A Guide to Traveling While Wanted by Interpol
(this article was submitted by Robert Rundo about his time being a international fugitive)
What do you do when your apartment just got raided by counter-terrorism police (for the 3rd time), your name’s all over local TV, and the only guy who can get you out is a chain-smoking wreck who just got rejected by the Ukraine war?
You take a shot of Rakija, say a prayer, and get ready to run for your life
.
“Everything I do, I fuck up. That’s why she left me,” the guide mutters in his best broken English. “So I go volunteer to fight in Ukraine to forget about her... and even they turn me away. You believe this? I couldn’t even go die in shitty field.”
This is the man I’m supposed to trust with my life—the guy who’s going to smuggle me out of the country. We’re sitting in the back of a nameless tavern in a nameless village in an unnamed part of the Balkans. His eyes are bloodshot, face sunken, and he lights his 10th cigarette in the 15 minutes since we met.
Not exactly the elite operator I envisioned.
Dead Ends & Open Roads
What brought me here, a young guy from Queens, to this low-budget trafficker with a broken heart, is simple: survival. The apartment I’d been hiding in just got raided by a local counter-terrorism unit. My face was splashed across local TV thanks to a swarm of bugman journalists doing intelligence work from behind their keyboards.
Luckily, I’d already cleared out. A local contact tipped me off—told me to get the fuck out of the country before it turned ugly. Which made sense, considering I’d already been banned from the place once and warned not to return “if I wanted to stay healthy.”
So I packed up. Again. Life in a backpack. Another border to cross. Another alias. Another mess.
The waiter drops a bill and a shot of clear liquor—probably homemade rakija. My guide knocks it back. I pass. Not because it’s 9am, but because I haven’t slept in two days and I’ve got a mountain to hike over in an hour.
We hit the road. He rambles about the girl who broke up with him, and at this point, I can’t even fake sympathy or spit out an Instagram quote about healing. Since i found out i was wanted by Interpol it’s been pure survival mode. Everyone’s sob story just sounds like noise now.
I ask him, just to be sure: “Hey, [REDACTED] told you the plan, right? The drop-off point?”
He grins with a cigarette stuck to his lip. “Brate, of course. Two hundred meters before the end of the road, you get out. I drive around. Meet you on the other side. Simple shit.”
Im not exactly convinced hes a mafia pro. More like the kind of guy who sells bootleg cigarettes at the bus station. But this is what my budget gets me.
We pass through sleepy villages where rugs hang from balconies and old women in headscarves shade their eyes from the sun, watching as we roll by. It’s familiar, but that doesn’t make it any easier on the nerves. I think back to El Salvador, getting extradited in shackles with two spooks sitting on either side of me. That flight still haunts me. The idea of going through that again freezes the blood.
The plan was for a clean drop-off near the edge of the woods—far from any guard tower. But when I glance out the window, we’re parked directly in front of one. Border agent standing close enough to spit on. My heart spikes.
The only thing saving us? The guard’s got his back turned and is trimming bushes with a gas-powered clipper, giant earmuffs on. He doesn’t hear me screaming at my guide:
“Back the fuck up! Are you fuckin’ nuts?!”
The guide slams it in reverse and somehow, by a stroke of whatever half-mad luck keeps saving me, the guard doesn’t notice. He’s got his back turned, running a gas-powered bush trimmer, ear-muffs on. I stare at his shrinking silhouette as we back up.
“Stop here. This is good.”
Fight-or-flight is fully activated. I grab my water bottle and belt bag and jump out, disappearing into the brush.
Mistake number two: I left my backpack. No change of clothes. No backup phone. No snacks. Just me in Slavic track pants, a T-shirt, a belt bag stuffed with Euros, and a dying phone with no service.
This isn’t my first Jason Bourne moment. I’ve crossed borders like this before—but never alone. Never through the mountains. I usually hitch a ride in the back of a van with a group of migrants or something. This? This is different.
I sprint into the bush
.
Welcome to the bush.
I’m from Queens, NYC. I grew up around buildings and numbered streets. Now, I'm trying to cross a Balkan mountain range using Google Maps screenshots and trees for reference.
Two hours in, I’m stuck in thorn bushes. It starts raining. I’m soaked.
Another hour. I’m lost.
Eventually, scratched and covered in mud, I stumble across the abandoned concrete building—our pickup point.
I made it.
The Red Jeep
I crouch behind a ruined wall, watching the road. I hear tires rumble on gravel. Finally, he’s here. I start imagining the shit I'm going to give him for having me wait 4 hours on this road, for sure he will be treating me to some cevap, sarma, and all the cold beer I can drink.
But the car isn’t his. It’s a red Jeep (not his car). It stops.
A bearded man gets out, stomach spilling over his army surplus belt. From the driver’s side, a woman—maybe his wife, maybe his sister—platinum-dyed hair, cigarette stuck to her lip like wallpaper glue.
He pulls out a rifle.
They say something in a language I can’t catch. Border patrol? Or are just some washed-up militia types looking to catch and rob smugglers? (the irony if I was to be shot, while illegally crossing a border by right-wing militia man)
I make myself as small as possible behind the wall, holding my breath until they drive off.
Still no sign of my guy.
Bedtime
I find a collapsed warehouse nearby. Floor’s covered in broken glass and rusted metal. Not ideal.
Then I see it: a rusted-out Yugoslavia-era tractor parked in a half-collapsed shed. I crawl into the cab. Metal floor. Torn seat. Wind howling through broken windows.
It’s freezing.
I curl up and repeat a phrase I learned in prison:
"better men have been through worse."
I say it until I fall asleep.
The Village
I wake up with the sun. I remember there is a village a few miles down the road. Originally i was told to make sure to avoid it but sitting in a broken-down tractor was not an option. I start walking the dirt road. Phone dead. No food. thirsty af. No idea who I’ll meet.
These border villages are tiny—sixty people at most. Everyone knows each other. Everyone works with the police. I’m either walking to freedom or walking into a trap.
It's still early in the morning the village is still sleeping pretty much.
I find an old woman unloading bread. I help her carry boxes and, using broken Bulgarian, Serbian and hand gestures, tell her I’m a hiker who got lost.
She buys it.
She gives me a ride into town.
I give here 40 Euros. Treat yourself to a new headscarf.
Later that day, I meet up with the guide in a nameless city. Turns out he was on the wrong road. That red Jeep? Locals who thought he was smuggling people in. So they kept driving up and down the area all night.
.
So yeah. I made it. At least that time...
Not because I’m lucky. Not because I’m smart. But because i had to.
It wasn’t just to avoid prison. It was personal every day I survived on the run was a fuck you to my hunters.
This story is just one leg of the journey that lasted 7 years.
Always inspirational reading about your life experiences, my brother
Lol, You Glownigger.