Korea Strait

by David Poyer

  Dan thought how the guy provided free cigarettes, smoked by one and all to the point it was like being teargassed. But obviously this wasn’t the time to bring it up. Maybe changing the subject would help. “And I appreciate that, Captain Yu. It is very hospitable of you, to treat your guests so graciously. Now. This typhoon. Brendan. It’s expected to head northwest, once it resumes its movement. We are turning north shortly, are we not? To head for the Phase II op area. What do you think is the commodore’s plan, should it also turn to the north and catch us out here?”

  Yu flipped a hand in contempt. “I have been through many typhoon. Typhoon is not a problem. If it come in Korea Peninsula, ROKN know early because of weather expectation and broadcasting.” He patted his cheek, looking less furious now than just exhausted, or maybe depressed. “In worst case we go to the port in the east. Perhaps Donghae. Perhaps P’ohang. P’ohang is a commercial port but there is concrete mole. For protection. I have ridden storm in P’ohang before. Do you think we need the stabilizers now? I believe I will order them turned on.”

  Dan mollified him some more and at last got him back into the pilothouse as the running lights came on and the chart table light clicked to red. With the stabilizing planes on, the frigate rode differently. It didn’t roll as far, but Dan wasn’t sure he didn’t prefer the rolls.

  Yu bent over the chart. He showed Dan P’ohang, halfway up the east coast. Protected by a peninsula jutting up from the south, it looked deep and wide, a fine storm-hole. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any other good harbors or even sheltered anchorages near the operating area.

  Dan studied it, pulling at his lip, trying to work out where the prevailing seas and winds would come from if the typhoon took this tack or that, which way would be best to run in each case. He wasn’t as sanguine about conning a two-thousand-ton frigate through a typhoon as Yu seemed to be. A hell of a lot could go wrong, and if it happened when you were pinned against a rocky coast like Korea’s, people could die.

  However, he was not about to start lecturing Yu, not after the way he’d reacted on the suggestion to rotate the gun mount. So at last he just nodded to the little skipper and groped his way to the ladder and slid down it, pulling himself in chest-tight as the bulkheads leaned and the ship groaned around him and a spattering crash outside signaled a heavy sea coming over the splinter shields.

  But she didn’t go as far over as he’d braced himself for, and he remembered: the stabilizers. They were stubby fins below the water-line up forward. Computers and hydraulic rams automatically “flew” them to manage pitch and roll. They were supposed to make a ship a better seakeeper, reduce the wear and tear of violent motion on the crew, and improve sonar performance in heavy seas. With them on she didn’t go over very far and she didn’t stay very long.

  But again, he wasn’t sure he liked the effect. With the system off, Chung Nam had a short, snappy roll that cracked the whip when she came back, but signaled plenty of reserve buoyancy and a good righting arm. With it on the rolls were less extreme—that much was true—but she gave a disquieting impression of being artificially balanced, like an elephant teetering on a circus ball.

  But she should be a good sea boat if they really got into something heavy. Though he still wouldn’t want to venture out on deck without a good stout safety harness.

  He wondered again what exactly Jung planned to do with them out here. Other than temper his men to heavy weather. They sure wouldn’t be doing much exercise ASW But they were at sea. You couldn’t fault that.

  Unless he pushed it past the point of safety.

  CIC was dim and hot and man-humid and reeked with smoke. In one corner someone was recycling rice into a red plastic beach bucket. Dan rubbed his stubble, not looking forward to spending the night locked in here. But he had to recast the schedule to salvage as much training time as he could. According to the original program, free play was supposed to start twenty-four hours after the units reached their assigned positions. He decided to push that back a day, shorten the event, and do transmission runs tomorrow. He spread out his schedules and charts, then decided he needed help. He dialed. O’Quinn answered grumpily.

  “Joe? Dan. I could use some help refiddling the schedule. Can you meet me in CIC?”

  O’Quinn said unenthusiastically that he could.

  When he slid into the chair Dan was startled to smell alcohol. He started to say something, then stopped. Then decided, no, he wouldn’t overlook it anymore. “Joe, you been drinking?”

  “They had soju in the wardroom.”

  “I’m trying to run an exercise. It’d be nice if my analysts were sober.”

  “Is that an order?” The older man was sneering now. “We’re not in uniform anymore, Commander. Show me where it says I can’t have a beer, if I’m off duty and it’s kosher with the host service. Know what? You won’t find it.”

  Dan sighed. He just wasn’t reaching the guy. He tried again to be reasonable. “It’s a piece of advice. Lay off the booze till we’re back ashore.”

  O’Quinn shrugged.

  “What’s that mean?” Dan said sharply.

  “Sure, sure. You’re the fucking boss. Whatever you say. What do you want me to do here? I see you’re going to transmission runs. Across the prevailing seas, or with them?”

  AROUND midnight he couldn’t take it anymore. His eyes were blurry with tears. His gut felt like a cast lead lump, and he was desperately seasick. It didn’t happen often, but heavy weather and tobacco smoke would eventually do in just about anyone. He found a weather door on the 01 level and groped outside, dogging it behind him.

  The sea-night was utterly black, and much cooler than it had been during the day. The wind keened a higher note than it had piped at dusk. The deck bounded like the back of a galloping stallion, wet-slippery, the nonskid worn smooth by many feet. Spray slashed his face. His outstretched fingertips collided with a salt-greasy lifeline. He grabbed it with both hands and braced the boots Mangum had liberated for him aboard San Francisco.

  It brought back a memory of a colder sea, an even darker night, a worn-out ship manned by a rebellious and disgruntled crew. Both Reynolds Ryan and her captain lay beneath the sullen rollers of the North Atlantic. But where were her other survivors now? His life had diverged from theirs long ago. But still he carried them with him. He’d never forget. Because they’d been shipmates.

  He shook those memories off and clung blinking as more spray whipped out of the blackness. It stung his eyes but he didn’t mind that. As he sucked deep long breaths of the clean night, his nausea ebbed. Far away a triangular constellation winked on and off amid passing swells. Two whites and a red. Kim Chon, port side to them. Making her way, with the rest of ASWRON 51, eastward.

  The planned operating area for Phase II had been centered on 36° 30’ N, 131° 20’ E, between the Oki Shoto Islands and the Korean coast. It was deep water but Dan was starting to wonder if he should move the exercise north, past a couple of small and badly marked islands out to where there was more sea room. One good thing about this weather was that the fishermen had all gone in. Commercial traffic, freighters and tankers, would be rerouting too, or staying in port till the typhoon passed.

  When he went back inside Jung was at the plot table, studying the new schedule. O’Quinn stood with arms folded, watching like a croupier in the shadowed light. The commodore nodded. “Dan. Feeling any better?”

  What had O’Quinn told him? Dan shot him a glance. To Jung he said, “I’m fine, sir. We’re trying to recast the order of events to salvage as much training time as we can. Both San Francisco and Chang Bo Go are standing by at their COMEX points. Here.” He grabbed a pencil and ticked off their submerged positions. “Their next comm availability’s 0200. So we need to have any sched changes out before then.”

  “The U.S. surface units are joining,” O’Quinn said. “We have them about thirty miles northeast. Other side of Dogo Island.”

  Dan tried to recall a Dogo Island. O’Quinn must mean th
e Oki Shotos. “So, they’re still in the exercise. That’s good.”

  Jung said, “I just talked to Commodore Leakham. He’s reserving the right to pull out and head for Yokosuka.”

  “He say anything else?”

  Jung hesitated. “Nothing else, no. We’re both just keeping an eye on the storm.”

  Hwang came over. The chief staff officer, shaky but unbowed, unrolled the latest weather fax, a warning plot dated midnight, from Met Center West in Guam. It showed Typhoon Brendan still stationary 160 miles away, over Kyushu. If it started moving again it would probably track up the central spine of the Korean Peninsula.

  Dan studied this with growing doubt. Still stationary? He wished he had more data, references on how typhoons typically tracked at this latitude. Of course he didn’t, or at least not here aboard Chung Nam, in any language he could read. To expect it to track straight, or nearly so, didn’t seem realistic.

  But the met weenies knew their job better than he did. He said that was fine, and they went over the revised schedule message. Jung changed the order of two events, then signed it. Dan handed it to Hwang and stretched. He wanted coffee, but still felt sick.

  An hour later, as the swell and sea conditions stayed constant, or perhaps got slightly worse, confirmation came back from the American commandore. It gave away nothing in the closer: “CTF 74 will keep close eye on weather conditions and will terminate the exercise if conditions degenerate beyond prudent limits.”

  Which was, Dan reflected, pure Leakham. Only Jung could officially terminate the exercise. All Leakham could do was withdraw his own forces, as the Japanese and Australians had. But the guy just had to act, and talk, and write his messages, as if he was in charge.

  At 0200 the subs erected their comm masts. When they’d rogered for the sched change, he went back to his stateroom, groping through the narrow, swaying passageways in the dim blackout lights. He stripped his damp salty clothes off and lay in his skivvies, arm angled around the bunk frame. He almost fell asleep a couple of times, but his reflexes didn’t work the way they were supposed to. As space started to roll around him he gripped the frame in his half-sleep. But then the stabilizers came on, and instead of completing the roll the ship did a queer floating routine, as if it had somehow become lighter than air and soared up off the waves. It snapped him wide awake every time.

  After it happened twenty or thirty times he got dressed again and went back up to the wardroom. True to Yu’s promise, there was coffee on. It was boiled down to road tar, but he’d had worse. He drank a mug and got down a couple of the sugary sour Korean cookies from the sideboard. He was sorry as soon as he swallowed the last morsel, but by then it was too late.

  On the bridge the rain came down in sheets. It drummed on the overhead and submerged the windshields. He went back down to CIC. He wedged himself into a corner of the sonar shack. He found a paperback copy of Genesis O’Quinn had left and tried to read. That didn’t go too well either, but he didn’t feel like trying his cabin again.

  Jung came up at 0400. The men in CIC came to silent attention, as they did whenever he entered a space. He smelled as if he’d just had a shower and used plenty of his favorite cologne. He rubbed his eyes, ignoring the men, and after a moment a chief said something in a low voice and they went back to work, but without conversation now. “A lot of smoke in here,” Jung said mildly, and lit a menthol to add to it. He peered around and saw Dan. “Has Commander Hwang been up?”

  “Haven’t seen him since midnight, Commodore.”

  Jung nodded. He checked the radar repeater, discussing each pip in a low voice with the chief. He paced back and forth, smoking with quick gestures, as if he couldn’t sleep either. Then turned abruptly and took the door that led to the bridge ladder.

  The chief of staff came in a few minutes later. “Looking for the commodore?” Dan asked him.

  “Not really.”

  “Well, he was just in here asking where you were. I think he’s up on the bridge.”

  Hwang sighed.

  A radioman stopped at Hwang’s elbow. The chief of staff took the clipboard with another sigh. He glanced down the message. Then reached out to steady himself as the ship took a lean.

  When Dan looked back he’d paled. “What’s wrong?”

  “This is interesting.” The chief of staff inhaled noisily through his teeth.

  “Can I see?”

  “It’s in Korean. The English version went somewhere else.” Hwang looked at the chart, then at the message again. He walked his fingers across the lat-long squares and went even whiter. As pale, in fact, as Dan had seen any of the Koreans get.

  “What is it?” Dan asked again.

  “There’s been a slipup with the met reports.”

  “What kind of slipup?”

  “They said the typhoon was stationary.”

  “It’s started moving again?”

  “Apparently it’s been moving the whole time.” Hwang snapped at the radioman, who responded with a subdued but voluble explanation. He turned back to Dan. “Unfortunately, someone made an error. For the last twenty-four hours they have been transmitting the same position data.”

  Dan felt the same spear-stab to the heart that the chief of staff had obviously taken. “They sent the six-hour updates. But they didn’t change the position of the eye?”

  “That is correct. We thought it would head northwest, once it began moving again. But someone made a mistake. The position was not updated. Even though the storm was moving. And yes, it moved northwest. Or northwest by north.”

  Dan eyed the chart too, dreading what was coming. He’d been through enough storms not to find the prospect of another exciting in the least. “Damn it. I had a bad feeling about this son of a bitch.”

  “It is the steel. The fishermen say the steel draws the storm.”

  He wasn’t sure what the guy meant by that; maybe it was a proverb. “Uh-huh… I thought we were getting a lot of wind, a lot of precipitation, this far away. So what’s the bad news?”

  “That is the bad news.”

  “I mean, what’s its current position?”

  Hwang took a pencil. He checked the message again, then made a small ideograph on the chart. He lettered in a date-time group, referred to the chart again, and took hold of the jointed rule attached to the chart table. He swiveled it, set the degrees knob, and ran a pencil line out from the position. Then cleared his throat, looking unhappy. He reached up and unsnapped a phone. ”Hwang sareongkwan im ni da. Taepoong ae kwan hae an joe eon soshik yi it suem ni da.”

  Dan figured he was reporting to the commodore. He leaned over the chart, feeling the dread, knowing before he looked what he’d see.

  In the hours they’d lost track of Brendan it had hooked to the right, just as he’d feared. The ideograph—it must mean “typhoon”—lay between Tsushima Island and the Japanese mainland. Only seventy miles south of where the task force plunged and struggled in increasingly heavy rain and spray. The storm-track Hwang had laid out headed due north from there. It would go up the east coast of Korea, only a few miles offshore.

  It wouldn’t pass directly over them, but it’d be close. And it would block them from reaching either of their only two possible harbors of refuge.

  11

  THE commodore’s breath wasn’t so sweet nor his canned-peaches-in-syrup cologne quite so effective as they all but snuggled on his stateroom settee. Koreans simply didn’t have the same ideas about personal distance as Americans. Hwang and Yu sat across the coffee table from them. Jung offered cigarettes from a carved teak-wood box. Hwang and Yu lit up. So did Jung. He didn’t offer Dan any but said, “Would you like tea, Commander? I will order fresh tea.”

  “That sounds good. Kam sa, ham ni da—thanks.”

  Up here on the 02 level the wind was louder than in CIC, its shrill keen distinct against the creak and groan of flexing steel. And aluminum, Dan reminded himself—the Ulsan class used the light metal for its superstructures, a technique U.S. shipbuil
ders had abandoned after some horrific fires. In a storm, though, a lightweight top-hamper was a plus. The steward brought tea and laid out more of the rice cookies as well.

  “We must make a decision quickly,” Jung began. “First of all, I believe we cannot make P’ohang in time.”

  The chief of staff took that as his cue to unroll a chart. He’d drawn a track based on the storm’s predicted speed of advance. He laid a pair of dividers on the table. Jung picked them up and measured. Dan called it at 130 nautical miles to P’ohang. No one said anything. A sea kettledrummed along the bulkheads. The ship started to roll, but the stabilizers caught it, and the tea sloshed in the cups, interrupted just as it had started to tilt. The wind rose to a whistle, then dropped back to the banshee keen.

  They debated the situation, the little flag captain taking the lead while Jung listened. The discussion was in Korean, but Dan followed it; in this situation seamen of any nationality would be making the same points, pondering the same forces and gambits. If they tried for harbor, they’d be making downwind. An easier point of sailing, but they’d be cutting in front of the storm. Like a deer trying to get across a highway in front of a speeding truck. If they could sustain twenty knots, they’d probably make shelter ahead of the worst of the winds and seas. But they’d have no time to snug in pierside, and might also have to deal with mountainous seas at the harbor entrance. If any of the squadron lagged or had engine trouble, they’d have to leave her behind, T-boned in the path of the eye….

  “Your recommendation?” Jung asked him in English.

  “I think you should make for a Japanese port, Commodore,” Dan told him. “Forget P’ohang. If anything goes wrong, you’re screwed. Stay out here, and you’ll be in the dangerous semicircle. Japan’s your safest option.”