Marine Sniper (7 page)

Now the young Communist soldiers realized that the war might rage for years. They were valiant enough, these young men, but they were new to combat. Their uniforms looked fresh, their turtle-shell-shaped helmets showed no dents or scars, and each man's Kalashnikov rifle looked as if it had just been unpacked.

They were a far cry from the typical National Liberation Army soldiers who had no uniforms other than khaki shirts and shorts, or black pajamas, and whose rifles were old and well worn. Men like these had often been in the jungle for years, and they waged war with whatever they could steal or capture, and with what little they could carry over the mountains from Laos.

These youngsters followed an officer who had only a little more experience than they did and who was assisted by a few subordinate officers and NCOs, who had seen some combat. Each officer and NCO carried a pistol-a symbol of authority-on his hip.

As the company route-stepped* along the rice fields, the commander kept his position at the lead. Behind him his senior NCO followed closely. The young officer who led the company planned to join his battalion in the jungles on the northern side of Elephant Valley, and rather than climb through the rough mountains at a crawl, he marched his men through the flat valleys at a rapid pace. This cut days off his trek, getting badly needed soldiers to his commander, whose battalion's numbers had been cut drastically by the search-and-destroy attacks that the growing American forces had launched against them.

Concealed in the thick jungle growth at the valley's edge, the two Marine snipers peered from behind a tree fall covered with broad-leafed vines, scanning the open fields through which the Ca De Song snaked. They rubbed light and dark green greasepaint on their faces, necks, ears, and hands. The whiteness of their eyes contrasted sharply with the mixture of green hues that surrounded them, like pearls laid in a mossy pool.

The white feather festooning the senior sniper's bush hat lay motionless in the still morning air. Soon dawn's first gray light began to reveal more and more of the wide and flat river valley to Carlos Hathcock's and John Brake's shifting and searching eyes. Both snipers felt knots tighten in the pit of their stomachs. As the early morning brightened, they could hear the muffled sounds of men on the march.

A thick fog hung just above the valley, hiding the upper reaches of the mountains that surrounded this place, offering the two snipers a field of fire that faded into grayness eight hundred yards from where they hid.

The distant sound of many voices became audible to the Marine duo. Hathcock searched for scouts who might be moving ahead of what be now concluded was a large unit that he knew could not be friendly. The brashness of their march puzzled him. Was it a ploy by an even larger organization to draw fire and expose an ambush to devastation by a hidden NVA battalion?

The snipers saw no scouts.

Hathcock tasted a mixture of salt and camouflage paint that dripped from above his upper lip into the crease of his mouth. He wrestled with a decision to shoot or wait, as dark silhouettes appeared through the fog directly before him in a lengthening column of inarch. The men were marching straight across the dried-out paddy fields that lay between the river and the hills and jungle beyond.

Hathcock glanced left at Burke who rested prone behind his M-14, aiming at the line of targets that grew in number with each passing second. In a whisper soft as the still air, he said, "Be ready to call for arty and move out quickly. I'm gonna shoot the one on the far right. Back me up on the left."

Burke confirmed receipt of the order with a slow, subtle nod and then trained his aim to the column's rear, waiting to follow the Winchester's report. His heart pounded against the mulch of decayed leaves beneath his chest. The Marine's coursing blood caused his front sight blade to rise and fall with the rhythm of his pulse.

Hathcock's heart pounded too, sending the rifle scope's cross hairs rising and falling over his target-the man who walked at the head of the column and wore a pistol. The sniper waited for his pulse to again settle. He had faced the same dilemma at Camp Perry, Ohio, when he won the Wimbledon Cup in 1965. This shot was not nearly as difficult as firing at a 20-inch V-ring from one thousand yards away.

As his concentration narrowed more and more on the accuracy of this first shot, the pitch of his sight's cross hairs grew less and less erratic until the steadiness of a national champion marksman held the scope's center point steadily on the NVA commander.

The surprise of die sniper rifle's discharge caused Burke to blink, and as he heard the sound of Hathcock's bolt ejecting the shell and sending a second into the Winchester's chamber, Burke fired at the suddenly frozen figure on the far left of the advancing column.

The NVA leader lay dead at the feet of his company. A seventeen-year-old recruit lay dead at the company's rear. A third shot cracked from the distant jungle, and another NVA soldier wearing a pistol reared back with a .30-caliber hole in his chest.

A short dike, approximately one hundred yards long, ran parallel with the column of soldiers. Other than the nearest tree line, nearly one thousand yards away on the base of the mountain slopes, nothing else offered cover to the company. They scrambled to the dike, and as they ran, Hathcock's and Burke's shots followed them, claiming soldiers with each report.

"We better move before they figure out what's going on," Hathcock whispered to Burke, expecting mis company to react as a seasoned one might.

"Right," Burke said-his first words in nearly a day.

"We're going over to the other side of this little finger we're sitting on," Hathcock told Burke. "They might buy the bluff that we are spread out along this ridge. We'll pick at 'em right and left. Keep your eyes and ears open. They could have friendlies closing on our flanks."

Hathcock moved first and took up a position fifty feet to the left of his previous firing point. Burke followed.

Behind the dike, an NCO raised his head above the mud wall. He tried to locate his enemy's position in the silence that now met his ears. Wondering if the attackers had gone, he slowly stood. Lifting his leg to step onto the dike, he suddenly bounded backward and crashed into the thick grass-his throat torn away from his collar bones. The fatal crack of another rifle shot echoed through Elephant Valley.

On the right and left ends of die dike, eight frightened soldiers leaped to their feet, set their rifles into action, and charged toward the mountain's tree-covered base and their enemy.

"Here they come," Burke spoke.

Hathcock answered with a shot that dropped one young soldier, and Burke replied with a crack that dropped another. Hathcock worked his rifle's bolt so rapidly that his fire kept pace with Burke's, whose bolt operated automatically.

After they had downed six men, die charge evaporated; the last two retreated toward the dike but were shot before they reached it. All the enemy fire was wild.

At that moment, one of the North Vietnamese officers scrambled to his feet and ran toward the river, which was five hundred yards behind the company. After he had gone fifty yards, he leaped into a flooded rice field. His cries echoed across the valley as he splashed and churned his way through the knee-deep bog. Just as he was about to disappear in the fog, a rifle shot cracked from the tree line, and he fell on his face with a .3Ocaliber boat-tailed bullet lodged in his spine.

The officer frantically struggled to raise his head above the rice paddy's slime, but the paralysis caused by his shattered spine made it impossible, and he sank beneath the muddy water.

Now none of the frightened soldiers moved, for they saw mat cowardice and valor purchased equal plots in the snipers' killing field.

The two snipers crept cautiously and silently around the broadly curving base of Dong Den mountain, hoping to expose the NVA's left flank. The three hundred-yard move took the pair more than two hours to complete. It offered only a slightly new angle of attack.

The sun climbed in the March sky, lifting and clearing away the morning's foggy shroud. It revealed a blue heaven scattered with white puffy clouds that towered above the mountains and grew ever higher on thermal currents, reflected from the earth's surface. By mid-afternoon, the towering cumuli changed to cumulonimbi with great anvil-shaped heads and broad, black bottoms that flashed lightning and rumbled thunder down the Ca De Song and through Elephant Valley.

Hathcock listened to the rumble of the approaching storm. He caught tine refreshing scent of rain, carried into the deep valley by a breeze that drifted down Dong Den's slopes. The first few drops of rain pattered on the broad leaves mat hid the two snipers. They continued to watch the short mud dike where the North Vietnamese soldiers awaited the night and the possibility of escape.

The afternoon wore on, and Burke lay back to rest while Hathcock continued to observe the dike. The enemy had remained still and quiet for more than seven hours. It was clear the snipers held the upper hand. With each passing hour, the Communist soldiers' situation became more desperate. They lay unshaded and baking in the midday heat. The sound of the river*s refreshing coolness teased them with its inaccessible nearness. Their water supply was being quickly consumed. They impatiently watched the thunder shower's black cloak sweep down Dong Den and wished that it would hurry toward them.

In the lush shade where Hathcock and Burke lay hidden, alternating shifts of observing and resting, the heat also rose, raising sweat on both men. Hathcock took a slow sip from his canteen, "Those guys have got to be miserable out there, cooking under that sun. It's way over ninety degrees right here. It's gotta to be close to a hundred out there."

"Think they'll make a move with this storm blowing in on us?"

"Not unless it gives them enough of a screen. They might make a run for it then. It would have to get pretty bad, though." Hathcock capped the canteen and looked down at the long line of the dike. "My guess is after dark, We'll let them try to slip out and then catch them with illumes-light up those hamburgers and rain all over them."

"Rain would feel good," Burke said, wiping sweat off his head. 'These few little drops just make you wish it would hurry up and turn loose."

"Think of what it's doing to them," Hathcock said.

On Hill 55, an assistant operations officer dropped a stack of yellow message slips on the intelligence chief's field desk. The gunnery sergeant took the stack and peeled through the first few until he saw Hathcock's sniper report.

"What's going on with Hathcock and Burke?" he asked the young lieutenant.

"They reported contact this morning and asked for illumination rounds on call through the night. They say they have a sizable NVA unit pinned behind a paddy dike in Elephant Valley. Division wants to wait and see what develops."

"What's Division going to do if the NVA decide to overrun Hathcock?"

"They have units ready to move by chopper. They can be in there in less than an hour. I think Division wants to see if the enemy goes in to pull their pork out of the fire, and then they'll hit 'em.

"You think those two can hold for an hour if they're stormed?"

"No. But I don't think they'll storm Hathcock. He probably has those gooners scared shitless."

Rain partially obscured the valley, but it did not provide the cover for which the pinned NVA soldiers had hoped. The two snipers lay in their leafy blind and watched heads pop above the dike and quickly drop back down.

"Those hamburgers are getting ready to move," Hathcock whispered to Burke. "Sun's going fast and I'd stake my stripes on them making a run for the trees or them hooches down the valley soon as it is dark. Just hope those cannon cockers give us the illumes when we need 'em."

Burke nodded and put his binoculars back up to his eyes. Hathcock lay behind his rifle and slowly moved his scope along the paddy dike, watching and waiting.

The afternoon showers faded and left the sky orange above the western mountains as the sun set behind them. Long shadows from the high peaks crossed Elephant Valley, and as darkness descended, the two snipers watched for movement emerging from behind the dike.

"I can't see a thing," Burke said, dropping the binoculars from his eyes.