Ambushed On An Albanian Mountainside (Part 1)
(International Politics -Risk & Threat)
Today, If you are earmarked by your company to work abroad, especially in conflict or volatile regions, most reputable companies and NGO's will equip you for your posting or assignment with suitably tailored hostile environment training (HET). The firms who provide HET are excellent and thoroughly professional as I found out when attending for future postings. However, when this story took place in 1998, there were non or if they were, the FCO thought a 30 minute London security briefing was sufficient. Thankfully, since this incident, the FCO are now one of the HET trainers best customers! There were a lot of mistakes made during the course of this story which I will highlight at the end of Part 2 where, with the benefit of adequate HET, things could have been handled far more differently.
So, after 4 months, having more or less settled into my tour in Tirana the capital city of Albania, Easter arrived with an extra couple of days off for the official holiday tagged onto the weekend. The Ambassador was out of the country on vacation, so the Deputy Head of Mission (DHM), the Management Officer (MO) and myself decided that we would pay a visit to a popular restaurant situated at the top of Dajte mountain just outside Tirana. Briefly checking with the local police, It was deemed that the area and the route was safe to travel in and we had it on good authority from other diplomats who had been there recently that the food at the restaurant was excellent and that there had been no security issues during their visits. Therefore, doubly reassured, we decided that we would head up there on Easter Sunday.
The day arrived and we piled into the DHM’s locally purchased, battered old Peugeot for our trip up the mountain. It was a wonderfully clear and sunny day and we were looking forward to getting out of Tirana for a few hours for some good food plus the view from the restaurant terrace at the top of the mountain was reputed to be spectacular. The journey out of Tirana up the winding road of the Dajte mountain passed uneventfully. It was wonderful to get out of the city and drive through the small villages, past the innumerable pillboxes (some of which the villagers had creatively converted into animal shelters for their cows, pigs and chickens) and up into the clear and clean air of the mountain.
Eventually we reached our destination and noticed that the car park was empty apart from the Saudi Arabian Ambassador’s official car and a couple of sleek Mercedes belonging to his bodyguards who were all inside partaking of the restaurant's excellent fare.
We spent the meal discussing cars prompted by the envy of having seen the Saudi Ambassador’s sleek fleet outside the restaurant. All our embassy official vehicles being armoured (except the DHM’s privately owned Peugeot) meant that half of them were off the road at any one time awaiting spares to be flown in as they all suffered continuous suspension and tyre problems driving around the badly kept potholed roads of Tirana and the surrounding areas. They were just too heavy for the task. The MO jokingly said we should go visit Durres. At that time, the port of Durres on the coast was the site of the weekly ferry from Italy that regularly brought in a whole shipment of top of the range vehicles from “various sources” throughout Europe. These were then all deposited in a field outside the port and once a week there was a sale of these vehicles, all transactions in cash and in US dollars. The MO said he could have picked up a virtually new top of the range Porsche 911 for just under $5000, however the only problem was that he would never be able to take it out of the country.
After finishing our meal and paying, we left saying goodbye to the Saudi Arabian Ambassador and his party and jumped back into the Peugeot for the return trip to Tirana. I sat in the front seat next to the DHM and the MO got into the back. We then set off down the mountain hoping to get back to Tirana before it got too dark. After about five minutes driving slowly down the narrow, winding route, we had just taken a short bend when right in front of us in the middle of the narrow road appeared a caped and masked gunman pointing an AK47 directly at us and beckoning us to stop.
The shocking impact of this sight lasted a couple of seconds. Both the MO and I being ex-military knew that in situations such as this, stopping was the last thing you contemplate. What you do is put your foot on the accelerator and drive through fast and hope for the best. If a bad guy is in front of you, you drive through him as well. We both yelled at the DHM to hit the accelerator and get us out of there. What did she do? She slowed down and stopped the car with the engine turning over. Now we were in trouble. Although there was only one gunman in front of us, we did not know if there were others hidden in the bushes and rocks on the slopes at the side of the road. The gunman was still standing menacingly in front of us and he kept on nervously cocking his AK47 all the time. Why was he doing this? I had no idea.
Now they say that victims of gun crime are usually so fixated on the weapon that they cannot remember anything else. What I do remember is that his AK47 looked as if it had seen better days. Perhaps it was one of the weapons looted from military arsenals the previous year during the nationwide civil unrest. It looked dirty and rusty and when he was continually cocking it, it looked as if he was having trouble working the moving parts properly. Using hand signals, he then indicated that he wanted money and valuables. He did this by holding up a dollar bill in one hand pointing at it then pointing to us. He also pointed to his watch and again motioned to us. I got out my wallet, which contained the equivalent of about thirty US dollars in local currency and held it up to the windscreen. I wound down the window and he came around the side of the vehicle and took it off me as well as my watch.
He went back and stood in front of the vehicle and motioned for us to all get out of the car. I turned to my right and glanced at the DHM who was visibly trembling and bolt upright in her seat, her hands firmly gripping the steering wheel. We were not going to get much direction or leadership from her in her present state. I glanced over my shoulder and quietly spoke with the MO. We both rapidly agreed that there was no way we were getting out of the car. God knows what would happen to us if we did. We both decided we needed to hit the gas and get out of there pretty damn quick.
I turned to the DHM and quickly whispered to her what the MO and I wanted her to do. Thankfully she seemed to quickly come out of her comatose state and realised that what we proposed was the only way to go. The gunman was by now growing more and more agitated and his obsession with cocking his weapon seemed to increase in intensity
I then spotted another armed man coming out from behind a large boulder slightly further up the mountainside. It was now or never. I then held my wallet up to the windscreen to distract the gunman while the DHM quickly put the car into first. I then said I would count to three and on three for her to hit the accelerator as hard as she could. On the count of three, she banged the accelerator hard and the car lunged down the road. As she did so, I fell forward and my head bounced off the dashboard and instinctively I decided to keep my head well down touching my knees. The gunman sensing that something was going to happen, jumped to one side at the last moment, which fortunately for me was the driver’s side and at the same time he let loose.
Amongst the fusillade of bullets, some now also coming from the mountainside, one lucky shot passed through the wing mirror of the car, then through the door window, through the DHM’s arm, through her headrest and finally hit the MO in the stomach. One bullet, so much damage, goodness knows what else the gunman had hit. The car had by now travelled a fair distance. The DHM still had her foot hard down on the accelerator as we sped down the hill. We passed through the villages we had transited on the way up without stopping, for all we knew the gunmen were local and had relatives or other accomplices in these villages.
After what seemed an eternity, but in reality were only a few minutes or so, we reached the bottom of the mountain. We pulled into a large guesthouse come restaurant that we had visited a month before and where we were on nodding terms with the owner and came to a stop. There was silence. Nobody spoke. I looked at the DHM. She was extremely pale and holding her bloodied arm. In the back, the MO was conscious lying across the back seat holding his stomach as blood seeped through his shirt. The interior of the car was littered with broken glass from the window scattered on the floor, glass shards were embedded in all the seating upholstery.
I felt extremely lucky having come out of this with only a bruised forehead but now my two colleagues needed urgent medical attention. I got out of the car and reached for my mobile phone, thank goodness there was a signal. I got hold of our local Embassy driver and told him what had happened. I asked him to get the police and ambulance to us as soon as possible and for him to get up to the guesthouse with an armoured vehicle. He said leave it with him, he would get things moving.
Reassured but still nervous, I started up to the guesthouse but the owner and his wife had already come out to where our car was parked having heard the screeching brakes. The owner’s wife ran back into the guesthouse for some clean towels and water to help bathe and bind my colleague’s wounds. Both the DHM and the MO were still conscious and talking. I could not make out what the DHM was saying, I presumed she was still in some form of shock, the MO on the other hand was swearing like the trooper he once was, not so much about being shot but because the blood would ruin his chinos and favourite shirt.
Quite quickly a whole posse of police cars turned up, deafening the quiet surroundings with their sirens followed by two ambulances. Our Embassy driver had also turned up with the armoured Discovery and was acting as interpreter for me with the police and medics. The DHM and MO were immediately placed in the ambulance and under police escort were whisked away to hospital in Tirana. Just after they had left, the police then indicated that they wanted me to go with them back up the mountain to identify the spot where the incident had taken place
(Part 2 to follow.....)
