Korea Strait

by David Poyer

  They looked away, and he tried to relax. They hadn’t meant anything by it. They were just old-line Navy and probably would never get used to women doing guys’ jobs.

  Wenck said, “Y’all hit some kind of old drifting mine, right?”

  “Something like that.” That was the cover story.

  “Guess you did a lot of antisub ops.”

  “The usual. Predeployment workup. JTFEX. But then mostly MIO in the Red Sea and Gulf.”

  “Maritime intercept. Boarding and search.” Henrickson sounded doubtful. “Any shallow-water ASW?”

  “Not too much on that deployment. But I’ve done it on previous tours. The Arctic, North Atlantic, the Med, the Gulf.”

  “How about here in WestPac?”

  “I’ve operated in the South China Sea. A multinational antipirate task force.”

  “Any ASW there?” Henrickson said casually.

  “Look, I get the picture. You’re asking if I’ve got the level of antisubmarine expertise you need in the guy who’s basically going to be conducting the exercise.”

  “What? No, we weren’t—”

  “Sure you were. So I’ll tell you. I’ve had a solid grounding in destroyer ASW. I know ops analysis. I’ll learn what else I need to fast as I can. But yeah, this is my first time out with a TAG team, so let me know if I’m headed for shoal water. They tell me you’re the best in the business or you wouldn’t be where you are. So I’m going to count on that.

  “But right now, I’m going to get my head down for a few hours.”

  Dan noticed Wenck glancing apprehensively behind and above him. He twisted to see a somber-looking, fiftyish white man with a nose like Richard Nixon’s and a scowl not too different either standing behind him, arms folded, listening.

  “And here’s Captain Joe O’Quinn,” Henricksen said.

  “Mister,” O’Quinn said, impassive. Correcting him, not angrily, just as a matter of fact.

  “Joe, nice to meet you,” Dan said. The older man tilted his head and smiled faintly, looking him up and down.

  Henrickson cleared his throat and studied his watch. “Uh—Dan—well, I know you’re short on sleep, but you might want to grab a quick shower instead. Maybe a shave. And get a uniform on. We’ve got the kickoff meeting over at CNFK at two.”

  . . .

  CNFK—Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Korea—was at Yongsan Army Garrison, surrounded by the city, like Central Park, Dan thought. A mix of brick two-stories dating from the Japanese occupation, according to Henrickson, and 1950s-era U.S. Army prefab housing and rusting Quonsets. The usual anchors, painted the usual gloss black, stood outside the naval headquarters, along with a bronze of a medieval Korean warrior. The conference room was upstairs, through a combination-keyed door. As Dan’s group trooped in, Asians and Americans were helping themselves to buns and coffee at a side table. Conversation buzzed in various languages. Dan, in short-sleeved khakis, laid his combination cap on a table that already held those of several services, of several nations.

  “Commander Lenson? Hi, I’m Dick Shappell. Got the button for the SATYRE.”

  Shappell was in khakis like Dan, but with aviator’s wings. His name tag had the COMUSFORKOREA staff insignia: the Korean flag, eagle, and crossed anchors, and his name was spelled out in Hangul under the Roman lettering. He blinked at the pale blue and white stars of Dan’s topmost ribbon. When he spoke again his tone was less brash. “Oh—Lenson! It sounded familiar when I read the clearance message, but I only just now—hell, it’s a real honor meeting you. Sir. Look”—he glanced at the wall clock—“I’m gonna kick off with the welcome, since the big boss is out of town just now, but I want you to meet a couple people first. Hey, Commodore!”

  A stocky Korean in what looked very much like U.S. Navy khakis, but with different ribbons and rank insignia—three little silver flowers—turned from the side table. He was bigger than the other Koreans but still shorter than Dan. He wore heavy, square-framed, PhotoGray glasses. A black mole grew beside his left eye. A leather tag with crossed silver torches inside an anchor hung from his breast pocket. He had big hands, big fingers, which were just now turning a pack of cigarettes over and over.

  “Commodore, Commander Lenson here’s in charge of the Taggers. He’ll be riding with you on the exercise. Dan, this is Commodore Jung—first name Min Jun—commander, Antisubmarine Squadron 51, Republic of Korea Navy.”

  One of the oversized hands mashed Dan’s as heavy-lidded eyes noted everything about him. They too snagged on the Congressional. “Hi, fella,” Jung said. He smelled of mentholated tobacco and English Leather.

  “Commodore. An honor.”

  The Korean shook a cigarette out of the pack. They had silver filter tips. Dan said thanks, no.

  “Ship driver,” Jung noted, looking at him still as he fit the cigarette into an ivory-colored holder and lit it with a gold Zippo engraved with a seal Dan didn’t recognize. “Annapolis ring. And some pretty impressive experience, if I’m reading your ribbon bar right.” His English was almost perfect, with a touch, Dan guessed, of California casual.

  “Guilty.”

  “First time on the peninsula? Or you been with us before?”

  “First time here, sir.”

  “Well, we’ll try to treat you right. Where are you in from, Dan?”

  “Just joined the TAG group. Last assignment was in DC.”

  “Where?”

  “Well… the White House military staff.” He wondered if he should mention that, but no one had told him not to.

  Jung smiled so radiantly that the mole almost vanished. “Excellent! They’ve sent us their best.” He turned to a willowy younger man who’d come up quietly behind him, and spoke rapidly in Korean. The younger raised an eyebrow, blinking at Dan. Jung gestured to him. “Commander Hwang, my chief of staff. Commander Lenson.”

  They shook hands too, Hwang’s palm lying limp in Dan’s. The chief of staff smiled almost fawningly, but said only, “I am pleased to meet you, Commander.”

  The lights flickered off, then back on. Shappell turned from the switch. Conversations cut off in midsentence. Men replenished their coffee cups, headed for seats.

  The first PowerPoint slide went up, a yeoman began doling out briefing packages, and Dan pulled his new PDA out and began trying to figure out how to make notes with it.

  SHAPPELL spoke more slowly than Pentagon briefing standard, Dan guessed to let the foreign participants keep up. After the usual cover slides, he got down to business. Dan checked that hard copies of the presentation were in the briefing package. That’d save a lot of note taking.

  Shappell kicked off by defining SATYRE 17 as part of a joint ROK and U.S. command post exercise called Ulchi Focus Lens, an annual joint and combined simulation-supported CPX that, as he put it, “trained Combined Forces Command personnel and major component, subordinate, and augmenting staffs using state-of-the-art wargaming computer simulations and support infrastructures.”

  The participants were from four countries: ROKN, USN, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. The chain of command went from CFC—Combined Forces Command, successor to the old UN Command Korea—to CINCROKFLT. Thence to Fifth Flotilla, based in Chinhae, down to the exercise level. Dan noted that the overall OTC, officer in tactical command, would be Korean, the commodore of Antisubmarine Squadron 51. In other words, the three-flower he’d just met, Commodore Jung.

  The next slide showed the units assigned:

  COMDESRON 15 (US)—Mccain, cushing, Vandegrift

  COMAWRON 51 (ROK)—Kim Chon, Dae JOn, Chung Nam,

  Mok Po

  Darwin, Torrens (Australian)

  Japanese ASW air

  Salt Lake City, San Francisco (USN, subs)

  Chang Bo Go (ROK 209, sub)

  Dan leaned back and tuned out for a while. In fact he almost fell asleep. He roused himself when he heard weather mentioned, and a female lieutenant commander took the stand. “Oooh ah,” Carpenter muttered, loud
er than he needed to. “Why don’t you put some lipstick around my dipstick?”

  Her slide showed an immense sea, six hundred miles across at its widest point. It was bounded on the west by Korea, on the east and south by the great embryo-curved main island of Japan, and on the north by North Korea and Russia. The south access was Tsushima Strait, where nearly a hundred years before, a Russian admiral had come to grief after sailing halfway round the world. The northern was remote, icy La Pérouse Strait. She said briskly, “Climatology. It’s going to be iffy out there, more than usually unsettled. For Phase One, participants can expect wind from the south-southwest at six to ten knots, seas three to four feet, and about sixty percent over-cast. Fog the majority of the time, with visibility less than four miles twenty-five percent of the time at sea level. Remember the current in the op area will be about one point five knots set to the northeast.”

  Dan looked at the faces listening, brown, white, and yellow. All looked attentive, but how many spoke enough English to follow this? All comms for SATYRE 17 would be in English. He’d have to make them as transparent as possible.

  Next up was a Korean. He had charts and sound-propagation tracings. A sonar guy. Dan rubbed his face, fighting to focus. He’d have to know all this cold once things started rolling. But the accent was tough to get through, ?’s instead of ?’s, and he wasn’t sure he was getting it all. Apparently passive sonar ranges—“passive” meant sophisticated and enhanced listening only, without sending out pings—were going to be less than a thousand yards for hull-mounted sonars, with less than three kiloyards for direct path. The man mumbled, speaking into his papers. Dan got something like “With the soft sand bottom, bottom bounce mode wir be unreriable. Bathythermograph shows a negative gradient and no rayer. There wir be much fishing activity.”

  A hefty, six-foot-plus American captain in trop whites with chubby cheeks and short blond hair broke into the presentation. His name tag read LEAKHAM. “How about biologics?”

  “Biologics” were noise from biological sources, mainly shrimp, which made a hell of a racket for so small a creature. The Korean bobbed his head. “Very good question, sir. There wir be high biorogics and high revelberation.”

  Carpenter leaned and muttered, “Meaning: Conditions are gonna be shit.”

  Henrickson: “And if the wind kicks up it’ll be even worse.”

  Dan nodded. Terrible conditions to hunt submarines in. On the other hand, if there was no layer, a sub couldn’t hide under it. And high environmental noise tended to blind a submarine. Sound was their only window on their surroundings, unless they wanted to risk poking up a scope or radar head. The moment they did a hunter could pick them up, visually, by radar, or by electronic surveillance. “It might work to our advantage,” he whispered.

  “Yeah…or not.”

  Shappell took the floor again. “The officer in tactical command. Commodore Jung.”

  The stocky Korean stood fiddling with the ivory holder a moment, looking around. Then handed it to his chief of staff with a lordly gesture, and locked his fingers behind him.

  “Welcome to Korea, those new to our waters. First let me say we value having you by our side, both to teach, and to learn. Korea is very grateful for her allies. If I can ever show how much in some way, please let me know.”

  Once again Dan noticed how colloquial his speech was. Jung wasn’t speaking from notes. He was just winging it. The guy had to be thinking in English. The chief of staff handed the holder back reloaded with a fresh filter tip. Jung bent it to the lighter, took a reflective drag, spoke with exhaled smoke.

  “You will learn many new things in what others call the Sea of Japan. To us it is our Tong Hae: the Eastern Sea. Our people have sailed it from time immemorial, and on it—a bit to the south, in the Korea Strait—our great admiral Yi Sun-shin defeated his country’s invaders through boldness and innovation.

  “Boldness and innovation—we too must discover these virtues within ourselves during the next few weeks.

  “Three points I wish all to bear in mind. First, all maneuvers must be made safely. We will not lose or injure a single man. We will not risk damage to ships or aircraft. That is our primary operational concern.

  “Second, recall that strategy is driven by water conditions. As Mr. Ku said, water and sonar conditions will be tough. In Phase One, all sensors and teams must be tuned to the maximum. Once we begin free play, all assets will have to be deployed with maximum efficiency.

  “Third: We’ve found the progressive barrier strategy works best in the shallow, noisy Tong Hae, especially near the salient that thrusts out from the coast between Kangnung and Changgi-Ap. Therefore my intent at this moment is to implement a succession of barriers, once we have identified and localized the threat and the Schwerpunkt”

  “The guy reads Clausewitz,” Henrickson whispered. Dan give him a lifted eyebrow, not sure who was surprising him more, Jung or his own second in command—if he was second in command. The Korean commodore seemed to be on the ball. Which would, if true, be a welcome change from the last foreign officer Dan had worked closely with, an arrogant and dangerous idiot from the Pakistani Navy.

  “Our motto will be katchi kapshida… we march ahead together. All right, any other comments or questions?” Jung finished.

  Dan jabbed up a hand and stood at Jung’s smile. “Commodore, if Imay… Dan Lenson, heading up the TAG team. I’d like to say a few words about the data-collection requirements of this exercise.”

  A rain-mist obscured the hills. Dan zipped up the complimentary black portfolio, etched with the ROKN insignia, that the chief of staff, Hwang, had handed him as the briefing broke up. “So, what about it?” he asked his guys. “Pretty standard?”

  Wenck said, “Yep. Pretty standard, sir, I’d say.”

  “Anything I should have picked up on that I didn’t?”

  “The ass on that tea girl,” Carpenter said, leering. Dan noticed Rit didn’t let an opportunity pass to crack a suggestive remark. It wasn’t PC, and it wasn’t current Navy policy, either. But a good many sailors, particularly those with a certain number of years in, spoke the same way, at least in male company. What Dan found intriguing was the sideways glance O’Quinn gave him. Disgust? Interesting.

  “Just that those sonar ranges are awful short,” Henrickson said. “That’s going to make this whole exercise tough. Maybe even dangerous.”

  Dan said, “How dangerous?”

  “You’ll see,” Henrickson said.

  O’Quinn said, not looking at either of them, “He means that as the ranges close down, the risk of collision goes up. Pretty much a reciprocal relationship.”

  An awkward silence. Dan wondered why. He was missing something. But what?

  “And that weather briefing sucked,” Wenck added.

  “Yeah, I’d like to have her suck my—”

  “Give it a rest, Rit,” Dan told him. “Donnie, you were saying—” “She didn’t mention the tropical depressions. Maybe it’s early in the season, but I’ve never been here when wasn’t at least a couple storms hanging around the Philippines. If they power up and head west they’ll hook right over where we’re gonna be operating.”

  Dan nodded. “So what now?” he asked Henrickson.

  But Carpenter answered. “What now? Shit, sir, we’re all gonna head on over to Itaewon. Start at the Rambunctious and slam down some brewskis. Then, who knows. The night, she is young. Like those sweet little brown-sugar mama-sans.” He smacked his lips. “You comin’ with us? What happens in Korea, stays in Korea.”

  “Thanks, but I’m going back to the hotel and crawl into this op order.”

  “Gotta break loose, Skipper. We’re gonna be out at sea next three weeks. No beer, no nookie.”

  He was tempted, but grinned and shook his head. “Next time—okay? The newbie’s got to study up. You guys have one for me. Let’s get together at zero-eight for breakfast and talk over the ship assignments, and then—what time’s the flight to Pusan?”

  T
hey said noon. He shook hands, slapped backs, and moved off.

  Then he turned back and beckoned to Henrickson. The analyst peeled off, yelling to the others to wait. “Yeah?”

  Dan lowered his voice and turned away from the street. “Two questions, Monty. One: who’s in charge of this outfit?”

  “Which outfit?”

  “Us. TAG Bravo. Is it you or me?”

  “You’re the one with the silver oak leaves.”

  “You’re the one with the doctorate.”

  Henrickson snapped his head back and forth. “Uh-uh. We’re under orders. TAG works looser back in the building, more collegial, but when we’re on the road, it’s all military. Next question?”

  “Okay, that clears things up. Next is, what’s the story on this O’Quinn character? Why do Rit and Donnie call him ‘Captain’?”

  “Because he’s a captain.” He caught Dan’s puzzled frown; if O’Quinn was a captain, why was a commander in charge of the team? “A retired captain.”

  “Oh. Okay… retired. I guess that makes sense. But why do I get the feeling…?”

  Henrickson lowered his voice. “I figured everybody knew.”

  “I just got here.”

  “Remember the Buchanan?”

  He searched his memory. A guided-missile cruiser, the class before Aegis and the Ticonderogas. Hadn’t there been an accident…? “The collision. The guys who were below—”

  “Right. The engine room, main space was flooding. Joe was in command. And he lost it. Ordered the hull techs to weld a hatch shut. Saved the ship, but… left six guys on the wrong side of the hatch. He wasn’t going anyplace after that. Resigned after the court of inquiry. Lost his wife too. I don’t know the story behind that part, but she’s history.”

  “Holy smoke.” Dan glanced O’Quinn’s way. The man stood alone, hands in his pockets, cigarette dangling from his lip as he studied the mist-wreathed hills. “So what’s he doing here?”

  “Oh, he knows his stuff. Works for a civilian contractor now. But if we ever get in a tight spot…”