FOUR REPORTERS HUSTLED to stay abreast of Captain Land as he led them to a bunker built on the military crest of Hill 55’s finger four. He purposely rushed them past the hard-back tents, where several bare-chested snipers sat on ammunition crates watching this media parade.
It was mostly because of the third reporter that Land hurried the group past the snipers. This correspondent carried a tape recorder slung across his shoulder and held a microphone in his hand. He spoke into it as he walked, turning his head every direction, apparently describing each vision that confronted him. His presence made Land feel uncomfortable.
As the group passed the lounging Marines who gathered outside to watch the “exhibition,” Land shot a cold glance at his men, warning them that this was not the time nor place for a bravado show.
The little party came up to where the low profile of a bunker stood overlooking miles of hills, hedgerows, rice fields, and jungle. “Gentlemen,” Land said, stepping atop the bunker and pointing to a heavily sandbagged machine gun nest to his side, “this is our longest-reaching sniper weapon, the M-2 .50-caliber machine gun… effective out to three thousand yards. You may notice, on the upper right-hand side of the weapon, we have mounted a telescopic gunsight. That is an eight-power sight made by the Lyman Gunsight Corporation. It is one of three primary scopes that we use on our sniper rifles. We also use a very similar-looking eight-power scope made by the Unertl Optical Company and a variable, three-to-nine power scope made by Redfield.
“Either of the Unertl or Lyman scopes will fit on the machine gun by way of the detachable mounts that we designed and had specially made right here,” the captain continued as the men gathered behind the big gun, taking turns looking through its sight, trying to imagine what it might be like to shoot someone with it.
“My snipers will go on missions and carry a set of mounts in their packs. When they get to the operational unit, it is a minor task to attach the mounts to any M-2, .50-caliber machine gun available. A sniper easily fastens the mounts to the big gun and removes his scope from his rifle and attaches it on the machine gun mounts. After that, it is a simple job of leveling the gun and zeroing the weapon to whatever distance that he expects to engage the majority of his targets.
“In this way, our Marines can carry their normal sniper equipment and still offer a battalion commander the benefit of extra long-range sniper fire.”
Absorbed in the tour, the two photo journalists amongst the four reporters jockeyed around the machine gun and snapped pictures of it and Captain Land as he stepped off the bunker and stood in front of the sandbag wall, over which the machine gun’s barrel tilted. Concentrating on his lecture Land forgot that standing outside the sandbags’ protection exposed him to any enemy sniper who might be watching.
“What’s this thing that looks like a level?” the man with the tape recorder asked, pointing to a device that hung from the tripod on which the machine gun sat.
“That’s a Gunners’ Quadrant. And you’re right, it is a kind of level.”
Just as the reporter knelt behind the big gun for a look through the scope, a rifle shot cracked across the valley from the cluster of low knolls to the right of finger four.
The bullet struck the hillside just below Land’s feet, splitting a small rock and blasting away a chip the size of a quarter, which ricocheted off his shin. Land leaped, thinking that the bullet had hit him. He dived over the top of the bunker and rolled to the other side.
The photographers scrambled behind the sandbags, and with their motor-driven cameras singing, they took aim at two Marines who scurried to the big gun and quickly trained it on the knoll and released a rapid burst of fire into its several peaks.
As he did every time he shot from that hide, the sniper slipped through the covered escape route and floated safely down the narrow canal at the base of the knoll.
While the reporters huddled around the two Marines who fired the machine gun, getting names, ages, and home towns, and taping comments to go with the “sound of battle,” a colonel unobtrusively watched the demonstration from several yards away, safely behind cover. As Land turned to see who had joined them, he recognized the man—his boss—Colonel Herman Poggemeyer.
The colonel frowned sharply at Land and motioned for the captain to come close.
“Sir,” the captain said, walking near the colonel. “Everyone appears to be okay. It was awfully close.”
“Captain,” the colonel said, “step up the hill with me, away from this crowd.”
Land said nothing but followed the colonel and felt a sudden tightness fill his stomach.
“What kind of example of leadership do you call that?” the colonel growled angrily. A long pause followed while the captain stood, braced for the storm, looking straight ahead and saying nothing. “I’m surprised at you, Captain—exposing yourself to fire so that a bunch of reporters can get some good pictures? What about those Marines back there who depend on your being around to lead them? What on earth got into your head? What about those people waiting for you back home? How could you needlessly risk leaving a family without a father! There will be no condolence letter to your wife. That’s because you will not leave your quarters until you rotate.
“Captain Land, you’re restricted. You may go to the chow hall, head, and chapel. You will sit down tonight and write your wife a letter. Tell her you will be home in a couple of weeks-alive. Is that clear, Captain?”
“Yes, Sir!” Land barked in the same manner as he had done to his sergeant instructor at Officer Candidates’ School.
The colonel held a folder filled with papers and opened it, pulled out several that he had stapled together, and waved them in the captain’s face. “Do you see this?” Poggemeyer said, speaking with increasing vehemence. “I came here to tell you that I had recommended you for a Bronze Star. But you can forget that now!”
As he lashed out those final words to the captain, he tucked the folder under his arm, took the award recommendation in his hands and, ripping it in half, threw it at Land’s feet.
Captain Land did not move. He stood rigidly fixed at attention while the colonel turned from him and stormed away.
When Colonel Poggemeyer returned to his quarters, he reconsidered what he had told the captain. A man of his word, he did not recommend Land for a Bronze Star, but at a ceremony at South Weymouth, Massachusetts, some time later, Land received the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat V*
Land walked to his hooch, sat at his desk, and wrote his wife, Ellie, a letter. The remainder of the night he worked on a turnover file that he would give to Maj. D.E. Wight, his replacement. He told no one that he was on restriction.
“Sergeant Hathcock,” a voice shouted outside the quarters where Hathcock lay on his cot, looking at a map that detailed the terrain surrounding Hill 55. “Sergeant Hathcock. You in there?”
Hathcock yelled, “Come on in, Gunny. What ya got?” “That woman, she may be full of shit, and then again she may not be. But take it for what it’s worth.”
Hathcock sat on the edge of his cot and took a can filled with cigarette butts off an ammunition crate; he offered it as a seat for the huge gunnery sergeant, who had interrogated the woman that Hathcock had shot in the neck.
“Go on, Gunny. What’s this woman full of it about?”
“I don’t doubt that these NVA told her this, and it may be a lot of brag. You know, the way we sometimes build up things to get folks* attention. But I think there is a root of truth to what she says.”
“To what?” Hathcock asked impatiently.
“She said that there are a dozen snipers—a whole sniper platoon—down here now from North Vietnam. They trained at a place up there that supposedly looks just like Hill 55. She said they have a compound, complete with bunkers and sniper hides, exactly like this here. They probably know the land as well as you do.”
“That makes sense. The way they’ve been picking people off around here, I was thinking they had some inside information,” Hathcock said, wrinkling his lips and nodding his head philosophically.
“Well, the best part is this,” the gunny said, resting his forearms across his knees and leaning toward Hathcock. “They want you.”
“Figures,” Hathcock said, without showing the shock that the gunny thought the news would evoke. “Captain Land told me they’ve got a bounty out on me and him. He saw a leaflet that they dropped all over creation. It figures that these hamburgers would have me at the top of their list. What about the skipper?”
“She didn’t mention him. All she could talk about was Long Tra’ng—White Feather—and how they had all taken a blood oath to not return home without your little trademark and scalp.”
“They don’t scare me none, Gunny. I don’t care how hard those hot dogs think they are, there ain’t none of them hard enough to get me.”
“You’re not Superman, Hathcock. You’re not invincible.”
“Oh, no! I never said I was. Oh, they could kill me. I could let down my guard and they would kill me in a heartbeat. But the harder they hunt me, the harder I get. There ain’t none of them who know how to move and hide like I can. And there sure ain’t none of them who can outshoot me. That’s what I mean, Gunny. I’m just a whole lot better than they are, and that gives me the advantage.”
“You may be better. And again, they may have an ol’ boy who is better than you.”
“And…?”
“Well, that woman told me there is one sniper in particular who is doing the majority of damage to the Marines walking around on the hill. He’s the man who killed the gunny outside your door. All this guy does is live in the jungle. He eats rats and bugs, weeds, lizards, and worms-shit like that. She said this guy catches cobras and vipers with his bare hands and eats ’em raw so that he’ll have their spirit in him.”
“Eating garbage and living in the mud don’t make you smart. You have to be smart in the first place. I can see where living in the wild and learning the ways of nature can improve this guy’s chances, but I’ve spent a lot of time crawlin’ around the woods, too.”
The gunny stood and slapped Hathcock on the back of the head. “I know your reputation. But this fella has one, too. Take it for what it’s worth… keep your head down.”
Hathcock walked the gunny to the door, “I figure this fella has a fair aim, considering the long-range shots he’s notched. But, no matter what he does, if he keeps shooting at us from the same little knoll out yonder, we’ll get him. It’s just a matter of time.”
The last of the lingering monsoon showers fell as Captain Land packed his sea bag. Outside his hooch, the rain pattered on the orange mud and collected in hundreds of puddles throughout the hilltop compound. The blue day matched Land’s mood. He had not left the hill since the colonel restricted him. For a while he thought that his boss might ease off, but now with only three days remaining in-country, he knew that the colonel’s word was firm.
Hathcock now looked nearly like his old self. His face was lull and his eyes clear and twinkling. The rest had put him back on his feet. He had remained restricted to the hill until a few days earlier, when the captain cleared him to go back to the bush on a day-to-day basis. And each evening, Hathcock made a point of checking in with Land. He did not wish to spend another day on restriction.
“At the tone, the time will be 5 P.M.,” a voice announced over the radio that played softly in the captain’s hooch. He leaned down to turn the volume up, following the short blare of a 500-hertz tone. Every hour, on the hour, Armed Forces Radio Da Nang broadcast five minutes of news.
Land listened as the voice told of increasing numbers of American troops now committed to the escalating war in Vietnam, as President Johnson proclaimed that this conflict would not be lost at any cost. Richard Nixon had begun his campaign for the presidency and vowed that he would bring an honorable end to the war. Meanwhile, young men bumed their draft cards and others waved North Vietnamese flags in protests that sprang from Boston to Washington, D.C., and from the University of California at Berkeley to Aliens Landing near Houston’s Old Market Square, where fighting broke out on Love Street when a Vietnam veteran attacked a demonstrator, ripping the Communist flag from his hands. The veteran was jailed for assault. Dr. Timothy Leary’s followers were dropping LSD, and stories of “bad trips” that ended in space walks from hotel windows added a punchy finish.
“…for details, read the Pacific Stars and Stripes,” the voice concluded as the newscast ended for another hour. “Sounds worse at home,” the captain grumbled, as a voice began singing to a slow rock beat.
Land jerked as the sound of a rifle shot, followed by a scream, “Corpsman! Corpsman! The captain’s hit!” echoed throughout the encampment.
Leaning out his door, he looked at the crowd huddled thirty feet away from his hooch and saw two feet kicking, toes up, in the mud.
Land thought of Hathcock and Burke, who had gone out to set up below the cluster of knolls, hoping to get a clear shot at the sniper. Instead of walking to where the corpsman frantically worked to save the wounded Marine’s life, he hurried to a sandbagged observation point and looked far below at the ruby stream of tracer bullets pouring into the lower hilltops.
He searched the low valley and along the rice paddy dikes for a sign of his snipers. He was afraid that they might have ventured out of their positions and been caught in a line of friendly fire. For the next hour of lingering daylight, he waited to find out what had happened to the two sniper teams he had put out.
Hathcock had told him what the woman had said to the interrogators, and it was then that the captain made the decision to keep Lance Corporal Burke and Sergeant Hathcock teamed. This combination of his best snipers gave Hathcock a better chance at surviving, but more important, it pitted the most lethal tandem possible against the phantom slayer who this rainy afternoon had shot another Marine on Hill 55.
When darkness fell, Land walked to the sniper school headquarters where Master Sergeant Reinke and Gunnery Sergeant Wilson sat in the dark talking about the new M-40 rifle, a .308-caliber, Model 700 Remington that had just arrived in country.
“Where’re die two teams?” the captain asked softly, as he felt his way inside the darkened hooch.
“One team is in, but there is no word on Sergeant Hathcock and Lance Corporal Burke yet, Sir.” Reinke said in the darkness. “We’re gonna sit and wait. I don’t think we could do them any good wandering around the jungle in the dark. What with the clouds blocking the moon and the rain falling so hard now, I think that they may be holed up for the night.”
“I agree,” Land said, repressing his own emotional need to go out and search for his men. He felt a strong bond with all his men, but especially with Hathcock. The captain had watched him mature from a seventeen-year-old, trouble-prone private in Hawaii to an exemplary sergeant in Vietnam. More than that, Carlos was a friend.
“Here’s where he got out,” Hathcock whispered to Burke. It was so dark that the corporal held tight to the sergeant’s pack straps as they drifted and paddled along the edge of this canal that fed water into the many rice paddies below Hill 55. Rain beat the broad leaves above their heads, like hail on a barn roof. The two men stirred, sloshing the water as they climbed from the canal where the grass lay parted and broken. Here, the North Vietnamese sniper had crawled out earlier and now made his way to his jungle lair.
During the afternoon, the two Marine snipers had hidden below the knoll where their quarry had fired the fatal shot across to Hill 55. After the retaliatory fire had ceased, Hathcock and Burke moved around the hill searching for a fresh trail; they found skid marks in a muddy slide that was sheltered by a growth of dense foliage and that led from the upper reaches of these low hills to a narrow canal.
The entire route lay in dead space, secure from machine-gun fire, and it allowed the enemy free entrance and exit from the area.
It was simple, yet cunning, Hathcock thought. Float in and float out, always out of sight.
The two Marines had found the place where the enemy sniper climbed out of the canal, and now, as they followed his soggy trail, the rain beat relentlessly down on them.
“We’d better find a hide and hole up for the night,” Hathcock whispered into Burke’s ear. “Up among that bunch of fallen trees might keep a little rain off our backs.”
Burke nodded, and the two pushed their way into the brush and dead wood and burrowed against a log covered by broad-leafed plants. The rain dripped in, but the direct downpour fell away from them. They opened a can of C-ration crackers and cheese spread and ate in relative dry ness. Here they waited until daylight.
The rains passed as darkness gave way to dawn and narrow shafts of orange light beamed down through the jungle’s canopy, illuminating the steam that rose in smoky swirls from the wet forest floor. During the night, Hathcock and Burke camouflaged themselves with leafy twigs and vines, draped and fastened through loops and buttonholes on their uniforms and hats. They painted their faces, hands, and necks shades of light and dark green, with sticks of dull makeup that they carried in their cargo pockets and jokingly called mascara.
Silently, the two men moved out of their hide and followed the trail of broken stems and tread marks in the mud. The rain had washed the footprints to only faint impressions, which required a tracker’s skill to spot. Yet the combination of broken plants, skid marks, and faint footprints provided a clear trail.
“Burke,” Hathcock mouthed to his partner soundlessly.
Burke came close and Hathcock whispered in his ear. “This trail is too easy. If I was chasin’ some VC scout, I wouldn’t worry. But this is an NVA sniper—maybe even the best of them. He wouldn’t leave a clear trail by accident.”
Hathcock dropped to his knees, and Burke followed his lead, crouching low too. “From here on out,” he whispered to his partner, “we go worm style.”
Hathcock and Burke crawled up the trail. After each silent, precisely limited motion of an arm or leg, they paused to survey their surroundings.
Smelling the air, tasting it, searching for any scent that might give away another man, the two Marines scouted for a sign that would reveal their quarry. Hathcock’s eyes shifted quickly from corner to comer; he looked for anything out of place or changed by man. His ears followed the track that his eyes took.
He saw nothing but green stillness in the damp morning, smelled only the mildew and rot of the jungle, felt only the grit and slime as he crawled, sniffing, tasting and observing. The distant sound of jets followed the rumbling thunder of their bombs. He heard a fire fight in progress, far away on another hillside. The slow rhythmic chop of a .50-caliber machine gun echoed across the distance. Hill 55? Another sniping?
The thought passed as quickly as it came, and Hathcock continued his single-minded stalk. Slowly and deliberately he pushed forward, reading the trail, cautious that as he stalked this quarry, that quarry might, in fact, be a cunning hunter stalking him.
Near the top of the ridge and not yet visible to the two snipers, a small, hand-dug cave, lined with grass and covered with brush and vines, stood empty at the end of the trail. Inside it, a grass bed lay matted flat from the weight of a man sleeping there for a time. But no one had rested there for several days.
On the other side of a shallow gully, on a steep hill where thick vines and tangled brush covered the granite boulders that cropped out from the earth, a sniper hid. He watched a six-foot clearing that he had carefully hacked out in front of the cave at the end of the trail. And as he had done each time before, after killing a Marine on Hill 55, he patiently waited in ambush. He knew that it was only a matter of time before a Marine would pick up his trail and follow it to the small hole and the narrow clearing near it. The sniper hoped that the Marine who stalked him, and who slowly closed on his bait, would be the sniper who wore the white feather—Hathcock.
White rays of midday sun bore straight down on the jungle floor, raising steam from the damp mulch that covered the ground where the two Marine snipers slowly crawled. Several hours had passed since the mild morning sun’s orange beams had tilted at sharp angles through the forest’s canopy, waking the day.
Now as the tropical temperature rose in the January afternoon, Tiny flies and gnats swarmed in the greenhouse-humid air that hung in sweltering stillness beneath the trees. The hungry insects smelled the body fluids oozing from the two snipers’ pores and attacked them, biting and sucking sweat and blood. And as the tiny gnats and flies landed on the Marines’ wet necks and began to gnaw, they drowned in perspiration and collected in little black balls along the wrinkles on the men’s necks. They attacked the comers of the two snipers* eyes and crawled into the creases of their mouths. Hathcock and Burke ignored the discomfort and pushed up the hill.
Every few yards, Hathcock raised a pair of binoculars and scoured the ground ahead. He searched for trip wires or any sign indicating hidden pressure peddles that would release the explosive charge of a mine or booby-trap. He searched for alterations of the foliage that would allow his enemy a clear shot. The two snipers moved forward over thick ferns and wet, rotten leaves.
Hathcock suddenly froze. Raising his binoculars, he focused them on the small, grass-lined burrow twenty feet away. Burke lay still.
The afternoon sun shone brightly through the trees, sprinkling bright spots of light across the forest floor. Small saplings and twisted vines wound their way between the larger trees, filling every available area in which they could grow. Yet at the cave, the forest seemed almost garden-neat.
Had the burrow’s resident cleared it away for his comfort? Hathcock carefully eased himself closer, trying to see how far the clearing extended laterally and how much exposure it offered. He could not tell for certain, but he did know that if he had made the burrow as a hide, he would have left the front yard piled with twisted growth. He would have made alternate escape routes from it, too. It seemed strange there was but one way in or out of this small hole.
“I don’t like it,” Hathcock thought to himself. He drew out a plastic-covered map that he had folded into a six-inch square, with this hill at its center. Tracing the hill with his finger, he found the slight hump near its crest where this cave lay and noticed the tiny draw at its right.
Lifting his binoculars, Hathcock tried to glimpse the ridge that faced the other side of the draw through the thick forest. “He’s over there,” he thought, although unable to clearly see the other side. “He’s bound to have a direct line of sight to that cave.”
Without a sound, motioning Burke to follow, Hathcock moved off the trail to his right and began to make a wide circle around the cave. He pushed through the tangle and thorns around the hide and over the hill’s top, where the draw came to a head.
Across the draw, the dark-faced sniper lay still, covered with ferns and vines, ready at his rifle. He sampled the air, sniffing and tasting, wary of the possibility that his enemy might detect the trap and sneak across the draw to where he hid.
By mid-afternoon, Hathcock and Burke had moved to the top of the draw where it flattened into a saddle on the ridge. As the two men pushed forward, they began to notice many birds pecking and scratching through the leaves. Above them, on lower branches, other birds sat and twittered. Below in the draw, more birds gathered. Hathcock took a closer look with his binoculars and saw what had attracted the many birds—rice. Someone had scattered rice throughout the saddle, and now birds and other forest creatures feasted on it, and by their presence created a natural early-warning system that would alert the Communist sniper to the arrival of an intruder.
The man deserved respect for his cunning. Hathcock knew that successfully stalking this enemy would require a change in strategy. The saddle and hilltop where the two Marines waited offered a clear vantage across the saddle and down the draw. From the place where die birds pecked for the rice, he could get a clear view of die draw below, as well as relatively clear fields of fire through a number of routes that his quarry might take. But Hathcock also knew that it would offer his enemy the same open field toward him as well.
The two Marines found a rest where a rock protruded up from die ground. To die right, a dead tree lay on its side, falling apart with rot.
Once positioned, Hathcock took a branch and tossed it into the flock of birds. The sudden stir of wings flying up to die higher branches in the forest echoed down the draw to where the small, brown man lay behind his MosuvNagant rifle, peering through its short 3.5-power scope. His eyes shifted sharply to his left. A wild pig or big cat might have sent die birds skyward, but another person might have done so, too. The sniper pushed his way over the vine-covered rocks and quietly headed toward the saddle.
He followed the sloping ridge to the draw’s head, but rather than moving across die saddle where Hathcock and Burke lay, he went down the far side of the hill and picked his way through a thicket of thorn bushes on the Marines right flank.
Hathcock lay quietly listening to die sounds of die forest, hearing a bird’s song carried on a breeze that quaked through the treetops and rustled the leaves. He could hear a slight wheeze in Burke’s lungs as his partner breathed in slow rhythm, two feet away. “The kids’s probably caught cold from sleepin’ in the rain,” Hathcock thought. And as his eyes shifted toward Burke, a sharp crack echoed through the brush to their right.
Without a word, both Marines shifted to their left. “He circled around us!” Burke whispered hoarsely, as he quickly pushed his way behind a tree.
“Shoot die gap, Burke!” Hathcock whispered back. “He’s closing right in on us.”
The two Marines scrambled down the saddle and into the thick cover that the draw offered. Once behind its shield of tangled stalks and vines, they dropped to their bellies and began to quietly crawl up the ridge where the enemy sniper had passed on his trek to their former hide.
The crack and thud of the two Marines scrambling into the draw told the NVA sniper that his quarry had flown. When his sleeve had snagged on the thorn bush and snapped its branch, he had known the chances were that they would hear. Still it was frustrating. He crept up the hill and examined the spot where the Americans had lain. Then he looked across the low saddle and surveyed the field of fire that his enemy had covered. It looked good. He would settle into the hide and wait and see if Hathcock and Burke came up the ridge and entered their own killing zone.
Meanwhile, the Marines pushed an inch at a time through the low vines and bushes to where the ridge met the saddle. They were at the opposite end of their former field of fire. Sweat beaded Hathcock’s face and dripped off the end of his nose as he looked across at the rock behind which he and Burke had hidden. Where had the enemy crawled?
From their opposite ends, all three men watched the clearing, waiting for the next move.
Burke swallowed hard to clear his scratchy throat, now irritated and dry. He reached to his hip and quietly unfastened his canteen pouch, allowing the green plastic bottle to slide out. Hathcock watched the young Alabama native press the open canteen to his lips and drink. The green camouflage, which had once covered Burke’s face, now eroded off his jaws by the rivulets of sweat that dripped from his chin, revealing his naturally bronze complexion and the redness that flushed over his cheeks.
As Burke slowly swallowed the water, he squinted his eyes with each gulp, reacting to the soreness in his throat. He glanced to his right and saw Hathcock watching him with concern. Burke cracked a toothy smile and, with liquid smoothness, slipped his canteen back into its pouch.
Hathcock knew that his partner was coming down with something and that the risk of his coughing or sneezing increased with time. It was risk enough for him to take the drink of water.
“He’s got to be here,” Hathcock thought to himself after searching every conceivable hide and seeing nothing. From his low, prone position, he could only see the flat front angle that the rotten log and rock presented. Despite the fact that he and Burke had vacated them only a half-hour earlier, they represented the best cover from which to control the openness of the saddle. But there was no sign of a muzzle or sight protruding from behind either object. “Where could he be?” Hathcock asked himself.
A large tree grew to the Marine sniper’s left and offered enough cover to allow him to raise himself to a sitting position and possibly see behind the rock and log. Grabbing around the tree with his right hand and clutching his rifle with his left, Hathcock began to work his way up the tree’s trunk to where he could sit and point his rifle scope at a high enough angle to see if his adversary had indeed moved into the two Marines’ vacated hide. “Hathcock had almost positioned himself and was about to work his legs into a cross-ankle shooting stance when the ground gave way beneath the edges of his boot soles and he sat hard, crunching twigs and leaves with a noisy plop.
The brown man who hid behind the rotted log peered through his rifle’s scope and saw the sudden flash of movement—the head of a man, wearing a hat with a white feather.
He had the American who could make him a wealthy hero clearly in his sights. And like the old fisherman who, after trying time after time to hook that grandfather trout, finally sees the great silver-and-green fish nipping at his lure, only a tug away from catching him, suddenly yanks too soon and misses his catch, the dark-faced man jerked his rifle’s trigger, bucking his shot wide and low.
The sudden crack of rifle fire sent a surge of adrenaline through Hathcock’s system. He raised his rifle and put his cross hairs on the log, where he saw the dark green flash of the enemy sniper disappear behind the foliage that cloaked his hide. “Damn!” Hathcock said under his breath, and then he looked down and noticed his partner lying motionless at his side, with an expression of wide-eyed alarm on his face.
“Sergeant Hathcock! I’m hit!”
“Where?”
“My butt. He shot my left cheek! It’s bad! It’s burning like a hot iron, and I can feel the blood running all over my legs!”
Hathcock dropped on his belly, crawled to where he could examine the wound, and then said sharply, “Buike, get up! That ain’t blood, it’s water. The bullet just grazed your hip and blew the bottom out of your canteen. Let’s go! He’s getting away!”
Both snipers could hear the brush breaking as their enemy crashed his way through the woods. They, too, jumped to their feet and hurried along the hilltop to a ridge that sloped down the windward side and overlooked a broad, treeless gap that extended down the hill. Beyond the gap, another ridge sloped to the forest below, and there Hathcock saw a gully where the runoff from the rain had eroded a route of escape for their enemy.
“Get down,” he told Burke, as they crawled to the edge of the tree line, near the top of the ridge. “Bet you everything I own that he’s in that gully.”
Resting on his elbows, Burke scanned the full length of the gully with his binoculars, while Hathcock lay at his side, prone behind his Winchester, looking for the slight flash or motion that would reveal his quarry.
They watched the long gully for an hour without seeing anything, yet Hathcock felt certain that their man had not fled, but hid in waiting for them.
Hathcock was angry. His sudden movement had put them in this predicament. It was his turn to shoot now, and he wouldn’t quit until he had taken it.
The sun lay low in the afternoon sky, sending its light down the hill at Hathcock’s and Burke’s backs and casting long shadows across the wide, grass-covered gap that sloped toward the gully where two almond-shaped eyes squinted behind a pair of black binoculars.
The enemy sniper slowly searched each tree trunk and bush for the white feather. “The arrogance of such a thing will cost this man his life,” the sniper thought, as he picked apart the cover opposite him. “I will teach you to flaunt yourself. It is the humble man who wins here, my friend.”
As he trained his binoculars again at the top of the hill where the trees met the crest of the gap, something caught his eye, something small, yet bright, fluttering in the shadows. The little man squeezed his eyes shut and looked again through his binoculars, squinting to see through the blinding rays of the low sun. “I think, maybe, I have found you, my young warrior with the white plume.”
In a smooth and deliberate motion, the North Vietnamese sniper raised his rifle from the gully and tucked it into his shoulder, steadying it with his left hand, which he rested on the ground above the trench. He concentrated on the pointed sight-post inside the scope, but his target disappeared in the sun’s glare, causing him to tilt and cant the weapon as he tried to pinpoint the Marine through the small scope and kill him.
“What’s that?” Hathcock said, catching a flash of light in his scope.
“What’s what?” Burke responded in a hoarse whisper.
“There, again. Down in that guilty. Something’s flashing down there. Reflecting the sun. Something shiny.”
“Reckon it’s him?”
“I can’t tell, but something is sure sparkling in the sun. You got your field glasses on it?”
“Yeah.”
“Make anything of it?”
“No. It’s like somebody shining a mirror in the sun. I can’t tell any thing.”
“Hold tight. Burke. I’m gonna gamble a shot.”
Carefully, Hathcock centered his scope’s reticle on the glimmer of reflected sunlight. He released his breath and let the cross hairs settle on the target, and, as they settled, his .30-06 cracked down the hill, echoing through the wide, treeless gap.
“Holy shit, Sergeant Hathcock! You got him,” Burke said as the glimmer disappeared and revealed the now dead man whose body had bounded against the opposite side of the gully when the bullet struck.
Hathcock smiled at his partner and said, “One shot—one kill.”
Although there was no sign of any other enemy, the two Marines avoided open areas and took the extra time to move along a covered route to where the dead soldier lay in the gully.
Burke reached the body first. He looked at his sergeant and said, “Nobody is gonna believe mis unless they see it. Look at that. You put that round straight through his scope!”
Hathcock took the Russian-made sniper rifle from his partner and looked into the hollow tube of a telescopic sight that had had the glass blown from it as his bullet passed down its length and entered the enemy sniper’s head through his eye.
“Burke, I just had a scary thought. What’s the only way a person could make a shot like this?”
Burke looked puzzled. “What do you mean, Sergeant?”
“Stop and think about it. He had to be sighting his rifle right at me in order for my bullet to pass clean through his scope and get him in the eye like that.”
“Why, then he almost had you!”
“Yeah, Burke, when you get down to it, the only difference between me and him is I got on the trigger first.”
With the last remaining daylight, Hathcock next to the man’s body and marked the exact position of the kill on his map. He would pass the information to headquarters, should they want to recover the body. As for the rifle, its lensless scope and bloody stock were a grim reminder to Hathcock of how close he had come to losing this duel, and he carried it away with him.
“Damn you, Hathcock,” Captain Land shouted in the blackness of the sniper hooch as the two Marines crouched in the doorway at midnight. The silhouettes of the two men stood out in the moonlit sky as the captain rose to his feet and bear-hugged them together. “I haven’t slept for two days, worrying about you two! What happened?”
“Got that boogerman for you, Sir,” Hathcock said, proudly holding out the long rifle. “Shot him in the eye. Thought you’d like to go back to the World with that problem solved.”
“That’s one hell of a good going-away present, Carlos, but I’ll tell you both, I’m a lot happier to see you two back here alive.”
Hathcock put his name on the tag on the bloodstained, Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle and turned it into the command headquarters. He was hoping to save it as a special souvenir, but he never saw the rifle again.
One day later, Capt. E. J. Land departed Vietnam, leaving Hathcock and Burke. He passed his concern for their safety to his relief, Major Wight.
“Hathcock’s a dichotomy,” Land told the major. “The man will put himself into the most dangerous situations imaginable, yet once he’s out there on his own, he’s the most cautious and thorough sniper I’ve ever seen. The only reason he’s alive is because he is so damned good, once he’s in the bush.
“Burke’s just like him. Hathcock taught him everything he knows. They’ll never say no. So watch ’em. Don’t let them get in over their heads.”