The Point Team Read online

  The ten Hmong threw caution to the winds. They ran forward in twos and threes, without shooting for fear of hitting one another, bayonets fixed and teeth bared. Three descended on the Montagnard in the most forward position, drove their bayonets into him repeatedly, and all together lifted him from the ground and threw his lifeless body aside, like farmers pitching straw with hayforks.

  “Hold your fire!” Campbell yelled, as the Hmong overran the Montagnard’s positions. “Waller, you want to kill commies? Go get ’em, boy!”

  Waller took off like a thoroughbred from a starting gate, and in a matter of seconds was driving the shining steel of his bayonet in living communist flesh, withdrawing it covered in scarlet life’s blood, waving the gory blade in a grotesque parody of a red flag while screaming obscenities about Marx, then plunging the tempered steel again and again into the writhing, screaming, turncoat tribesmen.

  Chapter 19

  THE party cadres looked expectantly at the cadre in charge of Eric Vanderhoven and the eleven other Amerasian youths at the reeducation camp. In a way they envied the fact he had been contacted about his wards from higher circles within the party—at least his existence had been acknowledged. Every one of them often wondered if anyone on a higher level either knew or cared what they did. But this was mere glorification of the personality—it was the sacred duty of a cadre to lose his or her identity and selfish motivations in his or her work for the party. The other side of the coin was that it was dangerous to have one’s existence noticed, to have wards in the camp who attracted the attention of high-level functionaries. If something went wrong, the cadre would have to answer for it. And if the cadre blamed his fellow cadres for their lack of cooperation, they might all be in danger of being censured.

  The stigma of being associated with any failure or error, no matter how indirectly, was enough to soothe their petty jealousies, rivalries, and personal dislikes and make them look down the long, woven wicker table with genuine concern at their colleague.

  He stood to talk, and his face disappeared out of the bright light of the oil lamp on the table into the dark shadows above. He spoke in a quick hurried voice and made little effort to conceal his worry and agitation as he described his orders to allow the American crew to film Vanderhoven.

  “I think this is a daring tactic on the part of our planners and one which will advance the party’s interest,” he concluded.

  Everyone there knew that what he meant was that this was a mistake of some city bureaucrat and that whatever was planned would backfire. It went without saying that the nameless city bureaucrat would not accept responsibility for an ill-conceived plan, which of course left them holding the baby. The others present were inclined to agree with his implied judgment of the scheme.

  A senior cadre took it upon himself to express the collective view. “This startling departure from accepted norms reflects knowledge and clearheadedness about future events beyond the abilities of all present here.”

  There was a gloomy murmur of assent to this, and they waited till the statement was carefully recorded by the secretary to be entered into the minutes of the meeting. More than this they could not do to register their opinions.

  The cadre in charge of the Amerasian youths summed up. “The Americans will arrive in a government car with two interpreters. We are to distract the interpreters, giving the Americans time to wander at will.”

  “If we put Vanderhoven and the other boys out in the fields by the road, the Americans will notice them,” one cadre suggested. “We could tell the boys they will be out there all week by themselves, without other workers nearby. When the Americans make contact with them, the boys will be able to tell them to come back and film them there. If necessary, we could detain the interpreters once again.”

  There was general acceptance of this suggestion.

  “But the Americans must not suspect …”

  * * *

  Lt. Tranh Duc Pho walked over to his radioman and listened as the message was repeated through heavy static.

  “Forty … repeat all forty … mountain pioneers killed. Weapons used by attackers seem to have been AK47s and American hand grenades. No survivors. No eyewitnesses. Reports of Hmong invading force of fifty men crossed Laos from Thailand. May be entering your area. Do not spread local alarm. Repeat. Do not declare emergency. Confirm.”

  The lieutenant nodded to the radioman, who transmitted, “Confirmed.”

  Tranh Duc Pho wandered away as a lot of patriotic palaver came to them over the airwaves—how it was essential to lay down their lives, if necessary, to stop the playfulness of these imperialist puppies, irresponsible agents of the malevolent foreign powers, hirelings of Peking and Washington bent on wanton destruction to besmirch the reputation of the workers’ republic. The lieutenant normally made a point of dutifully listening to such claptrap in the presence of his men, but the news he had just heard caused a surge of anger and frustration in him that he found difficult to control and which would have made him lose face with his subordinates if he had revealed his emotions.

  All forty of the men he had placed in the village dead! They had been the best Montagnard warriors he had ever convinced to join the new progressive forces. Nearly all the others had clung tenaciously to their outdated traditions and what they called their independence. Tranh Duc Pho himself had given them the name “mountain pioneers.” Only two weeks previously he had presented the village to them as a reward for their efforts and help.

  He had shipped the entire population of the village—men, women and children—to a distant reeducation camp as punishment for their smuggling activities, possession of weapons and contacts with outsiders. He had packed the lamenting tribesmen into big helicopters and flown them beyond where they would ever find their way back. After a couple of rice harvests at the camp, they would be transported to an uninhabited mountain area well away from the border and allowed to make homes for themselves there. They would never see the good land and well-built homes of their old village again. These were now a prize for the mountain pioneers.

  The lieutenant had expected that the forty friendly Montagnards would soon either entice or abduct women to their new property. Their sudden landed status and right to bear arms should send a clear message to the other mountain tribes of the advantages of cooperating with him and the Hanoi government. Tribesmen who didn’t, disappeared.

  Tranh Duc Pho believed in simple, forceful messages. Now these plundering Hmongs, no doubt on a smuggling mission to their old friends at the village, had come unexpectedly upon his mountain pioneers and had slaughtered them. These fools had wrecked his plan! His reward of the village now meant nothing! The other tribesmen would say this was the will of the Holy One and would become more firmly entrenched in their outmoded, mistaken ways!

  His face twisted in rage, and he snapped close his fingers like the teeth of a rat trap. It was intolerable!

  Yet he had a chance for vengeance. These marauding Hmong were advancing into his territory, by all accounts. They must have decided to deliver their smuggled goods elsewhere in Vietnam. The lieutenant knew that the estimate of fifty men was a gross exaggeration—it would not be permissible to admit that a much smaller force had defeated a greater force loyal to the government. From experience, the lieutenant knew the Hmong would number no more than fifteen men. They would be young and from this point operating in territory unknown to them, since they had always before returned into Laos from the Montagnard village.

  He would capture and torture them to death, then nail their mutilated bodies to trees as a warning to all who passed on the mountain trails.

  A small smile of anticipation spread across Tranh Duc Pho’s face.

  Katie Nelson winked at Jake, the sound man, as their two interpreters were led off in voluble discussion by the camp cadres. Roger did a medium shot of their departing backs, then panned his camera on the thatched camp huts.

  “I wish they had some barbed wire and guard towers,” he complained. “Thi
s is going to look like a fucking Club Med.”

  As soon as their interpreters had gone out of sight, Katie drifted over to the car. “The key is in the ignition! I’d almost swear Eric was one of those kids we saw picking rice near the road.”

  “Katie, you don’t pick rice—the kids were planting young shoots,” Jake told her with a smile as he slid behind the wheel.

  She got in beside him, and Roger took his camera off his shoulder and climbed in the back. In less than ten minutes they were at the edge of the flooded rice field in which the youths were working.

  “Stay in the car,” Katie said. “I’ll be more inconspicuous if I go alone.”

  “Bullshit!” Roger exploded. “I came out here to get footage and that’s what I’m getting.”

  He climbed out of the car and stared at her defiantly.

  Katie sighed. “You’d better come too, Jake. I’d hate not to have sound if they machine-gun us.”

  The look on Eric Vanderhoven’s face when he saw her made the whole trip worthwhile for Katie. He had stared up at the newcomers on the road above the rice field for an instant in his customary aggressive glare. This was replaced by a look of amazement, which in turn gave way to a smile of childlike delight.

  “Beautiful, beautiful,” Roger murmured as he squinted through the viewfinder and rolled the tape. “I got the little fucker in a close-up that’s real handkerchief material.”

  Eric had to make three separate approaches through the muddy water to Katie before Roger was satisfied with the shot.

  “We’ve come to take you to America,” Katie told him finally with a catch in her voice.

  “Now?” Eric asked. “They’ll let you?”

  “They don’t know about it. Someone is coming for you. He’ll be here in a few days or maybe a week or more, I can’t be sure. His name is Mike. He’ll contact me and I’ll bring him here to you.”

  “I’ll be working in this field all week,” Eric told her excitedly. “Any time he likes, I’m ready to go.”

  It had finally begun to dawn on Campbell’s men that they were alone now, on a hillside in Vietnam, with no backing to rely on from the outside. Andre Verdoux was the first to put this feeling into words.

  He said in private to Campbell, “God, I kind of miss the Hmong.”

  “I know what you mean, Andre, but I had to send them back to Thailand. They couldn’t wait for us in these mountains, and anyway, we have to go back by some other route, so there would have been no way to rendezvous with them again. We’ll go back the same way we came in, but it’s going to be one hell of a lot tougher trip, and I don’t want to commit us to any particular mountain pass in advance.”

  “The Hmong could have come with us,” Andre said.

  “What for? They don’t know the country. If anything, we know Vietnam better than they do. Why do I need sixteen men? From here on in, I’m avoiding confrontation any way I can. Sixteen men are a lot harder to hide than the six we are now.”

  “The men are sort of jumpy.”

  “I like that,” Mike said, half joking. “Nobody’s going to creep up on them when they’re edgy.”

  Verdoux could see he was getting nowhere with Campbell in his present frame of mind, so he grew quiet and moodily smoked a cigarette. The two men sat apart from the others as they all rested and sheltered from the midday heat.

  The humid stillness was shattered by Harvey Waller’s scream. Campbell had grabbed his rifle and flicked the selector to automatic before he realized that Waller had not been stricken by an unseen enemy, but was howling in rage at Bob Murphy. The big Australian was sitting placidly on the ground, grinning up at the enraged Waller, who was now on his feet and jumping up and down like a crazed chimpanzee.

  “You ought to be in a booby hatch,” the Australian was telling him in a friendly way. “In there, the men in white coats would give you little pills to make you feel good and upholster the walls so you wouldn’t hurt yourself climbing up them.”

  Waller was beyond speech. He took a few paces toward Murphy and tried to boot him in the face. The Australian jerked his head back, and the toe of the jungle boot grazed his nose.

  Murphy threw an arm lock on Waller’s leg, but the latter rabbit-punched him with the heel of his hand and worked his limb free.

  The blow was enough to set Murphy off, and he bounded to his feet and charged Waller like a wounded grizzly. Waller stood his ground. He was picked up effortlessly and slammed to the ground.

  Nolan and Richards looked on and laughed, making no effort to interfere.

  Half stunned, Waller lay on his side and stared up at his tormentor, who now stood above him, hands on hips.

  “I don’t know why Mike brought along a rat like you, Waller,” Murphy jeered. “We don’t mind you being nuts, what we do mind is you can’t fight.” He poked him in the side with his toe. “You run around ripping into dead bodies. Anyone stands up to you, mate, you flop over, belly up.”

  Waller snapped to his feet in a split second, whipping out his combat knife as he came. He shot a fast jab of the blade at Murphy, catching him a glancing blow on the left upper arm. The blade slashed his skin, and blood flowed. Murphy, outraged, ended it all with a straight right to the center of Waller’s forehead, an instant anesthesia that dropped him to the ground.

  Campbell hadn’t reached them in time to stop the blow. Now he snarled at Murphy, “Bring him to. And be gentle or I’ll kick your ass.” He turned to Nolan and Richards. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you see we have to stick together? When we get back to Thailand, you guys can make shish kebab of one another for all I care. While you’re on my team, you look out for one another—and that means breaking up fights. Like you would if you were on a baseball or football team. Except none of those pro sports guys is getting paid a hundred thou for a few weeks’ work like you guys are. So don’t come on like some goofball just serving out his tour. You fucks are being better paid than Eisenhower, Patton and MacArthur all put together.”

  Waller seemed surprised to find Murphy helping him when he came to. He said nothing.

  In order to pull the team together again, Campbell discussed their mission objectives. He passed about photos taken from satellites of Novgorod class and Poltava class Soviet merchant ships unloading military and other cargo at the docks in Ho Chi Minh City and of Soviet naval vessels at the old U.S. base on Cam Ranh Bay.

  Campbell smiled at their puzzled looks. “We’re not going to attack Soviet shipping. Those photos are intended only as disinformation in case we are captured.” He held up a print. “This is the only one that counts.”

  Nolan glanced at it quickly. “Not from a satellite. Looks more like one of those pictures they used to take from a hundred thousand feet up on a Lockheed SR-71. Remember them? You could see a cigarette in a man’s mouth and read the numbers on the license plate of a car.”

  “Yeah, I think you’re right, Nolan,” Campbell agreed. “It’s a shot of the reeducation camp where the kid is detained. Old Grandpa Vanderhoven told me he got it from a pal at the Pentagon before his relations with Washington turned sour. Anyway, you see it’s a low-security detention center, a kind of work farm, I guess, for nonpoliticals and dissidents the government is not much afraid of. Like kids. You see, here the jungle comes right down next to the rice fields. All the kid has to do is walk out and come along with us. It’s going to be a piece of cake.”

  “I’d sure like to meet that Katie Nelson,” Nolan said. “You can’t see much of her on the TV, but I bet she’s a nice piece of ass.”

  He gave Campbell an inquiring look, but before he could get the words “Did you score with her?” out of his mouth, Mike changed the subject.

  “Those dumdums, Waller?”

  “Yeah, Mike. I wasn’t using any before, but I sure as shit am now. I kept shooting those mothers and they kept coming like I was using an air gun. You don’t hit ’em in a bone, you don’t stop ’em. These dumdums going to flatten on impact and tear huge holes in the fuckers. You
’ll be able to see the scenery through them.”

  “Go easy with them, Waller,” Campbell said. “Put too many of them in your magazine, and you stand a good chance of jamming your gun.”

  “I’m using them one in five.”

  “That’s OK.”

  Hollowing the point of the bullet to make it into a dumdum usually unbalanced the metal projectile. Any imbalance in the bullet jarred against the small tolerances of the precision rifling inside the barrel and was a potential cause of trouble.

  Campbell said nothing but was surprised Waller had not been using doctored bullets up to this point. Campbell himself was, and he figured all the others were, too. Dumdums were illegal, according to the Geneva Convention, like a lot of other things in armed combat. Campbell didn’t talk much about these aspects of warfare, as a matter of preference. He felt that people who talked usually ended up either excusing or denying what took place every day in some part of the world.

  The bad feeling between Murphy and Waller and the amused unconcern of Nolan and Richards at their fight seemed to have evaporated as quickly as they had come into being. Campbell got the team under way while their mood was still good.

  Joe Nolan was at point. Waller was ten yards behind him, then Campbell, Richards, Verdoux, Murphy. The spread-out line of men moved fast through the trees and undergrowth. They had too much ground to cover to use a more cautious approach. This way, if they ran into something unexpected and couldn’t back off because of their pace, the opposing side was likely to be even more unpleasantly surprised than they, because as they traveled they were primed to react instantly and let loose at anything that stood in their way. Which was what happened.