The Point Team (11 page)

Harvey saw the Russian scrutinizing him over his shoulder. He accelerated and swung to the right so that his right front bumper
caught the left rear bumper of the Dodge. Harvey put his foot on the gas and banged into him hard. The Dodge’s front end jerked
toward the retaining wall of the Skyway, but Ivan swung hard to the left on the steering wheel and managed to avoid contact
and stay in his lane with some fishtailing.

It took Waller almost as long to get his car back under control. The Russian’s Dodge was now almost on top of the slow car
in front of it. Harvey goosed his engine again, this time all the way, and hit the Dodge a fender-crushing blow in the left
rear. He followed through on the punch, the Buick’s engine power surging and pushing the Dart into the car in front and toward
the wall at the same time. The Russian hit both and, with one final push from Harvey, the Dodge flipped, stood on its right
front wheel for a moment like a ballet dancer, and was gone over the wall.

The slow car in front veered out into the center lane, and Harvey couldn’t avoid sideswiping it. As he passed and fought with
his steering wheel to steady the Buick, he saw the car bounce off the retaining wall and do a complete 360-degree spin before
coming to a stop in the middle of the roadway. Sure stopped anyone from getting his plate numbers.

Harvey took the next exit off, stopped at a traffic light, and glanced at the newspaper on the seat beside him. He had used
up every lead he had gained from the group—killed every fucking traitor and spy he had come across. More even than the group
knew about. He really hoped now that the FBI caught up with those cowardly assholes and they had to answer for his deeds.
Meanwhile, he
might check out that ad in the paper for combat-hardened veterans.

Harvey carefully signaled his turn and drove courteously.

K
ATIE
Nelson was flirting with the vice-president in charge of the newscast division of the network. She knew he had the hots for
her, but had heard he was very cozily married and had never been known to step outside of the bonds of wedlock. Katie enjoyed
the feeling that she might be putting some thoughts like this into his head. She didn’t care if nothing came of it—he wasn’t
her type really, but she sure as hell enjoyed seeing him twist and turn in his indecision. And she did everything she could—as
long as it required no special effort—to keep the flames high under him, with a glimpse of thigh or breast, a touch of her
fingertips, a hug and a little-girl snuggle which made him sit down because of his hard-on.

However, today the VP did not have his usual calf eyes for her—in fact, there was a gleam of amusement in them.

“We finally got back that video camera and sound equipment you lost in Vietnam,” he said. “Came back to us via Switzerland.”

“How about the tapes?” she asked, not too hopefully.

“Not one, and the camera is empty.”

“I thought so.”

“I hear you may be taking the equipment on a trip there
again,” he said. “Maybe we should have asked them to hold it for you.”

Katie’s producer came by at that moment, and the VP said to him, “I hear you’re sending Katie off to Vietnam again.”

The producer said, “Hah! Me sending her? She’s going whether I want her to or not! Right, Katie?”

Katie shrugged. “When I suggested a return visit, the Vietnamese okayed it. So did you two.”

The producer picked up a photo torn from
The New York Times
that lay on Katie’s desk. He read the caption and commented, “Seventy-nine kids of mixed Vietnamese-American parentage and
sixty-seven of their relatives allowed to leave Vietnam. Says here it’s the largest group ever allowed to leave. You going
back to find that kid of yours, Katie?”

Again Katie noticed the amused look come into the once-adoring eyes of the VP.

“I can’t think of a better news story,” she snapped, “unless Eric were a Rockefeller or a DuPont instead of a Vanderhoven.”

The producer backed off. “I agree. I agree. Listen, this is a big story. We don’t want to breathe a word about it outside
this room, or we’ll be beaten to it by someone else. No one’s knocking that story. It’s just that it’s become … well, kind
of an obsession with you.”

“In what way?” Katie’s voice was ice cold.

At this point the VP jumped in. “Well, Katie, you’re pretty, and I’m sure you lead a very full romantic life and all, but
you’re also single, and I suppose you have strong maternal instincts that have been repressed and now this kid, Eric Vanderhoven,
needs you, so …”

Katie smiled at him so sweetly that he stopped. She said, “I think I have two nasty little boys here pulling my hair. Remember
how you did that when you were little? And look at you now, you’re still at it. Grow up,
please
.” She saw by the expression on their faces they were
sufficiently chastised. Now she set about building up their egos again. “But if I
do
return to Vietnam, it’ll only be because you two want me to—feel I’m the one who can get the job done. I’ll need your help
and support, both of you, like I had before. I couldn’t manage without that.”

“You got it from me,” the VP said warmly.

“Me too, kid,” the producer answered her.

Katie was looking forward to dinner after the evening newscast. She usually headed out on her assignment in the morning and
was back at the studio by three at the latest for editing and timing of her tape. Depending on the evening’s newscast, she
would often take on a second subject or a rush assignment or fill in for someone who was away. She argued for the favorable
placement of her segments and tried to prevent them being cut to mere seconds by the editors. By the time she dressed and
made up for the newscast, did her piece or pieces on the show and came down from the high anxiety after it was done, she was
normally exhausted. This evening was different.

She had run some old tapes from the files on the man who was taking her to dinner. They had footage of Michael Campbell as
a colonel in the Green Berets in Saigon, back from relieving a beleaguered column in the north, a film of him in a Montagnard
village someplace in the Central Highlands, and two minutes of exciting action as he and a unit were dropped by helicopter
under enemy fire in the rice fields of the Mekong Delta. The lean, battered colonel was photogenic and quite affable with
the reporters on each of the occasions, explaining the purpose of what he was doing in straightforward terms.

All in all, Katie decided she could handle this handsome warrior and get him to do her bidding. The Four Seasons had been
his suggestion for dinner. She would not have thought a professional soldier or mercenary or whatever Campbell was these days
would have chosen such a glamour hole as the Four Seasons—she would have expected
a steak house or even a burger and fries on a checkered tablecloth at a macho bar. The nickname Mad Mike she found less appealing.
She was definitely of the opinion that a man named Michael would be more useful to her than one called Mad Mike. But men were
silly. He’d probably once drunk a gallon of beer without taking a breath and earned that nickname forevermore. His buddies
would be calling him Mad Mike when he was ninety with no teeth and in a wheelchair.

She was late. Of course. She was familiar with how the very ordinary entrance of the Four Seasons on 52nd Street suddenly
blossomed into art, marble and flowers inside, and she ascended the grand staircase. A page led her past the Grill Room through
a glass-and-marble walkway that overlooked the lobby of the Seagram Building and led to the Pool Room—an enormous square room
with a ceiling several stories high. The windows ran from floor to ceiling and everything else was paneled in dark wood, and
in the center of the room water babbled in a pool surrounded by trees. The tall, spare man she had seen in the TV footage
sat alone at a table, not looking a day older or softer than he had in those rice fields in the Delta.

She joined him in a dry martini, and they took stock of each other.

“Who knows of this operation at the network besides yourself?” he asked.

“You’re not much for small talk, are you?” she parried.

“Not when I’ve more important things to discuss. Let’s get them out of the way so we can enjoy our food and conversation without
worrying about what’s coming next.”

She smiled. “All right. They know I’ve been invited back to Vietnam of course, since they had to approve the trip, and they
know—a few people, my vice-president and producer and a few people higher up—who Eric is, a Vanderhoven. They’ll keep quiet
about that in case the
Times
or another network steals it from us. None of them know about you. They think it’s just a good story as is.”

“Without Tarzan swinging out of the jungle and snatching the kid?”

“They might have second thoughts about that,” she said.

“That’s how it’s going to be, for all intents and purposes. You realize that?”

She nodded.

He persisted. “No second thoughts?”

“I never have them.” She laughed. “If I did, I wouldn’t last in this business.”

“I’ll be frank with you, Miss Nelson, when I say my chief concern in dealing with you is that whether the mission is a failure
or success, you win either way, since you get your media coverage of the event.”

“No, you’re wrong, Colonel.”

“I’m retired, Miss Nelson. Call me Mike.”

“If you call me Katie. Mike, sure I can use a segment of you being grabbed by the Vietnamese and being hauled off in a cage.
Except that’s not what people want to see. They’ll want to see Eric rescued from a communist slave camp and brought back to
America to inherit billions. So far as I’m concerned, I don’t even want you or any of your bloodthirsty friends to show your
faces for one second in the coverage.”

“Good,” he said. “We think alike on that. Another thing you must understand. When we move in to evacuate Eric, you and your
crew become part of my team for that period. Which means you obey my orders, do not question my judgment and will be shot
if you endanger our safety by disobeying orders. I want you to consider that carefully.”

“No problem,” Katie said easily. “Why should I disagree with what you want to do? Good Lord, I was never even in the Girl
Scouts. I wouldn’t know how to tie a knot.”

Campbell was alerted by her too-easy acceptance of his conditions and semihumorous dismissal of them. He knew any further
talk on this subject with her would be wasted.
He had stated his position clearly, and she had agreed to it. He would hold her to it.

She had a pâté of salmon and crabmeat as an appetizer, and he, crisped shrimp filled with mustard fruits. As the main course
she ate quail with deep-fried grapes, and he, sautéed calf s liver. They washed these down with two bottles of Pouilly Fumé
and finished with the restaurant’s famous chocolate cake. Katie noticed a definite softening in his attitude toward her as
the meal progressed.

“I’m kind of surprised,” she said, “to find that someone like you, with a reputation as a hard-boiled soldier of fortune,
has any use for fine food and wine.”

“It’s when you go without something for long periods of time that you develop an appreciation for it. If our plans work out,
I expect I’ll be living on rice and bits of dried meat in the jungle not so long from now. The thought of that is enough to
make me savor every bite of good food while I can.”

She nodded her head vigorously. “The food in Vietnam is awful. If Burger King opened in Ho Chi Minh City today, there’s be
riots. Tell me, does this—what I mean to say is that I expected to find you a sadistic bully.” She paused, a bit confused,
both by him and the wine. “You’re not. And I lied when I said I thought you’d be a bully, because I reviewed some tapes of
you on file when you were in Vietnam during the war. How can you kill people like you do and not turn into an animal?”

“That’s putting it straightforwardly.” He smiled and squeezed her hand to show her he was not annoyed. “A lot of people who
have never seen combat think that a soldier goes out and murders soldiers on the opposite side. Cold-blooded murder sometimes
happens, but it’s a lot rarer than the armchair philosophers realize. Most of the fighting happens on a kill-or-be-killed
basis. There’s no time to think, or if you try, that split second you hesitated could cost you your life. So you have to do
your thinking before you go. When you’re on the battlefield, it’s too late to start
having doubts. I make sure I’m on the right side going in—on what I believe is the right side anyway. Obviously things happen
to change a man’s mind—but even then, his first duty to himself is to get out alive.”

He continued, “So far as this mission is concerned, I think it’s worth rescuing the son of an American father who is being
persecuted because that is what he is. Any totalitarian government that takes away the liberty of individuals is worth fighting.
I’m not going to kill anyone who doesn’t try to stop me. I’ll respect their lives. But what you’ve got to realize is that
communists these days are very free with bullets. They’ve given up on the gentler forms of persuasion, since no one is fool
enough anymore to hand over everything to them out of free choice. If I come across any of these types, I can only hope mine
will be the finger first upon the trigger.”

She told him about the mothers she had seen separated from their babies in the compound outside Ho Chi Minh City. “That’s
why I don’t feel I’m doing something bad against them after they’ve invited me back—I’m sure they’ve asked me only because
they expect to make use of me.”

“Vanderhoven told me you’ve made inquiries about Eric.”

“They told me where he is,” she said. “I have a map for you with the exact location of the reeducation camp. Somebody at the
Pentagon confirmed the camp’s existence there from a satellite reconnaissance photo taken for Mr. Vanderhoven. The Vietnamese
have given me permission to meet Eric and perhaps even photograph him.”

“I wonder why.”