The Point Team (30 page)

He stopped when he heard the Viet sergeant shout commands in order to let Verdoux hear.

“The men are bunched up too much on his right, our left, and too spread out on his left, our right.”

“I’ll take the spread-out guys,” Murphy said.

“Mike will be pissed because they’ll see you’re a Westerner,” Andre warned.

“We got to trade them something if we want to keep our supplies,” Murphy said. “Tell the bastard that if I don’t come back.”

“Good luck, Bob.”

“You too, buddy.”

The big Australian was gone, moving with amazing speed and stealth through the jungle growth. He barely made it to the far
flank and hid only a few meters beyond the expected route of the outlying Viet trooper. The man passed without seeing him.
Almost twenty meters separated him from the next soldier. Murphy crept up behind the outlying man. He could have bayoneted
him, but a silent killing was not his purpose. Murphy blasted a single round into the man’s spine, which snapped him backward,
lifeless.

As the man fell and the shot rang through the jungle, Murphy switched the selector on his AK47 from semiautomatic to automatic
and delivered a short burst which took the adjoining Viet trooper at gut level. The victim’s legs buckled beneath him, and
he sank to the ground clutching the leaking punctures in his midriff.

Bob Murphy saw the horrified stares of several other troopers, astounded to see what they assumed was an American attack and
an attempt to kill them inside the borders of Vietnam. Bob sprayed fire in their direction and brought one of them down. Then
he beat a hasty retreat, a fox followed by an eager pack of hounds.

M
ITCH
came with a delegation of three of the other youths. Mike waited alone and said nothing when they arrived.

“We’ve come to talk,” Mitch announced.

Mike raised his eyebrows. He had heard from Katie that Eric Vanderhoven was a loud-mouthed, obnoxious kid. Apparently Mitch
had taken to modeling himself on him.

‘‘Where’s Eric?” Campbell asked finally.

“First we want to hear your terms. Then we’ll tell you ours. After that you meet Eric.”

“No way.”

“What?” Mitch seemed less sure of himself.

“I talk with Eric or nobody. Leader with leader, if you like. Go tell him that.”

“We don’t need you anymore, Mike. We got guns, a compass, food. We can make it to Thailand without you.”

“You couldn’t make it twenty kilometers from here without me. Now shut up and go get Eric. You’re wasting my time.”

Mitch was crestfallen, but he was not yet ready to back down.

Richards came up to where they were talking and winked at Campbell.

“I gotta go,” Campbell informed the four youths and exited fast with Richards, leaving them standing nonplussed.

“Waller got the little bastard,” Richards told Campbell.

Waller had tied the youth’s thumbs together behind his back and was cuffing him on the ear when they arrived. Campbell looked
carefully at the boy’s face. No doubt this time, this one was Eric Vanderhoven.

Richards and Waller caught Eric beneath the armpits and frog-marched him between them, with Campbell leading the way back
to their arms stash. Nolan brought up the rear. They were not too far away when they heard a single shot, a short burst and
then a long rattle of automatic fire. This was answered by fire from a number of automatic rifles, fortunately moving away
from them.

“Waller, stay with him in those boulders while Nolan, Richards and I check out Andre and Bob.”

They ran forward and approached their supply dump cautiously. Campbell almost got shot by Verdoux. The Frenchman told them
what Murphy had done.

“Crazy Aussie,” Nolan said in admiration and went back to fetch Eric and Waller.

“They didn’t get him, I’m sure of that,” Andre told them. “He’ll circle back here, but so will they to pick up their dead.
They may even have guessed by now he was a decoy and be on their way back here to find out what they were led away from.”

“Load up and move out,” Mike snapped, draping himself with his armaments and other supplies.

The rest followed suit and in minutes they were under way.

“What happened to the rest of the kids?” Andre asked Mike.

Mike shot the Frenchman a dirty look. “Couldn’t say.”

For the first time Mike met Eric’s eyes. He was surprised not to find them glaring out defiance and hatred, but
simply submission and misery. It occurred to Campbell that Waller had been brutally insightful in his treatment of the youth
as a detainee. Tie his thumbs together behind his back and clout him over the ear if he mouths off. Eric understood that approach.
He was used to that treatment. And countered with meek obedience.

They moved on for a while until Campbell called a halt. The early afternoon heat was still at its most intense. Campbell untied
Eric’s hands, and the boy sat quietly. They rested a while before anyone spoke.

“We’re not leaving Murphy behind,” Campbell said with finality. “He put his ass on the line to save our supplies. Anyone got
any ideas where he might show up?”

“Only landmark we have is that ruined temple,” Nolan observed.

“Yes, that’s it,” Richards agreed. “I bet that’s where he goes.”

“You two want to wait for him there?” Campbell said, giving them a chance to volunteer.

Richards and Nolan unloaded their gear, taking only the essentials and traveling light.

“We may not be here when you get back,” Campbell warned them. “Head for this spot if we’re not.” He showed them the place
on a map and pointed up in the foothills. “On the north bank of this stream after it makes this elbow turn.”

Campbell covered up the two men’s gear with long grass after they had gone. “We better be ready to move at a second’s notice.”

The heavy thatch and windowless walls of the hut the youths had until lately occupied at the reeducation camp maintained a
cool interior during the intense heat. Lt. Tranh Duc Pho sat with his sergeant on wicker chairs supplied by the party cadres.
They sipped from two bottles of beer set on a card table between them in the semidarkness of the hut and stared reflectively
at the bright, intense
colors visible through the open doorway—as if watching a primitive form of television.

But the lieutenant’s mind was dwelling on things not visible through the doorway. “The men resting? The helicopter ready to
go?”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant was being more formal than usual until he discovered the officer’s mood. They had lost three men
and had failed to kill their assailant. He would have to be very careful with the lieutenant.

“All of the local troops and militias out searching the new area?”

“Yes, sir. We got them as they came in from the midday heat and dispatched them in pairs into the field. Each pair has a radio
and calls in every twenty minutes. We divided up the wave bands, so there won’t be more crossover and confusion than normal.”

The lieutenant sipped on the bottle. “It’s not ideal, but it’s all we can do with limited manpower in this remote area. Sooner
or later one of those pairs is going to stumble on something and call it in or get cut to pieces and go missing. We’ll hustle
our unit into the location by helicopter and flush them out.”

The sergeant looked wary. “You think there’s more than one American?”

The officer amazed his subordinate by smiling cheerfully. “I think they’re
all
Americans. I don’t think there are any Hmong here—this has not been the way they would have handled it. We’re dealing with
a small force of Americans. Perhaps only five or six men.”

The sergeant gazed in awe of the lieutenant, for the likelihood of what he had said just dawned on him. “That was the coded
radio message you sent to army HQ?”

“Correct.” The lieutenant smiled happily and slugged down some beer. “We have them trapped down here. Along with twelve malcontent
youths. They’ll have their hands full taking care of those juvenile delinquents. We’re going to nail them!”

The sergeant joined in the lieutenant’s joy. He could see now what hero-citizens they were going to be after stamping out
the imperialist vermin.

Bob Murphy had taken off at top speed with his pursuers hot on his trail. Their bullets whipped through the vegetation around
him, rapped on heavy trunks like knuckles on a door, tore leaves from stems. But they were firing blindly or else on the run
at a glimpse of his fleeing form. Murphy did not waste time zigzagging or in worrying about what was in front of him. His
big body broke through the jungle growth with almost the force of a stampeding water buffalo. He ran wildly, with no tricks,
no caution, no subterfuges. He ran and ran till his breath came in long, asthmatic wheezes of humid fetid air that seemed
to hold no oxygen for his drowning lungs. He ran till his own heartbeat sounded in his ears so loudly he no longer heard the
shots behind him, and he ran and ran till the sweat pouring into his eyes and stinging them had almost blinded him. Then he
stopped, half doubled over, his chest heaving, his fatigues stuck to his body and his equipment dangling. He tried to listen.
Above the sounds of his own body. There were snapping noises made by insects and the piping of a bird or small mammal. Otherwise
the jungle was hot, still, motionless.

He stayed there till his body recovered. There was no point in going back to try to find Andre. He had led the troops away
from him but they would return there to collect their dead. The others had come and taken the supplies, or Andre had been
forced to abandon them. Either way, there was no reason to return there. The only other rendezvous point they had in the area
was the one Campbell had set up with the TV crew—the statue of the Buddha. They would figure that out and meet up with him
there. Unless they decided to abandon him and leave without him. Hell, they’d never do that. Not after he had
sacrificed himself for them. Campbell would never do that to him. Some of the others, maybe. But not Campbell.

Murphy wandered about till he got his bearings and headed directly for the ruined temple. On the way he saw two Viet troopers
searching through the jungle, making a hell of a noise and sticking nervously together as if they expected that at any moment
a big tiger might jump out at them. Bob smiled. The team would not have much trouble eluding this kind of search. He worked
his way around the noisy pair and had no more trouble on his way to the temple.

When he reached it, he did not approach it up the tiers of huge stone steps that Katie Nelson and her crew had climbed to
meet them, but along a narrow, winding path through the undergrowth which a man of his height and bulk had to travel slowly
to avoid rustling all the branches. He was moving carefully and reasonably quietly when his nostrils detected cigarette smoke.
Murphy himself had given up cigarettes two years before, and he enjoyed a sneaky whiff of smoke from someone else’s cigarette.
Only Richards and Verdoux smoked. However, they were too professional to do so while waiting undercover for him.

It took him ten long minutes, step by silent step, to approach closer along the path and then circle around behind the smokers,
who seemed to be lighting one cigarette from another. They were talking in Vietnamese. Two voices. From the way they talked
quietly and the heavy smoke, Murphy recognized from his own experience what they were—two soldiers goofing off. He crept in
closer behind them so that he could see them through the bushes. Their Kalashnikovs lay between them against the fallen slab
upon which they sat. He maneuvered until he could see them clearly. They were dressed in fatigues but had no sidearms or grenades,
only spare rifle magazines in a pouch on their belts and combat knives on their right hips. He couldn’t understand what they
said. When one spoke
over a hand-held radio, Murphy knew he was calling in their codes and present location—and perhaps lying about the latter.

Murphy waited patiently and silently, gently uncoiling a length of cable from his shirt pocket. At last one of the soldiers
stood and walked off ten paces to take a leak against a tree. Murphy waited till he had started urinating, then wrapped his
length of cable once about the sitting man’s neck as he placed his knee in the man’s back and pulled on the garotte with all
his strength, feeling the plastic-covered wire bite into his powerful, coarse hands.

The stricken soldier waved and kicked. His violent struggles only caused Murphy to pull tighter on the garotte while never
taking his eyes off the second soldier, only a few meters away. One of the man’s kicks knocked the rifles sideways, and his
companion glanced back over his shoulder. He stiffened when he saw his friend’s blue face and protruding tongue and eyeballs,
his bloodied fingers clawing at the unforgiving roughness of the stone slab, while his Western round-eye tormentor pinned
him to the rock with one knee and gazed calmly across at him.

The soldier was not a coward. He zipped the front of his fatigues and pulled the combat knife from its sheath on his right
hip. He came fast at Murphy, holding the blade out flat in front of his belly, swift and sure in his footwork.

Murphy released the ends of the cable, pulled his own knife from its sheath and advanced to meet his foe. He didn’t like what
he saw one bit—the man was trained and sure of himself—but he could not risk a shot since he had to stay on in the place to
wait for the others.

The Viet eased up in his onward rush when he saw the blade in Murphy’s hand. They squared off against each other, each sizing
up the other, trying to outstare, intimidate … catch off balance for one vulnerable instant by moving unexpectedly this way
and that … looking for an opening into which to launch a deadly thrust.

It was heavyweight versus flyweight as the bulky Australian
lunged at the light-footed Asian. Although Bob weighed almost twice as much as the Viet, he was deceptively fast on his feet
when he chose to be. He let his opponent see none of this and followed his first useless lunge with another and another.