RED ICE

by R. L. Crossland

  PART IV

  CHAPTER 18

  The trip back to Korea was sobering and lonely. Once there, I learned we had developed a disciplinary problem. Puckins and Wickersham had given the KCIA people the slip during the “rest” period and flown to Japan for the remaining days, returning only hours before me. They refused to explain their unauthorized absence. Questions from Dravit and me only met mischievous grins and hard silence.

  The breach of discipline didn’t disturb me as much as the breach of security. Clearly we had a spy and saboteur in our midst, and though I had known both Puckins and Wickersham for over a decade, no one was above suspicion.

  “Captain Dravit, make sure these two are kept busy until our departure. It seems that when they get bored they get the urge to go globe-trotting. Chiefs and first-class petty officers notwithstanding, I believe a good healthy dose of weapons maintenance and barracks cleaning would be in order.”

  Puckins and Wickersham’s faces fell.

  “And maybe they ought to re-pine-tar all our skis. When they finish that, let them shovel a walkway from here to Seoul.”

  “But, sir…” one of the culprits started.

  Nine sets of weary faces and bloodshot eyes manhandled personal gear onto an old bus and ordnance onto one of the Mercedes trucks. That three-day party must have been something. Tiny Gurung would start laughing uncontrollably for no reason at all. Kruger wore a pair of pink lace skivvies over his shirt pocket like a decoration for valor. Lutjens and Alvarez walked as if they were made of glass. Even Matsuma, who had fallen into the martial way of things, grinned whimsically when he thought no one was looking. The only one untouched by the graduation festivities was Chamonix, whom I’d never seen smile.

  Most of the men slept as the bus raced south through the snow-covered countryside, slowing only as it entered an occasional village. Not until we reached the long tunnel that marked the entrance to Chinhae did everyone become alert and begin to sense the full impact of what lay ahead. As we cleared the gates of the navy yard, the men speculated on where we were going and how and why. The consensus was that we were going to Red China since our equipment was primarily Chinese, and we were going by ship since our destination was Chinhae, Korea’s naval center. No one had a clue as to why we were going.

  We stopped at the end of one pier at a deserted portion of the base as instructed. The truck pulled in ahead of us and we began to unload it. Between the scuba tanks and the ski gear, the truck looked like a mobile sporting-goods store.

  There was no submarine in sight. Several patrol boats lay at anchor in the evening haze. There didn’t seem to be anyone around interested in doing anything.

  At about 2000, two patrol boats rumbled to life and came alongside the pier. A crewman dogtrotted over to us. “You come,” he said. “Now?”

  Puckins had the men transfer the gear with painstaking care to the two boats. I noted that the boxed ordnance seemed excessive. The Korean crews looked bored, as if this sort of smuggler’s transfer was becoming wearisome. If that’s what they thought, they kept it to themselves.

  “Did we order all this ordnance?”

  “I did,” Dravit said, inviting no further discussion. No use questioning the inventory. After all, he was the professional ordnance salesman.

  Since their punishment detail, Puckins and Wickersham had become very formal and ill at ease. I couldn’t tell if I had been too hard on them or if they were up to something. The transfer was too hectic to watch them carefully.

  The patrol boats took in their lines and soon we were cutting through the wintry chop and dodging the tiny islands that freckled the harbor.

  “There it is,” Dravit called out. I moved to the lee rail of the boat for a better look.

  The submarine lay dead in the water, dull black and menacing. Its bold, sleek lines seemed poised for attack. Forward of the conning tower, a single five-inch gun thrust ahead determinedly. Emblazoned on the conning tower was a large red star and identification numerals—in Chinese characters, not the way they would do it, but confusing nonetheless. According to these markings, this was a Chinese “Romeo” class patrol submarine. Yet the hull configuration and superstructure were all wrong for a Chicom boat. Furthermore, few modern subs carried deck guns and seldom so large. There was something faintly familiar about this sub and it disturbed me. A lone silhouette in a bridge coat descended from the cigarette deck to meet us.

  “Welcome aboard, Mr. Frazer. You like our artwork?” he said, pointing to the markings. “They were applied especially for your cruise.

  “Would you and your men kindly follow me below? A working party will stow your equipment for you. I expect you will want to leave one man to supervise the transfer?” the round-faced Korean officer said in matter-of-fact tones.

  “Gurung, keep an eye on the unloading of the gear,” Dravit, behind me, ordered.

  That sense of familiarity grew stronger and began to haunt me. I checked the frame markings. All markings were in Korean characters. The odor of kimchee-fermented cabbage pervaded the boat. Many of the fittings weren’t U.S. made, but by now I was convinced this was a U.S. submarine.

  When we arrived at the control room, the round-faced officer turned and introduced himself as Commander Cho, Korean navy, the sub’s skipper. He seemed indifferent to our arrival. I supposed that we were just one of the many small military and paramilitary units he deposited yearly on hostile doorsteps. I had been aware that Korea had a submarine of some sort since my days as an adviser.

  “Excuse me, Captain, but what ship is this?”

  He looked at me sidelong. “This is the Korean navy submarine Taegu. You may remember it—though you seem far too young—as the USS Wahoo.”

  “Damned,” Wickersham exclaimed half-consciously. No wonder she had seemed familiar. I had toured her sister ship, the USS Croaker, which was a World War II relic. But hadn’t the Wahoo disappeared years ago?

  As if reading my mind, Cho added, “She sank with all hands in forty-three while in the Sea of Japan. The Japanese began salvage work a year later but had to stop at the time of the surrender.

  “We took over the project in fifty-five, raising and concealing her in a remote submarine pen not far from here, she’s been used for intelligence work against North Korea ever since. Your government knows about her, but has never filed a formal protest.”

  He was all business.

  “My former government.”

  He turned to look at me, then had his executive officer show us the troop compartment. Dravit and I shared a stateroom.

  The boat began to vibrate faintly—we were under way. Hell-bent for Siberia in a flat black museum piece.

  Sometimes little things should tip you off. First, I should have sensed when Wickersham and Puckins deposited two seabags with such tender loving care in my stateroom that something was afoot. Second, I should have become suspicious when those two asked Dravit to take a look at some mysterious problem in the armory. I should have sensed skullduggery on their part of unmitigated proportions. But I didn’t. Instead, I gave my full attention to charts of the Siberian coastline and English translations of the long-term weather forecasts. Then I went to the head.

  When I returned, lying in my rack—nonchalantly reading a book, oblivious to the fact that we were gliding at periscope depth through the Sea of Japan aboard a vulnerable old commerce raider, crewed by eighty hard-nosed Korean seamen and carrying nine desperate naval commandos—reclined Keiko in a faded set of bell-bottoms and a dark blue turtleneck sweater. Damnation.

  “Dravit!” I bellowed out the stateroom door.

  “Yes?”

  “Get Chief Puckins and Wickersham in here ASAP.”

  Keiko looked up at me uncertainly. “Not their fault. They only suggested this stowaway after you left Hachijo. It was my fault for taking them up on it. They said it would be good for ‘skipper’s morale.’”

  She rolled over to face the bulkhead.

  Dravit, Puckins, and Wickersham came ba
rging through the door. Dravit was smiling but quickly dropped the smile when he saw the wild look of fury in my eye.

  “You two”—my index finger shook uncontrollably—“are hereby appointed head cleaners on this boat until further notice. If in the future you have any plans to buoy the spirits of ‘your skipper,’ or anyone else, you can take those plans and stick them…”

  Dravit seized the seconds it took to fish for an appropriate receptacle to hustle the culprits out of the stateroom and added some choice advice of his own.

  I went aft to the control room to tell the captain of his stowaway. The captain’s reaction, clearly, though not overtly, indicated he was of the opinion he had embarked ten rank amateurs.

  The humor of the prank escaped me. My full concentration had to be on my men and the mission. There would be no second chances, no coming back to pick up forgotten items. Keiko would be a distraction—albeit a pleasant one—but a distraction, nonetheless. A malfunctioning radio or a shortage of food, it didn’t matter. I was responsible.

  The submarine rushed headlong through the brooding waters of the Sea of Japan. After the prank, Dravit had limped out of the stateroom and berthed in the troop compartment. He had said, with ponderous sarcasm, that he could not abide officers who encouraged stowaways.

  Chamonix and I worked on organizing the field packs so that they were both light and complete. We would darken the troop compartment and the group would rehearse assembling the folding kayaks and breaking down the weapons. We fitted the green Chinese uniforms and made what few alterations were required of the white camouflage overblouses and overtrousers.

  I hoped to get fairly close to the Siberian coast in order to lock the raiding party out of the submarine. A lockout was a procedure in which divers exited a submerged submarine. It was a ticklish maneuver that required a rehearsal of both the frogmen and the submarine’s crew. Underwater, the submarine’s propellers generated a furious suction. Any error could suck a drifting frogman into the whirling propeller and certain death. The sub’s captain had agreed to a rehearsal and scheduled it for the next day.

  The rehearsal centered around the submarine’s forward escape trunk, a compartment about the size of two telephone booths. At the top of the trunk lay a hatch that led to the outer deck of the submarine. At the bottom of the compartment was another hatch, which opened into the sub’s working spaces. When the trunk was completely flooded, a small lip around the outer edge of the top hatch trapped a donut of air several inches in depth. In an emergency, a diver could just barely thrust his head into the donut-shaped bubble for breathable air.

  The lockout procedure was hazardous, yet simple in principle. By operating the controls within the trunk or the dual controls in the lower passageway, we could gradually flood the trunk with water from the sub’s reserve tanks. Once the pressure inside the trunk was slightly greater than the pressure outside the sub’s hull, the top hatch, which was already undogged and only held shut by the outside pressure, would pop open and the divers in the trunk could swim out. From there they would glide along a safety line, which stretched from the top hatch to the periscope. The line kept the divers from drifting back into the sub’s screws.

  I would have preferred to use oxygen rebreathers—Draegers—which left no telltale bubbles. However, a diver breathing pure oxygen under pressure stood a good chance of blacking out at depths exceeding thirty feet. The distance between this submarine’s hatch and the surface, running at periscope depth, came uncomfortably close to that depth. Draegers were therefore out, open-circuit scuba was the rig of the week.

  The lockout was one way of deploying raiders in enemy waters undetected. It placed great demands on divers, especially in waters as cold as the Okhotsk, but it allowed the submarine to stay below the surface. Submariners dreaded the detectability and vulnerability of surface running.

  The next evening we assembled the men for the drill. Every man wore a bulky bubble dry suit. These suits were warmer, but more cumbersome than the old-fashioned dry suits we had worn for Kunashiri.

  The first diver pair, Puckins and Lutjens, climbed up into the trunk and secured the lower hatch. As the assigned safety divers, they wore single-hose regulators with octopus extensions. Puckins operated the controls inside the trunk. Dravit, his ankle cast propped on the lower knife edge of the hatchway, stood by the series of valves and pipes that duplicated Puckins’s controls within the trunk. Puckins announced over the waterproof intercom each adjustment as he made it.

  “Flooding.”

  I could hear the pumps forcing water into the trunk. Dravit repeated each message back to Puckins.

  I could imagine the rising water level, first knee high, then waist high, then chest high…

  “Tell him to have Lutjens put his mouthpiece in and test it below water level.” It was a routine command. The divers had, of course, made a cursory regulator check when they had strapped on their tanks.

  “Lutjens…is having…trouble.”

  The resonance of Puckins’s words had changed as water poured into the trunk. I could hear coughing in the background over the hum of the pumps. Puckins vented the trunk.

  “Try yours…he may have to buddy-breathe off your octopus rig.”

  More coughing and gagging.

  “Something wrong”—cough—“getting water through the”—cough—“regulator.… Water’s real high…nearly to the hatch lip.”

  “Get up into the bubble. Don’t touch any of the controls.”

  “Captain Dravit, take over, using your controls. Abort the lockout. Flood down the trunk. Whatever we do, we can’t lose the bubble. Chief, we are aborting the drill.”

  The bubble was now their only source of air. If Dravit manipulated the controls in the wrong order, the bubble would slip out the wrong pipe and the divers would drown, trapped in a dark round coffin of steel.

  “Flooding down.”

  The pumps reversed flow. I realized I was in a cold sweat.

  When the trunk had finally emptied, Lutjens opened the lower hatch, and the two shaken divers climbed out. Wickersham grabbed their regulators and pried them open with a screwdriver.

  “Mr. Frazer, take a look at these.” Wickersham held out the two regulators.

  “No mushroom valves.”

  A mushroom valve was a soft, flexible rubber disk that, during the breathing cycle, kept water from entering the mouthpiece as exhaust air escaped. These disks were missing. We examined the other regulators. Their valves were missing, too. This was no manufacturer’s error. It meant deliberate sabotage—the kind a diver wouldn’t normally detect until it was too late—sabotage that killed with choking horror.

  “Gurung, let the control room know we’ve called off the lockout drill.”

  “Thought it might have been a Jonah back in Korea, but we’ve got a Judas with us. Don’t we?” Wickersham thought aloud.

  “Yes, it appears we do. But he hasn’t stopped us…yet.”

  “Break out the kayaks. It looks like this boat’s going to have to surface, after all.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Keiko and I shared the same stateroom but barely spoke to one another. She had become distant, or perhaps I had become distant. It didn’t matter since I was busy checking and rechecking, inspecting and reinspecting, planning and replanning. A chill had fallen on our relationship and I just could not spare the time to lift it. If that were possible.

  A howling storm hit us three-quarters of the way across the Sea of Japan. Forty-foot waves tossed the surface-running sub around like a beer can in a washing machine. The heads became awash with vomit and we were forced to strap ourselves into our racks. Several crew members sustained broken ribs or collarbones as they caromed down passageways or attempted to climb to the sub’s conning tower. The waves picked the boat up with perverse relish, hesitated, and then abruptly dropped it into the raging sea.

  On one occasion, several hundred gallons of seawater cascaded down an open hatch. A lookout had opened the hatch for his watch re
lief. The relieving crewman was knocked senseless and the seawater short-circuited a number of powerlines. Fortunately, the seawater did not get into the sub’s batteries. Seawater and batteries combine to generate deadly chlorine gas.

  The storm had lasted for twenty-four hours and left everyone hungry and exhausted.

  I was alone in the submarine’s wardroom when Dravit and Chamonix filed in.

  “Skipper, I think we’d better take a second look at this operation,” Dravit opened.

  His color was up. Chamonix wore a similar look of intensity. A confrontation.

  I was seated. They stood over me. Dravit’s cast clunked against the bench seat. I had been expecting something like this. Now the two of them had me cornered.

  “We’re out on a limb already and I can hear some bugger making little chopping noises behind us,” he said through clenched teeth.

  I searched their faces for a hint of indecision or inconsistency, and found none.

  “Mister Frazer,” Chamonix added in even tones, “there has been a serious pattern of acts, of, how do you say—it is the same word in English—sabotage. We cannot disregard these acts. To endure difficulties, this is admirable. To ignore clear signs of treachery, that is foolhardy.”

  Dravit drummed his fingers on the table softly, unconsciously.

  “You mean you want me to pull the plug?” Not quite the right expression to use aboard a submarine, I thought as I said it.

  They hesitated. They had come this far and now they stood before me awkward and flat-footed. None of us had wanted to be the first to say it.

  “We’re compromised,” Dravit pleaded.

  “Maybe. I don’t think so.”

  The Frenchman looked down at his shower shoes. Dravit slumped into the bench seat across from me. Then he pulled himself up to a more adversarial posture.

  It was disquieting being at odds with your second and third in command. Both Dravit and Chamonix were seasoned combatants with a wide range of field experience between them.