Korea Strait

by David Poyer

  Unless they missed each other. Which could happen in such wretched sonar conditions. The task force’s biggest asset might well be radar. Diesel-electrics had to poke their snorkels up on a regular basis to vent the boats and recharge the batteries. To run at high speed, they had to keep those snorkel heads—larger than periscopes, and easier to catch on radar—above the waves full-time. In calm seas the SPS-10 Chung Nam carried should pick one up at fifteen thousand yards, seven and a half nautical miles.

  Hwang came in. Dan watched him move from console to console like a bee making its rounds. When he got to Dan, Dan asked him, “Taking the duty?”

  “From now on either the commodore or I will be in CIC. Or on the bridge.” The chief of staff fingered a scroll under his arm. “What are your men doing now?”

  “Not much. Securing the nineteen, boxing up the data forms from Phases I and II. What can we help you with?”

  “The commodore would like to discuss a sort of… battle staff. Your people are deeply skilled in ASW. Would you be willing?”

  This was an amazing honor, one he couldn’t even imagine a U.S. task force commander extending to foreign riders. “We’d be happy to help. Sure! But… your crews are very good too.”

  “We are adequately trained on the ship-to-ship level. The commodore is thinking more broadly than that.” Hwang pursed his lips. “He seems to believe you are well placed with the De Bari administration. Is that true, Dan?”

  He almost rolled his eyes, before figuring that might be insulting. “Oh, jeez—only very indirectly. I know why he thinks that. He met my wife in Pusan. But I don’t have any kind of political pull. No influence, if that’s what he means.”

  “Would the president know your name?”

  “I don’t know. I went jogging with him…. Actually, yeah, he might. Since I was one of his aides. But not necessarily in a good way.”

  “You are modest. The commodore said that about you. In your situation a Korean would say he had great influence. He would even boast of it.”

  “Believe me, it’s not modesty,” Dan told him. “Commander, please, please don’t let him think I’ve got some kind of clout in Washington. Through my wife or any other way. We can advise on any tactical issues that come up. And we’ll be happy to do that. But that’s all he should count on.”

  Hwang glanced toward the door, but lingered. “I should also tell you this: ROK forces have gone to ‘Fast Pace’ along the DMZ and elsewhere. Jin do Kae. As of 1030 this morning.”

  “What’s ‘Fast Pace’? And this Jin do—”

  “It’s our highest readiness posture short of martial law and a state of war. The same as Defcon Two in your vocabulary. Clear and immediate threat of an enemy attack. We are mobilizing our reserves and going to intelligence Watchcon One.”

  Dan nodded slowly. He understood the increased manning in CIC now, and the lack of the usual hubbub and horseplay. “That’s serious, all right. What’s the trigger? Not this intruder group?”

  “They know in Seoul. We don’t out here. I don’t think it is this group. At least not just them. There may be other intelligence indicators we don’t know about.” The chief of staff looked toward the door again. “If I need to consult with you, where will you be?”

  “I’ll set up a watch. Two of us on, one off. And set up my notebook with our tactical tools. Is right here okay?”

  “Right there will be fine,” Hwang said.

  HE called O’Quinn and Henrickson and set up a rotation. Twelve on, six off. They couldn’t keep that up forever, but it’d ensure someone was in CIC at all times while making sure everybody got meals and at least some sleep.

  Henrickson was beside him, trying to puzzle out the Korean intelligence summaries on the Whiskey-class boats, when the chief on duty came over. Dan wasn’t sure whether he was the CIC officer, the evaluator, or just the watch supervisor, and they didn’t have enough language in common for him to ask. He placed a handwritten note in front of them. It said Barrer on Staion.

  “Barrier on station?” Henrickson asked after a moment. The chief nodded rapidly.

  Dan said, “Thank you.” The Korean bowed and went back to the plot.

  “He’s keeping us informed,” Henrickson said. “In his shy way.”

  “This could be tricky, Monty. I always get the feeling Captain Yu would just as soon do without me. But Jung wants us around for advice. And we can’t give it unless we know what’s going on.”

  “It’s psychological,” Henrickson said.

  “You think?”

  “Sure. We’re the only American faces left.”

  “So what? These guys don’t need us.”

  “You know that. And I know that. But we also know it can get lonely at sea. Facing you don’t know what, without anybody behind you.”

  Dan couldn’t argue that point. If Jung wanted a backstop, a token, even a good-luck charm, he was willing enough to serve. “Okay. So. Let’s think ahead a little bit. What’s going to happen when we pick these boys up? The ones riding into town with masks over their faces?”

  “They either surface and identify or they don’t.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Jung says they will.”

  “He told me the same thing. But did he happen to mention exactly how he’s going to make that happen?”

  “That, he didn’t say.”

  Dan nodded. He opened his notebook and turned it on. The battery indicator was low. He got down on the deck and crawled around till he found a vacant outlet. Fortunately Korean ships were wired for 115 volts, sixty cycle, U.S. standard current. The computer beeped and powered up. He called up a spreadsheet and started entering variables.

  AT 1900 Chang Bo Go popped up a comm mast and reported in. Jung asked Dan where the best station for her would be. He and O’Quinn looked at the sonar conditions again. At last they recommended putting her at safety, ten thousand yards behind the line on the right flank, depth four hundred feet.

  Mok Po reported first contact just before midnight. Radar contact, of course, since the PCC was non-ASW-capable, another reason Dan had suggested backstopping her with the Type 209. She reported a small intermittent blip at twenty-one thousand yards bearing 025. This was consistent with either a periscope or, more likely at that extreme detection range, a snorkel.

  Dan joined the plotting team at the DRT as the commodore came down from the bridge. He told Jung, “That’s farther east than the track the Japanese gave us, sir.”

  “They may have hoped to sidestep any patrols.” Jung was freshly dressed, smelled of flowery cologne, carried a saucer with a steaming cup of tea. He patted his smoothly shaven cheeks absently, touched the mole lightly with the tip of his little finger. The enlisted men wove around him as they plotted four simultaneous tracks in black pencil, their ballet giving him a foot of clear air. Kim #1 was with him, his ASW staff officer. They all watched the new track, plotted in red, creep toward them.

  Awfully slow warfare, Dan recalled. It was like a very deliberate game, played out above and below the surface of the sea. But with real ships for game pieces. Real lives for pawns and rooks. Its similarity to the exercise they’d just done didn’t erase the tension. But he kept his expression detached. Jung fitted a cigarette into its holder. Charred its tip with the Zippo’s wavering, almost invisible flame. Then spoke to the chief, who picked up a phone.

  The general-quarters alarm began to bong. Dan’s pulse accelerated with the all-too-familiar electronic note. Running feet rumbled from outside the compartment, from above them and below. CIC was already crammed, but more men crowded in, sonarmen joining the team behind the black curtain, weapons console operators booting up system self-tests, phone talkers checking their circuits. Their babble filled the space.

  A youngster on a radio headset exclaimed. He began to chant what Dan assumed were ranges and bearings. The chief pointed at another plotter.

  A second red trail came into existence at the upper right of the chart paper. It too began track
ing down toward them, about two miles west of the first contact.

  At least two and possibly up to four diesel-electrics on snorkel were proceeding toward the Korea Strait. Dan scratched his head, frowning. Trying to figure out exactly what, the guys coming in on them were trying to do, and what Jung had in mind as a response.

  Just seeing subs in company was creepy. Submariners were loners. Allergic to operating in close proximity. Only Doenitz’s wolf packs in the North Atlantic had ever coordinated attacks successfully, along with, possibly, U.S. Pacific Fleet submarines against the Japanese; and both had kept in only loose contact by shortwave radio. He glanced at the ESM operators’ stacks. If these guys were transmitting to each other, or to a shore station, the first warning would come from there. But the techs sat motionless, scrutinizing an empty screen.

  “Do we want to sidestep the barrier to the eastward?” he asked Jung. “Or would it be better to switch Kim Chon out to the right flank?”

  The Korean hesitated, eyeing the trace. Dan figured Jung was doing the same calculation as he was: how long it would take the ASW-capable PCC to switch flanks, versus when the oncoming subs would reach the barrier. Finally he nodded tightly to Kim. The staff officer pulled a phone off the overhead radio bank.

  From one plot to the next the black line of Kim Choris track altered. The gap between marks opened. She’d come to a southeasterly course and was racing across the back of the formation like a linebacker changing up. Dan hoped she was spitting sonobuoys on the way, to cover the hole where she’d been.

  She was passing astern of Chung Nam when another contact came up. This time the notification came from one of their own radar consoles. Number three was west of the first two.

  “Shee-it,” O’Quinn muttered, and Dan shook his head. They’d just shot themselves in the foot, reoriented their screen assets to the wrong flank.

  Seconds later the first radar contact vanished. Submerged, no doubt. The datum, their last positive fix on its position, was sixteen thousand yards out. Eight miles.

  “Sorry about that,” Dan said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jung said imperturbably. He stubbed out a butt and took several small wrapped candies from his pocket and scattered them across the plotting surface. Dan tried one. It tasted like watermelon and ginseng. “She left sonobuoys. They’ll pick up the track. But still I think I will begin moving Chang Bo Go west. She has a full charge in the can from her transit. She can move at high submerged speed.”

  The chief cleared his throat. ”Chang Bo Go report passive contact. Bearing zero, zero, seven. Suspect snorkeling submarine.” He glanced at Dan, probably to gauge the effect of his reporting in English.

  “Excellent,” Jung said.

  The plotters got it down as an arrow pointing north from the 209’s position. It matched the radar contacts, either the second or the third. “She’s getting better transmission at depth,” Kim said. “Too much surface mixing.”

  Some minutes passed. Then the second contact disappeared from the radar screen, as the first had. Seconds later, the third followed.

  Now all the radar screens were empty, the beams sweeping fu-tilely over the sea’s surface. Dan visualized the approaching subs slipping through the depths. They’d retracted their snorkels, gone to electric propulsion, probably dropped to two or three hundred feet. Below the thermocline. But still headed inexorably for the waiting line. Head on. All together.

  Creepy, he thought again, and a shiver wormed its way up his spine.

  Jung turned aside to sneeze. He cleared his throat and announced, “I’m going to signal them to identify themselves now.”

  “I don’t see why they should,” Dan told him.

  “International law. Submarines encountered on the high seas must respond when challenged.”

  “They didn’t for the Japanese.”

  “That is what the Japanese say,” Jung reminded him. “In fact they may very well have done so. But it was not revealed to us.”

  Dan hesitated, then nodded. Right. It was possible. But he didn’t think this silently approaching formation would respond. It was unsettling. You just didn’t see subs operating this way. It didn’t compute tactically. That was what made it so ominous.

  The eerie multitoned whalesong of an active sonar ping going out drilled through the frigate’s metal. It prickled the hair on the back of his neck. Detection distances would be very short. Still, they might get something. The oncoming targets were slowly drawing into range.

  Jung spoke sharply to Kim. The lieutenant nodded and picked up another handset. He spoke slowly, spacing his words. They went out in the haunted-house echo of an underwater voice transmission. It cut out in the middle, automatically silenced as the frigate’s sonar pinged again. If it hadn’t, the power they were pushing into the water would have burned the receiver out. He spoke in Korean, then in English, then in what Dan guessed was Chinese.

  ”Chang Bo Go will drop speed to bare steerageway in two minutes,” Jung murmured. “She will have the best passive sonar conditions. She is beneath the mixing layer.”

  “Can she report in?”

  “She’s streamed an HF antenna. There is a slow data link that should work as long as she’s not too deep. We can’t pick it up, but Seoul can. They will retransmit back to us over covered HF.”

  Complicated, but Dan didn’t see why it wouldn’t work. At least, as long as whoever was on the circuit back in Seoul was diligent about turning the reports around in a timely manner. In fact it was a pretty resourceful use of what limited comm channels they had, and his respect for Jung clicked up a notch.

  “What I’m afraid of is they’re going to envelop our line,” O’Quinn muttered from across the light table. Dan started; he’d forgotten the retired captain was there. “Just keep coming and bop on by right under our keel.”

  “They can’t pass us if we trail them,” Jung pointed out. “If we keep their heads down until they’re forced up to recharge.”

  “So what? They pop their snorkel up. They recharge and submerge again. And you’re no wiser.”

  Jung didn’t answer, and suddenly Dan suspected what he planned to do. “I hope there’s no accident,” he said, and both Jung and Kim glanced at him, startled. “They’d have to surface.”

  Jung waved the discussion away. He frowned at Kim, who was still holding the handset. ”Dap byeon up na?”

  ”Yeop sum ni da, jeon daejang mm. No response,” Kim explained.

  Over the next quarter hour Jung had him challenge twice more. They checked with the sonarmen on the effective range of the voice-phone. The consensus seemed to be that voice-phone range would be about twice active sonar detection range. Maybe a little less, but still close to a nautical mile in current conditions. Kim scribed range circles with a compass. Unless the contacts had altered course, at least one of them must have heard the demand for identification.

  But they hadn’t answered.

  Dan wanted to ask “Okay, what now?” but didn’t. They stood around the tracking table. Jung looked gloomy. Then a Teletype clattered into action on the far side of the space. A sailor ripped the paper off and brought it over.

  It was the HF link from Seoul. Kim looked up. ”Chang Bo Go reports: Passive sonar contact. Confirm Romeo-class submarine. Bearing two-seven-zero true. Time three-five. Shadowing.”

  Dan checked the bulkhead clock, then his watch. A firm identification at last, and ten minutes turnaround on the report. Not bad, but not terrific either. Assuming Chang Bo Go was where they thought she was, it meant the range was already opening, her contact already filtering through the screen. The target was most likely unaware of the new, quieter South Korean boat. “Shadowing,” of course, meant the ROKN craft was now coming around to plod silently in its wake, directly astern. They looked at each other, stymied. “Any ideas here?” Jiang said.

  Henrickson had come in and stood listening. Now he said, “What’s the procedure if a sub on the open sea fails to respond? The law, I mean?”

/>   “You’re allowed to force it to surface,” Dan told him. “The question is, how? Used to be the Soviets, when they caught one of ours inside their limit, would drop depth charges. Not close enough to kill, but near enough to damage. We used small charges to do the same thing.”

  “We no longer carry depth charges,” Kim said. ”Dae Jon did, but she is—”

  “No longer with us, right. And these guys aren’t in your territorial waters either. We’re still in the open sea out here.”

  Jung said, “So they are required to identify; but if they do not, we have no legal way to make them do so.”

  Dan hesitated, then nodded. Jung said to Kim, “Do we have comms back to Chang Bo Go?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “Order them to force the contact to surface.”

  The door to the space undogged. It was Captain Yu. The flagship’s skipper stood watching, but didn’t approach. He shook a cigarette out. A sailor hurried to light it for him.

  Dan tensed. He caught the others’ alarmed glances too. He murmured, “Well, Commodore—that risks your own men as well. If you’re thinking of forcing a collision.”

  “I was actually thinking of having her ram from astern. That would destroy either the screws or the prop. An accident, yes. Regrettable. But it would force them to surface.”

  A tactic Dan hadn’t considered. He rubbed his mouth, considering the geometry of such a close pass, whether the 209’s commander could actually localize the sub he was trailing well enough to put his bow in her screw. It sounded pretty fucking dangerous. What if the screw sliced through a ballast tank? He kept getting echoes of Nick Niles’s valedictory injunction. “Try to keep everybody alive this time,” his saturnine whatever-the-opposite-was-of-mentor had said.

  Blood heated his cheeks at the memory. The imputation—that he was some kind of killer, some kind of Jonah—was grossly unfair. But somehow he’d internalized the mission. He was going to bend over backward to make sure no one got hurt.

  This seemed like a good place to stick in his oar. “Well, sir—that might work. If he got lucky. But if he got unlucky, you could lose the boat. Both boats, actually. Is identifying them worth that kind of risk? I’m not sure it is.”