‘You don’t know, sir? Oh, is that so?’ Charlie opened the rear door, slotted in the laptop and pointed at me. ‘In!’
I saw it now. Charlie wanted me in the front because we were going to do a bit of hijacking.
He glowered at the driver as I got into the front passenger seat. ‘How far to camp?’
‘Just under an hour, sir. But I have to get permission to—’
Charlie’s hand told him to shut up. ‘Just drive. The flights are all leaving now; you’re leaving nobody behind. We’ll sort it out on the way. Can’t your fucking officers even organize a pick-up?’
He jumped into the back as the duty driver leaned across and flicked a switch on his radio, a small green thing tucked into the dash.
Charlie was quick off the mark. ‘Just get going, I don’t need to talk to anyone. No-one seems to know what day of the week it is anyway.’
The driver was flapping as he leaned back towards Charlie. ‘But, sir, I gotta call in when I leave, and I gotta tell them if I dropped off OK. It’s a standing order.’
There was no way we could stop him; it all had to appear routine. After all, Charlie was the one moaning about inefficiency. He was hardly the sort of man who would break a standing order.
‘Well, get on with it then. Let’s go.’
The driver started up the 110 and we left the airport perimeter. Charlie gave me a wink as he waited for the boy to finish speaking into the boom-mike headset.
‘That’s right. Two pax for our locale. But no work sheet?’
He shrugged at whatever was being said in response.
Charlie’s hand loomed over the driver’s shoulder. ‘Give me that.’
He barked into the headset. ‘Who is this?’ There was a pause. ‘Well, Sergeant Jay DiRita, I did not receive any joining instructions, not even the name of the person I have come all the way from Istanbul to see!’
Charlie listened to DiRita. ‘Oh, is that so? You don’t have any visitors scheduled for today? Well, Sergeant DiRita, now you do. We will be there soon to try to make sense of this total cock-up.’
He passed the headset forward to the driver and sat fuming out of the window.
I looked out at the parrot-coloured apartment blocks lining the dual carriageway, and hoped we got out in the cuds soon, so we could bin the driver and head for that border.
I scanned the dashboard. ‘Got a map?’
4
We continued along the dual carriageway towards the city. I glanced from time to time at the parrot- coloured apartment blocks while the duty driver over-concentrated on the road to avoid having to catch the eye of the monster in the back.
The map he’d handed me wasn’t much more than a commercial traveller’s guide to the main drags and towns, but at least I could see the Vasiani region, about thirty Ks north-east of the city. It looked like our current route would take us to the right, around the bottom of Tbilisi, then up towards the camp.
‘You haven’t got a better one, have you? I like to know where I’m going.’
He kept his eyes on the road. ‘’Fraid not, sir. The duty wagon only ever gets to go to and from the airport, and once we’re on this road, there’s not a helluva lot of choice.’
He took a right onto a single-carriage road. We were no longer in parrot country. A mile or two later we reached the mountains, and wove our way towards a sky filled with doom-laden clouds, massing for another downpour.
As we made our way down the other side, I saw the glare of brake lights. There were a couple of vehicles ahead of us, both slowing. Our driver changed down through the gears until we were creeping along at walking pace.
A hundred or so metres ahead, grey nylon sandbags had been piled into sangars each side of the road, and large concrete blocks had been positioned between them to channel the traffic.
I heard Charlie shifting in his seat behind me, and knew he’d seen it too. The same thoughts must have been racing through his head: were they going to ask for passports or ID? And even if they weren’t, had they read their papers or watched the news?
He leaned forward to give the driver another bollocking. ‘What’s the VCP for? Do we have to stop?’
‘Yessir. There’s checkpoints on all the approach roads to the city.’
On the far side of the VCP, a rusty old coach leaned precariously under the uneven load of crap strapped to its roof, and a line of cars waited impatiently behind it while soldiers with body armour and AKs checked out its passengers.
Charlie passed me the laptop bag. ‘Sort this thing out. I can’t get it to work.’
‘Yes, sir.’ I took it and got my head down. I made a bit of a meal of opening it up and fucking about with the power button until the screen started to flicker.
We were now the third vehicle in line. A Georgian soldier was heading towards us on the driver’s side, his weapon slung over his shoulder. A group of his mates were gathered on my side of the road, in the shadow of the sangar.
‘Can I have your IDs, sirs? They’ll want them alongside my work ticket.’
‘Unbelievable,’ Charlie fumed. ‘We’re here to help these people, and all they do is mess us around. Do we look like bloody militants?’
The squaddie got to the vehicle in front of us. He leaned down to speak to the driver, who was ready with some kind of ID. They had a bit of a chat and the squaddie pointed to the sky and shrugged, probably moaning about the weather. He took a step back, waved the driver through, and sauntered towards us.
I leaned even further forward, completely absorbed by the problem with the laptop.
‘Sir, I need—’
‘Fuck this.’ Charlie was out of the wagon, his back straight as a ramrod, his shoulders squared.
‘You!’ He jutted his jaw at the Georgian. ‘Stand up straight, man!’
Some orders are understood by every soldier in any language. The squaddie snapped to attention.
‘Why are you holding us up? You think we have all day?’ Charlie was gripping him big-time now. Looking him up and down, inspecting him. This boy was back on the parade ground.
‘Please, sir, he can’t understand you.’ The driver was half out of his cab. ‘Please, let me…’ He tried to placate the angry officer, at the same time as exchanging a knowing look with his fellow squaddie.
Charlie flicked the open map-pocket flap on the Georgian’s combat trousers. ‘What’s this, man? Get your act together! Buttons are there for a purpose; they’re not just decoration! Sort yourself out, soldier!’
I held my breath as Charlie got back into the vehicle. I thought he might have overdone it with his Starship Trooper impression.
The squaddie hesitated for a moment, dark thoughts furrowing his Slavic brow. Then he reached down and fumbled with his trousers. The other guys on stag kept well out of it.
‘Right, let’s get this wagon moving.’
The driver reached for the folder on the dash. I gave the laptop screen my total attention.
He wound down his window and passed the paperwork through as Charlie prodded my shoulder and treated me to the same kind of bollocking.
I nodded obediently and tapped the keys some more, then looked up to the skies for salvation. The Georgian hurriedly flicked open the folder and checked its contents.
Charlie was incandescent. ‘Come on! Get a move on!’
No way did this boy want to be treated to another helping of what Mr Angry had to offer. He scribbled a signature on the work ticket, then handed the driver his millboard for him to do the same. Almost in the same motion, he waved us through.
We negotiated the concrete chicane and came alongside the bus. The driver looked a little concerned about my performance with the laptop, and I could hardly blame him, especially now that I packed it up and passed it back to Charlie.
