The Point Team Read online

  Murphy waited patiently and silently, gently uncoiling a length of cable from his shirt pocket. At last one of the soldiers stood and walked off ten paces to take a leak against a tree. Murphy waited till he had started urinating, then wrapped his length of cable once about the sitting man’s neck as he placed his knee in the man’s back and pulled on the garotte with all his strength, feeling the plastic-covered wire bite into his powerful, coarse hands.

  The stricken soldier waved and kicked. His violent struggles only caused Murphy to pull tighter on the garotte while never taking his eyes off the second soldier, only a few meters away. One of the man’s kicks knocked the rifles sideways, and his companion glanced back over his shoulder. He stiffened when he saw his friend’s blue face and protruding tongue and eyeballs, his bloodied fingers clawing at the unforgiving roughness of the stone slab, while his Western round-eye tormentor pinned him to the rock with one knee and gazed calmly across at him.

  The soldier was not a coward. He zipped the front of his fatigues and pulled the combat knife from its sheath on his right hip. He came fast at Murphy, holding the blade out flat in front of his belly, swift and sure in his footwork.

  Murphy released the ends of the cable, pulled his own knife from its sheath and advanced to meet his foe. He didn’t like what he saw one bit—the man was trained and sure of himself—but he could not risk a shot since he had to stay on in the place to wait for the others.

  The Viet eased up in his onward rush when he saw the blade in Murphy’s hand. They squared off against each other, each sizing up the other, trying to outstare, intimidate … catch off balance for one vulnerable instant by moving unexpectedly this way and that … looking for an opening into which to launch a deadly thrust.

  It was heavyweight versus flyweight as the bulky Australian lunged at the light-footed Asian. Although Bob weighed almost twice as much as the Viet, he was deceptively fast on his feet when he chose to be. He let his opponent see none of this and followed his first useless lunge with another and another.

  Murphy waited till he saw a confident look on the Viet’s face, then roared and lumbered forward at him. The trooper neatly sidestepped him, and as the big Aussie missed with his wild knife thrust, came in behind him ready to sink his blade into Murphy’s right kidney. But the big man, while still in motion, whipped around 180 degrees like a fighting bull, threw four fast straight rights to the head and chest of the Viet soldier. The sharp tip of the steel blade cut through the Viet’s left cheek, exposing his upper and lower clenched teeth, and penetrated his shoulder muscle once and chest twice, going in only a few inches, but agonizing and disorienting the soldier so much that he stumbled backward.

  Murphy closed in on him and tried to drive his blade upward between the man’s ribs and into his heart. He was repulsed by a kick to his right shoulder which almost caused him to drop his knife.

  The merc managed to grab the wide tunic sleeve of the trooper’s knife hand but missed the arm inside. He barged in and smothered the smaller Asian with his weight. Both men crashed to the ground, with Murphy on top rolling over on the Viet’s right arm to prevent him using it and sending repeated upward stabs between the soldier’s ribs which were slatted like a half-closed Venetian blind. The blade cut through the muscle and fitted up between the ribs, rupturing blood vessels, lungs and connective tissue. The man’s emaciated body vibrated and lay still.

  Murphy drew the blade out of the soldier’s side, and as he raised his head, he started with fear as he found himself looking at a pair of soldier’s boots and the muzzle of a rifle a few inches from his nose.

  He raised his head slowly and resignedly. He swore when he found himself looking fearfully up into Richards’ grinning face.

  Chapter 23

  CAMPBELL, Verdoux, Waller and Eric Vanderhoven waited silently for the return of Richards and Nolan, hopefully in the company of Murphy. All three of the mercs kept a sharp eye on the youth, expecting him to pick up and run at any moment. Campbell wished he would try, because he had begun to suspect that Eric might have something more imaginative in mind, something that might be much more difficult for them to overcome. The youth sat sullenly and hardly moved, staring straight in front of him.

  Once they heard voices, and Mike had them all ready to move in order to avoid discovery, leaving Richards’ and Nolan’s weapons concealed behind them. The voices grew fainter and in a little while died away altogether. They sat down again to wait.

  Campbell passed around a can of insect repellent, which remained effective against the large, determined mosquitoes for only a short period of time before it had to be reapplied. He also passed out antimalaria pills.

  Again, voices and sounds of searchers came within range, this time from two directions. Campbell ordered them to their feet. One search party was a considerable distance away, the other much nearer.

  “Mike Campbell!”

  Mike looked at Eric fast, since these were the first words he had spoken since they had grabbed him. He saw a hand grenade in the youth’s right hand and the pulled safety pin in his left. Mike knew he had filched the grenade from Richards’ or Nolan’s kits.

  “If you come near me, I’ll release the lever,” Eric threatened.

  “Eric, if you loosen your hand on that lever, you have four seconds till it blows up,” Campbell told him calmly. “Know what’s inside? A spirally wound prefragmented steel coil. If you don’t throw it far enough, both you and us will be cut to pieces by fragments of hot steel.”

  “Keep talkin’, Mike,” Eric drawled unconcernedly.

  “Put the pin back,” Campbell ordered.

  “No way. If I don’t kill us all, those search parties will hear the grenade explode. They’ll finish the job.”

  Waller started to approach the boy.

  “Come back, Waller,” Campbell commanded. “What do you want, Eric?”

  “For you to take my friends along.”

  “You got it.”

  Eric looked at Campbell suspiciously. “All eleven of them?”

  “OK.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “You have my word on it,” Campbell offered.

  “Why do you agree so easily?” the youth asked warily.

  “You’re not leaving me much choice, are you?” Campbell grinned. “Besides, maybe you’ve given me an excuse now to do something stupid which I couldn’t justify otherwise.”

  Verdoux laughed. “I haven’t said much up till now, Mike, but let me say this is the best thing to do. What do you say, Waller?”

  Waller sneered at Eric. “You take one of these damn kids, you might as well take ’em all. I’d bet this one here will turn out to be a commie spy.” He cackled to show he only half-meant what he said.

  “Put the pin back, Eric,” Campbell said.

  “When we pick up my friends,” Eric countered.

  “Deal’s off if you don’t put that pin back,” Campbell said. “Give me that grenade or throw it.”

  Eric took Mike’s measure for a moment, listening to the voices of the searchers in the trees. Then he reinserted the safety pin in the grenade and handed it to Campbell.

  The voices of the searchers faded into the distance after a time. When Nolan and Richards showed up along with Murphy, there were smiles and handshakes all round for the Australian.

  “Let’s go pick up your friends, Eric,” Campbell said.

  The youth looked relieved.

  Eric led them to his secret camp. All of the boys except Mitch rushed to greet them, and Mike had trouble quieting them down.

  Mitch didn’t look too happy to be slipping from number one slot to second-in-command. “You arrived just in time,” he told Mike. “We were just about to head out for Thailand on our own.”

  This was such a transparent lie that Mike slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Now you’re with us, Mitch. On our team I call the shots, and my backup man is Andre. We don’t have any other chain of command.”

  He did pay respect to
Eric and Mitch’s status by allowing them to keep the two AK47s they had swiped. The rest of the team had been sharing the four remaining AK47s among the six of them, but now, with the two rifles taken at the ruined temple, they had their full complement of six rifles again. Some of the boys asked to use the Ingram submachine gun each of the team carried, but Mike decided against it.

  “It’s too easy to wipe out your own men with an automatic weapon,” he told them straightforwardly. “I wouldn’t feel safe standing in front of some of you guys with your itchy trigger fingers.”

  They moved out for the foothills in a big group. If they had been women, very young children or very old people, Mike would have placed them at the center and guarded them on all sides. But these kids were agile as monkeys and could probably seek cover better than any of the adults in the event of a fire fight, so he let them go as they liked, as long as they did not wander too far in front or drop back too far behind. As he muttered aloud several times, school tours were not his speciality.

  Three of the boys who had been making forays up front rushed back and in dumb show indicated that there were men with rifles directly in front of them.

  “Get your pals together,” Mike whispered to Eric. “You and Mitch stand guard over them. Not a sound.”

  The team had spread out with three to four meters between each man and were waiting tensely for Mike. When he joined them, they began to move forward cautiously, rifles ready.

  They edged ahead, now one and now another slightly in the lead, each man acutely aware that he had no idea of what he was walking into—four unarmed peasants or forty crack troops. The silence maintained by their opponents boded ill. These were not loudly keeping contact with each other and beating the underbrush like baby elephants, as had the previous parties. Campbell asked himself questions. Had they heard his unit? Were they now lying in wait? Wondering why they had not yet walked into their ambush? Had they seen the kids who saw them? Mike told himself there were times when he had to forge ahead and be a fool, hopefully a lucky one. One of those times was right now.

  It was like a mirror image—six men in fatigues with automatic rifles coming suddenly face to face with six men in fatigues with automatic rifles in the jungle vegetation. Campbell loosed off a burst of fire from the hip which blew the top of the skull away—peaked cap along with it—of the Viet trooper facing him at a meter’s distance. The semidecapitated body jackknifed and slumped at his feet, and Campbell distinctly smelled the released bowels of his victim.

  Verdoux was on his left and drilled four deliberate bullets into the Viet opposing him. The struck soldier’s automatic fire passed between the Frenchman and Campbell, and as the trooper pitched forward, his rifle emptied itself into the ground before him.

  Richards was on Campbell’s right, a couple of meters away. Out of the corner of his eye, Campbell saw the Englishman being hit by a bullet and stumble backward. His assailant rushed headlong at him, firing but missing and attempting to skewer him on his bayonet. Mike got a side view of the Viet for a second and let loose a volley of lead aimed for his head. The bullets ripped the soldier’s nose, eyes and lips clean off his face. For a moment the Viet turned in Campbell’s direction and seemed to stare at him with the eyeless raw steak that was his face. Mike gave him a short burst in the rib cage to put him out of his misery, then emptied his magazine in the back of a Viet trooper who had dropped his rifle and was running away. Waller and Nolan were doing the same, and the force of all three streams of bullets picked up the Viet in a wild dance of death. When their bullets stopped, so did he. A shattered, life-size doll.

  “Sound off!” Mike yelled as he rushed to Richards’ assistance along with Verdoux.

  No one was hurt except Larry Richards, who had taken two bullets, a few inches apart, in his right shoulder. It looked bad. Mike loaded a syringe with morphine and injected it into his right arm. Richards was semiconscious and moaning. Gradually his moans eased as his shoulder became numb to pain, and Mike waited another minute before investigating the damage.

  He lifted him a little. “No exit wounds. We’ll have to take out those bullets before infection sets in.” He pressed on the collarbone and upper ribs. “Doesn’t seem to be any bones broken. But there’s no way to tell how much he’s bleeding internally. Let’s move him out of here as far as we can while the going is good. Tell the kids if they want weapons and ammo to strip the bodies. Take any food or maps or anything else, too, but hurry it up.”

  Camp life and their hardships before it had taught the Amerasian boys not to be squeamish about corpses. Mike had barely finished giving the command when they were already expertly relieving the dead Viets of their weapons, plus two wristwatches and a ring.

  The five team members agreed to support Richards among them, keeping him shot up on morphine. None of them mentioned the obvious—that a man with his injuries was not going to cross on foot the mountains and then the jungles of Laos all the way to Thailand. They were going to leave that one to Campbell to answer.

  All Campbell allowed on his mind was the ways and means of moving his men out of this danger zone. The shooting had probably been heard, and he expected that a mobile force would be at the scene very soon. From here they would set out to track them down. There was less than two hours of daylight left. If they could get into the foothills before dark, bivouac wherever they found themselves and move on again before first light, they might stand a chance.

  As Mike watched the twelve kids sling man-sized weapons from their narrow bony shoulders and hang grenades from outsized belts, he knew he had to try hard for their as well as his own precious skin.

  A truck had arrived at 2100 hours with more helicopter fuel. Tranh Duc Pho had the pilot fuel up immediately to be ready to take off at first visibility in the morning. Another boost to the lieutenant’s mood was a pretty peasant woman he had seen cooking the prisoners’ food at the camp. He had forced her away from her tasks and now she was administering to his needs. Which were many in this time of stress. The cadres had warned the woman’s husband she would be shot if he made a fuss now or complained later. He became reasonable when he heard this. Almost reeducated.

  The sergeant and the rest of his unit were located somewhere behind the Americans and the escaped youths. They had disappeared by the time his men arrived on the scene of their latest slaughter. In the morning he would locate the escapees from his helicopter and direct his forces toward them.

  The lieutenant had had his report to military headquarters confirmed. An American television crew—now deported—had acted in the locality as a contact for a group of American mercenaries. Unofficial apologies had been forthcoming from Washington through indirect channels, but no details on how many men or what their resources were.

  They had come to rescue a rich man’s grandson. Typical! Tranh Duc Pho took out the photo of Eric Vanderhoven he had obtained from the camp records. His orders were strict—bring this boy back alive. He would have to do that, he dare not disobey. But his orders said nothing about bringing him back uninjured. An oversight like that gave a lot of leeway to a man with a mind like Tranh Duc Pho.

  The team began stirring with the first birds, in the darkness and stillness just before dawn. Campbell checked on Richards. The Englishman was fully conscious.

  “Need a shot, Larry?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll scale down the amount,” Mike said, “and if you need more, let me know before the pain gets bad. I dug out those two bullets last night and patched you up. No bones broken, and it seems like no major blood vessels were hit. You’re going to be OK.”

  “Don’t let them take me prisoner, Mike.”

  “I won’t,” Mike answered, recognizing in Richards’ resigned tone that the man had assessed his chances and reached the obvious conclusion—he was not going to be able to undertake a week-long jungle trek, he was not going to walk out of this one alive.

  Mike had operated on him by flashlight under local anesthetic. He had sterilized th
e blade with alcohol, cut out the two deformed bullets—both unfragmented, luckily—and had sewn up the wounds and shot him with antibiotics. Murphy and Verdoux had helped, while Waller and Nolan had trained the youths in the use of their newly acquired AK47s from the dead Viets and the light Ingram submachine guns from Mike’s team.

  With Andre holding the flashlight, Mike changed the dressing on Larry’s wounds and shot him with penicillin.

  “These look good, Larry,” Mike said. “No drainage. You had a hell of a fever all night and a steady temperature of 102. You’re down to a hundred now. That morphine taken care of things?”

  “I’m all right.”

  They ate cold K rations in the darkness and then sat hunched up, chilled, waiting minute by slow minute for the weak light of the new day to filter through the heavy canopy of trees down to them. They climbed the moderate slopes of the foothills, and by the time it was full light they had emerged from the lowland jungle vegetation into pines and other conifers which covered the hills and, beyond them, the high mountains. As the sun rose higher, so too did the mist—till it was a thick, blanketing fog. They called to each other constantly when their dark figures vanished into the swirling grayness. When they cursed, Mike laughed and told them not to complain.

  “We have a lot of open ground in this terrain,” he said. “The mist is concealing us from the air. If we had this visibility all the way, we’d have nothing much to worry about.”