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 the 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 farmer 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 that farmer’s I killed back at 55. This one here had a split stock, and that old boy had a wore out M-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?”
“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 Quonset 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 thoughts to words when he turned to Land and said, “We’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 imperceptably 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 tiger-striped 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 are?”
“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, snugging 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 the 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.
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