of a second village two miles to the south. This village was also considerably smaller than the map and briefing had indicated, and in the end Dean concluded that the information, like so much intelligence they were given, was simply wrong.
So they went ahead and set up an ambush. There were at least four different paths from the village into the valley, but the sharp cliffs on the east side of the valley meant there were only two passes across, and both lay within a half mile of each other. The snipers had their choice of three positions to fire from, all between five and six hundred yards. They settled on a good spot in the middle, not because of the range — even the M14 could handle that distance — but because a fifty-foot sheer drop made a surprise attack from the rear unlikely.
Twenty-four hours passed without them spotting anyone.
While their position was shaded, the heat kept increasing and both men stripped to their skivvies to try to keep cool.
Conserving water was difficult in the heat. It was the dry season, and a particularly parched stretch at that; moisture of any kind was hard to find. From about dusk to midnight — the time they figured Phuc Dinh was most likely to be traveling — they both stood watch. During the other twenty hours or so they took turns resting — it wasn’t sleep really, more a fitful sitting in a nook of the rocks.
By the fourth day, they were both down to their final canteen of water. Refilling the others was not a problem — they’d spotted a shallow spring-fed brook about a mile away on the way in — but it was, of course, dangerous, since only one person could go and there was no way the other could cover him while watching the trail.
Dean, as second man on the team, should have been the one to go. But Longbow overruled him.
“I need to stretch my legs,” he told Dean, taking the M14.
“Don’t break my gun.”
Some men believed it was bad luck and worse to let anyone else touch your gun. Longbow didn’t; Dean had fired his rifle before.
Still, Dean did think about it as he watched his companion climb up and then down the hill. There didn’t figure to be any action while Longbow was gone, though. It was still daytime.
Dean made sure he had the bolt rifle sighted properly, then picked up the binoculars and resumed watching the trail. He stared through the glasses for more than a half hour without blinking. He could see a lot more with the binoculars than he could with his sniper’s scope, but he was always conscious that they, too, were limited. The world the binoculars showed was carved into precise circles, and the real world was not.
About an hour after Longbow left, a cone-shaped hat poked over the hill in the distance. Within a few seconds it was joined by a second, then a third and a fourth. Four men were moving across the trail toward Dean. They weren’t “ordinary” villagers, either — all carried AK-47s.
Dean scanned them carefully. Phuc Dinh was not among them. Dean let them pass.
Not more than five minutes later, another villager appeared. It was Phuc Dinh.
Dean knew it was. He saw Phuc Dinh’s face, and the scar.
And he was moving quickly, confidently. Probably the four men who had passed first were a security team, making sure the path was clear.
Phuc Dinh had a pistol in his belt but no other weapon.
Dean stared through the scope of the bolt rifle, steadying his breathing. Phuc Dinh’s head moved toward the crosshairs.
The wind was 3 miles an hour.
Just as Dean’s finger started to pressure the trigger, shots rang out up the trail behind him. The shots were from an AK-47—years later, Dean would still remember the distinctive stutter the 7.62mm bullets made as they left the barrel, the sound partly echoing against the rocks, partly muffled by the jungle.
There was no way that the shots could have warned Phuc Dinh in time. Dean was already pressing the trigger. And yet for some reason Phuc Dinh had already begun to dive away.
Maybe Dean rushed the shot. Maybe the wind kicked up incredibly. Maybe the fact that the weapon wasn’t his — even though he’d fired it before — messed him up. Maybe Phuc Dinh had seen a flash of light from Dean’s scope, or realized he was vulnerable, or just had an itch to move. Maybe this was just the one time out of ten thousand that a sniper missed a shot.
In any event, Dean’s shot went wide left, hitting Phuc Dinh’s arm rather than his chest as he fell or threw himself off the side of the trail.
Dean immediately corrected and took another shot. He struck the only part of Phuc Dinh that was exposed, his right leg. As that shot hit home, Phuc Dinh bounced farther down, completely out of Dean’s view.
In the meantime, the automatic-weapons fire behind Dean continued. The gunfire wasn’t meant as a warning, and it wasn’t being fired at Dean. The men had obviously come across Longbow.
Dean ignored the other gunfire. His job was to take out Phuc Dinh. Only when that was done could Dean help his friend. Dean climbed up out of his “hide” or sniper’s nest and began circling to the west across the ridge for a shot. He had to go about ten yards before he could see into the spot where Phuc Dinh had dropped.
He wasn’t there.
Dean took a long, slow breath. The important thing, he told himself, was not to make a mistake. He knew he’d gotten Phuc Dinh in the leg and, while that wasn’t fatal, it would slow him considerably. Most likely he’d moved back down the trail into the jungle. All Dean had to do was track him.
As Dean started down the rocks, he heard the gunfire in the distance intensify.
There was no question that he had to stay with his target until he was dead. Longbow would have done the same. The fact that the Vietnamese were firing so many shots was a good thing; it meant that they probably didn’t have a real target, and they were giving their positions away besides.
And yet Dean did feel a tug as he moved down the hill-side, low to the ground, snaking toward the edge of the jungle, hunting his prey.
It couldn’t have taken Dean more than five minutes to get to a spot in the trail that he calculated would have been far enough behind Phuc Dinh that he could cut him off. But after Dean reached it, he spotted a few drops of blood, making it clear that the target had already slipped by.
Dean began to follow the trail, aware that he might be the hunted rather than the hunter. After about two hundred yards, he realized he wasn’t seeing the blood anymore. He stopped, listening, but heard nothing. He moved into the brush and began paralleling the trail.
By now the sun was almost directly overhead, and while the trees provided shade, the heat steamed through him. He was thirsty. Dean told himself that Phuc Dinh had to be tiring as well and that, wounded, he’d be slower and less careful.
Dean pushed on. He stopped every few yards, listening. Finally he heard a sound — brush moving — and he froze.
At first, Dean wasn’t exactly sure where the sound came from. Then he heard something else, which helped him locate it thirty feet to his left. He snaked through the vegetation, moving toward the sound as quietly as he could.
The thick leaves were more effective than a smoke screen. Men could pass within a few feet of each other and not be seen. Hearing was more important, though the jungle filtered that as well, mixing in the sounds of animals and the natural rustle of the wind as a screen.
Finally, Dean spotted something that didn’t look like vegetation about ten yards away. He wasn’t sure if it was a man, let alone whether it was Phuc Dinh.
Dean moved forward so slowly it was as if he were only leaning in that direction. The gun was at his hip, ready to fire. The gray shape became the side of a chest. Something above it moved.
Eyes.
Dean fired.
The bullet punched a quarter-sized hole through Phuc Dinh’s chest. In the sparse second it took Dean to chamber another bullet, life had ebbed from the VC commander; he fell straight back, collapsing against the trunk of a tree.
Dean’s heart beat three times before he reached the body.
A pistol lay next to Phuc Dinh; his mouth gaped open. There was no question he was dead.
Dean, like all scout snipers at the time, carried a small Instamatic camera to record kills. He pulled it from his belt pouch and took two pictures. Then he took the VC officer’s pistol, slid it into his waistband, and went to find out
