saw a flicker through the dense brush. He listened and heard the clanking again, but he saw nothing more as the sound now moved across his front and slowly made its way to his left.
“Burke and the Top will get these guys, too,” he whispered to Land.
“Shushhh,” came the captain’s response, as Land leaned on his elbows and continued scanning the opposite side of the river with his twenty-power spotting scope.
Hathcock glanced at his wrist watch. It was exactly eight o’clock.
Burke and Reinke had taken their positions on the sandy point of the river bend and had a broad view of a gap in the brush where a shallow ditch emerged from the low grass and brush and joined the river. There they saw the enemy patrol slowly emerge from the pale green undergrowth that had hidden their movement between here and the hill.
Carefully, Burke set his scope’s reticle on the point man’s head and began squeezing the trigger on his rifle.
Land flinched when he heard the sudden crack of the Winchester a short distance to his left. He looked at Hathcock and then lay behind his spotting scope, searching the far bank for the target at which Burke had shot. A second shot echoed through the wide valley—and then a third.
Suddenly the air was alive with heavy bullets cracking through the tops of the bushes and the tall grass in which the six snipers lay.
“What in the hell?” Land said aloud. “God damn quad-51’s! They’re going to cut this riverbank into pieces with their heavy machine guns.”
“Where they at?” Hathcock asked anxiously.
“Up on the hill. Right where I thought they would be. Only I thought they’d be shooting rockets or mortars, not .51s. They must have a hell of a lot of shit up there. We’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge, now!”
In the midst of the crackling shower of .51-caliber machine-gun fire, streaked with red tracers, Land sent two, red-star, cluster pyrotechnics skyward. The six snipers scrambled for their lives, running toward the low knoll that offered protection from the half-dozen four-barrel machine guns the Viet Cong had trained on them. The ground was checkered with rice fields, and knee deep in mud. Roberts and Wilson sprinted first through one of the paddies, followed by Burke—then Hathcock, Land, and Reinke.
Hathcock pumped his legs like pistons as he drove them through the mire of mud and water. He looked to his right and saw Land, his square face flushed, his eyes opened wide and his mouth agape, inhaling every drop of air that he could force into his burning lungs.
The first three Marines disappeared into the brush and found their safety behind the knoll, while Hathcock, Land, and Reinke crossed the midpoint of me boggy rice field. Hathcock pulled his legs up and down as hard as he could and saw that bullets were exploding into the water around him.
“Go for it, Hathcock!” Land yelled, “they’ve got us bore-sighted.”
Hathcock suddenly looked back. “Top!” he hollered. “Are ya hit?”
The master sergeant’s head and shoulders were just above the muddy water. He appeared to be struggling to get back on his feet.
“You hit bad, Top?” Land yelled.
Reinke motioned to the Marines to go on and leave him.
“God damn it, Hathcock. Top’s hit. I can’t leave him there to die. You go ahead.”
“You can’t get him alone,” Hathcock yelled back to Land, the two Marines ran toward their downed comrade who splashing the water with his hands and trying to pull his body forward through the heavy mud.
“We ain’t gonna leave you out here for that Apache woman, Top,” Land called.
The two Marines reached Reinke. All around them bullets were pelting the water.
“Where you hit?” Land gasped.
“I’m not hit,” the master sergeant said. “I stepped in a fuckin’ hole. Grab hold and get me out of here.1’
Hathcock and Land grasped the master sergeant near his armpits and pulled as hard as they could. Slowly, the sucking mud gave way and the Marine slid free, splashing in the water on his belly. The captain and Hathcock each lost their balance and fell to their hands and knees, soaking themselves in the mire.
“Gooooooo!” Land cried. The three Marines charged through die knee-deep mud and water. Hundreds of bullets sent tall, liquid shafts splashing up from the paddy’s surface.
Hathcock felt the blood surging through his veins at such pressure that his ears pounded and his vision blurred. He knew he was running for his life. He took a long, stride through the deep muck and plunged headfirst into the black water, gulping what seemed gallons of filth before he breathed air again.
Land and Reinke were doing no better. Now that they had gotten near the low dike that retained the water in the rice paddy, the three exhausted Marines frantically swam on their bellies through the mire the last few yards. They emerged on dry hind, caked from head to toe in stinking mud and, straining their last resources of strength, crossed the final few yards of open grassland. As Land, Reinke, and Hathcock fell behind the cover of the low knoll, they heard the first rounds of Marine mortar fire striking the enemy’s positions in the hills. All six men lay on the ground shaking, amazed that they had survived.
“I must have sucked in a gallon of that shit,” Land said, spitting kernels of mud and sod from his mouth.
“Better a bellyful of that than your ass full of lead,” Reinke said between heavy breaths.
Hathcock pulled a package of Salem cigarettes encased in a yellow plastic box from his soaked shirt pocket. “Well, I managed to keep something dry,” he said and put a white filter tip in his mouth.
“Anyone else for a dry cigarette?”
Land looked at the five Marines and then took the package from Hathcock’s hands, “I don’t smoke, but I think this time I deserve a cigarette. That was just too damn close.”
Hathcock threw him the lighter and, holding it in his right hand, Land flipped the top back and struck the flame. As he drew the lighter toward the cigarette between his lips, his right hand, which was holding it, shook violently. Land’s entire body began to tremble so badly he couldn’t light the cigarette.
Hathcock took the captain’s hands and guided the flame toward the cigarette, which also shook in the Marine’s lips. The four men who lay watching them roared with laughter.
Land looked at them, drew the smoke in, and said, “Fuck every one of you! You’re shaking just as much as I am.”
Reinke and Hathcock lay on the ground laughing, and with a gasp Carlos said, “I don’t think I’d ever believed you could get so shook.”
Land finally laughed too, after he saw one of the other men trying to put some purification tablets in a canteen spill half die water. Each one of them was astonished to find himself still alive.
The six snipers lay behind the knoll more than an hour, waiting for the exchange of fire to cease and then they spent the remainder of the day cleaning their equipment, preparing to return to Hill 55 that night.
8. A Nightmare’s Witness
NONE OF THE six Marines discussed that near-disaster at the riverbend for several days after they returned to Hill 55. They felt embarrassed about it. But even if the mission was a failure in every other sense, it had reinforced Land’s and his men’s confidence in the tactical principles of sniping, which they were adapting by trial and error from those of World War I Europe and tailoring to the jungle environment of Vietnam.
The rule that one should never hunt the same ground twice—and never set a pattern or establish predictable habits—became profoundly important for Hathcock after that day on the river. He saw it as a major key to survival and success.
Hathcock began dissecting and analyzing every activity in which he, or the Marines under his supervision, involved themselves. He concluded that even the call of nature could have deadly results if the trip to the privy took place at approximately the same time each day. He was determined that the only consistent thing about him or the snipers he instructed would be their complete unpredictability.
Hathcock was beginning to regard sniper warfare in a new perspective. He saw it as a complex craft that required scientific skill, total self-discipline, and absolute awareness of every aspect of the sniper and his environment. This, he told his students, was not a goal for them to strive for but a necessity that they would master
