by Alex Shaw
Jinks continued to pick off targets with his heavy calibre rounds, but then he noticed something impossible. Some of the targets were getting up and continuing forward. He was hitting the trucks but the occupants seemed to be immune. He drilled more rounds into three Talibs, advancing in a tight group in what should have been tactical suicide. All three fell. One immediately stood up and continued on. And then the Taliban were within AK range. Uncontrolled rounds wildly spun in the night air, without tracer they were invisible to the naked eye. Then grenades started to fly. Anders and Jinks ducked as a metallic object arced towards their position. It exploded in the air behind them. Jinks raised his head, Anders did not. Jinks shook his comrade in arms. “Anders…Anders!”
“W...what?” Anders seemed concussed. “I...I’m fine.” He smiled weakly and then his mouth fell open with shock as a round from an AK tore away Jinks’ face. Anders scrabbled for the .50 cal when suddenly he was lifted and thrown from his firing position. He landed heavily outside the blast walls. He tried to move but couldn’t and then he was held aloft as a Talib with red eyes attacked his neck like a rabid dog. As Anders’ world dimmed the last thing he heard was a Black Hawk powering away from the base.
In the darkness far away Black heard what sounded like thunder, as colours started to swim in front of his eyes he realised that it was gunfire. Then another sound attacked his ears, screams. His eyes snapped opened he saw the two camp medics at the windows, using their rifles. He swung his legs from the bed and stood.
“Give me your side arm!” Black yelled at the nearest. Without complaint the pistol was tossed towards him.
Black left the medical shack. Something was very wrong. Uniformed bodies littered the ground. He could see Taliban fighters engaged in hand to hand combat with the firebase’s troop. But something was wrong. The Talibs were winning. A turbaned figure saw Black and headed straight towards him. Almost in slow motion, the Afghan loosely aimed his AK and started to spray on full automatic. Black retreated into the doorway as rounds impacted all around him. He paused counted to three and as the insurgent’s mag emptied he sprang back out from cover, pistol in a two handed grip and double tapped the Talib. Two holes appeared in the fighter’s chest and he stumbled. Black fired again and this time sent a further two rounds into the man’s forehead. The fighter dropped. Black advanced and grabbed the Afghan’s AK. It had two magazines taped together for quick reloading. Black pulled out the mag, spun it around and drove it back in. A hand grabbed his ankle and almost pulled him to the ground. Amazed, Black sent two more rounds, 7.62mm this time into the Talibs face turning it into a red mess. Black looked for his next target. He shot a second Talib in the back of the head causing him to fall from the roof of the nearest pre-fab. He advanced into the open, a foolhardy but necessary move. His base was under attack and he was not going to let it fall. In the open now he saw the true picture of the attack. The comms shack and several others were billowing smoke, each of the guard-towers were manned but the 0.50 cals’ had been made to point inwards and were picking off ISAF targets. Men fell and were instantly set upon by Taliban fighters who clawed at them like wild animals. To his left at the far end of the firebase a group of ANA soldiers had manned a Gimpy and were attempting to make a last stand, to the right he saw three American soldiers retreating tactically backwards in formation firing controlled bursts. Everyone else was dead. The base was lost. Black never thought he would die like this, cut down in his own base but he took a perverse pleasure in the fact that he would be going down fighting. He chose the nearest gun emplacement and charged towards it. Heavy rounds zipped over his head and then he was hit in the chest by something with the force of a sledgehammer. Black was lifted from his feet and slammed to the floor. He lay motionless for several seconds as he realised that he’d been by a 0.50 cal. That was it he was going to die. He moved his hands to feel the wound then looked at his fingers, dripping in his own blood. A white hot rage took over him, it masked the pain. He had no idea how he could, but he knew he could stand again. Pushing himself up Black ignored the fire in his chest and charged at the tower. He reached the rough-hewn steps and without pause took them two at a time. At the top he emptied his mag into the nearest Talib fighter and then threw himself at the second who was manning the .50 cal. The gunner fell sideways and Black pushed his thumbs deep into the man’s eye sockets. The Afghan screamed, arms flailing and then became still. Black pushed the corpse sideways and grabbed the heavy machine-gun. Lining up a target he fired. The heavy round tore the head from the shoulders of its target. “Scratch on more Talib!” Black muttered to himself before lining up the next insurgent. It was a target rich environment, but he knew his time was limited. Within seconds twenty fighters, some armed others not were heading his way. Black continued to fire, he felled the first two yet those behind stepped over the fallen and continued to come. Then a trail of smoke raced towards him. An RPG…Black threw himself sideways as the grenade impacted a meter from his position. The explosion was deafening, the shockwave contained within the wall horrific. Black couldn’t move and his hearing had gone. Then he felt vibrations, heavy thuds of boots. His entire body leaden he managed to sit as the face of an Afghan appeared above the steps, eyes wild, mouth open to show bloody teeth. Instinctively Black bared his own teeth and for a moment there was stillness then his hearing returned and so did his strength. He grabbed the fighter by the neck and hauled him up. With a power he had not known he possessed, he squeezed the man’s neck until he felt the cartilage buckle. Pulling the Afghan nearer he sank his teeth into the exposed neck and felt blood pour into his mouth. His victim thrashed wildly before becoming limp. This act had taken no more than five seconds yet it was enough for two more Talibs to appear at the top of the steps, both now leapt at him.
Hakim raised his head from behind a sandbag, the firing had slowed and the remaining Taliban had moved away from his position. On either side of him dead ANA soldiers lay, they were the brave ones who had chosen to fight or the lucky ones whose lives had been extinguished by a bullet and not the jaws of a Hadama. He was one of only two left. The other ANA soldier to survive was Yusuf. “Now do you believe my camp fire stories?”
Yusuf nodded. He had seen the Hadama for himself. “We must tell Kabul, we must alert the rest of the army!”
“How?” Hakim glanced at the young officer. “We have no communication equipment and if we move they shall slaughter us. What we must do is to stay low and prey to Allah, peace be upon him, that these affronts to Him leave us. It is three hours to daylight then we shall be safe.”
“OK.” Yusuf nodded his assent to the older and far more experienced soldier. “But what drew them away?”
Hakim said humourlessly. “Perhaps they have found some more American beef to feed upon?”
Black ducked the blade that swung violently at his neck and at the same time stepped into his attacker. Black grabbed the wrist with his right hand and with his left hand he used an open palm strike to the elbow to shatter the joint. The Talib screamed and before he could react further Black grabbed the knife and slit the man’s throat. As the Talib fell to the ground the second Talib dived for his comrade’s neck, not in an attempt to save him but to feed from him. The steps were now blocked but it would be only a matter of seconds before more Talibs swarmed his way. Like lemmings headed towards the edge of a cliff they would not be deterred. He moved towards the .50 cal and saw that it was now no more than a heap of twisted metal, fused together by the heat of the RPG round. He stood up straight and willed a round to enter his flesh but the base was now in an unnerving silence. To his right he saw movement, two figures crouching behind a hastily arranged pile of sandbags and to his left he saw a solitary US soldier with his standard issue M4 carbine. Black slapped his cheeks and snapped himself out of his immobility. He was now more determined than ever. The American would survive, and so would he. Black dropped to his haunches and then springing forward like a sprinter, launched himself off of the wall and towards the compound
floor ten feet below. He landed with a thud but somehow managed to keep moving, keep running. Behind him the Talibs were taken by surprise and momentarily did not follow. Black kept his head down and like a linebacker barrelled two Talibs out of the way who were making for the American. He could now see the eyes of his countryman, wide with fear as he neared him. The American raised his rifle and fired, the round just missing Black’s left ear, a second round swiftly followed. A Talib appeared between them. The American had missed and now he was out of ammo. He swung the rifle wildly as the Talib grabbed his arms, and then Black was on him. The Talib was forced into the dirt, Black reached down grabbed the head twisted it and tore it away from the body. Arterial spray bathed his face.
“Y…your SIX!” The American yelled.
Black spun as an AK round hit him in the left shoulder. The full focus of the remaining Talibs was now on them. Black swore. They couldn’t win, they wouldn’t live. Another round hit him and he staggered. The American next to him fell, screaming, dying. A third round caused Black to drop to his knees. This wasn’t how he was going to die; again he stood without knowing how and stared directly at an ugly, red-eyed knife wielding Talib no more than a meter away. The Talib bared his teeth then suddenly jerked left as a round entered the side of his skull. Controlled bursts from an AK felled three more Talibs in quick succession. Black picked up the knife and attacked a further fighter. Around him the Talibs scattered as more and more of them were taken out by AK rounds. As they retreated Black looked up and saw the Ukrainian, Krasnov standing on the blast wall with an AK 47.
“Come with me and you will live!” Krasnov bellowed.
Then Black saw it, another RPG aimed his way. His periphery vision became blurred, he moved quickly as the grenade spun towards him. Black looked down from the blast-wall, the grenade landed where his feet had been a moment before. He had no idea how he managed to mount the wall.
“Follow me!” Krasnov yelled as he stood next to a Toyota pick-up on the ground outside the base.
Black jumped down, rolling as he landed. “How?”
“Just get in; we need to escape the sun!”
Krasnov pulled away, tyres throwing loose stones and dirt into the air. High above there was a whining noise and milliseconds later a Hellfire missile exploded on the other side of the base. The unblinking eye of ISAF had for once blinked.
FOUR: Camp Bastion, Helmand Province, Afghanistan
On the other end of the secure line the two star US General gave his acceptance. “Declare a Critical Mission Status. You have my permission to send in a team. Immediately.”
“Thank you General.” As the SF liaison officer Matthers was glad the overall boss of ISAF operations in Afghanistan was on the same page as him. He ended the call. The firebase had as far as they could ascertain been overrun by insurgents. All contact with Rockbridge and his men had been lost. A drone had confirmed that Taliban fighters were indeed inside the base. The deployment of a Hellfire missile outside the front gates had done very little it seemed to make the unwelcomed guests leave. Matthers made another call to the QRF team; he would brief them in ten. In fifteen they would be airborne. First he had a few questions to ask the last person to see Rockbridge before the camp went dark, his fellow Brit Paige Turner.
As Turner crossed the base from the journos’ ‘holding area’ she felt a sense of urgency that she had not experienced before. She couldn’t put her finger on it but something was happening. She had told Raymond to take his camera and go mobile on the pretence of getting some candid footage that they could cut into. In reality he was attempting to find out what was going on. She had missed the biggest story of her life the last time she had been in ‘the Stan’. She had been re-called to London by the BBC on the pretence of assisting with the build-up for the Royal Wedding only days before the capture of bin-Laden. She had gotten too close; someone had ‘pulled strings’ and had her shipped home. She’d be buggered if she was going to miss another story. She arrived at Matthers’ office, a plywood affair topped with sandbags and partly hidden by a blast-wall. Even though she found him extremely dishy to look at, she disliked the man. Perhaps it was his hair that was too well groomed for a frontline command position? He reminded her of an old ‘Just For Men’ advert. She knocked and entered without awaiting a response.
“You wanted to see me Colonel?”
“Thank you Ms Turner.”
“What can I do for you?” This time she noted that he looked unusually stern.
“Please sit.” She did so and he stared at a legal pad on his desk. “I’m not going to beat around the bush or try to hide this. We simply do not have the time to waste. We have reason to believe that Firebase Python has been overrun by the Taliban.”
Her jaw dropped, she felt it.
He continued. “As of 19:25 we lost contact with the base. We have been unable to raise Major Rockbridge or anyone else.”
“But I was just there…”
“That is why I called you in here, Ms Turner. The helo you left on with your cameraman and a handful of other personnel was the last to leave the base. You left at, what was it, 18:00?”
“18:19.” She had a photographic memory; it served her well in the supermarket and during arguments. “The pilot made a remark that we’d get to see the sunset if we were lucky on our way here.” Suddenly she tried to hold back the tears. Did this mean that the men she had filmed, got to know and shared a joke with were now dead?
Matthers noticed she was shaken but ignored it. “Well just after sunset was when we lost all contact. Ms Turner, what I need from you is to tell me if there was anything you noticed when you left the base, anything strange or unusual at all?”
She reached into her pocket for a tissue and touched the corners of her eyes. “Nothing during the day but there was an unexpected helo departure the night before; I mean the same day – early hours of the morning. About two-ish.”
“I was unaware of that.”
“It was carrying a Russian from the GRU.”
“Your sources are obviously much better than mine. What Russian?”
“That’s all I could find out. The Russian got in to a helo and left. A few minutes later a Delta team followed him.”
Matthers folded his arms and sat back in his chair. He knew of no JSOC mission or why Russia, a non-member of ISAF would be involved in ISAF operations. “What the bloody hell is going on?”
Turner was surprised by his admission and the tone of it. “You don’t know?”
“No I do not. So apart from the ‘phantom mission’ was there anything else that struck you as strange?”
Turner told Matthers about the fight between Hakim and a Delta who had been in the medical centre a matter of hours before. Matthers jotted down a few notes before dismissing her and running to his briefing.
The enormity of what had just happened momentarily muted Black. As the Toyota continued to bounce away from the firebase, passing the wrecked Talib trucks and then the empty compounds, his brain tried to process what he had seen and what he had done. They skirted the desert plain and took a narrow road into the mountains. He finally looked at Krasnov and only then realised that the Ukrainian had been navigating in the complete darkness without the aid of either headlights or NVGs. Black managed to speak. “I shot you dead.”
“You did shoot me, but I have been dead since 1988.” Krasnov replied.
“I don’t understand. Who are you?
“You should ask me what I am. I am a vampire, as are you.”
“What?” Black asked the Ukrainian as he manoeuvred the Toyota in-between two giant boulders.
“We are mythical beings, blood sucking creatures of the night. But you are different, you are Ra-Hodok, you can walk in sunlight.”
As if on cue Black felt dizzy, his head fell back against the headrest.
“You need to feed. If you do not feed you shall fall into a coma. Here, take it.” Krasnov handed him a flask.
Black shakily accepted it. “Blood? Hu
man blood?”
“Drink it, you know that you must.”
In the gloom, Black looked at the flask and for a moment hesitated but as he did so his vision blurred at the edges. Krasnov abruptly stopped the truck and grabbed the American’s wrists, pushing the flask to his lips. Black’s eyes rolled back in his head as the heavy red liquid cascaded down his throat. His eyes then snapped open and his vision cleared. Black locked eyes with Krasnov, both men’s eyes momentarily flashed red.
“You know that I am speaking the truth even though your rational mind does not want to believe it. You can feel it in your heart and in the blood that flows through it.”
“I’m meant to believe this? That Vampires are real? Come on, they don’t exist, they are made up to sell movies and books.”
The Ukrainian shrugged. “Where did these writers get their ideas from? From folk lore, myths and legends which in turn originated from encounters with vampires, from fact. I exist, you exist, we as vampires exist. Those things you fought at the base what were they, figments of your imagination?”
Something inside Black told him that as crazy as it seemed, this was the truth. He had been trying to deny it but no longer could. He had drunk the blood of two Talibs, had survived rounds entering his body and now after this new blood he felt unbeatable. Black shook his head, not sure what to feel, or who or what he had now become. “Shit.”
“As you Americans say, ‘shit happens’.” Krasnov put the Toyota back into gear and they continued up the path. “When we met I told you my name, what is yours?”
“Black, Brad Black.”
“And your call-sign?”
“Peter Pan.”
Krasnov grunted. “Very appropriate; the boy who never grows old.”
Black frowned. “The Russians from the cave, are they vampires?”
“They are ‘The Vampires’, they are what remains of a Soviet Special Operations unit.”