The Point Team Read online

  Their butchered bodies were dragged over the shallows by the blood-stained river waters, carrying the tragic burdens downstream.

  Mike raged. His blood boiled. He had to strive to clear his head so he could think. Opening his eyes, he saw the solution right before him on the riverside highway. A Thai farmer with a truck bearing a transverse 500-gallon tank. Mike had thought it was agricultural fertilizer till he heard the farmer, who had abandoned the vehicle in a panic as bullets ricocheted around him.

  “Gasoline! Petrol!” he screamed, pointing at the tank.

  He only recovered his senses when Mike showed him a wad of dollar bills and the muzzle of his AK47.

  “Deux mille litres!” the farmer squeaked.

  Mike hoped so, and counted out twenty hundred-dollar bills before he seized the ignition keys.

  Verdoux nodded and hauled out a spare magazine from his pouch as he ran back to the riverbank.

  As Mike drove the truck upriver on the road, he looked out at the machine gunner who had Murphy, Nolan and half the kids pinned behind the shelter of a gravel shoal fifty yards from the bank.

  At a boat landing, he drove the truck out into the river. The late 1960s truck operated well till the water got above the wheel hubs. Then the engine cut out. And would not restart. Mike figured he was OK where he was and did not fight it.

  He did not bother with the fuel hose but released two emergency valves on the tank that sent the fuel spilling onto the river water. In a minute, a wide slick of gasoline spread over the surface. The currents were bringing the slick in the general direction he needed, yet it was too early to tell if it would reach its goal.

  Verdoux waited till the slick, in its rainbow colors, had reached the machine-gun position before firing his magazine full of tracer bullets into it. The burning phosphorus on the bullets ignited the gasoline slick in a carpet of blue flame.

  Although the water the soldiers were in was only about a foot deep, the sea of flames rose three feet high above it. When they jumped up to try to escape, only their heads and shoulders were clear of the consuming tongues of flame. Their awful cries of agony and screams for help to the people they had been machine-gunning seconds before rang clearly across the water surface.

  Murphy, Nolan and the surviving kids who had been marooned behind the shelter of the gravel shoal ran like crazy for the Thai shore.

  The gasoline combustion lasted a few seconds more, then suddenly, the fuel almost spent, the flames on the surface of the water died down to a shimmering topaz glimmer on the river. Some of the soldiers were still staggering about, burning and smoldering. Others had fallen into the flaming water and flopped about like dying fish, blinded, half drowned, half burned to death.

  The ancient bus bumped at terrifying speeds along the roads, driven maniacally by the brother of the Thai whose gasoline Campbell had bought. In the weak yellow headlights, they had glimpses of people jumping out of their way into the darkness, and every so often they would compete with an approaching pair of undimmed headlights for supremacy on the narrow roadway.

  Mike yelled to Andre over the rattles and squeaks, “Tell him to ease up. We haven’t come this far to die in a goddamn traffic accident.”

  Whatever the Frenchman said to him, the Thai thought it was hugely funny and drove all the faster. They made only one stop, at a roadside eating place, for Campbell to telephone the TV network bureau in Bangkok. He couldn’t have cared less if no one was there, but it was part of his bargain with Katie Nelson, so he waited nearly fifteen minutes for the call to go through. He and the others ate a huge dinner of pork slivers barbecued on small wood skewers, served in a thick, hot peanut sauce over rice.

  “Mike, you’ve done it!” Katie Nelson’s voice finally came over the wire.

  “We lost one man and two of the kids, but we’re here and in good shape. Except, I think you’ll find Eric Vanderhoven quieted down a lot.”

  “No one’s going to complain about that,” she said. “One moment, Roger is saying something.” She came back on the line. “Remember Roger? He’s the cameraman. He wants you to delay your arrival to Bangkok till daylight tomorrow.”

  “Tell Roger from me where he can stick his video camera.”

  Katie laughed. “I thought that would be your reaction. What time can we expect you?”

  “About one or two in the morning, if our driver doesn’t kill us.”

  All of them, including the kids, were now feeling the effects of their weariness and the strong Thai beer they had drunk. And all, except the ever-vigilant Campbell, dozed off from time to time. Mike roused them as the bus hurtled through the nearly deserted, early-morning outskirts of Bangkok. Andre translated his instructions for the driver.

  The kids, with their too-large weapons slung about their puny bodies, stepped one by one from the bus door, led by Eric, into the incandescent white glare of Roger’s portable TV lights. A large crowd had collected to see what was going on. Katie was interviewing them, Jake was creeping around with microphones out of the camera’s line of sight, Roger was moving this way and that with his shoulder-held camera, old man Vanderhoven—whose presence surprised Campbell—seemed to be making some kind of speech.

  “This is where we get off,” Mike said to the other four mercs.

  They piled their weapons and ammo on a double seat under the watchful eyes of the driver, who was accepting them as payment for the hire of his bus. The mercs slipped off the bus quietly and were noticed by hardly anyone. They grinned as they heard Eric boasting before the cameras how he alone had led his pals out of the bondage of communism into freedom.

  “You coming along with us, Mike?” Nolan asked. “We’re going back to that place I found last time here with all the pretty girls.”

  Mike grinned. “Whatever you say, chief.”

  A great rush of contentment passed over him. He had no more orders to give now. Mission was complete. Objective achieved.

  For Mike Campbell, Special Forces veteran and top-dollar soldier for hire, the proposition is dangerous enough to spark his imagination and lucrative enough to enlist his talents.

  His mission: a suicidal rescue operation deep inside Vietnam. At stake: the lives of five hand-picked mercs and an Amerasian boy. His reward: one million dollars.

  From the plush boardrooms of New York to the bordellos of Bangkok, from a private Atlantic island to a “re-education camp” in Vietnam—Campell and his squad of death-dealers challenge a vicious Communist enemy in their quest for the boy’s freedom.

  In the most dangerous game only one team can win…

  THE POINT TEAM