The TV crew came on time, an hour before sunset. The big show of "Games without frontiers" was about to start, and they were here to provide an uplink to a repeater in Split. For which they were in the right place - this is the hill which has the line of sight to other important peaks, and from the north slope you can see the stadium below.
They plugged their cables in, oriented their dishes, the images started flowing and so did the wine, while the whole leg of beef, that they sent a week in advance, was roasting. The wine wasn't exactly the same one they had sent, as their 20 liter canister was exhausted... twice in the previous days. And refilled, at sergeant's father-in-law's in the valley. I think they had a good deal here, this wine was better.
Of course we drank with them. The bannerman was absent, allegedly went downtown to meet another officer about some flour we were due but didn't arrive. And he went down on foot, mentioning to Šime that he'd be "at the Neighbor's" if there's any emergency - the place being just about the first tavern on our road. We pretty much forgot about him, knowing that he's not on good terms with the TV crew. He worked here before, and so did they, on various football or basketball matches broadcast live, so we guessed he just didn't want to be there so no trouble would arise.
The (red, which we call black) wine was drunk from a special wooden mug, called bukara, which holds about two liters and looks like a flatsided barrel with bottom and no top, where the bottom is somewhat wider than the top. And it has a handle, wooden, pretty much like a saucepan. The special touch was a small unpeeled orange, nicked eight times with a knife along its meridians, which floated in the wine and banged lightly against your nose as you drank, contributing to the aroma.
After the TV crew finished eating, drinking (wine was all gone) and packing, they went away. We figured they'd meet the bannerman somewhere on the road, or that at least he'd see them drive by - he'd be sitting on a terrace, it was a nice evening - and since there were no other vehicles on this road, he'd know they were gone, and would come up. For which he wouldn't need more than 30 minutes.
After an hour, he was still out there.
Morkec, Šime and I somehow assumed the role of, well, temporary authority. We decided to send the largest guy we had and the driver in our offroader, with no special instructions, just to drive the guy up if he needs it, and generally to just tell him the crew is gone and everything's fine up here.
They didn't return in 45 minutes, which left us befuddled. Next we sent Šime as a patrol, with one extra guy as escort, to find him and just report to him and to us. We gave them one walkie, and codewords to use, as the walkies used the same channel as all the ships (actually, the channel used to be very near the firemen's channel, so just about everybody used to know the codenames of all the posts in the area, then they switched channels and replaced all codenames). After the expected 30 minutes, Šime reported "This is Horatio, Horatio, Horatio. The green object is spotted; blue object is also spotted, but it's deeply anchored. Over." Don't remember what was our codename, it was something equally hilarios. Translation: we found the offroader (green object). Found the bannerman too (blue, as in naval uniform) but he's drunk.
Eventually they got him out of the quarrel with the guy (another naval officer) with whom he was drinking, got him into the vehicle and brought him up. He didn't mind all the initiative... but he got at us in a different way a few days later.