The Point Team (7 page)

Since Campbell had already heard of her daughter’s second failed marriage and her son’s lack of attention to her, he didn’t
need a dissertation from her on street crime. He got one anyway. Her energy and indignation, all the way from Phoenix to New
York on an early morning flight, amazed him. For some reason Campbell could never fathom, people unloaded their worries on
him in planes, in buses, on park benches—even at the trailer park, where they daily expected him to run amok and make coyote
food of them all, individuals would come up to him from time to time and unfurl some sad tale without an ending.

The plane flew north in a line directly above Fifth
Avenue and then swung east over where the Harlem and the East Rivers separated Manhattan, the Bronx, and Long Island. They
touched down at La Guardia Airport on Long Island Sound. Mr. Vanderhoven’s limousine was waiting.

Campbell was ushered into the study of the huge Fifth Avenue apartment.

“Colonel Campbell,” William Vanderhoven said by way of greeting, and shook his hand.

“I’m retired,” Campbell said. “People don’t call me by my rank anymore, except by way of a joke.”

“I see. What is it they call you now—yes, I remember. Mad Mike. Do they call you that to your face?”

“No.”

“But you are popularly known as that by your … associates?”

“I suppose so.” Mike grinned, completely unfazed by the hard time the old man was giving him. “I just can’t think what I’ve
ever done to earn a name like that.”

“Let us say you wouldn’t be here today if you didn’t have your name and reputation. Mad Mike. Indeed. I like that. Know what
they call me? The Old Bastard. My name is William—but no one has ever called me Wild Bill or Crazy Willie. Just the Old Bastard.
Mad Mike is much better than that, don’t you think?”

Mike laughed at the old man’s poker-faced brand of humor. He could easily imagine this man’s employees putting a lot of feeling
into it when they called him the Old Bastard.

Then Vanderhoven tried to sound him out on his views on Namibia.

“If I was into making bets on political stability for business ventures, I’d be sitting in a glass-walled office somewhere,”
Mike told him. “I’m a soldier. I deal with the present. A soldier can’t heal the past or foresee the future. He’s like a repair
man. He tries to fix something that’s not working right. What the other people do with it the next day is something he doesn’t
control so long as he
remains a soldier and stays out of politics. And out of business.”

The crusty old billionaire obviously didn’t like to be told what Mike was and was not going to discuss. His mouth tightened
and his manner became cold. Mike watched this drama with detached amusement. He could imagine how this sudden change of mood
in the old man would cause one of his employees to quake after saying something that displeased him. Mike never gave a shit
for generals when he was in the armed forces, and right now he didn’t need money so bad that he had to give a damn about the
moods of a wealthy old carpetbagger who wouldn’t even be talking to him if he didn’t need to hire him for some dirty work.
The Old Bastard sure as hell wasn’t hiring him to play polo or race a yacht to the Bahamas. Mike was determined to betray
no curiosity about what Vanderhoven had in mind and had received no clue yet as to what his mission might be. His five-thousand-dollar
consultant’s fee, whether he took the job or not, was enough to persuade him to take a short trip to New York, all expenses
paid.

“I understand that you have pursued a military career of sorts since you left the Special Forces.”

“I’ve been a mercenary, soldier of fortune, call it what you will.”

“Where?”

“Africa, the Middle East, Central America—I’d prefer not to get too specific.”

“I understand,” Vanderhoven said. “How long were you in the Special Forces in Vietnam?”

“Four years. Not all in Vietnam, of course. There were forays into Laos and Cambodia.”

“I’m sure you don’t want to be too specific about that, either. Have you been back in Southeast Asia since the war ended?”

“No.”

“Care to go back?” the old man asked casually.

Mike hesitated. “I imagined you had something in Africa for me …”

“You are avoiding my question.”

Campbell shrugged. “I’d have to give it serious consideration.”

“Good. I’m pleased to hear that. Because I don’t want any gung-ho amateurs or reckless heroes in my affairs. What I tell you
now I expect you to keep confidential even if you are not interested. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

Vanderhoven began to speak in a dry neutral voice. “I have a grandson in Vietnam …” He told Mike the whole story in as few
words as possible and without emotion until he summed up his narrative by saying, “These totalitarians demand that we
both
apologize. Vanderhovens apologize! I hadn’t realized I’d treated the boy unjustly—I’d never considered him a
real
Vanderhoven—until Katie Nelson described his attitudes to me and then my assistant Boggs confirmed the fact that the boy
is standing up alone—at the age of thirteen—to these … these inhuman communist robots. I want him out, Campbell! I want you
to go in there and bring him out! I don’t care how you do it, and I don’t care how much money it costs. Understand? Bring
him out, and I’ll leave him every penny I possess.”

The force and passion in the octogenarian’s voice took Campbell by surprise. He said, “People you suddenly develop an affection
for after not noticing for years may not live up to your great expectations.”

“I am used to people falling short of my expectations, Campbell,” Vanderhoven said in a flat, ironic voice.

“You’re certain that this boy Eric wants to come? That it will be a rescue, not a kidnapping?”

“I’m absolutely certain.”

Mike shifted in his chair. “If money’s no object, I can bring a team into Vietnam for you and bring the boy out again. The
part I’m not happy about is making contact with him. A unit of heavily armed Westerners can’t wander
about looking for an American youth. There’s no tourist trade, so we can’t wander about with cameras and Bermuda shorts,
either.”

“Katie Nelson is more than willing to return to Vietnam. I understand the communists were very pleased with her American TV
program and will let her back in anytime she pleases.”

Campbell shook his head. “The media will blow the whole thing. They’ll put us on the seven o’clock news while we’re still
behind enemy lines and announce to the world exactly what we’re doing and where we’re going. Forget her.”

“She knows the boy, Campbell. And she can move inside Vietnam with much more freedom than you can. You can’t do without her
help. Plus she demands the exclusive TV news rights to your escape story in exchange for her cooperation.”

Mike laughed. “You can’t be serious! Not only do you want us to go into the middle of communist goddamn Vietnam and grab one
of their citizens, who happens to be a minor and may not want to come for all I know—not only all that, now you want me to
take along a TV crew to cover the action. What do we do, pause for commercial breaks? Coming to you live from Vietnam, via
satellite, Mad Mike Campbell abducts a rich American’s grandson from under the very nose of Russia’s puppets in Hanoi. Our
own Katie Nelson is providing a live commentary, and we’ll be back with Mad Mike after this word from Budweiser …”

“It’s very possible that Miss Nelson has such a scenario planned,” Vanderhoven replied. “However, I’ll leave it up to you
to make arrangements with her. I recommend that you promise her whatever she wants. What you actually deliver would be your
concern. I don’t care.”

“Money?”

“What will you need?”

“For me alone, one million.”

“I see.” Vanderhoven paused. His face was expressionless. “Very well. The full amount if you succeed, half if you fail.”

“OK. I’ll also need a hundred thousand each for five men, plus another half million in expenses. That will include weapons,
training, transportation, bribes, the lot. This kid will cost you a total of two million.”

“Each of my seven wives has cost me twice that.”

“Eric is all you have left?”

“Right. One of my boys was drowned while still at school. The other, later Eric’s father, I tried to keep in school and out
of the war with a student deferment. He was having none of that, particularly because the peace demonstrators had already
begun to picket our factory that made napalm. I got him nominated to the U.S. Air Force Academy out in Colorado Springs. He
was delighted—never saw that I was sticking him in school for four years anyway. He came out of there a second lieutenant
four years later and the damn war still hadn’t finished. He was out there less than a year when his plane was shot down south
of the DMZ.”

“Missing in action?”

Vanderhoven shook his head sadly. “Not even that hope. No, they found his body. He’s buried in Arlington.”

“So are a lot of good men.”

“My son was a better human being than I am, Campbell. Seems as though my mean personality must have skipped his generation
and been inherited by this young fellow, Eric. You think that’s possible?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. When I bring him back, you’ll find out for yourself.”

The old man brightened. “You’ll go then? We’ve got a deal?”

“A million dollars up front. I run everything, you ask no questions.”

Vanderhoven offered him his hand and over their hand
shake gave him a crafty, jeering look. “Good luck, Mad Mike.”

“Thank you, Old Bastard.”

“You’ve put on weight, Harper.”

“I’m fit as you any day, Mike.”

They threw a few playful punches at each other, and the burly black man in a well-tailored business suit gestured to a cream
and chocolate-brown Lincoln pulled up near the airport entrance.

“Come on, before I get towed away,” he said to Mike.

On the drive across Detroit along the Edsel Ford Freeway, Harper began to sound Campbell out. “You know I ain’t going to help
some jive-ass white farmers in Africa because they claim the Zulus is communist.”

“This is nothing like that.”

“Better not be. Now that time we was in South America. That was OK.”

Campbell laughed. “That’s not what I remember you saying while we were there.”

“You’re right. We were lucky to escape out of there alive.”

That mission had been the only one on which Campbell had persuaded his former sergeant in the Special Forces to go along as
a merc. Harper could not be persuaded to go near the continent of Africa with a white mercenary group under any circumstances,
although several other black soldiers who had served with them both in Southeast Asia had gone along.

Campbell gave him a quick rundown of the mission, omitting all names and actual locations within Vietnam. If Harper agreed
to go, it would cut his work in half. Had he thought it would make any difference, he would have offered him a higher cut
than the hundred thou. But Harper was already a millionaire—the only one of the old unit who had hit it big moneywise after
returning home. Campbell waited for his answer.

“I want you to see my latest place,” Harper said, pulling the Continental onto an exit ramp from the freeway. “Just opened
it a couple of months ago.”

“How many does this make?”

“Eleven.”

“Not bad,” Campbell said admiringly.

The Continental pulled into the parking lot of a large, spread-out, single-story restaurant.

“Same formula as the others, except this one’s much bigger,” Harper explained. “Family places, reasonable prices, nothing
real fancy, not expensive—just real American food that hasn’t been frozen or kept in a can for a year.”

They were well into their meal before Harper announced that he would go on the mission. They discussed the other possible
members, all of whom had served with them in the Green Berets and had been along on one or more of Campbell’s later mere missions.
The men were given an order of preference—the first four available would go. Harper would take care of this. Campbell would
come back to Detroit again in a week and they would finalize a timetable together.

Harper looked about his big, thriving restaurant as if he were seeing it for the first time. “I got a wife. I got kids. I
got this. Yet I agree to go back to Nam with you. That’s crazy.”

“Probably.”

On their way back to the airport along the freeway, Campbell kept glancing back over his shoulder. He said finally, “We’re
being followed.”

“Mike, you’re getting uptight. I been watching you just now. You were eyeballing that blue Regal that left two exits ago.
Now you think it’s that tan Plymouth. Right?”

“Damn right,” Campbell said. “And I bet the Plymouth peels off a few exits from now and we’ll have something else on our tail.”

Harper laughed at this but kept a wary eye in his
rearview mirror. The Plymouth left the freeway as Mike had predicted. It could have been replaced by any of three cars behind
them, none of which followed them into the airport turnoff.

Campbell shrugged.

“This is Motor City, Mike,” Harper joshed. “Don’t get paranoid about cars in this place.”

“I wasn’t paranoid on my way here. I was sure I wasn’t being followed. What worries me is that the guy who’s backing this
mission told me he first tried to get action in Washington and then in Switzerland. That would have put them onto him. I knew
none of this when I went to see him. We’d have done it differently if I had. So someone saw me, maybe.”

“Maybe not,” Harper put in.

“My imagination.”

Three days later Campbell, back at the trailer park in Arizona, got a phone call from Harper.

“I got a phone call from the Internal Revenue Service yesterday afternoon,” Harper said. “When I called them back this morning,
a dude said they
might
want to discuss my last seven years of finances with me. Said they were looking into the situation. He’d let me know. Next
I get a call from Washington. Fella says he wants to fly up to review my hiring practices—equal opportunities for women, how
many blacks, whites—he wants to know how many people of Asian background I employ; I thought he kind of leaned on that one
a little. Why the hell would a black man serving Middle Western food in Detroit hire Asians? Yeah, you got it. The state and
city health departments may recheck my places, I’ve heard from the city fire department—and this is all in one day!”