6
I stopped just short of the crest of the hill and Charlie got out.
He scrambled up to check the dead ground in front of us, dropped onto his hands and knees as he neared the skyline, and crawled the last few metres. We didn’t want to run the risk of piling straight over the top and discovering that our old mates at the sangar were right there in front of us.
He waved me up and jumped back in as I drew level with him. He leaned through the gap between the front seats. ‘The road’s two hundred the other side of the rise. No way have we passed that VCP.’
I edged the wagon uphill. ‘We’ll soon find out, one way or the other. Fuck ’em.’
The time comes when you just have to accept your options are running out and go for it.
We hit the road, hung a left, and I flicked the 110 back into two-wheel to conserve fuel.
No more than a minute later, we saw the duty driver ahead of us. He spotted the wagon and started waving us down.
Charlie laughed. ‘Bet he changes his mind when he sees who it is.’
He was right. As we got closer, the guy did a double take and legged it into the trees.
Another quarter of an hour and we had to slow for an oncoming truck, overloaded with turnips. A few fell off and bounced across the top of our wagon as we manoeuvred round each other.
We came to the top of another rise and the dead ground opened up before us. The camp was in the distance, maybe a K off the road, along what looked like a newly laid gravel track.
It was the size of a small city. Dozens of green twenty-man tents stood in smart, regimented lines along the side of a chain-link-fenced compound. To their right lay a maze of Portakabin-type structures with satellite dishes on their roofs, either linked in terraces or connected by concrete roadways.
Five or six Hueys were parked in a neat line beside a helicopter pan.
The main drag continued for maybe three Ks past the junction towards another camp on higher ground.
Charlie leaned forward again. ‘Fucking hell, they’ve got the whole army here!’
He wasn’t wrong. ‘Any bright ideas?’
He shook his head. ‘We’ve got to keep on going for it. Nowhere else to go. And we’re in a company wagon, aren’t we? Let’s hope the driver hasn’t got to the VCP yet and they just give us a nod.’
I put my foot down and we accelerated past the turn-off to the first camp. The track was actually hardcore, and stretched a K or so to the main gate, where massive US and Georgian flags fluttered shoulder to shoulder in the breeze.
The fields either side of us were a hive of activity. The Partnership for Peace programme was in full swing. American unarmed-combat instructors in green T-shirts and US Marine Corps spotty-camouflage BDU bottoms were putting Georgian troops through their paces. They looked as though they were having a great time, kicking the shit out of the happy boys from the recruitment commercial while their mates force-fed infantry fieldcraft to patrols in arrowhead formation.
No-one gave us a second glance.
So far so good.
The 110 started to shake and rattle as the road surface quickly deteriorated the other side of the junction. I kept my foot to the floor as we moved uphill towards the second camp.
I dropped to third on the steeper gradient and the 110 ate it up. I was starting to feel good about this.
‘Hello, duty vehicle, duty vehicle. Is that you on the hill? Report. Over.’
I looked down at the radio and then at Charlie. He shrugged his shoulders. Somebody with nothing better to do was watching us through their binos. So what?
I changed down to second to get a spurt on past the camp at the top of the hill, in case they’d been instructed to stop us.
‘Duty vehicle, do not go any further. Repeat, do not go any further. Return to our locale. Over.’ Maybe they needed the wagon back to pick up the CO’s sandwiches.
We ignored it again. The throttle was flat to the boards. The engine screamed as we headed on up the hill.
‘Do not cross the demarcation line. Crossing the demarcation line is contrary to standing orders. Repeat, return to this locale. Over.’
‘Demarcation line?’ Charlie’s head was level with mine as he too peered up the hill. ‘These two places in the middle of a union dispute?’
‘Something like that.’ I nodded in the direction of the flags flying over the gates of the camp, now about 150 ahead on our left. They weren’t the Stars and Stripes or anything to do with Richard the Lionheart, but the white, blue and red horizontals of the Russian Federation.
Charlie’s head was level with my right shoulder. ‘Fuck it, let’s just keep going; take our chances. There’s fuck all else we can do.’
We began to parallel the camp’s front fence. Men in uniform swarmed around in confusion alongside never- ending lines of tents and vehicles. By the look of it, they were getting stood to.
There was now a major flap on at the main gate. I slowed as armed men spilled out on the road. Were they throwing up a roadblock?
The radio blared at us again. ‘Duty vehicle, status report. Over.’
I kept my eyes on the uniforms up ahead. They’d obviously dressed in a bit of a hurry; some had combat jackets that weren’t done up, some didn’t have helmets. But they all had AKs. Run one of them over and they’d open up big-time.
‘I’m not going to stop. I’m just going to keep going, but real slow. You up for it?’
I looked back at Charlie in the rear-view.
He winked. ‘So which one are you, Butch or Sundance?’
7
We were level with the main gate and the speedo flickered near twenty. Nobody on the road seemed to know what to do. They were all mouthing the Russian for ‘What the fuck’s a British 110 doing up here?’ Thankfully they all still had their AKs slung rather than in the shoulder.
Charlie started to wave. ‘How’s it going, lads?’
They stared back, then some of the younger ones smiled and returned the wave. NCOs started shouting angrily, trying to get something organized.
We trundled past, Prince Charlie in the back still doing his greet-the-people bit. Still nobody challenged us.
The radio barked. ‘Duty vehicle, turn around, turn around. Do not stop; do not take any action that is deemed aggressive. If apprehended, comply with their orders.’
‘Shut up, you twat,’ Charlie said, smiling broadly at his new subjects.
I flicked the radio off.
Moments later, we were clear of the confusion. I was braced for shots, but none came. We were going gently downhill, no longer in view from the American camp.
The fence line stopped. Charlie turned and looked back. ‘Still no follow-up. Let’s keep going. Get that foot down, lad.’
Absolutely no argument with him on that one.
For maybe thirty minutes we saw no junctions, no options, no VCPs, just lots of undulating green to our front, a forest to our left, and a valley to our right. The engine was gunning and we were up to 90 Ks an hour in some places where the road surface allowed it.
The duty driver must have reached the VCP by now. But so what? We were well out of the area. There’d be a Welcome to Tbilisi VCP waiting over the horizon somewhere on the road, just itching for the chance to stop us any way it could, but we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. For now, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself.
