“Reckon he belongs to that woman?”
“Odds look promising. We’re in the middle of her stomping grounds.”
“I keep thinking how good a whole lot of folks would feel if we nailed her. After that night back at Hill 55, I haven’t been able to get the idea of her out of my head.”
“Don’t go gettin’ your hopes up. It’s likely we won’t get a clear shot at her, even if we see her. And, don’t forget, she hit An Hoa last night, and that is way over the other side of Hill 55 from where we are now. She could just as likely be laying back mere now, looking to catch herself another young boy to skin.”
“I know. Still, it don’t hurt none, wishin’.”
“While you’re wishin’, just keep your sights on old Nguyen Schwartz out there a snoopin’ and a poopin’.”
Land had guessed correctly, die Viet Cong soldier was a scout. He had left the tunnels two hours ahead of his patrol in order to disclose any enemy ambushes on, or around, the hill. If the hill was clear, he would wait just below die crest and signal his comrades to approach.
The little man spent more than an hour crawling on his knees and elbows through the heavy fall of splintered tree trunks that lay criss-crossed and tangled, like a heap of gigantic pick-up sticks.
“He’s definitely scouting,” Land concluded in a soft whisper to Hathcock. “Probably looking for us. Let him look.”
The black-clad man moved back to the hill’s crest and disappeared on the other side.
“Sir,” Hathcock said. “We either let another one get away, or we’ve got ourselves a whole stringer full of fish fixing to strike the bait.”
“He’ll be back,” Land said.
Hathcock looked at his watch. It was nearly 5:30 P.M., an hour and a half beyond the time they had planned to leave this blind. He wondered how long his captain would persist in the wait. He only hoped he wouldn’t give it up prematurely.
The November sun now stood just above the mountaintops that rose along the western horizon. It had turned from bright white to yellow and now deepened to a burning orange ball. Long shadows stretched below the trees.
“We’re losing our light, Carlos,” the captain said. “It’s time w£ pulled in our lines.”
“Sir, ten more minutes. I got this feeling that any second…”
“Carlos,” the captain said, but the sight of a dim silhouette emerging at the hilltop stopped him. “The hilltop. Something’s coming.”
Hathcock looked through his scope and saw the outline of several figures emerging over the hill’s crest. “I can’t tell, Sir.”
“I can, Carlos,” Land said, looking through the more powerful spotting scope. “They’re VC. Check out the one that just squatted off to the left, just below the rise from the others.”
“It’s a woman! She’s pulling at her britches leg.”
“She’s taking a piss, Carlos.”
“Is that her? Is that the Apacne?”
“It’s her,” the captain said, now certain from his recollection of the photos and sketches that an intelligence officer at the division command post had shown him. “Carlos, hand me that radio handset. I think that our best chance of hitting them is with artillery. Read me the coordinates off your map.”
The answer to their radio call came quickly. The first shell exploded directly at the junction of the trail and the road, killing three of the seven Viet Cong there. Two ran down the trail away from where Hathcock and Land lay hidden. The woman, who was still squatting when the first shell exploded, fell on her face. Two shells exploded behind the first, and a VC soldier ran down the trail, toward the two Marines. The sound of more incoming artillery sent him leaping for shelter among a jam of logs.
The woman scrambled to her feet and, in sudden panic, ran down the trail, and down the hill, directly toward the two snipers hiding in the low palms and grass. She remembered how trouble always seemed to plague her on this hill. It was where her unit had had its headquarters before the bombers had laid it flat. She was running hard in panic, her heart pounding, and tears streaming from her eyes.
Hathcock tightened his grip around the stock of his Winchester rifle and centered the scope’s reticle on the woman’s chest. “Hold it. Don’t rush the shot,” he reminded himself. “Keep the cross hairs centered. Wait. Wait. Get her at the turn.”
Higher up the hill, the soldier who took cover jumped from the logs and began to sprint down the trail, trying to catch his leader. He realized that she ran, not away from the danger, but straight toward it. This was where he had seen the two Marines wrestling, near the turn in the trail that his commander now approached.
He screamed for the woman to stop, but she kept running. Her temples throbbed with blood, and the shouts of her comrade seemed muffled and unintelligible, as though they came from a drowning man, pleading with his last breath beneath the water’s surface.
She looked back and, as she did so, Carlos, coming to his natural respiratory pause, let his finger complete the roll of the rifle’s trigger. The recoil sent the Unertl scope sliding forward in its mounts as the bullet cracked across the open land, crossed the narrow stream, and shattered the woman’s collarbones and spine, sending blood and gristle spraying over the low, green ferns that lined either side of the trail.
The Marine sniper pulled the scope back to the rear position, cycled his bolt and centered his sights on the woman’s body heaped in the center of the trail. The next bullet ripped through her shoulder and into both lungs, scrambling vital organs to a pulp.
The man who followed her reeled on his toes when the first shot blew the woman off her feet a few yards ahead of him. In leaping steps, he sprinted back up the hill. A single shot that Carios aimed squarely between the man’s shoulders killed him instantly.
An enormous smiled passed across Hathcock’s face. Land threw his arms around his sergeant’s shoulders and shook him hard, “You got her, Carlos! You did it!”
Hathcock laughed in jubilation and then, suddenly, he pounded his fist angrily on the hard-packed earth, and said, “Ya, we did it. We got that dirty bitch. She ain’t gonna torture nobody no more!”
10. Rio Blanco and the Frenchman
AT THE NVA compound far to the west of Hill 55, the squat, stockily built old commander rose early. He had not slept well. The forces that he commanded had not enjoyed the success that he had anticipated, and the tension this caused gave him a grizzly’s disposition.
Today he hoped for good news.
When the old man walked into his office and sat behind a table covered with papers, a soldier stepped through his door carrying a leather pouch containing intelligence reports and dispatches from the regiments under his command. As the soldier left, an officer came to attention before the general and informed him that the commander of the guerrillas who had so successfully harassed the enemy near Da Nang had been killed, with four of her men, by snipers. The same snipers about whom she voiced concern a month before.
Her death was a sharp loss. Guerrillas of the National Liberation Army were now reluctant to go on patrol in the country where they encountered these snipers, one of whom was gaining recognition for the white feather he wore in his hat, as well as for his marksmanship.
This woman, who had begun as a Lao Dong party worker in the north, meant much to the old warrior. He had the determination, and he believed he had the means, to see to it that her assassins did not go unpunished.
Far to the east of where the NVA commander sat brooding, Hathcock walked briskly into the sniper school’s command hut.
“Sir,” he said, “me and Burke, we want to go back out.”
“Funny you should come waltzing up here so chipper,” Land said. “You get wind of something?”