Free Insurgency by Alex Shaw Page B

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? Human 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.”
    “Spetsnaz?”
    “Correct. Our commanding officer was a General Vladimir Dratshev.”
    “Ours? You were one of them?”
    “I was their newest recruit; Dratshev turned me only months before we were deployed.”
    “Are you seriously telling me that the Soviet Union