grenades and begin the attack. He put a three-round burst into the manâs head. The grenade detonated, and the firefight was on. The guerillas lost the element of surprise and quickly withdrew. Dean and Longbow had to retreat as well, barely escaping the crossfire. The detour had cost them not only several hours but also more ammo and water.
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â VILLAGE HAS FIVE huts,â said Dean, looking at it through his field glasses. âFive huts. Shit.â
âYou sure this is the place? Supposed to be four or five times that.â
He pulled out his map again. While it could be difficult to correlate points, in this case the location seemed fairly obvious
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the village was located at the mouth of a bend in a small creek, which corresponded with the map. There were other geographic marks as well, including the road and the valley three miles to the west.
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EVEN SO, THEY took another day making sure, circling across to the valley and back, even moving to the edge of a second village two miles to the south. This village was also considerably smaller than the map and briefing had indicated, and in the end Dean concluded that the information, like so much intelligence they were given, was simply wrong.
So they went ahead and set up an ambush. There were at least four different paths from the village into the valley, but the sharp cliffs on the east side of the valley meant there wereonly two passes across, and both lay within a half mile of each other. The snipers had their choice of three positions to fire from, all between five and six hundred yards. They settled on a good spot in the middle, not because of the rangeâeven the M14 could handle that distanceâbut because a fifty-foot sheer drop made a surprise attack from the rear unlikely.
Twenty-four hours passed without them spotting anyone. While their position was shaded, the heat kept increasing and both men stripped to their skivvies to try to keep cool. Conserving water was difficult in the heat. It was the dry season, and a particularly parched stretch at that; moisture of any kind was hard to find. From about dusk to midnightâthe time they figured Phuc Dinh was most likely to be travelingâthey both stood watch. During the other twenty hours or so they took turns restingâit wasnât sleep really, more a fitful sitting in a nook of the rocks.
By the fourth day, they were both down to their final canteen of water. Refilling the others was not a problemâtheyâd spotted a shallow spring-fed brook about a mile away on the way inâbut it was, of course, dangerous, since only one person could go and there was no way the other could cover him while watching the trail.
Dean, as second man on the team, should have been the one to go. But Longbow overruled him.
âI need to stretch my legs,â he told Dean, taking the M14. âDonât break my gun.â
Some men believed it was bad luck and worse to let anyone else touch your gun. Longbow didnât; Dean had fired his rifle before.
Still, Dean did think about it as he watched his companion climb up and then down the hill. There didnât figure to be any action while Longbow was gone, though. It was still daytime.
Dean made sure he had the bolt rifle sighted properly, then picked up the binoculars and resumed watching the trail. He stared through the glasses for more than a half hour without blinking. He could see a lot more with the binoculars than hecould with his sniperâs scope, but he was always conscious that they, too, were limited. The world the binoculars showed was carved into precise circles, and the real world was not.
About an hour after Longbow left, a cone-shaped hat poked over the hill in the distance. Within a few seconds it was joined by a second, then a third and a fourth. Four men were moving across the trail toward Dean. They werenât âordinaryâ villagers, eitherâall carried AK-47s.
Dean scanned them
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