Korea Strait

by David Poyer

  Dan could finish that sentence: don’t trust him not to weld the hatch shut on you.

  “Anyway, so long.”

  “So long, Monty. See you guys in the a.m.”

  THE hotel phone’s electronic cheep sounded so much like the one that had been in USS Thomas W. Horn’s at-sea cabin that in the split second before he was awake he relived the whole explosion, the damage, their daylong fight to keep her from going down that sunny afternoon off the Israeli coast. By the time he reoriented and got his eyes locked on the red light that was the only illumination in the darkened room, his heart was pounding and he was bathed in sweat. His upper spine felt as if someone had mauled a log splitter into it.

  “Lenson,” he snapped.

  “Hey, Dan? Dick Shappell. With CNFK?” He sounded taken aback at Dan’s tone. “Sorry to get you up.”

  “Yeah. No problem. What—what is it?”

  “Like I said, sorry to wake you. But Fifth Flotilla, down in Chinhae, cornered something interesting. Thirty miles off Sokch’o. That’s—you probably wouldn’t know—that’s south of the DMZ, on the east coast.”

  “Yeah? Sokch’o.” He cleared his throat, straining to see what time it was. He couldn’t make out his watch, but when he skated the drapes open it was dark outside except for the dirty rose sky, the endless blue-white glitter of city lights. “They cornered something interesting? What?”

  Shappell hesitated, as if unsure what to say over an open line. “Something that doesn’t belong there. For some reason—and believe me, doesn’t happen often—our good buddies and bosom pals the Koreans want us around when they bring it up. Want to go? Captain Owens thought you might.”

  Dan didn’t know who Captain Owens was, or why he thought he’d want to see whatever this was. But he was already turning on the light, reaching for his pants as he tucked the phone in the crook of his shoulder. “I guess. Okay. Khakis all right?”

  “Khakis are fine. And you don’t need to shave, just be down in front of the entrance in about a hundred and twenty seconds. Tell your guys you’re with me. And if you’ve got a camera, bring it. On the off chance.”

  “Be right down,” he said, sticking his feet into his Corfams and pulling on his shirt at the same time. Thirty seconds later the door closed behind him.

  2

  38° 35.11’ N, 129° 07.7’ E: Aboard ALS-25 Chung Wan

  THE smooth-surfaced sea heaved under a cloudless aramanthine sky. It was just before dawn. There was no wind. Not a ripple marred the ever-changing, everlasting interface between water and air. But it rose slowly, then fell away along the worn steel of the hull, all but imperceptibly, as if the sea were breathing.

  One to two-foot swells at most, Dan judged, leaning over the side to gaze into bottomless turquoise. Every hundred feet or so a wave broke with a quiet splatter. It left a patch of ivory lace rocking, slowly melting, till the clear blue welled up again. Small silvery fish hovered in the hull-shadow, fluid rippling commas poised tensely between quiescence and alarm.

  Beside him Major Zach Carmichael, U.S. Army, who was beyond any reasonable doubt Defense Intelligence, was telling him about the Maritime Department of the North Korean Reconnaissance Bureau. “That’s who’s most likely running it. The most elite of all NK Special Forces. Disciplined. Tough. Sworn never to surrender. They caught one before, in a fishing net. When they got it to the surface they were all dead.”

  “Drowned? Hull breach?”

  “Shot each other, far as we can tell. Last one used a grenade.” Carmichael sounded as if he admired this.

  On the flight out, on an ROK helo, he’d looked down to see the lights of fishing boats setting out, nodding their way toward their salty crop-fields from the flickering yellow lights of hamlets that clung to blackened zinc cliffs. Rocky islets dotted the coast. As the sun rose the pilot pointed out North Korea in the distance. Dan gazed out on a hazy, featureless sweep that gave no hint that anything human had ever existed. Save, far away, the contrail of a MiG patrolling the Northern Limiting Line, the naval extension of the DMZ out to sea.

  They’d droned out till the land fell back and vanished in a nebulous mercury blurring. Gradually a ship emerged from the rosy haze. From her anachronistic, towering masts, her dented gray sides, she’d slid down some stateside shipway during World War II. They’d circled, the copilot barking into his throat mike in abrupt Korean, then moved over the bluff bow. He’d dangled, rotating on a sling, till Koreans crouched against the rotorblast reached up, receiving them like gifts from heaven. First Dan, then Shappell, then Carmichael.

  Now they stood aft on the main deck, looking out on a wide rounded counter. The flat stern was almost featureless except for two large centerline hatches, a towing chock, a stanchion with the stern light, and bitts spotted to port and starboard. The black steel underfoot was scarred and dented with decades of dragged chains and dropped shackles. So many layers of old paint scabbed it, it looked like the Black Hills seen from above. A canvas awning reminded Dan of The Sand Pebbles. But wherever she’d been built, she was Korean now. They swarmed over the fantail. The divers, just now lifting their helmets above a gently heaving froth of bubbles, slowly making their way to a rigged-out platform and boat-ladder, were Korean too. She was at diving stations, with hoses and lines flemished out across the deck. Tanks, weight belts, suits, regulators, were lashed to the gun-wales or laid out on canvas. Beyond them, out on the horizon, prowled the low wolf-gray silhouette of a destroyer.

  “She was once USS ship,” a junior officer told them. “USS Grasp. Now Chung Wan.”

  “So what exactly you people got down there?” Carmichael asked him. He fiddled with the Nikon around his neck, glancing at the divers clambering up the ladder.

  “Enemy submarine,” the ensign said.

  Shappell muttered, “Aha.” Carmichael focused his telephoto and snapped a couple frames of the divers.

  “How deep?” Dan asked. The guy cocked his head, considering, then called to a squat Korean in slacks and a blue Windbreaker. His face was leathery, like that of an old tortoise.

  “Kim Baksa nim!”

  “Ke miguk sa ram del yi yo? Yi chok ue ro de rigo o si yo.”

  Dan bowed and shook hands. The man in the Windbreaker said he was Dr. Kim, in charge of the salvage operation. Carmichael asked again what they had.

  “It appears to be a Sang-o,” Kim said, choosing each word. “Which means ‘Shark.’ It is most likely either embarking on or returning from a reconnaissance mission. They come out of Toejo-Dong, and transit south across the Tongjoson-man. Sometimes they attempt to land agents.”

  “How’d you find it?”

  “It broached, we are not sure why. Perhaps an accident. We did not detect it until then. Our units fired on it. Then it either sank, or was scuttled when they realized we had detected them.”

  “Wicked,” Carmichael said. He advanced the film and tried for a picture of the Korean, but at the last moment the doctor turned away.

  Dan had memorized everything the U.S. Navy knew about the Sangos, which wasn’t much. The North Korean People’s Navy operated three classes of submarines. Sharks were the middle rung, small diesel-electrics built in-country to a native design at the Nampo or Wonsan shipyards. Naval Intelligence estimated their operational depth between three hundred and four hundred feet. They carried a crew of twenty with torpedo and mining capabilities. Their max speed was about nine knots at snorkel depth. They came in two variants, attack and infiltration. Even that was a guess… which meant it would be a coup to get their hands on one, or even get a close look.

  Carmichael said, “Is the crew aboard?”

  Dan, at the same monent: “How deep is it?”

  Kim shouted a question to the divers. One shouted up, his answer cut off by a sea that jostled him into the ladder. The doctor turned back. “The crew is dead. The sub is lying on the bottom of sand thirty-five meters down. The salvage divers have blown one compartment clear.”

  “About a hundred and ten feet,
” Dan said. “Air range.”

  Kim glanced at him. “You are a diver?”

  “I sport dive. Scuba.”

  “You have done this in wrecks?”

  “Wrecks? Sure. Now and then.”

  “Then, of course, you will want to see for yourself. If you are willing.”

  The Korean held his gaze, and Dan realized it wasn’t an invitation; he was being dared. “Sure,” he said. “Suit me up. I’ll take a look.”

  Carmichael and Shappell traded glances. “Hey now,” said the commander. “I don’t think you need to go down there yourself—”

  But the Korean was smiling, and Dan very much wanted to have the first U.S. look at a Sang-o class sub, if that was what it was. He glanced over the side again, then at the sun, then off to where the destroyer hovered. Storing the information, in case he should need it.

  “All right then,” said the Korean. He called to one of the tenders, who came over, running a critical eye up Dan’s height. “He will help you suit up.”

  THE water was very cold. The wet suit was heavy black rubber, the biggest they had aboard, but still too tight, which wasn’t good; he’d take some serious heat loss by the end of the dive.

  Twenty feet down, he clung to the thick yellowing braided nylon of the descent line, sucking gas with a hissing click. His mouth was already parched and the moistureless gas didn’t help. What the fuck had he gotten into? He gazed up at the black wedge of the salvage ship’s stern, the motionless, cruel-looking screws. Golden rays flickered around it. They slid through the blue down into an inky twilight that yawned beneath his slowly kicking fins. The fish he’d watched from above undulated slowly between him and the light.

  Dropping his gaze, he finned himself horizontal and slowly pivoted around the line, searching the sea to the accelerated thud of his heart. He was encased in light-filled sapphire, surrounded by a circular wall of blue-gray haze. About thirty yards visibility. No sharks yet. Some yards away red and black hoses and safety lines dropped away into the black, losing their color as they receded from the sun. The helmet divers were working down there. His free hand roved over the regulator, checked his mask, tested the buckle of his weight belt. The gear wasn’t that different from what he was used to. Solid quality, but not exactly the latest technology.

  A plunge of bubbles, and his partner fell through the silvery rocking roof. A pudgy fellow who’d made comic faces when they told him Dan would be going down with him. He hovered, adjusting his buoyancy, then jackknifed and headed down, jabbing a questioning finger to his head.

  Dan pointed to his own ears and nodded. He thumbed the exhaust button of his buoyancy compensator and felt himself go from weightless to heavy.

  He kept his right hand out, letting the line drag through it as they dropped into steadily darkening blue. Flecks of organic matter drove past them like a slow snowstorm. Pain jabbed inside his head. He grabbed his nose through the mask and cleared his ears. Again.

  He grinned around the regulator, remembering Shappell’s warning that he shouldn’t go. They were here to observe, not participate. And the naked envy on the intel officer’s face.

  But he’d never enjoyed standing around and watching. And the Koreans who suited him up had slapped his back, grinning and nodding. These people operated on face. And strapping on a tank with them had earned him some.

  He checked the depth, then his Seiko. Sixty feet. The light from above was dimming away. He looked down, but saw only blackness. His partner was swimming down the line headfirst, fins kicking turbulence toward him. A back-turned mask flashed the last of the sunlight. Dan was content to drop slowly, staying vertical. He’d check out the hull, maybe swim along it, then come up. Punch his ticket and surface.

  Was he being foolish? Stepping beyond what a full commander ought to be doing? To hell with it. He could push paper anytime. Carmichael wanted a report, didn’t he?

  Eighty feet, and sinking faster as the pressure squeezed the buoyancy out of vest and suit. His stay time would be only fifteen minutes at 110 feet. Longer than that would require decompression stops. He’d have to pay attention. That deep you could get fuzzy, disoriented—the famous rapture of the deep. He reminded himself he was short on sleep, and the cold wouldn’t help. He’d better stay on the conservative side of the dive tables.

  When he looked down again the sub lay below him. It was obscured by the dim and the blowing silt, but the surprise stopped his breath for a moment before the hiss and click resumed. The descent line was gray now, all yellow sucked away in the dim light. It was tied off on what looked like a rudder pivot. The after body was smoothly curved. The craft lay stern, or perhaps bow—he couldn’t quite tell yet—down in soft-looking brown muddy sand.

  He dropped a few more feet in the bubbling silence and realized he was looking at the stern. Then the whole picture, dim and fragmentary as it was, snapped into place. The craft was much smaller than he’d expected. It was dead black, dotted here and there with the pale flakes of barnacles. The tail planes and rudder were rigged with struts. He wondered why. Then realized they were antifouling guards, to keep fishing nets or mine cables out of the prop.

  A ridge ran the length of the hull, with port-and-starboard swellings that had to be sidesaddle ballast tanks. He couldn’t see the bow, but a small sail, or conning tower, loomed dimly through the murk. It was denser down here, blowing past at the rate, he remembered from the briefing, of the knot and a half’s worth of slow massive current that was hanging him out along the descent line like a slowly flapping flag. He noted carefully that the sub lay crosscurrent. He didn’t want to let go of this line and not know which way led back.

  His dive buddy had already released it. He was finning forward just above the hull, toward a silvery gush. The bubbles rushed wavering up like a silver escalator. Dan saw he was following the air hoses. He bled air into his compensator until he hovered. It was colder down here, as if they’d passed through some chill barrier that blocked any emanation of the sun. His hands and feet, even in gloves and booties, were going numb. He fumbled for his watch and ratcheted the elapsed-time bezel to fifteen. Then let go of the line.

  His buddy eased over the hull and disappeared into the darkness below. Dan followed, clearing his ears again as he descended. Brown rippled sand rose up through the milling murk. The bow was clear of the bottom. The hoses led under it. He startled at a flicker in the obscurity, then realized that what looked like black flames was the flutter of fins, under the hull. He hung back, wary of overhanging steel. Then forced himself forward.

  The other diver hung on what looked like a hatch-rim. Dan caught dark eyes studying him. A finger pointed up.

  He nodded, and the Korean turtled his head and chinned himself up into what must be a lockout chamber. Fins kicked, then disappeared.

  Dreading the mass looming above him, Dan herded himself farther under it. When he looked up he saw only a vibrating green-golden gleam, trickling and twisting like melted light.

  He checked his watch. Three minutes. He got a grip on his breathing and finned slowly upward, arms raised, fingering along smooth cold metal for some handhold.

  His head burst through into an echoing ullage crammed with darkness, splashing, a deafening hiss of releasing gas, hollow shouts. A flashlight strobed across a circular emptiness above that mirrored that below.

  “You come up,” a voice gonged. A pudgy figure filled his sky. A gloved hand grabbed his wet suit. “Set tank in rack. Give me hand.”

  THEY were in what seemed to be the control compartment—or more accurately, a combined control, berthing, and torpedo area. The upper hemisphere of the lockout module took up most of the space. It left a short, extremely cramped tube twelve feet across, so crammed with equipment they had to worm their way through an aisle that touched Dan’s shoulders on either side. Dive lights beamed glares that left most of it in shadow. A discarded glove huddled like a small dead animal. The cold air was thick, dense, humid. It stank of the heavy oil that coated every surfac
e and a bleachy sting he realized must be chlorine from the flooded batteries. The incoming air hissed so loudly from its hose fitting, vised to one of the hull ribs with a red C clamp, that communication had to be in shouts.

  Compressed air, he reminded himself. He looked at his Seiko again. So they were still building up bottom time, taking on nitrogen, though he was out of the water. Seven minutes gone; eight remained.

  The Koreans glanced at him as they worked. Four occupied the space, three hose divers and the guy who’d come down with him on tanks. The chubby diver belted out aggressive-sounding Korean, gesturing at Dan. They reached through piping to shake hands, grinning and nodding. “Welcome,” one said. “Thank you,” another. He waved and smiled, feeling he was intruding.

  He stepped on something soft, and instinctively lifted his bootied foot. An oil-smeared, startled, wide-cheekboned face appeared. Its features were delicate. It looked up at the curved ribs of the inner hull. The left side of its skull was missing. Brain was visible, but no blood. Dan stared. Then made out a shoe nearby. It was oil-stained dark, but bore a familiar boomerang-shaped logo.

  “Nikes.”

  “Muarago? What did you say?”

  “I didn’t know they had Nikes in North Korea.”

  He followed a flaccid leg to another corpse wedged facedown behind a motor-generator. The barrel of an AK-type rifle poked out. He couldn’t tell what had killed this second man. He had on a red Wind-breaker with a red-and-white patch. The Marlboro logo.

  “Three dead,” the pudgy diver said at his elbow.

  “I only see two.”

  “Another there.” He pointed into the shadows forward.

  “Who are they?”

  “North Korea, like commando. Like SEAL.”

  “Who shot them?”

  “They shoot each other. Do not give up.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yichoyero! You come, see this,” called one of the others. “See what we find.”