Korea Strait

by David Poyer

  It seemed like minutes as he fought his way through the door again, groped in the dark for the right microphone, and hit the button. Perhaps a tenth of second elapsed between pressing the button to speak and the red transmit light illuminating. In that instant his brain warned him he’d pay for this. But then he remembered the men in a fragile envelope not far below the surface. The knife-edged bow of the old destroyer, flank speed, bad visibility… an electric shock ran up the injured nerves of his spine. He couldn’t wait for someone else to act.

  “Buffalo, Buffalo,” he said as clearly and slowly as he could. “Event terminated. Dae Jon, Dae Jon: Speed zero, I say again, speed zero. Turn to safety course due north immediately. Acknowledge.”

  He wanted her dead in the water, now. An accented voice came back with a stilted interrogative. Dan repeated the order till he got a roger. Then said, “I say again, Buffalo, Buffalo. All units clear and disengage to safe standoff distance.”

  The Koreans were shouting at him. He felt a hand on his shoulder. He shoved it off and went through the litany again, slowly, precisely, sending in the clear so everyone could hear and not waste one precious second searching a signal book. He signed off, let up off the button. Took a deep breath. Then turned.

  The bridge was emptying. He could only guess, but someone must have ordered it cleared.

  THE confrontation wasn’t pleasant. Midway through it, with Yu spluttering in a spit-spattering froth of English and Korean, trying to tear him a new asshole without the vocabulary for it, San Francisco came up on the tactical coordination net. Laying it out in dry phrases, a midwestern voice from the American sub notified the overall exercise OTC—Commodore Jung, though Hwang had been the one who actually answered the radio—that San Francisco would no longer participate in exercise play. He was withdrawing to the east for the remainder of the dark hours and would report his pullout to SUB-PAC. He requested that all Korean units stay well clear of him west of 127 degrees east longitude.

  “May I talk to him?” Dan asked Hwang. He got a hesitation; then the handset.

  “Romeo Kilo, this is TAG exercise coordinator. Request to speak to Romeo Kilo actual. Over.”

  “This is Romeo Kilo actual. Over.” The sub’s skipper, in person.

  “This is TAG coordinator. Request to know reason for your dropping out of exercise. Over.”

  “This is Romeo Kilo. I can’t play with these idiots. Over.”

  Dan cleared his throat, conscious of Hwang, and Yu, and the officer of the deck, Kim #2, he thought, listening to the exchange, which was being piped over the speaker as well as through his handset. Plus everybody in CIC as well, no doubt. “Uh, this is TAG coordinator. Understand there was a violation of standoff distance. Over.”

  “Romeo Kilo. You could call it that. I call it irresponsible maneuvering, too close at too high a speed. He missed me by less than two hundred yards. That’s too dangerous for me to continue participation. Over.”

  Dan rubbed his forehead. Without the sub, they no longer had an event. “This is TAG coordinator. The signal for a dangerously close approach is a red flare. Over.”

  The sub skipper explained he’d tried to fire one, but it had hung up in the ejection tube. When the inner door had been opened to extract it, it had ignited and fallen out on the deck. Dan closed his eyes. No wonder the guy was pulling out. At periscope depth, with a destroyer charging down on him, and a fire aboard too. “Any casualties? Is the fire under control? Over.”

  “Romeo Kilo. Fire is out. A couple guys down with smoke. Over.”

  Dan eased off the button, trying to think. He thought he knew where the Koreans were coming from. They had the fighting spirit. He didn’t want to discourage that. But he also understood the sub skipper’s misgivings. Captaining a billion dollars’ worth of nuclear submarine was as exacting a trade as there was. His job was to get everyone working together. That was the only way to keep the exercise going. But at the moment, it was falling apart.

  “Commander Lenson?”

  Hwang. The staff officer tugged at his sleeve. Past him, in the corner of the pilothouse, Dan saw Commodore Jung. His stocky shape stood square in the dimness, like a rock around which the surf seethed. Dan steeled himself and went over. “Commodore. Commander Lenson here.”

  “I understand you interfered in Captain Yu’s conduct of this event.”

  “Sir, Dae Jon was within San Francisco’s standoff distance. The sub was at periscope depth. It was too dangerous to continue.”

  “Yu is the OTC. You could have advised him. Rather than causing him to… rather than assuming his responsibilities.”

  Jung’s tone was iron, the silence in the pilothouse complete. Dan decided diplomacy might be in order. “Sir, it’s U.S. Navy doctrine that anyone observing a hazard during an exercise may terminate the exercise. Must terminate the exercise. If that’s not Korean procedure, I most humbly apologize. Both to you and to the captain.” He bowed, both to Jung and Yu, to make it plain even to those who didn’t follow English what he was doing.

  Jung cleared his throat but didn’t respond, so Dan pressed on. “Unfortunately we have a problem.”

  He explained about San Francisco’s onboard fire, her CO’s reaction to the close pass, and his withdrawal from the exercise. Jung’s shadow stroked its chin. Said slowly, “If they leave, the only submarine involved will be Chang Bo Go. That won’t be sufficient?”

  “Well, sir, no, it won’t. The free play just won’t work with only one sub.”

  Jung said angrily, “I’m not happy about this, Commander. Korean doctrine too emphasizes safety. But after all, we also train the way we fight. And I don’t plan to admonish any of my skippers for being too combative. No. I will not do that.”

  “No, sir. I understand where you’re coming from on that. And if I acted too hastily, I apologize once again.”

  “Very well; that is closed. But about the submarine… what can I do about that? Is she really going to withdraw?”

  “They take safety very seriously, sir. And you can’t blame them.”

  “Tell me what to do,” Jung said.

  Dan thought a moment. He didn’t like the idea, but it was all he could think of. “Well, sir,” he said slowly, “there might be one thing we can try.”

  7

  THE rain blew down in slanted ramps from colorless clouds as somewhere dawn broke. It sparkled on the gray decks and skipped along the coamings and whirled in the scuppers. Dan was soaked all over again as he climbed up into Chung Nam’s motor whaleboat. The boat swayed like a cradle as he stood clutching the dripping monkey lines, waiting to lower away. The deep flute-roar of the stack ten feet away vibrated his very bones. He’d left his wallet with Henrickson. He carried a handheld radio and was laden-wet in foul weather jacket, fore-and-aft cap, and a bright orange flotation vest. Which was too tight across his chest, but it reassured him. Considering he was facing a heavy chop, with a doubtful destination. He hitched his sagging trou and looked toward the bridge.

  A face he hadn’t seen much of late looked back. Joe O’Quinn, back among the living. As Dan looked up, the retired captain raised two fingers from the rail like a pickup driver on a country road. Taking that as a greeting, he nodded back.

  The chief shouted and pointed and a seaman pushed over a controller. The davits rotated out and the boat began its descent. Dan crouched, gripping the line as the whaleboat metronomed. The wet-glazed gray of Chung Nam’s hull swung close, then far away. The boat crew was ragged, tentative, as if they didn’t do this very often. It wasn’t quite up to par with what he’d come to expect, which was a high standard in seamanship and gunnery, somewhat lower in communications and tactics. And of course near the bottom of the stack when it came to chow, showers, and the other habitability issues. Or maybe they liked their food that way and didn’t care about the rest.

  The front tackle lurched. The chief screamed his head off above them, and Dan came back to where he was. He glanced down into the rain-spackled, greasy-surfaced s
ea. He tightened the life jacket straps, gauging his chances. If that forward hook let go it’d drop the bow into the water, flip the boat, and drag it over top of them. A gray-green sea crested and spray rattled over them. He licked it as it ran down his face. It tasted like sweat.

  The flagship had checked out of the exercise. They were fifteen miles east of the op area, headed into the prevailing seas. The submarine was a black nub only occasionally visible two thousand yards distant. Her CO had refused to allow them closer. Dan didn’t think that boded well for his mission, but this was all he could think of to do.

  The keel hit the sea. The chief screamed again and gestured violently. The hooks released with a ragged double clank barely audible through the wind and the breaking seas and the snorting growl of the boat’s diesel. The forward hook swung back at them and everybody ducked as it went through. He crouched, feeling better being unhooked and seaborne. The coxswain put the wheel over slowly, so as not to slam their stern into the hull, then gunned it.

  The frigate receded into a gray shadow in the rain astern. He found a seat on the thwarts as another mass of spray boarded. Water rolled to and fro on the thwart. His pants and underwear were already sodden. He wished he had another pair of shoes. Corfam was never the same after salt water.

  The sea seemed bigger and much rougher down here. Also dirtier: a scattered litter of cardboard scraps, bits of styrofoam, chunks of what looked like plastic packing material, bobbed in the dimpling rain. The diesel growled and burbled and roared. The helm groaned as the coxswain, the biggest Korean Dan had yet seen, spun the wheel, searching out an approach to each oncoming wave. As they surged to a crest Dan shaded his eyes against the rain and spray. He clicked his gaze across the horizon but saw nothing. Looking back, he couldn’t see the frigate anymore either. The coxwain had his head down; Dan saw he was checking the compass.

  Ten or eleven minutes later San Francisco’s massive sail loomed above them like a black keep just emerged from the sea. Even ballasted up the submarine was being swept from one end to the other, rolling much more violently than the frigate had. Two seamen, safety lines dragging in a track, clung to the base of the sail. The coxswain eyed Dan, then the rolling, seaswept rounded hull. Lenson swallowed, resigning himself to a swim at least, major damage at worst. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

  “Gal ryeom ni ka?” the coxswain yelled. “You go?”

  “Nay, nay,” Dan said, wondering why the Korean and English were exact opposites. He made a get-the-hell-in-there gesture. The coxswain shrugged, gauged the roll, and whipped the wheel over as the sail rolled to port.

  As the hulls collided with a head-jerking slam the other Koreans grabbed him bodily and pitched him out. Dan hit on his feet, but staggered as the roll came back at him. His shoes flew out from under him on slippery rubber tiles. He went down hard and started sliding back down into the sea.

  The two submariners hurled themselves at him. One smashed him in the skull with a hard object. Dazed, still sliding backward, Dan sucked a breath, anticipating a long time underwater. The second man got a line around him. Dan got his hands on it and together, somehow, they dragged him up to the sail. A sea hit them there, smacking them into the wet rubber that coated the steel. When it receded he saw recessed rungs leading up the sail. The sailors gave him a boost. Clinging hard against the roll, the centrifugal force of which got wilder the higher he climbed, he reached the top at last and ducked through an access cutout and came up in a little semienclosed cockpit.

  “Welcome to San Francisco,” a jaygee in a green foul-weather jacket yelled. “Skipper’s below. Let’s get you down there and dried off.”

  The hatch led to a ladder trunk that went down like a deep well. Dan kept his mind on his hands. They were burned from the lines, stinging from the salt, but if he slipped he’d fall sixty feet, break his legs or worse. He went down and down.

  At last he stepped off, sopping wet, into the control room. Everyone was in blue coveralls. A tall officer with close-cropped champagne hair and high cheekbones shook his hand. “Dan? Thought that was you on the horn. Andy Mangum. Sixth Company.”

  . . .

  MANGUM’S cabin was half the size of Dan’s on Chung Nam, about like four shower stalls put together. The overhead curved in: they were just beneath the top of the pressure hull. Mangum sat on the bunk. Dan got the single chair, with the little modular desk folded up.

  “Thanks for the b-robe.” He fingered Mangum’s gold-piped blue Naval Academy bathrobe.

  “We’re running your uniform through the wash and dry. Have it back in half an hour.” Mangum leaned back. They’d already gone through the usual drill of Annapolis classmates running into each other on active duty, who was where, who’d gotten out, who’d been passed over. “Okay, what can I do for you?”

  “First off, have you sent that message yet?”

  “What message?”

  “The one to SUBPAC. Saying you weren’t going to play with us anymore.”

  “I’ve got it drafted.” Mangum didn’t meet his eyes.

  “But have you sent it?”

  “I hope that isn’t what you came all the way over here for. To get me not to. Because it’s not gonna happen.” He shook his head. “I can’t gamble the boat and my guys’ lives on a bunch of overzealous shiphandlers.”

  “That’s got to be your call,” Dan said.

  “Oh, it will be. Believe me. And if I have to err, it’s on the side of caution. You had command, right? A couple of them?”

  “Officially just one.”

  “Surface type?”

  “Destroyer. Yeah.”

  “So you know what I mean. But the margins are narrower with no reserve buoyancy. We operate in a zero-error environment down here.”

  Dan noticed for the first time there was no motion whatsover. “We’re submerged?”

  “Two hundred feet. Eight knots.”

  “Very smooth.” He’d sniffed the air in the control room, expecting the afterwhiff of fire, of a burning flare. There’d been nothing; the air had been polished clean, sterile, bland.

  “So, given that’s not negotiable, I hope you didn’t come just for that.” Mangum waited, palms cupping his kneecaps. “So, why did you come?”

  “Actually I had something to give you.”

  He’d had them wrap it in a waterproof chart pouch. He unsealed it and took out the paper. Held it out. “From the captain of the ship that did the drive-by on you.”

  Mangum took it, looking suspicious. He glanced down the message. “Boy,” he said.

  “Takes a while to get the gist of what he’s trying to say.”

  “I guess he writes better English than I do Korean.”

  “It’s an apology.”

  “I can see that.”

  Dan gave him the second sheet. “And here’s another one, handwritten, from the ROK COMDESRON. Commodore Mm Jun Jung. They take apologies seriously.”

  “I’ve worked with the Japanese. Same same.”

  “Then you know they won’t be happy campers if we just blow these off.” Not giving Mangum a chance to argue back, he went on, “I also want to tell you, why you’re getting all this personal attention from our allies here. Why I came over in person. I didn’t want this on the VHF, or in anybody’s signal log. And I want your assurance you never heard it from me.”

  Mangum hesitated. At last he said, “Okay. What?”

  “I got this from the naval attache in Seoul. We’re going to pull out of Korea. Part of the reduction of forces.”

  “What? Pull out?”

  “That was my reaction. The administration’s already downsized the Army; we’ve got to take a cut too. If the Koreans can take over the sea lanes, we’ll lease them six destroyers, buy them four more diesel boats, and retrograde.”

  Mangum said anxiously, “Did he say anything about the forces out of Japan?”

  “It was a she. Oh, you guys’ll stay. But that’s what this exercise is about. Whether they’re good enough to deal with
the North Koreans on their own.”

  “Are they? What do you think?”

  Dan pondered that, finally decided the honest answer was “I haven’t seen enough yet to make that call, Andy. But I think what it means in this context—bottom line is what we owe, actually what I owe, the Navy. And that’s a bona fide, no-shit assessment of the ROK’s antisubmarine abilities. The chain of command needs an objective reading. Without that, they can’t vote yea or nay on the pull-out. What I’m afraid of is that if they don’t give a clear signal, this administration’ll go for the low-cost option: get out. And in that case, if they’re not ready—”

  “We’d have a real bitch-up,” Mangum supplied. “If the North decided to try again.”

  Dan was waiting for him to make the connection when someone tapped on the door. Mangum said, “Come in.” A young man in the ubiquitous blue coveralls didn’t actually enter—there was literally no room to—but slid a tray in. Mangum settled it on his lap. “Coffee?”

  “Thanks.”

  “How’s the commander’s uniform doing, Cus?”

  “Out of the wash, in the dry, Skip.”

  Mangum nodded and the crewman closed the door. He handed Dan a cup. “And this all relates to me, how?”

  “If you don’t play, there’s no exercise.”

  “They have their own boat. The new one.”

  “It’s too easy with just one targ—uh, with just one opponent.”

  ”We are not the targets,” Mangum observed mildly.

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “We pull out of here, the U.S. I mean, there’ll be tanks in Seoul a week later.”

  “That’s my thought too, but it’s not my call. My bailiwick’s to do this exercise and give them a valid grade.”

  He sipped the coffee and waited. After a couple of seconds the submariner said, “When they see that periscope, visually I mean, they don’t know the range. We’ve got some new features that disappear us from radar. I just can’t have them charging in on me.”