“We will disburse this elite group throughout the region where these assassins operate. Our men will hunt the two Americans, isolate them, and kill them.”
General Tran paused to allow the two field commanders an opportunity to comment. With none forthcoming, he looked coldly at the colonel.
“You will personally command these men, Colonel Ba,” the general said. “I give you the best that our forces can assemble. I expect success.”
CARLOS HATHCOCK LAY on his cot and sipped warm beer while reading The Deep Blue Good-by. John Burke, now halfway through Nightmare in Pink, had finished the first of the Travis McGee novels and had passed it to the sergeant.
Above his head a black and silver clock radio played the latest from Armed Forces Vietnam Radio at low volume. He had balanced the device on the narrow windowsill, securing it with two elastic, boot-blousing garters hooked into the wire screen. Broadcasted from the Da Nang station, Jim Reeves sang his wistful song about hearing the sound of distant drums and beseeching his girl, Mary, to marry him.
Flies buzzed against the door screen and soared inside the hooch, adding an irritating quality to the midday doldrums. They crawled on the sticky residue left on the lips of the empty beer cans that Carlos had tossed into a weathered and tobacco-juice-stained cardboard cookie box.
Gulping the last mouthful of hot beer from another can, Hathcock dropped it in the box and then felt for more beer in the nearly depleted case by the end of his cot. It was his third twenty-four-can package in the sixteen days since Captain Land had ordered him arrested, returned to Hill 55, and confined to his hooch “until further orders.” The skipper had given Gunny Wilson money with which to buy the sergeant beer, to keep him on an alcohol-driven tilt and within the camp’s confines.
Carlos tossed the book on the floor by his cot. Then he took the piece of finger-smudged paper that lay folded on the ammo-crate nightstand, opened it, and looked again at the pen and ink drawings of himself and Captain Land. He read the translations, again. He thought about the reward. Again. The seriousness of what this handbill represented had stuck in his mind for the past two weeks, ever since his captain had given the flier to him.
Not long after his return to Hill 55, Marines began dying outside their hooches on their way to the privy or the chow hall, struck down by enemy snipers’ bullets. A gunnery sergeant had fallen near Carlos’s door the very day that Captain Land had shown him the wanted poster with their names and pictures on it.
Hathcock had finally gotten Captain Land to allow him to walk down the finger below the sniper hooch, where he had built a sandbag-reinforced sniper hide. From that position, he had taken a few shots, and had made two probable kills. However, he knew that the only real way to stop this menace, or menaces, was for Burke and him to track this new enemy and kill him.
FAR TO THE west of Hill 55, well beyond Charlie Ridge, Happy Valley, and Dodge City, on a flat grassland two miles across that began just past the down-slope of the Annamite mountains, Colonel Ba addressed a dozen lean-faced guerrillas. Each man carried a long, bolt-action rifle fitted with a short telescopic site. The sniper weapons looked similar to many others used by Communist soldiers, except that these 7.62 × 55- millimeter Mosin-Nagant rifles with their 3.5 power PU scopes were new. Each of them hand-fitted and much more accurate than any others like them in Vietnam. Like their rifles, the men looked battle hard, lean-faced, and well-oiled. All of them experienced, efficient veterans.
A short, muscular guerrilla stood at attention two paces in front of the others and faced Colonel Ba, who walked to the end of the line of soldiers and began inspecting each man. After today, the elite platoon would return to the east where they would individually patrol until one of them had brought down the Marine sniper, who wore the white feather, and his captain.
Until today, the men had accompanied Colonel Ba’s units as they patrolled near Da Nang and Chu Lai. Two of their group had already fallen.
For the past fortnight, the specially trained platoon had learned the lay of the land, as well as capitalizing on opportunities to inflict damage on the Americans and tax them psychologically. They had made shots that killed a gunnery sergeant, a staff sergeant, and more recently a captain on Hill 55.
Tonight, they would return to the east, fan themselves north and south of Hill 55, and hunt a wide territory, coordinating their tactics to kill Carlos Hathcock and Jim Land. They would live off the land, sleep in trees, in caves, on the ground. They would avoid contact with all other human beings, except when Colonel Ba’s patrols checked on their status at prearranged intervals.
Not only did these twelve men feel honored to be a part of this small, elite tribe, but they held opportunity on the tips of their trigger fingers. Whomever among them killed Hathcock or Land would receive a great bounty for the men’s heads.
9
Eluding Charlie
LONG SHADOWS CLOAKED the western slopes of Hill 55, giving Carlos Hathcock what he considered an edge.
With the sun rising behind him, and the resulting shade cast by the mountain covering where he lay, the Marine sniper could easily see any movement in the valley or among the small knolls and hillocks beyond. Meanwhile, an adversary must struggle to see him, having to face the low-angle morning light and high-contrast darkness below it.
In the still air, he could hear dogs barking outside the huts at the edges of the rice fields. An old man coughed. Another spoke. The smell of burning wood drifted from the farmers’ homes as the people who lived there prepared breakfast before another day in the patchwork of rice fields below Hill 55.
Behind him, muffled voices and laughter came from the encampment of Marines who had also begun a new day. Music from radios carried down the slope to Hathcock’s ears. Farther back, the whistling, throaty growl of truck engines firing to life mixed with the thumping grind of helicopter blades turning. Their din began to mask the quieter sounds.
Slowly the shadow across the west side of Hill 55 crept away, leaving yellow light that warmed the day as flies swarmed the bushes. The heat dried the thin fog that had only moments earlier lay like sheer chiffon over the cool draws and dips beneath the shade.
Each day had begun the same for the past week that Jim Land had allowed Hathcock to work from the sandbag hide far below the sniper hooch. The captain thought that it kept the restless sergeant occupied while still providing him with relative safety from the enemy. In that time four more Marines had suffered wounds and another had died from the sniper fire that came almost daily now. Carlos held hope that one morning he might get lucky and see the guerrillas that had now claimed the lives of four Americans who had believed themselves safe behind the wire on Hill 55.
Throughout each day, Hathcock munched round crackers spread with cheese or peanut butter from a C ration can. He sipped water and watched and waited. Nothing moved except the unarmed farmers below him.
Jim Land had already packed and sent many of his personal belongings homeward. He had his orders to report to inspector-instructor staff duty with the Marine Corps reserves in the Boston area. Major D. E. Wight had just reported to 1st Marine Division, and now began his check-in process at headquarters on Hill 327, due west of Da Nang, and directly north of Hill 55. Soon, he would move south and join the snipers as their new officer in charge.
By noon, Carlos felt drowsy. He could see Lance Corporal Archer and the long line of his squad snaking its way home from a patrol that they began a morning ago. Surely, if an enemy sniper lurked nearby, he would have taken a shot by now at one of Archer’s crew, from 3rd platoon, Company B, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines. They sauntered lazily up the slopes to an entry point in the defensive wire that surrounded the lower reaches of Hill 55.
Carlos watched the Marines, and glassed the countryside, looking for anything that might signal danger to these friends. They were his favorite of all the small units that worked with him.
Although a dark, hulking man of mostly African heritage, Archer’s eyes shone pale blue. Becaus
e of this, anyone who met him even once remembered him. He had joked with Carlos and Burke that if he ever chose to be a stickup man, he would certainly have to wear sunglasses on a heist.
However, once a person came to know Archer, the quality of the man became far more memorable than his unusual eye color. Although only a lance corporal, he held a sergeant’s billet, and performed the job extremely well. He was a fearless leader, bold with inner strength and iron determination. Time and again he proved himself faithful. Dependable. True to his word. For those reasons, Carlos greatly respected the lance corporal, and regarded him as highly as he did Burke, a Marine so close he cared for him like a brother.
A sniper team could find no better patrol to guard their rear security. Archer never let an enemy even come close.
Hathcock smiled. He recalled an afternoon patrolling with Archer only a few weeks ago. An enemy platoon had disappeared into a tree line, and had taken an ambush position beyond a flat of rice paddies, across from the place where Carlos and Burke had hidden. The squad leader offered to move his patrol into the open fields to draw fire, so that the two snipers could pinpoint the enemy for artillery and direct fire.
“Oh, no,” Carlos said, laughing. “You’ll get somebody hurt doing something like that. Just watch our backs. We’ll get ’em.”
Archer lumbered near the center of his patrol, several paces ahead of a Marine who had a radio strapped to his back. Carlos thought a man might as well paint a bull’s-eye on his shirt as carry a big radio. Radios and pistol belts drew enemy bullets like a magnet in a sack of nails. They represented two of the three primary target objectives a sniper always sought: Deny the enemy access to crew-served weapons, deny him communications, and deny him leadership. Pistol belts and radios represented leaders and communicators. Carlos always took them out first.
Hathcock raised his binoculars and began to scan the valley, hearing Archer’s men laugh and wisecrack as they ambled through the gate. They were headed for their hooches where they could finally rest after a full day and a half of patrolling.
Carlos saw a white puff of smoke burst from a clump on the top of a hillock, then he heard the sound of the rifle. Almost simultaneously, one of Archer’s Marines screamed. Hathcock looked across the ridgeface and saw one man on his back, his legs kicking. Two of his brothers knelt at each side of him, holding the wounded Marine.
Then came the second shot, and a third.
Another of Archer’s men fell.
“I see the hamburger,” Carlos said to himself, placing the crosshairs of his rifle scope on the black-clothed shoulder of an enemy guerrilla who lay in a grassy clump on the small knoll across the valley.
In the second that Hathcock squeezed his shot, he saw clods and dirt and grass fly next to the enemy soldier’s head. Then nothing moved.
The sergeant squinted through his telescopic sight, trying to see the enemy, when suddenly pieces of rock and wood exploded left of him, sending debris into his eyes. He had no more than turned his head when from the right a second bullet struck, splattering in the sandbag an inch below his elbow.
Then, from the low rise where the first shots came, wounding the two men in Archer’s squad, another shot popped and then blew across the valley. Carlos felt the rush of air and heard the crack of impact as the bullet landed in the hillface a foot above his head.
“They shot those men to draw my fire,” Carlos said to himself as he curled behind the sandbags and waited for the machine guns behind him, at his right and left, to open on the enemy positions. “Set up three ways, and then suckered me to show myself.”
The heavy, cyclic boom of the .50-caliber machine guns, and the more rapid chops of the .30s began to thunder across the valley at the enemy guerrillas. Hearing their reports, Hathcock peeked over the top of the sandbags and watched the red streams of tracer bullets arching to the knolls directly across from him and to his right and his left.
Several Marines rushed down the trail to Archer’s patrol and helped carry the two wounded men to safety. With the opportunity to move under the cover that the suppressive fire of the machine guns gave him, Carlos tossed his spotting scope inside the small canvas pack that he carried, slung it and his rifle on his shoulder, and ran uphill, too.
He had no idea how many enemy soldiers had taken positions across the valley, but he did know they had put a lock on his location. No point in sitting any longer at the bad end of a VC shooting gallery.
Breathlessly, he dove over the sandbagged parapet of the gun position just below the sniper hooch where Burke Wilson, and a gunnery sergeant from the 1st Marine Division Interrogator Translator Team had also taken cover. Together they watched for enemy movement.
“Looks like that woman told it like it is,” the ITT gunny said. He was a broad-shouldered man who, like others in his staff section, had shaved his head and wore a neatly waxed handlebar mustache.
“Woman?” Carlos said, lighting a cigarette.
“That old gal we took your bullet out of the other day,” the gunny answered.
“Oh, yeah,” Hathcock said, laying back against the sandbag walls and pulling out his canteen for a drink. “The one that was cutting those NVAs’ hair, and I shot her through the haystack.”
“Uh-huh,” the gunny answered. “And she told us about the dozen NVA sent here to wax your ass, and the skipper’s.”
“I picked out three gun positions, not twelve,” Wilson said.
“I think I hit the one in the middle, too,” Carlos added.
“It was coordinated though,” Burke said.
“Yes,” Hathcock answered. “I think they actually tried to draw me out for a shot, too.”
“I’m going to talk to the skipper,” Wilson said. “Tactically, a sniper has the advantage if he is in the offense, and better off if he is partnered instead of alone.”
“Not always,” Carlos said. “Sometimes alone is better.”
“You’re safer if you can move around,” Wilson told Hathcock. “And better off if Burke here is next to you.”
“I won’t argue that,” Carlos said.
“Me either,” Burke added.
AN HOUR LATER, four black-clad Vietnamese guerrillas crouched next to a small cave, sharing a pot of rice with peppers, oil, and small bits of meat mixed in. The remaining seven of their group carried the body of the man Carlos Hathcock had killed westward. The soldier who led the patrol would inform Colonel Ba of the attack they had carried out, and that they had narrowly missed the one who wears the white feather.
The stocky leader of the group laid against the rock-face next to the cave opening and wrote in a small brown booklet bound with cardboard and tape. He described the circumstances of his man’s death, the time, date, and his name. He wrote how he had sent a patrol to turn the body over to Colonel Ba and his men, so that they could return the remains to Hanoi, should they desire, for the man’s family.
He thought, as he wrote, of the many thousands of his comrades who lay in unmarked, communal graves.
He thought of how close they had come to success today. How his soldier had sacrificed himself drawing Long Tra’ng’s deadly fire, so that the others could make their shots at him. It was a good idea, but costly.
It had come to him a few days earlier when the sniper captain had stood in the open, guiding a tour of civilian-dressed news reporters. When Land had stepped in front of the sandbags, showing the reporters the .50-caliber machine gun set up with a telescopic sight, the Vietnamese sniper had fired. His bullet struck a rock below the American, splitting it and sending a shard into the captain’s shin. Land had at first thought that the bullet had struck his leg.
The American dove over the top of the sandbags, while the reporters scattered for cover. The sniper simply slid down a trail from the knoll where he had hidden and slipped into a canal. Quietly, as he had done in the past, he allowed the current to carry him away to cover.
“SKIPPER,” GUNNY WILSON said as he knocked on Jim Land’s door. “You have a problem w
ith me letting Burke team with Hathcock, and letting them be a little more maneuverable?”
“I’ll allow it, but I want them to remain within the confines of Hill 55,” Land said. “It is okay with me for them to move along any of the lower fingers, and to go outside the wire to a point. But they cannot venture beyond the hill itself. That means not across the valley. Not on the hills across the valley.”
“That will work, sir,” Wilson said. “I think Hathcock will be better off with Burke, and being able to maneuver.”
Land nodded and turned his attention back to the fitness reports he had begun drafting on the sergeants and staff noncommissioned officers under his direction. The captain felt blessed in this job since the reports nearly wrote themselves. He had nothing but the highest quality Marines. The difficulty, however, came with having to rate them against each other, and having to rate Hathcock in particular.
Of course, Land would particularly desire to serve with the sergeant in any situation. Especially in combat. He had found Carlos extremely desirable as a Marine. Always resourceful, dedicated, enthusiastic, mission-oriented. All the pluses a Marine should possess that he would rate outstanding. But what about the independent streak that seemed to grow stronger by the day? What about his fearlessness, reinforced by his attitude of invincibility? What about having to physically remove him from the field for his own safety and health?
Land then thought about himself. Colonel Poggemeyer had restricted him to the hilltop confines a few days ago. More or less to his hooch, after the incident where the sniper had narrowly missed him. The colonel had even ripped up his recommendation for Land to receive the Bronze Star.
The captain appreciated the colonel’s concern for his safety, him so close to going home. But was it fair? He was simply doing his job to the best of his abilities. Just like Carlos was simply doing his job. Hazards come with the turf. One cannot do a good job as a warrior unless he accepts the hazards.
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