The Point Team (28 page)

Nolan glanced at it quickly. “Not from a satellite. Looks more like one of those pictures they used to take from a hundred
thousand feet up on a Lockheed SR-71. Remember them? You could see a cigarette in a man’s mouth and read the numbers on the
license plate of a car.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right, Nolan,” Campbell agreed. “It’s a shot of the reeducation camp where the kid is detained. Old
Grandpa Vanderhoven told me he got it from a pal at the Pentagon before his relations with Washington turned sour. Anyway,
you see it’s a low-security detention center, a kind of work farm, I guess, for nonpoliticals and dissidents the government
is not much afraid of. Like kids. You see, here the jungle comes right down next to the rice fields. All the kid has to do
is walk out and come along with us. It’s going to be a piece of cake.”

“I’d sure like to meet that Katie Nelson,” Nolan said. “You can’t see much of her on the TV, but I bet she’s a nice piece
of ass.”

He gave Campbell an inquiring look, but before he could get the words “Did you score with her?” out of his mouth, Mike changed
the subject.

“Those dumdums, Waller?”

“Yeah, Mike. I wasn’t using any before, but I sure as shit am now. I kept shooting those mothers and they kept coming like
I was using an air gun. You don’t hit ’em in a bone, you don’t stop ’em. These dumdums going to flatten on impact and tear
huge holes in the fuckers. You’ll be able to see the scenery through them.”

“Go easy with them, Waller,” Campbell said. “Put too many of them in your magazine, and you stand a good chance of jamming
your gun.”

“I’m using them one in five.”

“That’s OK.”

Hollowing the point of the bullet to make it into a dumdum usually unbalanced the metal projectile. Any imbalance in the bullet
jarred against the small tolerances
of the precision rifling inside the barrel and was a potential cause of trouble.

Campbell said nothing but was surprised Waller had not been using doctored bullets up to this point. Campbell himself was,
and he figured all the others were, too. Dumdums were illegal, according to the Geneva Convention, like a lot of other things
in armed combat. Campbell didn’t talk much about these aspects of warfare, as a matter of preference. He felt that people
who talked usually ended up either excusing or denying what took place every day in some part of the world.

The bad feeling between Murphy and Waller and the amused unconcern of Nolan and Richards at their fight seemed to have evaporated
as quickly as they had come into being. Campbell got the team under way while their mood was still good.

Joe Nolan was at point. Waller was ten yards behind him, then Campbell, Richards, Verdoux, Murphy. The spread-out line of
men moved fast through the trees and undergrowth. They had too much ground to cover to use a more cautious approach. This
way, if they ran into something unexpected and couldn’t back off because of their pace, the opposing side was likely to be
even more unpleasantly surprised than they, because as they traveled they were primed to react instantly and let loose at
anything that stood in their way. Which was what happened.

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.

“H
EY
, 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.