Marine Sniper (25 page)

"Aye, aye, Sir." Hathcock said, taking a rearward step with his left foot, executing a drill-perfect about-face, and walking briskly toward his quarters.

Land reached into his back pocket, pulled out a dirty black wallet, and withdrew five dollars.

"Gunny Wilson, I want you to go buy a case of beer and take it to Sergeant Hathcock. When he runs out of that, come see me. If I don't keep him drunk and sleeping, he'll manage to worm his way out on the next operation-I know the way he maneuvers. His body has to get some rest."

12 Nguyan Stalks the Hill

A HAND SLOWLY parted a patch of tall grass on a knoll that rose in a cluster of small peaks along a low ridge beneath Hill 55. In that gap between the thick grass stalks, a rifle barrel surrounded by a wooden hand guard slid forward and stopped. A stocky Oriental man wearing a dark green, long-sleeved uniform, snuggled behind the rifle, pulling its butt into his shoulder. He blinked away small drops of sweat and peered through the weapon's telescopic sight at the sleepy encampment atop the hill five hundred yards above him.

In the early morning's stillness, he trained his rifle at the squat silhouettes of sandbagged bunkers, set low on the hillside. He could see the dirt walkway that led between the bunkers and branched to three long tents with plywood sides and sandbags stacked around them. Tracking his scope's sight-post* up the pathway, he followed it far to the right to a small plywood structure with a sloping roof-the privy. There he took aim and waited for nature's morning call to summon his next victim.

Hathcock awoke with a jerk. The popping sound of a bullet impacting outside his door startled him. He made no sudden

The Soviet-built, 3.5-power PU and 4-power re scopes commonly used on the Ml891/30 Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle used a pointed aiming post rather man a cross-hair reticle.

moves, but opened his eyes and rolled off the cot onto the floor in a push-up position. The single shot told him that there was a sniper lurking somewhere outside the wire.

"Welcome home," he thought to himself. He shoved an ammo carton filled with empty beer cans to one side and quickly low-crawled toward the front of the hooch, where he heard the moans of a wounded Marine. He grabbed his rifle and a cartridge belt, on which hung a first-aid pouch, and pushed his way outside the door. There on the dirt walkway leading past his hooch lay a man, a gunnery sergeant, blood soaking through his shirt.

Ignoring the danger, three Marines and a Navy Corpsman scrambled across the open ground to where the Marine lay. The Corpsman carried a large, green canvas bag filled with medical equipment and quickly went to work on the casualty as Hathcock and the other Marines crouched around him, ready to assist.

Opening the man's shirt, the Corpsman exposed the wound, which had opened the Marine's belly. "Hang in there, Gunny," the Corpsman said as he pulled a canteen from his cartridge belt and began dousing the man's drying entrails with water.

Among the tall weeds and brush that grew on the cluster of knolls below Hill 55, the sniper slid swiftly down a draw, covered by a canopy of broad-leafed trees. Then he dashed to the base of the low-lying hills. There the trees grew next to a narrow canal that fed water to the many rice and lotus fields that checkered the valley. The sniper slipped into the water and let it carry him away. He drifted downstream, hidden by grass growing along its banks, to a place shielded by the jungle. There he climbed out, unseen.

On the bill, the battle to save the gunnery sergeant's life continued.

"I can't move. I think I shit my pants," the wounded Marine said, fighting back sobs.

"I can't tell, Gunny, so don't worry about that. You just keep yourself awake."

The gunnery sergeant blinked in the sunlight that bore down on his face, and Hathcock seeing this, moved over the man's head to block out the blinding rays.

"Doc's taking good care of you, Gunny. He'll get the

bleeding stopped and fix you up. Just keep awake."

The wounded Marine tried to speak, but his strength was fading. He mumbled in whispers, "I gotta go home now. Gotta go..."

"Hey, Gunny!" Hathcock pleaded, a lump building in his throat. "Hang on-you'll make it!"

Hathcock stared into the Marine's eyes and watched his pupils grow wide and transparent, like two black, glass marbles. It seemed as though the man's soul drained from his eyes, leaving only empty clear pools where life had been.

"He didn't have a chance, Sergeant," the Corpsman said. "His liver was gone. You know him?"

Hathcock looked at the Marine and shook his head, "No."

An hour later, Hathcock sat in die doorway of his hooch sipping a warm beer, still thinking of the Marine's death and of how quickly life can vanish.

"Carlos!" a familiar voice called.

Captain Land walked toward the hooch and Carlos stood.

"Yes, Sir."

"Let's talk."

The two Marines walked inside the sergeant's quarters where Hathcock sat on the corner of his cot, and the captain pulled up a large wooden box and sat on it.

"Thanks for the beer, Sir. Gunny Wilson said you bought it for me. I shared some of it with a few of the guys last night," Carlos said, shaking the crate filled with empties and smiling.

"No problem," Land said. 'Too bad about that gunny getting killed out here."

"Yes, Sir. I've been thinking about that for the past hour. It never gets better, does it?"

"I don't think it does."

Hathcock gulped down the last swallow of beer and tossed the can in the box. "What about this sniper?"

"Don't you even think about hunting this guy," Land said firmly. "You're restricted, and dial's that. Besides Top Reinke has a half-dozen teams out hunting him right now."

Hathcock looked at the captain expressionlessly.

"You understand?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Alt right. As for the sniper, he started pot-shooting us about three weeks ago. He hit a staff sergeant about a week ago, and got two men out on the wire a week before that. He's good. Real good."

"Sir," Hathcock said, "I think if you let me and Burke team up, we could find that hamburger."

"No, we'll get him. But that's not what I came to talk about. I had an interesting visit at division headquarters the other day. I saw something that you might want to see for yourself."

"What's that?"

"Your picture and mine on an NVA 'wanted' poster. They've probably dropped thousands of them across the country. Looks like ol* Nguyen of the North wants us real bad. They offered a big bounty for our heads-equal to what a Saigon or Da Nang middle-class worker would make in three years' time-several thousand dollars."

"I reckon they mean business," Hathcock said, raising his eyebrows.

"Reckon so, Carlos. My orders are in, and I'll be gone in a couple of weeks. Going on Inspector-and-Instructor duty up near Boston. You have until what, April?"

"Yes, Sir."

"I want you to slow down."

Hathcock smiled.

"I'm not going to tell you to crawl in a hole and hide, but you need to be aware of how serious they are about killing you. They want your head awfully bad, to offer that kind of money for it.

"Another thing is that from all the sniping and booby-trap incidents we've had in the past month, I'm guessing that the enemy has a whole sniper platoon down here now. Remember that they know who you are, where you live, and what you look like."

The captain stood and looked down at Hathcock, who sat on the cot, staring at the floor, visibly frustrated.

Land tilted back his head, rolled his eyes, and said with a loud sigh, "Okay, Hathcock. I'll let you go down on the finger during the day and observe. Who knows, you might luck out with a shot at this guy. But don't you dare leave the hill. The positions out on the finger are as far as you go. Got that?" Hathcock looked up, smiling. "Yes, Sir. Don't you worry one bit. I'll be here in the hooch or down on the finger." Land looked back at his sergeant as he walked out the door,

"Just be sure you get your food and rest."

The following morning, while the sun stilt lay hidden beyond the foggy horizon, Carlos Hathcock silently crawled behind a blind of bushes and grass on the far end of finger four. Months before, he had constructed the hide by digging a small hole in which he could lie and bench his rifle over two sandbags. From it he could watch the rice fields below and the hills that flanked them.

More than twelve hundred yards directly ahead of him, a small thatched hut sat near a stand of tall trees. Near the hut a high stack of straw and grass stood with its top covered by a large canvas tarpaulin. Through his scope, Hathcock could see the dark doorway and a woman walking outside, carrying a large jug.

A thousand yards to his left, a less-prominent hill rose from the forest, and on its peak, overlooking the countryside, stood a small, one-room temple, crowned with a bell-shaped top, that had large, oblong windows. The entire shrine was made of stone tinted green and black with moss and mold.

Across the fields and hedgerows to his right, several small hills rippled up from the flatness of the surrounding farmland. It was from there that this sniper who killed the gunnery sergeant had fired the fatal bullet. Every time he shot from that cluster of knolls, the Marines on watch responded with concentrated machine-gun and mortar fire, yet he survived each attack. The dead space between the series of hills gave him several sheltered channels through which to escape and allowed him many avenues in which to maneuver to a variety of exits.

As Hathcock scanned the wide panorama of low hills and rice paddies, Captain Land and Master Sergeant Reinke, green greasepaint on their faces, climbed toward the small stone temple atop the peak at Hathcock's left. They hoped that the shrine's different sighting angle would expose the enemy sniper while he climbed to his hilltop hide.

A misty fog lay like a humid blanket over the deep green jungle that covered the hillside through which the captain and the master sergeant struggled. Tangled humps of slick, moss-covered roots covered the ground. They grasped low branches and saplings and pulled their way up the hill hand over hand, while their feet slipped and slid beneath them.

Long beams of light shone down between gaps in the forest's canopy revealing the humid air in smoky swirls of mist and fog. Ahead in a clearing, lit by the orange light that shone at an angle through the trees, stood the small stone temple, bathed in glimmering moisture from the dank air that hung over the hill.

Land turned and motioned for Reinke to come close. "I'll check the inside," the captain whispered into his assistant's ear. "You stand out here and be ready in case somebody jumps out. It's too close in there for the rifle, so I'm going in with my .45. You just be ready."

Reinke nodded and crept to the side of the building, where he crouched on one knee and held his M-14 ready to snap into his shoulder and fire.

Land crawled next to the shrine and leaned his rifle against the wall, inadvertently causing an audible click as the barrel struck the stone. He drew out his pistol, which he carried in a holster that he wore at an angle on the back of his belt, and prepared to make his entrance.

The captain felt confident with the pistol. As well as being a Distinguished Marksman, he was a Distinguished Pistol Shot, winning many interservice and National Rifle Association championships. More than that, Land had excelled in snap-and-shoot combat pistol competition. Clearing one small room ought to be no challenge for his expertise.

With his pistol raised, a vision of John Wayne entered the captain's mind as he lifted his leg high and slammed his foot against the temple's thick wooden door. The heavy door swung open, and he stepped inside with a turn, pistol first.