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 corner; 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 corners 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 pedals 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 the birds pecked for the rice, he could get a clear view of the 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 the ground. To the 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 the higher branches in the forest echoed down the draw to where the small, brown man lay behind his Mosin-Nagant 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 the 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 the saddle where Hathcock and Burke lay, he went down the far side of the hill and picked his way through a thicket of thornbushes on the Marines’ right flank.
Hathcock lay quietly listening to the sounds of the 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 the 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 thornbush 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 adrenalin 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, “Burke, 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 gully. 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 mir
ror in the sun. I can’t tell anything.”
“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 this 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 sat 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.
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