“Come on, Carlos. There’s an afternoon supply helicopter that will go down there, and we can fly instead of ride. Think how sore you’re gonna be when you get there, riding in the back of that six—by all that way.”
“You think that they can give you a pair of glasses by noon?”
“I’m positive. In fact, I’ll call ahead and the doc over at the aid station can read them my prescription over the phone. I’ll be back by noon and we’ll be down there by the middle of the afternoon. I promise!”
“Okay, Mack. Plan B. I’ll wait here and get all our gear double-checked while you’re getting your glasses.”
Before Hathcock had gotten off his cot the following morning, Ron McAbee had already gone to the motor pool and drawn a jeep. He and three Marines, who volunteered to ride shotgun, raced the nearly thirty miles to the hospital at Da Nang. Mack would be back at LZ Baldy before noon.
Hathcock sat in the mess tent sipping coffee at 7:30 on the morning of September 16. Across from him sat his good friend Staff Sergeant Boone, a counterintelligence Marine. They talked about a patrol that would leave LZ Baldy at 8:30 A.M. and move toward the Que Son area, and Boone invited him to come.
Hathcock turned down Boone’s invitation, but after nearly thirty minutes of speculating on what the patrol might encounter, Hathcock began to think better of it. He was already tired of sitting around camp, doing nothing, waiting for McAbee to return. He looked at his watch and realized that he had four more hours to wait for his friend and then two hours to wait for the helicopter.
Boone was halfway out the door when Hathcock shouted to him, “Boone, I’m going. Let me go get Perry and I’ll meet you at your hooch.”
“Perry!” Hathcock shouted as he pulled open the screen door on the sniper platoon’s command hooch.
The junior Marine sat straight up, wide eyed and startled, “What’s happening? Something happen?”
“Where’s your gear?” Hathcock said, slinging two rifles over his shoulder and strapping down his pack.
“In my hooch. Why? What—?”
“Grab your gear. Meet me back here in ten minutes. Better yet, meet me over at the CIT hooch. We’re going on a special patrol.”
Ten minutes later, Perry stood next to Hathcock watching a line of five amtracs* parked with their motors running, waiting for the “all aboard” signal to move out.
“If somebody is gonna take a hit, we need to be where we can help fast. So I guess we ought to get on the middle tractor.
“Hold my rifle while I climb on top. I’ll pull up the gear and then you can climb up,” Carlos told the London, Ohio, native as the two Marines walked to the third amtrac.
In a minute, both snipers sat with six other Marines. One of them was a first lieutenant who had just arrived in Vietnam. This was his first mission.
“Staff Sergeant Carlos Hathcock,” Hathcock said, extending his hand to the officer who seemed more friendly than most.
“Lieutenant Ed Hyland,” the Marine said, shaking Hathcock’s hand.
“This is my partner, Corporal John Perry,” Hathcock told the officer.
“You’re snipers?”
“Yes, Sir. I’m the sniper platoon sergeant, and Perry, here, is one of our ace trigger pullers.”
“What’s with that white feather in your hat? I thought that snipers were masters of camouflage. Isn’t that kind of a giveaway?”
“Yes, Sir. I wear it anyway. It’s been my trademark ever since 1966. I’ve got ninety-three confirmed kills and I don’t know how many thousands of hours of trigger time, and I’ve only taken it off my hat once. That was when I snuck into an NVA general’s compound and zapped him.”
Perry, taken by the opportunity to brag about his leader, said, “Staff Sergeant Hathcock has the biggest bounty on his head in Vietnam. It’s more than ten-thousand dollars!”
The lieutenant blinked and Hathcock smiled, “I don’t really know how much it is. It’s three years pay, whatever that might be.
“This is my second tour. The NVA published a wanted poster on me in 1966, and then last month I got word that they put it out on me again. I haven’t seen this new one. I suppose it’s still the same. However, now I do know what they call me.”
“What’s that?” Hyland asked.
“Long Tra’ng and then something after that, but mainly Long Tra’ng.”
“White Feather,” the officer said, translating the Vietnamese language.
“You speak Vietnamese?”
“I understand some of it. I guess they’d call you Long Tra’ng du K’ich.”
“That’s it.”
“White Feather Sniper,” the officer said with a smile.
The amtrac lurched forward and began rumbling down the roadway. Hathcock looked back through the dusty air toward LZ Baldy and thought of his friend. It would be all right. Mack would understand. But he still felt a pinch of guilt as he turned his eyes toward the fields and trees and huts and all the other places where Charlie might be hiding.
The noise of the convoy was so loud that further attempts at conversation ceased. The Marines sat on top of the vehicles, rifles poised, magazines inserted, looking out with caution at a seemingly tranquil world.
Ahead of the column, a mine sweep team carefully cleared the way, giving Hathcock a sense of security. Not perfect security, however. He only felt that when he was on his feet, in his element, stalking the enemy. In the bush he made his own luck. Here, his luck rested squarely in the hands of fate and the amtrac driver.
The amtrac came to a jolting halt, bouncing low on its tanklike treads, causing its three antennae to whip and snap through the air. Hathcock looked back at Corporal Perry and at Lieutenant Hyland who sat next to him.
“I think we’re going to follow that trail off to the left,” the officer shouted, pointing at some tracks left days earlier by a similar patrol.
Carlos didn’t like it. He thought of the hand grenades tied in a daisy chain along the cane field.
One after another, the heavy, armored transports crept off the highway, and as the number three amtrac creeped along the gravel shoulder, starting its turn, Hathcock’s entire world disappeared in a booming, ringing, earth-shattering explosion.
Fifty startled Marines scrambled for cover as gunfire erupted from the nearby trees. They saw a forty-foot high column of fire rise from the amtrac on which Hathcock and the seven other Marines had ridden. It filled the air with an acrid pall of billowy, black smoke.
Beneath that smoke, between the flames, Hathcock opened his eyes and saw nothing but blackness and fire. Something heavy pinned his legs. He felt the hair on his neck, his eyebrows, and the top of his head singe and curl. Panic suddenly flashed through his mind and sent his heart pounding—“I’m gonna die!” He had to run. He had to get away.
Hathcock reached for the dead weight that pinned his legs and saw that it was the body of the lieutenant who had spoken to him only seconds earlier. He was already on fire.
“Save him! Got to save him!” Hathcock suddenly thought. And without thinking of his own life, he took the young officer by his flaming clothes and hurled him off the side of the burning vehicle. As he looked at the tangled bodies of the other Marines, who had been whole and well only a second ago, he saw their slow, groggy motion among the flames and instinctively began hurling them off too.
He didn’t notice when he threw Corporal Perry clear of the inferno. All the Marines were equally important to him—brother Marines who would otherwise die. He grabbed them randomly and tossed. Privates First Class Roberto Barrera, Lawrence Head, Keith Spencer, and Thurman Trussell, and Lance Corporal Earl Thibodeaux.
He himself was on fire. His trousers were burning, his chest and arms and neck were burning. And as another explosion rumbled beneath his feet and fire belched skyward through the torn and bent hulk that seconds ago was an amtrac, Hathcock blindly jumped through the wall of flames. He had no idea what awaited him on the other side of that fiery curtain.