“Could be, Sir. You tell me.”
“You ever hear of Rio Blanco?”
Hathcock had. He constantly kept attuned to all the operations throughout southern and central I Corps, and he knew that Rio Blanco was big. But he liked to antagonize his captain.
“John Wayne movie. Right, Sir?”
“John Wayne my ass, Carlos. That was Rio Bravo, and you probably know more about Rio Blanco than I do.”
“Oh, no, Sir! I just heard the name, that’s all,” Hathcock said, trying to sound innocent.
Land rested his arms across the desk and cleared his throat, “Rio Blanco is a major operation that will clear out a wide valley over by Hill 263. The river Song Tro Khuc runs right through the middle of it, and word is that Charlie has a reinforced regiment, or larger, down there.
“Division is massing Bravo, Charlie, Delta, and Mike companies out of 7th Marines, plus two and a half batteries from 11th Marines—a MAU-sized outfit. They will link up with the ROK Marines’ Dragon Eye Regiment and the Lien Ket 70 Division from the ARVN. They aim to kick ass.”
Wilson, who had been sitting at the table with Land, looked at Hathcock and rolled his eyes. The sniper smiled and said nothing.
“Gunny Wilson and I have been putting together a roster of twelve snipers to take down there. The four we leave back here will check in with Top Reinke over at his hooch and operate with 1st Battalion, 26th Marines while we’re gone.”
Hathcock stood at the doorway, with a long expression on his face. He knew they wouldn’t leave him behind, but he needed to hear it.
“We leave at zero six, day after tomorrow,” Wilson said firmly. “You be sure the troops are up and packed, Sergeant Hathcock.”
“Aye, aye, Sir!” Hathcock said, saluting with his palm turned outward in crisp British fashion.
Two days later, when the sniper team arrived at the 7th Marines command post on the afternoon of November 20, the operation had already begun. A busy major greeted Land and told him that it made no difference to the command where he disbursed his snipers, as long as they remained north of the river.
“General Stiles* will be in and out of this command post, so you might do yourself a favor and establish your CP on one of these fingers just down the hill so you can be close, if something pops. The ITT and CIT folks are set up where they can overlook the operational area from their CP, and they have room for your guys, too. You might consider that.”
Land thanked the major and led his snipers down the hill to where he could see the counterintelligence Marines’ shaved heads shining in the afternoon sun. “That’s right, Major,” Land sarcastically thought to himself as he walked away from the command post, “put all the oddballs in one spot where you can keep an eye on ’em, and at the same time, keep ’em out of sight.”
“Gunny Wilson,” Land said aloud.
The gunnery sergeant jogged down to where Land walked. “Yes, Sir.”
“You, me, Hathcock, and Burke will stay up here. I’m fanning the other eight snipers out to the four companies down there on the operation. They’ll work in direct support of the companies. We can keep ourselves busy around the hill.”
Hathcock was walking on the heels of his captain, mouth shut and ears wide open. Already the wheels were turning. He liked this country. He had patrolled it from trucks as an MP and knew that as a sniper he could do some real good.
A skinny and weathered old fanner in his fifties, who looked a hundred, worked in a cane field below Hill 263. He kept his head down and swung his hand scythe through the tall stalks, cutting down the crop that he had planted a full growing season ago. The man did not want to appear out of the ordinary to the Vietnamese government troops who walked past him while he worked. Sweat trickled down his face, hidden beneath the large, round straw hat that he wore. The perspiration came not so much from heat or work, but from the fear that turned in the pit of his stomach.
Had the passing soldiers talked to him, they would have known at once that he had something to hide. He was such a frightened man.
During the days that Hathcock had patrolled the fields as an MP, riding atop a truck with a mounted .50-caliber machine gun in hand, this man had waved to the Marines as they drove past. He was a simple fanner whose life revolved around the large cane field and two flooded paddies in which he alternated growing rice and lotus. He measured his wealth by his family and by the one water buffalo that he shared with a neighbor, who in return shared with him a cask of rice wine.
The war had already taken his son, but his son’s widow and children remained with him. His wife had passed away in her sleep ten years ago. Now his daughter, her two children, and his son’s widow and her four children were the family who looked upon him as father, protector, and provider.
In that past summer of 1966, he did not speak of politics. It was a subject about which he knew little. He could neither read nor write, nor could anyone else in his family. They were farmers, not scholars.
There were those in his village who did speak of politics and war. They spoke of Ho Chi Minh and his dream of once again uniting Vietnam. But would a united Vietnam make his cane or rice or lotus grow? Would a united Vietnam return his dead son or his wife to him?
He worked in the three fields, planting and harvesting his lotus, sugarcane and rice. That was his life. He counted on nothing more.
During that summer, the Viet Cong came for rice and pigs and to lecture the villagers. The old man stood in the crowd and listened to them for a while and then walked away.
The Viet Cong commander noticed him leaving. That night the Viet Cong killed the old man’s water buffalo and threatened to kill his family and bum his house if he did not cooperate.
The Viet Cong left for him a Chinese-built K-44 rifle. It was covered with rust, and the stock was cracked from the top of the hand guard to the trigger housing. His bullets would do well to strike anywhere near a target at which he aimed, even if he had been a marksman. Each night, the Viet Cong left twenty rounds for him to shoot at the Americans who camped atop the hill. When the Viet Cong returned, they took the twenty empty brass shells.
At that darkest time of morning when the moon had set and the sun remained well below the horizon, he took the rusty rifle, with its broken stock and badly worn barrel, to the edge of his sugarcane field. There, he hid behind a dirt bank and rested the old gun over it. Aiming at the hilltop, he fired twenty shots, one after the other.
Cloaked by dawn’s black shadows, the old man collected the spent brass and hurried back to his hut, where he hid the rifle beneath straw mats and dropped the empty shells into a pot inside his tool shed. Once this chore was done, he walked to the fields and worked—hitching himself to a heavy wooden sledge, or plow, that he could pull only inches at a time through the deep mud. These were implements that his water buffalo had once drawn with ease.
On November 21, Captain Land sent out his eight snipers at 3:00 A.M. to rendezvous with the four rifle companies. He, Wilson, Hathcock, and Burke stayed on the hill.
Hathcock had pointed out to Land the fields that lay along the river and told how he used to watch for smoke rising from tunnels that the VC had dug beneath the dikes. Despite the fact that many of those same fields, which lay directly below the hill, were considered under control of friendly forces, the snipers knew this country was rich with Viet Cong.
Hathcock sat down on an ammo case.
“Skipper, what’s the plan of attack?”
“Gunny Wilson and Lance Corporal Burke will move down to the river’s edge. You and will spend the day scoping the world from on high. We’re gonna watch for smoke signals. We have to come home with a few scalps on our belts so we can stay in business. There are people at places like Quantico and Camp Pendleton who are trying to get snipers organized as a regular part of every infantry battalion in the Marine Corps. This is our chance to sell the program by showing that one man with a rifle can do as much damage as a company on patrol.”