Marine Sniper (35 page)

"I remember you," Hathcock said. "You were here in '67.1 taught you myself."

"Yeah, that's right. I got twenty-one confirmed kills and that's plenty."

"In two years you got twenty-one kills. In six months I got eighty confirmed. In two years you ought to have a hundred. You must have just quit as soon as you got this platoon. You found a good deal, hiding out here, drinking beer, and collecting tax-free pay.

"Well, I don't need you. You go on up to Gunny Sommers and tell him I kicked your butt out of this platoon. Maybe he can find some use for you for the next couple of weeks."

Hathcock took a deep breath and tried to control the anger in his voice. "I'm going out to find my platoon. You be packed out of here when I get back. You got any problems with that, go talk to Sergeant Major Puckett."

Slamming the door shut, Hathcock stormed toward the bunker at the base of the sniper encampment. A suntanned Marine was lying across a long row of sandbags wearing nothing except a pair of utility trousers with the legs cut off at the lower seam of the pockets. He wore sunglasses and was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Around his neck dangled a German iron cross and a metal peace symbol.

"You a Marine?" Hathcock asked walking up to the man.

"Yeah."

"You a sniper?"

"Yeah."

"Where is the rest of your platoon?"

"Here and there."

"Can you find them?"

"Sure. No problem. Who wants to know?"

"I do," Hathcock said, narrowing his eyes. "I want you to have them all back here by sixteen hundred today. Will that be a problem?"

"Naw. Most of the guys are goofing off or on work details around the hill. I can get them here in an hour."

"That's even better. You do that."

"You never told me who you are."

"Staff Sergeant Hathcock. Carlos Hathcock. Your new platoon sergeant."

The Marine stood and smiled. "You mean we finally got another platoon sergeant?"

Hathcock nodded.

"We ain't all shit birds, Staff Sergeant Hathcock. You hang tight, I'll round up the platoon."

As the Marine jogged up the hill, Hathcock yelled to him, 'Tell them to bring all their sniper gear when they come to my muster."

The Marine waved his hand, acknowledging the last order, and continued jogging in his scuffed white jungle boots.

Hathcock sat down on the sandbags and waited for his platoon.

Less than twenty minutes passed, and one after another, his snipers began to appear. They stood together near the old hard-back tent and kept their distance from the new staff sergeant who wore a small white feather in his bush hat and sat staring quietly at the ground between his feet as if he were by himself. He was no stranger to them. They had heard of Hathcock during training sessions at both Da Nang's and Camp Pendleton's two-week sniper schools. He was one of several Marines that their instructors had cited as frightening, superhuman examples of what they should be striving to attain for themselves. Now the man with the white feather was here and owned them body and soul. Without saying a word, Hathcock had already gained their undivided attention.

Hathcock looked at his watch as he heard the suntanned Marine in the cut-offs shout to him, "Staff Sergeant Hathcock, we're all here-twenty-two snipers, including you."

The vision that met Hathcock's eyes would remain vivid the rest of his life. He had to grind his teeth to keep from laughing. His men stood before him dressed in the widest array of color and costume that he had ever seen. Most of the Marines wore berets, some brown, some black, some red, and others green. One Marine wore a bush hat but had it covered with such an array of pins and buttons that he looked more like a fly fisherman or conventioneer. Many of the men wore wire-framed sunglasses with lenses that ranged in colors from blue to dark green and yellow to pink and cherry red. Their dog-tag chains supported a wide assortment of hardware from beer openers and gold rings to religious medals and protest symbols. Flowers adorned several berets while feathers and beads dressed others.

None of the men wore shirts, all wore cutoff trousers. Their boots showed no sign of ever being polished, and they all needed hair cuts.

'Take off all those ridiculous hats and throw them in a pile right here," Hathcock said, pointing to the ground at his feet. He looked at the tan Marine and said, "You see that generator up the hill?"

"Yes, Sir."

"You see that gasoline can set out there by it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Bring it to me."

The Marine charged up the hill, grabbed the can, and returned, huffing out of breath.

Hathcock shook the little bit of fuel that was left in the bottom of the can on the pile of berets. He tossed the can back to the tan Marine and then removed his Zippo cigarette lighter from his pocket. He flicked it open and set the berets ablaze.

"The only reason that I don't make you strip off those cutoffs is 1 know you ain't wearing any skivvy snorts, and I don't want you running around here bare-assed naked. But when we hold muster from now on, you will be dressed in a complete utility uniform. I want you looking like Marines, not clowns.

"From now on you'll look and act like snipers. You're no better than any other line troopers so we don't dress any different. But, because you are snipers, those line troopers expect more out of you. They've been told that snipers are disciplined and tough, that they're elite troops. It took a lot of good Marines to develop that respect, and I am not going to let you foul it up.

"The only hardware you'll wear around your necks will be your dog tags, taped together so they don't rattle. If you wear glasses, they'll be the ones issued to you or ones that I personally approve. Get rid of the rest of that garbage. Any questions so far?" One Marine raised his hand and Hathcock pointed to him, "Yes?"

"Staff Sergeant Hathcock. When we got here, we zeroed our rifles for five hundred yards, but in the past three months, I don't think we got more than a dozen kills between all of us. Now, we haven't been able to go on patrol all that much because of all the shit details we've been pulling, but when we do go, it seems that we miss more often than we hit."

"Good point," Hathcock said. "Right now, I want to get a roster. Tonight I will team you up in pairs. Tomorrow we are going out here and zero all the rifles for seven hundred yards. We will start from scratch. You will be looking like snipers, and I will have you shooting like snipers. Does mat answer your question?"

"Yes, Sir."

The flame of the burning berets died in the smoldering ashes, and Hathcock tapped them with the toe of his new jungle boot.

"When we start fresh tomorrow, I want a fresh area too. The rest of the afternoon, I want you to field day this whole finger. I want all the trash raked out of the hooches and bunkers. I want all the porno pictures off the walls and the porno magazines get put in your footlockers or I will make a fire out of them too."

While Hathcock talked to his new platoon, the sergeant who had lain on the cot staggered up the hill beneath the weight of his seabag. Hathcock looked at the departing Marine and felt a flash of sorrow for him. He remembered him as a good Marine and a good sniper, and he wondered what had happened to him.

"One last thing. The cot in the sniper hooch is for the duty. We will man mis post twenty-four hours a day, if possible. That sniper hooch is our headquarters, not a lounge or private room. If you have been living in there, you will move out and live in the proper hooches according to your rank. That clear?"

"Now, turn to and get this area squared away."

As the Marines began cleaning up and hauling away the garbage, Hathcock made a list of needed repair materials. He planned to make a stop at me supply tent tomorrow.

The sun set and the 7th Marines sniper platoon continued working, restacking sandbags, tacking down loose screens, and hauling away a year's worth of garbage. Hathcock walked toward his hooch, where David Sommers sat on a chair made of pipe and split bamboo.

"I wasn't sure how you would take that bunch," Sommers said as Hathcock stepped up on the small plywood porch in front of the staff NCO hooch. "I guess you started out on the right foot with them, I've never seen them work so hard."

"Gotta start by giving them some pride," Hathcock said, sitting across from Sommers. "I never saw the likes of that bunch. I've seen hippies that looked better. What on earth is going on, Gunny?"

"Drugs. Marijuana. Heroine. You name it. It's all happening here. Lot of guys on it. We've been on them pretty heavy, but I hear of entire Army units that have refused to go on patrol because of the problems with drugs and booze."

"You think my platoon..."

"I don't know. I wouldn't start worrying about that right now. You start fresh with them. My point is to be aware that the stuff is real popular among the troops. Just file it away and keep to your plan. Those troops you have are real good men, they just needed some leadership."

"I got that right off," Hathcock answered. "I just solved a big part of that problem."

Sommers smiled. "Yeah. I sent that sergeant over to the police tent. He'll finish out his last two weeks in-country passing out toilet paper and getting the shiners burned."

"That was a good sniper when I had him back in '67. What happened?"

"He stayed here too long. He's tired, I guess."

"No. I don't buy that. He had twenty-one confirmed kills and quit. When he quit, he quit altogether."

"Too bad," Sommers said. "He's had a shit-bird reputation since I've been here."

Hathcock looked at me gunnery sergeant curiously, "In the conversation I had with my snipers, one Marine mentioned that they haven't had the opportunity to go on operations, that they've been pulling shit detail instead."

Sommers nodded. "That platoon has never produced anything that would give anyone an idea of what they do, other than wander around with deer rifles and pick off stragglers. The sergeant major uses them for whatever has to be done on die hill because they don't seem to serve any other useful purpose. You'll have your hands full changing all of that."

"Gunny, I'm informing you officially that my men are in training tomorrow. That has priority over shit detail. They'll be zeroing their rifles and getting ready to go on patrol."

"I'm all for that. But there're a lot of folks who'll bitch because somebody has to burn the shitters. They won't like filling those quotas that your Marines filled."

"It's their quotas that my men were filling. It's time to balance the books!"

"Staff Sergeant Hathcock, die sergeant major is going to raise hell. It's nothing new for me. Like I said, I lead the sergeant major's hit-parade. I have a hunch that you and I will be competing for that number one spot after this. It's your choice right now. Once you make it, the sergeant major will be on you just like he's on me."

"There's no choice to be made, Gunny. My snipers come ahead of my own pleasure. I've got a hunch mat fella I just relieved might have tried to get along and keep everybody happy. He was a good Marine when I first knew him. But you can only compromise so far. I think he chose to keep folks on the hill happy, and his Marines went to hell in a handbasket."

Hathcock stood, "I've gotta go inspect my area and cut the troops loose. You eat chow yet?"

"No. I'll wait for you to get back. We'll go together."

"Sounds good," Hathcock said smiling.

Before the sun revealed any light to the black sky the following morning, Hathcock sat behind a field desk in the sniper platoon hooch. He glanced down a roster of names and from it paired a senior-ranked Marine with one of a junior grade on each of ten teams he organized. He took the odd man, a corporal from London, Ohio, named John Perry. He would rotate these combinations of men and equipment until each team satisfied him. Hathcock compared it to arranging marriages, since much of a team's success depended on the compatibility of the two partners.