Korea Strait

by David Poyer

  “You know our history?”

  “Hardly any of it.”

  Hwang laughed. “Do Americans even know their own?”

  “No argument here,” Dan said. He groped under the seat for the bottled water. Offered one, then cracked another for himself.

  The willowy, pale chief of staff said, “For seven hundred years there were three kingdoms in Korea. The Chinese aided whichever gave them the most influence. At last the Silla Kingdom defeated the Koguryo and Paekche, with the help of a Chinese army. They ruled for many years and became prosperous. Only to grow self-indulgent and peace-loving…as has happened many times before.”

  As Dan puzzled over what he meant—that the Republic of Korea was self-indulgent and peace-loving? that the Chinese were the eternal enemy? or that prosperity itself was?—he was jostled forward as Hwang braked, muttering under his breath.

  It was another hamlet. Brightly painted houses crowded a road thronged with running children, elders wobbling on warp-wheeled bikes, battered, smoke-snorting farm-trucks loaded with vegetables, goats, and pigs. Hwang leaned on the horn as he continued his fast-forward through Korean history. Through the Mongol conquest, the Yi dynasty, and the great admiral, Yi Sun-shin, whose bronze statue Dan had admired at Yongsan.

  “His fleet was smaller than that of his enemy, but his mind was greater. He defeated the Japanese every time they met. You have heard of the turtle boats? The ironclad warship?” Hwang honked again, a viciously long blast, but not one hustling head so much as glanced back. “This could take some time,” he muttered. The window was open and Dan caught the stench of village life: pig shit, diesel exhaust, rotting cabbage, cheap tobacco smoke.

  “Ironclad? I thought—”

  “That your Monitor and Merrimack were first? Admiral Yi put iron armor on his ships in 1592. Perhaps you can make a side trip to Hyongchungsan while you are with us. There is a turtle boat there we have rebuilt.”

  The truck ahead of them snorted, belched black smoke, and began to move at last, a thin stinking tide drooling out the back. Hwang pulled out and passed it on the right on a blind curve as Dan clutched the edges of his seat. As they passed he locked eyes with one of the hogs through the slats of the truck. I know my doom, its sad regard said. Do you know yours? A tunnel entrance loomed. They plunged into darkness and the tinny racketing echo of the little engine.

  “This shape drives our strategy as well,” Hwang said. “As one trained in sea power, you will understand this. If the Northerners attack again, the war will be won or lost by the shape of our land.”

  An aperture of light grew ahead, became the end of the tunnel. Dan examined the map again. “Meaning because it’s surrounded by water?”

  “Meaning that to conquer us they must attack north to south, while their flanks rest on the sea. So air interdiction and ground reinforcement will decide the outcome.”

  Dan had figured out that much. If the FEBA—Forward Edge of the Battle Area, the defensive line south of the DMZ—broke, and the Communists flooded into South Korea, they’d be like the Iraqi Army on the Highway of Death. They’d have to blitz their heavy armor fast to occupy the airfields and stop U.S. reinforcements arriving through the southern ports. Meanwhile the U.S. and ROK air forces would be attriting them with every kilometer they traveled. The Joint Chiefs J-3 and Eighth Army had no doubt calculated, diagrammed, computed it all out with mathematical precision, from M-day on. So many percent losses per day. So many sorties to produce that percentage. It would be a war of remorseless, slowly advancing reptiles, picked off day by day by crows diving fiercely from above.

  As if following that exact thought process Hwang said, “A thousand sorties per day. That is the dividing point in our staff studies. More than that and the enemy will be destroyed north of Pusan. Less, and he will occupy all of our country before your tanks and troops can arrive to reinforce.”

  “So the sortie rate’s key. What about the weather? Surprise?” “In our training we always assume a surprise attack in bad weather.” “So what’s your take? Will they try again?” “Oh yes, of course. They are devils in human shape, these people,” Hwang said, thin face not quite as impassive. His fingers sank into the padding of the steering wheel. “They killed my uncles, aunts, grandparents in Tanyang. Lined them up and shot them. My mother got to Pusan as a refugee.” He cleared his throat, and Dan saw what he might look like a day after he was dead. “Our country was not prepared. And America—you did not stand behind us until it was almost too late.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I know there was some question whether we were obligated to defend you. Back then, I mean—there’s no question now.”

  Hwang frowned. “I don’t tell you this to make you feel guilty. I tell you because the other Americans I meet don’t seem to think it will happen again.”

  “The way I see it, nothing happens the same way twice.” “Really? You are an optimistic people. We would say: Everything returns. And again. And again.” He peered ahead, not slowing for a hairpin curve. Cliffs fell away to vertiginous valleys. Dan gripped his seat, visioning the long careening tumble down that rocky fall, how their bones would smash and snap inside the car before it finally impacted. The tires shrieked. Hwang said, “I believe every day they ask themselves, Is this the hour to attack? All it requires is that we be isolated. That is why the North has such large special-purpose forces. Missiles to hit our air bases. Chemical weapons. They will lay mines at sea. And they will threaten Japan. If the Japanese close their bases to your air force, and the mines keep your carriers out of the battle, there’s no way to reach that thousand sorties a day.”

  “It still sounds like a gamble,” Dan said. “For them.” “It is. But if they think they can succeed—then yes, they will gamble. And it will be a terrible war. It will destroy everything we have built since the last one.” Hwang leaned on the horn again, swerved around a bus. Fresh mountains grew in the distance.

  “A terrible war,” he whispered again.

  THEY descended hours later into a metropolitan cauldron edged by the distant sea. Now there were clouds, as if generated by the miles of city, the sweating breathing humanity that stretched from one wall of mountain to the other. Hwang told him Pusan had been a fleet base for the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II. Dan knew its more recent history. Pusan was where the United Nations had finished retreating. They’d finally held the North Koreans, who were by then exhausted and strung out along the roads, depleted by garrisoning after their long advance. Then Douglas MacArthur’s marines and troops had landed at Inchon, to bar the door behind the invaders. Before the Chinese had turned the course of the war once more.

  The Hotel Commodore was a scarlet and green and gold pagoda perched on a hill too steep to walk up comfortably. Its upper floors overlooked miles of snaky narrow streets and back alleys, every square inch lined with small homes and tiny shopfronts and teahouses and restaurants. The city fell away downhill to the waterfront, still a couple of miles distant. Pusan looked much older than Seoul. But then, it hadn’t been shelled to rubble, the way Seoul had.

  Hwang let him off at the ornate red-and-yellow entrance, shouting angrily at a stone-faced valet as the man heaved Dan’s bag out of the trunk. He didn’t see why, but decided against getting involved. This was Hwang’s country. He gave the porter a couple hundred won, checked in, and asked for Dr. Henrickson’s number.

  When Monty let him in the TV was on so loud the little analyst had to shout over his shoulder, “Donnie! Turn that crap down! The commander’s here.”

  The very small room was crammed with heavy, dark-lacquered furniture and the gray scuffed shockproof containers that held the classified gear. A nature show was on, narrated in Korean. Donnie Wenck sprawled on the floor like a kid watching cartoons. He was in his underwear, surrounded by crumpled balls of shiny foil. Chocolate wrappers. When he saw Dan he blushed. He groped for the control and rolled to his stockinged feet.

  “Everything good in Seoul?” the analyst said, pumpin
g Dan’s hand as if he never wanted to stop. He looked as if he’d gotten some sun.

  “That tan looks good on you, Monty. But I thought you guys’d be in Chinhae.”

  “We were. Stocked up on those greasy burgers at the bowling alley.”

  “That Korean food, that shit’s not good for you,” Wenck said, pulling on black jeans.

  Henrickson added, serious now, “But there might not be a SATYRE after all.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The analyst held out a fax with the TAG letterhead. Dan read it and looked up. “They’re thinking about pulling out?”

  “Not them, Seventh Fleet. They’re getting cold feet.”

  He wondered why, but of course the fax didn’t say. “It won’t be much of an exercise without U.S. participation.”

  Henrickson shrugged as elephants trumpeted. At low volume it sounded more plaintive than threatening. Wenck had drifted back to the screen, riveted again. Dan said, “Hey, Donnie, you mind? Where are the others, Monty? Rit, and Teddy, and Captain…I mean, Joe? I figured you’d be aboard ship getting things checked out. Getting those nineteens installed. If the exercise cancels, we can always pull them out again.”

  “Well, we need to talk about that.”

  “About which?”

  “Joe.” Henrickson looked upward without moving his head. “He’s up in his room. Been there since we got here, actually.”

  Dan said, astonished, “O’Quinn didn’t go to Chinhae with you?”

  “Just stayed in his room. He pays extra to get a single.” Henrickson looked as if he expected Dan to do something about it. Wenck was still hypnotized by the nature show, scratching his butt crack through the jeans. Dan lowered his voice. “So you’re saying—what? That he’s drinking?”

  “Well, oh no, I wouldn’t say that. I didn’t say that.”

  “Just that he stays in his room? Nothing wrong with that. As long as he comes out when we need him.”

  The analyst shrugged. “I’m just letting you know.”

  “Okay. Message received. How about Oberg? Carpenter? Where are they?”

  A leopard coughed. Wenck, mesmerized, slowly unpeeled another Hershey’s Kiss. Henrickson sighed. “Well, Teddy’s over in Chinhae. He wanted to use the gym. But Rit—Donnie? Donnie?”

  What

  “You were there. Tell the commander what happened.”

  The sound went down again. “Who? Rit? Oh yeah—we were at the train station, waiting for a taxi. And Rit, he sees this Korean girl. Oh, you’ve never seen anything that cute. In that little plaid skirt they wear to school. So before I know it, he’s over there hitting on her.”

  “She’s a student?”

  “Yeah. Goes to Pusan Women’s College. At least that’s what she said. He got in the taxi. Checked in here with us. But then he took off. Never used his bed, far as Oberg says. Him and Oberg are in the other double.”

  Henrickson said, “He left a number, but when we call there’s nobody there who speaks English. At least, that we can understand.”

  Dan ran his fingers through his hair. “He’s UA? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Well—not exactly. But if he’s not here, and we can’t get hold of him—”

  “How old is this girl?”

  “He said eighteen,” Wenck called from the television.

  “Damn it! I want one of you to take that number down to the desk. Have them call and translate for you.”

  “You want him to come in?”

  “Of course I do! He belongs here with us, not shacked up with some eighteen-year-old.”

  “Looked more like thirteen,” Wenck mumbled over the throb of jungle drums.

  Dan started to ask if he was serious. Then decided that was one of those questions he was better off not asking. “I want him here for dinner. Six o’clock, and we’ll get organized.”

  In his own room, he stood at the window looking down at Pusan. The mountains, the city sprawled halfway up them, and in the distance the sea, gleaming like ironed foil. He did a couple of stretches, just to get the car trip out of his muscles. Then unzipped the computer case.

  He spent the next hour setting up the notebook, then getting connectivity with TAG with the scrambler modem. It was slow work, and at first the system wouldn’t take his password and user ID. It was case sensitive, though nobody had mentioned that. At last bytes started oozing through, but it was like sucking molasses through a drink stirrer. All the way around the world. Most of his in-box was routine unclassified but there was also a message explaining in more detail what the fax had said. Team Bravo was to stand easy on station until Commander, Seventh Fleet made up his mind about participating. He rogered for it, logged off, and shut down, then looked at his watch. Still an hour till dinner.

  He wasn’t looking forward to it. But it was time to check on Captain Joseph O’Quinn, U.S. Navy, Retired.

  “JUST a second,” came a muffled voice when he knocked. Dan stood in the corridor as a middle-aged Japanese couple brushed by, bowing and smiling. He smiled back, wondering how they perceived Korea, how older Koreans reacted to them. Certainly Hwang didn’t seem to cherish any good memory of Japanese occupation.

  “Who is it?” Through the door, louder.

  “Lenson.”

  “Yeah?” The chain rattled. “C’mon in.”

  O’Quinn was in the same white terry bathrobe with an embroidered dragon that Dan had seen hanging in his own bathroom. He held a can of Diet Pepsi in one hand and a paperback novel, finger thrust between the pages, in the other. Smoke curled from an ashtray. He was unshaven. Dan smelled liquor. He stepped in, checking for bottles, and caught one on the sideboard. Dark rum, a fifth, nearly empty.

  “You doing okay all alone up here, Joe?”

  “I always get a single on the road. I can’t sleep with another guy snoring in my ear. I guess we’re just waiting for the assholes in charge to make up their fucking minds, right? Want a drink? Oh, yeah—you don’t touch it. Pepsi?”

  Dan accepted one from an ice bucket by the bed. More paperbacks lay on the night table. They were all science fiction: Greg Bear, Alan Dean Foster, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle.

  They stood awkwardly a moment before O’Quinn pointed to the chair. He took the bed himself, reached for the cigarette. Said around it, “So, you Naval Academy?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Worked my way up from the spaces myself. Worked for some ring knockers over the years. Nothing personal, but I found ’em pretty much obsessed with themselves. Thought they had some kind of inside track. But they weren’t all that smart. Some of ’em, pretty damn dumb.”

  “Some can be that way.”

  O’Quinn scratched grizzled stubble and half grinned. “Like I said. No offense.”

  “None taken.” But Dan didn’t buy it. The guy either was deliberately being offensive, or had been hiding behind the door when they were passing out social skills. He’d met men like that. Some surprisingly senior. Either way, the only way to meet it was to be just as blunt as they were. “How about you, Joe? I heard what happened on Buchanan. A lot of guys would have just quietly slunk away after something like that. But here you are. Still on the government payroll—or wait, no, it’s Titan, right?”

  The older man stubbed the cigarette out. His face was controlled. “Joe O’Quinn never slunk away from anything,” he said at last. “What’d they tell you happened?”

  “Just that there was a collision. Guys died.”

  “Not in the collision. Which was the freighter’s fault, by the way. Failure to keep a proper lookout. Henrickson say they died in the collision?”

  “No.”

  “’Cause they didn’t. They drowned because I locked down on them. The pumps were falling behind. Firemain pressure, zip. I had to keep her afloat. The sea was too cold and too rough and we were too far out, this was way down in the South Atlantic, even to think about abandoning.”

  O’Quinn was staring at the drapes. Dark plush maroon,
they were drawn against the light, against the jagged mountain panorama Dan knew lay on this side of the hotel. He wondered what the older man saw against that screen. O’Quinn drank out of the can, hesitated, then added a solid slug from the bottle. Amber drops bounced on the carpet. “Unfortunately, I should have waited and seen if the flooding reports were right. Yeah, there was a court. And yeah, I ended up on the beach. You were a skipper. Ever had to make a call that turned out wrong?”

  “Yeah. I have.”

  “And lost people ’cause of it?”

  Dan nodded again. You could argue they’d had to die, it was just the mission. Or that it was the commander’s lack of resourcefulness, seamanship, judgment, that had doomed them. You could talk about risk analysis too. The line was there. But sometimes it was buried in darkness, and all the analysis went to shit, and shit happened. And in the dead watches of the night, faces and screams drifted back and woke you, if you’d been able to close your eyes in the first place. Now he knew why O’Quinn slept alone. If he slept at all. He cleared his throat and scrubbed his hand back over his hair. “I know what you mean. It’s not an easy row to hoe. So I might have a little more sympathy than—”

  O’Quinn jumped off the bed and thrust his face into Dan’s. Pepsi and rum spattered brown foam on the bedspread. “I never asked for your fucking sympathy Mister Annapolis. Mister fucking hero How many lives did that Medal of Honor cost you?”

  “You’d better shut up,” Dan said. His hands were claws around the armrests. “And back off. Sit down, O’Quinn.”

  The older man laughed as if he didn’t care anymore. “Fucking ay I will. Don’t worry. I’ll keep it shut around the boys. I just want you to know I see through the act. What’s a fucking hero, anyway? Just whatever dickhead’s at the right place at the right time.”