Marine Sniper

by Charles Henderson

  He had been in the hospital when his son was born. It had upset him at the time—he would have liked to have been with his wife—but he sometimes felt it had hardened his resolution to get out of the hospital and take up his responsibilities, even though his physical unsteadiness hadn’t entirely disappeared.

  This evening in the sniper hooch on Hill 55, he felt much worse than in many months. He sat there visibly shaking when a meaty hand took him by the shoulder.

  “You okay, Carlos?”

  Hathcock turned to see his captain standing at the foot of his cot.

  “Get over to the sick bay,” Land said in his gruff voice. “You look pretty well wrung out.”

  “Skipper,” Hathcock said in a high-pitched, singsong voice, “I’m really all right. I just got a little chill from the rain today. I’m gonna get me something hot to drink, and I’ll crawl in the rack. I’ll be okay.”

  Land looked at him quizzically, but decided to accept his sergeant’s opinion of when he was sick enough to need a doctor. “I guess that will do, but I’m gonna be keeping an eye on you. I don’t like the way you look. Just remember—life is hard. But it’s one hell of a lot harder if you’re stupid.”

  Hathcock smiled as he recalled the John Wayne movie where he had first heard that line. “Yes, Sir. Don’t you worry about me. I may be ignorant, but I ain’t stupid.”

  In his heart, however, he knew that life was getting one hell of a lot harder, and he could remain stupid only so long. Some day his secret would be out. The doctors would have to know. But now was not the time.

  Less than twenty minutes later, the captain returned to Hathcock, carrying a canteen cup filled with hot chicken soup. “Here, drink this.”

  “What is it? Chicken soup? Where you find that?”

  The captain smiled. “That staff sergeant at the mess tent. I just asked him for some hot soup and he came up with this. I didn’t ask where or how…I just thanked him and left.”

  Land picked up an ammunition crate that the Marines who lived in the hooch with Hathcock had used as a stool and set it down next to the cot and took a seat on it. “You sure you don’t need to talk to a doctor about this? You’re shaking pretty bad.”

  “I’m okay, really. I just got a little flu or something today and got the shakes from it.”

  Gently cupping his palm over Hathcock’s forehead, the captain did not feel any sign of fever. “You don’t seem to have a temperature. I guess you’ll be okay. Probably is just a little chill. You stay in that rack tomorrow.”

  “I will, Sir, unless I feel real fit. I’ll come see you first.”

  “You be sure you do.”

  At one o’clock that morning, Hathcock walked to the privy. He stumbled and staggered as though he had been drinking heavily. He was frightened that the problem would not leave before dawn.

  Inside the plywood hut, he took short breaths and held them for several seconds each, trying to avoid smelling the stench of the excrement that filled a cut-down fifty-five-gallon drum positioned below the wooden throne on which he sat. He recalled watching a private lift the heavy cans onto the bed of a mule* and how the foul liquid sloshed on the man’s hands and clothes—how his utility uniform bore greasy black stains across the chest and down both legs from this chore.

  Hathcock thought how lucky he was to be a sergeant. He did not have to pull shit detail, hauling the shit-filled cans down to the west side of the hill, topping them off with kerosene, and setting them on fire.

  When Hathcock awoke the following morning, he felt better. The dizziness had almost gone. The trembling had settled to a slight twitching in his legs. He smiled as he put his feet on the oil-stained plywood floor and stood, feeling steady. “Maybe it was the soaking I took,” he thought.

  Although he felt better, he did not go to the field for several days. He spent his time writing lesson plans and debriefing students. And planning patrols—patrols that he longed to lead.

  On a sweltering monsoon afternoon, with the temperature and humidity both hovering near 95, Hathcock was writing the day’s report at the green, clapboard field desk. He took off his shirt and wore only his camouflage utility trousers and boots. The snipers had returned from the field early and empty-handed again. Their debrief was short.

  Carlos sipped a cold beer. The gunny had bought six when the service club opened at five o’clock, and now two cans sat on the corner of the field desk, water beading down their sides, awaiting the captain.

  A large, black mosquito landed on Hathcock’s arm and began drawing blood from skin marked by a tattoo of the confederate flag and the word “Rebel” written beneath it. “Go ahead and suck,” Hathcock said, watching the insect fill its stomach, stretching it round. Just as the mosquito was about to withdraw its proboscis, Hathcock pressed the tip of his finger on the insect and burst it, leaving a bloody smear on the red-and-blue tattoo.

  “Damn mosquitos,” Wilson said, slapping one that bit his neck as he sat on an ammo crate and reclined on his shoulders against the wall of the hooch. “One way or another, I’m gonna wind up leaving most of my blood over here—if Charlie don’t get us, then the bugs will.”

  “Gunny,” the captain said, as he walked through the doorway, “if it wasn’t the bugs, you’d be bitchin’ about the heat or the dirt.”

  “Now that you mention it, Skipper, this is about the hottest, filthiest sandpile I’ve ever spent time at anyway. I’d just as soon be livin’ inside a shit-can on the Sahara,” Wilson fired back.

  “Don’t be joking about that, we’ll probably wind up there next,” Land said.

  Hathcock smiled and said, “I don’t know what is so bad about living in this nice little house we got here.”

  “You would like this dump, Hathcock. I forgot about you coming from Arkansas. It was probably a step up for you to come here and wear shoes,” Wilson said, evoking a chuckle from Land and a finger from Hathcock.

  “We’re going out tomorrow,” the captain said, taking a healthy swallow from one of the dripping beer cans.

  “Sir, does that ‘we’ include me?” Hathcock asked hopefully.

  “Yes it does, Sergeant Hathcock.”

  WHEN THE SUN ROSE, HATHCOCK AND CAPTAIN LAND ALREADY rested beneath the leaves of a short palm in a grassy hide that overlooked a clearing fifty yards wide that the Marines often used as a landing zone. Beyond the clearing grew short bushes and plants with broad, flat leaves. Farther on, a tree line followed the edge of a narrow stream. The water ran along the base of a hill that a barrage of napalm and heavy explosives had left bare except for splintered trees bristling up like the pins in a pincushion. A faint trail led across the front of the two snipers’ hiding place, made a left turn in the clearing, and etched its way between the bushes and plants, through the shattered timber and onto the top of the hill, where it connected with a road.

  This junction was the focal point of the two Marines’ interests. Here they watched for the enemy to emerge, crossing one of the openings below this denuded hill, on the way to ambush American forces. And here they hoped they might also get a glimpse of the woman torturer who led the Viet Cong snipers thereabouts. This hill was two to three miles west of their base on Hill 55.

  Hathcock shivered slightly from the coolness of the morning’s heavy dew, which soaked through the front of his uniform.

  While Hathcock and Land lay behind their leafy blind, a lone Vietnamese sniper stepped carefully along the edge of the stream. The man wore a black shirt and pants with the legs rolled up past his knees, and he was undoubtedly heading back to his unit’s underground headquarters beyond the bomb-scarred hill. He stepped slowly and paused, sniffing the air for cigarette smoke and listening for any unnatural sound.

  “Hathcock,” Land whispered. “You take the scope for a while. I’ll give you a break off the rifle.”

  “Five more minutes, Sir. I got a feeling that Charlie is gonna step out any second.”

  “You’ll have that feeling all day until you get a shot out. A
nd when he shows himself, you’ll say, ‘See, I told you so.’ Carlos, you’re not psychic. Let me take the rifle for a while.”

  “Sirrrr,” Hathcock whispered, “just five more minutes.”

  Land said nothing but put his eye back to the rear optic of the M-49 scope through which he scanned the clearing and the lane that led to the hilltop.

  “Hathcock. Give me the rifle,” the captain said after waiting fifteen minutes more. “I’m tired of looking through this scope. I need the relief, if you don’t.”

  “Yes, Sir. I’m sorry,” Hathcock said softly, taking the rifle from his shoulder and slowly passing it to Land.

  Just as the captain grasped hold of the weapon, and before Hathcock had released his grip from the small of the stock, both men saw a lone dark figure creep from the trees along the stream and step into the open, two hundred yards away. It was easy to recognize this soldier’s specialty by the long wooden stock of the bolt-action rifle that he carried across his back—obviously a sniper.

  “Give me the rifle, Hathcock,” Land said, pulling the weapon toward himself, trying to loosen Hathcock’s grip.

  “I’ll get him, Sir. Turn loose.”

  “No, Carlos. I’ll shoot him.”

  Hathcock pulled hard on the rifle, forcing Land to grunt, as he fought to win what had now become a tug-of-war. And rapidly the struggle between the two men escalated into a full-blown wrestling match.

  “God damn it, Carlos. Let go of the rifle.”

  Hathcock let go. Land shoved the butt into his shoulder and put his eye to the scope in time to see the fleeing enemy sprint into the tree line and disappear, before the captain could get a shot away.

  “Shit!” Land said, looking at Hathcock, who was futilely trying to resist laughing. The captain began smiling too. “You dumb ass. He got away. Now we gotta pick up and move. He’ll be back with help.”

  Carlos blinked and a curious expression came over his face. “Captain Land, what if we sat tight? We got our six o’clock covered by that patrol that dropped us off. If that gook wants to come back with his friends, who’s to say we can’t shoot ourselves a bunch of them. And, what if he brought back his boss. You know who she is.”

  “Get on the radio, Carlos,” the captain said firmly. “Tell that patrol to close up on our rear and sit tight, and be ready for anything. In the meantime, I think we’d be better off at the other end of this clearing. We can set up in those low bushes on that rise along the edge. They might come back with mortars or rockets, and I don’t want to be hanging out where old Nguyen saw us last.

  “You’re right about that woman. She’s gotta believe there are a couple of bozos out here, after that little show of mature professionalism that we put on. She just might come out here lookin’ to capture herself a couple of easy pigeons.”

  The two snipers cautiously crawled along the edge of the clearing, through the short palms and on to the upper reaches, where a thick stand of grass and elephant ears covered their movement. A slight rise in the earth made an ideal bench-rest for their rifles. They adjusted the camouflage around their position and settled into their new hide.

  By noon, nothing had crossed their line of sight. The patrol that lay hidden far to their rear along a low ridge remained silent, too.

  WHEN THE VIET CONG SNIPER REACHED THE NETWORK OF TUNNELS and underground chambers that housed his unit’s headquarters, his commander—the woman who hunted Marines at Hill 55—met him at the door. He told her of the two enemy soldiers whom he saw fighting at the edge of the clearing and urged her to hurry back and get them. The woman was hesitant. Where there were two Marines, there could be many more. She had planned an ambush for that evening and to reach the place where it would be set up, she would need to go over or around the hill in front of which the two Marines had shown themselves. After some thought, she decided not to cancel the evening’s ambush. She would decide whether they would go over or around the hill when they reached it.

  GNATS AND OTHER FLYING, BITING INSECTS SWARMED IN THE SHADE beneath the low plants and palms as the sun heated the humid afternoon. The air hung still in a hothouse doldrums that left the two Marines stewing beneath the foliage, helplessly suffering from the bites of the hungry bugs that swarmed over them. Sweat seeped into Hathcock’s eyes and dripped from the tip of his nose, while an army of tiny pests crawled around his neck, inside his ears, and on his eyelids and nostrils. Hathcock remembered hearing that the Japanese in World War II had a word for days like this—it translated as “buggy-hot.” He lay motionless. Any sudden motion could draw attention from an unseen enemy.

  “Sir,” Hathcock whispered to his captain, who lay next to him suffering similarly. “You okay?”

  “No,” came the captain’s sharply whispered retort. “I’ve just about had it. We don’t pick up a sign by sixteen-hundred and we’re gone.”

  Hathcock didn’t want to complain, but the bugs were getting to him, too. He felt certain that an army of black ants had found their way into his trouser leg and now waged battle on his loins. The reassuring comment from the captain made their stinging more tolerable.

  Just then, Hathcock saw a sudden motion among the broken tree trunks at the crest of the hill. “Skipper. Look. Just at the top.”

  The captain shifted his spotting scope slightly to his left and immediately saw the black-clad man, crawling on his knees through the maze of dead wood with an AK-47 in his hand.

  “Don’t shoot, Carlos. He ain’t alone.”

  “Sir?”

  “Look at the rifle. If he was a sniper, he would be carrying a long stick, not an assault rifle. Bet you money that he’s a scout.”

  “Reckon he belongs to that woman?”

  “Odds look promising. We’re in the middle of her stomping grounds.”

  “I keep thinking how good a whole lot of folks would feel if we nailed her. After that night back at Hill 55, I haven’t been able to get the idea of her out of my head.”

  “Don’t go gettin’ your hopes up. It’s likely we won’t get a clear shot at her, even if we see her. And, don’t forget, she hit An Hoa last night, and that is way over the other side of Hill 55 from where we are now. She could just as likely be laying back there now, looking to catch herself another young boy to skin.”

  “I know. Still, it don’t hurt none, wishin’.”

  “While you’re wishin’, just keep your sights on old Nguyen Schwartz out there a snoopin’ and a poopin’.”

  Land had guessed correctly, the Viet Cong soldier was a scout. He had left the tunnels two hours ahead of his patrol in order to disclose any enemy ambushes on, or around, the hill. If the hill was clear, he would wait just below the crest and signal his comrades to approach.

  The little man spent more than an hour crawling on his knees and elbows through the heavy fall of splintered tree trunks that lay crisscrossed and tangled, like a heap of gigantic pick-up sticks.

  “He’s definitely scouting,” Land concluded in a soft whisper to Hathcock. “Probably looking for us. Let him look.”

  The black-clad man moved back to the hill’s crest and disappeared on the other side.

  “Sir,” Hathcock said. “We either let another one get away, or we’ve got ourselves a whole stringerful of fish fixing to strike the bait.”

  “He’ll be back,” Land said.

  Hathcock looked at his watch. It was nearly 5:30 P.M., an hour and a half beyond the time they had planned to leave this blind. He wondered how long his captain would persist in the wait. He only hoped he wouldn’t give it up prematurely.

  The November sun now stood just above the mountaintops that rose along the western horizon. It had turned from bright white to yellow and now deepened to a burning orange ball. Long shadows stretched below the trees.

  “We’re losing our light, Carlos,” the captain said. “It’s time we pulled in our lines.”

  “Sir, ten more minutes. I got this feeling that any second…”

  “Carlos,” the captain said, but the sight
of a dim silhouette emerging at the hilltop stopped him. “The hilltop. Something’s coming.”

  Hathcock looked through his scope and saw the outline of several figures emerging over the hill’s crest. “I can’t tell, Sir.”

  “I can, Carlos,” Land said, looking through the more powerful spotting scope. “They’re VC. Check out the one that just squatted off to the left, just below the rise from the others.”

  “It’s a woman! She’s pulling at her britches leg.”

  “She’s taking a piss, Carlos.”

  “Is that her? Is that the Apache?”

  “It’s her,” the captain said, now certain from his recollection of the photos and sketches that an intelligence officer at the division command post had shown him. “Carlos, hand me that radio handset. I think that our best chance of hitting them is with artillery. Read me the coordinates off your map.”

  The answer to their radio call came quickly. The first shell exploded directly at the junction of the trail and the road, killing three of the seven Viet Cong there. Two ran down the trail away from where Hathcock and Land lay hidden. The woman, who was still squatting when the first shell exploded, fell on her face. Two shells exploded behind the first, and a VC soldier ran down the trail, toward the two Marines. The sound of more incoming artillery sent him leaping for shelter among a jam of logs.

  The woman scrambled to her feet and, in sudden panic, ran down the trail, and down the hill, directly toward the two snipers hiding in the low palms and grass. She remembered how trouble always seemed to plague her on this hill. It was where her unit had had its headquarters before the bombers had laid it flat. She was running hard in panic, her heart pounding, and tears streaming from her eyes.

  Hathcock tightened his grip around the stock of his Winchester rifle and centered the scope’s reticle on the woman’s chest. “Hold it. Don’t rush the shot,” he reminded himself. “Keep the cross hairs centered. Wait. Wait. Get her at the turn.”

  Higher up the hill, the soldier who took cover jumped from the logs and began to sprint down the trail, trying to catch his leader. He realized that she ran, not away from the danger, but straight toward it. This was where he had seen the two Marines wrestling, near the turn in the trail that his commander now approached.