The Point Team Page 25

  Already, as the sun grew higher and hotter, the mist was being burned away, growing thinner. They no longer had to shout to keep in contact with each other. After two hours, there was nothing left but miniature streaks of vapor within the heaviest and darkest conifers and a shining droplet of water on each of millions of pine needles. The air was cool, thin and sharp on the slopes, so different from the clammy, unmoving gas they breathed in the lowlands.

  A helicopter systematically quartered the slopes north of them. It was as if the pilot had developed an obsession that they were in one particular area and kept returning and returning to search for what he knew must be below him somewhere. No one bothered to mention its presence, even jokingly, but the insistent throbbing of its engine served as a reminder to them and as a goad to keep up their pace as they climbed higher.

  Then the chopper lifted and came flying sideways toward them.

  “Everybody freeze!” Mike yelled. “Hug the ground! If he gets close enough without spotting us, I’ll try to bring him down.”

  But the chopper eased its advance while still a thousand meters away, gained altitude and swooped in widening circles. There was no hiding from its surveillance.

  “To hell with it,” Mike said. “If he can’t see us, he wants to keep us pinned down for his troops to catch up with us. This chopper’s too big and unmaneuverable to try an air-to-ground attack on us. Let’s go.”

  They were located by the helicopter almost immediately. The craft flew behind them, staying out of range of their weapons, and hovered there, gauging their pace. Then a dark object dropped from it to the ground, and the craft wheeled away down the hill slope and began to circle again. A column of orange-yellow smoke rose from the object the chopper had dropped.

  “A smoke bomb to mark our position,” Mike observed. “Don’t bother with it. By the time he locates his men down there, finds a landing place and gets them aboard, that marker will be worth shit.”

  Campbell gave Richards another shot of morphine, and he and Murphy, as the strongest members of the team, supported the wounded man between them and set out on a fast climb toward an area of stunted pines and bushy rhododendronlike shrubs.

  “They won’t be able to find us in there to do a direct airdrop on us,” Mike explained as they went. “I want those troops on the ground again, searching for us. We can’t fight heliborne troops. We gotta keep them on the ground, where they have to go through the same trauma and hard work as us. Stay away from areas a chopper can set down.”

  The kids swarmed ahead of the team, their very real weapons looking like plastic toys. Only their hard faces and calculating eyes would have alerted someone that these boys were not making believe. The chopper seemingly had located its forces, and its engine droned as it spiraled about them, searching for a landing place among the trees and rocks of the sloping ground. When they heard it finally set down, they quickened their pace even more. Eric and his friends had reached the area of dense pines and shrubs and were exploring its immediate interior while waiting for Campbell and Murphy to carry Richards there. Nolan and Waller formed an unhurried rearguard, looking like they would welcome the chance to take a helicopter load of commie troops out of the sky.

  It was another half hour before the big Russian-designed helicopter was circling again higher up the slope from them, looking for a place to set down the Viet troops. They heard it land, then after a minute lift off again. They saw it fly down the slope and away.

  “Back to base, refuel and wait for a radio call,” Mike summed up. “Which means we’ve got everybody on the ground here.”

  “Unless that chopper’s coming back with a second load of men,” Verdoux added.

  “Could be,” Campbell conceded. “Which means we should take care of business here before they arrive.”

  They halted at a treeless, rocky hummock of land, a hundred meters in diameter and perhaps ten in height above the hill slope. Mike and Andre investigated it for its defensive possibilities, having transferred Richards to Waller and Nolan.

  “I want them to have to come get us,” Campbell told Verdoux. “We can defend this site from all sides from light weapons. If they have mortars, we’d have to move out. What do you say?”

  “It’s as good a place as any we’ll find in the next five minutes,” Andre said. “I reckon that’s how long we have till we make contact.”

  Mike beckoned the others up. He spread the kids behind rocks in a kind of halo around the crown of the hummock. They were so arranged they couldn’t do damage to others on their side by wild shooting. Mike was expecting the worst. Richards couldn’t handle a weapon, but Mike deliberately did not make a big deal about him so he wouldn’t feel himself too much of a burden and liability on the rest of them. The team members arranged themselves as they saw fit, staying flexible in order to handle an attack from any direction.

  “Listen, you guys.” Mike spoke in a loud reassuring voice. “We got eighteen men here. We probably outnumber these bastards. So all each of you has to do is bag himself one man and we got them beat.” He was speaking for the benefit of the kids, of course, but honored them as full members of his unit by making his remarks seem applicable to all. “Keep your heads down. Bide your time. Don’t try for him till you know you’ve got him. Never forget, we have the advantage here. They have to move on us. Hit ’em while they’re moving. Quiet now! Good luck, men.”

  Mike ordered them to quiet down not to hide their positions, but to calm the kids’ growing excitement at the prospect of battle. He could guess that their concept of a fire fight had little to do with the reality of one. Even with kids like these who had experienced the underside of life, when a gun was put in their hands and an enemy indicated—they forgot all the hard facts of survival they had learned and saw themselves as invulnerable conquering heroes. Mike had an uneasy feeling they were about to learn the hard way how things really were.

  Verdoux had been wrong in his time estimate. It was almost twenty minutes before they saw the line of men coming down the slope. They suspected danger from the hillock right away, and slid around to the west of it, keeping their distance.

  “I make it thirteen men,” Mike said.

  “Right,” Andre confirmed.

  “They haven’t seen us. If they continue on downhill, we’ll just sneak on up into these mountains. But I think they’re going to investigate this rise of land.”

  He proved correct. A minute later, a lone trooper, presumably not too happy with his lot, ran toward them from cover to cover.

  “Eric, this one is yours,” Mike said in a hoarse whisper. “Nail him just as he rises from cover. A short burst. Don’t empty your magazine at him.”

  The Viet was still zigzagging from rock to rock, never predictably moving in any particular direction—changing his pace and never presenting himself as an unmoving target. The soldier knew what he was doing, and Mike nodded to Andre to take him when the boy missed. But first, give the kid a chance.

  The trooper dodged from behind a rock, went one way, then the other, walked into a couple of rifle bullets from Eric’s gun and spun sideways, clutching his chest. His lifeless body rolled a little way downhill before coming to rest against a rock.

  A loud cheer rose from Eric’s friends. Their leader had done it! Killed one of their adult tormentors! Eric tried to smile for his fans, but looked more like he wanted to throw up.

  Mike met Andre’s eyes for a moment. They were both remembering their first day of combat—on different battlefields, in different years—when as raw recruits they had once cheered when the most daring or luckiest of them had first drawn enemy blood. Their cheerful mood had lasted till their side took its first casualty. After that, there was no more applause.

  The remaining twelve Viets suddenly came forward, spread out and keeping well to cover.

  “Mike, they’re going to charge us!” Murphy warned.

  “Grenades!” was all Verdoux said.

  “You kids up front, come back here,” Campbell ord
ered. “Don’t let them see you.”

  Some of the boys were reluctant to abandon their front-row seats to the coming conflict, but the menacing advance of the Viets was enough to convince most of them. When they were all safely behind big rocks, Mike spoke rapidly to them.

  “What they’re going to try is this. They’ll advance on us till they think they’re within range, then throw hand grenades—offensive grenades with no fragmentation—so they can overrun us while we’re stunned by the explosive shock. If they haven’t seen you pull back, they may go for your forward positions with the grenades. Keep your heads down. When the grenades are finished, pop up and let them have it with all you’ve got. OK? Meanwhile, keep those Viets back well out of throwing range.”

  “Jesus, Mike, they’re very good,” Nolan muttered as they waited and watched their foe advance on them, making use of every rock and scrap of cover.

  “Bullshit! They’re just doing what they’ve been trained to do, like performing seals. They’ll do what I said they’ll do, and we’ll waste ’em.”

  Some of the kids opened fire on the advancing men. Mike did not tell them to save their ammo till they got closer because he realized the boys needed to get the feel of their weapons—and there was nothing like shooting at something and missing to familiarize someone with his gun. The team let the kids make the running—they were keeping their guns cool till after the grenades went off. All twelve boys were blasting away now, without a single hit.

  Then Campbell saw the overarm throws of the first incoming grenades.

  “Heads down!” he yelled.

  This time no one hesitated. The grenades went off among the forward positions the boys had occupied before retreating—just as Campbell had said. The hot air and dust traveling on the shock waves tore over the rocks behind which they were sheltering, so that they crouched in miniature sheltered pockets in the violent slipstreams of the explosions.

  What Campbell had not said was that one of the attackers would have a superstrong pitching arm and overthrow the forward positions. The grenade came in as innocently as a flat rubber ball, bounced listlessly and spun on end where it lay.

  It was perfectly placed from the enemy’s point of view. Right in the center of them all. With maybe a fraction more than two seconds before it detonated. Probably less.

  Larry Richards was slumped against a rock, looking drawn and with feverish eyes. The grenade lay in front of him like an apple at a picnic.

  He said casually, “Carry on, fellows.”

  And flopped forward, covering the grenade with his body.

  Its blast lifted his body into the air less than a second later. His flesh absorbed the major impact of the explosion. The rest were hit by a blow resembling a human punch. Next thing they knew, Campbell was yelling.

  “Drill the fuckers! Give it to ’em! Kill! Kill! Kill!”

  They rose simultaneously to their feet, like a crowd at a stadium, and hammered home good ol’ USA holes in the communist attackers.

  The Viets died out in the open like moths on a summer’s evening.

  Mike, businesslike as always, counted the dead Viets and found one missing. One must have gotten away. He instructed the youths to pick over the bodies for weapons and ammo. Meanwhile, he and the other team members dug a shallow grave for Richards. To make up for the lack of depth, Campbell had everyone pile rocks over the mound of earth covering the merc’s body.

  Bob Murphy, as Larry Richards’ friend, placed the last rock on his cairn. He looked around them all, with a single tear trickling down his left cheek. “I don’t need to tell you that he saved every one of us here. And he was the only one of us who was not in Vietnam during the war. He and I joked about this—I always swore I would attend his funeral, that the Irish would get him. He thought so, too. As usual, we were only half right.”

  Chapter 24

  THEY climbed for a day and a half up the mountains without seeing a human. Whether they themselves were seen, they could not tell. At the opening of a mountain defile, they met two Montagnards. Campbell felt that the two tribesmen were waiting for them, and Verdoux could neither confirm or disprove this in his very dislocated conversation with them. He made a gift of three filled AK47 magazines to each man and listened carefully to what they said.

  “So far as I can make out,” he told Campbell, “they’re telling us not to cross the mountains due west of this point. They say we should travel north half a day and then head northwest, where we will be in territory not controlled by the Hanoi government.”

  “Any reason we shouldn’t take their advice?”

  “I’d take it,” Verdoux said.

  “Done,” Campbell confirmed. “What else do they say?”

  “That we stick to paths marked with blazes on tree trunks. I think we both know what that means.”

  Campbell nodded.

  They bowed in farewell to the two Montagnards. Mike thought he detected a glimmer of amusement on their stone expressions—like they were thinking their equivalent of the Yanks are back in town with their crazy goings-on, such as five mercs and twelve heavily armed children crossing the mountains from Vietnam into Laos. Mike could see a grim humor in the situation.

  Tranh Duc Pho scraped off the encrusted blood which was almost closing his right eye. He could feel with his fingers that his right ear had been cut almost cleanly off his head by a bullet. He had dropped his rifle, he supposed, and staggered away—crazed and blinded by the fierce pain coursing through his head. He had run wildly, trying to escape from the demon ripping his brain and soul apart in an agony so powerful it took over his being like an independent spirit. Then he had fallen face down in the pine needles—he remembered the way the dry brown needles looked two centimeters before his eyes—and screamed in pain into the earth.

  He was a soldier. Tranh Duc Pho was a warrior. A proud man. The essential part of that bargain with existence, in his view, was that he die rather than accept defeat. It was a fighting man’s only excuse for failure—his own death offered in recompense, along with as many enemy lives as he could bring along with him.

  Tranh Duc Pho admitted failure. It was more serious than having his unit wiped out and his remaining as the only survivor—although this was a disgrace in itself. He was in much deeper trouble than this. His orders from Hanoi were clear as a mountain stream—locate the American invaders and inform military HQ so they could send a party-selected senior officer to finish them off and take the credit. Of course, if the invading party turned out to be simply Hmong—Hanoi was still not accepting his word that Americans were involved, even after Washington’s acknowledgement of the fact (party regulars were accus tomed to regard all American news as CIA disinformation)—no army brass was going to bother to make the trip.

  The lieutenant was tired of being a lieutenant. He had just seen half a year’s work with the Montagnards reduced to zero by the slaughter of his mountain pioneers. Achievement in the field of battle was transitory … He had laughed before at suggestions that he think of himself. For the first time, he had tried to do that. Claim the credit that was rightfully his. By not calling in the reinforcements that the situation demanded. He had taken a chance. And failed. He would be held responsible. Now he must die. Honorably.

  Strangely to him, he felt no animosity to the American soldiers of fortune. They were like him, in a way—like every warrior since history began, regardless of cause, of right or wrong. He channeled his hatred, he focused all his spleen and frustration on a single target. Eric Vanderhoven.

  He had to destroy this spawn of gold bullion, this grandson of a decrepit capitalist who could buy healthy men to do his dirty deeds in impoverished countries. The boy was the larva of a greedy monopolistic toad, and he would metamorphose into a killer adult.

  What he was doing was comparable to spraying malarial swamps. He was ridding mankind of a potential future parasite. Tranh Duc Pho would die a hero.

  Tranh Duc Pho followed the Westerners and the children from the hill where they
had slain his men. The rifles they had not taken with them, they had damaged beyond repair. They left no grenades behind, and threw other weapons and ammunition among the rocks. The lieutenant had lost his own rifle, but still possessed his 9-mm Pindad pistol, an Indonesian-made copy of the FN Browning HP, which carried thirteen rounds in its magazine. He had seven spare magazines, a combat knife, and a canteen of fresh water. He had all he would need.

  One of the Western mercenaries kept a constant watch on their rear, and Tranh Duc Pho was careful to keep his distance behind. There were so many in the group, they were easy to follow. He watched while they talked to two Montagnards, apparently receiving directions from them, because now they turned north instead of continuing east. The lieutenant raged inwardly at this treachery, for that advice was good. If ever he had armed men under his command again, he would return to this place and destroy the village of those two Montagnards who had given assistance to foreigners. If ever he had men under his command again …

  They were moving now into territory hostile to the government, where the mountain tribesmen went to great lengths to maintain their fierce independence. He should strike soon.

  They came to a perfect place for his attack—great clumps of flowering bushes obscured vision, and often three and sometimes five paths ran more or less parallel to each other. While the Westerners fussed over which path they would take and paused at every branching of the ways to make new decisions, he caught up with them rapidly, took a path that branched off from theirs and almost certainly rejoined it a little farther on. He would wait there, kill the Vanderhoven boy and disappear into the bushes.

  Tranh Duc Pho could hear them, perhaps only twenty meters away through the bushes on his right, as he sped silently along the parallel path. His heart beat fast in anticipation. He felt a gentle pressure and then a snap against his ankle as he broke the trip wire. He heard the bent-back tree branch spring loose, and for an instant he saw the five six-inch hardwood darts, thick as his little finger and sharpened to a point at either end, fly in formation at his chest. Two glanced off the tough cloth of his army shirt, three penetrated his chest the length of a finger deep.