by Paul A. Rice
She laughed, said something about being absolutely loaded and then, with a quick touch of my hand, stood up and went back to join the techs whilst they sorted out what time the live shots were going to occur.
The rest of the afternoon was a walk-in-the-park for me. The crew were so busy with the getting their show on air, that all I had to do was to keep them hydrated, passing them bottle-after-bottle of water and encouraging them to eat some of the sardines, bread and chocolate, which we’d fetched along. I mainly did that to stop myself from being bored. To be honest, I was bored and the heat was so bad that I just felt like taking a nap. I know it sounds crazy, but the sound of gunfire was so constant that I no longer noticed it. I also made an effort to make sure the crew were all in cover when some stray lead came whizzing past our position. Only a few times did I feel that someone may have actually taken a pot-shot at us. The loud cracking of a bullet under full-steam is markedly different to the buzzing and whining noises that ricochets make. The only similarity is in their shared ability to kill you.
All the while the battle raged below us, NATO had stopped their bombing and I took that as a sign of the rebels being too close to the target, which meant the aerial bombardment had to cease for fear of friendly casualties being incurred. It didn’t make any difference to Gadaffi’s troops – the amount of lead being hurled towards the compound was horrific. I for one would definitely not have wanted to be on the receiving end of such an onslaught.
We could see the huge water towers being engaged by small-arms’ fire. Puffs of concrete dust flying into the air as the rebels pinned down yet another enemy sniper. There were several of those towers on the route towards their objective, and as far as I could make out, all of them were occupied by snipers. I made a mental note to make sure that when we moved towards the compound… which I knew we would do, eventually – the press follow the story and that’s where the big story was going to be… that we waited a while to ensure that all the snipers were killed or captured before we passed through the area.
I could see the area of the compound, but the buildings that lay between our position and it, prevented a clear view into the place. It was no big deal as there were soon several large fires in the area, and they gave us a good idea of the location. Gino and Bill zoomed in on the blazing buildings and it was then that the news desk decided that perhaps now would be a good time to go live. The shots must have been awesome to their huge audience; tall pillars of black smoke rising into the air from at least three different areas within Gaddafi’s compound provided the backdrop to the rippling waves of gunfire, the sound of which could be heard throughout the city. Yeah, their bosses back in whichever city they were in – London or New York – must have been well-pleased with their crews’ work that day.
Meanwhile, I was busily looking through my binos and trying to figure out exactly where the Hotel Rixos lay in relation to the fearsome battle that raged to our front. The Rixos lay in quite close proximity to the compound and that whole area was known to be full of pro-government supporters. I wondered how the news crews, who had been held captive in there for a few days now, were faring under the heat of battle. I tried ringing some of the security guys that I knew were still with their crews in the hotel, but the phones were now completely useless. I mentally crossed my fingers for them, hoping that they all got out in one-piece.
The only communication that I did manage to make that afternoon was a quick call to London on the crew’s sat-phone. I gave them a situation report and our location. I also told them that in my opinion we would be going into the compound as soon as it fell.
My opinion wasn’t wrong.
At about three o’clock that afternoon, Jim came up to the roof with a rebel fighter close behind him. According to their sources, the rebel army was now on the verge of breaking into Bab al-Aziziya. Gaddafi’s forces had mostly fled, leaving only a handful of foreign mercenaries behind, who, by the sounds of things were getting the ‘good-news’, and getting it big time.
We told Andi and Bill and they immediately wanted to go to the compound. I agreed but advised them that perhaps we should stay put for a while whilst the sniper threat was neutralised.
‘We’ve been going flat-out all day,’ I said. ‘How about we take ten minutes to get some water and food down our necks, and…’ I nodded towards the plethora of cables, wires and equipment that lay scattered all across the rooftop, ‘…that’ll give the techs a bit of time to sort out their gear – this place looks like a frigging, chaos-grenade has gone off up here!’ They agreed, but I could see by the look on Gino’s face that he didn’t give a toss – all he wanted to do was get into the action.
‘Tough-shit,’ I thought. ‘Andi and Bill are in charge here, and I’ll just get them to do the thinking…’
As it turned out, Gino would have his chance for thinking later that afternoon, but his idea of ‘thinking’ would turn out to be a totally different one to mine, or anyone else’s for that matter. The man was a liability, I just didn’t know how big a one, not yet I didn’t.
Bill told the crew that we were going to move, wearily they began to disassemble there pile of equipment, all of us wobbling up-and-down the stairs with the heavy boxes. It wasn’t long before we were all sweating like crazy once more.
Jim had met a couple of rebel guys who had come up from the rear and were just readying themselves to push forwards. ‘They say we can hook onto the back of their convoy,’ he said. ‘I reckon that’s a good idea, at least they’ve got a shit-load of weapons if it kicks-off. What do you reckon?’
I agreed. Okay, the rebels were a target for any of Gadaffi’s troops who had slipped the net, and following them may have increased our risk somewhat… But, if we were caught on our own then things would almost certainly be worse. We were western, we were unarmed and, most of all, we were press. Anyone of those three would have been enough to get us killed by fleeing government troops.
In the end, it was decided that Jim, Bill, and the technical crew should make their way into the centre of Tripoli – Green Square, to be precise – whilst Andi, Gino and I would head for the compound to get some footage to be used during the next live spot. Jim’s crew would, in the meantime, set up the satellite and other equipment in the square, ready for when we got back with the new pieces.
With the vehicles packed, we said our goodbyes to each other, vowed to stay safe, and then headed off into the city, splitting at a big flyover – Jim’s crew going towards the port and Green Square, whilst my gang headed towards Gadaffi’s compound, hot on the heels of a small, rebel convoy. This was a big one for us – I knew that getting into the compound just after the rebels had kicked the doors down, was likely to quite an adventure.
I wasn’t wrong.
8
The Lion’s Den
We were lucky; on the way to Tripoli’s ‘big party’ my crew were not involved in a single incident, managing to cruise straight through the madness without stopping. Others had not been so lucky and we saw several ambulances racing the other way, sirens warbling and lights flashing. There were also numerous other vehicles doing the same thing and we caught glimpses of the wounded inside them. There were also scores of pickups loaded with men, all struggling to save the life of a casualty that lay below our line of sight, bloodied rags trailing off the back and drip-bags being held high as they came roaring past.
We reached the compound gates amidst a melee of rebel fighters, medical crews, civilians and other press teams. Somehow, through the utter chaos, we managed to find a route straight to the area that lay right in front of the gates. Raouf told us that this was as far as he could go, and so we all piled out. The noise from inside the walled compound was horrific – the sound of gunfire and exploding RPG rockets, being launched into the air and then exploding all over the place, filled every sense I possessed.
‘Wait here, please, Raouf,’ I told the driver, almost shouting to be heard above the noise. ‘Whatever happens, do not leave this area for any reaso
n – if we have to get out, then we’re going to need you!’
‘You can depend on me, Mr Jake,’ he replied, sincerely. ‘I have your life – it is my responsibility.’
‘Okay, thanks a lot!’ I said, shaking his hand.
Turning to the crew, I said, ‘Right, come on then, you two – let’s have some of this, shall we?’ They didn’t need any second invitation.
As one, the three of us jostled our way into the maddening crowd that was streaming into Gadaffi’s former safe-haven. I took a quick look backwards to ensure that I could remember which gate we had left the vehicle at, I knew that there were plenty of different gates in the compound and we weren’t guaranteed to return through this one, especially if we had to run... The ones we entered through had been blown completely off their hinges – those steel gates must have weighed a couple of tonnes at least, but there they were, bent, buckled and bullet-riddled, laying several metres away from their proper position.
Within twenty metres of being through the gates, Gino went straight into character. It started when Andi said that she needed to go live on the network by using her sat-phone; the deadline was but a few minutes away and the news desk would patch the recorded pictures from the day over her voice as she spoke – the whole ambience of the piece, with all the live noise in the background of her phone-call, would be an award-winner.
‘We have to stop somewhere so that I can talk,’ she said. ‘If I try and walk around then we’ll drop the satellite signal – Gino, you stay with us and get some shots of everyone passing, and then we can patch it…’
Gino pulled a face, hefted his camera on his shoulder and turned on his heel. ‘I’ll be back here in an hour,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘There’s some big shit happening further inside the compound and I intend to go and get some shots of it! I’ll meet you back in here in one hour…’
Before either Andi or I could say anything, he’d disappeared into the crowd of people who were now rushing into the compound.
To be fair, Gino was right in one way. All the best shots were probably happening deeper inside the compound, but Andi had to stick to the deadline. The viewers in the USA would be watching the news, and there could be no missing such a deadline. He should have stayed and waited until she was done, then we could have stuck together and gone into the interior to get some more shots for the later pieces.
But not Gino, he’d rather just do his own thing – I’d only worked with the guy for one day and already he was getting right on my tits. Oh, and he had a ponytail, too. You do know what sits beneath a pony’s tail, don’t you? Yeah, well… enough said.
I looked at Andi and shrugged my shoulders, saying: ‘Well, it looks like you’re stuck with me – I can’t be in two places at once, so… lead-on, boss-lady!’ I didn’t say anything derogatory about Gino, it wasn’t the done thing. For all I knew, Andi and he may well have been best buddies. Wrong again, Jake.
Andi shook her head angrily. ‘What a prick,’ she said. ‘He’s always the same, a fucking, selfish asshole!’ Even the way she said ‘arsehole’, made me smile, bloody yanks – screwing with the Queen’s English.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ I said. ‘It’s just you and me now, and I’ll make damn sure that we’re Okay – see if you can dial the desk and let’s get to it. Oh, and if you see me running then just you make sure that you’re right behind me… I may be old, but I can move when I have to!’ I grinned and leaned forward to tighten her chinstrap.
‘Thanks, Jake – I’ll just bet you can…’ she said, with a cheeky grin. ‘You lead the way and I’ll be right behind you, don’t you worry!’ She grinned again, flashing her pearly-whites. Then, like the true professional she was, immediately went into full-on, journo mode.
For more than an hour we stood, deep inside the compound whilst Andi did her thing. Whatever satellite-link she was using, worked a damn-sight better than mine. I stood in front of her, hand upon her shoulder, watching her back and gently pushing her down when the insanity of our surroundings got a bit too close. Several times the branches and leaves of surrounding trees exploded as wayward bullets flew past. Ricochets constantly flew overhead, whining and whistling their way past at high-speed. Their sound was regularly interspersed with the much louder, cracking noise of high-velocity missiles under full power.
Andi faced towards me, I guided her backwards as she walked and talked. It would have been simpler if she had just turned around and faced forwards, but I think that she was so use to having a camera in front of her that she simply went onto auto-pilot. She never resisted me, calmly talking to her anchor-man on the other end of the phone, never once faltering in her commentary of all the sights and sounds she was seeing on this, the maddest day of all time.
It was a mind-bending experience to be in there on that day. I had seen plenty of crazy things before, but this topped the list. It was day in history. I could hardly believe that we were on the inside of the compound, never mind anything else. The place had been a fortress, impenetrable, imposing, impervious, and now, impossibly, turned to ruins. The fortress, for it truly was such, lay surrounded by huge, twenty-foot-high, pale-green walls regularly interspersed with massive guard-towers made from solid concrete. Thick, bullet-proof windows stared menacingly out onto the surrounding streets. There were miles of razor-wire, coiled viciously on the top of the wall. Numerous steel gates, tall, solid and impassable, gave entry to the place, but only for those who were welcome.
Gadaffi’s was not a small, military, compound in the classic sense, nothing of the sort. No – Bab al-Aziziya was a very large place, an entire village in its own right. The overall size was easily the size of a large housing-estate back in the UK. From previous visits, whilst accompanying the press on my other jobs, back in the Rixos days before the liberation, I knew the place to be filled with many different buildings, all of lavish design. There were mosques, offices and villas, plus at least two, big, tent-like constructions where meetings and celebrations would be held. Gadaffi loved his tents, making a great deal out of the Bedouin heritage of his tribe, if that’s what he was – to be honest, I didn’t really know and nor did I really care. Dozens of military-related buildings were also situated on the inside of the compound, including row-upon-row of thick, concrete bunkers, which were long, curved-roof affairs, like aircraft hangars. Then there were the tunnels, their hatches lay everywhere, but no-one knew exactly where all those tunnels led. The rebels were soon to find out.
Finally, there was his crowning monument, a gold-coloured fist reaching up thirty-feet to snatch the effigy of an American fighter-jet out of the sky – I found the fact that the jet looked more like a Russian Mig, rather amusing. The golden fist stood in front of a bombed-out building, which the yanks had hit many years before, allegedly killing one of Gadaffi’s daughters. (We were told later, that she never had been killed, and was, in fact, a doctor at one of the medical establishments in Tripoli – and a very-privileged doctor, by all accounts.)
On this day, the entire monolithic monstrosity of his compound had been brought to its knees. Great lumps of the wall bulged outwards onto the streets, the blast of airstrikes having pushed them over with the ease of a child knocking a sandcastle down. The tents were now on fire, as were large areas of the well-kept gardens, wayward tracer-bullets igniting anything they came into contact with. There was so much devastation around that it was difficult for me to comprehend – too many sights for my tired brain to keep up with.
Yes, it was a day in history all right. I watched as the fall of Bab al-Aziziya unfolded before my very eyes. It was mayhem, people running everywhere, screaming, shouting, shooting and looting.
Eventually I manoeuvred Andi so that her back was against a tall, concrete barrier. I would have liked to push her all the way into the reinforced guard-hut that lay ten-feet away, but I knew that being inside a building would ensure we lost the satellite signal.
The firing was incessant – a solid, deafening noise of weapons being discharged. Mo
st of the firing was now celebratory, and that was half the problem. Some of the people, who were blasting off with everything ranging from 9mm pistols all the way to vehicle-mounted 40mm anti-aircraft weapons and carelessly discharged RPGs, were clearly beyond the realms of sanity. Their joy-induced madness was in no way helping their already rudimentary weapon-handling skills one iota. I knew the chances of getting whacked by an ecstatic, gun-toting, ‘happy-chappy’, were very strong. Bullets and missiles were literally flying all over the place. I had never seen anything quite as crazy in my entire life.
Andi stayed calm, keeping her voice nice and steady as she gave the world her telephone commentary. Only a pair of fiercely-blinking, blue eyes gave clue as to the duress she was under. I stayed close, hand on her shoulder with my eyes and ears on full receive. Every so often I would observe something worth diverting her attention to.
The sight of a middle-aged man, smartly dressed in a pinstripe suit, carrying at least four Italian assault rifles still in their fancy plastic cases as he headed home from a very successful looting session of Mr Gadaffi’s den, was not something one gets to see every day. I would beckon the looters over and get them to tell Andi their story, which she in turn would relay to whoever it was on the other end of the phone. We saw kids, teenagers, middle-aged-men, and grandfathers, all carrying some kind of weapon out of the compound. Add to this the convoys of rebel fighters’ vehicles that came streaming out, filled to the brim with great piles of ammunition boxes and stacks of weapons and you can only imagine the half of it.
Most of them were smiling and laughing. ‘Where is Gadaffi, where is he now?’ They would shout. ‘Free Libya, Gadaffi is gone – we don’t need Gadaffi!’ By the looks on their faces, I pretty-much figured that old ‘Mr G’ wouldn’t to have wanted to be there to argue that particular point, not right then he wouldn’t have.
People came out carrying plasma TV-sets, furniture, computers, and anything else that wasn’t nailed down and that they could carry out by hand. One man, tall and very well-dressed came running over to me. Discovering that I was from England, he reached forward and offered me a gift. Looking down, I saw that he was holding out an ornate wooden box. Lifting the lid, I peered inside. On a bed of red velvet, there lay two intricately-decorated Glock 9mm pistols. The brace of silver-engraved guns sported some extra-long magazines, I could see them protruding from their housings and they, too, looked to be silver plated.
