Point of Impact Read Free

displayed a business card with a neat block of print under the silhouette of a telescopic rifle.
    It said,
    WE DEAL IN LEAD, FRIEND.
—SCOUT-SNIPER PLATOON,
HEADQUARTERS COMPANY,
    FIRST MARINES.
    “The line was stolen from Steve McQueen in
The Magnificent Seven
. It was his platoon’s calling card, part of the First Marine Psywar operations in its region, left inprominent places in the area where Bob and his men were operating, usually in the left hand of corpses dropped by a single bullet in the chest. Scout-Sniper of the First was the most proficient unit of professional killers this country had ever sponsored, at least on an individual basis. In the six years it operated, it is said to have killed over one thousand seven hundred fifty enemy soldiers. Itself, it only counted forty-six men in its ranks over those years. A sergeant named Carl Hitchcock, with ninety-three confirmed kills, was highest; Bob, five years later, was second, with his eighty-seven; but there were several other snipers in the sixties and more than a dozen in the fifties.
    “As for Bob, I’ll only sketch the high points. He evidently did a few jobs for the CIA’s Operation Phoenix, liquidating hardcore infrastructure people, Vietcong tax collectors and regional chieftains and the like. So he is not unfamiliar with the operations of professional intelligence agencies. But his more common targets were rank-and-file North Vietnamese regulars operating in the area. They even had a huge reward out for Bob, over fifty thousand piasters. But most astonishingly, he and his best friend and spotter, a lance corporal named Donny Fenn, once ambushed a North Vietnamese battalion which was rushing toward an isolated Special Forces camp. The weather was bad, and the jungle was triple canopy, so air support or evacuation was impossible. It was out of range of artillery. A thousand men, heading toward twelve on a hilltop. But Bob and his spotter were the only other friendly forces in the area. They tracked the North Vietnamese, and began taking out officers one at a time over a forty-eight-hour stretch in the An Loc Valley. The battalion never reached the Green Berets, and Swagger and his spotter made it out three days later. He killed over thirty men in that two-day adventure.”
    Even Payne, who tried never to be impressed, had to suck in some air.
    “Cocksucker can shoot a little,” he said.
    The projector clicked.
    A man swaddled in bandages lay in a hospital bed, leg locked in traction, face bleak, eyes hugely hollow.
    “Bob Lee Swagger’s war came to an end on eleven December 1972. He was sliding over a crest line on his way out when he was hit in the hip by a rifle bullet fired from over a thousand yards. His friend and spotter Donny Fenn slid down the embankment to get him. The next bullet hit Donny in the chest, blew through to his spine. Bob lay out there all morning with his dead friend in his arms, until they could call in artillery on the suspected sniper position. It ended his war and it ended his career in the Marine Corps. He was invalided out of the service in 1975, after three years’ painful rehabilitation. It ended his competitive shooting, too. Competitive shooting is an extremely formalized sport, involving positions of great physical discomfort, while wrapped tightly in leather shooting garments for maximum body control. With his hip wired together, Bob was never able to achieve those formal positions with the same degree of intensity.
    “You could say, I suppose, that Bob Lee Swagger gave everything to his country, and in return, it took everything from him. His heroism was of a sort that makes many Americans uneasy. He wasn’t an inspiring leader, he didn’t save lives, he didn’t rise in the chain of command. He was simply and explicitly an extraordinary killer. Almost certainly for that reason, he never got the medals and the acclaim he deserved.
    “What followed, one can almost predict. He was married, but the marriage fell