“We’re going out tomorrow,” the captain said, taking a healthy swallow from one of the dripping beer cans.”
“Sir, does that ‘we’ include me?” Hathcock asked hopefully.
“Yes it does, Sergeant Hathcock.”
When the sun rose, Hathcock and Captain Land already rested beneath the leaves of a short palm in a grassy hide that overlooked a clearing fifty yards wide that the Marines often used as a landing zone. Beyond the clearing grew short bushes and plants with broad, flat leaves. Farther on, a tree line followed the edge of a narrow stream. The water ran along the base of a hill that a barrage of napalm and heavy explosives had left bare except for splintered trees bristling up like the pins in a pincushion. A faint trail led across the front of the two snipers’ hiding place, made a left turn in the clearing, and etched its way between the bushes and plants, through the shattered timber and onto the top of the hill, where it connected with a road.
This junction was the focal point of the two Marines’ interests. Here they watched for the enemy to emerge, crossing one of the openings below this denuded hill, on the way to ambush American forces. And here they hoped they might also get a glimpse of the woman torturer who led the Viet Cong snipers thereabouts. This hill was two to three miles west of their base on Hill 55.
Hathcock shivered slightly from the coolness of the morning’s heavy dew, which soaked through the front of his uniform.
While Hathcock and Land lay behind their leafy blind, a lone Vietnamese sniper stepped carefully along the edge of the stream. The man wore a black shirt and pants with the legs rolled up past his knees, and he was undoubtedly heading back to his unit’s underground headquarters beyond the bomb-scarred hill. He stepped slowly and paused, sniffing the air for cigarette smoke and listening for any unnatural sound.
“Hathcock,” Land whispered. “You take the scope for a while. I’ll give you a break off the rifle.”
“Five more minutes, Sir. I got a feeling that Charlie is gonna step out any second.”
“You’ll have that feeling all day until you get a shot out. And when he shows himself, you’ll say, ’See, I told you so.’ Carlos, you’re not psychic. Let me take the rifle for a while.”
“Sirrrr,” Hathcock whispered, “Just five more minutes.”
Land said nothing but put his eye back to the rear optic of the M-49 scope through which he scanned the clearing and the lane that led to the hilltop.
“Hathcock. Give me the rifle,” the captain said after waiting fifteen minutes more. “I’m tired of looking through this scope. I need the relief, if you don’t.”
“Yes, Sir. I’m sorry,” Hathcock said softly, taking the rifle from his shoulder and slowly passing it to Land.
Just as the captain grasped hold of the weapon, and before Hathcock had released his grip from the small of the stock, both men saw a lone dark figure creep from the trees along the stream and step into the open, two hundred yards away. It was easy to recognize this soldier’s specialty by the long wooden stock of the bolt-action rifle that he carried across his back—obviously a sniper.
“Give me the rifle, Hathcock,” Land said, pulling the weapon toward himself, trying to loosen Hathcock’s grip.
“I’ll get him, Sir. Turn loose.”
“No, Carlos. I’ll shoot him.”
Hathcock pulled hard on the rifle, forcing Land to grunt, as he fought to win what had now become a tug-of-war. And rapidly the struggle between the two men escalated into a full-blown wrestling match.
“God damn it, Carlos. Let go of the rifle.”
Hathcock let go. Land shoved the bun into his shoulder and put his eye to the scope in time to see the fleeing enemy sprint into the tree line and disappear, before the captain could get a shot away.
“Shit!” Land said, looking at Hathcock, who was futilely trying to resist laughing. The captain began smiling too. “You dumb ass. He got away. Now we gotta pick up and move. He’ll be back with help.”
Carlos blinked and a curious expression came over his face, “Captain Land, what if we sat tight? We got our six o’clock covered by that patrol that dropped us off. If that gook wants to come back with his friends, who’s to say we can’t shoot ourselves a bunch of them. And, what if he brought back his boss. You know who she is.”
“Get on the radio, Carlos,” the captain said firmly. “Tell that patrol to close up on our rear and sit tight, and be ready for anything. In the meantime, I think we’d be better off at the other end of this clearing. We can set up in those low bushes on mat rise along the edge. They might come back with mortars or rockets, and I don’t want to be hanging out where old Nguyen saw us last.
“You’re right about that woman. She’s gotta believe there are a couple of bozos out here, after that little show of mature professionalism that we put on. She just might come out here lookin’ to capture herself a couple of easy pigeons.”
The two snipers cautiously crawled along the edge of the clearing, through the short palms and on to the upper reaches, where a thick stand of grass and elephant ears covered their movement. A slight rise in the earth made an ideal bench-rest for their rifles. They adjusted the camouflage around their position and settled into their new hide.
By noon, nothing had crossed their line of sight. The patrol that lay hidden far to their rear along a low ridge remained silent, too.
When the Viet Cong sniper reached the network of tunnels and underground chambers that housed his unit’s headquarters, his commander—the woman who hunted Marines at Hill 55—met him at the door. He told her of the two enemy soldiers whom he saw fighting at the edge of the clearing and urged her to hurry back and get them. The woman was hesitant. Where there were two Marines, there could be many more. She had planned an ambush for that evening and to reach the place where it would be set up, she would need to go over or around the hill in front of which the two Marines had shown themselves. After some thought, she decided not to cancel the evening’s ambush. She would decide whether they would go over or around the hill when they reached it.
Gnats and other flying, biting insects swarmed in the shade beneath the low plants and palms as the sun heated the humid afternoon. The air hung still in a hot house doldrums that left the two Marines stewing beneath the foliage, helplessly suffering from the bites of the hungry bugs that swarmed over them. Sweat seeped into Hathcock s eyes and dripped from the tip of his nose, while an army of tiny pests crawled around his neck, inside his ears, and on his eyelids and nostrils. Hathcock remembered hearing that the Japanese in World War II had a word for days like this—it translated as “buggy-hot.” He lay motionless. Any sudden motion could draw attention from an unseen enemy.
“Sir,” Hathcock whispered to his captain, who lay next to him suffering similarly. “You okay?”
“No,” came the captain’s sharply whispered retort. “I’ve just about had it. We don’t pick up a sign by sixteen-hundred and we’re gone.”
Hathcock didn’t want to complain, but the bugs were getting to him, too. He felt certain that an army of black ants had found then—way into his trouser leg and now waged battle on his loins. The reassuring comment from the captain made their stinging more tolerable.
Just then, Hathcock saw a sudden motion among the broken tree trunks at the crest of the hill. “Skipper. Look. Just at the top.”
The captain shifted his spotting scope slightly to his left and immediately saw the black-clad man, crawling on his knees through the maze of dead wood with an AK-47 in his hand.
“Don’t shoot, Carlos. He ain’t alone.”
“Sir”
“Look at the rifle. If he was a sniper, he would be carrying a long stick, not an assault rifle. Bet you money that he’s a scout.”