“Good luck.”
Inch by inch, Wade and Max pulled their bodies forward, relying only on elbows and knees for locomotion as they had been trained. Every few feet, the men stopped and listened for sounds and movement.
Keeping his head low to the ground, Wade saw the heavy fog rolling in from the south. He thought to himself, You can’t see more than a foot in front of you. Even with a night scope the conditions are not ideal for a sniper. He hoped the sniper was dwelling on the same thought.
Twenty minutes passed, and the men advanced a few feet further. Branches and leaves were becoming wet from descending fog and mist. Their position wasn’t comfortable, but the moist leaves and wet ground ensured greater protection from discovery as they moved closer to the sniper with every pull.
After fifty feet of alternating crawls and stops, Wade heard something in front of him perhaps twenty yards away. The sound appeared to come from a thorny thicket to his left. His first thoughts were of a deer or one of the many animals which roamed the woods, often feeding at night, but he couldn’t be certain. He assumed Max heard the same noise.
Wade stopped his crawl and just listened. His senses, keen from so much time in the swamp, focused on a single point of sound. The soft sound pattern he heard was movement over wet leaves — which meant it wasn’t being made by an animal or something that crawled.
Wade changed the timing of his intermittent crawl-and-stop pattern to one with longer pauses in between. His mind raced, trying to identify the sound he heard for the second time. It sounded like the quiet steps of a boot exerting pressure against wet leaves. One slow step up, then a pause before the down step. After hearing the sound again, he was certain it wasn’t coming from a four-footed animal.
Wade wanted his next movement to be quieter than his last. He slowly collected wet leaves under his body, and then tested the padding with a gentle roll to his right. His roll made no sound at all. There was no new sound from his shooter, but Wade was two feet closer to the source. His immediate thought was, This shooter is well trained.
He could no longer continue to move in a straight line. More leaves and another quiet roll put his new position behind two large tree trunks at a different angle to the shooter. His change in direction might cause the shooter some confusion about Wade’s actual position. He was now comfortable with letting silence work its magic on the shooter’s mind.
Snipers usually position themselves for the best possible visibility, not sound. Wade stayed behind the large tree trunks. His low profile made a clean shot extremely difficult. To lessen his infrared signature, he covered himself with cold, wet leaves, hoping they would lower his body temperature and thus the chance of visual recognition.
Wade wanted the shooter’s recognition of him to be based solely on sound. He once again rolled twice to his right, stuffing more wet leaves over and under him to muffle his sound and signature. Wade crawled another two feet closer to the sound he’d last heard.
This time Wade broke his pattern by remaining still even longer. He hoped the silence would cause the shooter to think he was closer than he really was. With two people coming closer on both flanks, sooner or later the sniper would figure out his position might be compromised, and either fire or leave the area.
After two more rolls to the right and several short crawls forward, Wade heard nothing. He wondered, Are the two of us playing the same game? Wade could only hope Max was approaching in the same manner.
His stomach tightened as he felt the increasing stress of waiting. A flash back to the USS Prowfish came vividly to mind, with visions of the cramped, even claustrophobic submarine quarters. Remembering the strain of not knowing the location of the Soviet sub or who would fire first, he remembered how it felt to be so close to death, and sweat poured from his body.
Wade slowed his breathing, telling himself he had better control over his current situation. He had gotten as close as he could; the next move was in the sniper’s court. Wade froze himself in time. Seconds seemed like hours before he heard the crack of a twig. Another crack soon followed. The pattern of sounds became synchronized. The target was moving away from his position.
He lay still to confirm the sounds were footsteps. It could still be a trap if there was another shooter involved. Wade carefully raised his head a few inches to better position his ear. He noted the direction of the sounds and counted footsteps in order to estimate the distance and how rapidly it was being covered.
Wade had to be certain there was not a second shooter. He heard an unfamiliar sound to his left and wondered, Could that be Max? He didn’t want to give away his position until he was sure.
Wade signaled by making a bird call with his cupped hands. It was something he’d learned in childhood from hunting in the swamp. Max heard the call and recognized it was Wade. He replied with a simple, “Yo.”
Wade responded in a low quiet tone, “Forty feet to center slowly. Watch for second shooter.”
“Confirmed.”
The two men crouched behind two large spruce trees, just weary from their “pull.” Wade turned to Max. “The shooter went off in a westerly direction from my position. He had a good stride once he cleared those thickets. He was really hauling.”
“He was good. I think he sensed us but wasn’t sure of our positions.”
“We were lucky to have this dark overcast night.”
“You’d better believe we were lucky.”
“I think we should try to preserve some evidence here until we can report the incident. Let’s see if we can find his shooting position. There may be a spent cartridge or footprints. Get some twigs to use as markers.”
Wade began tearing his undershirt into marking strips. A few yards away, the men found the shooter’s lair. The area was surrounded by bushes strategically arranged for maximum cover and a stable platform. The floor of the clearing was trampled down to ensure steady footing. There was even a cleared escape path leading off to the south for his departure.
“He was here quite a while before he shot. That tells me he was waiting for us to return from our mission,” noted Max.
“I don’t see any spent cartridges. He may have removed his brass. There are some footprints leading out in that direction,” Wade said, pointing to several indentations. “Be careful where you walk — don’t destroy any footprint impressions.”
“There’s a wet area over there that has some good prints on the other side of the puddle. We should mark that.”
“I see it. I’ll tag it.”
The men followed the shooter’s escape path for thirty yards until it ended at the beginning of an open field. There was a thicket on the other side of the open field, but it was too dark to see much on the other side. Wade couldn’t see much past the mist that had settled over most of the field.
“We need to stop here. We don’t want to be exposed in that open field. He’s probably on the other side of that thicket, scoping us right now.”
The men continued marking evidence in the dark and returned to camp. Red Team was once again huddled in a second bivouac but without the benefit of a fire. They set up doubled watches around the perimeter. No one got much sleep the rest of that night.
Dawn came early with a hot rising sun and little sleep. The group had assembled around two large stones in the center of the clearing to discuss their next steps.
“We have another cache to capture, but I’m more concerned about what happened last night. The incident needs to be reported. Problem is, I’m not sure at this point who we can trust. We have to cross a dirt road about two klicks west before reaching the last cache. Just to be on the safe side, let’s move toward the last cache, staying out of sight until we get to the road. There might be a training monitor on the road.”