The platoon searched the tree line and hedgerows for the fourth Marine until well after dark. When they quit looking for their fallen comrade it appeared certain that the Viet Cong had him.
The rain stopped just after nightfall and ushered in a light shroud of fog, which covered the low rice land surrounding Hill 55 like sheer, white chiffon. Inside a sandbagged bunker, where Marines drank beer and listened to rock ’n roll music, Hathcock listened to the stories that the survivors of the ambush told. He felt both grief and anger about the wounded Marine being left behind, but he said nothing to these men who now spoke in slurred phrases, trying to purge the sorrow from their minds with beer. He knew that their grief was much greater than his—the man had been their friend.
The din of the music shut out the war but soon, one after another, Marines began disappearing from the dimly lit room. A corporal tapped Hathcock on the shoulder. “Some poor bastard is screaming bloody murder outside the wire.”
Carlos left his beer and walked over to where Captain Land and Gunnery Sergeant Wilson knelt behind sandbags, searching the tree line with a starlight scope.
“I can’t see a damn thing, Gunny,” Land told Wilson, as he passed the scope to him. Resting the scope across the sandbag, Wilson slowly panned across the tree line from where shrill cries echoed over the rice paddies.
Hathcock knelt beside Wilson. “That bitch! That filthy-assed Communist whore!” Wilson growled.
Across the quarter-mile of rice fields that separated the tree line from the hill, the tormented Marine who had been taken prisoner that afternoon hung naked on a rack made of bamboo. He wore only his boots and the green wool socks that had his name stamped in black ink across the tops. Blood streamed down his cheeks, mixed with tears.
The boy, just out of his teens, tried to blink, but the effort only obscured his vision with blood that flooded from where his eyelids had been cut away. He cried and prayed aloud, reacting to the pain each time he strained to blink.
The Viet Cong woman had pried off each of his fingernails and was now in the process of bending his fingers backward, snapping them at their middle joints. She had finished with the left and right little fingers and was working her way toward the index fingers, one at a time. Breaking a finger every twenty minutes, she followed a well-planned timetable of torture that covered her prisoner’s entire body and would carry the session through the night. At a few minutes before midnight, she had eight fingers to go.
The woman and four men from her platoon sat at the Marine’s feet, speaking softly in Vietnamese and laughing. The remainder of her platoon lay quietly surrounding her in a maze of sniper hides, ready to ambush anyone who might try to come to rescue the prisoner.
The woman chewed betel nut, spitting the juice between her feet as she squatted with her arms resting across the tops of her knees. She looked at the youthful Marine. “You cherry boy? I think maybe no. You get plenty pussy back stateside, yeah. You get Vietnamese pussy too? I think you do. You go China Beach swimming, fuck plenty.
“You like get cherry pussy? Plenty American GI like cherry pussy. Rape many young girl—take cherry pussy. True! I know true.”
She shouted in Vietnamese at the men squatted by her, and they glared at the Marine. The woman walked to where the boy hung limp on the bamboo rack and spit a mouthful of betel nut into his eyes. “You goddamn-fucking GI!” she said.
HATHCOCK SAT ON AN EMPTY AMMUNITION CRATE, HIS ARMS folded across the top layer of sandbags and his chin resting on them. He stared into the darkness, feeling more and more frustrated as the hours passed. A major sat next to Captain Land, who was still searching the tree line, and talked of sending a company out to find the Marine.
“You’ll end up killing more men and that poor guy, too,” Land told him. “During World War I, the Germans used a tactic of catching a man in the open, shooting him in the legs, and letting him lie there and beg for help. Pretty soon, there would be some hero who couldn’t bear to hear any more, who would organize a rescue. It was always a big mistake.
“We’ve done it here, ourselves. We’ll wound some gooner in a rice paddy and wait for his buddies to drag him away. We’ll sometimes get two or three that way.
“I’ll bet you money they have more mines, booby traps, and snipers between us and that man than you or any other Marine here would care to face in a month.”
“Well, Captain,” the major said, “what do you propose?”
“Sir, just what we’re doing now. We locate them and maybe my snipers can get the bitch. It takes a thief to catch a thief.”
The major stood, cleared his throat with a grunt, and walked away. Hathcock sat motionless, his eyes closed, trying to picture in his mind the rocks, trees, trails, and streams that lay beyond the tree line.
“Hathcock,” Wilson said, “hit the rack. You’re not doing any good here. The skipper and I won’t be worth a shit in the morning, and somebody’s got to be functional tomorrow.”
Hathcock spent most of the night awake on his cot, listening to the screams.
AS THE FOG THICKENED JUST BEFORE DAWN, THE VIET CONG WOMAN torturer completed her work on her prisoner. “Goddamn-fucking GI. You no fuck no more,” she said, as she approached him with a long, curved knife in her hand. Taking his genitals in her left hand, she jammed the blade’s point beneath the base of his penis, grazing his pubic bone. She pulled the knife with a sweeping, circular cut that released both testicles and his penis in one large handful of flesh that gushed with blood.
Blood surged from the gaping cavity left between his legs. She knew that this man could not last long, and, quickly cutting away the cords that bound him to the bamboo rack, she said, shaking with laughter, “Run, GI. Maybe you live—you find doctor in time! Run to wire. We watch Marines shoot you fucking ass.”
The Marine ran, shouting unintelligibly, as blood gushed so rapidly from his body that it left jellylike pools on the compost of decaying leaves that covered the forest floor. And when he emerged from the trees on the far side of a rice field that lay below the observation post where Land and Wilson watched, he began waving his arms, screaming incoherently and sobbing.
“The poor bastard’s trying to tell us not to shoot,” Land said.
“Look at him, Gunny. That bitch has emasculated him.”
Several Marines ran toward the wire, only to see him fall headlong into the curled strands of concertina wire, dead.
The final nightmarish cries had awakened Hathcock, and he had just reached the observation point when the Marine ran the final yards of his life. The sniper hung his head and shook, his anger rising to a nearly uncontrollable peak.
“I want her!” Hathcock said in a strained voice, his teeth and fists clinched.
Land didn’t speak, but wrapped his arm around Hathcock’s shoulders. He, too, felt the need for revenge.
9
Sign of the Sniper
“SERGEANT HATHCOCK,” A VOICE WHISPERED IN THE DARKNESS, “the time on deck is zero three hundred.” Hathcock opened his eyes to see a black figure at the foot of his cot. The Marine standing the duty watch, who now was making his wake-up rounds, pushed the button on his flashlight and pointed the beam at him. “You awake?”
“Turn that off,” Hathcock ordered, holding one hand in front of his face to block the light. “I’m awake.”
The Marine woke two other men, then he walked out of the hooch and let the screen door slam.
Hathcock gave instructions to the two Marines, then laced his boots and headed toward the mess tent. He would spend the day leading a student sniper team in the farmlands and forests west of Hill 55. He felt that area offered the best hunting and an ideal classroom for teaching his new snipers the craft of operating from a hide.
As he sat sipping coffee and reading notes scrawled in his sniper log, the two sergeants joined him. The three Marines huddled in the dim glow of a small lantern set on their table, sipping coffee and discussing the best combinations of men to team for this day’s missions.
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Two hours later, Hathcock and his sniper students were hidden at the edge of a forest that climbed the hills up to Charlie Ridge. Their hide overlooked a patchwork of rice paddies and trails, bordered by a community of thatched huts. To their right, Hathcock could see Hill 55’s dark blue peak jutting through a thin, white veil of fog.
The edge of the sun boiled above Hill 55. A flock of white sea birds silently flew across the sunrise, and Hathcock wondered at the contrast between the morning’s beauty and the war’s ugliness.
He knew that in this land few people noticed the beauty of a sunrise. Mornings were a time for making war. Hathcock gazed across the wide patchwork of fields and scattered huts, his thoughts of peace and beauty dissipating from his consciousness. He thought of the woman who butchered the young Marine a fortnight ago and wondered where she was hiding now. He was certain that this new day represented nothing for her except a time for war. And with that thought, it became that for him as well.
He watched three silhouette figures walking along the dikes that divided the rice fields and lotus ponds and, as they emerged into a streak of sunlight that stretched down the length of the valley between Hill 55 and Charlie Ridge, he put his eye to the M-49 spotting scope on the tripod in front of him. Examining them closely through the twenty-power telescope, he saw that the men carried hoes, not rifles. They were farmers on their way to the fields.
In the corner of his eye, Hathcock caught the student who took the first watch behind the sniper rifle—a burly private first class—tightening his grip around the small of the gun’s stock, preparing to shoot one of the men. Saying nothing, Hathcock placed his hand over the rear optic of the rifle’s scope. The PFC turned and smiled guiltily.
Hathcock motioned for the other student to take the sniper rifle. The first Marine would spend the remainder of the day with his instructor, but once they returned to the hill, he would be gone. The three Marines continued their vigil, quietly hidden among the soft, green ferns and grass, beneath a low umbrella of broad-leafed trees and palms. To the right of the rice field where the farmers busily chopped weeds along a dike, Hathcock watched a lone man wearing a khaki shirt and black shorts walk to and from a hut that hugged the edge of the forest.
Slowly, Hathcock moved his rifle to his right and lay behind it, watching the hut through his telescopic sight. The way that the man kept walking back to the hut and nervously stepping in and out the door made him suspicious.
In the distance came the rumble of heavy explosions, the sounds of an arc-light raid—Air Force B-52s dropping their tons of bombs on targets high in the steep mountains that stood well beyond Charlie Ridge and Happy Valley. That was where the enemy leaders hid and controlled the guerrilla war. Hathcock had seen that country only on maps and in aerial recon photographs. Even from such a sanitary perspective, he did not like the looks of it. He knew that for an American to go into those mountains that faced the Laotian border took great courage. The terrain alone could kill a man.
THE BOMBS FELL ON THOSE DISTANT VIET CONG AND NVA STRONG- holds that morning, but did not strike the headquarters of the North Vietnamese Army division general, who commanded thousands of soldiers from there. Hathcock knew nothing of this man, yet the man already knew of Hathcock and his fellow snipers. The commander carefully read a report sent to his headquarters by the cruel woman who led the Viet Cong near Hill 55. She told of the new school at the hill and the sniper tactics that she had observed being taught. She felt certain that American sniper operations were potentially very harmful.
In little more than a month, this general would read much more about the snipers who operated from Hill 55. He would also know many of them by name including Sergeant Carlos N. Hathcock, the sniper they would call “Long Tra’ng,” White Feather. Even as he read the report on this morning that the bombs fell dangerously close to his office, hidden beneath a camouflaged umbrella of netting and foliage, he contemplated means of stopping this new threat of sniper warfare. He knew that if it were left unchecked, it would badly cripple his operations near Da Nang.
The old man scratched a message on a narrow pad with his black, mother-of-pearl-finished fountain pen. He pressed the ink dry with a small ivory rocking horse blotter, a gift from his daughter, folded the paper double and sealed it shut with a drop of red wax, on which he pressed the impression of a crimson, enamel-inlaid, five-point star, a gift presented to him in China.
A soldier wearing a tan uniform and pith helmet marched smartly from the headquarters, with the note secured inside a small leather pouch that hung from a strap across his shoulder. The neatly dressed soldier stopped at the end of the walkway and looked up at the sun, which stood at its noonday peak. He lifted the tan helmet from his head, wiped sweat from his brow, and turned his eyes toward the towering clouds that loomed in the east and promised rain that evening.
SHEETS OF RAIN FELL ON THE THREE MARINES AS THEY HID SILENTLY observing all activity around the rice fields and huts. The men who had worked chopping weeds from the edge of the rice paddy now huddled inside the doorway of a hut that faced the three Marines. Hathcock was not concerned with them, but the man who squatted just inside the door of the hut at the edge of the forest continued to hold the sniper’s interest.
The monsoon rained through the afternoon, and Hathcock and his two students lay soaked at the edge of the jungle, watching intently for the man who squatted in the hut to confirm himself as Charlie.
“Let’s go,” the burly PFC whispered to Hathcock. “It’s almost time for us to get back. There ain’t no VC to shoot out here anyway. And besides, I’m hungry.”
Hathcock looked at the young Marine’s round face with a glance that easily told the man that he should keep his thoughts to himself. Crooking his finger in a motion for the man to come closer, Hathcock whispered tersely, “Sit still and don’t make any more noise. You got enough explaining to do, with you trying to kill them farmers.”
The Marine lay flat on his stomach and rested his chin on his hands, which he clasped together. He said nothing more until he spoke to the captain that night.
The rain lightened to a drizzle and a soft breeze began to blow from the east, clearing the hazy pall that had gathered over the fields. In the doorway of the hut that hugged the edge of the forest, the man who wore the khaki shirt and black shorts stood. He stepped outside and looked to his right, and then to his left, before disappearing behind the hut.
“He’s up to something,” Hathcock thought to himself, as he watched through his rifle’s scope.
Ten minutes later the man returned with a white canvas bag strapped over his shoulder. He looked again to his right, and then to his left. And when he felt certain that no one watched him, he reached inside the hut’s doorway and took an SKS rifle from its hiding place there.
“Got you, Charlie,” Hathcock thought, as he gently squeezed his rifle’s trigger and dropped the man dead in his tracks.
“Let’s go home,” Hathcock told the burly PFC.
The three Marines silently slipped into the tree line and, following the edge of the forest, came abreast of the hut where Hathcock had killed the Viet Cong soldier. They stopped and looked at the man lying dead only a few feet from the forest’s edge. Next to him lay the SKS rifle.
“I’m gonna capture that weapon,” Hathcock told the two students.
As they cautiously walked to the forest’s edge and peered from behind its dense cover, Hathcock scrambled to where the body lay and snatched the rifle. He turned to retreat quickly when he noticed a broad, white feather, three inches long, lying at his feet. The sight of it reminded him of the white sea birds that he watched fly over this valley at sunrise.
He knelt and took the delicate plume in his left hand, and without another pause, stepped rapidly behind the jungle’s green curtain.
As the trio of men made their way to the rally point, Hathcock twirled the feather between his fingers and thought again of the peaceful dawn and the white birds. It might well have been a feather dr
opped by a chicken that had strayed to that far end of the community, but for Hathcock, the white birds of the morning seemed a more meaningful source. And in the same respect that hundreds of Marines and soldiers would occasionally wear a small flower on their helmets, representing a simple beauty that still survived in the midst of war’s thorns and fires, he took his bush hat from his head and inserted the feather into its band.
Shoving the hat back on his head, Hathcock turned his interest to the rifle he had captured. He would tag it and turn it in at the command post. Hopefully, he would be able to take it home as a souvenir, just as his father had done with the old Mauser.
The march home took much longer than the trek out that morning. The squad took a return route that brought them to the opposite side of Hill 55 from where they had departed. They knew that often the Viet Cong would rig explosives in trails left by outbound patrols, in hopes of blowing away the soldiers as they backtracked home.
By the time Hathcock reached his hooch, he felt extraordinarily tired—physically drained from the long day, the rain, and the extra miles home. Cleaning his rifle and combat gear seemed a dismal chore, one he had to force himself to complete.
THAT NIGHT, HATHCOCK SAT SHAKING ON THE EDGE OF HIS COT. HIS legs trembled and his vision blurred. His head buzzed as though he had taken a marathon roller coaster ride. He thought that it may have resulted from the soaking he took during the day. But deep in his consciousness he knew that it had to be something else. Something that he did not like. A thing that had been subtly attacking him—coming and going—for three years.
It began when Jo gave birth to Carlos Norman Hathcock III. She herself had had to call the Naval Hospital ambulance at Cherry Point to get to the delivery room. Hathcock had suffered fainting and dizzy spells two weeks before that, and the doctors had hospitalized him, as a precaution.
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