Silent Warrior Read online

  Contents

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  1 Semper Fidelis

  2 Newbee in Chu Lai

  3 Welcome to Da Nang

  4 The Frenchman

  5 The Riviera

  6 Farewell, Jacques

  7 Spook Central

  8 Hunting White Feather

  9 Eluding Charlie

  10 Getting Short

  11 Home and Back

  12 The Valor of Corporal

  13 Déjá Vu, All Over Again

  14 Dance with the Devil

  15 Holding On and Letting Go

  16 Marine Sniper

  17 Shark Bait and the Mustard King

  18 Honors

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  SILENT WARRIOR

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2000 by Charles Henderson

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

  http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0434-4

  A BERKLEY BOOK®

  Berkley Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: June, 2003

  FOR

  ELLY LAND,

  A CARING MOTHER TO

  ALL MARINE CORPS MARKSMEN

  AND MARINE CORPS MARKSMANSHIP

  COMPETITORS . . .

  SHE KEEPS US IN TOUCH.

  Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to the battle will arrive exhausted.

  Therefore, the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy’s will to be imposed on him.

  Hence, that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.

  O divine art of subtlety and secrecy!

  Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy’s fate in our hands.

  —SUN TZU WU, THE ART OF WAR

  (WRITTEN 512, B.C.–496, B.C.)

  Preface

  CERTAINLY, NO ONE can know what is in the mind of a dying man who is unable to communicate with or even recognize the people around his bed. For this reason, I extend my apology to Carlos Hathcock’s family, friends, and my readers for the liberty I have taken in that regard. I believe that I knew Carlos well enough to realize what he might have been thinking as he passed his final hours. I honestly believe his wife, Jo, and his son, Carlos III, his family and his love for them, was what dominated his final thoughts. I seriously doubt that his Vietnam experience was something he wanted to spend his last night reliving.

  With his family, I believe that he recalled the good days he spent competing with his rifle. The good days he spent shark fishing with his friend Steve McCarver. I also believe that he thought about his many friends in law enforcement, and how much he loved his Marine Corps family and being a Marine.

  I used Carlos’s dream state as a tool to tell his story in this book. My dilemma was how to cover events that occurred during the same period as my book Marine Sniper. How could I write Silent Warrior as a companion book to Marine Sniper, yet have it stand alone on its own merit? Thus, I imagined it is possible that he could have recalled these events, though unlikely, simply as a means of tying additional stories about Carlos’s Vietnam experience with events that transpired after the publication of Marine Sniper.

  I drew the events that occurred prior to 1985—told in Silent Warrior—from my research documents, notes, and tape recordings of interviews that I used to write Marine Sniper. More than 300 pages were cut by the publisher simply to reduce Marine Sniper’s length for marketing purposes. Obviously, they had no idea that Marine Sniper would become a classic among books of military themes. However, what was disturbing for me then has become a blessing now. Silent Warrior has not only provided the opportunity to tell these stories cut from Marine Sniper, but also to follow the rest of Carlos Hathcock’s life. Much of what occurred after the publication of Marine Sniper I collected from my own personal experiences with Carlos, and from newspaper articles and other documents. Jim and Elly Land are greatly responsible for providing this documentation, and to them goes a great deal of credit.

  Additionally, I was able to add in greater dimension the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese viewpoint from interviews I conducted in Vietnam in 1994. During my travels there, I spent many hours hearing former Viet Cong and North Vietnamese veterans describe their combat experiences. Most significantly, I had the good fortune on two occasions to sit down privately with General Tran Van Tra, Commander in Chief of the Viet Cong, and hear his perspectives of the war.

  I believe that it is important that we tell more of Carlos Hathcock’s story because he was one of the greatest Americans to ever wear a military uniform. I consider him great because he sets an ideal for everyone, especially for those young people who enter military service today and in the future. Carlos did get in trouble, broke the rules, as did most of us Marines. That makes him human. But the important lessons he demonstrates are his priorities, putting others ahead of himself, his honor and his devotion to his country, and his friends and his family. His family also includes everyone who wears or has worn the Marine Corps uniform.

  Together with Marine Sniper, this second volume in the saga of Gunnery Sergeant Carlos N. Hathcock II provides not only exciting reading but good lessons in values, courage, and integrity. If you have not read Marine Sniper, I urge you to read it, too. If it inspires you, then in your prayers ask God to thank Carlos Hathcock. We Marines truly love him.

  —Charles Henderson

  Acknowledgments

  MY THANKS GO to Jim and Elly Land for their support, friendship, and assistance. Also thanks to my many friends and fellow Marines who encouraged my efforts. Special thanks go to the handful of these friends who took time to read this manuscript and gave me their honest feedback.

  Tom Colgan, Executive Editor of The Putnam Berkley Group at Penguin Putnam, deserves great praise for his courage to roll the dice with me. He put a lot on the line in his enthusiasm for this book. He took the heat and kept it off me. A Max Perkins kind of editor. I will not forget it.

  I would have no career as a writer without the friendship and ceaseless encouragement of my agent, Bob Markel. He has stood fast with me for the past fifteen years, and remains my friend and confidant. I look forward to the future with optimism because he has been and will remain in my corner, whether good times or bad.

  Lastly and most important, my heart, eternal love and thanks go to a special lady whose name I need not mention. A perfect angel. I would have been lost without her—she saw what I needed to be doing, pointed me in that direction, and then helped me to get with it. She put me back on track. Her love keeps me smiling. 123!
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  Semper Fidelis

  METAL TASTE. COPPER. It felt like a mix of acid and adrenaline in Carlos Hathcock’s mouth as he knelt just inside the cover that the trees and ground foliage provided him. Slowly he raised the Model 70 Winchester to his shoulder and looked through the 10-power Unertl scope mounted above the rifle’s receiver.

  He turned the focusing ring on the long slender tube, bringing the white plaster house and the sandbagged compound that surrounded it into focus. Even with the powerful telescopic sight the structures and the few men he saw around them still looked tiny. Nearly a mile and a half away, Carlos considered that he still had a lot of ground to cover before he could make the shot.

  “I gotta go worm-style,” he said in his mind. “Grass is shorter than I thought, too.”

  He considered his odds and didn’t like them at all. The metal taste grew stronger, and he pulled out his canteen and took a long, slow drink of water.

  “Make myself look like a bush. Like a hump of grass,” Carlos told himself as he slowly and methodically plucked handfuls of grass at the jungle’s edge. He stuffed as much as he could carry inside his shirt and crept to deeper cover where he could work.

  Carefully, he cut little slits along the backs of his shirt and trousers. Taking a small bunch of grass in his fingers, Carlos stuffed their ends through one of the incisions he had cut in his clothing and brought the short ends through another opening next to the primary slit, thus securing the camouflage tightly. The grass laid at a slight angle, so he gently spread the blades so that each clump would stand and look natural.

  Carlos had taken light green and dark green camouflage paint and covered every speck of skin on his face, ears, neck, hands, arms, even his eyelids.

  With his Winchester cradled beneath him, Carlos knelt slowly and deliberately, and then spread himself, stomach down, on the ground.

  Now, well into the night, Carlos inched himself forward. Oozing like a worm. His motion so purposeful and slow, one could hardly detect any movement at all.

  Carlos reminded himself of what Captain Jim Land had taught him.

  “A sniper’s best defenses are cover and concealment, and long-range accuracy. Most important,” Land had taught, “one shot, one kill.”

  CARLOS HATHCOCK GASPED for air. It seemed as though he had the weight of a car sitting on his chest. He blinked.

  “Where am I?” he thought. He felt the dampness of the sheet and mattress cover beneath his back. It was not 1967. This was not Vietnam.

  None of the faces in the room seemed familiar, so the tired and aging Marine sniper simply closed his eyes. His memories kept him company now.

  The multiple sclerosis that he had fought for nearly thirty years had finally worn him out. Although he persisted in trying to walk, for the past few years, the wheelchair had become more and more a constant in his life. His balance was bad. He could manage to totter just a few steps. Although only three months shy of his fifty-seventh birthday, his body had spent its course.

  Outside, cold wind moaned through the trees as Carlos lay in bed, dying. His body was numbed by drugs and the illness that now raged through him, blocking most conscious recognition.

  He had developed a urinary infection. Infections of all sorts were an increasing hazard to him as his immune system weakened with the rest of his body. While trying to recover, pneumonia had invaded his lungs. His body just could not take any more.

  Now, well after midnight, February 23, 1999, Carlos Hathcock slept as the last measure of sand drained through the hourglass of his life. His vision had turned inward, and played back scenes of an incredible life. Still, he could never quite understand why so many people made all the fuss about him. “I just did my job,” he had always said.

  Although there are snipers who reported more confirmed kills than Carlos Hathcock’s ninety-three, it was the nature of those missions and the impact that his service had on the Marine Corps that made him the legend. The Marine Corps drew from his vast experience to develop its sniper doctrine, its sniper programs, and the training of snipers that followed him. For Carlos, that meant much more than any score.

  He had more than 300 probable kills in addition to his ninety-three confirmed. That is the way with most snipers. However, Carlos always rejected the thinking of people who measured a sniper’s success by the numbers. He considered the sniper’s role as a support element to be more important than any other. Many times, his job was simply to observe, or to shoot an antenna.

  “You would have to be crazy to enjoy killing,” Carlos always said. “I never enjoyed it. It was my job. It was important that I did it well. If there was a meaningful thing about numbers, it would have been the number of lives I saved. Not the number I took.”

  Until the book Marine Sniper had made him famous, and confirmed him as a legend among United States Marines, Carlos Hathcock was just another retired Marine living a quiet existence in Virginia Beach, Virginia. His gentle, soft-spoken nature, his slight build, and his kind spirit, hid from most people the courageous, silent warrior. Yet, it was that loving, sensitive part of him that had enabled Carlos to be such a hero and great Marine.

  Once a person came to know Carlos Hathcock well, his contradictory nature—the gentle man combined with steely killer—made perfect sense. He was that valiant Marine because he cared so greatly for others.

  Carlos had always regarded himself last, and placed his family, his brother and sister Marines, and his country first. His selflessness and devotion, his deep sense of honesty and honor had, in every case, guided his decisions. Always at the root of the decision was this question: His life or the good of his brethren? Himself or his family? Himself or the mission? He equated the good of the mission to that which was best both for his family and his fellow Marines. The mission always came first.

  Certainly he, like any other person, feared death and injury. Carlos was just an average man, after all. But, unlike so many others, he held a clear set of values. The values were perfectly logical to him, and the importance of his own well-being meant much less.

  His love of others. His gentle caring. His simple, uncluttered rationale that focused itself on the good of others, his community and nation, remained constant with Carlos Hathcock until he could no longer acknowledge the presence of anyone.

  Now, he could only remember. Lying quietly, he watched film reel after film reel play the best parts of his life through the windows of his mind.

  SEATED IN HIS wheelchair, Carlos’s hands shook so violently that he could hardly maintain his grip on the black metal gunnery sergeant insignias that he was about to pin on his son’s collar. This was his favorite memory. He had told his friends that it was one of the most important moments of his life.

  The next day’s newspapers had written, “Is the world ready for two Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcocks?” That made Carlos beam. The world would just have to deal with it, he thought.

  Most newspapers seemed to always get Sonny’s name correct: Carlos Norman Hathcock III. But Carlos could never understand why so many newspapers insisted on referring to him as Carlos Norman Hathcock, Jr. He had always made it a point to impress on every reporter that he was not Junior. He did not even care for the name Junior. His parents had named him Carlos Norman Hathcock II. And it was very important to him that everyone respect this aspect of his name. Some people thought, What is the difference, the second or junior? However, it made a big difference to Carlos. He had guided his life, had succeeded on the battlefield as one of the greatest snipers the Marine Corps, or America, had ever known, by this simple aspect of his nature. He paid attention to detail. Detail was important. And his name, Carlos Norman Hathcock II, not Junior, was a very important detail.

  Today, as he always had, Carlos made a special effort to ensure that the reporters covering his son’s promotion knew better.

  For Sonny Hathcock, making gunnery sergeant stood as one of his life’s great accomplishments. He had dreamed of this day from the time he was a school
boy and had first put on a Naval Junior ROTC uniform. He had known then that he wanted to be like his dad. He had joined the Marines, had competed in the marksmanship programs, led the Cherry Point shooting team. Now, at last, he had achieved this dream. Who else other than his father should pin on his stripes?

  Fumbling with the rank pin, Carlos took hold of the left collar of Sonny’s Marine Corps camouflage utility uniform. The younger Hathcock, while maintaining a presence of attention, leaned over his father’s wheelchair to enable Carlos to pin the stripes. First the collar slipped from his grip. Then he fumbled again with the pin. Sonny remained at a leaned-over position of attention, patient.

  Even for healthy fingers, the tight, tough weave of this uniform is difficult to pierce. For Carlos, with his weakened, crooked, and burn-scarred fingers, the cloth seemed impenetrable.

  A well-meaning lieutenant, standing in the ceremony stepped to Carlos’s side, and asked, “May I help you with that, sir?”

  Those who knew Carlos well, including his own son, felt lumps gather in their throats. They knew this was trouble. When Carlos meant to do something, he would not accept help.

  Carlos Hathcock narrowed his eyes, and through pursed lips he sharply whispered to the lieutenant, “Sir. I don’t need no help!”

  Hushed and reddened, the lieutenant snapped back to attention and retreated to his post. Carlos, now heated by his solitary determination pressed the insignia’s two sharp posts right through Sonny’s collar. Then, in true Marine Corps fashion, he slapped the insignia down hard against the younger Hathcock’s collarbone and smiled joyfully.

  CARLOS STIRRED FROM his slumber. He felt chilled and breathless. His chest rattled with each shallow and labored breath he took. A small lamp near his bed gave a soft halo of light about him. The light quickly fell to darkness beyond his bed, where loved ones stood vigil. Light from the hallway spilled into the doorway, illuminating a path to the foot of Carlos’s bed. He was at peace, and dreaming. The film reels of his life flickered onward in his mind.