AT THE NVA compound far to the west of Hill 55, the squat, stockily built old commander rose early. He had not slept well. The forces that he commanded had not enjoyed the success that he had anticipated, and the tension this caused gave him a grizzly’s disposition.
Today he hoped for good news.
When the old man walked into his office and sat behind a table covered with papers, a soldier stepped through his door carrying a leather pouch containing intelligence reports and dispatches from the regiments under his command. As the soldier left, an officer came to attention before the general and informed him that the commander of the guerrillas who had so successfully harassed the enemy near Da Nang had been killed, with four of her men, by snipers. The same snipers about whom she voiced concern a month before.
Her death was a sharp loss. Guerrillas of the National Liberation Army were now reluctant to go on patrol in the country where they encountered these snipers, one of whom was gaining recognition for the white feather he wore in his hat, as well as for his marksmanship.
This woman, who had begun as a Lao Dong party worker in the north, meant much to the old warrior. He had the determination, and he believed he had the means, to see to it that her assassins did not go unpunished.
Far to the east of where the NVA commander sat brooding, Hathcock walked briskly into the sniper school’s command hut.
“Sir,” he said, “me and Burke, we want to go back out.”
“Funny you should come waltzing up here so chipper,” Land said. “You get wind of something?”
“Could be, Sir. You tell me.”
“You ever hear of Rio Blanco?”
Hathcock had. He constantly kept attuned to all the operations throughout southern and central I Corps, and he knew that Rio Blanco was big. But he liked to antagonize his captain.
“John Wayne movie. Right, Sir?”
“John Wayne my ass, Carlos. That was Rio Bravo, and you probably know more about Rio Blanco than I do.”
“Oh, no, Sir! I just heard the name, that’s all,” Hathcock said, trying to sound innocent.
Land rested his arms across the desk and cleared his throat, “Rio Blanco is a major operation that will clear out a wide valley over by Hill 263. The river Song Tro Khuc runs right through the middle of it, and word is that Charlie has a reinforced regiment, or larger, down there.
“Division is massing Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and Mike companies out of 7th Marines, plus two and a half batteries from 11th Marines—a MAU-sized outfit. They will link up with the ROK Marines’ Dragon Eye Regiment and the Lien Ket 70 Division from the ARVN. They aim to kick ass.”
Wilson, who had been sitting at the table with Land, looked at Hathcock and rolled his eyes. The sniper smiled and said nothing.
“Gunny Wilson and I have been putting together a roster of twelve snipers to take down there. The four we leave back here will check in with Top Reinke over at his hooch and operate with 1st Battalion, 26th Marines while we’re gone.”
Hathcock stood at the doorway, with a long expression on his face. He knew they wouldn’t leave him behind, but he needed to hear it.
“We leave at zero six, day after tomorrow,” Wilson said firmly. “You be sure the troops are up and packed, Sergeant Hathcock.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!” Hathcock said, saluting with his palm turned outward in crisp British fashion.
Two days later, when the sniper team arrived at the 7th Marines command post on the afternoon of November 20, the operation had already begun. A busy major greeted Land and told him that it made no difference to the command where he disbursed his snipers, as long as they remained north of the river.
“General Stiles* will be in and out of this command post, so you might do yourself a favor and establish your CP on one of these fingers just down the hill so you can be close, if something pops. The ITT and CIT folks are set up where they can overlook the operational area from their CP, and they have room for your guys, too. You might consider that.”
Land thanked the major and led his snipers down the hill to where he could see the counterintelligence Marines’ shaved heads shining in the afternoon sun. “That’s right, Major,” Land sarcastically thought to himself as he walked away from the command post, “put all the oddballs in one spot where you can keep an eye on ’em, and at the same time, keep ’em out of sight.”
“Gunny Wilson,” Land said aloud.
The gunnery sergeant jogged down to where Land walked. “Yes, Sir.”
“You, me, Hathcock, and Burke will stay up here. I’m fanning the other eight snipers out to the four companies down there on the operation. They’ll work in direct support of the companies. We can keep ourselves busy around the hill.”
Hathcock was walking on the heels of his captain, mouth shut and ears wide open. Already the wheels were turning. He liked this country. He had patrolled it from trucks as an MP and knew that as a sniper he could do some real good.
A skinny and weathered old fanner in his fifties, who looked a hundred, worked in a cane field below Hill 263. He kept his head down and swung his hand scythe through the tall stalks, cutting down the crop that he had planted a full growing season ago. The man did not want to appear out of the ordinary to the Vietnamese government troops who walked past him while he worked. Sweat trickled down his face, hidden beneath the large, round straw hat that he wore. The perspiration came not so much from heat or work, but from the fear that turned in the pit of his stomach.
Had the passing soldiers talked to him, they would have known at once that he had something to hide. He was such a frightened man.
During the days that Hathcock had patrolled the fields as an MP, riding atop a truck with a mounted .50-caliber machine gun in hand, this man had waved to the Marines as they drove past. He was a simple fanner whose life revolved around the large cane field and two flooded paddies in which he alternated growing rice and lotus. He measured his wealth by his family and by the one water buffalo that he shared with a neighbor, who in return shared with him a cask of rice wine.
The war had already taken his son, but his son’s widow and children remained with him. His wife had passed away in her sleep ten years ago. Now his daughter, her two children, and his son’s widow and her four children were the family who looked upon him as father, protector, and provider.
In that past summer of 1966, he did not speak of politics. It was a subject about which he knew little. He could neither read nor write, nor could anyone else in his family. They were farmers, not scholars.
There were those in his village who did speak of politics and war. They spoke of Ho Chi Minh and his dream of once again uniting Vietnam. But would a united Vietnam make his cane or rice or lotus grow? Would a united Vietnam return his dead son or his wife to him?
He worked in the three fields, planting and harvesting his lotus, sugarcane and rice. That was his life. He counted on nothing more.
During that summer, the Viet Cong came for rice and pigs and to lecture the villagers. The old man stood in the crowd and listened to them for a while and then walked away.
The Viet Cong commander noticed him leaving. That night the Viet Cong killed the old man’s water buffalo and threatened to kill his family and bum his house if he did not cooperate.
The Viet Cong left for him a Chinese-built K-44 rifle. It was covered with rust, and the stock was cracked from the top of the hand guard to the trigger housing. His bullets would do well to strike anywhere near a target at which he aimed, even if he had been a marksman. Each night, the Viet Cong left twenty rounds for him to shoot at the Americans who camped atop the hill. When the Viet Cong returned, they took the twenty empty brass shells.
At that darkest time of morning when the moon had set and the sun remained well below the horizon, he took the rusty rifle, with its broken stock and badly worn barrel, to the edge of his sugarcane field. There, he hid behind a dirt bank and rested the old gun over it. Aiming at the hilltop, he fired twenty shots, one after the other.
Cloaked by dawn’s black shadows, the old man collected the spent brass and hurried back to his hut, where he hid the rifle beneath straw mats and dropped the empty shells into a pot inside his tool shed. Once this chore was done, he walked to the fields and worked—hitching himself to a heavy wooden sledge, or plow, that he could pull only inches at a time through the deep mud. These were implements that his water buffalo had once drawn with ease.
On November 21, Captain Land sent out his eight snipers at 3:00 A.M. to rendezvous with the four rifle companies. He, Wilson, Hathcock, and Burke stayed on the hill.
Hathcock had pointed out to Land the fields that lay along the river and told how he used to watch for smoke rising from tunnels that the VC had dug beneath the dikes. Despite the fact that many of those same fields, which lay directly below the hill, were considered under control of friendly forces, the snipers knew this country was rich with Viet Cong.
Hathcock sat down on an ammo case.
“Skipper, what’s the plan of attack?”
“Gunny Wilson and Lance Corporal Burke will move down to the river’s edge. You and will spend the day scoping the world from on high. We’re gonna watch for smoke signals. We have to come home with a few scalps on our belts so we can stay in business. There are people at places like Quantico and Camp Pendleton who are trying to get snipers organized as a regular part of every infantry battalion in the Marine Corps. This is our chance to sell the program by showing that one man with a rifle can do as much damage as a company on patrol.”
Hathcock said nothing. He knew that sniping was highly cost-effective in terms of materials and lives. He also knew its impact on the enemy. Snipers denied the enemy leadership and access to communications and heavy weapons. But mostly, snipers demoralized the enemy. Made them quit. Made them hide and not want to fight.
“Sir, I can’t imagine anybody not wanting to make snipers a regular part of the battalion. Just think if every company had a platoon of snipers who doubled as scouts. How could anyone not want that?” Hathcock asked Land.
“They don’t want to consider that you, in a single month, killed more than thirty enemy soldiers, confirmed. Forget probable kills. Compare your success—one man—against an entire battalion’s during the same period.
“Operation Macon started back on the fourth of July down near An Hoa. That’s real hot Indian country. Third Battalion, 9th Marines worked extra hard clearing the area around the industrial complex. They lost twenty-four Marines from the time they started until the end of October, when they wrapped it up. In the four months that Macon lasted, they confirmed 445 enemy dead. That is a little more than 110 per month. It’s a damn good result for a battalion. They’re proud of it, too.
“From mid-October to mid-November you confirmed thirty kills, nearly a third of what an entire battalion accomplished patrolling day and night.
“Look at October alone. Operation Kern netted seventy-five VC kills and cost eight Marine KIAs. Operation Teton nailed thirty-seven VC and two Marine KIAs. And Operation Madison blew hell out of Cam Ne hamlet—looking for a VC battalion—and got nothing, not even a sack of rice.
“In the first month we’ve been in business we have more than sixty kills. That’s between seventeen people, and most of them students. “What if those battalions had snipers working ahead of their operations, or keeping security around their camps. I think the results would have been much more impressive and would have had longer lasting effects against the enemy. Lord only knows how long Charlie keeps on ducking and dodging after we’ve worked an area.
“If we sell the sniper system, battalion and company commanders won’t want to go to war without a sniper platoon to keep the boogeyman out of the bushes.”
Hathcock looked Land in the eye and smiled. They both knew that if the Marine Corps could be convinced of the value of sniping, they were the ones to do it. Just then, rifle fire began to crack.
The bullets struck the rocks well below where Hathcock sat, but the surprise sent him diving headlong into the din. He heard shot after shot splattering against the rocks.
The old man who lay at the edge of the cane field fired his twentieth round and gathered the empty brass.
Land glanced at Hathcock in the gray light that now filled the hillside as November 21 dawned. “I know one place to start hunting tomorrow.”
Wilson and Burke returned from their day’s stalk with little more than a few blisters. They had not had a good hunt. They had seen Charlie, but by the time they got authorization to shoot into that sector, he had strolled right on by.
Land looked disgusted, “I swear these rules of engagement get my goat. One place there’s a free fire zone. Shoot anything that moves. Next place you can’t shoot at all unless you get permission.”
Resting his head on his pack, Hathcock sprawled out to sleep on the bunker’s dirt floor. He thought of how he preferred to work away from the crowd, shooting into free fire zones—places he called Indian country. He felt as though he had just dozed off when Land’s strong hand firmly gripped his arm.
“Carlos. Time to get up.”
Carlos jerked at his captain’s touch. He had slept with a coiled spring’s tension, leaving him stiff and sore. Stretching felt good.
Nighttime left a dampness on everything, including the aching snipers who crawled down Hill 263 into the area that the captain had cleared with operations. The zone included a large cane field that waved in the predawn breezes.
The gray morning felt chilly as the two snipers built a dummy position a hundred yards to the right of their hide. They counted on it drawing any fire, should Charlie have friends. Land calculated that when they fired, the bullets passing the elbow that jutted out from the hill, just above the dummy position, would cause a crack from the bullet’s supersonic wake. Charlie would look to where he heard the loud pop of the speeding projectile as it passed the dummy position, rather than the more distant and less dissemble .30-06 muzzle blast from the heavy semi varminter barrel.
The old man awoke late this morning. He, too, had slept poorly. He had seen strange-looking soldiers that his neighbor told him were Korean. His neighbor told him to be careful, these Koreans were not like the Americans—they killed with unquenchable thirst.
The fanner looked across the dark hut at the sleeping children and at the rapidly brightening sky that shone through the window above where they lay. It reminded him that he must hurry.
He crept to where the straw mats covered the rifle, and, with shaking hands, he rolled them back and took the weapon from its hiding place. In the shed where he stored his plow and hand tools, he lifted the lid off a pot and removed a fresh box of shells, left during the night by the phantom guerrilla who prowled through the village while all others slept. He never saw who left the shells, but they were always there each morning, and the spent rounds were always gone at night.
Because the early morning light now exposed him, the old farmer chose a hidden route through the tall, green stalks of cane. He slowly crawled to the earthen barrier that held back the rice paddy’s water.
Hathcock took the first watch behind the rifle. He scanned along the dike, searching for a target. As he panned the edge of the cane field, he noticed a dark figure crouched low.
“We got company,” he whispered to his captain. “He just hunkered down behind that dike next to the cane field. It sure wasn’t a farmer. I saw a rifle.”
“When he raises his head to shoot,” the captain answered, “drop him.”
The world seemed extraordinarily quiet to the old man, who nervously shoved the muzzle of the badly worn Chinese rifle over the top of the dike. He pulled the rifle’s butt into his shoulder and fixed his eyes to the hilltop where he saw dark figures silhouetted against the gray morning sky. His hands trembled as he gripped the stock and rolled his finger around the rusty trigger.
“Get the task finished,” he thought to himself as he jerked the trigger.
The sudden explosion from the rusty barrel sent an echo across the valley to where the two snipers lay beneath their camouflage.
“Can you see him?” Land asked Hathcock, who now squirmed behind the long scope atop his Winchester.
Carlos said nothing. He saw the top of the old man’s gray head, his temples, his ears, and his one open eye behind the sights of the rifle. The target that the old man presented at five hundred yards lay hidden behind die reticle as Carlos concentrated on the cross hairs’ intersection.
Slowly, he increased pressure on the trigger so as not to disturb the sight’s alignment on the old man’s temple. He watched through the scope and saw the gray puffs of smoke clouding above the old man’s rifle.
Above where the fanner and the snipers lay, Marines jumped behind sandbags, swearing at this constant aggravation. Before the operation, the firing had bothered no one, since the Marines who normally camped on the hilltop rarely ventured to the side where they had heard shots each morning since the summer.
A fourth and fifth shot belched from the rusty rifle, yet Hathcock did not rush his. He waited for the pressure to overpower the resistance of the trigger’s spring.
“Break, damn it. Break!” Hathcock strained in a whispering breath. It seemed as though the trigger would not release the firing pin and send his round ripping across the rice field and into the head of the man who continued firing the rifle. “Get aggressive on that trigger, Hathcock,” Land said, waiting for the rifle’s report. He looked at his sergeant’s face, twisted in a grimace. His left eye hidden beneath a wrinkled brow and his teeth showing between his curled and twisted lips. Land glanced at the rear of the Winchester’s bolt and saw the problem.
“Try it with the safety off.”
A flush of blood filled Carlos’s face. He remembered flicking back the safety when he cleaned the rifle the previous afternoon. He’d neglected to return the small lever to its ready position when he finished.
Without removing his cheek from the side of the rifle, Hathcock lifted his right thumb to the small lever on the bolt’s tailpiece and flicked it to “ready.”
He narrowed his concentration to the reticle and the target beyond it. It seemed as though he had just begun to apply pressure to the trigger when the sudden explosion in the rifle’s chamber sent the weapon recoiling into his shoulder. Hot gas blasted down onto a square canvas patch that he laid beneath the rifle’s muzzle to prevent a dusty signature that would give away his position. The bullet cracked from the barrel, arched past the lower elbow of the hill, and struck the target.
In that same instant, the old man jerked his final shot, as half his face and the portion of his head above his right ear exploded in a crimson spray. The bullet’s impact separated the man from his rifle and hurled him backward into the field. His suddenly lifeless body leaped skyward, violently kicking and crashing through the sugarcane.
“Damn!” Land said, grimacing.
Several Marines who sat behind the sandbags on the hill’s finger heard the sniper’s shot. They peeked over the top and witnessed the gory sight of the man’s dead body reeling in uncontrolled acrobatics—whipping, kicking, jumping.
Hathcock watched through his scope, tracking the nearly headless body as it flopped and crashed through the cane field. Several of his head shots had ended in similar displays of dancing dead, but this was the most gruesome. The sight repulsed him, and he turned his head away.
The old man’s body came to rest nearly thirty feet into the field from where Hathcock’s bullet struck it. The body had torn down a wide circle of cane before it finally quit kicking and thrashing. His blood glistened on the broken green and purple stalks.
Two wailing and sobbing women ran down the rice paddy dike to where the body lay sprawled in the sugarcane. The snipers had moved out of their hide and stood among the trees, watching the man’s family.
That evening, back at the hill, the four snipers discussed the event.
“I took a look at the rifle that old fart had,” Land commented between bites, as the four Marines spooned their way through cans of C-rations and canteen cocoa, “it was a worthless piece of crap.
“Reminded me a hell of a lot of my first kill. You remember, don’t you J.D.?”
“Yes, sir. I kind of felt sorry for that dumb asshole, too. I wonder how much the VC pays these gooners to go out and bust caps like that?”
“Obviously not enough,” the captain said wryly.
“Their rifles are what gets me. This fella’s was just about like mat farmer’s I killed back at 55. This one here had a split stock, and that old boy had a wore out IW-1 carbine, with the stock broken in three places. Shit! The bastard tried to hold it together by wrapping it with wire. And the barrel was worn completely smooth. Why, it didn’t have a land left in it.”
“War is hell,” Wilson commented, stuffing his mouth full of beef and potatoes. “So is this can of beef and rocks.”
Hathcock sat quietly eating ham and lima beans, watching and listening as the major who met them when the operation began now squatted next to the captain and talked softly.
“We need your best shooter,” he said. “Got word from the Division CP.”
“Something big?”
“I don’t know, Captain. I’m just passing the word.”
“Can I send two?”
“I don’t see what it would hurt, but again, that’s a shot Division will have to call.”
“Okay, Sir.”
The major left and Land looked at Wilson, “You sit tight. I’ll take Hathcock and Burke over to Division. While I’m there, I’ll try to get the lowdown on this mission. I’ve got a hunch we may be gone a few days.”
“Skipper, if you’re still on this mission when the operation here wraps up, I’ll get the troops back to five-five. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.”
“I expect to be back, but you continue to march.
“Hathcock, you and Burke grab your packs when you’ve finished your supper. Meet me at the G-2 tent, they may have some information on what’s going on.”
With his rifle and pack shouldered, the captain stood, dusted the seat of his trousers, and walked up the rise toward the cluster of tents. Hathcock excitedly shoveled big spoonfuls of creamy beige beans into his mouth, swelling out his cheeks, as he hurriedly chewed and swallowed them. Burke followed Hathcock’s lead, as he rushed to choke down the remainder of his can of beans and franks.
Wilson looked at the two Marines gulping and wolfing, “You two are gonna smell real sweet, come tomorrow when that crap starts working in your guts. That business will keep a couple of minutes longer while you eat at a normal speed. There’s no point in ruining your insides so you can hurry up and go wait over there.”
With their cheeks bulging, the two snipers nodded, agreeing with Wilson’s logic. But the excitement of going on a special mission made them want to hurry. Both men wanted to discover what venture could be so mysterious that the major who brought the word to them was not privileged with full details.
“Come on, Burke,” Hathcock urged, as he pulled one pack strap over his left shoulder and slung his rifle over his right. “We gotta get up the hill and not keep those folks a waitin’.”
Burke stood and crammed the empty tin cans back in the small square C-ration box, “Gunny, you mind getting the trash tonight 7”
“No problem, John. You two keep your heads down.”
“We will,” Hathcock said, waving at Wilson.
Hathcock would not see the gunnery sergeant for a month.
The two snipers walked to a cluster of tents and sandbagged positions where they met their captain walking away from the tent that looked like it housed the operations complex.
“Hathcock, you and Burke follow me. A chopper is turning right now, waiting for us.”
“What’s the word, Sir,” Burke asked, as he walked hurriedly behind the captain. Hathcock, too, stretched his legs at the rapid pace. Something big was happening, and they were about to become the star performers of whatever it was.
“I don’t have all the details yet. But they want us to kill a man. A special man. And he needs to be killed now. Once we get to the departure point, they will give us more information.”
Adrenalin suddenly pumped through Hathcock’s heart and left him light-headed with the urgency and importance of what he was about to do. He knew that it had to be something that only a trained sniper could accomplish. That left him somewhat frightened, yet overwhelmingly gratified and impatient to taste this adventure.
A jeep met the helicopter on the small pad and rushed the three Marines to a complex of buildings and radio towers. Hathcock had no idea where he was or whom he was about to meet.
Inside a green structure that appeared similar to the Quon—set huts in which Hathcock lived at boot camp, a colonel greeted them. He shook Land’s hand and asked, “These the men?”
“Yes, Sir. Sergeant Hathcock is one of the best long-range shooters in the United States. Lance Corporal Burke is one of the best people in the bush whom I’ve ever known. The two of them are the best sniper team in the country today,” Land said, sensing that it did not impress this Marine.
“Sergeant Hathcock. I need you to kill me a man. What do you say to that?”
“Yes, Sir. Who?”
“A white man.”
“Sir?”
“A white man. He’s helping the enemy, and it is extremely important that we stop him immediately.”
“Can’t the Vietnamese government just arrest him?”
“No,” he said, quietly sizing up the sniper who stood in front of him. “This man,” he continued, “is a Frenchman in his early fifties, slightly bald, with shaggy hair. He’s six feet tall and heavyset. He usually wears khaki trousers and a white bush shirt—you know the type with the patch pockets on the chest and on the waist. He will be walking up a trail near his house, early tomorrow morning. You will shoot him at a clearing that he will cross. After you kill him, leave. Don’t engage anyone. Don’t waste any time. Just run.”
“Why do you want him dead, Sir?”
“You don’t need to know, Sergeant,” the colonel replied. “We will fly into that area before daylight. You will move into your hide and be there before it gets light.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” Hathcock responded, snapping to attention.
The three snipers turned to depart and the colonel called to Land. “Captain, you stay back. I have to speak with you some more on this.”
At three-thirty the next morning, the three men were up and ready. A tall, slim captain led them to a Huey helicopter. Land, speaking to Hathcock and Burke, said, “This bird will take us to an LZ,* where you two will walk a little less than five klicks to the hide. I will remain at an observation point with a recon team, who is up there. Once you shoot, leave. Hurry back to the LZ, and the chopper will bring you back here.”
Both the snipers wondered why it was so necessary to kill the man immediately, and Burke was only putting their draughts to words when he turned to Land and said, “Vfe’re stopping this guy from doing something, aren’t we. Otherwise, they would be killing him a whole lot differently.”
Land looked at the lance corporal and offered no response. He himself knew little more of the mission, other than the two snipers must depart the area immediately after the assassination. He would wait and catch a second helicopter to a debrief sight.
“Perhaps there,” Land thought, “I’ll find out what’s so special about this man.”
Skimming the treetops and hugging the terrain’s contour, the single-engine helicopter beat its way across miles of dark jungle, rushing the snipers to their ambush site. The moonless, black sky merged imperceptibly with the treetops and ridges, and Carlos wondered how the pilot kept from crashing into them. Unobtrusively, he bowed his head and prayed.
The flight lasted less than half an hour, giving Hathcock and Burke an hour and a half to steal their way five kilometers, unseen, and hide in a position that would allow a clear, five hundred-yard shot.
Carlos had no idea where he was. His captain had marked the route to the hide on a small, plastic-covered map that someone had cut from a larger section. It made him feel uncomfortable, not knowing which direction he should retreat toward should things go sour. If something happened, he hoped that the Huey would stay long enough for him to get aboard.
The moonless night left the jungle so black that the two snipers had to feel their way down the gentle slope from the landing zone to a small stream that flowed down a long, wooded draw, or gully, that would lead them to their hide. It was a simple route, but the darkness made it a dangerous one. Charlie could be hiding, waiting.
Neither Marine spoke. Every move they made was slow and deliberate; every action, thought out and mentally rehearsed. “Where’s Charlie?” Carlos silently asked himself. “Where do we escape if he discovers us now.” Every night sound seemed amplified in the darkness. The air. The moisture. The taste and smell. All became part of Carlos’s world as he moved silently-one step, then the next.
At 5:30 A.M., the sky began to show the orange streaks of sunrise. The two snipers crawled on their stomachs as they left the cover of the trees and ferns growing along the stream and moved toward a hump of earth covered with tall grass. It was their objective, and beyond it the wooded draw opened into a grassy valley.
A trail, easily visible from the hide, crossed the clearing. Here, Hathcock thought, this Frenchman on a morning stroll would meet his end. What had he done? How had he helped Charlie? What act closed his account with life?
The wait began.
On a hilltop two kilometers away, Captain Land joined a cluster of cammy-clad men who sat in an outcropping of rocks, peering through binoculars, watching the clearing and the trail.
A man with a bushy mustache and long sideburns, wearing tigerstriped camouflage utilities typically worn by ARVN soldiers, sat with his ranger hat’s brim turned up in Gabby Hayes fashion and concentrated his vigil on one spot of the valley far below him.
“Either your man is real good, or dead, back in the woods. I never saw a sign of life from the time it was light enough to see down there. He’s well hidden or not there,” the man said in a cold tone.
“He’s there,” Land said. “When that Frenchman heads down that path, you’ll see. The bastard’s good as dead.”
“You better hope so. Otherwise a couple of pilots will be wishing they were dead.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This Frenchman. He’s a professional interrogator for Charlie. One of the best. I think he’s a little funny too. You know, sadistic sex, likes little boys. They say the bastard gets his rocks off fuckin’ up people.”
“Where you get all this?”
“Just take my word for it. That son-of-a-bitch is bad. Charlie has a couple of our pilots down there waitin’ to meet ole Jacques. We don’t want ole Jacques to get there—he knows too much about these guys.”
“Why don’t you go in and take them? You know where they arc?”
“Can’t. Your man is the key to this. He has to kill the cat.”
“Spooks,” Land thought to himself. The sun turned the countryside yellow as it now cleared the hilltops. Hathcock rested on his stomach, his heart beating rhythmically against the earth causing his rifle to pulse with each surge of blood that pumped through him. Burke hid to the right and trained his watch to their rear, looking at the jungle’s edge and the slopes that surrounded their escape route.
Patiently, the two Marines waited: Watching the air. Smelling and tasting. Hearing the birds distantly call. Hearing the bushes and grass rustle from the breeze that grew stronger as the sun climbed.
Three hours passed.
“Here he comes,” the man in the tiger stripes said, as he saw a distant figure wearing tan trousers and a white shirt enter the clearing, far to the left of where the snipers hid. “Shit! There’s Charlie, coming to greet him.”
Far to the right of the sniper hide, below the base of the hill from where the observers watched, a Viet Cong patrol emerged from the forest and now walked casually into the clearing, toward the Frenchman.
“Gonna be a ruckus,” Hathcock thought to himself as the seven Viet Cong appeared on the right. Far to his left, he also saw the Frenchman, hands in his pockets and a pipe in his mouth.
“Well, I hate to shoot and run, but you know how it is,” Hathcock said, amusing himself with the situation. He tapped Burke with the toe of his boot. Burke tapped back. Ready.
It was an easy shot. Hathcock placed the reticle on the man’s shoulders and squeezed the trigger. The crack of the rifle shot sent the Viet Cong diving for cover. Hathcock did not waste a second round. The man went down hard. The explosive impact of the bullet, which is the real killing factor with a .30-06, would almost certainly have destroyed his heart and lungs.
Before the Viet Cong patrol could react, Hathcock and Burke had turned from the hide and now low-crawled through the grass, toward the narrow stream and the trees that stood on the other side.
“We’re gonna have to jump and run,” Hathcock told his partner. “They might get a couple of shots off at us, but we got no choice. I’m not gonna get boxed in up that draw.”
“Say when,” Burke replied, snuggling his rifle across his back and crouching like a sprinter in starting blocks.
“Now!” Hathcock grunted, leaping to his feet and bounding across the stream with Burke at his side.
Both Marines dashed to the trees, and as they disappeared behind die forest’s green curtain, a shower of bullets riddled the grass.
“Up the hill!” Hathcock ordered. “They’ll look for us to follow that draw. But we’ll go straight to the top and follow the ridge back to the LZ.”
“Good job,” the man in tiger stripes told Land, giving him a congratulatory slap on the shoulder.
“It’s not over yet. My guys still have to get back to the LZ.”
“Nothing you can do about that, Captain. They’ll make it.”
The Viet Cong continued chewing the forest’s edge with their automatic fire. Meanwhile, the two fleeing snipers charged up the hill. At five hundred yards, it was easy to recognize that the snipers were Americans. They saw both men well—even the white feather in one man’s hat.
“Christ sake!” Burke heaved in horse breaths. “This hill … didn’t seem… this high from down… there.”
“Just…” Carlos gulped, trying to talk, “think about… Charlie! You know… he got a… pretty good look at us! Better keep running! Don’t… stop!”
The two Marines ran the five kilometers back to the helicopter in twenty minutes—it would have been a major accomplishment on flat ground and without the added burden of rifles.
As they charged into the clearing where the helicopter sat, they saw the rotor blades start turning. The Huey’s crew had heard the gunfire and now anxiously waited, ready.
The chopper was lifting from the landing zone as the two snipers fell into the doorway, where the crew chief grabbed bod) men by their collars and pulled hard, dragging them aboard as die treetops began rushing beneath the aircraft’s skids.
Hathcock rolled on his back, blinking sweat from his eyes as it streaked through the green greasepaint dirt covered his face. His chest heaved and his head pounded. With his hand, he felt Burke’s shoulder and arm at his side, and smiled triumphandy. All was well.