The Point Team

by J. B. Hadley

  Mike climbed back out and called Verdoux to one side as the others lifted the equipment out of the pit. “Andre, we don’t have time to check the stuff on this side of the river. Those three CIA men must have stopped Poon by now. They’ll be back here any minute with scores of armed police. How deep is the river at our crossing? Do we use a boat?”

  Andre questioned a man in Thai and told Mike, “We wade across. He says the water will be waist high, no higher than our chests, at most. They want us to hurry.”

  Mike handed him two hundred dollars in ten-dollar bills. “Give one to everybody here now, as a gift. Careful how you do it, I don’t want their pride offended. They’ve been well paid by Colquitt’s agent here and so have the Laotians across the river who are waiting for us.”

  Mike saw no sign of offense being taken in the eager way they each grabbed a bill from Verdoux.

  One by one the oil lamps were quenched, and they all stood still for a moment in the bean field beneath a sky of huge stars. Mike listened to the sound of the others breathing. Far away there was a strange animal cry.

  Then they set out in single file, one of the villagers leading, then the six mercs loaded with their gear, finally four village men with extra ammunition and grenades as a gift for the Laotians. They crossed the road to one side of the village and descended the riverbank into water a little above their ankles. Staying close behind each other in order for each man not to lose the man in front of him, they walked across the sand and gravel banks just beneath the water’s surface. All that could be heard in the darkness now was the gurgles of the water and the splashing of their feet. From time to time they could see the stars reflected in smooth patches of water.

  None of the men had to be told how the human voice carries across water. Not a word was spoken. They realized the enormous width of the river, even if they could not see it, by the length of time they walked through the shallows. Then very quickly the water came up to their knees, then halfway up their thighs, and they could feel the greater force of the current sweeping downstream against their legs.

  The villager leading them slowed his pace as he negotiated the main channel. Even if the river was at its lowest point toward the end of the dry season, the man still showed a healthy respect for it, taking his time to find good footing and searching with his feet for the sand bars he knew to be there.

  They felt the cool, flowing water at waist level and kept their weapons, grenades and ammo above it, knowing that at any time they might step into a deeper hole in the riverbed or lose their footing on slippery gravel and soak or even lose their load. After a long time they grew aware of the water level dropping slowly as they climbed out on the Laos side of the channel. Now more serious obstacles than slippery stones began to present themselves in their minds. Could they trust these villagers? For all they knew, they might be communists or in league with them. Were there river patrols at night on this section? Probably. The CIA knew where to find them in spite of their maneuvers. Would the Laotians? Had the Laotians heard they were coming? Were they, right at that moment, lying on the opposite bank watching them through night scopes? They were defenseless now, standing in open water a little more than a foot deep, their guns and ammo still wrapped in waterproof plastic sheaths. What the hell had they come here for? It was all a terrible mistake. They would go home. Call it all off. Never again.

  Of course none of the six wanted any of the others to know of his rising panic and second thoughts, so each of them looked mean as hell—though no one could see their faces in the dark—and they sloshed determinedly on through the water. Each man was damned if he’d be the first to look weak. They guessed the others might be having doubts too, but only Mike sensed that every man jack of them at that particular moment would have jumped at the opportunity to be moving in the opposite direction.

  Mike Campbell had bad dreams enough alone with the woman he loved in a trailer in Arizona—he did not need to make these dreams come true by going back to Nam, the very place that caused them.

  Andre Verdoux was enjoying sex, food and wine with a greater appreciation and finesse in his mid-fifties than he ever had in his life before. He would not have thought this possible, but it was so. And here he was, in a single irrational act, throwing the good life away—this was worse than a teenager running off to join the Foreign Legion!

  Joe Nolan could have gone to Houston, like a lot of his buddies had done. He didn’t much care for the sound of life in Texas—folks not having much use for cowboys in his part of Ohio—but shit, it had to be better than fucking Laos and Nam. He didn’t even have the excuse of being ignorant. He had been here before. Probably he’d have been better off hit with that coke bust.

  Larry Richards had to think about the loony Irish wanting to cut out his English liver and daft French-Canadians who would dismember his body with a smile—but they seemed almost like old friends now that he was out here in Asia again, where he had sworn a hundred times he would never set foot again. Not after Malaysia. He didn’t even know this lot, the Laotians, Viets and whatnots. The others had the advantage on him there. They knew what to expect. But he really doubted if it could be rougher than Malaysia.

  Harvey Waller’s high school friends might have recognized the Harvey he was now—unsure, hesitant, fearful … not the Red-baiting, two-fisted Harvey who had come back crazy from Vietnam. The way the others had dumped him when the FBI got on their case had been a great blow to Harvey—despite all their patriotic talk, they had crumpled before the first blow had been struck against them. He was alone now—marching by himself into commie hell. These others on the team knew nothing and would care less about his great purpose.

  Bob Murphy had to agree with his wife’s estimate of him—he was a fool. Self-indulgent. Out of touch with his true feelings. In need of professional mental help. Selfish. A psychopath. Uncaring for her or for anyone but himself. He must not forget his childish sense of humor. His total lack of appreciation of all the things she had done for him. How she had sacrificed her life to pander to his thoughtless pranks, a woman like her who could have picked and chosen among the most eligible and wealthy bachelors of good family in the whole of New England. She was right! She was definitely right, Bob Murphy decided, two-thirds of the way across the Mekong river into Laos. He felt a sudden surge of emotion for his wife and wished sincerely he had spent more time in her company.

  They heard wind in the leaves above them, and grass rustled against their legs as they blindly followed the villager along a narrow path on the Laotian bank. After they had walked for twenty minutes or so, all six of the team wondering how the villager could find his way in this total darkness even if he had spent his whole life in the area, the Thai came to an abrupt stop so that each man bumped into the one in front of him. After some rattling of equipment and quiet curses, they stood motionless where they were for what seemed like at least ten minutes.

  A voice called softly from the left, and the villager started moving again with his procession close behind. When they next came to a halt, Mike reached out and touched the side of a hut. The walls were made of a thick weave of dry fronds. He stooped and entered the open door. When all six were inside, the villager lit a hurricane lamp.

  Verdoux explained what the man said. “The walls are thick enough so no light can be seen through them, but when we open the hut door we must put the lamp out or cover it with a cloth.”

  They thanked and said good-bye to the villagers and dutifully covered the lamp as they went out the door.

  “Weapons,” Mike ordered.

  Each man had a Kalashnikov assault rifle, an Ingram submachine gun and a Colt .45 automatic pistol. Campbell shared out the grenades, ammo and other items. Next, they changed into combat fatigues and ran a check on all their equipment.

  “Old Cuthbert Colquitt is OK,” Mike said. “We got everything he said we would and seemingly in working order.”

  “This has got to be a first for any mere mission,” Verdoux said wonderingly. “Anybody
set eyes on any of these Laotians yet?”

  No one had seen them in good light.

  “I think we should take turns to stand guard,” Murphy suggested.

  “No use,” Campbell said, gesturing at the frond walls. “One man with one burst of automatic fire could take us all out in a few seconds. You might as well hope for the best and catch some sleep while you can. I know I am.”

  Mike slept like a log. On waking the next morning with that feeling a man has when he has slept deeply and well, he found it ironic that he had had his best night’s sleep in weeks on his first night on enemy soil. He roused the others and opened the hut door. Two other huts stood across from theirs in a small clearing in heavy jungle. Strata of gray mist were floating at different levels above his head beneath the canopy of trees. There was an early morning chill in the air which the sun had not yet risen high enough to get rid of, and birds shrieked loudly everywhere in the forest.

  Four of the Laotian guerrillas stood watching him. Mike saw immediately that they were not ethnic Laotians, but Hmong tribesmen. This pleased him. He had worked with the Hmong in Laos during the Vietnam war and knew what dependable fighters and independent people they were. He greeted them in the few words of their language that he knew. They smiled and responded in a Hmong language, dialect or accent totally strange to him. Others came from the other huts, so that there were ten in all—wide faces with prominent cheekbones, clad in dark blue tunics and baggy pants with a tribal-colored sash tied about the waist. None of them could be more than seventeen years old, and two looked no more than fourteen.

  Andre Verdoux came out of the hut and greeted them in what Mike recognized as a mixture of Hmong and Laotian. They spoke together for a while.

  Mike said, “Ask them why their hair is long. I’ve never seen Hmong with shoulder-length hair before.”

  Andre grinned. “I’ve already asked. They say they have sworn not to cut their hair till they have freed their people—it’s a mark among the young men of those who are willing to fight back. This lot were toddlers when you were last here, Mike, but they call themselves ‘sky soldiers,’ which is what their fathers were known as when they fought for the CIA and Special Forces.”

  “You guys, bring out the extra grenades and ammo for our friends here,” Mike told the others.

  Mike formally presented the gifts, using the Hmong words for sky soldiers several times.

  Bob Murphy shook his head in an amused way. “Mike, when you said we were going to team up with Laotian mercs, I didn’t know you meant a teenage gang.”

  “You say that only because you don’t know the Hmong,” Andre interrupted. “Any Hmong teenager is worth three Australians.”

  Bob laughed. “They must be worth a hell of a lot, then, because any Australian soldier is worth ten Frenchmen. We proved that in the Second World War.”

  “Enough!” Mike commanded. “It happens you both have a good point about these Hmong. They will be good fighters, as Andre says, but they are very young and crazy to think they can take on the Vietnamese troops here in Laos as well as the Laotian army. So Bob is right, too: we’ve got to realize these kids are probably kamikazes, not survivors. All right now, listen, this is our plan of action. We cross Laos well to the north of the town of Saravane and the Plateau des Bolovens. As the crow flies, it is about 120 miles to the Viet border. Inside Vietnam we link up with a Montagnard group who are allies of these Hmong—I suppose they are smugglers. The Hmong will wait at this village for us while we go into Vietnam to our mission target. When we return, these Hmong will accompany us back to the Mekong crossing into Thailand. Any questions?”

  “What’s the mission target?” Richards asked.

  “It’s not a political assassination, as I told you before. When it becomes important, we’ll discuss it.”

  Verdoux put in, “The 120 miles to the Vietnam border are across hilly country with lots of forest—I’ve been over it a few times, as I know Mike has. It could take us five or six days to cross on foot since we have to keep to cover. Also, if we’re discovered in the first couple of days, we’re done for.”

  “On foot,” Mike qualified.

  “I didn’t hear you say we would be going any other way,” Andre said.

  “It’s something to keep in mind,” Mike said, keeping things vague. “Anybody else got something to say?”

  “Let’s go,” Nolan said.

  This was met by cheers and shouts like a football team psyching itself up in the locker room before hitting the field. The young Hmong seemed a bit puzzled and agitated by their behavior.

  After a meal of dried eggs from their rations with rice and beans, they split into two units and set out to cross Laos. Campbell, Murphy and Waller, with five Hmong, formed the lead unit. They moved forward in a line, with five yards between each man to prevent them from being all taken out in a single sweep of enemy automatic fire. The second unit followed two hundred meters behind.

  One of the Hmong pointed wordlessly at the canopy of trees overhead and smiled. As long as they had this type of jungle vegetation, they could move by day without fear of being spotted from the air. The branchless trunks of the trees rose seemingly a hundred feet in the air, like king-size, crooked telephone poles, each with a small umbrella of leaves on top. The leaves spread out and, competing with each other for maximum sunlight, formed a thick canopy that left everything beneath in perpetual twilight, a thick, wet humid gloom when the sun was high, or, as now, an early-morning chilly damp that few would expect in this equatorial climate.

  Campbell glanced in admiration at the way the Hmong moved among the trees, their man at point moving swiftly forward from trunk to trunk, pausing behind the cover of each for a split second to eyeball the terrain ahead, darting forward again with an economy of movement like a deadly hunting, aggressive snake. Teenagers they might be in years, but out here in a jungle combat real-life scenario they were highly knowledgeable men, seasoned with the wisdom of experience. Campbell figured that it had to take at least a couple of years for them to grow hair down to their shoulders. Thus, any Hmong sky trooper with hair this long had survived as an active guerrilla against the Viets and Laotians for a couple of years. Which was no mean achievement.

  Bob Murphy and Harvey Waller were moving like real soldiers now. He knew it and they knew it. As a man thrown in deep water quickly remembers how to swim again, they had slipped into an infantryman’s wary prowl—aware that he was vulnerable to anything unseen, that his main defense was to strike before being struck. Their heavier, more mature bodies would never again have the almost feline, deadly grace of the young Hmong, but hopefully their more mature minds would more than tip the balance in their favor in day-to-day survival tactics in the jungle.

  Campbell himself eased forward in a kind of amble with his neck, arm and leg muscles relaxed, deliberately eliminating the strain of tension. He fell into a loose, nonstop vigilance he knew he would have to maintain for as long as his team was in the field. Like a security video camera, his eyes panned the tree trunks ahead without focusing on individual objects unless one did not fit with its surroundings. His gaze zeroed in with sudden, hard-edged focus on whatever object had sent a visual warning flag to his brain, and his fingers imperceptibly began to close over his AK47 assault rifle, hung on a shoulder sling and resting against his right hip. Then the leaf moving in a beam of sunlight or small animal or whatever it was that had attracted his attention would be recognized as harmless—not a threat—and his gaze would again pan across the trunks and shady recesses of this gloomy cathedral of trees.

  The Hmong at point raised his left hand and the unit stopped and sought cover, except for the rearguard Hmong, who retreated till the second unit saw his warning and stopped their advance. Campbell crouched on the ground behind a big trunk, listening and watching intensely for movement.

  Calmly crashing through the undergrowth, bored as hell on their daily uneventful patrol, seven Laotian regulars armed with AK47s walked in line from right to
left only a hundred yards in front of them.

  An advance party for a platoon, Campbell was thinking, and how far away were the others? Not so very far away, he guessed. He would allow the seven soldiers to pass them by and lie low for ten minutes to see if others showed. If no more came by, they would forge ahead and move away from the vicinity of the river as quickly as possible. It made sense that the closer they were to the border with Thailand, the more heavily the area would be patrolled. Once they had moved into the interior of Laos undetected, the Laotian forces would be even less on the lookout for trouble.

  The last of the Laotian regulars, the seventh man, stopped while still in sight to light a cigarette. A cloud of blue smoke rose over his head, and he hurried on to join the others. As soon as he had gone, the five Hmong in Campbell’s unit jumped from cover and took after him—along with Harvey Waller, who deliberately avoided looking in Mike’s direction as he bolted into action. Bob Murphy started to move out too but responded to Campbell’s wave to back off. Campbell could not stop Waller or the Hmong without a risk of exposing their presence to the Laotians. Instead, he ran back and signaled to the second unit to hold their positions.

  The five Hmong in the second unit vacillated for a moment before they finally decided to obey Campbell’s command.

  Mike made his decision and told the Australian, “If they get into an extended fire fight and become pinned down, we leave them and move on. If the other Hmong stay, we go on without them. Fuck Waller. He wants to act as an independent agent, he gets treated as one.”

  “Mike, we can’t leave Waller behind,” Bob said. “I don’t even like the bastard, but he’s one of our team.”

  “Bullshit. He’s only one of the team when he’s obeying orders. Stay here and cover this position in case more Laotians come. I’m going after Waller and the others.”