Land signed Hathcock’s fitness report and looked through the screen door where Wilson stood talking to Master Sergeant Reinke.
“Top! Gunny!” the captain called to them. “Hathcock is off restriction. However, we must keep his situation in the fronts of our minds. Charlie wants Carlos’s head.”
Both men smiled at the skipper.
“Oh, and by the way,” Land said in a casual tone. “We don’t need to mention anything about Sergeant Hathcock’s restriction to Major Wight either.”
TWO DAYS LATER, Carlos Hathcock and John Burke had eaten breakfast when the mess tent opened at four A.M., obtained passwords from Operations, and now stepped quietly in the remaining darkness, finding a hiding place on a low rise at the base of Hill 55.
Well below and left of the old sandbagged hide, Carlos hoped that its slight elevation above the tops of the knolls and low ridges on the other sides of the rice fields would give Burke and him the advantage today. With the two men in place well before daylight, no enemy could know where the sniper team lay.
No sun came with daylight. A gray overcast hugged the world, and as the morning wore on, a mist became a soaking, drizzling rain. Carlos Hathcock smiled. He liked these conditions for a hunt.
So did the North Vietnamese sniper who led the platoon charged with killing Hathcock and Land. Before daylight, he had slithered from thick grass into the stream that fed a canal bordering the many rice fields northwest and west of Hill 55. While Burke and Hathcock had crept through the foliage on the low knoll where they had hidden, the enemy guerrilla had pulled himself along the canal, hugging the bank until he came to the back of a hill, where he moved like a snake to its top and hid.
As the rain began to drizzle, the stocky, dark man hugged close to the base of a bush, minimizing the water that fell. It was a steamy rain, no wind, and fog drifted in and out of the draws and on the low, flat land between them. He opened his mouth, allowing the moisture that beaded and dripped down his face and off his nose to fall on his tongue. He ate nothing. He did not move. He only watched and waited for a target to offer itself to him.
Engines whined through the long day as trucks and jeeps slid along the muddy road from the hilltop and wound eastward to Highway 1, just south of Da Nang. All day long they drove back and forth, moving equipment, supplies, and Marines to and from the hill and the city. None of the day’s activities had offered a single opportunity until three figures appeared on a lower trail that led below several hooches built along the crest of a ridge that extended northwest from the hilltop.
When he began hunting for the Marine who wore the white feather, many soldiers walked along this lower trail. He easily picked shots. Now, rarely did he see a target there.
Carefully, he lifted his binoculars to his eyes and studied the three figures. The man to the far right wore a pistol in a shoulder holster. Two silver bars shined on each collar. The sniper smiled as he took his Mosin Nagant rifle, laid it snugly in his shoulder, rested his cheek on its level stock, and peered through its scope.
Using his toes to adjust where his sight post lay, he maneuvered his body until the sharp tip of the aiming point rested squarely on the captain’s midsection. He closed his eyes and opened them to find the sight still on his target.
No expression crossed his face as he applied pressure to the trigger. Calm, peaceful serenity blanketed him as the firing pin released, striking the primer on the 7.62 × 55-millimeter cartridge and sending the 180-grain copper-jacketed projectile out the rifle’s barrel, arching above the rice fields at 2,400 feet per second.
It took the captain off his feet, splashing him backward in the muddy path. In seconds a crimson river flowed down the trail as the Marine kicked but could make no sounds and could find no breath for his shattered lungs.
Another officer, a husky one with a square jaw, immediately stepped from the hooch thirty feet above the dying man. The sniper captain. The Communist soldier trained his scope on this new target and prepared to shoot, but at the same time a barrage of machine-gun fire danced up the knoll where he lay. He had to fall back.
As he had done so many times before, the guerrilla slid down the back of the hillock and into the canal where he again pulled himself through the water beneath the cover of the near embankment. Several hundred yards west of the knoll, the sniper stopped to look once again at the activity on the hilltop. Then on the far edge of the rice fields, he saw two figures sneak from the undergrowth and crouch behind a dike. From the long rifles that both men carried, he knew they were phantom hunters like himself.
The guerrilla knew he only had the time that the machine-gun fire from the American positions provided him. Once that ceased, the two hunters would begin their stalk. So he pulled himself along as quickly as he could without splashing.
Rain began to sheet and blow across the wide flatland, and he stopped to see the two American snipers now crossing the field at a dead run, directly to the knoll where he had hidden. They would easily find where he had lain, and the muddy scar on the back of the hillock where he had slid into the canal. Certainly these two hunters would follow him westward. He smiled. Perhaps the missed shot at the sniper captain would in the end garner him White Feather.
Now cloaked in darkness, and well up the slopes far beyond the wide flatland, the stocky brown man climbed to an overlook hidden by granite boulders. Hard rain continued to fall across the country, and he knew that the two snipers would likely hole up until light. So he waited in the shelter and cover that the rocks provided him. In the morning, from his hide, he could easily see them follow the clear trail he had left for them to track. It led to a cave where he had cleared a kill zone at its opening. Before daylight, he would move to the place where he had almost ritually hidden each time he killed an American on the hill, hoping that White Feather would follow him.
Tonight, as the storm pelted the land, he realized that tomorrow this rare quarry could likely fall into his sights, or he into theirs. As he dozed, he thought of that sickening possibility, and how he should avoid allowing his own traps to spring on himself. White Feather had not gained his reputation from being stupid. Unquestionably, he would see the obvious trail and try to flank it. Then the dark man began to smile. He would simply find a new hide where he could see the trap and its flanks.
By this time tomorrow one of them would be dead.
WHEN THE SHOOTING started, Jim Land had stepped to his hooch door to see the young captain lying toes-up with his life running down a muddy stream. He jogged to the sniper hooch while machine guns poured lead into the countryside below.
Two sniper teams had gone out today. One had returned just before the attack. Hathcock and Burke remained outside the wire.
Land squatted in the gun position with Wilson and Reinke, searching the world below with a starlight scope. The rain had made looking difficult. However, no sound of gunfire reassured the sniper leaders that their two men were most likely alive, and in pursuit of the enemy gunman.
It was after midnight when Jim Land finally stripped off his wet uniform and fell onto his cot to rest. Fatigue had him withered but not out. Sleep came fitfully.
Carlos and John waited until morning before they crawled from beneath a pile of dead wood where they had spent the night sleeping in shifts and eating peanut butter and John Wayne crackers. They needed light to follow the enemy sniper’s trail.
Hathcock had worried that the rain had washed away any tracks or other sign. However, enough skid marks, broken twigs, and grass remained so that he and Burke could easily follow the man’s path, which led from the stream up the slope of a high line of jungle-covered ridges and hills.
THE SHORT BROWN man who had slept in the rocks, moved from his lookout when he saw the two snipers cross an opening through which he had purposefully led them. At a fast pace, it would take them half an hour to reach the area of his killing zone. At a sniper’s pace, he anticipated their taking at least two hours, if not most of the morning.
He only sipped w
ater. He had eaten nothing in a day and a half now. He would not eat or disturb anything until he had finished this hunt.
Carefully he crept across the trail he had left, which led to the cave opening and the six-foot-radius kill zone he had cleared in front of it. It might make tempting bait for a typical patrol, but he doubted that White Feather would expose himself in the clearing. But he would certainly approach it, and take a distant look.
After each step, he checked to make sure he had left no tracks, had broken no twigs, had left no marks a skilled hunter might follow. He stepped lightly across a shallow gully and made his way up a steep hillside to the hide he had used each time he had hoped to lure a pursuer by shooting a Marine. From that spot he climbed higher and left until he clearly saw the cave, the killing zone, and much of the trail he had left leading toward it. Now, hidden among granite boulders and densely growing vines, he waited.
Gnats and biting flies feasted on the guerrilla, yet he ignored the discomfort. With the growing, steamy greenhouse humidity that cooked yesterday’s rain with today’s heat, he knew that the two Americans who now slithered along his trail suffered equally, if not worse. One swat. One sneeze. One groan, and he would have them.
With his binoculars, he studied every inch of ground that led toward the cave. As the day wore toward noontime, the dark man felt anticipation begin to build within him. He focused on the feeling and pressed against it. Impatience could cost his life.
He concentrated on now. He cleared his head of daydreams. White Feather was coming. He had to see him first.
The dark warrior had covered the area above him and on the saddle at the top of the draw with rice. Birds twittered and feasted on it each day. Should anyone approach from behind, the flight of wings would warn him.
By noon, he had decided that the two Americans had gotten wise to his tactic and skirted around him, trying to open his flank. Quietly, he began to work his way uphill.
Then in the middle of the afternoon, birds in the saddle squawked and beat their wings into the air, swarming above the treetops and then drifting to the far right. He calculated that something lay to the left, so he went the opposite direction.
Quietly, he moved down the ridge into another draw, and slipped through tangled vines and thorn-covered bushes. At a place where vines covered rock drop-offs, where down-flowing water had washed away the soil, the dark man slipped. He fell only a few feet, but his foot struck a branch that cracked with a loud pop.
In a second, he heard the thudding of feet on the far side of the draw. The sound traveled uphill. He immediately moved down and across, hoping for a shot.
Watching uphill, the guerrilla began to smile. “Of course,” he thought. “White Feather is merely trading ends of his kill zone.”
The sudden crunch of breaking brush in the saddle told the dark sniper that his quarry truly hid at the top of the draw.
Raising up behind the rotted log where Hathcock and Burke had earlier hidden, the man in black focused his rifle’s scope sight on the spot from which the noise had come. It was a mere flash, but enough to see the white feather fastened at the base of the crown of the American’s bush hat.
Thoughts of wealth and fame rushed through the NVA soldier’s mind as he pulled the rifle’s trigger. His excitement caused him to jerk the trigger slightly instead of smoothly increasing pressure. The round went low and to the left of Hathcock.
Burke screamed from the sudden burning he felt on his hip. “Sergeant Hathcock! I’m hit!” The wetness that flowed from the painful spot frightened him.
“Burke, get up!” Carlos snapped, after examining his partner’s wound. “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!”
Missing his shot, the guerrilla knew he must put distance between himself and the two snipers. He ran full out into the trees and over the lower slopes of the ridge until he dropped into a deep wash, dug into the earth by many rains. In it, he dropped to his knees and crawled to a spot he knew well. From that place, he knew he could take one last shot, and if he missed, escape.
Hidden in the midst of tall grass, only his head, his hands, and his rifle exposed above the cover of the wash, the dark man trained his telescopic sight up the wide, clear draw where, if his enemy followed, he could certainly see him. It was the Americans’ only route to him.
The sun drifted lower and lower to the hilltop, and made seeing up the draw difficult for the guerrilla. He cupped his left hand above his scope, shading out the direct light.
Then, through the weeds, he again saw the white feather contrasted against the dark green camouflage hat. Taking his left hand from the scope, and placing it under the rifle, the dark man laid the sharp point of the sight post directly beneath the brim of the sun-shrouded hat.
He smiled as he squeezed the trigger. Steadily increasing pressure. Waiting for the shot to break.
The NVA sniper never heard the sound of his rifle scope exploding, nor did he even have the chance to comprehend it when Carlos Hathcock’s bullet shattered its way through the sight, into the dark man’s eye, through his brain, and blasted out the back of his head.
Through his binoculars, Burke had watched the glint, sparkling almost like a mirror. Hathcock realized that no naturally occurring object would reflect the sun like that, so he laid crosshairs on it and squeezed off a round.
With the rifle’s report, Burke saw the dark man reel backward. He watched him slam against the opposite side of the gully, his nervous system in a spasm, covering the ground, the bushes, the rocks, and the Mosin Nagant rifle with blood.
Although there was no other sign of an enemy, the snipers took their time, staying behind cover, as they moved to where the body lay.
“Burke, I just had a scary thought. What is the only way a person could make a shot like this?” Carlos asked his partner as he examined the dead man’s rifle.
Burke looked puzzled, as though he missed something important. “What do you mean, Sergeant Hathcock?”
“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.
“Burke, this man was good. He was about as hard as they come. When you get down to it, the difference between me and him is I got on the trigger first.”
Carlos Hathcock sat by the dead man and marked a map section where he had made this kill. He took the Mosin Nagant rifle with its blood-soaked stock and the glass blown from its scope, and carried it back to Hill 55.
The two men crossed the wire at midnight. Jim Land lay awake in his hooch when the duo stepped through his doorway and showed him the rifle. Hathcock tagged the weapon, hoping to bring it home, but someone else laid claim to it, and he never saw it again.
Jim Land left Vietnam. However, Carlos and John had plenty more time to hunt. After all, most of the NVA platoon charged with eliminating Long Tra’ng du K’ich still remained in the bush. Carlos knew they would be back.
10
Getting Short
COLONEL BA’S NIGHT patrol found the body just after midnight, stiff from rigor mortis. Whoever had killed this man had also taken his map and notebook from his pocket, the small canvas NVA pack in which he carried ammunition and a first-aid kit, and his Mosin Nagant rifle. He dreaded making this report.
Three soldiers lashed the dark man’s body to a pole that they fashioned from a young tree they had cut, tying his hands and feet to it, and then taking several wraps around the trunk of his body and his legs to snug him tight. The men did not talk. Their leader squatted and watched them work. His eyes gazed empty and sad.
White Feather killing the guerrilla from the special platoon several days earlier had carried little significance with Ba’s men. After all, they realized that he had made himself vulnerable when he shot several times from the knoll. A man that had lain with him had returned fire in concert with his comrades hidden in the two flanking positi
ons. Most average snipers could have made the shot that killed that NVA soldier.
However, this death today would impact everyone. Even Colonel Ba felt demoralized. No easy sniper shot here. This hunt had required great skill, remarkable cunning, and perhaps a bit of luck to eliminate this particular man. He had set the standard for the other men in the elite platoon. They emulated him.
With their leader killed, shot by the man they had sworn to hunt to his death, the confidence they had built from their rigorous training would now erode significantly. This Viet Cong warlord, who held the rank of colonel in the North Vietnamese Army, just as Brigadier Le and General Tran held their respective ranks, felt his legs begin to tremble. Rapidly, the quake moved through his whole body. If he felt panic, what must the soldiers in his command feel?
He watched his men as they finished knotting the ropes that held the dead guerrilla fast to the pole. He studied their faces, their gesticulations, their breathing. Colonel Ba had no doubt that the nervousness that charged him also swarmed within the spirits of his men. They too shook, and breathed fast, and hurried their hands, sweating, their eyes wide, their noses flared.
A solemness swept the ten guerrillas who remained in the elite platoon. Colonel Ba, as they did themselves, believed that no single man or pair of men could match the American who wore the white feather.
Brigadier Le expressed outrage to General Tran at the idea of spreading these men among other platoons. He insisted that persistence with their plan would bring success. After all, their tactics had taken them close to killing the sniper captain and White Feather several times. These ten highly skilled warriors, the best the North Vietnamese Army could select from their forces, would finally claim Hathcock’s scalp. He must keep their platoon intact.
“Persist. Persist. Persist,” Le stressed to the general, pounding his right fist into his left palm for emphasis each time he spoke the word.
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