Marine Sniper (38 page)

'Told you that looked funny."

Hathcock snuggled behind his rifle and laid his cheek against the old Winchester's humped stock. He found his proper eye-relief behind the Lyman 8-power scope that he had selected for this particular mission. Mack had come across with the fine-tuned rifles and now Hathcock did select them like a golfer selects clubs. For this mission, he chose a Model 70 Winchester, shooting a 180 grain, 30-06 bullet, and the Lyman scope for what he called medium range shooting- three hundred to seven hundred yards.

McAbee could hear Hathcock's slow and steady breathing stop, followed by the sudden explosion from the muzzle of the Winchester. The Viet Cong guerrilla, who had begun climbing out of the hole, suddenly fell on his face. Hathcock waited, staring through his scope. He waited for anyone else who might have been in the hole with the man.

"Look to the left," McAbee whispered.

A man wearing black shorts and a khaki shirt trotted across the open field. He held an AK-47 in his right hand, and when he knelt next to the dead comrade, Hathcock dropped him too. He waited again.

"Here comes another one," McAbee whispered.

"Got him," Carlos said, waiting for the Viet Cong soldier to reach that point where the earth rose slightly and the two men lay dead. The rifle cracked and the third man joined the other two, and Carlos waited.

"Somebody's peeking out of the grass where those two hamburgers came from."

"Got him."

Hathcock followed the soldier, who carried an AK-47, as he cautiously edged from the grass and walked toward the hole. He knelt to one knee, and before he could stand, Hathcock killed him too.

"Four. Any more?" Hathcock asked quietly.

"Yes, looks like three others. They're just sitting on the edge of the clearing trying to see what's happening. With the wind blowing in our faces, I don't think they can figure out where the shots are coming from. That must be their hole, and they're trying to get in to take cover."

"I figured they had some sort of tunnel there. That patrol was headed home." Hathcock waited quietly for ten more minutes, and then the three soldiers rose to their feet and walked cautiously toward the hump and the four dead men.

"Three-round rapid fire," Hathcock said, chuckling as he sighted through his scope. His first shot surprised the group, and the two still-living men turned to flee. A second shot dropped one, leaving him kicking on the pile of bodies. The last man pirouetted in confusion. He was still spinning when the bullet shattered his breast bone, exploding his heart and killing him as he whirled in his death dance.

"Damn! Carlos," Mack whispered in wonder. "I've never heard of a sniper killing more than seven at a time!"

"I took on a company a long time ago. I don't know how many I killed then. But there was this one sniper I knew back in '66 who killed eleven at one time-all confirmed. I guess that's the official record, if anybody really cares about things like that."

"I guess you're right. You start shooting for record, like it's the Marine Corps Matches or something, and you could go off the deep end. Anybody who enjoys this has got to be crazy."

"Yeah," Hathcock said quietly. "Crazy."

McAbee buried his face in the crook of his arm, and Hath-cock watched the big man's body tremble.

"You okay?"

McAbee raised his face from his arm and looked at Ham-cock. "I'm ashamed. I was laughing."

"Why?"

"That was the stupidest bunch of gooks I ever watched. They were about as dumb as I've ever seen, walking up there like that." He started chuckling again and Hathcock smiled, seeing the humor in the midst of the ugliness.

"It is kind of funny, come to think about it."

The two Marines moved further up Route 4 and hid on a hill, in a twisted mangle of shattered trees, devastated from heavy shelling and now covered with low, new plants that found sunlight in the absence of the trees' umbrella. There they spent the day waiting for any unlucky enemy who tried to cross the narrow stream that flowed five hundred yards away from them.

"Except for yesterday, this whole operation has been slow as syrup," McAbee said, squinting through the spotting scope, examining the tangled and fallen jungle for signs of a hidden enemy.

"Looky, looky, here comes Charlie," Hathcock said.

A Viet Cong soldier wearing an open white shirt and black shorts walked along the edge of the stream, holding his rifle over his shoulders like a yoke. He walked with a staggered gait, and even at five hundred yards, the two snipers could hear him singing.

"He drunk?" McAbee asked.

"Don't matter," Hathcock said as he sighted through his scope. "He's gonna be dead soon as I crank this round in him."

The rifle recoiled and Ron McAbee expected to see the man drop, but after a jolt that sent the enemy soldier to his knees, he began to run. He ran straight for them, shooting blindly.

Hathcock shot again, and the man dropped but bounced up and again ran, shooting and yelling.

But before Hathcock could shove a third shot into his chamber, McAbee fired his M-14, dropping the man temporarily to his knees. This time the soldier dropped his rifle, but got up again and continued to run toward them, yelling.

Hathcock fired once more and McAbee fired twice, and the man kept coming, blood streaming from both his shoulders and his groin. McAbee could see large chunks of flesh torn away from his chest, yet he kept coming at them.

Taking one long, slow breath, Hathcock took careful aim, laying the center of his scope's reticle on the man's head. Hathcock watched his eyes, flaming and wide. His mouth gaped open, and his arms dangled broken in their joints. Ron McAbee stared through his spotting scope, not believing what he saw. He too saw the eyes-die eyes of a man crazed. Dead yet still alive in his final attack. His mouth wide with a scream that echoed more and more loudly through the once quiet valley.

When the soldier began to climb the slope, three hundred yards below the blind where the two snipers hid, Hathcock sent the seventh shot into the man's face. He stopped at that moment and moved no more.

"He had to be on opium!" McAbee exclaimed. "No normal man could take that many shots."

Hathcock sweated. It was as though he had encountered a devil and in the last moment won.

The next two months weren't easy ones. Hathcock moved with his snipers to the Que Son hills as did the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. In August, Lieutenant Colonel Dowd was killed in battle, and Carlos, who had regarded him as both a friend and an ally, felt devastated at the loss. On the day of Dowd's death, Hathcock took a bullet in the thigh when the helicopter he was traveling in was fired upon. But the sniper recovered quickly from that and was back in action before the month was out.

18 The Sacrifice

SEPTEMBER IN QUANG TRI PROVINCE feels cooler than September in Da Nang. The high mountain passes that overlook Laos sometimes pick up cool breezes from their lofty altitudes and allow a respite from the uncomfortable 95 percent humidity and 95 degree temperatures of the lower elevations. At a place that Marines named The Slot, one could sit in that cool breeze and watch North Vietnamese and Viet Cong caravans sweating beneath the loads of supplies that they carried over the steaming plait-work of jungle paths that the world called the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

On a rounded hilltop where trees and vines still grew in a green, thick tangle, Carlos Hathcock and Ron McAbee silently slithered their way to a rocky sinkhole hidden beneath the dense jungle's umbrella and surrounded by ferns and vines and shine-covered roots. The monsoon rains of a year ago and the frequent summer showers kept this rocky depression filled with water, warmed by the beams of sunlight that shone between the overhead boughs. Slugs, leeches, worms, algae, and slimy moss made the water look like a puddle of green oatmeal.

Hathcock wrinkled his nose. The watery slime had a distinct odor that Hathcock associated with a neighbor's outhouse near his grandmother's home in Arkansas.

Carefully, he brushed the top layer of lumpy slime away until he saw the black water, clear and almost drinkable, in the small opening he had made. Extending his lips, he put his face down to it and took tiny sips.

"Pew!" Hathcock whispered softly. "It tastes exactly like it smells."

"You done?"

"That's all I can stand."

"You keep watch while I get me a drink too. As thirsty as I am, I could drink piss."

"I think that might taste better."

"I'll try this do-do flavored stuff for now. Here, hold my glasses."

Mack lay over the pool and brushed the slime away to expose the water. He took several sucking gulps and raised his face, dripping wet. After pulling a long string of moss off his tongue, Mack looked at Hathcock and whispered, "It's probably full of liver flukes and we'll be dead in a couple of years."

"You didn't want to live forever, did ya?"

"Yes."

"I hear that a big helping of nuc-mom* will get rid of any case of liver flukes you might pick up in the water."

Mack frowned at Hathcock, "I don't care how hungry we get. I'll eat dog shit before you get me to touch a drop of that nasty crap!"

"Shhhhhh!" Hathcock whispered with a grin, putting his finger next to his lips. "You get loud and we won't need to worry about liver flukes."

Mack put his glasses back on his face, slipping the black elastic strap back around his head. "I gotta be careful with these, they're my last pair. I break 'em and I'm no help at all."

"Keep 'em on your face then."

Hathcock recorded his ninety-third confirmed kill that morning-a lone Viet Cong who climbed a slope, rigging booby traps along a patrol route. Hathcock called in the position to the Marines on a mountaintop observation post, who verified the kill with their powerful binoculars and plotted the positions of the anti-personnel mines that the man had laid.

When Hathcock and McAbee reached the observation post on that peak a lance corporal met them and handed them a yellow slip of paper.

"Sergeant Major Puckett's looking for us," Hathcock said, grinning.

"I told you so!" said McAbee. "Sergeant major always gets mad when we take off together. You know... first and second hi command."

"You're the only other man in the platoon who can shoot my zero.* Only one other sniper I worked with could do that. And, just like you, he could almost read my mind. To me, we're the ideal team. I don't want to trust my life to someone else, Mack."

The lance corporal seated in front of a table covered with radios and a spaghetti-work of black wires running to power and antennae, passed the handset across the table to Hathcock. "Staff Sergeant, your sergeant major is coming."

Hathcock put the black receiver against his ear, waiting for what he knew would come.

"Staff Sergeant Hathcock, is Staff Sergeant McAbee with you?" The sergeant major's transmission was weak and Carlos strained to hear.

Hathcock pressed the large, rectangular black button on the handset and heard the powerful lineal amplifier whine as he keyed the radio. When the shrill sound of the radio "powering up" peaked, he answered, shouting, "Yes sir, he's right here with me."

"You two know better!" the sergeant major shouted, trying to be heard.

The crackling message came clear, and Hathcock shook his head. "Everybody else was out, and we had this job-" Hathcock could bear the whine of the sergeant major's signal walking over his and knew that the senior Marine had lost his temper. He waited until the channel cleared.

"We're headed home today!" Hathcock shouted.