The Point Team Page 22

  They had been climbing ridge after ridge of the north-south-running mountains as they journeyed east. A stream in the valley at the base of one ridge cut through the next. If they followed it as far as it ran east, it would save them a lot of climbing. A well-worn path ran along the southern bank of the stream. Nolan waited for Campbell to give him the go-ahead.

  It was tempting. After all their scrabbling up and down the loose rocks and undergrowth of the ridges, here was a level, smooth path to walk along—like a human being for a change, instead of a mountain goat. The vegetation on the north bank of the stream was too dense for them to make their way through, and the streambed, although nearly dry, was too rocky for easy walking. Campbell nodded to Nolan, but gestured with his Kalashnikov for them to be on extra alert.

  Maybe Campbell should have slowed Nolan down. Maybe not, since it made sense that they should use the path for their greatest benefit, yet spend as little time upon it as possible. Fighting men don’t spend a lot of time figuring out all the variations which might have occurred in any given situation because all that counts is what in fact did occur and what was done in response to its happening.

  Nolan just walked into a group of armed men traveling in a tight bunch on the path, taking no precautions. At a glance, Nolan simultaneously saw that all of them had their rifles slung on their backs and correctly judged that he had no way out of the situation. He emptied the thirty 7.62-mm rounds in his AK47’s magazine on the group, at chest level, then dropped to the ground on one side of the path, pressed the release button, discarded the empty magazine, and slapped a full one in the housing.

  His burst of automatic fire cut down the leaders of the group. However, the entire burst was so rapid that the riddled bodies of those in front shielded those immediately behind.

  Waller waited till Nolan dived out of the way, and while the leaders of the group were still staggering and falling, he emptied his AK47 magazine into the ones still wavering immobile from this sudden onslaught. He did not throw out his bullets in a sweep as Nolan had done, but in more accurate bursts, punctuated by dumdums.

  The Viets looked like a bunch of lousy actors pretending to be poisoned—they suddenly clutched their bellies, rolled their eyes, made grotesque faces, keeled over slowly. Some screamed, others moaned, the rest fell silently.

  Chapter 20

  “HEY, Mitch, tell Red I want to see him,” Eric Vanderhoven said in his usual tone of command.

  Mitch ignored him.

  Eric was alarmed by this. If one of the others had tried to defy him, he would have settled the rebellion right away, but Mitch and Red were his two buddies from Vo Veng’s orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, convicted with him of spying on Soviet ships with stolen video equipment. If one of them turned against him, he was in trouble. If both of them ganged up on him, he was finished.

  “Hey, Mitch, you hear me?” he tried again.

  No response.

  Eric turned about to survey him carefully. Mitch was chopping up some vegetables he had stolen, and he concentrated on his task. Two of the other boys came into the hut.

  “Get Red for me,” Eric ordered one of them.

  The boys paid no attention to him.

  Eric stalked out of the hut, his instincts warning him to find out what was going on before he decided on a showdown. He was their leader. He would fight for that. It was a position he had earned, and he was going to hold onto it.

  Another youth passed him, studiously avoiding looking him in the eye.

  Eric saw Red’s shock of bright ginger hair over by a drainage ditch, where he was gutting some frogs he had caught for their meal.

  “What’s up?” Eric demanded to know. “Have you turned against me, too?”

  “No one’s turned against you, Eric.” Red’s voice was cold.

  “Don’t pull this polite crap with me, Red. What’s wrong?”

  “Everything’s great for you.”

  “Me?” Eric was genuinely puzzled. “Look, I’m your leader. Right? You tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it.”

  Red rinsed a freshly cleaned frog in the ditch water, placed it on the grass and looked at Eric. “You were our leader before you decided to cut out and leave us. Now we got to look for someone else.”

  Eric was silent for a while. Finally he asked humbly, “How did you know?”

  “You talk in your sleep. We all heard you last night, about how Katie Nelson is getting someone here to rescue you. And leaving the rest of us behind. Oh, you didn’t say that while you were asleep, but it wasn’t hard for us to guess we weren’t included.”

  They were quiet for a time while Red cleaned the final frog. When he had finished, he said, “We don’t expect you to turn down this chance, Eric, but you got to understand you’re not one of us anymore.”

  Red gathered up the frogs and headed for the cooking pot. He turned back to say, “You don’t have to worry, Eric. None of us is going to give you away.”

  Eric felt so guilty, he stared at the ground between his feet.

  * * *

  “Yes, I want to go to the Buddhist temple,” Katie Nelson said with finality.

  Her senior Vietnamese interpreter shrugged resignedly. “You will give Americans the idea that the communists destroyed this temple we go to every morning. It has been a ruin for hundreds of years. Why do we have to go every day?”

  “In America we interrupt the program for commercials—you’ve heard of them. We need shots to begin and end segments of the show, and the ruined temple and its intact statue of the Buddha is perfect for that. My cameraman needs to catch it in the varying light each day to match what we film later on.”

  This was barely disguised bullshit, but Katie knew from experience that people, even communists, are willing to believe anything they’re told about television.

  They made their way, as they did every morning, up the stone steps between the toppled stone columns amid a tide of jungle vegetation that swept over the broken walls and cracked paving. Some of the arches and walls still stood, giving them an idea of what had once stood in this place. Alone, and the only thing undamaged in this heap of defaced rubble, stood a fifteen-foot carved stone statue of the Buddha, in the sacred lotus position, one hand raised and the eyes staring outward, aware, passive, transcending the passage of time in its spiritual message.

  Katie looked up at the smooth, rounded features of the stone face. In the iris of the right eye was propped a shiny new American quarter. Roger saw it too, and zoomed in on it with his camera lens while Katie distracted the interpreter.

  Campbell had arrived! This had been the only meeting place they could be sure they would confuse with nothing else in the aerial photographs. The statue had shown up intact on them. Katie had not known what sign Mike would leave for her, but as soon as she set eyes on the coin she knew it was not the currency of any other country but her own. She did not have to see George Washington’s head or the eagle with spread wings on its faces. She knew a Buddha when he winked.

  Katie Nelson stared amazed at Eric Vanderhoven. “All eleven of them?”

  “Right.”

  She took a deep breath and looked over at the eleven youths still busy planting rice shoots in the mud. Then she turned back to the determined thirteen-year-old who faced her on the roadway.

  “I sympathize with you, Eric,” she said, looking grave for the cameraman and wishing Jake was not picking this up on the microphone. “It’s a matter of logistics. I don’t think there’s any way Mike could take you all. Perhaps one or two of your real close friends. I’ll ask. But he’ll say no to all of you coming. For sure.”

  “Then I’ll stay.”

  Katie looked at him and felt like screaming, “You ungrateful little shit-head, you treat me like a fucking air-head and steal my equipment, and now when I come halfway round the world to save your ass, you say on tape that you won’t come because you’re too loyal to your buddies.” Instead, after a nervous half-glance at the camera, she said, “I understand, Eric
, you’re being loyal to your friends. Everybody in America will know and understand that. I’ll talk to Mike and see what he says. I’ll try to persuade him. I promise you, I’ll do my best.”

  Catch in her voice. A tear, perhaps, in her eyes. A sad smile. Change of focus. Roger panned on the laboring kids and turned off the camera. Jake cut the sound.

  “Since when have you become a hero?” Katie rapped at Eric. “Up till now you’ve been a selfish, dictatorial little snot.”

  Eric grinned at her maliciously. “Say what you got to say to me on camera, lady. You be careful, or I’ll say some things about you that you won’t like.”

  He turned away and climbed down the earthen bank into the rice field. He was soon at work again and, like the others, ignoring their presence.

  Katie felt Roger’s amused look, but did not acknowledge it. He knew what she was thinking—that he was too well-known as a cameraman for her to insist that she have a right to edit the contents of his film. If he ever got anything bad on her in the can, she knew he would insist on its being shown. Just to show her he could do as he pleased. No doubt he would call it artistic integrity or professional independence or some such. One word from him to a few producers that he had less-than-complimentary footage on Katie Nelson would set the mills of envy grinding. These were the dangers of live reporting in the field. The producers and their damn editors in the cutting room would make her look like less than star quality if she ever gave them the chance. While here she had been in Vietnam for a week already without being able to find a hairdresser!

  Their interpreters were waiting for them in the car. Jake’s opinion was that they had bored them so much, the interpreters no longer cared what they filmed or did. Roger claimed that boredom was a luxury no Vietnamese could afford under the communist regime, that if they were allowed to do something, there was a reason for it. Katie was inclined to agree. Yet, as news reporters, when given an opportunity they had to take it and ask questions later.

  Katie noticed the interpreters were not so easy to shake off at places other than the reeducation camp. Except at the ruined Buddhist temple. They always followed the three Americans partway up the steps, then stopped and smoked while keeping an eye on them in the distance.

  The day was baking hot, and Katie looked enviously at Roger stripped to the waist as he carried his camera on his shoulder. She could feel her blouse stuck to her back. She silently cursed the American TV audience which expected a woman to look primped, cool, and perfumed in the torrid tropics. There was no way Roger could get her to stand before a camera this afternoon.

  Campbell stood concealed where he had been before. Roger quickly moved into the niche in the ruined stonework and passed his camera to Campbell. Mike was walking after a moment’s delay alongside Katie Nelson in full view of the two interpreters, stripped to the waist as Roger had been, and the video camera on his shoulder blocking his face from their view.

  “I’m not taking him on his terms,” Mike said. “I’m taking him on mine.”

  “Eric said he won’t go.”

  “We’ll take him against his will if we have to.”

  “I really think Eric is right,” she said. “I think you should take the other eleven with you.”

  “So now we know what you think,” Mike snapped.

  “At first I reacted the same way as you,” Katie said earnestly. “Now I see it would be heartless to leave the others behind.”

  “It would be suicide not to. I can’t take a goddamn school tour out of Vietnam across Laos.”

  “Talk to Eric.”

  “I don’t have time.”

  Mike grew increasingly irritated at Katie, promised to meet her at the same place the next morning, and changed places with Roger.

  Eric Vanderhoven and the others worked hard to meet their quota for the day’s planting. It was essential to meet work requirements now to keep overseers away. None of the youths thought to question why they had been allowed to work together away from all the other workers and so conveniently located to meet with the American TV crew.

  Eric, back in his position as leader, was taking his responsibilities as such with great integrity. He regarded himself as father-protector of the other eleven now, and his demands on their behalf had allowed him to cast himself in a role of glory. The others were willing to put up with this if it meant that they, too, could go along with him, as he assured them they could. He, Eric Vanderhoven, would insist.

  As he worked, he watched out for the others—feeling himself to be an old male lion protecting know-nothing cubs. He saw the two Americans—they could be nothing else!—creep along the ditch near the rice field. He saw them unsling their rifles and place them on the earthen bank, then whisper urgently together as they looked at the working youths, heads lowered to their task. He was aware they had selected him, saw them grimace as they slid into the field and their boots filled with muddy water, was readying himself to bargain with them when he divined their intentions.

  “Eric! Eric!” he yelled in warning to Mitch, who straightened and looked at him in a puzzled way.

  The two Americans splashed across the rice field and hesitated.

  “Run, Vanderhoven, run!” Eric shouted at the stupefied Mitch.

  The Americans changed their minds, grabbed Mitch instead of him and led Mitch off struggling and kicking between them.

  Barefooted and sure-footed in the familiar mud beneath him, Eric sped past the two sloshing mercs and their captive, climbed up on the bank, seized a Kalashnikov in each hand and disappeared over the far side of the bank.

  Chapter 21

  MIKE Campbell lay hidden along with deadly snakes and vermin among the roots of a great tree that had levered apart the ornamental carved stones of the abandoned temple as they swelled through decades of rapid tropical growth. The Buddha as usual was greeting the new day with his calm, impassive stare.

  Campbell had decided the previous day, after meeting with Katie Nelson, to make a preventive strike. He knew Katie intended to film all sorts of sequences of Eric’s rescue. Mike had no intention of allowing himself or any of his men to be caught on videotape. Now the damn kid was acting up, as if he and his pals were going on some kind of picnic or outing. Campbell felt sorry for the little turds he had to leave behind. There was no way he could drag a pack of kids through the jungles all the way back to Thailand. He decided to grab the Vanderhoven kid right away and strike out that night for Thailand, leaving Katie Nelson and all her demands behind him.

  He put Richards and Nolan on the job, had them study drawings of Eric Vanderhoven made by an artist under Katie’s direction. They unloaded their equipment, except for their Kalashnikovs and magazine pouches. Go in quick ly, get out quicker and don’t hurt any of the kids—those were Mike’s instructions.

  Mike observed the fiasco that followed through binoculars, saw one of the youths steal the AK47s, yet didn’t realize that Richards and Nolan had bagged the wrong kid till they were much closer to him.

  “I’m not Eric Vanderhoven!” Mitch was yelling as they carried him struggling.

  “I know,” Mike said and freed him from the grip of his men. “What’s your name?”

  “Mitch.”

  “Tell Eric I want to talk with him. I’ll meet him at the temple statue at first light tomorrow. Know where it is?”

  Mitch nodded.

  “Wait a moment.” Mike gave him a bagful of K and C rations. “And here’s a half-dozen spare magazines for those rifles, to show there’s no hard feelings. OK?”

  Mitch disappeared with the food and ammo.

  “Why did you give those kids ammo?” Murphy asked.

  “I got an idea they may need it,” Mike said.

  Campbell had his men waiting to move out on the first streak of gray. He spread them through the heavy growth around the ruined temple with orders to grab the Vanderhoven kid but not to reveal themselves to any of the others if Eric didn’t show. Campbell was satisfied that if Eric came, he would be trapped. Th
ey would take him and head for Thailand then and there. Too bad about the others. But he wasn’t the International Red Cross. He had a dangerous job to do. The way Katie Nelson had talked, you would imagine he was the driver of a school bus.

  All the same, Mike was bothered … In the future, he would stay out of this kind of deal, he decided. A merc’s job was to go in and blow something or waste somebody, not these fucking mercy missions. No more missions like this. Of course, if this one worked out, he’d have a cool million. He’d never have to go on a mission again. But he knew he would …

  He felt bad about the eleven kids who wouldn’t be going. Too bad he couldn’t take them. He knew he couldn’t. The middle of a mission in enemy territory was no time for the leader to go sentimental. He steeled his mind and made his decision. Eric went. They stayed.

  He heard the bushes part before he saw the figure come toward him. He knew it would not be Eric. Eric would not have gotten this far without being taken. It was the youth they had grabbed by mistake the previous day. Mitch.

  “Where’s Eric?”

  “He’s not coming. I’m his messenger.”

  “All right, Mitch. What’s the message?”

  “We’ve escaped from the reeducation camp. We’re under Eric’s command now. He’s set up a camp in the jungle. We’ll meet up with you if you want. If not, we’ll make it to Thailand on our own.”

  “When did you take off? What time would you have been missed?”

  “They left after you kidnapped me. They waited for me. We have guns and food and we sneaked down for water bottles during the night. We’re ready to go.”

  Mike smiled at Mitch’s confidence. He fished out a hand compass from his fatigues and handed it to him. “Know how to use it?”

  “Eric does.”

  “I want to meet at high noon today.”

  Mitch pointed south. “You see that hill? On the far side, there’s a path. We’ll meet about halfway up. Right now they’re searching for us that way.” He pointed northwest. “They moved close by us before it was even light. The hill should be a safe meeting place. I’m going now. Mike, don’t have me followed. We’ve got guys watching where I pass. If I have a tail, our meeting is off. We’ll go it alone.”