by Paul A. Rice
The most bizarre thing was that, right on the front doorstep, there laid a pile of neatly arranged sandbags. They were completely untouched and the only thing out of place was a smashed machinegun of Russian origin, that and a pile of rags – they may not have been rags, and I had a feeling that at one stage the cloth had been covering something far more vulnerable than the shattered concrete above. Being on that doorstep when the missile struck must have been quite some sensation…
Seeing the destroyed building grabbed Andi’s attention. Leaning out of the window, she pointed with her hand in a direct indication for the cameraman, who followed behind in Jimbo’s vehicle, to take some shots. Knowing we were about to do some filming whilst on the move, both of our vehicles slowed down a touch to allow the cameraman to clamber into a decent position on the back of the pickup. As we rolled along, Andi spoke quietly into her small voice-recorder. From previous experience I knew that the crew would dub everything together later on – the finished piece nicely tying together the sound and pictures.
Switching the machine off, she turned to me and said, ‘Okay, Jake – let’s get going, the big story is up ahe…’
A loud cracking sound, accompanied by a line of flickering red tracer-bullets, which came zipping past the front of our windshield like supersonic fireflies, stopped Andi’s instructions in their tracks.
I yelled at the driver: ‘Drive, Raouf – DRIVE!’
Instantly he floored the accelerator, sending the big Toyota surging forward. There were some more loud cracks and then two heavy, thumping noises from the rear of the Land Cruiser. I turned to the rear and ordered Andi and Bill to get down, being more than pleased to see that they were already there, crouched low across the back seat. Looking out of the side windows, I tried to see what the hell was happening. The only thing I did see was a few blurred figures running by the side of some buildings, which were currently receding into the distance. The runners could have been gunmen or they may have just been civilians trying to escape. Either way, I was pleased to see that we were racing away from them.
I glanced over the back seats to look through the rear window and was relieved to see that Jim was hot on my heels. Trying to see beyond his vehicle was impossible as by now we’d rounded the bend and the speed at which we were travelling had raised a nice cloud of dust. I really hoped that Rory and his gang had made it through as well. What I would have given for a two-way radio right at that moment was anybody’s guess.
We drove like demons for about five minutes before I eventually told Raouf to cool it. Looking rearwards, I could see that Jim was in one-piece and had dropped back to a slightly safer distance. There was still no sign of Rory and his crew – that bothered me. Seeing a large pile of the sea-barriers over to the right, I asked the driver to pull over behind them.
‘Let’s stop for two minutes,’ I said, to my passengers. ‘We can have a quick chat, make sure everyone’s Okay and see if the other crew catches up.’
They grinned with relief and sat back up in their seats. Both of their faces were flushed with excitement, Andi’s crystal-blue eyes sparkled like fire.
She looked at me and laughed, saying: ‘Thanks, Jake! That was a great reaction!’
I grinned back and told her that the thanks should be given to our driver – his instant reaction to my command had been more than I could have hoped for. Both Andi and Bill congratulated Raouf; he just smiled and said that it was no problem.
‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘This is Libya today – but tomorrow it will be better, Insha'Allah!’ Opening his door, Raouf stepped out and, without a care in the world, wandered away to relieve himself.
Jimbo and his crew soon joined us; we sat together and discussed what had happened. He said that all he saw was some guys on our left who suddenly appeared in a doorway and let rip at us with their assault rifles. That reminded me – taking a look at the rear of my vehicle, I spied two, shiny, new bullet-holes. Both rounds had entered the luggage compartment, passed through a box containing some bread rolls and then headed on out through the other side of the boot at a slight angle. We were lucky, if the firer had been just a few meters further back then there was more than a fair chance that the rounds would have entered the passenger compartment.
‘Minor detail,’ Jim said, looking at the holes with a grin on his face. ‘Imagine how pissed-off you would have been if they’d smashed your bottles of JD!’
I laughed and then quickly double checked, just to make sure that we weren’t actually leaking valuable alcohol into the dry, Libyan soil. All of us had fetched some bottles of duty-free plonk along with us, we weren’t going to be armed, and as far as I was aware the job wasn’t a ‘dry’ one. The one thing I had learned whilst working with the press was that the vast majority of them liked a good drink, especially when they were having some down-time. Who was I to argue with that? And after all, when one is in Rome…
Getting back to the job in-hand, I asked Jim where Rory and the others were. He said that all he saw was a whole load of tracer rounds heading towards the other crew’s vehicles and that they, Rory’s convoy, had turned off the road to head for the cover of some buildings by the side of the road.
‘I don’t think he could have gotten through like we did,’ Jim commented. ‘The bad guys had got our range by then and I reckon that Rory’s best bet was to get the fuck out of there – hopefully he’s in cover, or moved back…’
Jimbo was right – Rory knew what he was doing and if there was any way in which he could have followed us, I knew he would have done so.
Rory, he must have been a mind-reader, and a lucky one at that. How the hell he managed to get through on the phone I’ll never know. But he did. Just as Jimbo finished talking, my Nokia buzzed.
It was Rory.
‘Hey there, big-boy, where are you?’ I asked.
‘In the shit,’ he replied. ‘We got hammered back there – the cameraman has been whacked in the upper-arm and the driver has got some glass from the window in his eye.’ He breathed out and I could hear him gathering himself.
After a short pause, Rory said, ‘It’s not too bad, mate – I’ve patched them up nicely, and no-one’s gonna die… Only trouble is that we need to get back to Zawiyah and get them into the hospital, we’re not gonna be able to back you up, so you’re on your own, mate!’
‘That’s fine.’ I said. ‘We’re all in one-piece and just having a smoke-break for five minutes anyway.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’re legging-it to the hospital as we speak, so I’ll…’ The line beeped once and Rory was gone.
No matter, I was extremely grateful that we’d even been able to have that call. At least I knew what was going-on behind us.
I gathered the rest of our crew and gave them a quick heads-up, quickly doing my best to allay their concerns over the injuries that two of Rory’s crew had sustained. It was a bad moment, but with a bit of positive attitude, and some sick humour… ‘Don’t worry too much guys,’ I said, light-heartedly. ‘At least it will be our crew that gets the Pulitzer, with the competition out the way the story is all ours! ...it wasn’t long before I had them back on a more even-keel.
We did a quick check of all the gear, had a final smoke and then climbed back into the vehicles. Just as I was about to get into my car, Jim gave me a nod – I could see that he wanted words with me. Closing the door, so the others couldn’t hear what he had to say, I walked over to him.
‘What’s up, mate?’ I asked.
Jim looked over my shoulder and then being sure that no-one could overhear him, said: ‘Listen, JC – this cameraman with me is a twat!’ He nodded towards his pickup where I could see the man in question fiddling with something in the back of the truck.
‘You mean Gino – what’s his problem, being bit of a princess, is he?’ I said, with a grin. I’d seen plenty of them before, as soon as the shooting starts they turn into a nightmare, and suddenly everything’s a problem.
‘No, he’s exactly the opposite
,’ Jim said, with his voice lowered. ‘He’s on a mission – the fucking guy won’t get into the truck, he insists on riding in the back. I’ve told him that’s a big no-no, but he won’t have it, and… guess what?’
‘Go on, tell me…’
‘Well, in the middle of that contact he tried to take over command of the vehicle,’ Jim said, angrily. ‘The bloody idiot tried to get the driver to stop so that he could get out and film the guys who were shooting at us!’ He shook his head in disbelief, saying: ‘There’s always one fuckwit, ain’t there?’
‘You’re right there,’ I said. ‘Well, watch him like a hawk, mate. Just remember that we’re here in an advisory category – all we can do is advise him, if he wants to ride in the back then let him. If he gets thrown out or takes a brick to the face, then that’s his problem. Just make sure that you tell him to wear his armour and helmet, Okay?’
Jim nodded, saying: ‘Yeah, roger-that. I just wanted you to know because he’s going to be a nightmare; I can see it coming and didn’t want it to be a surprise… he doesn’t give a shit about anyone else!’
I grinned and said, ‘Thanks, Jim – fuck-all surprises me with some of these guys! We’ll keep our eyes on him. Just do what you need to and if he gets out of hand then give him a good slap!’
‘Wouldn’t that be great,’ Jim said, looking down at his ham-sized fists with a laugh. ‘If only we could, eh – if only we could!’
We grinned at each other and then turned away to get back to the task at hand. In a few moments we were back on the road to Tripoli, only this time we were on our own.
***
As we neared the outskirts of Tripoli, having passed through several other towns and numerous check-points along the way, we began to see lots of civilian vehicles leaving the area. All of them were filled with people and they were all heading out of town in a hurry. Huge traffic queues lined the opposite side of the road – scores of rebel-held checkpoints held the flood of humanity at bay whilst each and every occupant of the fleeing cars had their identity checked.
‘They’re making sure that Gadaffi’s people don’t try and escape,’ Raouf told us. ‘The rebels want to see them all hanging like dogs!’ he added, pointing at a convenient lamp-post with a laugh.
We cruised on past with hardly a car in sight on our side of the road. Only the odd, heavily-armed rebel pickup truck came zooming past us with their lights flashing and horns blaring. Some of them were loaded to the gunnels with rebel fighters, men and boys of all ages rushing toward the frontline without an ounce of fear on their faces. Today was to be their day and there would be no stopping them. The sight of hordes of Libyan rebels, some barely out of school, brandishing the most fearsome weaponry available, whilst dressed in nothing more than jeans and T-shirts… I saw at least a dozen shirts from English football-clubs go rocketing past on the back of some crazy guy with a rebel flag tied around his head and a Kalashnikov in his hands… was totally insane.
They just didn’t seem to care – it was to be today or never.
We speeded-up slightly as Andi was starting to worry that we were going to miss the party. Journos are under immense pressure from their news desks, getting the story was paramount and nothing else mattered. Shit-or-bust, that’s just the way it was for them.
‘We need to find somewhere to start filming,’ she said, anxiously. ‘Somewhere good that overlooks Gadaffi’s compound – can we do that, Jake?’ I was pleased that she had at least asked.
‘Yeah, that won’t be a problem, Andi,’ I replied. ‘Raouf can find us somewhere suitable, can’t you, mate?’ I asked, nudging his arm.
Raouf grinned and said that it would be no problem; nothing was ever a problem for Raouf. He was a great guy and a pleasure to work with. With a small laugh, he gunned the engine and we raced into town to get the shots. Shit-or-bust it was.
It wasn’t long before we entered the outskirts of Tripoli, each checkpoint simply waving us through as though we were some form of benign sightseers, which, in a way I suppose we were… We could hear the sound of distant gunfire, and also the thumping sound of some much larger explosions that I guessed was a helping-hand being delivered by NATO aircraft. As it turned out, we wouldn’t need to find a place to film the fighting, the fighting found us.
Zooming along the highway, we suddenly saw a large group of people up ahead. ‘Slow down a bit,’ I said to Raouf. ‘Let’s see what’s happening.’ He dropped the speed to a crawl whilst I used my set of mini-binoculars to peer through the windscreen.
Focussing in, I was able to see that the group of people consisted mostly of rebel fighters and, what appeared to be, a handful of civilians. It was hard to tell the difference as there was no real uniform being worn by the fighters – only the weapons clutched in their hands gave any indication as to who was who. It appeared to me that the group were in some trouble as there was a lot of arm waving and a few of the men were gesticulating frantically to any vehicle that happened to be passing.
‘Okay, we can go there, but take it slowly,’ I said to the driver.
Turning to my passengers, I said, ‘Looks like a decent place to get in the action,’ I pointed at the crowd ahead. ‘Would you like to stop and get some shots?’ They nodded in agreement.
In short order we were pulling up by the crowd. Before I could even exit the vehicle and go and see what the score was, Gino sprinted past me with his camera in hand and was soon bustling his way into the centre of them. Jim was hot on his heels, giving me a shrug of resignation as he ran past.
The rest of the crew soon joined us, and it was then that we, as a collective, encountered our first casualties of the war. Lying by the side of the pavement were two men – one civilian and one rebel fighter. Both had been shot in the head and both of them were dead. Several ounces of brain matter, spread across the surface of the road, and a few pints of blood, pooling under their heads, gave the game away.
Gino was on them like a cat – kneeling down beside the bodies and zooming-in with his camera without any sign of remorse or any attempt at a polite introduction. As soon as he started filming, one of the other fighters pushed past and covered the corpses with some dirty blankets, giving Gino a decent shove with his knee as he passed. I heard the cameraman muttering his displeasure, but just smiled to myself. For my money he was lucky not to have taken a rifle-butt to the face.
Andi was much more subtle, and at least she had the decency to introduce herself and express her condolences before she got down to business. Her actions took the heat out of a fairly dodgy situation. No matter whose side people are on, they very rarely like the press to barge in and start taking shots of their dead comrades. Gino should have known better.
I left the crew talking to the people around the bodies and wandered over to talk to one of the rebel fighters. He was kneeling in a firing position behind a low, concrete wall and was scanning the streets that sloped gently away to our front. Litter filled the gutters and there were destroyed vehicles and makeshift barricades all along the way, every so often a thin haze of smoke would drift across the junction that lay a few-dozen metres away.
After giving him a cigarette and making some small-talk, I learned that the dead men were part of a group of people who had been sheltering from incoming sniper-fire. Obviously the sniper had out-foxed them and as a result there had been four casualties – two wounded and two killed. The wounded had only just been whisked away in a makeshift ambulance.
As we crouched behind the wall I could hear the sound of firing down the street, the rattle of small-arms, suddenly being drowned-out by the much deeper, booming noise of the heavy machineguns that the rebels had mounted on their pickup-trucks. Then, down the street, all hell suddenly broke-loose. An intense fire-fight broke out some three hundred metres away. By the sounds of things there were at least four pickups giving it hell-for-leather. These vehicles were often described as ‘technicals’ during the conflict and consisted of any old pickup truck, usually a Toyota, which the rebels coul
d get their hands on. Then they took some outrageously large weapon, the bigger the better, and figured out a way in which to attach it to said vehicle. I have seen several with rocket-pods taken from aircraft that they had simply welded or tied to a homemade stand, often supported by concrete blocks. Many of the vehicles were so over-gunned that I often wondered how the recoil didn’t tear the back off. Talk about ‘make-and-mend’…
Right at that moment it sounded as they were being put to very good use, and whoever was in the receiving end was properly in the shit. The ripping sound of many weapons firing at once filled the air. The sound of gunfire was interrupted by the repeated concussions of RPG rockets being discharged and impacting. Although I couldn’t see the battle, the sight of ricocheting tracer rounds, flittering like demented fireflies into the air, and the distant puffs of concrete dust, mushrooming from the sides of buildings down the street, gave me a fairly good idea as to where the action was happening.
The rebel’s radio squawked, an undecipherable stream of noise that was perfectly understandable to the guy next to me. He looked up with a grin and said, ‘They have them, they are killing them now!’ After listening to the radio once more, he looked up, saying: ‘All of them are finished, they are dead! Five mercenaries – black people from Africa, maybe Somalis… Gadaffi, he pays them to stay and kill his own people!’ He shook his head in disgust, and then with a glint in his eye, said, ‘But anyway, they are dead and now we can be safe here – soon all of Libya will be safe and all of us will be free!’ He gave me a grin, flicked his cigarette-butt away, got to his feet and went to join his friends as they stood gathered around Andi and the cameraman.