The Point Team (32 page)

Mike had operated on him by flashlight under local anesthetic. He had sterilized the blade with alcohol, cut out the two deformed
bullets—both unfragmented, luckily—and had sewn up the wounds and shot him with antibiotics. Murphy and Verdoux had helped,
while Waller and Nolan had trained the youths in the use of their newly acquired AK47s from the dead Viets and the light Ingram
submachine guns from Mike’s team.

With Andre holding the flashlight, Mike changed the dressing on Larry’s wounds and shot him with penicillin.

“These look good, Larry,” Mike said. “No drainage. You had a hell of a fever all night and a steady temperature of 102. You’re
down to a hundred now. That morphine taken care of things?”

“I’m all right.”

They ate cold K rations in the darkness and then sat hunched up, chilled, waiting minute by slow minute for the weak light
of the new day to filter through the heavy canopy of trees down to them. They climbed the moderate slopes of the foothills,
and by the time it was full light they had emerged from the lowland jungle vegetation into pines and other conifers which
covered the hills and, beyond them, the high mountains. As the sun rose higher, so too did the mist—till it was a thick, blanketing
fog. They called to each other constantly when their dark figures vanished into the swirling grayness. When they cursed, Mike
laughed and told them not to complain.

“We have a lot of open ground in this terrain,” he said. “The mist is concealing us from the air. If we had this visibility
all the way, we’d have nothing much to worry about.”

Already, as the sun grew higher and hotter, the mist was
being burned away, growing thinner. They no longer had to shout to keep in contact with each other. After two hours, there
was nothing left but miniature streaks of vapor within the heaviest and darkest conifers and a shining droplet of water on
each of millions of pine needles. The air was cool, thin and sharp on the slopes, so different from the clammy, unmoving gas
they breathed in the lowlands.

A helicopter systematically quartered the slopes north of them. It was as if the pilot had developed an obsession that they
were in one particular area and kept returning and returning to search for what he knew must be below him somewhere. No one
bothered to mention its presence, even jokingly, but the insistent throbbing of its engine served as a reminder to them and
as a goad to keep up their pace as they climbed higher.

Then the chopper lifted and came flying sideways toward them.

“Everybody freeze!” Mike yelled. “Hug the ground! If he gets close enough without spotting us, I’ll try to bring him down.”

But the chopper eased its advance while still a thousand meters away, gained altitude and swooped in widening circles. There
was no hiding from its surveillance.

“To hell with it,” Mike said. “If he can’t see us, he wants to keep us pinned down for his troops to catch up with us. This
chopper’s too big and unmaneuverable to try an air-to-ground attack on us. Let’s go.”

They were located by the helicopter almost immediately. The craft flew behind them, staying out of range of their weapons,
and hovered there, gauging their pace. Then a dark object dropped from it to the ground, and the craft wheeled away down the
hill slope and began to circle again. A column of orange-yellow smoke rose from the object the chopper had dropped.

“A smoke bomb to mark our position,” Mike observed. “Don’t bother with it. By the time he locates his men
down there, finds a landing place and gets them aboard, that marker will be worth shit.”

Campbell gave Richards another shot of morphine, and he and Murphy, as the strongest members of the team, supported the wounded
man between them and set out on a fast climb toward an area of stunted pines and bushy rhododendronlike shrubs.

“They won’t be able to find us in there to do a direct airdrop on us,” Mike explained as they went. “I want those troops on
the ground again, searching for us. We can’t fight heliborne troops. We gotta keep them on the ground, where they have to
go through the same trauma and hard work as us. Stay away from areas a chopper can set down.”

The kids swarmed ahead of the team, their very real weapons looking like plastic toys. Only their hard faces and calculating
eyes would have alerted someone that these boys were not making believe. The chopper seemingly had located its forces, and
its engine droned as it spiraled about them, searching for a landing place among the trees and rocks of the sloping ground.
When they heard it finally set down, they quickened their pace even more. Eric and his friends had reached the area of dense
pines and shrubs and were exploring its immediate interior while waiting for Campbell and Murphy to carry Richards there.
Nolan and Waller formed an unhurried rearguard, looking like they would welcome the chance to take a helicopter load of commie
troops out of the sky.

It was another half hour before the big Russian-designed helicopter was circling again higher up the slope from them, looking
for a place to set down the Viet troops. They heard it land, then after a minute lift off again. They saw it fly down the
slope and away.

“Back to base, refuel and wait for a radio call,” Mike summed up. “Which means we’ve got everybody on the ground here.”

“Unless that chopper’s coming back with a second load of men,” Verdoux added.

“Could be,” Campbell conceded. “Which means we should take care of business here before they arrive.”

They halted at a treeless, rocky hummock of land, a hundred meters in diameter and perhaps ten in height above the hill slope.
Mike and Andre investigated it for its defensive possibilities, having transferred Richards to Waller and Nolan.

“I want them to have to come get us,” Campbell told Verdoux. “We can defend this site from all sides from light weapons. If
they have mortars, we’d have to move out. What do you say?”

“It’s as good a place as any we’ll find in the next five minutes,” Andre said. “I reckon that’s how long we have till we make
contact.”

Mike beckoned the others up. He spread the kids behind rocks in a kind of halo around the crown of the hummock. They were
so arranged they couldn’t do damage to others on their side by wild shooting. Mike was expecting the worst. Richards couldn’t
handle a weapon, but Mike deliberately did not make a big deal about him so he wouldn’t feel himself too much of a burden
and liability on the rest of them. The team members arranged themselves as they saw fit, staying flexible in order to handle
an attack from any direction.

“Listen, you guys.” Mike spoke in a loud reassuring voice. “We got eighteen men here. We probably outnumber these bastards.
So all each of you has to do is bag himself one man and we got them beat.” He was speaking for the benefit of the kids, of
course, but honored them as full members of his unit by making his remarks seem applicable to all. “Keep your heads down.
Bide your time. Don’t try for him till you know you’ve got him. Never forget, we have the advantage here. They have to move
on us. Hit ’em while they’re moving. Quiet now! Good luck, men.”

Mike ordered them to quiet down not to hide their positions, but to calm the kids’ growing excitement at the prospect of battle.
He could guess that their concept of a fire fight had little to do with the reality of one. Even with kids like these who
had experienced the underside of life, when a gun was put in their hands and an enemy indicated—they forgot all the hard facts
of survival they had learned and saw themselves as invulnerable conquering heroes. Mike had an uneasy feeling they were about
to learn the hard way how things really were.

Verdoux had been wrong in his time estimate. It was almost twenty minutes before they saw the line of men coming down the
slope. They suspected danger from the hillock right away, and slid around to the west of it, keeping their distance.

“I make it thirteen men,” Mike said.

“Right,” Andre confirmed.

“They haven’t seen us. If they continue on downhill, we’ll just sneak on up into these mountains. But I think they’re going
to investigate this rise of land.”

He proved correct. A minute later, a lone trooper, presumably not too happy with his lot, ran toward them from cover to cover.

“Eric, this one is yours,” Mike said in a hoarse whisper. “Nail him just as he rises from cover. A short burst. Don’t empty
your magazine at him.”

The Viet was still zigzagging from rock to rock, never predictably moving in any particular direction—changing his pace and
never presenting himself as an unmoving target. The soldier knew what he was doing, and Mike nodded to Andre to take him when
the boy missed. But first, give the kid a chance.

The trooper dodged from behind a rock, went one way, then the other, walked into a couple of rifle bullets from Eric’s gun
and spun sideways, clutching his chest. His lifeless body rolled a little way downhill before coming to rest against a rock.

A loud cheer rose from Eric’s friends. Their leader had done it! Killed one of their adult tormentors! Eric tried to smile
for his fans, but looked more like he wanted to throw up.

Mike met Andre’s eyes for a moment. They were both remembering their first day of combat—on different battlefields, in different
years—when as raw recruits they had once cheered when the most daring or luckiest of them had first drawn enemy blood. Their
cheerful mood had lasted till their side took its first casualty. After that, there was no more applause.

The remaining twelve Viets suddenly came forward, spread out and keeping well to cover.

“Mike, they’re going to charge us!” Murphy warned.

“Grenades!” was all Verdoux said.

“You kids up front, come back here,” Campbell ordered. “Don’t let them see you.”

Some of the boys were reluctant to abandon their front-row seats to the coming conflict, but the menacing advance of the Viets
was enough to convince most of them. When they were all safely behind big rocks, Mike spoke rapidly to them.

“What they’re going to try is this. They’ll advance on us till they think they’re within range, then throw hand grenades—offensive
grenades with no fragmentation—so they can overrun us while we’re stunned by the explosive shock. If they haven’t seen you
pull back, they may go for your forward positions with the grenades. Keep your heads down. When the grenades are finished,
pop up and let them have it with all you’ve got. OK? Meanwhile, keep those Viets back well out of throwing range.”

“Jesus, Mike, they’re very good,” Nolan muttered as they waited and watched their foe advance on them, making use of every
rock and scrap of cover.

“Bullshit! They’re just doing what they’ve been trained to do, like performing seals. They’ll do what I said they’ll do, and
we’ll waste ’em.”

Some of the kids opened fire on the advancing men. Mike did not tell them to save their ammo till they got closer because
he realized the boys needed to get the feel of their weapons—and there was nothing like shooting at something and missing
to familiarize someone with his gun. The team let the kids make the running—they were keeping their guns cool till after the
grenades went off. All twelve boys were blasting away now, without a single hit.

Then Campbell saw the overarm throws of the first incoming grenades.

“Heads down!” he yelled.

This time no one hesitated. The grenades went off among the forward positions the boys had occupied before retreating—just
as Campbell had said. The hot air and dust traveling on the shock waves tore over the rocks behind which they were sheltering,
so that they crouched in miniature sheltered pockets in the violent slipstreams of the explosions.

What Campbell had not said was that one of the attackers would have a superstrong pitching arm and overthrow the forward positions.
The grenade came in as innocently as a flat rubber ball, bounced listlessly and spun on end where it lay.

It was perfectly placed from the enemy’s point of view. Right in the center of them all. With maybe a fraction more than two
seconds before it detonated. Probably less.

Larry Richards was slumped against a rock, looking drawn and with feverish eyes. The grenade lay in front of him like an apple
at a picnic.

He said casually, “Carry on, fellows.”

And flopped forward, covering the grenade with his body.

Its blast lifted his body into the air less than a second later. His flesh absorbed the major impact of the explosion. The
rest were hit by a blow resembling a human punch. Next thing they knew, Campbell was yelling.

“Drill the fuckers! Give it to ’em! Kill! Kill! Kill!”

They rose simultaneously to their feet, like a crowd at a stadium, and hammered home good ol’ USA holes in the communist attackers.

The Viets died out in the open like moths on a summer’s evening.

Mike, businesslike as always, counted the dead Viets and found one missing. One must have gotten away. He instructed the youths
to pick over the bodies for weapons and ammo. Meanwhile, he and the other team members dug a shallow grave for Richards. To
make up for the lack of depth, Campbell had everyone pile rocks over the mound of earth covering the merc’s body.

Bob Murphy, as Larry Richards’ friend, placed the last rock on his cairn. He looked around them all, with a single tear trickling
down his left cheek. “I don’t need to tell you that he saved every one of us here. And he was the only one of us who was not
in Vietnam during the war. He and I joked about this—I always swore I would attend his funeral, that the Irish would get him.
He thought so, too. As usual, we were only half right.”

T
HEY
climbed for a day and a half up the mountains without seeing a human. Whether they themselves were seen, they could not tell.
At the opening of a mountain defile, they met two Montagnards. Campbell felt that the two tribesmen were waiting for them,
and Verdoux could neither confirm or disprove this in his very dislocated conversation with them. He made a gift of three
filled AK47 magazines to each man and listened carefully to what they said.