Dan Murdoch faces down crazy men with guns... again.

TONY’S voice crackled over the walkie-talkie: “Um, guys. This village is not abandoned. I can see people.”

We were in Armenia, driving through the lazy Caucus hills along the border with Georgia, when we noticed the derelict villages. Dozens of houses stripped bare, their windows and doors gaping lonely holes in crumbling brickwork, the roofs long collapsed.

Fascinated, we decided to divert for a closer look and some filming. Our convoy left the highway and slipped into a crater-pocked road then a rough dirt track towards the crumbling ruins of the ghost town.

“I say again I can see people,” the walkie burst into life, putting me on edge. Tony, in the lead car of the convoy was 50m ahead but I couldn’t see any people.

“There are people here,” the voice from the walkie distorted, paused, then came across loud but calm, “and they have guns. There are people coming with guns. Back up. These guys have guns.”

The voice didn’t betray a hint of panic, but I slammed on the brakes and squinted through the windshield. In the distance I could see a man in scruffy shirt and trousers, with someone behind him wearing all green. Are those fatigues? What is he carrying?

“They are waving at me, they want me to go to them,” warbled the walkie, “one of them has a gun. I think we should go back.”

I began to panic. There was a man with a large machine gun hurrying towards the lead car. I rammed the stick into reverse with a horrible scraping sound and looked out of the back window. The guys behind were already reversing, but I could see Carlos was out of the rear car and filming the whole thing.

“He has a gun and he wants me to go to him,” said the walkie, a trace panic.

“Reverse mate, let’s go, come on, let’s get out of here. Let’s go,” was my advice.

But his car sat motionless as thoughts raced through my head. Do we leave Tony here? Do we stay and face up to this with him? The adrenaline flowed fast in the panic.

“Tony let’s go. Come on.”

Still no movement from the lead car. I watched as the man with the gun reached it and then broke into a run as he went past. He was clearly in my view now. Wearing a metal helmet, green fatigues, body armour and carrying a machine gun.

Terrorist? Insurgent? Revolutionary? Hostage taker?

The thoughts flew by and he was nearly on us. I’ve never been run at by a man with an automatic weapon before. It is truly frightening.

Fear-induced paralysis set in. There was going to be a confrontation, we were in a lot of trouble, but best it be a verbal onslaught than a bullet-based exchange.

The man ran past us, past the next car, and it became clear who the focus of his attention was – Carlos and the video camera. I saw the impish Catalan trying to stash the thing but it was too late, we were busted. We got out of our cars and we went to face our fate.

It quickly became clear they were Armenian military, a huge relief. There was a lot of shouting and radioing and I was worried they were about to bring their cohorts down and march us off.

But a battered old car arrived and three men stepped out. They too were from the military, but you could immediately tell the difference between them and the squaddy who’d chased us. They wore loafers not boots, had beer bellies instead of armour plating, caps instead of helmets, sidearms on their hips and stars on their shoulders. They were officers, and I didn’t know if this meant we were in more trouble or less.

Initially there was shouting, but OJ used his simple Russian:

We saw these abandoned villages and thought we’d investigate.

We’re driving to Cambodia.

After a lot of gesturing OJ translated their reply: We had stumbled onto the Armenia-Azerbaijan border and just our luck, the two nations were still at war. The villages weren’t ghost towns, they were a war zone. They didn’t crumble under the ravages of time, but were blown apart by Azeri shells. The hills were fortified by both side’s militaries in a tense stand-off.

The officers said that if we had gone further up the dirt road we would have crossed the disputed Armenia-Azerbaijan border. He said the Azeris would have shot at the cars if they had seen them coming over the hill. I tried to imagine what threat our battered convoy would seem. A new fangled Armenian weapon disguised as a band of gypsies?

The filming was the biggest issue. It turns out that the military don’t like their front lines being filmed. We showed the head honcho what we’d shot and he demanded it be erased, or else he’d start shooting something else. So we pointed the camera at the ground and filmed over the offending footage, but when we showed him the result - a five-minute film of Armenian rocks- he went into a rage and demanded it be erased.

So we closed the lens cap and filmed blackness. Anything but give him the tape, which had some good shots of us driving through the countryside.

Tony passed cigarettes to the officers and they seemed to relax. They looked through our passports and laughed at our stamps, inquired about our Azerbaijani visas, but seemed to accept we were just stupid foreigners, not enemy spies. We’d lost our footage, but I couldn’t resist taking a sneaky picture of the military in my wing mirror.

After an hour of interrogation we were escorted back to the main road. One of the officers gave Tony a peach and sent us on our way, another brush with disaster under our belts.

Ends

mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com

For more about Dan’s travels go to: danmurdoch.blogspot.com