hand, and when he knelt next to the dead comrade, Hathcock dropped him too. He waited again.
“Here comes another one,” McAbee whispered.
“Got him,” Carlos said, waiting for the Viet Cong soldier to reach that point where the earth rose slightly and the two men lay dead. The rifle cracked and the third man joined the other two, and Carlos waited.
“Somebody’s peeking out of the grass where those two hamburgers came from.”
“Got him.”
Hathcock followed the soldier, who carried an AK-47, as he cautiously edged from the grass and walked toward the hole. He knelt to one knee, and before he could stand, Hathcock killed him too.
“Four. Any more?” Hathcock asked quietly.
“Yes, looks like three others. They’re just sitting on the edge of the clearing trying to see what’s happening. With the wind blowing in our faces, I don’t think they can figure out where the shots are coming from. That must be their hole, and they’re trying to get in to take cover.”
“I figured they had some sort of tunnel there. That patrol was headed home.” Hathcock waited quietly for ten more minutes, and then the three soldiers rose to their feet and walked cautiously toward the hump and the four dead men.
“Three-round rapid fire,” Hathcock said, chuckling as he sighted through his scope. His first shot surprised the group, and the two still-living men turned to flee. A second shot dropped one, leaving him kicking on the pile of bodies. The last man pirouetted in confusion. He was still spinning when the bullet shattered his breast bone, exploding his heart and killing him as he whirled in his death dance.
“Damn! Carlos,” Mack whispered in wonder. “I’ve never heard of a sniper killing more than seven at a time!”
“I took on a company a long time ago. I don’t know how many I killed then. But there was this one sniper I knew back in ’66 who killed eleven at one time—all confirmed. I guess that’s the official record, if anybody really cares about things like that.”
“I guess you’re right. You start shooting for record, like it’s the Marine Corps Matches or something, and you could go off the deep end. Anybody who enjoys this has got to be crazy.”
“Yeah,” Hathcock said quietly. “Crazy.”
McAbee buried his face in the crook of his arm, and Hathcock watched the big man’s body tremble.
“You okay?”
McAbee raised his face from his arm and looked at Hathcock. “I’m ashamed. I was laughing.”
“Why?”
“That was the stupidest bunch of gooks I ever watched. They were about as dumb as I’ve ever seen, walking up there like that.” He started chuckling again and Hathcock smiled, seeing the humor in the midst of the ugliness.
“It is kind of funny, come to think about it.”
The two Marines moved further up Route 4 and hid on a hill, in a twisted mangle of shattered trees, devastated from heavy shelling and now covered with low, new plants that found sunlight in the absence of the trees’ umbrella. There they spent the day waiting for any unlucky enemy who tried to cross the narrow stream that flowed five hundred yards away from them.
“Except for yesterday, this whole operation has been slow as syrup,” McAbee said, squinting through the spotting scope, examining the tangled and fallen jungle for signs of a hidden enemy.
“Looky, looky, here comes Charlie,” Hathcock said.
A Viet Cong soldier wearing an open white shirt and black shorts walked along the edge of the stream, holding his rifle over his shoulders like a yoke. He walked with a staggered gait, and even at five hundred yards, the two snipers could hear him singing.
“He drunk?” McAbee asked.
“Don’t matter,” Hathcock said as he sighted through his scope. “He’s gonna be dead soon as I crank this round in him.”
The rifle recoiled and Ron McAbee expected to see the man drop, but after a jolt that sent the enemy soldier to his knees, he began to run. He ran straight for them, shooting blindly.
Hathcock shot again, and the man dropped but bounced up and again ran, shooting and yelling.
But before Hathcock could shove a third shot into his chamber, McAbee fired his M-14, dropping the man temporarily to his knees. This time the soldier dropped his rifle, but got up again and continued to run toward them, yelling.
Hathcock fired once more and McAbee fired twice, and the man kept coming, blood streaming from both his shoulders and his groin. McAbee could see large chunks of flesh torn away from his chest, yet he kept coming at them.
Taking one long, slow breath, Hathcock took careful aim, laying the center of his scope’s reticle on the man’s head. Hathcock watched his eyes, flaming and wide. His mouth gaped open, and his arms dangled broken in their joints. Ron McAbee stared through his spotting scope, not believing what he saw. He too saw the eyes—die eyes of a man crazed. Dead yet still alive in his final attack. His mouth wide with a scream that echoed more and more loudly through the once quiet valley.
When the soldier began to climb the slope, three hundred yards below the blind where the two snipers hid, Hathcock sent the seventh shot into the man’s face. He stopped at that moment and moved no more.
“He had to be on opium!” McAbee exclaimed. “No normal man could take that many shots.”
Hathcock sweated. It was as though he had encountered a devil and in the last moment won.
The next two months weren’t easy ones. Hathcock moved with his snipers to the Que Son hills as did the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. In August, Lieutenant Colonel Dowd was killed in battle, and Carlos, who had regarded him as both a friend and an ally, felt devastated at the loss. On the day of Dowd’s death, Hathcock took a bullet in the thigh when the helicopter he was traveling in was fired upon. But the sniper recovered quickly from that and was back in action before the month was out.
18. The Sacrifice
SEPTEMBER IN QUANG TRI PROVINCE feels cooler than September in Da Nang. The high mountain passes that overlook Laos sometimes pick up cool breezes from their lofty altitudes and allow a respite from the uncomfortable 95 percent humidity and 95 degree temperatures of the lower elevations. At a place that Marines named The Slot, one could sit in that cool breeze and watch North Vietnamese and Viet Cong caravans sweating beneath the loads of supplies that they carried over the steaming plait-work of jungle paths that the world called the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
On a rounded hilltop where trees and vines still grew in a green, thick tangle, Carlos Hathcock and Ron McAbee silently slithered their way to a rocky sinkhole hidden beneath the dense jungle’s umbrella and surrounded by ferns and vines and shine-covered roots. The monsoon rains of a year ago and the frequent summer showers kept this rocky depression filled with water, warmed by the beams of sunlight that shone between the overhead boughs. Slugs, leeches, worms, algae, and slimy moss made the water look like a puddle of green oatmeal.
Hathcock wrinkled his nose. The watery slime had a distinct odor that Hathcock associated with a neighbor’s outhouse near his grandmother’s home in Arkansas.
Carefully, he brushed the top layer of lumpy slime away until he saw the black water, clear and almost drinkable, in the small opening he had made. Extending his lips, he put his face down to it and took tiny sips.
“Pew!” Hathcock whispered softly. “It tastes exactly like it smells.”
“You done?”
“That’s all I can stand.”
“You keep watch while I get me a drink too. As thirsty as I am, I could drink piss.”
“I think that might taste better.”
“I’ll try this do-do flavored stuff for now. Here, hold my glasses.”
Mack lay over the pool and brushed the slime away to expose the water. He took several sucking gulps and raised his face, dripping wet. After pulling a long string of moss off his tongue, Mack looked at Hathcock and
