colonel named Gildo S. Codispoti, is already inbound. He’s due to take over in a month. Work on impressing him.”
Sommers looked down the hill at the rusted tin roof of a distant hooch and said, “Part of the reason the colonel has bad feelings about snipers is what you’re going to see tomorrow. That platoon is nothing to write home about. But before we get into that, let’s get you checked into the company. You’ll step into that rats’ nest soon enough. You got your orders?”
17. The Tribe
HATHCOCK WIPED SWEAT from his face as he walked from the 7th Marines command post, now on his way to the more familiar finger four where the sniper platoon’s hooch still stood. He had spent the morning waiting to see the sergeant major and the commanding officer. When he finally did, he’d been given a typical welcome aboard filled with the standard rhetoric told to all new officers and staff NCOs and culminating with the cliche, “My door is always open. I’m glad to have you aboard.” The meeting confirmed Hathcock as the new sniper platoon leader and gave him the license to walk down the hill and begin assuming responsibilities.
It seemed strange to Carlos that the outgoing platoon sergeant had not come to meet him. As he walked down the trail to the low hooch and the bunkers on finger four, he began looking for signs of life-anyone who might tell him where he could find the platoon sergeant.
“Anybody here?” he shouted as he walked close to the old canvas-covered hooch—the same hooch that he helped build two and a half years ago.
“In here!” a voice shouted back.
The place looked dirty and worn now, just like much of the country. Several tears in the canvas hung loosely open and the roof revealed hundreds of small holes, made by years of harassing small-arms fire. As Carlos stepped near the door, he lifted the torn screen with his hand and wondered why no one had tacked it down again. The unpainted door frame was now dark from weather. Black streaks stained the wood from the rusting nails that held the door together—the same nails that Hathcock and Burke had driven in in the fall of 1966.
The door screeched as Hathcock pulled it open on its rusty hinges and stepped inside. The room was filthy. It smelled like a combination of mildew, body odor, and stale beer. Odd gear leaned against the walls and littered the floor. Boxes and bins overflowed with empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and trash from C-rations.
“Where’s the platoon sergeant?” Hathcock asked, standing in the open doorway.
“I’m him. What ya need?” the sergeant said, lying on a cot at the rear of the hooch. He slurped a beer and gave a healthy belch. The Marine wore a dirty green T-shirt and cutoff trousers. His jungle boots lay topsy-turvy on the dirty floor, among the cans and men’s magazines.
“I’m your replacement.”
The sergeant leaned on one elbow. “Welcome to the war.”
“You guys just get back from the bush?” Hathcock asked.
“Naw,” the sergeant said, gulping more beer. “They don’t have any idea of how to use snipers. We just burn the shitters, fill out the mess-duty quotas, and stand perimeter security.”
“Where are all your snipers?”
“Out, I guess.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know,” the sergeant said, and opened up a Playboy.
“How many men you have?” Hathcock said. He could feel the muscles in his neck tensing. “You do know bow many men you have, don’t you?”
“About twenty or so, I think.”
“How many rifles you have?”
The sergeant shook his shaggy head. “Hell, I don’t know. Ask the troops when you see ’em.”
“How many scopes you got? How many M-49s you got? Don’t you know anything?”
“Yeah,” the Marine said spitefully, looking at Hathcock. “You’re pissin’ me off, hassling me about this shit. Where you comin’ from anyway? We’re doing just fine. Nobody bugs us and we don’t bug nobody. We pull our details, do our time, and go back to the World… alive.”
“I remember you,” Hathcock said. “You were here in ’67. I taught you myself.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I got twenty-one confirmed kills and that’s plenty.”
“In two years you got twenty-one kills. In six months I got eighty confirmed. In two years you ought to have a hundred. You must have just quit as soon as you got this platoon. You found a good deal, hiding out here, drinking beer, and collecting tax-free pay.
“Well, I don’t need you. You go on up to Gunny Sommers and tell him I kicked your butt out of this platoon. Maybe he can find some use for you for the next couple of weeks.”
Hathcock took a deep breath and tried to control the anger in his voice. “I’m going out to find my platoon. You be packed out of here when I get back. You got any problems with that, go talk to Sergeant Major Puckett.”
Slamming the door shut, Hathcock stormed toward the bunker at the base of the sniper encampment. A suntanned Marine was lying across a long row of sandbags wearing nothing except a pair of utility trousers with the legs cut off at the lower seam of the pockets. He wore sunglasses and was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Around his neck dangled a German iron cross and a metal peace symbol.
“You a Marine?” Hathcock asked walking up to the man.
“Yeah.”
“You a sniper?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is the rest of your platoon?”
“Here and there.”
“Can you find them?”
“Sure. No problem. Who wants to know?”
“I do,” Hathcock said, narrowing his eyes. “I want you to have them all back here by sixteen hundred today. Will that be a problem?”
“Naw. Most of the guys are goofing off or on work details around the hill. I can get them here in an hour.”
“That’s even better. You do that.”
“You never told me who you are.”
“Staff Sergeant Hathcock. Carlos Hathcock. Your new platoon sergeant.”
The Marine stood and smiled. “You mean we finally got another platoon sergeant?”
Hathcock nodded.
“We ain’t all shit birds, Staff Sergeant Hathcock. You hang tight, I’ll round up the platoon.”
As the Marine jogged up the hill, Hathcock yelled to him, ’Tell them to bring all their sniper gear when they come to my muster.”
The Marine waved his hand, acknowledging the last order, and continued jogging in his scuffed white jungle boots.
Hathcock sat down on the sandbags and waited for his platoon.
Less than twenty minutes passed, and one after another, his snipers began to appear. They stood together near the old hard-back tent and kept their distance from the new staff sergeant who wore a small white feather in his bush hat and sat staring quietly at the ground between his feet as if he were by himself. He was no stranger to them. They had heard of Hathcock during training sessions at both Da Nang’s and Camp Pendleton’s two-week sniper schools. He was one of several Marines that their instructors had cited as frightening, superhuman examples of what they should be striving to attain for themselves. Now the man with the white feather was here and owned them body and soul. Without saying a word, Hathcock had already gained their undivided attention.
Hathcock looked at his watch as he heard the suntanned Marine in the cut-offs shout to him, “Staff Sergeant Hathcock, we’re all here-twenty-two snipers, including you.”
