“Major, they’re not turning,” Hathcock said.
“Kill them,” the major responded.
The sniper placed his scope’s cross hairs on the first man and pressed the butterfly. The soldier splashed down dead in the muddy water.
“Good shot,” the major said. He took the binoculars from his eyes and leaned slightly to his right, spitting a load of tobacco juice to one side of the sandbagged nest.
The second man wheeled, almost falling, and broke to his right, still headed away from the sweep. Carlos Hathcock laid his scope’s cross hairs on the VC’s back and again mashed the machine-gun’s trigger. The second man tumbled into the water.
No one else broke out of the tree line during that day’s sweep. When it was over, the major walked back to the command post, located on the other side of the hill, for an appraisal of the day’s operation, and Hathcock waited and watched through the afternoon. He suspected mat once the dogs had called off their hunt, “Homer the Hamburger” might show himself. For Hathcock, the Viet Cong had only two families—the Hamburgers and the Hot Dogs. They were all named Homer.
Sure enough, just as he had expected, he spotted a figure slipping from the trees to the edge of a distant rice field. He knelt and put his face in the water, and when Carles put his scope on him, he could see a Chinese K-44 rifle slung across his back.
A lieutenant from a company that had participated in the sweep now sat next to the Marine sniper, staring through binoculars.
“You see him down there?” Hathcock asked the young officer.
The lieutenant shifted the binoculars toward the direction that the machine gun now pointed and found the Viet Cong soldier, still drinking. “I got him. How far you judge that to be?”
“Twenty-five hundred yards. He’s right on the spot where I zeroed this gun when I first got here.”
The lieutenant laughed, and Hathcock said, “Let’s see if I can’t rain all over his parade.” He took a firm grip on the gun’s two wooden handles, took a short breath, and began pressing the trigger, waiting for the recoil’s surprise.
The lieutenant watched. He felt strange because even at mis distance he could see the man’s face and his eyes. He had never looked at a man’s eyes just as a bullet killed him. The young officer jerked as die machine gun belched a single round down the hill. At that precise second, the enemy soldier started to rise and caught the bullet just below his chin.
The lieutenant saw the soldier kicking in the dirt and shouted, “You missed!”
In his Arkansas, low voice, Hathcock drawled, “He’s dead, sir. They just flop around a lot when you shoot ’em in the head.”
Hathcock never connected with a longer shot.
Later that day, he saw a Viet Cong soldier coming down a trail. On the same trail, an old woman was carrying water-filled buckets hung on the ends of a long pole, which she balanced across her shoulders like a yoke. She was teetering up the path when the Marine sniper’s bullet struck the dirt between the soldier’s legs and ricocheted over the woman’s bead. The frightened man charged right at her, and she attempted to set down her load. But, just as she began to squat, the soldier struck her head-on. The woman tumbled over backward into the dirt, spilling her buckets and losing her pole.
Hathcock had a chance at a second shot, but his laughter took charge of his aim. He continued chuckling as he dismantled the big machine gun. It was a satisfying end to his long watch atop the hill at Due Pho.
The weapons platoon retook possession of their M-2 .50-caliber machine gun that had served as Carlos Hathcock’s sniper weapon during his stay on the Due Pho hilltop.
Hathcock fastened the long Unertl scope back on his sniper rifle—a match-conditioned, .30-06 Springfield caliber, Model-70 Winchester anchored at the receiver with precisely torqued screws that held it in a glass-bedded, Monte Carlo-style stock, above which the finely tuned barrel floated, less man the width of a dollar bill, allowing the barrel to flex freely when he fired the rifle. He again zeroed the weapon for seven hundred yards.
With his NVA pack strapped snugly to his back and his rifle shouldered, Carlos Hathcock waited at the landing zone for the helicopter that would take him back to Hill 55, his base of operations. He liked Hill 55 because it overlooked miles of Viet Cong-controlled countryside—hot spots like Elephant Valley to the north and, to the south, Antenna Valley. East of Hill 55 were the friendly strongholds of Marble Mountain and Da Nang, but to the west lay the badlands known as Charlie Ridge and Happy Valley.
Hathcock felt glad to be getting back to his old hunting grounds. Charlie Roberts stood next to him and nudged him, “Looks like our frog.” He pointed toward the twin-rotor helicopter that had just cleared the horizon along the northwest coastline and now raced toward them, skimming the treetops.
Hathcock said nothing to Roberts. It was typical of their relationship. They had never gotten along, and Hathcock politely endured die staff sergeant whik suppressing his often felt frustration with the senior Marine. As they waited, Hathcock recalled the first day on Due Pho and how Roberts had stood atop the rocks surrounding the sniper position, admiring the breathtaking view, and drew a hail of enemy fire. A senior NCO in the battalion had yanked Roberts off the rocks just as the shooting began and then questioned the reliability of both the Marines. That insult had deeply wounded Hathcock’s pride. From that day forward, the rift between the two men grew. Hathcock did his thing, and Roberts did his-mostly watching.
Hathcock smiled and took off his bush hat, holding his white feather secure in the hatband with his thumb.
More than seven years before, on a warm spring day in 1959, Cartos Hathcock had stood in die Marine recruiter’s office in Little Rock, Arkansas, and watched his mother sign the papers giving him permission to join the Marine Corps. It was May 20—the day of his seventeenth birthday. He was fulfilling what for him was already an old dream.
That afternoon he got on a plane bound for San Diego, where he would have thirteen weeks at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in which to prove himself man enough to join the United State’s most elite society of warriors.
Carlos stood five feet ten inches tall and weighed one hundred forty pounds. Although slight in build, he could run all day and lift a load equal to bis weight over his head. He had developed mis strength after dropping out of high school at age fifteen and going to work for a Little Rock concrete contractor, shoveling cement ten hours a day, six days a week.
Boot camp wasn’t going to be any picnic, but Carlos had the physical stamina to withstand the long, punishing days and nights. As for the mental pressures, he would handle them with the strong self-discipline that he had developed at an early age when he was forced to shoulder the responsibilities of his family.
Hathcock arrived at MCRD San Diego sitting on a brown, plastic-covered seat inside a dull gray bus with “U.S. Navy” stenciled on its side. He and approximately thirty other reemits had ridden it from Lindbergh Field to the recruit depot. Several of die young men talked loudly and smoked cigarettes, although the chubby, blond-haired Marine private who drove the bus had warned them that that wasn’t the best way to start their military careers.
It was eleven o’clock of a warm, West Coast evening. The bus came to a halt, and a Marine sergeant wearing a tan uniform, with creases so sharp that they stood out a half inch from his chest, stepped briskly aboard.
The sergeant wore black, spit-shined shoes, which glistened like patent leather, and a brown, beaver-felt campaign hat with a wide, flat brim. Centered on the hat was a coal Mack Marine Corps emblem. The Marine walked directly to where one of the cockiest recruits was sitting.
During the ride from the airport, this loud-talking fellow boasted how tough his St. Louis gang had been. The young man wore his long and thick black hair heavily oiled and combed back in a ducktail. He sported a pack of Camels rolled in the sleeve of his black T-shirt. A smoking cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth.