Marine Sniper

The men and organization that he loved had not forgotten him. Today they honored him at the school that he helped create and where much of his soul still remained.

The small boat rocked with the waves that broke across the shallows offshore from Virginia Beach. Hathcock had helped scatter the “shark chum”—mackerel and tuna heads and chicken blood. Now he sat with a thick fishing rod staked in a steel fixture and waited for its gigantic reel to sing. He had become an old hand at this now, after making several trips out to hunt these great and dangerous fish.

His face no longer looked ashen and pale; it was dark and beading a light coat of sweat. He was after another big and deadly shark that he would tail-rope alongside the boat, like The Old Man and the Sea. Nearly like being a sniper again.

Hathcock had learned the sport quickly and demonstrated his rapidly improving skills by landing a 277-pound lemon shark on one of his first outings—a shark tournament. He won second place with that fish he caught in four feet of water.

“You look good,” Steve said as he and Carlos sat rocking and bobbing in the red and silver hunting boat they named “Shark Buster.”

“I feel good,” Carlos said, tilting his eyes upward.

“I told you. I would either kill you or make you well,” McCarver said.

“I am getting better,” Hathcock said as he sat in the rocking and bobbing craft, his bush hat tilted back, and a soft breeze rustling the white feather tucked in his hatband. As he gazed at the sea-filled horizon, listening for the line to spool off the reel and sing to him, a broad smite beamed across his suntanned face. He felt alive again. Again in the arena.

End

About the Author

Charles Henderson is a veteran of more than twenty-three years in the United States Marine Corps, with a distinguished career spanning from Vietnam to the Gulf War, after which he retired as a Chief Warrant Officer. In addition to writing his own books and for various publications, he runs his family’s cattle enterprise in Peyton, Colorado. His first book was critically acclaimed military classic Marine Sniper, which first chronicled the exploits of U.S.M.C. sniper Carlos Hathcock. He is also the author of Marshalling the Faithful.