Korea Strait

by David Poyer

The commodore cleared his throat and they fell silent. “Dan, what do you think?”

  He rubbed his face. He didn’t want to say it. He really, really didn’t want to put himself in the situation. But he forced his mouth to make the words. “If there’s half a chance to get our people out of this alive, Commodore… I’ll go.”

  “It will be at grave risk to you.”

  He tried to muster some gallant rejoinder, but all his tired brain surfaced with was that great old all-purpose military response. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled. “Just one thing—”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d better have some more coffee first. Or they’re not going to get much useful out of me.”

  “Well, I don’t like it,” Henrickson mumbled. “Once they’ve got you over there, we have absolutely no way of getting you back. They can shoot you. Torture you. Submerge again, with you aboard—”

  Jung sat with head cocked, eyes closed. He spoke to Hwang, who turned and relayed orders to one of the crewmen. The man came to attention, snapped out, ”Jal al get seum ni da,” and disappeared below.

  When the long-faced steward came up he carried a cloth-wrapped bundle. He handed it to Jung. The commodore unfolded it, revealing a holster. He took out the automatic, worked the slide, and put the safety on. He wiped oil off it with the cloth and handed it to Dan. “Take this.”

  Dan turned it over. An unfamiliar make, Korean, he guessed. He tried to hand it back, offering it butt first. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go over there armed, sir.”

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion, Commander.”

  That was pretty clear. Dan checked again that the magazine was seated and the safety was on, and tucked it into the small of his back, under his belt. When he’d carried the Presidential Emergency Satchel, and a sidearm to protect it, he’d found that was the only way he could carry a pistol and not have it come adrift on him.

  Next up the ladder was the little guy from Yu’s wardroom. The steward O’Quinn had saved, Dan remembered. He lurched, he sniffled, but he was back in his white smock. Again he was carrying the silver coffee urn, the covered tray. Dan hoped they hadn’t bothered with the sugar-cube ship this time. Seeing him, the server smiled and whipped off the napkin.

  Dan closed his eyes. They had.

  He took a big slug from the proffered steaming cup and almost choked: it was thick as syrup, boiled down nearly to solidity. They watched him gravely as he drank it off. It felt ominous, like a ceremonial send-off. It didn’t help his already sizable reluctance. He shoved that cowardly, cringing Caliban back down into the shadows where it lived.

  “So… shall I get going?”

  Jung looked out at the waiting shadow. At last, he nodded.

  A whaleboat had a mind of its own in seas like this. They were still eight, ten feet high, boiling in from every point of the compass. Dan crouched beside the helmsman as the latter wrestled the wheel. He felt like the Michelin Man in foul weather pants, foul weather jacket, then a life jacket over it all. Plus the pistol, and a portable radio in the pocket of the jacket. His boots were full of salt water again. When spray came over the bow he didn’t bother to duck. Just bent his head and took the shower.

  His neck ached, and he knew why. He kept expecting the black hull they steered toward, the sea, the air, to vanish in an incandescent flash. You won’t feel a thing, he told himself. But the quickened corpse he rode kept flinching. His legs were rigid as iron and his breath came too fast. Now he wished he’d skipped the coffee. It sloshed sourly in a jittery gut, and the crazy seesaw of sea and sky didn’t help.

  They had four souls in the whaleboat: the big helmsman, a bowhook, another boatswain’s mate type, and Dan. No visible weapons, and from the boat’s staff flew not the ROK flag but a white one, made up at the last minute by Yu’s guys from a bedsheet. This struck Dan as a cool touch. He’d never sailed under a flag of truce before.

  He swung his gaze to the approaching conning tower, and the gun that tracked them from atop it. The sub was rolling violently. The gun crew were tethered by harnesses. One was just then being sick, trying to catch it in his palm till the outboard roll, but not having much success. That was the only sign of human weakness in the dour visages that glared down as they neared.

  A door slammed open at the base of the tower. Two men peered out. They wore blue cotton uniforms, a lighter hue than that of the South Koreans. One fingered a coil of line. They pointed alongside, gesturing furiously. The coxswain blipped the horn to acknowledge and swung to parallel the sub’s axis. Someone else was shouting down from the tower but the helmsman ignored him. He gunned the engine, then throttled back as a copper-green swell mounted, hung, then broke, gnashing and foaming down the Romeo’s deck. When it smashed into the tower the spray leaped many fathoms into the air.

  Dan flexed his fingers. He had to make it on the first jump. If he didn’t he’d fall between the whaleboat and the hull, and most likely get something crushed—his leg if he was lucky, his head if he wasn’t.

  He nudged the coxswain. When he turned his head Dan shoved the pistol into the Korean’s pocket. The sailor twisted to look down at it, then at Dan, gaping. ”Jeon dae Jang,” Dan yelled into his ear, slapping the bulge of the gun within wet cloth. Telling him it was the commodore’s. The guy hesitated, then nodded. Boarding with a concealed weapon didn’t seem like the way to build trust here. If any could be built, and he wasn’t just setting himself up for a hostage situation.

  The boatswain’s bear-paw whammed down on his shoulder. Time to go. He unlocked his fingers and scuttled forward, then knelt in the bow. The boat zoomed dizzily, nearly level with the officers watching from the top of the tower, then sank away till the hull loomed over them. He examined green slime and razor-edged barnacles at close range.

  “Yes, yes,” yelled the coxswain in his high voice, and drove in as they soared once more. The bow slammed against black steel so hard they all staggered. At that exact second the linesman on the deck slung the bight. The wet heavy line slammed Dan in the chest, almost knocking him down. But at the same moment the boatswain grabbed it, slipped it under his arms, picked him up, and threw him bodily over the bow.

  He tried to get his legs around but instead took the impact with his ribs. It felt like a truck crushing his chest, but he clung to the line with both fists, hard as he could. The line handlers braced their boots and got him in hand over hand. He slammed his arm against the steel of the door coaming, and couldn’t suppress a groaned curse.

  Then he was inside, his wheezing breath echoing in a cramped, dripping, dark, reeling, sea-smelling space that evidently flooded during submergence.

  One of the guys who’d reeled him in threw him against the bulkhead. The other began patting him down roughly, grabbing his crotch hard, feeling behind his neck, the small of his back. His breath smelled like radishes and rotten fish. White sea-pimples circled his neck like a pearl necklace, and his face was hard and flat as a mechanic’s hammer. He found the radio and shook it suspiciously, then handed it to the other guy. When he came to the heavy bronze USS Horn buckle he pulled it off, and Dan’s belt with it. Dan grabbed for his pants with one hand and braced against the next savage roll with the other.

  They pushed him into the gloom. A coaming diked six inches of rolling water on deck from a hatch leading down. Dan leaned over it, breathing the reek of rotten rice and diesel fuel and stinking bodies that flooded up from a region of dim orange light.

  A shout came up, and a totally enraged-looking scarlet face followed it up the ladder. This character was shouting so loud it was deafening in the closed space. He threw a canvas bag at Dan’s escorts. The next second it was being pulled over his head.

  The last time anyone had put a hood on him, it’d been Saddam’s Muhkbarat. Without even considering he yanked it out of their hands and whipped it out the still-open door. The sea heaved. The bag floated a moment, then was sucked down. The face in the hatch opening went from scarlet to purple, screaming. The two guys beside Dan we
nt stiff as posts.

  One thing he’d learned on this float was that Koreans feared rank and weren’t afraid to pull it. Maybe the Northern brand were the same. He rounded on Red Face and shook his fist at him. “I’m not wearing that fucking hood!” he screamed as loudly as he could. He grabbed his own collar, the silver oak leaf insignia, and thrust it in the man’s face. “Get that through your thick fucking head, asshole! Now get out of my fucking way!”

  . . .

  HE stood in the little cramped messroom, the painted cork-lined overhead low and curving, bracing himself with one hand on an overboard discharge pipe. It was weepy with condensation and rough with rust, but felt solid under his weight at each roll. Down here the stink was close and choking, the air hot and thick with diesel fumes. All the lights were twenty-watt incandescents. The bulkheads were wooden. The equipment cabinets were pop riveted, with the round black meter faces that had gone out of style in the West about 1949. It was vintage technology, and he’d have been happy in a professional way, in different circumstances, to examine it more closely.

  It was also interesting to note several recent bullet-scars, gleaming raw metal that marred the paneling in the dim light. A dark red stain on the deck looked as if it had been hastily blotted up with rags.

  A harsh voice. “You are American officer?”

  He was surrounded, hemmed in, by extremely hostile-looking North Koreans. Two stood to either side, another behind him, between him and the access trunk. At a wooden mess table with a stained tablecloth sat three men. The one in the center, in his thirties, wore the light blue ship’s coveralls. He had a hard, rawboned face, close-cropped hair, ears that stuck out like propeller blades, and black, stabbing eyes. His hands lay pressed flat on the tablecloth. The two who flanked him looked younger. One was in the same powder blue; the other wore a khaki uniform with red collar tabs. Dan did a double take when he saw their feet. They all wore white canvas slip-on tennis shoes, vintage surfer models, some very much the worse for wear.

  His attention was redirected by Propeller Ears slamming his palm on the table. “I ask again! You are American officer?”

  “Correct.”

  “Your name.”

  “Daniel V. Lenson. Commander, USN. You are the captain? Hang-jung?”

  “I am Captain Im. Political Officer Park; my second in command, Lieutenant Won.”

  Dan nodded and looked around pointedly. “How about a chair?”

  Won snapped an order, and a wooden one appeared. It looked handmade. Dan lowered himself, keeping his grip on the pipe. The rolling was so extreme that the chairs and the table kept grating this way and that. He felt light-headed, a prelude to seasickness, but kept his expression impassive. He’d just come through two typhoons, on the surface. This would be much worse for them. Submerged, they’d have experienced little motion, except when they snorkeled. The pervasive sour-vomit smell didn’t help his stomach, though.

  Time to establish some rapport, get this on a friendlier footing than what felt like an interrogation. “Any chance of tea?” he asked. “I very much enjoy Korean tea.”

  “No tea,” Im snapped. “This is not party. Are you prepared to surrender all force under your command?”

  “No. But I’m prepared to accept your capitulation.”

  Park and Won barked laughter; Im frowned. “That is not what you are here for. We have overwhelming force. Surrender, or we destroy all ships.”

  Dan said, as deadpan as he could, “What overwhelming force? I don’t see such a force, Captain. Only one badly damaged submarine.”

  Im paused for dramatic effect. Then said gravely, tapping the table for emphasis, “We have atomic weapon aboard! That is overwhelming force.”

  “Is that right. May I see it?”

  Consternation. They stared at each other. Then burst out arguing in Korean.

  When Im turned back his frown plowed fresh grooves around his mouth. “We have nuclear weapon aboard. We will detonate it unless all South Korean bandit ships surrender to us and take measure to obey our command.”

  Despite queasiness and dread, Dan felt he was tuning in to what was going on. Im was starting out hard-line, the way North Koreans always did. He was convinced he held the top hand. And maybe he did, if he was willing to die. After a lifetime of regimentation, programming, indoctrination, he probably was.

  All Dan had to do was convince the commander to ignore everything he’d ever been taught was right and honorable. Persuade him there was another way out than death and war.

  Right, Lenson, he thought. How tough could it be? Persuading fanatical zealots, who believed their families would pay if they failed, to give up?

  He folded his arms and put on the best command face he could muster. “Why should I believe you? Perhaps you are stinking Communist liars. I want to see this so-called weapon. It is probably nothing more than a fraud.”

  All three tensed. The word “fraud” meant something, then. Im barked at Won. The exec rose. When he beckoned impatiently Dan hauled himself up too.

  They headed forward. At a small circular watertight door, the second in command swung himself through. Dan followed less gracefully, crouching, on all fours. There seemed to be only one deck, unlike San Francisco. More like World War II submarines: a single level, floored by a massive battery compartment. As they threaded a ballast control station Dan glimpsed scores of red-painted valve-wheels, a hull-penetration board glowing before a boyish crewman threw a blanket over it. The crewman’s face was expressionless but his gaze followed Dan as he passed. Ahead along the passageway more blankets and sheets were being hastily pulled over what they obviously considered sensitive gear.

  Forward of that was a berthing area, but all the bunks were empty. Dan wondered where the crew was. Next came another watertight hatch, massive as the door of a bank vault. Sacks of rice walled up the bulkhead around it. They were working their way free with each roll; brittle grains grated under his boots. He folded again and followed Won through, grabbing a handhold, trying it feetfirst this time.

  The next compartment looked like any torpedo room on any submarine, though more cramped. The long fish lay racked and strapped aft of the tubes and the maze of valves and piping that wrapped them. But to port, as he straightened from his crouch, was a large assembly that Dan saw at once was no torpedo.

  It was about twenty feet long and a yard in diameter. The exterior looked like cast steel, painted gray. He saw instantly from the shape alone that if it was indeed a nuclear weapon, it must be a gun-type uranium bomb. Two crewmen stood at attention in white paper suits, snoods, and booties. One held a Geiger counter. Won took it from his hands and snapped a switch. The clicks mounted to a roar as he passed it over the massive tube.

  Dan couldn’t move. He couldn’t even unlock his eyes from the thing. He felt cold at the same instant sweat broke all over his body.

  He’d been close to them before, aboard carriers and Tomahawk-armed cruisers. But never this close. Touching close. The thing radiated, not just gamma and neutrons, but pure, focused evil. He’d never believed things could be malign, cross-grained with the universe, in and of themselves.

  But intellectual conviction and this feeling of absolute horror were two very different things.

  “You are satisfied, then?” Won smiled, patting the massive object as if it were a prizewinning hog he’d hand-fed from infancy.

  Dan nodded, taking a step back even as he tried to note everything he could about it.

  “You do not want us to open? We are much happy to open. Inspect.”

  He retreated another half step, till his back hit something hard behind him. If he was reading the scale on that counter right, he didn’t want to spend a moment longer in this compartment than he had to. “No, no. I’m satisfied.”

  Won nodded again, looking pleased. He led them in a little reversed processional back to the messroom. Dan breathed easier when the massive door dogged behind them. Now he knew why the crew stayed aft. Why everything they owned was b
arricaded up against the bulkhead. He took his chair again opposite the trio, set his moves out in his mind, and began.

  “Captain Im. I see you are well armed and bravely determined. You have fought very well. However, it is plain you can’t achieve your mission. You cannot reach Pusan.”

  He paused, thinking they might confirm that was their mission. But all he got was Easter Island stone faces. He went on. “As you can’t fulfill your orders, my commander, Commodore Jung, proposes the following. First, that you surrender your ship and your men.”

  “The People’s forces do not surrender,” the uniformed guy, Park, snapped.

  “I understand. Their bravery is well known even in the United States.” They seemed pleased when he complimented them; he decided to lay it on thicker. “You have sunk two ships and caused great damage to the ROK fleet. We never expected such seamanship and courage! The whole world is marveling at this moment. But even the bravest fighter must bow to inevitable defeat. The question then becomes, on what terms to surrender.”

  Park stirred again, but Dan hurried on. “Here is what I propose. We will announce that your submarine has been sunk and you all died heroically. You will receive Republic of Korea citizenship under new names. No one will ever know you surrendered. Your government, and your families at home, will remember you as heroes. As far as history will know, you will lie forever at the bottom of the Eastern Sea.”

  When he stopped speaking the exec began, apparently translating for those who didn’t speak English, or speak it that well. Park burst out in a storm of protest. The others scowled at Dan, but he thought he saw interest in the captain’s gaze. He looked at his watch, and turned the face toward them. “That is my proposal. You have one hour to make up your minds. After that, Commodore Jung will destroy your submarine.”

  “You are in us, Commander,” Im pointed out.

  “I came under a flag of truce. I will be back aboard Chung Nam before then.”

  “So Chung Nam is flagship?” Won wanted to know. Dan hesitated, then nodded. They’d showed him the bomb, after all.