malleable, crescent-shaped, as long as

his forearm. He pinned it into place under the lower flange, near one of the four hot pipes. 

He placed a second charge against the upper flange. Unrolling the coil of wire that linked them to two other charges from his

pack, he swam a third of the way around the pipes till the wire grew taut, and fitted the two other charges above and below the

flange. 

On the unrolled wire midway between the two pairs of charges was a water-sealed box like a soap dish that he tucked under

the flange. He ran his finger and thumb along each wire; there were no kinks, no cuts. 

02:47 – ahead of schedule, despite the shark. Even without Two. When his watch hit 02:55, he pushed a two-inch button on

the right side of the water-sealed box, then swam up to twenty feet below surface and southward from the platform, rechecking

his watch often for depth and direction. He craved to shine down his torch to check for the shark, but that would only attract it.

Don’t panic. 

You can do this in your sleep. In seven minutes you’ll be back in the sub. Fuck Two. 

Far below, a huge shape crossed the deep. No, he begged. Please no. He lit the torch. The shape undulated onward, trailing

phosphores‐ cence. A giant squid. 

But now he’d turned on his torch. 

Guest Post:

Why We Are Here

 

Many years ago I woke from a dream of being in a large place like a supermarket full of people.

I met a young man with long dark hair who looked like me. “Why are we here?” I asked him.

“To find out what it is.”

“What what is?”

“Life.”

I awakened understanding that this was the task we are all given in life. That in good years and bad,

joys and sorrows, our unerring goal is to understand life, to seek the meaning of this vast mystery

encompassing us. To find out what life is and spread the word, like scouts returning to the tribe from

distant and dangerous lands.

We are in an infinite universe of endless infinities. They stretch in all dimensions far beyond our feeble

cognition. Time is forever, and forever unknowable. Even deep inside ourselves we cannot begin to

understand.

We are children of the void. We go through many joys and sorrows in life, many magical mysteries we

cannot comprehend. Perhaps what we experience feeds a greater wisdom far beyond our ken; we cannot

know.

Like many people, I have lived through great joys and dangers – atrocious wars and vicious perils, and

deep, long-lasting love, that have all made me believe in God. And to live deeply, intensely, to love,

have children and give them the magical mystery of life – this is what we are born for.

Nothing else matters.

 Q&A

Writing Process & Creativity

How did you research your book?  

I don’t research my books, but write from my own memory of events.

What’s the hardest scene or character you wrote—and why?

The killings of Jack and Bobby Kennedy (whom I knew and loved) by the CIA.

Where do you get your ideas? 

From my own past experiences, or from issues that concern me, like the danger of nuclear war. Or wars I have

been in and I wish to expose how they happened, and who is responsible for all the deaths, sorrow, and destruction.

What helps you overcome writer’s block? 

Never had it. Too many things to write about.

What’s your favorite compliment you’ve received as a writer? 

Among many other critical praises, when BBC called me “The master of the existentialist thriller.”

Your Writing Life

Do you write every day? What’s your schedule?

I write when I want to.

Behind the Book

Why did you choose this setting/topic? 

Because nuclear war will end all life on earth, which is a far more important issue than anything else.

Which author(s) most inspired you?

 Hemingway – the greatest American writer of the 20th century. And Tolstoy, Gogol, Zola, Aristotle, Cicero, and many others.

Fun & Lighthearted Qs

What’s your go-to comfort food?

For writing -- Gin or vodka.

If you could time-travel, where would you go?

Somewhere in our Paleolithic past, or among the Cheyenne or Sioux before the coming of Europeans.

What 3 books would you bring to a desert island?

If I were on a desert island I would be happy there and wouldn’t bother with books

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