Marine Sniper

by Charles Henderson

  An iron pot filled with boiling water and rice hung over the fire. Three NVA soldiers squatted nearby, sleepily waiting for their breakfast to finish cooking. They manned the “Quad-51” machine-gun position on the left flank of the compound. A narrow trail through the grass led from the compound, passed next to the machine-gun nest, made a sharp left turn, and then led arrow-straight to the trees. Lights shone through several windows of the main house. Carlos supposed that it had been a French plantation in years past.

  Inside, the short, graying general leaned over a porcelain bowl filled with cold water. A thin white undershirt covered his hairless, sagging chest and wrinkled belly. Baggy white shorts covered his bottom. He wore no shoes but stood on the glossy teak floor in his stocking feet. The old officer’s brown uniform rested neatly on hangers hooked to a peg on the door. Gold clusters and braid shone on the uniform’s wide, red shoulder-boards and on the broad red patches sewn on his collar.

  In an adjoining room that had been made into an office, the general’s aide-de-camp huddled over papers, shuffling them into order for the old man. They would inspect a battalion today. The day before, the general and his entourage had walked the perimeter, inspecting the security of his headquarters. He had found it satisfactory.

  Hathcock had seen him, but the old man was too distant from the Marine sniper’s firing point. Now the sun fully lit the new day. In the distance, Hathcock watched a white car pull away from the house, drive up the trail, and disappear into the tree line.

  “Old man’s gone for a while, I reckon,” he told himself. “Good. That means that those guys will really slack off.”

  By late afternoon, Hathcock had put five hundred yards between himself and the tree line. More than twenty hours had passed since he had left the jungle’s cover.

  Just before sunset the white sedan drove up to the house and stopped. Carlos watched the indistinguishable figures walk toward the door. “Just keep it up, Homer—you and your hot dogs. I’ll get you.”

  The evening security patrol began its first tour of the perimeter. Ten NVA soldiers fanned into a line and began closing toward Hathcock. He stopped his oozing wormlike slither and waited. He watched as the soldiers approached him in the dimming light. “It could have been worse,” Hathcock thought, “they could have come before sunset.”

  After lying flat in the dirt for twenty-four hours, Carlos had attracted a following of ants. His body ached from hundreds of small lumps left by their bites. He wondered if enough ant bites could eventually kill a man. Sweat poured into his eyes as the enemy patrol came on. They were spread on-line with twenty-to thirty-feet wide gaps between them.

  “Here I am, gettin’ hell stung out of me,” Hathcock thought, “my body crawlin’ with critters, layin’ here, can’t move—and here comes Homer and his friends. Hell, I’ll probably crawl all the way up, never be seen, kill this old muckety-muck, and then when I try to leave, I’ll die from all these critter bites. The ants will cart off my bones, and I’ll wind up MIA forever.”

  Carlos watched the approaching patrol. He could see only three of the soldiers now, the remaining seven were on his blind, right-hand side. He watched the three NVA riflemen plod closer and closer.

  “If the guy on my right don’t step on me, I’ll get by this one too,” he reassured himself. But the soldiers were looking far ahead, toward the tree line, and they were oblivious to the sniper they had just passed.

  Day Three

  The sun found Carlos Hathcock twelve hundred yards from the compound’s headquarters, its doorways and windows now clearly visible to him. He watched as the soldiers relieved and posted the guard. “It’s as though they’re back at Hanoi,” he thought. Over everything hung the calm air of routine.

  Throughout the day, he observed couriers filing in and out of the compound, reporting to the man with the red collar. The sniper kept to his steady pace. He could feel adrenalin surging at the thought that tonight he would halt and prepare to fire with dawn’s first light.

  He thought of how he had succeeded thus far. He also turned his attention to his escape. To the right of where Carlos would eventually lie, a small, almost imperceptible gully ran nearly to the tree line. Once he fired his shot, he planned to slide along the shallow and gently sloping gully and disappear through the trees.

  “It’s a good thing, Carlos,” he told himself. “These hamburgers are so loose here, it’ll take them half a day to figure out what happened.”

  Hathcock squirmed forward a few more inches and then, looking ahead of him, his confidence faded at the same time that his entire body stiffened.

  The hunger, which had wrapped his stomach in knots for two days, vanished. The blood drained out of his face and the whole world took a violent spin. He wanted to jump up and run. He wanted to scream. He wanted to do anything rather than continue to lie there and look into the eye of a jade-green bamboo viper that lay coiled in the grass six inches from his face.

  Panic ripped through every fiber of self-discipline that Carlos had ever been able to string together. He felt numb as his eyes focused on the deadly snake’s emerald head, its ruby-colored eyes evilly slanted above head-sensing pits.

  The snake was motionless but the sniper felt his own body shaking. “Gotta get hold here,” he breathed slowly. “Oh Jesus! What if he bites me in the face! Control yourself! He ain’t bit you yet.” He knew this snake was neurotoxic like the cobra. One pop, even a little one, would kill him in minutes. “You’ve come too far to let a bamboo snake end it all,” he told himself as he lay still and watched the viper flick its black, forked tongue from its yellow-rimmed mouth, testing the air.

  Almost as though the shaken Marine had never existed, the glossy snake turned its head, whisked silently between broad stems of grass, and disappeared.

  After Hathcock’s heart slowed to its normal rhythm and the shaking effects of the adrenalin that sent his blood coursing through his temples had subsided, his nagging hunger returned, accompanied by a sudden thirst. “Where’s the groceries!” he exclaimed to himself. “Where’s the water!”

  His hand found the canteen lid, and he began to carefully unscrew it from the flask. Half an hour later, he felt the wet relief of the now warm liquid soaking into his swollen tongue like water on a dry sponge.

  Hathcock moved on, wincing with every inch he went. His hip, knee, and arm were covered with blisters from the three days of constant pushing. Shards of pain shot through his side. He had less than two hundred yards left to travel, and compromise began tempting him now.

  “You can do it from here,” he considered. In all his years of marksmanship competition, his best scores came from the thousand-yard line.

  “It’s been all bull’s-eyes and Vs from this distance,” Carlos told himself. But in all his years of shooting, never had one shot been so critical.

  A second voice told Carlos, “Stick to the plan. Don’t change things now. Survival depends on it. Survive.” Carlos always listened to that voice. It had kept him alive. “You thought out this plan when you were rested; now you’re tired. Gotta stick to the plan—got to.”

  He pushed on toward where the slight depression came slicing through the grass. It was very much as he had estimated—almost precisely eight hundred yards from the target.

  Darkness fell and, as he drew near to his planned firing position, Hathcock’s anticipation mounted. He versed himself on everything in these surroundings that might affect his bullet’s flight. He was constantly aware of humidity, wind speed, and wind direction. The faint sound of men laughing caught his ear. He could imagine the North Vietnamese general and his officers drinking and toasting each other around a dining room table. “That general had better enjoy himself while he still can,” Hathcock thought.

  The Marine sniper watched as the nightly patrol began another round. “They don’t even consider a ground attack,” he reflected. “They’re more worried about air assaults. Look at the bunkers and holes they’ve got around here. Everything’s covered.”


  The last guard changed as Carlos Hathcock reached the shallow gully he had spotted on aerial photographs and that he had spent the last three days crawling toward. It was not even six inches deep, but it was wide enough for a man to lie in. The depression, which stretched fifteen hundred yards to the distant tree line, actually began here in the middle of the open field, and at its head there was a slight rise, on the back side of which Hathcock positioned his rifle. He unfolded a handkerchief-size cloth and laid it down beneath the weapon’s muzzle so that the gases the rifle expelled from the barrel when he fired it would not raise up dust from the ground and give away his position.

  Day Four

  When the sun sent its first rays across the wide clearing, the Marine sniper’s eyes already blinked through the eight-power scope atop his rifle, searching for his target.

  He had estimated the distance correctly—his experienced eyes verified eight hundred yards to the walkway. “I’ve got to get him standing still with either his face or his back toward me,” Carlos told himself. “Don’t compromise.” He watched for signs of wind—trees rustling, smoke drifting from the cooking fires next to sandbagged gun positions, the waving of the grass and weeds between him and his target. But more important than these, he watched the mirage, how it danced and boiled above the earth and tilted with the wind.

  From that he could calculate the wind velocity by dividing the angle of the mirage by four. After determining that, he could multiply the velocity times eight, which represented this particular range in hundreds of yards, and then divide that again by four and have the number of “clicks” or half-minutes of angle he would need for windage.

  The sun climbed higher and sweat trickled down the sniper’s cheeks. His eyes still fixed to the scope’s lens, he felt his neck burn from the overhead sun that baked the ground powder dry and left the grass wilting in its heat.

  From somewhere behind the complex of bunkers came the sound of an automobile’s engine. The white sedan wheeled around the bunkers and stopped short of the walkway upon which Carlos held the rifle scope’s cross hairs. The driver waited with the motor running.

  “Here we go,” Hathcock told himself. “Get a firm grip. Watch the cross hairs.” The general stepped through the doorway, and Hathcock centered the man’s profile in his scope. He waited for him to turn face-on. He did, but as the commander turned and walked toward the sniper’s sight, the general’s aide-de-camp stepped ahead of him.

  “Dummy! Don’t you know that aides always walk to the left of their generals? Get out of the way!”

  At every moment since the sun rose Hathcock had refined his attunement to the environment with computerlike detail and speed, judging the light, the humidity, the slight breeze that intermittently blew across his line of fire. He factored in the now-increasing heat and how the rise in temperature would elevate the mark of his bullet by causing the powder to burn more quickly when he fired. The air density and humidity would affect the velocity of his bullet, and the light would change the way his target appeared.

  Based on his estimations, he decided to place his scope’s reticle on the general’s left breast, in case the breeze carried the round eight inches right. The bright sunlight warned the sniper to keep his aim high on the man’s chest, but not too high, in case the heat raised the bullet’s flight a few inches.

  The group of officers walking out with the general departed toward the side of the house. It left only the old man and his youthful aide. Carlos waited. The young officer took his place at the left side of his superior. Hathcock said, “Now stop.” Both men did. The sniper’s cross hairs lay directly on the general’s heart.

  Hathcock’s mind raced through all his marksmanship principles, “Good firm grip, watch the cross hairs, squeeze the trigger, wait for the recoil. Don’t hold your breath too long, breathe and relax, let it come to the natural pause, watch the cross hairs, squeeeeeeeeze.”

  Recoil sent a jolt down his shoulder. He blinked and the general lay flat on his back. Blood gushed from the old officer’s chest and his lifeless eyes stared into the sun’s whiteness.

  The general’s aide-de-camp dove to the ground and began crawling toward a sandbagged gun position. The other officers, who had only seconds earlier left their commander’s side, ran for cover.

  The Marine sniper slid into the slight gully and, flat on his belly, began pulling himself stealthily along the ground with both arms. His rate of retreat seemed light-speed compared to his inbound time. Still smooth and deliberate, he traveled many feet of ground per minute. He now covered a distance, approximately equivalent to that which he had crawled across in three days, in four or five hours. The fact that no patrol approached him during his retreat told him that no one had seen his muzzle flash. In daylight, at eight hundred yards, that didn’t surprise him. The patrols would be out, but they would be searching hundreds of acres. Once he thought he heard one far to his left.

  It was almost nightfall when he reached the jungle’s edge. Squirming past the outer layer of greenery, Hathcock lifted himself off his knees for the first time in three days. The pain was an excruciating counterpoint to his inner exhilaration. He hurried through the heavy forest. He was wary of mines and booby traps, but going as quickly as he dared, he covered the three kilometers to his preplanned pickup coordinate in a matter of a few hours.

  There Carlos sat in a bush and waited, well aware that patrols might be scouring the jungle for his trail. His heart settled to a resting pulse. The songs of birds and other jungle creatures replaced the sound of heaving breath that had pounded in his ears. And as the hubbub settled to tranquillity, he thought of Arkansas and how similar this moment seemed to many childhood days behind his grandmother’s house, when he sat in the bushes there—the old Mauser across his lap and his Shetland collie dog panting at his side. He closed his eyes for the first time in four days.

  “SERGEANT HATHCOCK,” A VOICE WHISPERED. “I THOUGHT YOU KNEW better than to doze off like that.” The Marine who led the squad that had left Hathcock four days earlier now knelt by the bush where the Marine sniper waited.

  Hathcock smiled slowly, not even opening his eyes at first. “I knew you were there,” he said. “I heard your squad tromping up the ridge five minutes ago.”

  “Let’s get going. Charlie’s crawling over these hills, and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover between here and the LZ,” the squad leader told him. “When we left the Hill, Charlie’s lines were burning up. I guess you got that general?”

  “Well, he hit the ground mighty hard,” Hathcock said, pulling out his canteen and swallowing its last few drops. “Spare any water?”

  “Sure,” the Marine said, handing Hathcock a canteen and sloshing its contents out the open top. “We better book.* Charlie’s mad as hell now. They’d love to get you after today.”

  Hathcock felt uneasy when the squad leader told him, “Charlie’s mad as hell.” During the flight back to Hill 55, he wondered if the assassination of the general would only arouse the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong to fight with greater fury.

  He would always have mixed feelings about this day’s work. As American casualties rose sharply in the weeks that followed, he began to feel that this was one sniper killing that might have been a mistake.

  When Hathcock stepped off the helicopter, home at Hill 55’s landing site, a group of smiling and whooping Marines met him. Burke stood among them and said, “White Feather made it.”

  Hathcock smiled.

  The giant of a captain who’d recruited Hathcock for the mission slapped him across the back so hard that Carlos wondered if he had dislocated any bones. The hulking Marine put a pot roast–size hand on Hathcock’s shoulder and said, “Son, I’m sure as hell glad to see you back in one piece. Lot of us kept you in our prayers. You did one hell of a job.”

  Walking up the hill toward his hooch, Hathcock felt the great fatigue from the mission finally take hold. He longed to lie down and sleep for days. But his standards were demanding. And des
pite the fact that this was his last mission—that he would leave Hill 55 in a few days to return to the MP company and on to the World by way of Okinawa—he remained true to them. He cleaned his rifle and gear before he rested.

  15

  Saying Good-bye

  THE PROPELLER-DRIVEN CONVAIR AIRCRAFT TAXIED TO A halt in New Bern, North Carolina, at a few minutes past midnight. Carlos Hathcock, a brand-new civilian, discharged the day before at Camp Pendleton, California, sat alone in the back of the plane and looked out the Plexiglas window, trying to see if Jo and Sonny were there to meet him. Floodlights shone from the eaves of the terminal and made it difficult to tell who was whom.

  It had been a long flight, and no one on the plane had spoken to him. He waited until the pushing mass of passengers had almost made their way through the doorway on the side of the airplane before he reached under his seat and brought out his green vinyl satchel with yellow handles and USMC written on the side, and walked out of the plane.

  As he walked through the gate, he saw Jo standing there, holding their son and smiling, thankful that her husband had survived and had come home so that they could build a new life. Hathcock took his son in his arms and kissed his wife. The greeting lasted a moment and no one took notice of them.

  He took his sea bag and vinyl suitcase from the baggage claim and left the airport, bound for his little house on Bray Avenue, a promised job with an electrical contractor, and a new life as a civilian.

  NEARLY ONE MONTH LATER CARLOS HATHCOCK SAT NEXT TO JO ON the front porch of his small frame house and held his son on his knee, bouncing him up and down, playing horsy. He thought of the past long weekend. He had taken Thursday and Friday off and had driven to nearby Camp Lejeune where he watched the Marine Corps’ Eastern Division Rifle and Pistol matches. There he met many of his old shooting partners from the Marine Corps team. He saw again that side of the Marine Corps that he loved and now missed.