“What about the sweep team?” Burke asked.
“We have to call operations and ask them to move up their timetable a couple of hours. We’ll leave the sweep team a real easy operation, once we’re done.”
By midnight, the NVA had made a fourth push toward the group of huts and each time lost men. Each time they turned back, the two Marines ceased fire-encouraging the retreat.
For three hours after midnight, neither side fired a shot. And, for three hours after midnight, a drizzle soaked Elephant Valley and the men who lay imprisoned behind the mud wall, as well as their captors. Other than the drip and patter of the light rain, only the sound of the Ca De Song’s rushing water and the intermittent popping of the illumination rounds overhead broke Elephant Valley’s silence.
Both snipers lay quiet, their rifles trained at the end of the dike now nearest to them. Nothing but stillness met their eyes as they monotonously watched the low mud wall through the night. “Burke,” Hathcock whispered.
“Yeah,” came his quiet reply.
“Let’s get ready for the big adios. It’s just past four o’clock and I’ll bet those shovel heads are sleeping. When we get to the other end, we’ll wake ’em up.”
Slowly and silently, the two Marines crept up the ridge and edged across the lower face of Dong Den.
Two hours later, they reached the ridge that overlooked the western end of the paddy dike. Hathcock slipped through the thick vines and brush like a snake, hardly making a sound as he pushed himself up to a place where the ground leveled off. Carefully he pulled a thick branch from one side and bench-rested his rifle across it, focusing his scope on the west end of the mud wall.
Above and to the right of Hathcock, Burke bellied himself behind a fallen tree where he sat cross-legged with his body following the contour formed by upward-turning roots mat jutted at a right angle from the fallen trunk. He took out his binoculars and began searching for movement along the low dike below him.
Hathcock looked at his watch and offered a thumbs-up sign to Burke. Burke smiled back, and taking the handset, he called the artillery battery, warning them to ready their guns for the fire mission.
Hathcock looked at the thick black clouds that hid the sunrise and allowed only dim gray light to usher a new day into Elephant Valley. He hoped that the clouds were high enough to allow helicopters to land the sweep team into the eastern end of the valley, near the tree line.
He pointed at the sky and shrugged at Burke.
Burke took the signal and radioed the sweep team, which now sat mustered in the landing zone south of Dong Den with their three CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters prepared for takeoff. He glanced back at Hathcock and put his thumb straight up.
Hathcock sighted down his scope, picking the corner of the west end of the low dike, and sent a round whining toward the river after it ricocheted at a right angle off the wall. Moving his scope along the dike, he found a tuft of black protruding from behind. One of the soldiers attempted to peek over the top and locate the snipers’ position. Hathcock took a short breath and held it, bringing his scope’s reticle on the black tuft. Slowly he tightened his grip around the small of the rifle stock and began squeezing the trigger.
Burke winced as Hathcock’s bullet struck the soldier’s skull, showering the young NVA troops who huddled beside him with blood, bone, and brains. The sudden bloody shower sent a dozen soldiers scurrying down the wall toward the eastern end, and Burke followed them with three shots from his M-14.
Hathcock shot once more and sent two soldiers dashing from the dike’s east end toward the distant huts. Both snipers concentrated their fire toward the middle section of the wall as more of the soldiers saw the escape unfolding and followed their brothers’ lead.
“Call the artillery, Burke.”
Burke called the fire mission, instructing the battery to fire for effect.
“Let’s go,” Hathcock said.
Both men moved quickly up the ridge and began their trek around Dong Den to their rendezvous with the patrol that would take them back to the fire base and their helicopter ride home.
The two Marines walked up Hill 55 toward the operations tent.
“You two look like shit!” the stocky intelligence chief called out to the pair. Between laughs he said, “The word’s out on you two—all the way up to General Walt. Pinning down those NVA like that. What were they, a Boy Scout troop?”
“Durn near, I suppose,” Hathcock responded. “Their big mistake was walking smack down the middle of that valley. I was going to watch the other side of the river where mat opening runs between the hills at the big turn. I had that all staked out to catch a patrol crossing there.
“When these hamburgers come marching down the middle of the valley—on my side—just like a Saint Patrick’s Day parade, I knew I had them. But one thing that I can’t figure out is why didn’t they move out at night. All they had to do was run out to the river and jump in. I couldn’t have gotten more than a dozen of them like that. They kept going for those huts that sit on the east end of the bend, you know, just out of the trees where that ridge runs down into the valley.
“I let that woik in my favor when we had to pull out. We called in the fire mission and dropped over the ridge. We never saw what happened, but I know plenty of artillery dusted them at those huts, if the rounds were on target.”
The gunny put his arm over Hathcock’s shoulder and said, “Come on in my house. We’ll debrief and I’ll tell you about that artillery mission.”
The three Marines sat down inside the tent. Hathcock took a cigarette from the gunny’s pack, which lay open on the field desk, and lit up.
“What about that artillery.”
The gunny chuckled and said, “You boys were real smart getting out before the HEs hit-all over that valley. You probably would have taken a few. When Lance Corporal Burke radioed for the fire mission and said ‘fire for effect,’ they did. Those cannon cockers opened every gun they had and hit every one of your on-call targets at both ends of the valley… and everything in between, too.
“By the time the shooting stopped and the sweep team got in there, that NVA company scattered over every mountain around that valley, and they may still be running. The sweep team picked up one prisoner. And nobody can make heads or tails of any kind of body count out there.”
“What did the prisoner have to say?” Hathcock asked.
“Well, that company was close to being a troop of Boy Scouts. They had just finished training in the north when their captain—whom you killed right out of the gate-marched them south to join up with an NVA battalion that was supposed to be waiting for them on the north side of Elephant Valley.
“We had pretty well ground that particular battalion down to nothing in the past two weeks—they needed these guys bad. But not bad enough to come down and face whatever it was that had them pinned. They figured you controlled the high ground on the south side, and they didn’t want to screw around with you guys. That NVA prisoner said that they had no idea what in hell they faced up on that hillside, but whatever it was, it was deadly.”
Hathcock took a final draw off the cigarette and crushed it into the brass ash tray that sat on the corner of the gunny’s desk. Exhaling a cloud of smoke, he smiled and then tucked his bush hat back on his head, stroking the white feather in its band.
The two Marines walked away from the buzzing command tent toward their hooches, where they would clean their gear, then themselves, and get some rest. Hathcock looked at Burke and rubbed his finger down the Marine’s cheek where sweat had washed white streaks through the light and dark green camouflage greasepaint that both snipers had caked on their skin. Hathcock shook his head and then lazily drawled, “Come on, Burke, let’s get cleaned up, your mascara has done run all over your face.”