THE STEAMINESS OF the hot October morning left a foggy pall across Hill 55 as Marine helicopters approached from the south. The rippling, thumping sound of their rotor blades beating the heavy air echoed across the rice paddies beneath die dusty hill, and a dirty-faced young woman turned and searched the hazy southern skies.
She was attractive, about thirty years old, and stood just five feet tall. She wore her shiny black hair pulled into a tight bun on the back of her head. Her nose was small and pointed, and her eyes were wide and light brown, hinting at a partially French ancestry.
In her left hand she held a three-inch by five-inch notebook whose narrow-lined pages were bound together with paper tape that she had carefully removed from the cardboard containers in which the Americans’ artillery shells had been wrapped for shipment to Vietnam. She had bought the small notebook in Hanoi, nearly a year ago, while she was training to become a sniper platoon commander and intelligence expert. The notebook was mildewed now, and its water-stained pages were filled with the records of her numerous encounters with the enemy.
She looked at the large face of the man’s wristwatch that she wore on her left arm, opened the book to a clean page, and began writing of the activity that she observed.
Squatting in the tall, saw-blade elephant grass, she swore in Vietnamese and spit out the betel nut she had been chewing. She realized that the Marines she had tormented so successfully were leaving, and an entirely new unit was replacing them. The progress she had made with the old residents of Hill 55 was nullified. She would have to begin anew.
She crawled through the thick grass to the edge of a rice field where other women, dressed as she was—in black silk blouses and pants and wearing broad-brimmed, rice-straw hats-worked. The women knew better than to take any notice of her. When a few of them walked back toward the village, she followed behind them. Once they reached the cluster of huts, she made her way to a hut at the far side of the village, next to the edge of the jungle and, reaching in its doorway, took hold of a canvas rucksack and her most prized possession, a Russian M1891/30 Mosin-Nagant 7.62 × 54mm sniper rifle with a 3.5-power PU scope mounted atop its receiver.
Glancing over her shoulder at the women huddled at the other end of the village, their eyes turned away, she stepped quickly behind the hut and disappeared into the jungle.
On Hill 55, four Marines who had gotten off one of the helicopters that had flown them there from Chu Lai, walked to an empty, hard-backed tent on the edge of the compound and laid down their packs. A lieutenant from the intelligence section met them outside the dark green canvas-covered, plywood-and-pine-board structure, with its large, screen-covered windows and doors, and introduced himself to Captain Land.
“What’s the good word, Lieutenant?” Land asked cheerfully, as he pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiped the sweat from his face.
“How soon are you and your men going to be in operation?”
“Give us a little time to get our racks made and office in order, and I’ll tell you.”
“Come see me when you’re ready to go after Charlie,” the lieutenant said casually. “I can put you onto some leads, and I can certainly use the input from your sightings.”
“I plan to do that. What can you tell me about this place?”
“It’s one of the most active areas in the country,” the young officer said. He unfolded a plastic-covered map that he carried in the cargo pocket on the leg of his trousers. “Our west are Charlie Ridge and Happy Valley. Just south is An Hoa, and right there is Dodge City. Up north we have Elephant Valley, and over here, across this river, is Oklahoma Territory—all Indian country, just crawling with gooks.
“You could set up on finger four of this very hill, just out back of this hooch,” he said, pointing toward a panorama of rice fields, hedgerows, and jungle overlooked by a small bunker a few feet away from the tent’s rear screen door, “shoot off into that general area and probably kill or wound more VC than you ever saw down at Chu Lai. If you’re into huntin’ Charlie, you’ve come to the right place—he lives down there.
“The boys that vacated this fine country estate tell me that Charlie puts on his own special brand of entertainment for the troops at night. The local VC hatchet lady, who we code-named Apache, likes to get her hands on a young boy and make him sing real loud to the troops on the hill. I haven’t heard it yet, but I figure it’s only a matter of time before we get our first serenade. I could tell you stories though.”
Land glanced down at his three Marine snipers, who had sat down on the wooden cots that lined one side of their new home, “You want to hear about this?”
The three Marines nodded and Land and the lieutenant sat on the racks by them, and the intelligence officer began to tell what he knew.
“I think this woman has some sort of sexual problem concerning men—she hates them. She’s been known to carve on a man all night long, just to hear him yell, and she’s always coming up with new innovations in torture, which serves to demoralize the hell out of anybody going on patrol. For example, it seems there was this civilian contractor over here a few weeks ago who farted around and got himself kidnapped by the VC. I guess she figured that he was some sort of CIA spook, and he might have been, for all I know. But she wanted to make him talk about all the secret shit that the spooks got going on over here.
“She cut on him awhile, and that didn’t do anything but… make him scream. Finally, she gets mis great brain stroke and has a couple of her boys go out in the trash pile and catch a bunch of rats—you know the kind, those great big motherfuckers that eat cats and shit and attack you if you get close to them.
“Well, she has this poor asshole stripped naked and tied to a bamboo rack where he can’t move. She gets a big straw basket and sticks it on the guy’s head and sews the bottom up around this bastard’s neck.
“Her henchmen come back with a half-dozen big rats and they drop them in the basket and sew the lid shut.
“I don’t know how long it took for that son-of-a-bitch to die, but when the patrol found him, there was nothing left of his head except for hair and bone and a two-inch hole in the basket where the rats gnawed their way out.”
Land looked at the lieutenant and shook his head. Hathcock shrugged his shoulders and shivered, “Sir, I reckon we ought to put this Apache right at the top of our list.”
“Hathcock, she will be our top priority,” Land said tersely. “How many Marines did she torture like that?”
The lieutenant frowned, “I don’t have a firm number for you, Skipper, but I know it’s more than a dozen in the past three months. She’s done it to ARVN troops too. Tied them to trees and skinned them alive. She keeps the fear factor high.”
“Well,” Land said, “maybe we can increase her fear factor in the next few weeks. I’d love to snag her up and feed her to the fish.”
“You and every Marine who has cut down a buddy from a tree after she finished with him,” the lieutenant said.
Hathcock gazed through the screen windows of the hooch, staring down the hill at the rooftops of the huts that surrounded the rice fields, and the emerald jungle and bush country that surrounded them.
A faint wisp of white smoke drifted from a small hole in the ground hidden by thorn bushes northwest of Hill 55. The smoke came from cooking fires in a kitchen chamber. It was part of a tunnel network that comprised the company headquarters of the Viet Cong sniper platoon that hunted the Marines of Hill 55. The underground compound consisted of an ammunition bunker, three sleeping chambers, a conference room, and, finally, an observation chamber that was some distance from the main body of tunnels and chambers, connected to them by a narrow spider hole.
Beyond the kitchen a network of tunnels lay booby-trapped, to welcome any Marine or ARVN patrol that happened upon them. Just beneath the ground’s surface, in the opposite direction from where the faint white smoke drifted and disappeared into the hazy morning air, the woman sat beneath the light of a kerosene lantern. She was marking notes on a map spread across the top of a crude table made of rough pine boards taken from ammunition crates. Two men sat across from her. They watched as she moved her index finger down a page in her small notebook and then wrote on the map.
Across the many rice fields and hedgerows that stood between the Viet Cong headquarters and the Marine compound atop Hill 55, six Marines dressed in camouflage uniforms and wearing bush hats boarded a green, twin-rotor helicopter that would take them and two companies from the 26th Marine Regiment to a hill position. From there, the men would sweep for three days the broad flood plain that flanked a wide and muddy river. The snipers, led by Captain Land, would guard their flanks at a sandy point, checkered with rice fields and tall grass, that jutted into a wide bend in the river. From that position, they could cover an expansive area of tall grass and low-growing bushes and trees.
A tall, thin Marine major met the snipers as they bounded from the roaring helicopter.
“Captain Land?” the major said.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Follow me. You can brief me on your plan while we walk.”
Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, Gunnery Sgt. James Wilson, Lance Cpl. John Burke, Staff Sgt. Charles Roberts, and M. Sgt. Donald Reinke followed Land and the major to the far side of the hill where a general purpose tent, sprouting antennae and draped with camouflage netting, billowed in the easterly breeze. Inside the tent was a large acetate-covered map mounted on a four-foot by eight-foot sheet of plywood. Land stood before the map and pointed to the bend in the river, “We’ll set up three two-man positions along that point and cover the flats on the far side of the river. I’ll use the knoll located behind these rice paddies as my rally point.”
The major nodded in agreement as the five snipers under Land’s command looked closely at known enemy positions plotted on the map in red grease pencil. The markings showed heavy VC concentrations across the river on low hills overlooking the flats—the snipers* principal fields of fire.
As the six Marines walked from the bustling tent, Hamcock looked at his captain, “Sir, it looks like pretty good huntin’ over there.”
“Could be, Hathcock. It just could be.”
“Reckon the gooners will try to come across there? The water’s pretty shallow.”
“No. But I think we may catch a few breaking across those flats, trying to sneak around by the back door. One thing we have to keep on guard for is that concentration of gooners on those low hills. If they pick out our positions and set up on us, it could get a little hairy. The only high ground we have is that five-foot-high knoll behind the rice paddies, and that ain’t much. You guys look for my signal. Something breaks—we’re gone.”
The six Marines slipped down the hill, edged around the rice paddies, and made their way toward the sandy point. Burke and Reinke assumed the forward-most position in the center. Roberts and Wilson took the left flank, while Land and Hathcock set up on the right.
Hidden in the tall grass, the six snipers watched the hillsides and the flat country across the river.
Hathcock’s heart pounded against the matted grass as he lay prone behind his rifle. He saw something—a flicker of white. Just a flash. But it was enough to tell him that someone was moving through the thicket at the base of the hills, six hundred yards across the river.
Hathcock nudged Land, who nodded slightly. As they strained all their senses to detect any sign of the enemy, they suddenly heard the report of a rifle, three hundred yards to their left. Land turned his binocular toward the brush-covered river-bank opposite Burke and Reinke. Draped across an upturned tangle of roots a body hung with a crimson stain running down its back. Leaning into the roots, just beyond the dead man’s fingertips, rested a K-44 rifle.
The single shot also informed the Viet Cong in the hills above the river that their lone scout had met with trouble. The next patrol would be larger.
Several hours passed before Land sighted the VC patrol’s point man moving along the same route that the scout had taken. He knew Hathcock had seen him too, by the way he stiffened behind his rifle. Soon more men followed. Land found his sight picture and waited to fire following the report of Hathcock’s rifle.
Sweat seeped into the comers of Hathcock’s eyes as he put his scope’s reticle on the guerrilla in the center of the group, who appeared to be the officer in charge. He felt a tightness grow in his throat and stomach as he drew the slack from the rifle’s trigger-shooting men rather than targets was still something new and uncomfortable for him.
A matter of seconds seemed an eternity to him, as the rifle finally discharged the 172-grain bullet and sent it ripping into the soldier’s chest. Before the rifle returned to its rest from the recoil, Hathcock had drawn the bolt to the rear and had chambered a second round.
Land fired and caught the patrol’s point man in the hip. The other guerrillas had scurried for cover, and the wounded soldier disappeared into the brush before either Marine could finish him. “One KIA and one WIA,” Land said softly to Hathcock.
A few seconds passed and then the sound of gunfire broke die stillness. “Sounds like they slipped past us and got caught by the Top and Burke,” Hathcock said.
“I think that once the shooting stops, we’ll move out,” Land whispered. “We could wind up sitting ducks down here if we hang around too long. They have all their cousins up in those hills, and next time, they won’t send another patrol—they’ll blast us out of here.”
“Just give the word, Sir. I’m ready when you are.”
Land patted Hathcock on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go. I’ll pop a green star to signal the others.”
Thirty minutes later after the green pyrotechnic burned high in the air over the sandy point, the six Marines huddled at their rally point behind the five-foot knoll that offered them protection from direct fire. There they waited until the daylight faded.
After dark, the men reached the safety of the fire base. Inside the now sandbag-reinforced tent that housed the large operations map and the crackling radios, Captain Land and the major stood before the map talking. Land’s five snipers sat quietly outside in the darkness, waiting for their captain and straining to hear the conversation he was having with the major.
“Sir,” Land said, “I understand how rich a hunting ground that flood plain looks, and we did make contact. But that’s what worries me. I think the VC will be ready for us tomorrow. I wouldn’t be surprised if they move in rockets or heavy mortars on us.
“I’d rather move on the hillside off to the right. We can still cover that area. We will just have to shoot at a thousand yards instead of six hundred. And all my snipers are excellent thousand-yard shooters. Hathcock, as a matter of fact, is the United States champion at a thousand yards.”
“Captain, I appreciate the skill of your Marines, but I don’t believe that you can compare fast-moving targets with the bull’s-eyes that you shoot out at the rifle range. If you’re more than half a mile away from your major area of responsibility, you’ll miss more than you hit.”
“If they kill us, Sir, we won’t be any good to anybody.”
“I don’t think that they will kill you. You didn’t do that much damage today. Take my word for it, Skipper, they won’t be looking for you.”
“Well, Sir, you may be right, but I feel uneasy about going back into the same position two days running. It goes against all sniper doctrine that I have read or encountered.”
Land saw it was no use discussing it further and agreed to go out the next day, only asking that some covering fire be prepared for them. “We’ll plot some targets on the hills above that flat,” said the major. “If you take fire, it will come from there. A pair of red stars will turn on the fireworks. Good luck, Captain.”
Land shook the major’s hand and walked out of the tent, tripping over Burke, who had crawled next to the doorway where he could hear the conversation more clearly.
“Do I need to explain anything to you men, or did you get it all?” Land said sourly.
“We got it all, sir,” Reinke said.
“What time we humpin’ out there, Skipper?” Hathcock said quickly, hoping to smooth over the mood of his captain.
“Plan on a zero four wake up. We’ll start down the hill at four thirty. We should be back in position well before daylight.”
The I Corps’ darkness that morning was blacker than any night Hathcock could remember. The dark shapes of the bushes and grass blended with the sky, offering his eyes no firm definition of form. He searched the horizon for a line of reference-straining his eyes, he finally saw the hilltops standing mute against the starless heavens.
As the troop of snipers descended into the black valley, Hathcock looked down at the river and its broad, flat bend. There he would spend his second day on this operation—and possibly, it occurred to him, his last day on earth.
Hathcock thought of the conversation he overheard the night before. He knew that Land had been right—it was foolish to move back into that flat two days in a row.
Hathcock sniffed the air, searching for the familiar scent of river mud and mildew. It was a sign that they were nearing their trek’s end. But at this point, all he could smell was the sour odor of sweat from his fellow snipers as they made their way across the flats toward the small knoll that would be their rally point.
There, the three teams checked their bearings and departed in three directions.
For Hathcock, the sound of his breathing and heart beating seemed amplified in the predawn’s stillness—as loud to him as the roar of the broad, muddy river fifty yards ahead. The two men had reached their firing point, and they crouched in the brush.
Soon Burke and Reinke, Roberts and Wilson also lay in position, awaiting the first gray light of day.
Hathcock focused on the input of his senses to keep his sharpness. He tasted the hint of salt in the air and smelled the faint fragrance of fish coming from a shallow cove where the river water eddied in a foamy swirl. In the distance he saw and heard a flock of white birds suddenly rise up screeching from the shallows. He also heard something else down river—it was the faint clank of metal.
Slowly, yet deliberately, he shifted his scope to his right, trying to find the source of the sound. He thought he saw a flicker through the dense brush. He listened and heard the clanking again, but he saw nothing more as the sound now moved across his front and slowly made its way to his left.
“Burke and the Top will get these guys, too,” he whispered to Land.
“Shushhh,” came the captain’s response, as Land leaned on his elbows and continued scanning the opposite side of the river with his twenty-power spotting scope.
Hathcock glanced at his wrist watch. It was exactly eight o’clock.
Burke and Reinke had taken their positions on the sandy point of the river bend and had a broad view of a gap in the brush where a shallow ditch emerged from the low grass and brush and joined the river. There they saw the enemy patrol slowly emerge from the pale green undergrowth that had hidden their movement between here and the hill.
Carefully, Burke set his scope’s reticle on the point man’s head and began squeezing the trigger on his rifle.
Land flinched when he heard the sudden crack of the Winchester a short distance to his left. He looked at Hathcock and then lay behind his spotting scope, searching the far bank for the target at which Burke had shot. A second shot echoed through the wide valley—and then a third.
Suddenly the air was alive with heavy bullets cracking through the tops of the bushes and the tall grass in which the six snipers lay.
“What in the hell?” Land said aloud. “God damn quad-51’s! They’re going to cut this riverbank into pieces with their heavy machine guns.”
“Where they at?” Hathcock asked anxiously.
“Up on the hill. Right where I thought they would be. Only I thought they’d be shooting rockets or mortars, not .51s. They must have a hell of a lot of shit up there. We’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge, now!”
In the midst of the crackling shower of .51-caliber machine-gun fire, streaked with red tracers, Land sent two, red-star, cluster pyrotechnics skyward. The six snipers scrambled for their lives, running toward the low knoll that offered protection from the half-dozen four-barrel machine guns the Viet Cong had trained on them. The ground was checkered with rice fields, and knee deep in mud. Roberts and Wilson sprinted first through one of the paddies, followed by Burke—then Hathcock, Land, and Reinke.
Hathcock pumped his legs like pistons as he drove them through the mire of mud and water. He looked to his right and saw Land, his square face flushed, his eyes opened wide and his mouth agape, inhaling every drop of air that he could force into his burning lungs.
The first three Marines disappeared into the brush and found their safety behind the knoll, while Hathcock, Land, and Reinke crossed the midpoint of me boggy rice field. Hathcock pulled his legs up and down as hard as he could and saw that bullets were exploding into the water around him.
“Go for it, Hathcock!” Land yelled, “they’ve got us bore-sighted.”
Hathcock suddenly looked back. “Top!” he hollered. “Are ya hit?”
The master sergeant’s head and shoulders were just above the muddy water. He appeared to be struggling to get back on his feet.
“You hit bad, Top?” Land yelled.
Reinke motioned to the Marines to go on and leave him.
“God damn it, Hathcock. Top’s hit. I can’t leave him there to die. You go ahead.”
“You can’t get him alone,” Hathcock yelled back to Land, the two Marines ran toward their downed comrade who splashing the water with his hands and trying to pull his body forward through the heavy mud.
“We ain’t gonna leave you out here for that Apache woman, Top,” Land called.
The two Marines reached Reinke. All around them bullets were pelting the water.
“Where you hit?” Land gasped.
“I’m not hit,” the master sergeant said. “I stepped in a fuckin’ hole. Grab hold and get me out of here.1’
Hathcock and Land grasped the master sergeant near his armpits and pulled as hard as they could. Slowly, the sucking mud gave way and the Marine slid free, splashing in the water on his belly. The captain and Hathcock each lost their balance and fell to their hands and knees, soaking themselves in the mire.
“Gooooooo!” Land cried. The three Marines charged through die knee-deep mud and water. Hundreds of bullets sent tall, liquid shafts splashing up from the paddy’s surface.
Hathcock felt the blood surging through his veins at such pressure that his ears pounded and his vision blurred. He knew he was running for his life. He took a long, stride through the deep muck and plunged headfirst into the black water, gulping what seemed gallons of filth before he breathed air again.
Land and Reinke were doing no better. Now that they had gotten near the low dike that retained the water in the rice paddy, the three exhausted Marines frantically swam on their bellies through the mire the last few yards. They emerged on dry hind, caked from head to toe in stinking mud and, straining their last resources of strength, crossed the final few yards of open grassland. As Land, Reinke, and Hathcock fell behind the cover of the low knoll, they heard the first rounds of Marine mortar fire striking the enemy’s positions in the hills. All six men lay on the ground shaking, amazed that they had survived.
“I must have sucked in a gallon of that shit,” Land said, spitting kernels of mud and sod from his mouth.
“Better a bellyful of that than your ass full of lead,” Reinke said between heavy breaths.
Hathcock pulled a package of Salem cigarettes encased in a yellow plastic box from his soaked shirt pocket. “Well, I managed to keep something dry,” he said and put a white filter tip in his mouth.
“Anyone else for a dry cigarette?”
Land looked at the five Marines and then took the package from Hathcock’s hands, “I don’t smoke, but I think this time I deserve a cigarette. That was just too damn close.”
Hathcock threw him the lighter and, holding it in his right hand, Land flipped the top back and struck the flame. As he drew the lighter toward the cigarette between his lips, his right hand, which was holding it, shook violently. Land’s entire body began to tremble so badly he couldn’t light the cigarette.
Hathcock took the captain’s hands and guided the flame toward the cigarette, which also shook in the Marine’s lips. The four men who lay watching them roared with laughter.
Land looked at them, drew the smoke in, and said, “Fuck every one of you! You’re shaking just as much as I am.”
Reinke and Hathcock lay on the ground laughing, and with a gasp Carlos said, “I don’t think I’d ever believed you could get so shook.”
Land finally laughed too, after he saw one of the other men trying to put some purification tablets in a canteen spill half die water. Each one of them was astonished to find himself still alive.
The six snipers lay behind the knoll more than an hour, waiting for the exchange of fire to cease and then they spent the remainder of the day cleaning their equipment, preparing to return to Hill 55 that night.