I, Sniper

4

A few hours later, in the press briefing auditorium of the FBI headquarters building in Washington DC, Nick stepped to the podium, almost blinded by the lights. He could sense the seething crowd in the darkness. He went to the lectern, cleared his voice, tested the microphone. Then he stood by to be introduced by Phil Price, the Bureau’s public affairs officer, as “Nick Memphis, Special Agent in Charge of Task Force Sniper, with, as we said, important new information.”

Nick leaned to the microphone.

“Thank you all for coming. Are we ready? Jimmy, hand out the circulars and the release; make sure everyone gets one. All right, as Phil said, I have information. I am here to announce that we have just obtained an arrest warrant in the deaths of Joan Flanders, Mitch Greene, Jack Strong, and Mitzi Reilly.”

A wave of excitement radiated from the gathered reporters, as all squirmed forward on their seats.

“The warrant names Carl R. Hitchcock, sixty-seven, of Jacksonville, North Carolina, as prime suspect in the felonies. I should add that Hitchcock, a highly trained, experienced, and decorated marine sniper with a lot of combat experience, is to be approached with extreme caution, and I say this to law enforcement too. He is an exceedingly dangerous man, possibly the most dangerous man the Bureau has sought since Baby Face Nelson in 1934. He was credited with ninety-three kills in Vietnam in a 1969-1970 tour of duty and was one of the most accomplished of the marine snipers in that war. Here’s his picture.”

Nick stepped aside, and behind him, where the seal of the FBI had been projected, the image of a man swam into focus. It was a hard, lean face, dominated by hawklike eyes furious in their concentration, completely Scots-Irish, Appalachian-bred, from a hardscrabble farm or vertical plantation. In older days, the cruel word “hillbilly” would have applied to such concentration knitting the brow, the bricklike chin, the eyes so close together. Nowadays, the snarky of the world would apply the word “redneck” or even “trailer trash.” The planes of the face were all vertical slashes; the eyebrows thick, the nose meaty, the mouth a grim cipher. He wore the dress uniform of the United States Marine Corps with the saucer cap squared away atop his white sidewall, the brow low to his dark eyes. The tunic was immaculate, the chest festooned with medals and awards.

“This was taken in 1974, the week he retired as a master sergeant. He’d served the Corps for twenty-three years, did three tours in Vietnam, the last as a sniper and platoon sergeant with Scout/Sniper Company, Second Battalion, Third Marines near Huu Toc, just off the DMZ. He was in combat nearly every day for thirteen months. He was shot at a lot. In his other tours he was a military policeman and the platoon sergeant of a line infantry company. He has three Purple Hearts as well as the Silver Star, which was awarded him for removing men from a burning tracked vehicle at considerable risk and in considerable pain, as he had sustained forty percent first-degree burns. You can see that his service record is impeccable, the stuff of heroism and sacrifice at its highest level. That is why no one here is anything but saddened by this development.”

A new face appeared. It was clearly the same, though the discipline had eased, the eyes were merry, there was more flesh. From the angle it was clear he’d been snuggling with someone, a wife probably, and the old warrior was happy.

“This is our most recent picture of Sergeant Hitchcock. It was taken three years ago before the death of his wife, Mavis. We’ve cropped her out of the picture. But this is the man we’re hunting today.”

“Can you outline the case?” came a call from the darkness.

“Briefly. Based on intelligence derived from a canvass of sniper and SWAT and other long-range shooting communities, we quickly obtained information that Sergeant Hitchcock had been depressed of late and hadn’t been seen in two weeks. We obtained a search warrant, and at four this afternoon, a Bureau team with the help of local and state law enforcement agencies in Jacksonville, North Carolina, served it in his domicile. We found a room with photos on the wall of several of the victims as well as others in the antiwar movement of forty years ago. We found the number ninety-seven drawn on walls, pads of paper, on the photos themselves, all over the room. We found computer records suggesting a great deal of research into the lives and whereabouts of various antiwar movement figures, particularly Joan Flanders, but also Strong and Reilly. There was less on Mitch Greene, but he was included. We found gun oil, cleaning rods, ammunition cases, and a case of.308 Federal Match 168-grain hollow point boat tail cartridges, of the sort our forensics people have ID’d as used in the four shootings. Four boxes, eighty rounds, were missing. We found the paperwork for a Treasury Department stamp tax of two hundred dollars for a class III device, approved by ATF, called a suppressor, which you would call a silencer. We found packaging for that device from its manufacturer, SureFire Inc., as well as an invoice for the costs to thread the muzzle of a new Krieger barrel, by which method the suppressor could be effectively mated to the rifle, all dated from 2005. We found maps with routes marked out charting a trip that went from the Hamptons on Long Island to Chicago to Minneapolis. We believe he diverted from Minneapolis, where an ex-radical named Ivan Thorson is a controversial law professor, to Cleveland, where Mitch Greene was scheduled to appear at a book signing. We have determined that the time frame of the three shootings sustains the interpretation that he had sufficient allowance to drive to and away from each site. We have tracked his credit card records and have determined that he rented motel rooms in each locality the night before the shooting.”

“Where is he now?”

“On the road.”

“Do you-”

“No, but I assure you, all possibilities are being exhaustively examined at this point in time. We have a federal alert code blue, the highest category, and all police agencies in the continental U.S. were notified immediately prior to this press conference.”

“What’s the motive? Is he crazy? Did he flip? Some kind of combat stress disorder?”

“Combat stress disorder, almost certainly. His own declining health, yes, as records indicate a slow recovery from a broken hip some years ago, problems with alcoholism, two DWI arrests in the past six months, and other factors generally pointing to depression and disappointment. Loneliness, isolation, depression in the aftermath of the death of his wife. But there was something else.

“For close to thirty years, Carl Hitchcock had been known publicly as the United States Marine Corps’ number one sniper in Vietnam. He had ninety-three kills, as I’ve said. A book was written about him, magazine articles and so forth. He was in a small world a king, a center of attraction and attention. I leave it to you all to discover the joys he took in that identity, as well as the benefits he reaped from it. He attended many gun shows, he sold autographs, he was kind of like an old ballplayer trading on his celebrity by attending public meets. He enjoyed small royalties from several products he endorsed, such as a rifle manufactured by Springfield, a lithograph that showed him in full combat regalia, a line of premium ammunition. I think this speaks to the point: he had a license plate that read SNIPR-1.

“But about two years ago, an article was published in Soldier of Fortune magazine mentioning offhandedly another marine sniper with ninety-six kills. It caused a storm in that small world. A researcher used the Freedom of Information Act to access Marine records and determined that, indeed, a Chuck McKenzie, a former lance corporal from Modoc, Oregon, had served for thirteen months in Vietnam in 1966 and achieved an officially credited ninety-six kills. It never occurred to him that he’d done anything remarkable, and he went on to a career in the United States Forestry Service, never mentioning his Vietnam service to anybody but other vets. As I understand it, he was never decorated, his kids didn’t even know what their dad had done in the war, and he took no part in what might be called ‘tactical culture,’ a kind of celebration of various aggressive, firearms-centric methodologies that seems to enjoy some currency now and is supported by various magazines and Web sites and blogs. He never knew there was a Carl Hitchcock cult, so to speak, and that products and endorsements and magazines and the book had been written about Carl and his ninety-three kills. He only found out about it when Soldier of Fortune contacted him a few years ago. He had no comment then; I doubt he has any comment now. He’s never done a thing to capitalize on his ‘fame,’ such as it was.

“But we now see that Carl was extremely upset. A taciturn man, he wouldn’t have sought psychological help or counseling. He simply withdrew from the world, a process speeded up by the death of his wife at about the same time. Clearly he brooded on it; I’ll let the psychologists tell you by what process he arrived at his conclusion, but from our reading of the materials in his house, it seems clear that he saw this week’s shootings as a continuation of his Vietnam tour of duty. It was a last mission, and he identified as ‘enemies’ not Vietcong or North Vietnamese regulars but protesters who in his interpretation had helped the enemy. So he set out to eliminate them and, in some fashion, reclaim the title of the number one Vietnam sniper. Thus we find the number ninety-seven scrawled all over the headquarters room he’d dedicated in his house; it seems clear that he will go on hunting the supposed traitors until we stop him or he comes to his senses and turns himself in.”

“What is the state of the manhunt at this time?”

“Well, even as we speak, this information is going to all law enforcement entities within the continental United States. We continue to receive information from hundreds of sources. Our last sighting places him in an Econo Lodge Motel on the outskirts of Shaker Heights, Ohio, two nights ago. We are concentrating our efforts in an area within two days’ drive of that locality. Meanwhile, our forensic people, our evidence recovery teams, and their local equivalents examine the evidence for further information. We have established state police roadblocks on interstates in Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York State. If Carl Hitchcock is listening, we urge him to give himself up and end this madness. But I have to say again, he is armed and dangerous, highly trained, a superb shot, a combat veteran, a close-quarters combat expert, and he is capable of wreaking extreme havoc in a very little time. So he must be approached with caution.”

“Do you have any opinion, Special Agent, on the use of ‘trained killers’ in the military and the risks such men pose for society when they return to the civilian world? I mean, this seems to dovetail neatly with the report released by the Homeland Security Agency some months ago that-”

“You must be from the New York Times.”

“Yes sir,” the young man said.

Then Nick saw movement, and his eyes flashed to it. In the back of the room Jack Hefner, assistant director and Nick’s immediate supervisor, was winding the index finger of one hand around, helicopter rotor style, meaning “Wind it up, we have news.”

“Okay, ladies and gentlemen, sorry I don’t have time for more questions, but we’ve got to get back to the manhunt.”

Trying to appear casual, Nick gathered up his papers, conferred briefly with the Bureau’s public information officer, then slid out the door to the rear, avoiding the reporters who’d now clustered forward, wanting more, more, more.

Nick got into the off-limits sector of the floor and watched as Jack came toward him on the fly.

“We got him,” he said.

“Where?”

“His credit card was just used to check into a hotel in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He’s there now, in a room. Michigan State Police can have SWAT teams there in a few minutes. It’s your call, Nick.”

“No assault. Tell them to set up discreet surveillance. I don’t want this guy opening up. One sniper team. I guess if he goes, we’ll have to drop him. God, I’d hate to do that. But one sniper team in a truck across from the hotel. I’m leaving with my team now.”

“Nick, I’d advise that you send the word to take him down now. If it goes bad, Michigan will have to answer for it.”

“Jack, if I’m incident commander, my best judgment is soft surveillance. I’m on my way, can be there in three hours.” He looked at his watch. It was 9:35 p.m., 10:35 in the Midwest. “We’ll let him fall asleep. We’ll take him down at dawn.”