by Paul A. Rice
As we travelled along I tried repeatedly to call Jim – hoping and praying as I did so that Gino had made it out in one-piece. In typical fashion, not one of my damned phones worked. It was probably the most frustrating time of my life – I’d lost a client, which is never good, and in the meantime I couldn’t even alert anyone.
It was a position not of my own making, but I was responsible and knew that it would probably cost me my job. Slipping the phones back into my jacket pocket, I sat in silence and sipped my water until we arrived at Martyr Square. I was thinking so hard about what I could do about the situation that I can’t remember a single thing about that trip. There was only one thing occupying my thoughts: If Gino had gone missing on my watch, well… then I was really for the chop.
9
Mayhem in Martyr Square
The crew were all in the square, a huge, concrete rectangle near the port of Tripoli. It faced onto an ancient building, which I seemed to remember was called the Red Palace, or something similar. There was a stone archway to the left and I knew from previous experience that this led into the old town. The maze of narrow streets and alleyways on the other side of the arch was where the souk did its daily trading. Like I said before – I’m not that good at remembering the names and details of places when I’m working. Suffice to say, the place was rammed with celebrating Libyans.
By now, darkness had fallen and the surrounding skies were filled with the sight of tracer bullets rising into the air. It was like a scene from one of those old documentaries that I had watched on the fall of Berlin. The air was thick with lead and, although it did look pretty cool, I knew for a fact that what goes up must come down. Trust me when I tell you: there was whole shit-load of things going up that night. We were to discover later just how many of those bullets came back down, right where they were least required.
Big Jim came bouncing over as soon as he saw my car filtering through the barricades. We parked next to his vehicle and stepped out onto the square. I advised Andi to keep her helmet on, just in case one of those falling missiles decided to ruin her day. She nodded and then quickly walked off to where the techs and Bill were standing by the back of their pickup.
The noise of the crowd was rising – the atmosphere hit you as soon as you put a foot in the place. It was party time and although they were in Ramadan, the locals were still going to celebrate. The sun had gone down and although I don’t know about the exact timings and rules of their fasting, I pretty much guessed that the sight of many people eating and drinking was a sign that right now they were free to do as they pleased.
‘How’s it going, JC?’ Jim asked, passing me a warm Coke. ‘Did you get any decent shots?’
‘Yeah, it was awesome, man!’ I said, taking a chug on my canned drink. ‘Listen, I’ll tell you about it later… right now I’ve got a serious problem on my hands!’
‘Why, what’s up – nothing serious is it, I hope?’ Jim said.
I dragged a smoke out from the packet with my teeth, lit up and looked at Jim through slitted eyes. ‘Yeah, it’s a major fuck-up – I’ve lost one of the clients!’
‘What? Who, they’re all here, nice and safe, aren’t they?’ Jim hissed, with his brow creasing as the bad news hit home.
‘It’s that twat, Gino,’ I said. ‘He fucked off when we were in the compound and I couldn’t find him anywhere – we nearly landed ourselves right in the shit trying to find him!’
‘Gino…’ Jim said, looking at me like I belonged in a straightjacket.
I never had Jimbo down for being a thick twat, but, for some reason he didn’t seem to be quite getting the gist of this.
‘Yeah, you know,’ I said, trying to get the bad news into his dense, Scottish skull, ‘Mister… ‘I’ll-do-my-own-fucking-thing-Gino’! Your bloody cameraman who doesn’t give a toss! Remember, he came with me to Gadaffi’s place?’ Jim nodded, staring at me like I was a gibbering idiot. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve lost him in the compound – shit, this is gonna be a nightmare!’ Even I could hear the stress in my voice.
‘Fucking-hell, JC…’ Jim said, still looking at me like I was a fruitcake. ‘…you’ve been out in the sun too long, mate. Gino’s over there!’ With that, he turned and pointed over towards a large pile of concrete slabs that lay behind me.
Sure enough, right on top of the slabs, there was Gino. The ponytailed prick was completely oblivious to my predicament as he stood there, happily fiddling away with his camera.
‘I don’t fucking believe it!’ I exclaimed, staring across towards the source of my latest nightmare. ‘When the hell did he get back?’
‘He’s been back for hours, mate. He came back in a taxi. He’s been tossing himself off all night over the pictures he got in the compound – he said that you and Andi knew where he was!’
I just stared at the big fella and shook my head in disgust.
Jim started to get the drift, perhaps he wasn’t that thick after all.
‘Don’t tell me that he didn’t tell you, he never just… no way! He didn’t just fuck-off on his own, did he?’ ‘He said that you knew! He definitely said that he’d told you, what the...’ Jim was aghast.
‘My arse, he told us!’ I said, angrily. ‘He knew where we were. Jesus, I’ve been pulling my hair out for hours over that guy! He must have walked straight past us!’
To be honest, and although I was absolutely fuming at the time, the sense of relief, which flooded into my stomach, was almost overwhelming. Gino was lucky that the passing of time had calmed me down a touch, ten years earlier and I’d most likely have run over and punched his lights out, just for being a tosser.
I grabbed my pack and went to sit down somewhere; anywhere would have done as I just needed to take the weight of my feet. Jim took me across to a large gantry of some sort, which stood by the side of the square. The tall, metal construction was based on top of some more concrete slabs and there was a big enough space underneath it for us to quite comfortably squeeze ourselves into. It was a good idea as the overhang provided us with plenty of protection from any falling bullets. We took ten minutes out, just sitting and smoking and watching what was going on. As we sat there, Jim and I swapped details of the day’s events and generally chilled-out for a while.
By now the crew were in full-swing. The camera lights blazed away, the techs were running around, laying out cable and working on all their gizmos. Andi was on top of the slabs, standing in front of the camera and going through her rehearsals, earpiece in place as someone very far away talked her through the upcoming sequence of a live show. Gino and Bill stood behind the camera, adjusting the picture and shouting over to the techs when they wanted something changing.
All things apart, these guys knew what they were doing and you couldn’t possibly fault them for their ability to get the job done under the most difficult of circumstances. Their job was to go live to a massive, world-wide audience, no matter where they were and what was happening. It has to be said, they were very good at that job and I admired them for that. I smiled to myself at the thoughts. I felt calmer now, seeing the crew all back together and realising that we had just been through a day in history, whilst managing to escape unharmed, gave me a sense of satisfaction.
And Gino, well… he may well have been a great cameraman, but that didn’t mean to say he didn’t have a good blow to the face still coming his way. It was an ironic thought, ironic because unbeknownst to me, Gino was going to step much closer to the mark than was good for him. In fact, in only a few days’ time he would have crossed the line completely.
***
That night in Martyr Square passed by in blur of noise – and when I say ‘noise’ I mean lots of it. Thousands of people turned up to celebrate what they saw as the liberation of Tripoli. This was mostly true, I supposed, but I also knew that there were several areas within the city where fighting was still going on, and even as we sat there telling the world of the day’s amazing events, people were still dying.
The square beca
me surrounded by convoys of technicals – each and every one of them making sure they had a good blast on their heavy weapons. The noise of the quad-barrelled, anti-aircraft guns, firing just ten feet away from you is not something I would recommend for any longer than about thirty-seconds – we endured more than five hours of it. Plus, there were all the other people with guns, every one of them firing off their personal weapons with complete abandon. I even saw kids and women, happily enjoying the chance to have a quick play with the men’s ‘toys’. By the end of the night, my head felt like it had an axe embedded in the middle of it, whilst my brain had seemingly turned into nothing more than a lump of quivering, noise-sensitive jelly.
We talked to hundreds of people, maybe more, all of them literally jumping for joy, thanking us for telling their story, thanking the west for helping and, most of all, thanking God for their good fortune. Seeing that we were obviously hungry and thirsty, one guy disappeared into the throngs of people, only to return about twenty minutes later with his family in tow. All of them were carrying plastic bags. The man’s wife arrived and spread a blanket on the ground, whereupon we were treated to feast that was definitely fit for a king.
The food was great, and I knew that they had been very generous as supplies were extremely scarce in Tripoli at that time. We ate grilled fish, several Arabic stew dishes and bowl-after-bowl of delicious, spicy, Libyan soup. Add to that the mountains of locally-baked bread along with plenty of ice-cold fizzy drinks and water and you can imagine how soon we were stuffed to the gunnels. It was the first decent hot meal I’d had in about four days, and we literally had to beg them not to bring us another course.
The live shots went fine, from what I could see, which wasn’t much as I don’t get involved in that side of things. No, all I do is to wander around the periphery of the crew’s working area, keeping an eye on things and making sure that any locals don’t get too carried away and barge into the camera or Andi as she’s in the middle of a live broadcast.
Jim kept an eye on the drivers as they, too, were very excited and we didn’t need them wandering off. I’d actually managed to get a quick call through to London on the satellite-phone, using the opportunity to give them an update on our situation. They informed me that Rory’s casualties were all Okay and that he and the others were back at base and all in one-piece.
By 02:30hrs on the 24th of August, we were shattered – the crowd were still going strong and we needed to be going home, well… back to the farmhouse. Wearily, the crew packed everything away into the vehicles. It was an onerous task and took longer than it should have done due to everyone being so shattered – the stress and heat we had endured that day having taken its toll.
The drive back through the darkness was non-eventual and apart from being constantly stopped at the checkpoints, the only thing we saw was dozens of vehicles heading into the city. I kept my eyes open as I had heard reports that Gadaffi’s lot were still on the prowl, dressing as rebels to disguise themselves. Apparently a couple of other press crews had been fired upon by such people. Andi and Bill were in my Toyota and both of them were fast asleep, heads thrown back against the headrests and dead to the world. I kept myself awake by talking to Raouf, laughing softly as we shared the memories of the previous day’s madness, eyes burning with tiredness and cigarette smoke.
The car was in silence as we rolled onto the forecourt of the farm. By now the tiredness had kicked-in fully and even Raouf and I were barely awake. When Gracie saw the state of her people, she immediately forbade any more work that night and ushered everyone over to the steps of the veranda, where, without argument, we all collapsed in a heap. Gracie had prepared a massive pot of hot tea… I could have kissed her for that, the sour-faced bitch… and in a short time the wonders of a hot brew soon began to work their magic.
The first thing we did was to find-out how the casualties were. By all accounts they were fine, the cameraman had only sustained a flesh-wound and the driver’s eye injury was only going to be a temporary one. Both were fine – the cameraman, Ralf, was currently enroute the Tunisian border, whilst the injured driver had been sent home with a pocket full of cash. Once recovered, he would re-join us in Tripoli.
Even though we were shattered, all of us stayed up way too late, regaling each other with tales of the day’s events. It was a good time and helped us to bond a bit. The only person who didn’t have much to say, was… yeah, you guessed – Gino. He sat in silence, giving me some dark looks every time I cracked a joke or recounted some of the things that Andi and I had seen. I couldn’t have cared less. Gino knew that he’d been bang out of order, and I wasn’t going to help him feel any better, the idiot. ‘Fuck-him!’ I thought to myself, secretly hoping that it wasn’t going to be the way in which he continued to operate.
Yeah, well…we can all have blind hope, can’t we?
By 04:00hrs we had said all we could say and one-by-one everybody started to drift off to bed. Rory and I were last to go, spending a few moments in making sure that everything was squared-away and that all the vehicle keys were where we could get to them. We also had a quick check of the walled perimeter of the farm. Being as satisfied as we could be – people like us, in places like that, are very rarely satisfied, especially without an armful of guns – we said our goodnights and headed for the sack. Rory’s pit was in the main house, whilst my mattress lay in a small outhouse several yards away.
‘Jake…’ Andi’s voice came out of the darkness.
I turned towards the sound, peering into the darkened interior of the mud-walled barn that lay next to the house.
‘Jake, over here,’ she said. ‘I’m in the barn.’
‘Yeah, I see you,’ I murmured, walking softly over to where I could see the pale glow of her face and hair.
‘What’s up?’ I asked, standing in the doorway.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I only wanted to have a quiet cigarette with you, just to say a massive ‘thank you’ for watching my back today!’
‘Hey, that’s no problem; it’s all part of…’
‘…the service?’ she said, with a low chuckle.
I shrugged, giving her a grin as I did so.
Andi said, ‘I’ve been doing this a long time, Mister Collins, and I have been in plenty of dodgy situations before, but today was something else entirely! And, just so you know – so were you!’
I held out my cigarettes so she could help herself, cupping the lighter in my hand and sparking her up once she’d taken one. She looked up at me in the orange glow of my Zippo, smiling as she lit her smoke. The way the light reflected in her eyes made the whole thing felt surreal. I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t know what to do. I knew what I wanted to do, but that was an entirely different matter.
So, taking a deep breath, I said, ‘Come on, trouble – let’s cut the clandestine stuff and go and have one last brew on the steps, shall we? This type of thing gets people’s tongues wagging…’
She giggled, just the once, a sound that I would remember for a long time afterwards. Turning away from the darkened temptress of the old barn, we ambled over to the steps and did as I had suggested. Spending an extra half-an-hour making small-talk and drinking tea, Andi and I sat on the steps and watched the dawn slowly creep into the clear, Libyan sky.
‘Okay,’ I said, eventually. ‘I’ve got to get some head-down, Andi. I’m absolutely knackered!’
‘Yeah, me too,’ she replied, rising to her feet. ‘I’ll see you in the morning – don’t get up too early, the other crew are going to go and earn their keep tomorrow, and you’ll be glad to hear that Gino’s going with them...’ Andi grinned, saying: ‘Gracie says that we should have an easy day, but I’ve heard that before….’ With that, she headed for her bed, stopping at the door just as she entered the farmhouse.
Turning back to me she said, ‘Night, Jake – and I meant what I said: thanks a lot; you did a great job.’
‘No dramas, Andi. I’ll see you in the morning, sleep well.’
&
nbsp; ‘I’ll try,’ she said, giving me a last look at that killer dimple before turning away and disappearing into the building.
I stood and stared at the door as it closed behind her. I knew that I was on dangerous ground. Rule number one: ‘You don’t screw the crew, not ever.’ But this one, she was something else; there was just something about her. I didn’t know what, but I knew that I was getting in deep…
‘Jake! Just shut-the-fuck-up, will you? Pull your head out of your arse and go to bed – she’s probably just manipulating you so that she can do whatever she wants to over the next few days.’ I shook my head to dispel those sensible thoughts and headed for my pit.
I must have been tired that night because I slept the sleep of a dead man. Not once did the demons of my past come and see if I was having a good time, which was unusual, because those bastards usually turned up and ruined my dreams at any time they felt like it.
No, that night I slept, and slept well.
10
Easy Day
Andi had been right about the next day being an easy one. I slept until gone 10am. After doing a nice little session of fitness training – just some push-ups, sit-ups and a few sprints along the perimeter wall of the farm – I had a quick shower and then grabbed a bite to eat. Boiled eggs and sardines were on the menu again.
Afterwards, I set-to the task of repacking all my gear as yesterday’s running around had depleted some of my supplies of rehydrate powder and other basics. I needed to replace the chocolate bars, water, and several-dozen headache tablets. With that job complete, I headed for the veranda with a fresh brew in hand. I was alone and so, sitting in the warm sunlight, I prepared a report on my laptop, giving details of the situation so far. As soon as one of our techs showed his face, I would get them to connect me to the internet and send the email to London.
I was soon joined by the other members of the crew, one-by-one slipping out into the daylight to sit in quiet contemplation whilst sipping on a hot brew. Jim and I went and checked the vehicles, making sure they were topped up from our supplies of diesel and that all the tyres were in good order. After that we simply sat and sunbathed on the veranda, watching as the rest of the crew sorted their equipment out.