Higher up the hill, the soldier who took cover jumped from the logs and began to sprint down the trail, trying to catch his leader. He realized that she ran, not away from the danger, but straight toward it. This was where he had seen the two Marines wrestling, near the turn in the trail that his commander now approached.
He screamed for the woman to stop, but she kept running. Her temples throbbed with blood, and the shouts of her comrade seemed muffled and unintelligible, as though they came from a drowning man, pleading with his last breath beneath the water’s surface.
She looked back and, as she did so, Carlos, coming to his natural respiratory pause, let his finger complete the roll of the rifle’s trigger. The recoil sent the Unertl scope sliding forward in its mounts as the bullet cracked across the open land, crossed the narrow stream, and shattered the woman’s collarbones and spine, sending blood and gristle spraying over the low, green ferns that lined either side of the trail.
The Marine sniper pulled the scope back to the rear position, cycled his bolt and centered his sights on the woman’s body heaped in the center of the trail. The next bullet ripped through her shoulder and into both lungs, scrambling vital organs to a pulp.
The man who followed her reeled on his toes when the first shot blew the woman off her feet a few yards ahead of him. In leaping steps, he sprinted back up the hill. A single shot that Carios aimed squarely between the man’s shoulders killed him instantly.
An enormous smiled passed across Hathcock’s face. Land threw his arms around his sergeant’s shoulders and shook him hard, “You got her, Carlos! You did it!”
Hathcock laughed in jubilation and then, suddenly, he pounded his fist angrily on the hard-packed earth, and said, “Ya, we did it. We got that dirty bitch. She ain’t gonna torture nobody no more!”
10. Rio Blanco and the Frenchman
AT THE NVA compound far to the west of Hill 55, the squat, stockily built old commander rose early. He had not slept well. The forces that he commanded had not enjoyed the success that he had anticipated, and the tension this caused gave him a grizzly’s disposition.
Today he hoped for good news.
When the old man walked into his office and sat behind a table covered with papers, a soldier stepped through his door carrying a leather pouch containing intelligence reports and dispatches from the regiments under his command. As the soldier left, an officer came to attention before the general and informed him that the commander of the guerrillas who had so successfully harassed the enemy near Da Nang had been killed, with four of her men, by snipers. The same snipers about whom she voiced concern a month before.
Her death was a sharp loss. Guerrillas of the National Liberation Army were now reluctant to go on patrol in the country where they encountered these snipers, one of whom was gaining recognition for the white feather he wore in his hat, as well as for his marksmanship.
This woman, who had begun as a Lao Dong party worker in the north, meant much to the old warrior. He had the determination, and he believed he had the means, to see to it that her assassins did not go unpunished.
Far to the east of where the NVA commander sat brooding, Hathcock walked briskly into the sniper school’s command hut.
“Sir,” he said, “me and Burke, we want to go back out.”
“Funny you should come waltzing up here so chipper,” Land said. “You get wind of something?”
“Could be, Sir. You tell me.”
“You ever hear of Rio Blanco?”
Hathcock had. He constantly kept attuned to all the operations throughout southern and central I Corps, and he knew that Rio Blanco was big. But he liked to antagonize his captain.
“John Wayne movie. Right, Sir?”
“John Wayne my ass, Carlos. That was Rio Bravo, and you probably know more about Rio Blanco than I do.”
“Oh, no, Sir! I just heard the name, that’s all,” Hathcock said, trying to sound innocent.
Land rested his arms across the desk and cleared his throat, “Rio Blanco is a major operation that will clear out a wide valley over by Hill 263. The river Song Tro Khuc runs right through the middle of it, and word is that Charlie has a reinforced regiment, or larger, down there.
“Division is massing Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and Mike companies out of 7th Marines, plus two and a half batteries from 11th Marines—a MAU-sized outfit. They will link up with the ROK Marines’ Dragon Eye Regiment and the Lien Ket 70 Division from the ARVN. They aim to kick ass.”
Wilson, who had been sitting at the table with Land, looked at Hathcock and rolled his eyes. The sniper smiled and said nothing.
“Gunny Wilson and I have been putting together a roster of twelve snipers to take down there. The four we leave back here will check in with Top Reinke over at his hooch and operate with 1st Battalion, 26th Marines while we’re gone.”
Hathcock stood at the doorway, with a long expression on his face. He knew they wouldn’t leave him behind, but he needed to hear it.
“We leave at zero six, day after tomorrow,” Wilson said firmly. “You be sure the troops are up and packed, Sergeant Hathcock.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!” Hathcock said, saluting with his palm turned outward in crisp British fashion.
Two days later, when the sniper team arrived at the 7th Marines command post on the afternoon of November 20, the operation had already begun. A busy major greeted Land and told him that it made no difference to the command where he disbursed his snipers, as long as they remained north of the river.
“General Stiles* will be in and out of this command post, so you might do yourself a favor and establish your CP on one of these fingers just down the hill so you can be close, if something pops. The ITT and CIT folks are set up where they can overlook the operational area from their CP, and they have room for your guys, too. You might consider that.”
Land thanked the major and led his snipers down the hill to where he could see the counterintelligence Marines’ shaved heads shining in the afternoon sun. “That’s right, Major,” Land sarcastically thought to himself as he walked away from the command post, “put all the oddballs in one spot where you can keep an eye on ’em, and at the same time, keep ’em out of sight.”
“Gunny Wilson,” Land said aloud.
The gunnery sergeant jogged down to where Land walked. “Yes, Sir.”
“You, me, Hathcock, and Burke will stay up here. I’m fanning the other eight snipers out to the four companies down there on the operation. They’ll work in direct support of the companies. We can keep ourselves busy around the hill.”
Hathcock was walking on the heels of his captain, mouth shut and ears wide open. Already the wheels were turning. He liked this country. He had patrolled it from trucks as an MP and knew that as a sniper he could do some real good.
A skinny and weathered old fanner in his fifties, who looked a hundred, worked in a cane field below Hill 263. He kept his head down and swung his hand scythe through the tall stalks, cutting down the crop that he had planted a full growing season ago. The man did not want to appear out of the ordinary to the Vietnamese government troops who walked past him while he worked. Sweat trickled down his face, hidden beneath the large, round straw hat that he wore. The perspiration came not so much from heat or work, but from the fear that turned in the pit of his stomach.
Had the passing soldiers talked to him, they would have known at once that he had something to hide. He was such a frightened man.
During the days that Hathcock had patrolled the fields as an MP, riding atop a truck with a mounted .50- caliber machine gun in hand, this man had waved to the Marines as they drove past. He was a simple fanner whose life revolved around the large cane field and two flooded paddies in which he alternated growing rice and lotus. He measured his wealth by his family and by the one water buffalo that he shared with a neighbor, who in return shared with him a cask of rice wine.
