5. Elephant Valley Roundup
BURKE LOOKED OVER his shoulder at Hathcock, “What did you do when you found out you won?”
“I had completely shut out everything. You could have walked up and stood on my back and yelled at me. I wouldn’t have heard you. I was so intent on looking at where I had hit the target and so disturbed that I had landed outside the V-ring that I hadn’t even stopped to realize that the other two guys were out and I had won.
“I was still staring through the spotting scope when one of the other shooters grabbed my shoulder and wanted to shake my hand. Then everything was like a whirlwind. I don’t think that it soaked in until they handed me that big trophy and took my picture. The rest of that day is still a blur.”
Burke smiled and put his eye back to the scope, “Boy, that’s something—really something. No wonder you busted so many of these hamburgers over here.”
“You ready to switch over?” Hathcock asked.
“Sure. Not a thing moving out there.”
Hathcock eased himself through the tangle of vines and jungle growth to where the rifle lay benched on a fallen log; he tucked it into his shoulder while Burke rolled to one side.
“If they don’t try something tonight, what are we going to do tomorrow?” Burke asked.
“We need to be moving out of here by ten o’clock, no matter what. We’ll signal the sweep team at about nine thirty. One way or another, those hamburgers are gonna get some relief tomorrow.”
Burke chuckled. “Too bad we won’t be around to watch the round-up. This has wound up pretty slow.”
“Don’t count those guys out. They may just be a waitin’ for us to lull off. When that sun goes down, you better be on your toes.”
Burke closed his eyes and caught up on his sleep.
Hathcock lay behind the sniper rifle and glassed the short dike with the weapon’s telescopic sight. He searched for a target to shoot that would remind the NVA that he remained their adversary-ready for whatever the night might bring.
As the afternoon wore toward evening, the sky turned hazy. By the time the sun set forty-five degrees above the horizon, the hazy sky had turned gray with thick clouds that threatened rain.
“Burke,” Hathcock whispered. “Sun’s going fast, and it looks like rain.”
“Yeah, we’ll probably get wet about midnight or so,” Burke answered, opening his eyes and raising on his elbows. “Those clouds will make watchin’ Charlie a lot tougher. Light from the illumes won’t break through the clouds until they’re right down on top of us.”
“Some just might slip through the crack tonight,” Hathcock said. “We have to stay on our toes tonight. At this stage of the game, the tables could turn real easy. Just about the time we start thinking we got ’em whipped, they could wipe us out.
“Just keep this in the back of your head, those bastards are gettin’ more and more desperate the longer we sit on ’em. I think that if somebody was going to rescue them, they would have been here by now, and I think they realize that, too. Plus, they’re probaoly runnin’ a mite short on vittles and real short on water. Those hot dogs are at the point where they either have to do something or get off the pot.
“We ain’t got a whole lot left either. Our food is running short, and the way we been pot shootin’ the past four days, our ammo won’t stretch a whole lot further.”
The two snipers waited for the sun to disappear behind the mountains and usher in their final and their darkest night in Elephant Valley.
Behind the low dike, fewer than one hundred bewildered and desperate soldiers of the NVA company remained. They continued to huddle and wait behind the protective wall like frightened puppies in a storm, cowering beneath a house’s eaves to stay dry.
The youthful soldiers who sang songs of triumph as they marched through Laos along the Ho Chi Minh Trail now finalized their plans for one last desperate act. They, too, watched the overcast sky grow dark and knew that the heavy cloud cover gave them a greater chance for escape.
“It’s startin’ to smell like shit out there,” Burke told Hathcock, wrinkling his nose after catching a whiff of the breeze that drifted across the wide valley. “They’re gonna have a hell of a time sneakin’ through the dark like that.”
“I know. It’s gotten worse today. I think a bunch of them may have a bad case of the squirts, being hunkered down back there for so long. And they can’t have much water left, if they got any at all. With diarrhea, on top of the effects of cooking out there in the sun, dehydration is gonna start taking its toll on ’em.”
The sun was setting over the western mountain tops as a platoon of weary boys crouched at the eastern end of the dike, hoping to make a run in the gray evening twilight—ahead of the nightly barrage of illumination rounds.
Hathcock and Burke watched as the dike faded from view.
“There’s something moving,” Hathcock whispered as he shifted his rifle scope’s reticle onto a dark lump that appeared to the right of the wall. He had already called the artillery battery to request flares.
Burke put his binoculars to his eyes and saw the motion.
“It’s too dark to be sure of my shot,” Hathcock said, “I can barely pick up my cross hairs. Where’s those illumes?”
High overhead, three muffled pops echoed through the valley, and three bright spots appeared in the clouds.
“They’re running,” Burke cautioned, and just as he spoke, Hathcock’s Winchester broke the silence with a shot that sent the cluster of dark shadows rushing across the open terrain.
“Shoot, Burke, shoot! They’re getting away!” Hathcock said as he rapidly drew his rifle’s bolt back, ejecting a smoking brass casing. As he shoved the bolt forward, chambering a second round. Burke’s M-14 began to pop and flash in the darkness.
“I can barely see ’em, Sergeant Hathcock, we need more light.”
“Just shoot into the crowd. Those illumes will brighten up pretty quick once they drift to the bottom of these clouds.”
Three muffled pops ignited more illumination rounds. As the glowing flares, swinging beneath small parachutes, flooded light across Elephant Valley, the soldiers who remained behind the mud wall sprayed a broadside hail of bullets at the tree line, hoping to suppress the snipers’ fire and allow their comrades to reach the huts. Once there, they would set up a second base of suppression fire, allowing the men behind the dike to follow them.
Beneath the forest’s umbrella, and behind the thick knot of brush and fallen timber that had filled with silt and dirt, Hathcock and Burke continued their assault on the fleeing platoon. They had already shot the first few leaders of the escaping band, and now, midway between the mud dike and the huts, the remaining troops fell into prone positions in the dried out rice paddies and began shooting back.
“Damn,” Hathcock said.
“Those guys gonna lay there?” Burke asked. Both snipers dropped their heads behind the upper edge of the log that they had used as a bench-rest for their rifles. Above them hundreds of bullets sang and popped as they struck the broad leaves and branches along the tree line.
“I reckon,” Hathcock answered. “I suppose we’re gonna have to pick at ’em down there until they decide to go back to the dike.”
“Reckon we ought to radio operations and tell them what’s happening?” Burke asked.
“Let’s give the gooners a chance to regroup behind the dike. I’d a whole lot rather wait until daylight before we drop our people in on them. We would stand a better chance of sweeping them out with fewer casualties.”
Placing his rifle on the log, Hathcock put his eye to the scope and fired another carefully placed round. Then he said to Burke, “If you think that the calvary can ride to the rescue for us if we start losing ground down here, you better think again. I ain’t about to wait around if things start to fold up too fast. That happens, I plan for us to be up on the ridge, looking down and moving out.
“If the sweep team catches the bastards after that, then good for them. I’m not about to let anybody come in here and die trying to save you and me. Besides, those hamburgers ain’t worth a thing, except maybe to those shaved-headed bozos at ITT (Interrogator Translator Team).
