Authors: Charles Henderson
The last of the lingering monsoon showers fell as Captain Land packed his sea bag. Outside his hooch, the rain pattered on the orange mud and collected in hundreds of puddles throughout the hilltop compound. The blue day matched Land's mood. He had not left the hill since the colonel restricted him. For a while he thought that his boss might ease off, but now with only three days remaining in-country, he knew that the colonel's word was firm.
Hathcock now looked nearly like his old self. His face was lull and his eyes clear and twinkling. The rest had put him back on his feet. He had remained restricted to the hill until a few days earlier, when the captain cleared him to go back to the bush on a day-to-day basis. And each evening, Hathcock made a point of checking in with Land. He did not wish to spend another day on restriction.
"At the tone, the time will be 5 P.M.," a voice announced over the radio that played softly in the captain's hooch. He leaned down to turn the volume up, following the short blare of a 500-hertz tone. Every hour, on the hour, Armed Forces Radio Da Nang broadcast five minutes of news.
Land listened as the voice told of increasing numbers of American troops now committed to the escalating war in Vietnam, as President Johnson proclaimed that this conflict would not be lost at any cost. Richard Nixon had begun his campaign for the presidency and vowed that he would bring an honorable end to the war. Meanwhile, young men bumed their draft cards and others waved North Vietnamese flags in protests that sprang from Boston to Washington, D.C., and from the University of California at Berkeley to Aliens Landing near Houston's Old Market Square, where fighting broke out on Love Street when a Vietnam veteran attacked a demonstrator, ripping the Communist flag from his hands. The veteran was jailed for assault. Dr. Timothy Leary's followers were dropping LSD, and stories of "bad trips" that ended in space walks from hotel windows added a punchy finish.
".. -for details, read the Pacific Stars and Stripes," the voice concluded as the newscast ended for another hour. "Sounds worse at home," the captain grumbled, as a voice began singing to a slow rock beat.
Land jerked as the sound of a rifle shot, followed by a scream, "Corpsman! Corpsman! The captain's hit!" echoed throughout the encampment.
Leaning out his door, he looked at the crowd huddled thirty feet away from his hooch and saw two feet kicking, toes up, in the mud.
Land thought of Hathcock and Burke, who had gone out to set up below the cluster of knolls, hoping to get a clear shot at the sniper. Instead of walking to where the corpsman frantically worked to save the wounded Marine's life, he hurried to a sandbagged observation point and looked far below at the ruby stream of tracer bullets pouring into the lower hilltops.
He searched the low valley and along the rice paddy dikes for a sign of his snipers. He was afraid that they might have ventured out of their positions and been caught in a line of friendly fire. For the next hour of lingering daylight, he waited to find out what had happened to the two sniper teams he had put out.
Hathcock had told him what the woman had said to the interrogators, and it was then that the captain made the decision to keep Lance Corporal Burke and Sergeant Hathcock teamed. This combination of his best snipers gave Hathcock a better chance at surviving, but more important, it pitted the most lethal tandem possible against the phantom slayer who this rainy afternoon had shot another Marine on Hill 55.
When darkness fell, Land walked to the sniper school headquarters where Master Sergeant Reinke and Gunnery Sergeant Wilson sat in the dark talking about the new M-40 rifle, a .308-caliber, Model 700 Remington that had just arrived in country.
"Where're die two teams?" the captain asked softly, as he felt his way inside the darkened hooch.
"One team is in, but there is no word on Sergeant Hathcock and Lance Corporal Burke yet, Sir." Reinke said in the darkness. "We're gonna sit and wait. I don't think we could do them any good wandering around the jungle in the dark. What with the clouds blocking the moon and the rain falling so hard now, I think that they may be holed up for the night."
"I agree," Land said, repressing his own emotional need to go out and search for his men. He felt a strong bond with all his men, but especially with Hathcock. The captain had watched him mature from a seventeen-year-old, trouble-prone private in Hawaii to an exemplary sergeant in Vietnam. More than that, Carlos was a friend.
"Here's where he got out," Hathcock whispered to Burke. It was so dark that the corporal held tight to the sergeant's pack straps as they drifted and paddled along the edge of this canal that fed water into the many rice paddies below Hill 55. Rain beat the broad leaves above their heads, like hail on a barn roof. The two men stirred, sloshing the water as they climbed from the canal where the grass lay parted and broken. Here, the North Vietnamese sniper had crawled out earlier and now made his way to his jungle lair.
During the afternoon, the two Marine snipers had hidden below the knoll where their quarry had fired the fatal shot across to Hill 55. After the retaliatory fire had ceased, Hathcock and Burke moved around the hill searching for a fresh trail; they found skid marks in a muddy slide that was sheltered by a growth of dense foliage and that led from the upper reaches of these low hills to a narrow canal.
The entire route lay in dead space, secure from machine-gun fire, and it allowed the enemy free entrance and exit from the area.
It was simple, yet cunning, Hathcock thought. Float in and float out, always out of sight.
The two Marines had found the place where the enemy sniper climbed out of the canal, and now, as they followed his soggy trail, the rain beat relentlessly down on them.
"We'd better find a hide and hole up for the night," Hathcock whispered into Burke's ear. "Up among that bunch of fallen trees might keep a little rain off our backs."
Burke nodded, and the two pushed their way into the brush and dead wood and burrowed against a log covered by broad-leafed plants. The rain dripped in, but the direct downpour fell away from them. They opened a can of C-ration crackers and cheese spread and ate in relative dry ness. Here they waited until daylight.
The rains passed as darkness gave way to dawn and narrow shafts of orange light beamed down through the jungle's canopy, illuminating the steam that rose in smoky swirls from the wet forest floor. During the night, Hathcock and Burke camouflaged themselves with leafy twigs and vines, draped and fastened through loops and buttonholes on their uniforms and hats. They painted their faces, hands, and necks shades of light and dark green, with sticks of dull makeup that they carried in their cargo pockets and jokingly called mascara.
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 comer; 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 comers 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 peddles 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.