who took one more mission with only days remaining in-country and died on it. To take such a mission violated a superstition. Go on patrol when you’re a newbee or a short-timer and you’re dead. But, he also thought that the odds stood in his favor more than in any other sniper’s, despite the short-timer superstition.
He looked at Burke, standing silently in the moonlight. What if they turned to him or to the gunny or the top? Which friend would he allow to go in his place?
He looked at the captain and took a deep breath. “Sir, I’ll go. I wouldn’t be able to face myself if I didn’t.”
The captain put his arm over Hathcock’s shoulder and patted him. “I’ve got a map and some recon photos up at operations, we’ll talk there.”
The two Marines walked away from the sniper hooch, and Burke watched them disappear in the darkness. A feeling of emptiness suddenly pulled at his soul: he would never go hunting with his partner again. The reality of it struck him as he watched his friend leave. He wished he could go too.
“Oh, Carlos, oh, Carlos, you ain’t a comin’ back alive from this one! You and your big ideas,” Carlos Hathcock said aloud. Johnny Burke sat on a wooden crate scrubbing his M-14’s bolt-face with a doubled-up pipe cleaner. Carlos sat on another crate. Between his feet a topographical map and several photos lay spread on the dirty plywood floor of me sniper platoon’s command hooch.
“How on earth did I ever get myself into this one?” Hathcock said with a sigh.
“You’re the best, Sergeant Hathcock. That’s why you wear that white feather, isn’t it?” Burke said, looking up.
Hathcock glanced at his partner. “Maybe. But, I ain’t so sure about this one. Come here and look at these recon photos. I tell you, this one’s suicide.”
Burke laid his bolt on a towel and walked across the hooch. Hathcock had drawn an orange line on the plastic film that he had laminated to the face of the map to make it weatherproof. The line represented the path that the patrol, which dropped him off, would take. He was pondering the best route from there to his mission’s ultimate destination.
“There ain’t a stitch of cover within two thousand yards of that place,” Hathcock said, pointing to an aerial photo that corresponded to an area on the map around which he had drawn a red circle. “I’ve got the tree line for cover up to here,” his finger tapped the circle as he spoke. “All I’m ever gonna get at the guy is one shot. I’ve gotta make it count. Once that round goes, all hell’s gonna break loose so the odds for a second shot are zero. I can’t gamble on connecting at two thousand yards—it’s gotta be eight hundred yards or less. That means I’ve gotta cover about fifteen hundred yards of open ground without being seen.”
Burke knelt on one knee and shook his head. “Sergeant Hathcock, I don’t know!”
Hathcock looked at Burke, an unusual expression of worry crossing his face, “I know.” He looked back at the map and photos and again leaned his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together beneath his chin, as if in subconscious prayer, “I’ve gotta go worm-style across there and hope they don’t walk across me.”
Burke walked back to his crate and sat down. He picked up his rifle’s bolt and began scrubbing its face with a fresh pipe cleaner.
“Sergeant Hathcock, if anybody has the answer, you do. If it can be done, you can do it. But I gotta tell you the honest truth. Goin’ into the NVA’s headquarters and blowin’ away their stud duck takes one hell of a tot more guts than I’ve got. Too bad you can’t tell ’em to forget it.”
“Nope,” Hathcock replied without looking up. “Ain’t my style. Job’s gotta be done.”
Carlos looked at his watch and softly laid it inside his foot-locker with all his other personal items. He would leave everything behind on this stalk.
He took his bush hat with his left hand and gently slipped the wispy white feather from its hatband, dropping it between the pages of his Marine Corps issue New Testament. He placed the cigarette-pack size book in one corner of his foot-locker and dropped shut the locker’s wooden lid. Snapping the combination lock on the big box’s hasp, he tucked on his bush hat, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and walked out to meet fate head-on.
As he walked through Hill 55’s complex of deeply dug and heavily sandbagged bunkers, hard-backed tents, and antennae farms, Carlos listened to the new day come alive.
“Goooood morning, Vietnam!” a voice boomed from a nearby radio tuned to AFVN. “It’s six-oh-five in the A-M and time to… Shout!” Joey Dee and the Star-Lighters’ all-time rock and roll favorite, “Shout,” echoed through the camp from scattered radios tuned to the Da Nang American Forces Radio station.
A black Marine with a gold-capped front tooth sat on a stack of sandbags next to his rocking and rolling radio. His steel helmet pot, half-filled with milky colored water, sat in the dirt before him. Lather covered his face, and he stretched his neck tight as he shaved under his chin, rolling his eyes downward in order to look in a mirror balanced atop the radio. Hathcock thought about how long it had been since he had stood in front of a bathroom sink and shaved with hot water.
He walked down the hill beyond the bunkers and joined a group of Marines wearing helmets and flack jackets. Each man had two fragmentation grenades and several pouches full of ammunition, balanced by two full canteens hanging on their cartridge belts. Carlos had only his rifle, one canteen hooked to his belt and a KaBar knife. He reached in his pocket and touched the tube of camouflage greasepaint resting there. He was scared.
The walk to the landing zone did not take long, neither did the flight—due west and well into the high mountains that bordered Laos.
The Marine rifle squad moved quickly taking him to the departure point, and by noon Hathcock sat alone, his back against a tree, surrounded by heavy vegetation. He was preparing himself mentally for what he knew lay ahead. The fear that lay like a heavy animal inside his chest would need some calming.
DAY ONE
Carlos had calculated perfectly, as always in the past, and arrived at the tree line’s edge just as the sun set. He covered his exposed skin with shades of light and dark green greasepaint from the tube that he carried in his pocket. Every buttonhole and strap on his uniform held various-shaped leaves and grass.
Here, at the edge of the open country, he saw the NVA’s heavily guarded buildings with their camouflaging and their fortified gun positions. He had no idea where in Southeast Asia he was at the moment and had not wished to ask. The terrain map he had studied had had no place names. From their flight path and the distance covered, he would not have been surprised if he was in Laos or even North Vietnam.
Under the cover of darkness, Carlos retouched his camouflage paint and exchanged the forest’s deep green leaves for the lighter green and straw-colored grass that now surrounded him and covered the vast open land ahead. He drew his canteen and poured a capful of water. He brought the lid to his lips and sipped, his eyes constantly shifting and looking for signs of movement, his nose testing the air for any smell of other men.
For the next hour, he continued preparing himself, drinking sips of water from his canteen lid and relaxing in the tree line’s cover.
Finally, his every move fluid and slow like that of a clock’s minute hand, he lay on his side and slipped into the open. His Winchester rifle was clutched tightly against his chest.
His body was in constant motion, but the motion was so slow that a man staring at him from ten feet away would in all probability have seen no movement. He traveled inches per minute and yards per hour. From now until he reached his goal, Hathcock would not eat or steep and he would drink rarely.
He had had no idea that he would have to move this slowly. The dry grass was about a foot above his head as he crawled slowly on. Hathcock noticed the stars in the clear night sky and prayed for rain. If it came he could move quickly, since the enemy’s vision would be obscured and the shower’s noise would cover his. Dampness would also soften the crackling dry grass and weeds.
The Marine sniper had crawled approximately thirty feet from the tree line when he heard the first enemy patrol approaching his position. His eyes strained to find them in the moonless dark. He knew they were closing in on him by each crunching footstep’s increasing loudness. Hathcock held his breath. The patrol was very near. His lungs burned, and his heart pounded. Sweat gushed from every pore on his body. He was worried they would smell him. Absolutely motionless, he stared back at the trail of bent and broken grass that lay behind him.
Hathcock thought, “If they see me, then that’s how. They’ll see my trail.” His lungs could take no more
