The Point Team (22 page)

Joe Nolan could have gone to Houston, like a lot of his buddies had done. He didn’t much care for the sound of life in Texas—folks
not having much use for cowboys in his part of Ohio—but shit, it had to be better than fucking Laos and Nam. He didn’t even
have the excuse of being ignorant. He had been here before. Probably he’d have been better off hit with that coke bust.

Larry Richards had to think about the loony Irish wanting to cut out his English liver and daft French-Canadians who would
dismember his body with a smile—but they seemed almost like old friends now that he was out here in Asia again, where he had
sworn a hundred times he would never set foot again. Not after Malaysia. He didn’t even know this lot, the Laotians, Viets
and whatnots. The others had the advantage on him there. They knew what to expect. But he really doubted if it could be rougher
than Malaysia.

Harvey Waller’s high school friends might have recognized the Harvey he was now—unsure, hesitant, fearful … not the Red-baiting,
two-fisted Harvey who had come back crazy from Vietnam. The way the others had dumped him when the FBI got on their case had
been a great blow to Harvey—despite all their patriotic talk, they had crumpled before the first blow had been struck against
them. He was alone now—marching by himself into commie hell. These others on the team knew nothing and would care less about
his great purpose.

Bob Murphy had to agree with his wife’s estimate of him—he was a fool. Self-indulgent. Out of touch with his
true feelings. In need of professional mental help. Selfish. A psychopath. Uncaring for her or for anyone but himself. He
must not forget his childish sense of humor. His total lack of appreciation of all the things she had done for him. How she
had sacrificed her life to pander to his thoughtless pranks, a woman like her who could have picked and chosen among the most
eligible and wealthy bachelors of good family in the whole of New England. She was right! She was definitely right, Bob Murphy
decided, two-thirds of the way across the Mekong river into Laos. He felt a sudden surge of emotion for his wife and wished
sincerely he had spent more time in her company.

They heard wind in the leaves above them, and grass rustled against their legs as they blindly followed the villager along
a narrow path on the Laotian bank. After they had walked for twenty minutes or so, all six of the team wondering how the villager
could find his way in this total darkness even if he had spent his whole life in the area, the Thai came to an abrupt stop
so that each man bumped into the one in front of him. After some rattling of equipment and quiet curses, they stood motionless
where they were for what seemed like at least ten minutes.

A voice called softly from the left, and the villager started moving again with his procession close behind. When they next
came to a halt, Mike reached out and touched the side of a hut. The walls were made of a thick weave of dry fronds. He stooped
and entered the open door. When all six were inside, the villager lit a hurricane lamp.

Verdoux explained what the man said. “The walls are thick enough so no light can be seen through them, but when we open the
hut door we must put the lamp out or cover it with a cloth.”

They thanked and said good-bye to the villagers and dutifully covered the lamp as they went out the door.

“Weapons,” Mike ordered.

Each man had a Kalashnikov assault rifle, an Ingram
submachine gun and a Colt .45 automatic pistol. Campbell shared out the grenades, ammo and other items. Next, they changed
into combat fatigues and ran a check on all their equipment.

“Old Cuthbert Colquitt is OK,” Mike said. “We got everything he said we would and seemingly in working order.”

“This has got to be a first for any mere mission,” Verdoux said wonderingly. “Anybody set eyes on any of these Laotians yet?”

No one had seen them in good light.

“I think we should take turns to stand guard,” Murphy suggested.

“No use,” Campbell said, gesturing at the frond walls. “One man with one burst of automatic fire could take us all out in
a few seconds. You might as well hope for the best and catch some sleep while you can. I know I am.”

Mike slept like a log. On waking the next morning with that feeling a man has when he has slept deeply and well, he found
it ironic that he had had his best night’s sleep in weeks on his first night on enemy soil. He roused the others and opened
the hut door. Two other huts stood across from theirs in a small clearing in heavy jungle. Strata of gray mist were floating
at different levels above his head beneath the canopy of trees. There was an early morning chill in the air which the sun
had not yet risen high enough to get rid of, and birds shrieked loudly everywhere in the forest.

Four of the Laotian guerrillas stood watching him. Mike saw immediately that they were not ethnic Laotians, but Hmong tribesmen.
This pleased him. He had worked with the Hmong in Laos during the Vietnam war and knew what dependable fighters and independent
people they were. He greeted them in the few words of their language that he knew. They smiled and responded in a Hmong language,
dialect or accent totally strange to him. Others
came from the other huts, so that there were ten in all—wide faces with prominent cheekbones, clad in dark blue tunics and
baggy pants with a tribal-colored sash tied about the waist. None of them could be more than seventeen years old, and two
looked no more than fourteen.

Andre Verdoux came out of the hut and greeted them in what Mike recognized as a mixture of Hmong and Laotian. They spoke together
for a while.

Mike said, “Ask them why their hair is long. I’ve never seen Hmong with shoulder-length hair before.”

Andre grinned. “I’ve already asked. They say they have sworn not to cut their hair till they have freed their people—it’s
a mark among the young men of those who are willing to fight back. This lot were toddlers when you were last here, Mike, but
they call themselves ‘sky soldiers,’ which is what their fathers were known as when they fought for the CIA and Special Forces.”

“You guys, bring out the extra grenades and ammo for our friends here,” Mike told the others.

Mike formally presented the gifts, using the Hmong words for sky soldiers several times.

Bob Murphy shook his head in an amused way. “Mike, when you said we were going to team up with Laotian mercs, I didn’t know
you meant a teenage gang.”

“You say that only because you don’t know the Hmong,” Andre interrupted. “Any Hmong teenager is worth three Australians.”

Bob laughed. “They must be worth a hell of a lot, then, because any Australian soldier is worth ten Frenchmen. We proved that
in the Second World War.”

“Enough!” Mike commanded. “It happens you both have a good point about these Hmong. They will be good fighters, as Andre says,
but they are very young and crazy to think they can take on the Vietnamese troops here in Laos as well as the Laotian army.
So Bob is right, too: we’ve got to realize these kids are probably kamikazes, not survivors. All right now, listen, this is
our plan of action.
We cross Laos well to the north of the town of Saravane and the Plateau des Bolovens. As the crow flies, it is about 120
miles to the Viet border. Inside Vietnam we link up with a Montagnard group who are allies of these Hmong—I suppose they are
smugglers. The Hmong will wait at this village for us while we go into Vietnam to our mission target. When we return, these
Hmong will accompany us back to the Mekong crossing into Thailand. Any questions?”

“What’s the mission target?” Richards asked.

“It’s not a political assassination, as I told you before. When it becomes important, we’ll discuss it.”

Verdoux put in, “The 120 miles to the Vietnam border are across hilly country with lots of forest—I’ve been over it a few
times, as I know Mike has. It could take us five or six days to cross on foot since we have to keep to cover. Also, if we’re
discovered in the first couple of days, we’re done for.”

“On foot,” Mike qualified.

“I didn’t hear you say we would be going any other way,” Andre said.

“It’s something to keep in mind,” Mike said, keeping things vague. “Anybody else got something to say?”

“Let’s go,” Nolan said.

This was met by cheers and shouts like a football team psyching itself up in the locker room before hitting the field. The
young Hmong seemed a bit puzzled and agitated by their behavior.

After a meal of dried eggs from their rations with rice and beans, they split into two units and set out to cross Laos. Campbell,
Murphy and Waller, with five Hmong, formed the lead unit. They moved forward in a line, with five yards between each man to
prevent them from being all taken out in a single sweep of enemy automatic fire. The second unit followed two hundred meters
behind.

One of the Hmong pointed wordlessly at the canopy of trees overhead and smiled. As long as they had this type of jungle vegetation,
they could move by day without fear of
being spotted from the air. The branchless trunks of the trees rose seemingly a hundred feet in the air, like king-size,
crooked telephone poles, each with a small umbrella of leaves on top. The leaves spread out and, competing with each other
for maximum sunlight, formed a thick canopy that left everything beneath in perpetual twilight, a thick, wet humid gloom when
the sun was high, or, as now, an early-morning chilly damp that few would expect in this equatorial climate.

Campbell glanced in admiration at the way the Hmong moved among the trees, their man at point moving swiftly forward from
trunk to trunk, pausing behind the cover of each for a split second to eyeball the terrain ahead, darting forward again with
an economy of movement like a deadly hunting, aggressive snake. Teenagers they might be in years, but out here in a jungle
combat real-life scenario they were highly knowledgeable men, seasoned with the wisdom of experience. Campbell figured that
it had to take at least a couple of years for them to grow hair down to their shoulders. Thus, any Hmong sky trooper with
hair this long had survived as an active guerrilla against the Viets and Laotians for a couple of years. Which was no mean
achievement.

Bob Murphy and Harvey Waller were moving like real soldiers now. He knew it and they knew it. As a man thrown in deep water
quickly remembers how to swim again, they had slipped into an infantryman’s wary prowl—aware that he was vulnerable to anything
unseen, that his main defense was to strike before being struck. Their heavier, more mature bodies would never again have
the almost feline, deadly grace of the young Hmong, but hopefully their more mature minds would more than tip the balance
in their favor in day-to-day survival tactics in the jungle.

Campbell himself eased forward in a kind of amble with his neck, arm and leg muscles relaxed, deliberately eliminating the
strain of tension. He fell into a loose, nonstop
vigilance he knew he would have to maintain for as long as his team was in the field. Like a security video camera, his eyes
panned the tree trunks ahead without focusing on individual objects unless one did not fit with its surroundings. His gaze
zeroed in with sudden, hard-edged focus on whatever object had sent a visual warning flag to his brain, and his fingers imperceptibly
began to close over his AK47 assault rifle, hung on a shoulder sling and resting against his right hip. Then the leaf moving
in a beam of sunlight or small animal or whatever it was that had attracted his attention would be recognized as harmless—not
a threat—and his gaze would again pan across the trunks and shady recesses of this gloomy cathedral of trees.

The Hmong at point raised his left hand and the unit stopped and sought cover, except for the rearguard Hmong, who retreated
till the second unit saw his warning and stopped their advance. Campbell crouched on the ground behind a big trunk, listening
and watching intensely for movement.

Calmly crashing through the undergrowth, bored as hell on their daily uneventful patrol, seven Laotian regulars armed with
AK47s walked in line from right to left only a hundred yards in front of them.

An advance party for a platoon, Campbell was thinking, and how far away were the others? Not so very far away, he guessed.
He would allow the seven soldiers to pass them by and lie low for ten minutes to see if others showed. If no more came by,
they would forge ahead and move away from the vicinity of the river as quickly as possible. It made sense that the closer
they were to the border with Thailand, the more heavily the area would be patrolled. Once they had moved into the interior
of Laos undetected, the Laotian forces would be even less on the lookout for trouble.

The last of the Laotian regulars, the seventh man, stopped while still in sight to light a cigarette. A cloud of
blue smoke rose over his head, and he hurried on to join the others. As soon as he had gone, the five Hmong in Campbell’s
unit jumped from cover and took after him—along with Harvey Waller, who deliberately avoided looking in Mike’s direction as
he bolted into action. Bob Murphy started to move out too but responded to Campbell’s wave to back off. Campbell could not
stop Waller or the Hmong without a risk of exposing their presence to the Laotians. Instead, he ran back and signaled to the
second unit to hold their positions.

The five Hmong in the second unit vacillated for a moment before they finally decided to obey Campbell’s command.

Mike made his decision and told the Australian, “If they get into an extended fire fight and become pinned down, we leave
them and move on. If the other Hmong stay, we go on without them. Fuck Waller. He wants to act as an independent agent, he
gets treated as one.”

“Mike, we can’t leave Waller behind,” Bob said. “I don’t even like the bastard, but he’s one of our team.”

“Bullshit. He’s only one of the team when he’s obeying orders. Stay here and cover this position in case more Laotians come.
I’m going after Waller and the others.”

Mike set off at a trot through the undergrowth. He knew the Hmong would circle about to the left in order to hit the line
of seven Laotians at a right angle. He had no chance of stopping them, but felt it would do no harm to check out what was
going on since they were taking such a hell of a long time about it. Before he reached them, he heard a long burst of automatic
fire and broke into a run.