“How do you get just the right windage?”
Hathcock looked toward the gunny and with a straight face said,
“I watch the clouds…how fast they’re moving. I look at the treetops and bushes. I take a good look at the mirage, that tells me a whole lot. Once I settle on direction and velocity, I take a swag and come up with minutes of windage.”
The gunny cupped his hands around his face and peered through the screen at Hathcock, who sat up on the cot smiling at him. “What’s a swag, Sergeant Hathcock?”
Hathcock narrowed his eyes, cocked his head to one side, and in a serious tone said, “We use it a whole lot in long-range shooting.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Uh huh. Swag…Scientific Wild-Ass Guess.”
13
Sniper Counter Sniper
FOUR REPORTERS HUSTLED TO STAY ABREAST OF CAPTAIN LAND as he led them to a bunker built on the military crest* of Hill 55’s finger four. He purposely rushed them past the hard-back tents, where several bare-chested snipers sat on ammunition crates watching this media parade.
It was mostly because of the third reporter that Land hurried the group past the snipers. This correspondent carried a tape recorder slung across his shoulder and held a microphone in his hand. He spoke into it as he walked, turning his head every direction, apparently describing each vision that confronted him. His presence made Land feel uncomfortable.
As the group passed the lounging Marines who gathered outside to watch the “exhibition,” Land shot a cold glance at his men, warning them that this was not the time nor place for a bravado show.
The little party came up to where the low profile of a bunker stood overlooking miles of hills, hedgerows, rice fields, and jungle. “Gentlemen,” Land said, stepping atop the bunker and pointing to a heavily sandbagged machine gun nest to his side, “this is our longest-reaching sniper weapon, the M-2 .50-caliber machine gun…effective out to three thousand yards. You may notice, on the upper right-hand side of the weapon, we have mounted a telescopic gunsight. That is an eight-power sight made by the Lyman Gunsight Corporation. It is one of three primary scopes that we use on our sniper rifles. We also use a very similar-looking eight-power scope made by the Unertl Optical Company and a variable, three-to-nine power scope made by Redfield.
“Either of the Unertl or Lyman scopes will fit on the machine gun by way of the detachable mounts that we designed and had specially made right here,” the captain continued as the men gathered behind the big gun, taking turns looking through its sight, trying to imagine what it might be like to shoot someone with it.
“My snipers will go on missions and carry a set of mounts in their packs. When they get to the operational unit, it is a minor task to attach the mounts to any M-2 .50-caliber machine gun available. A sniper easily fastens the mounts to the big gun and removes his scope from his rifle and attaches it on the machine gun mounts. After that, it is a simple job of leveling the gun and zeroing the weapon to whatever distance that he expects to engage the majority of his targets.
“In this way, our Marines can carry their normal sniper equipment and still offer a battalion commander the benefit of extra long-range sniper fire.”
Absorbed in the tour, the two photojournalists amongst the four reporters jockeyed around the machine gun and snapped pictures of it and Captain Land as he stepped off the bunker and stood in front of the sandbag wall, over which the machine gun’s barrel tilted. Concentrating on his lecture Land forgot that standing outside the sandbags’ protection exposed him to any enemy sniper who might be watching.
“What’s this thing that looks like a level?” the man with the tape recorder asked, pointing to a device that hung from the tripod on which the machine gun sat.
“That’s a Gunners’ Quadrant. And you’re right, it is a kind of level.”
Just as the reporter knelt behind the big gun for a look through the scope, a rifle shot cracked across the valley from the cluster of low knolls to the right of finger four.
The bullet struck the hillside just below Land’s feet, splitting a small rock and blasting away a chip the size of a quarter, which ricocheted off his shin. Land leaped, thinking that the bullet had hit him. He dived over the top of the bunker and rolled to the other side.
The photographers scrambled behind the sandbags, and with their motor-driven cameras singing, they took aim at two Marines who scurried to the big gun and quickly trained it on the knoll and released a rapid burst of fire into its several peaks.
As he did every time he shot from that hide, the sniper slipped through the covered escape route and floated safely down the narrow canal at the base of the knoll.
While the reporters huddled around the two Marines who fired the machine gun, getting names, ages, and home towns, and taping comments to go with the “sound of battle,” a colonel unobtrusively watched the demonstration from several yards away, safely behind cover. As Land turned to see who had joined them, he recognized the man—his boss—Colonel Herman Poggemeyer.
The colonel frowned sharply at Land and motioned for the captain to come close.
“Sir,” the captain said, walking near the colonel. “Everyone appears to be okay. It was awfully close.”
“Captain,” the colonel said, “step up the hill with me, away from this crowd.”
Land said nothing but followed the colonel and felt a sudden tightness fill his stomach.
“What kind of example of leadership do you call that?” the colonel growled angrily. A long pause followed while the captain stood, braced for the storm, looking straight ahead and saying nothing. “I’m surprised at you, Captain—exposing yourself to fire so that a bunch of reporters can get some good pictures? What about those Marines back there who depend on your being around to lead them? What on earth got into your head? What about those people waiting for you back home? How could you needlessly risk leaving a family without a father! There will be no condolence letter to your wife. That’s because you will not leave your quarters until you rotate.
“Captain Land, you’re restricted. You may go to the chow hall, head, and chapel. You will sit down tonight and write your wife a letter. Tell her you will be home in a couple of weeks—alive. Is that clear, Captain?”
“Yes, Sir!” Land barked in the same manner as he had done to his sergeant instructor at Officer Candidates’ School.
The colonel held a folder filled with papers and opened it, pulled out several that he had stapled together, and waved them in the captain’s face. “Do you see this?” Poggemeyer said, speaking with increasing vehemence. “I came here to tell you that I had recommended you for a Bronze Star. But you can forget that now!”
As he lashed out those final words to the captain, he tucked the folder under his arm, took the award recommendation in his hands and, ripping it in half, threw it at Land’s feet.
Captain Land did not move. He stood rigidly fixed at attention while the colonel turned from him and stormed away.
When Colonel Poggemeyer returned to his quarters, he reconsidered what he had told the captain. A man of his word, he did not recommend Land for a Bronze Star, but at a ceremony at South Weymouth, Massachusetts, some time later, Land received the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat V.*
Land walked to his hooch, sat at his desk, and wrote his wife, Ellie, a letter. The remainder of the night he worked on a turnover file that he would give to Maj. D.E. Wight, his replacement. He told no one that he was on restriction.
“SERGEANT HATHCOCK,” A VOICE SHOUTED OUTSIDE THE QUARTERS where Hathcock lay on his cot, looking at a map that detailed the terrain surrounding Hill 55. “Sergeant Hathcock. You in there?”
Hathcock yelled, “Come on in, Gunny. What ya got?”
“That woman, she may be full of shit, and then again she may not be. But take it for what it’s worth.”
Hathcock sat on the edge of his cot and took a can filled with cigarette butts off an ammunition crate; he offered it as a seat for the huge gunnery sergeant, who ha
d interrogated the woman that Hathcock had shot in the neck.
“Go on, Gunny. What’s this woman full of it about?”
“I don’t doubt that these NVA told her this, and it may be a lot of brag. You know, the way we sometimes build up things to get folks’ attention. But I think there is a root of truth to what she says.”
“To what?” Hathcock asked impatiently.
“She said that there are a dozen snipers—a whole sniper platoon—down here now from North Vietnam. They trained at a place up there that supposedly looks just like Hill 55. She said they have a compound, complete with bunkers and sniper hides, exactly like this here. They probably know the land as well as you do.”
“That makes sense. The way they’ve been picking people off around here, I was thinking they had some inside information,” Hathcock said, wrinkling his lips and nodding his head philosophically.
“Well, the best part is this,” the gunny said, resting his forearms across his knees and leaning toward Hathcock. “They want you.”
“Figures,” Hathcock said, without showing the shock that the gunny thought the news would evoke. “Captain Land told me they’ve got a bounty out on me and him. He saw a leaflet that they dropped all over creation. It figures that these hamburgers would have me at the top of their list. What about the skipper?”
“She didn’t mention him. All she could talk about was Long Tra’ng—White Feather—and how they had all taken a blood oath to not return home without your little trademark and scalp.”
“They don’t scare me none, Gunny. I don’t care how hard those hot dogs think they are, there ain’t none of them hard enough to get me.”
“You’re not Superman, Hathcock. You’re not invincible.”
“Oh, no! I never said I was. Oh, they could kill me. I could let down my guard and they would kill me in a heartbeat. But the harder they hunt me, the harder I get. There ain’t none of them who know how to move and hide like I can. And there sure ain’t none of them who can outshoot me. That’s what I mean, Gunny. I’m just a whole lot better than they are, and that gives me the advantage.”
“You may be better. And again, they may have an ol’ boy who is better than you.”
“And…?”
“Well, that woman told me there is one sniper in particular who is doing the majority of damage to the Marines walking around on the hill. He’s the man who killed the gunny outside your door. All this guy does is live in the jungle. He eats rats and bugs, weeds, lizards, and worms—shit like that. She said this guy catches cobras and vipers with his bare hands and eats ’em raw so that he’ll have their spirit in him.”
“Eating garbage and living in the mud don’t make you smart. You have to be smart in the first place. I can see where living in the wild and learning the ways of nature can improve this guy’s chances, but I’ve spent a lot of time crawlin’ around the woods, too.”
The gunny stood and slapped Hathcock on the back of the head. “I know your reputation. But this fella has one, too. Take it for what it’s worth…keep your head down.”
Hathcock walked the gunny to the door. “I figure this fella has a fair aim, considering the long-range shots he’s notched. But, no matter what he does, if he keeps shooting at us from the same little knoll out yonder, we’ll get him. It’s just a matter of time.”
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 full 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 burned 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 Allens 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 the 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 dryness. 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.
Marine Sniper Page 19
