Tears in Tripoli: A Jake Collins Novel (Jake Collins Novels Book 1) Page 3

  I sent an affirmative reply and headed for the shower.

  If I had of known what was heading my way, I would most likely have passed on the shower, grabbed my gear and immediately fucked-off back to the airport. That’s what I now tell myself that I should have done, but in all honesty it probably wouldn’t have made much difference even if I had of know.

  That’s what is so great about this job – you know that there’s going to be some shenanigans, but you also know that it’s what you signed-up for. It’s in the nature of the job

  Falling into the chasm of sleep, I wondered what the blonde-haired woman would have made of all this, whether she would have minded me doing my job, whether she liked a beer, whether she would have given a toss…

  4

  Risky Road Trip

  I awoke early and rose immediately. Putting on my gym kit, I went to find somewhere to work up a sweat. The gym was basic but it did the job, I also went for a quick jog down on the deserted beach, sprinting up and down for a good ten minutes until I was panting like the devil. On the way back I passed the pool, it looked too good to miss so I dumped my T-shirt and dived-in wearing my running shorts, the water was cold and I warmed myself up by pushing out a few-dozen lengths. Once back in my room, I showered, got changed and waited for my lift.

  Mus picked me up at 08:30hrs. He fetched a new Kia four-by-four, it smelled of leather and that was good, because both he and I were hung-over. The smell of stale beer on our breaths was only made bearable by the car’s new interior and the pine-scented air-freshener, which he had stuck into one the dashboard vents.

  Like I’d asked for on the night before, Mus had rounded-up all the things I felt that I may need for the next week or so in a war-torn country. The back seats were now full of bags containing bread and tinned sardines. He told me that he had also managed to get lots of chocolate bars, plenty of biscuits and some coffee and tea bags, too. There was a whole stack of bottled water, piled into the foot wells of the passenger compartment. He had also acquired one-hundred litres of diesel, which he had in plastic cans in the boot.

  As we zoomed along, heading for the border, I had a quick rummage around in the bags. Mus had done me proud – there were all sorts of food stuffs in them. I knew that it would see us through for a least a week and that settled my mind a bit. Mus had also purchased sim-cards for both of the Libyan telephone networks.

  I dragged out a couple of my spare Nokias and slotted the cards into them. I always carry at least three extra phones in addition to my Blackberry – you can never have too many phones in this job and I’ve pulled myself out of trouble on more than one occasion by having spares available.

  All international sim-cards are barred when you get into Libya, and so you need the local ones, but they’re monitored so you have to watch what you’re saying. Because of that, I also had my Iridium sat-phone, which came with a magnetic antenna for the car’s roof. In addition I had various battery chargers, ranging from a fancy, solar-powered gizmo to a little handheld generator that would happily charge the phone’s battery, just so long as you didn’t mind spending about an hour walking around and cranking its handle like a maniac. I also had several spare batteries and an in-car charger. I was about as ready as I could be when it came to keeping comms.

  I was going to have to be.

  We stopped after about two hours. It was a welcome break and now that the hangover was receding, my hunger had kicked-in with a vengeance. I’d given solids a miss at breakfast, preferring several cups of tea instead. The hangover was bad because, as I suddenly realised, I hadn’t eaten since breakfast the day before. No wonder I was starving. Mus took me into a roadside café where he was obviously well-known – in truth, Mus was well-know just about everywhere in this neck of the woods. That’s why he was our fixer. The guy behind the counter soon delivered a chicken baguette that came filled with some spicy sauce. I didn’t care how spicy it was and wolfed the whole lot down in seconds. We washed our food down with a cold Coke and finally, a cup of the thickest, strongest, black coffee I’ve ever tasted.

  Two cigarettes later and we were on the road again – Mus driving with one hand, no seatbelt on and constantly talking into his mobile phone, whilst swerving around any and all objects that we came across. How we survived that trip is beyond me. It’s always the same – you are so focussed on the task in hand that you forget about the fact that your greatest risk will be taken in the car journey just to get you to where the real works starts. Luckily for me, my fixer was a great driver, but he still scared the shit out of me.

  I’m pretty sure he did it on purpose, the funny fucker...

  Mus informed me that we couldn’t go across the most northerly border crossing – Gadaffi’s guys still controlled that area and were arresting any westerners on sight. Instead we had to go all the way south and cross over at a much smaller, less well-used, border point, one that the rebels now controlled.

  ‘It’s only three hours from here,’ he said, swerving around some crazy bastard in a rusty truck who pulled out from a track on our right, ‘we can get you over down there, no problem. My friend, he works there. He gives us a stamp for your passport, and then you can go over – Wahid will be waiting for you in the other car and then he drives you to Tripoli, no problems, Jake – no problems at all!’

  ‘Great stuff, Mus!’ I said. ‘Is Wahid a good driver?’

  Mus gave me an evil grin, saying: ‘Oh yes, Mr Jake – he’s very good! The best driver in Libya – he’s only had two accidents this week! Yes, Wahid is a very good driver for sure!’ He burst out laughing. ‘You don’t believe in our saying ‘Insha'Allah’ do you, Jake?’ he asked, with another chuckle.

  ‘No, Mus – I’m afraid that I don’t,’ I replied. ‘Driving like a twat has bugger-all to do with God’s will, mate!’

  Mus burst out laughing again.

  Like I said, he was a really funny fucker…

  We smoked and talked our way down to the border crossing – luckily for me, God was obviously laughing right alongside Mus. We made it in one-piece, and even though I could feel the grey hairs pushing out of my head, we didn’t hit a single thing along the way.

  Tunisia is dusty, dry place. It’s under-developed and there’s a lot of litter, laying in swathes alongside the roads. Why they couldn’t get their shit together and sort the basics out baffled me. But, they had attained some degree of democracy and the future lay before them, maybe it would even be a bright one.

  It’s sad really, if you’re like me. I’ve been to almost every crazy place in the world and I couldn’t really tell you what they’re like – one place just blurs into the next. I’d seen it all before and had long ago stopped looking at the sights. Crimson sunrises over shimmering desert sands did nothing for me these days. In all honesty, there were many times when I struggled to even remember what country I was actually in.

  Arriving at the border, we pulled up short of the crossing and waited whilst Mus made another phone-call. Two minutes later and a border guard came wandering over. Mus joined him outside the car and the pair stood there, smoking and chatting for about ten minutes. After a while they came across to me and Mus asked me to hand over my passport. His friend ambled off with it in his pocket and disappeared into a little hut on our side of the border.

  The crossing was in total chaos. Hundreds of vehicles were lined-up on either side of the border. Some of the big trucks looked like they had been there for days. If that had been in a western country there would have been hell to pay. Over here the people just took it all in their stride. Groups of men were gathered around, laughing and joking. Others were queued at the passport counter, which was a dirty, concrete building with a tiny window. The guy inside was so laid-back that he may as well have been asleep. The whole place was filled with a complete lack of urgency.

  It had been the same on the other border, up north, but instead of the laid-back atmosphere, there had been a palpable sense of intimidation – that’s what having a dictatorshi
p brought to the party. When I’d crossed into Libya before, at the previously-mentioned, northern point, the subsequent wait once your passport had disappeared was never less than two hours, and that’s if you were lucky. Then the guards would start eyeing you up, fresh western meat, just asking for a good searching. It was a real pain.

  Today was different – in less than five minutes, Mus’ friend came back over to the car. Mus asked me to get out of the car and say hello, so I obliged him. After a few hearty handshakes and some cheek-to-cheek rubbing with the guy, I had my passport back in hand. It had a nice, shiny, Tunisian exit-stamp in it, too. Now all I had to do was get across to the Libyan side and obtain the same thing from them, only this time it needed to be an entry stamp.

  Well, you could have knocked me down with a sweaty sock. Whatever Mus had said, or whomever it was that he knew, obviously worked a treat. I was across that border and into the second car in no more than a few minutes – the rebel guards didn’t even want to search my kit. They even let Mus accompany me into the Libyan side.

  All they kept saying was: ‘Welcome to free Libya – FREE Libya!’ This would be followed by a burst of celebratory gunfire, usually from their AK-47 assault rifles, which they pointed into the air and let loose with casual abandon. It was cool, but I did wonder where all the rounds were landing, especially when one or two of them got carried away and let rip with half-a-dozen rounds from the heavy calibre, anti-aircraft guns, which they had mounted on the back of their pickup trucks. I found that by just plastering a big, cheesy grin across my face and holding up the ‘V’ for victory sign with my fingers, that most of them would instantly smile back. I cross-loaded my gear into Wahid’s car underneath a hail of aerial gunfire and the loud chanting of the rebel guards: ‘Free Libya, Allah u Akbar!’ Mus stood there grinning like a madman as he passed all my things across to me.

  Wahid was a tall, well-dressed Libyan man. He had a smile as big as Mus’ and an even bigger and newer Kia Four-by-four. It was white with blacked-out windows and sported a V6 engine. ‘It’s a very fast car, Mr Jake,’ he said, with a wild grin. My heart sank.

  I signed the receipt for Mus, just to clarify that he had done his part in the deal, and then slid into the passenger seat of Wahid’s motor. I was glad to see that there were airbags all round. I’m not a nervous passenger by any means, it’s just that I’ve seen so many accidents in these places, and also because I know that these guys don’t give a shit – in their minds it is genuinely a case of ‘God willing’.

  Mus reached into the window and shook my hand. ‘Take care, Jake,’ he said, jovially. ‘There’s a war going-on over here, you know?’

  ‘I know,’ I replied, raising my eyebrows. ‘I’ll see you when I come back over, Mus. Thanks a lot for all you’ve done, it’s been a great job and I’ll make sure that the boss knows about it – cheers!’

  He stood back from the car and gave a little wave. I slid the window up and watched him in the wing mirror, disappearing into the dust cloud that rose behind us as we roared away.

  Wahid was a good driver, very good. But he simply didn’t know how to spare the fucking horses. It was fortunate that it was Friday, being as it was the usual day off in this part of the world ensured that the roads were mostly clear. Within a mile of the border we were touching two hundred kilometres per hour. I seem to remember that equates to about one hundred twenty and miles per hour – it didn’t really matter, exactly. All that mattered was the fact that we were moving, and very quickly. We drove for nearly half-an-hour without stopping, the desert stretching out for kilometres on either side of the car, mountains rising in the distance. It was mostly barren down in that part of Libya. Only the odd farmhouse broke the monotony of the landscape. Every now and then there would be the sight of some half-finished buildings, most of them looking almost like the blocks of holiday apartments that could often be seen rising all over Spain. There was no holiday industry here in Libya as any westerners were immediately classed as spies. Wahid explained that the buildings had been constructed by Gadaffi’s government, to be mostly occupied by ‘his people’, but now with the revolution in full-swing it seemed that the regime had other things to occupy their minds.

  That was the thing over here, there was so much tribalism and so much history, so much corruption and so much suppression, that as a westerner it was doubtful if you could have ever understood even the half of it. One person’s lie was another person’s truth – and no-one dared tell the truth in Libya. To do so would likely in end in your disappearance. Hopefully those days were nearly at an end now.

  There were the odd signs of battle, but not so that you notice if you were just casually looking. When I’d been here before it was the same, we very rarely saw any military hardware, government or otherwise. I suppose that was partly due to the fact that any military vehicles, at least on the government side, which dared to show their faces, were almost instantly annihilated by NATO airpower. Still, I would have expected to see more, even if it was smashed.

  We passed through a few towns where a few of the buildings had received some incoming fire, but even they were as of nothing compared to some of the places I had seen before. It was weird, almost as though something big had happened, an apocalypse, but a long, long time ago. It was as though I was passing through the scene of somewhere from another time, not through the middle of a war that was raging as we spoke.

  Eventually we stopped for a break. Just to take ten minutes to stretch our legs and have a bite to eat. I dug out some water and a chocolate bars, reaching over to offer my driver one of each.

  Wahid refused, saying: ‘It’s Ramadan, Mr Jake – remember?’

  ‘Oh shit! I’m sorry, Wahid, I completely forgot,’ I said.

  The sudden realisation just made matters worse for me and I was very glad of the fairly-decent supply of food in the back of the car. Getting anything to eat in the middle of a war, in a Muslim country, which just so happened to be in the middle of Ramadan, could be a slight problem.

  ‘Great,’ I thought, ‘this could be one long, hungry trip!’

  Mind you, it didn’t stop me tucking into a chocolate bar or having a smoke afterwards – I’m not a Muslim and any chance of me earning some points for my afterlife, are long-gone. Wahid just grinned and floored the accelerator. If he couldn’t starve me to death then I guessed that he’d be happy to have a good go at the car-crash method.

  Within a mile or two of being into Libya, my international phone had stopped working. Luckily for me, I had the two Libyan sim-cards – one for each of the networks. As soon as I switched-on my local phones I acquired a signal on both networks. I checked in with head-office in London and listened whilst they told me that Andy was well on the way and wouldn’t be more than about eight hours behind me. Also, the plan had changed – I was now to head to a town that lay about an hour’s drive to the west of Tripoli, a place called Zawiyah. I had been through there many times before. Apparently it had now been liberated, which meant it would be a good place to operate from in the early days. The office told me that some of the other guys, who were already in Libya, had found a farmhouse on the outskirts of Zawiyah, and so I was to head there as fast as I could.

  I asked Wahid if he knew where the place was.

  He shook his head and said: ‘Not really, Mr Jake – but it’s no problem, I will ask someone…’

  ‘Fair-play,’ I thought. ‘At this speed we’ll have plenty of time find the place before dark…’ I was wrong.

  It wasn’t long after those thoughts that we started to come across the checkpoints. The road to the more northerly border crossing had always been littered with checkpoints – Gadaffi’s troops checking everyone and everything that travelled that route. Well, now that the area I was in had been liberated, the checkpoints all belonged to the rebels, and there were dozens of the hastily-erected things. From now on, every junction, built-up area, crossroad and petrol station – all still closed with massive queues of cars lined up for miles-and-miles
, whilst the owners waited for fuel supplies to start getting through – had some sort of blockade and a few heavily-armed rebel fighters guarding them.

  If we were stopped once, Wahid and I must have been stopped at least thirty times. As soon as the fighters came over to the window, it would be a case of cue the big smile and ‘V’ sign. Only once did they actually look into the car to see who I was – Wahid just told the rebels that I was press and that would be that.

  ‘Welcome to free Libya!’ they would shout, and then blast off half a magazine of ammo, just to show me how free they really were. By the time we hit the outskirts of Zawiyah, I was completely battle-inoculated. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much random fire in my life, and I’ve seen a lot. Little did I know that it was to be as nothing compared to the things I was to see later that week.

  Four hours later and we rolled into the outskirts of Zawiyah – the place had been shot to hell. In the centre of the town there lay a large square. Every building surrounding the square was riddled with bullet holes and the gaping wounds left by tank rounds or RPG strikes. The must have been a massive fire-fight here – the TV coverage I’d watched before I arrived had shown some of it, but here tonight… in the half-light of a town bereft of electricity, and filled with joyously happy people, all tearing around in their cars, kids and family hanging out of the windows with rebel flags flying high… the scene was one of total destruction.

  Everywhere, people were basting off their weapons – teenagers were doing burnouts and doughnuts in their cars, wheels spinning until the tyre-smoke filled the air. Buildings still blazed away, rubble fell, and people cheered. ‘Allah u Akbar… Allah u Akbar! Libya free, Libya FREE!’ It was utter madness. The noise was literally deafening, a scene of total anarchy. ‘The regime is gone; we are free, free – free!’ That’s all they were saying, that and ‘God is Great…’ It was a huge outpouring of disbelief, of relief, and of joy. And let me tell you something: those Libyans, they sure know how to hold a celebration!