Korea Strait (23 page)

Putting his face to one, he peered into a heaving waste. Glanced at the anemometer and translated the reading laboriously into knots. He checked the heading and peered again, trying to get a bearing on where the seas were coming from. They seemed larger than before, but it was hard to tell, given the mist and blowing spray. Another ten knots of wind and visibility would vanish. They'd have to run on radar and faith.

He bent over, kneading his turgid gut and trying to deny the nausea. He'd never felt quite this bad at sea before, though he'd been more frightened. But he'd always had plenty to do, watches to stand, a division or department to supervise. Something to take his mind off his misery.

With the SATYRE at all stop, though, he and the rest of the TAG team were excess cargo. He decided to try his bunk again. Get his eyes shut for a few seconds. He was just so fucking
exhausted.
Maybe he was coming down with something.

He was making his way down the ladder when there was a soft thud. The metal he gripped quivered. Not hard. Just a quiver. The same sort of tremor those aboard
Titanic
might have felt.

A second later all hell broke loose.

Chung Nam
toppled fast and hard. She went so suddenly that the ladder jerked out of his hands. He floated up weightless in the narrow companionway. Only years of seagoing reflex snagged him the next rung. By then he was nearly perpendicular to the ladder, because it was on its side, whereas he'd dropped straight down.

With a boom that quaked through the hull, gravity returned. His knee slammed into a metal edge so hard he knew before sensation arrived that it would be bad. Pain shot through both wrists as they snatched his falling weight. Above him, below, men were shouting.

The ladderwell lay over at about seventy degrees, and the ship shook. Crashes shuddered aft. He scrambled to his feet and, bent over, scrabbled back up along the inclined bulkhead, boots shooting out from under him on the glossy paint, one hand on the ladder to steady himself.

He reached the top and pulled himself through the hatchway.

The pilothouse deck lay nearly vertical, a steep, wet-slick, tiled cliff no man could climb without pitons and a rock hammer. High above, the boatswain hung from the degaussing console, boots kicking desperately above a forty-foot drop. Others clung to repeaters, the helm console, the chart table. The officer of the deck was wedged behind the commodore's chair. A ruck of charts, clipboards, cuttlefish-flavored peanut snacks, containers of the barley water and orange pop the enlisted brought on watch, binoculars, and struggling men stirred at the base of the cliff. Even as he surveyed this the frigate heaved again, taking another sea from the beam, and an ominous grinding rumble came from below. It hammered again and the shock this time told him there was something down there, something hard, something
beneath the ship.
He couldn't imagine what it was. Ice? No, that was impossible. Not here, in summer.

The bulkhead he lay on shook again. He scrambled up, but his boot skidded away under the shattering porcelain of a teacup and he went down into the scrum. An elbow smashed his nose so hard he saw strobes going off. He fought back, got a knee on someone's chest. He had to get to the helm. No ship could live like this, broached to, battered by successive seas. But the helm was twenty feet above, and there was no way to climb that glassy inclined deck.

Above him he caught Kim #2's eye. Dan yelled above the scream of the wind, the batter and creak as another sea body-slammed them, shaking the frigate from end to end. “You've got to get her head into the seas!”

The lieutenant stared, then looked away through the windows. The wiper was still spinning, but nothing was visible outside but a hurtling gray. The world was dark, as if the sun was eclipsed.

Dan fought upright again, got to the after bulkhead, and started climbing it, hauling himself from hand- to foothold on junction boxes and cable brackets like a rock climber. He tasted salt. Above him the helmsman stared openmouthed, white as the paper towels that clung to the deck like taco wrappings in a parking lot. “Get your helm over! Right hard rudder!” he roared, but the seaman just blinked. He gave no sign of comprehending English, and Dan certainly didn't have the Korean. He couldn't even remember the word for “starboard.” Where the hell was Yu? Hwang? Jung? Someone to take charge up here?

A seaman with a sound-powered headset, clinging above him, yelled something shrilly. Dan switched his gaze to Lieutenant Kim, who was struggling upright. “What?” he yelled.

“Taking water forward,” the officer of the deck interpreted hoarsely.

“You've got to get her pointed into the seas. And secure the stabilizers. They're not working.”

Kim screamed at the helmsman. After a second the man reacted, cranking the wheel over. Dan spotted a handhold above him. His foot slipped just then, though, leaving him dangling. The pain in his arm sliced right through the excitement. “Ah, fuck… that hurts. Full power! Use full power! You have to get her around, get out of the trough!”

But Kim was screaming just as loudly back at him. “Turn switch! Turn fucking switch!”

”Which
fucking switch?”

“Blue switch! No!
Blue
switch!”

He got to it and snapped it over. Realized after a second it was the power to the stabilizers. Then got a boot-toe wedged into the cables. The helmsman had the wheel hard over now. The boatswain had joined him with a length of line, and was bighting him to the console.

The frigate sagged back upright, at first a little, then with more confidence. As soon as he could get traction on the deck Dan pushed himself uphill. Kim let go of the captain's chair and got to the engine control, which on
Chung Nam
wasn't part of the helm console, as on U.S. destroyers, but beneath the forward windows. He slammed the throttles forward and headed for the centerline gyrocompass. The boatswain started across to him, but lost his footing and slid, yelling, down the toboggan-slide of the still-canted deck, gathering wet paper as he tumbled, and slammed into the others struggling upright at the bottom. They went down in a discordant howl.

The rudder indicator was at hard right, gyro indicator passing 150. “Point into the seas,” Dan screamed. The lieutenant stared back, gaze fixed, then whipped around and faced front, peering into the spinning circle of sight. He pointed to the right. Dan looked back at the console. The engine order indicator was labeled in Korean. It seemed to be coming up to full power, but he couldn't tell if it was full diesel or full turbine. Whichever, she seemed to be pointing up. Or so said the instrumentation, and he couldn't tell any other way.

He looked back up to see Kim glancing over his shoulder again. “Where's the water coming from?” Dan shouted.

“Water?”

“The goddamn report,
Tae wi!
Taking water forward! Where from?”

“Where from—from forward storage!”

“Port or starboard?”

“Port side. Port side.” Kim shouted something long at the seaman with the headphones. “I am getting damage-control team there.”

“Good, now you're thinking.”

Where the fuck was the captain? Dan could get them out of a broach, but he didn't know the handling characteristics of an Ulsan-class frigate. The deck leveled, then fell off to starboard. He guessed the seas were from about 170 true, south by southeast. They were passing 180 and swinging right.

He put his finger on 170 on the compass and jabbed the helmsman in the ribs. The man flinched, and shifted his rudder to hard left. Dan looked up to see Kim cranking the telephone. “Keep pointing!” Dan screamed at him. Where the/Mcfc was Yu?

On cue, the little captain reeled through the doorway. Dan glanced back. The door to the chartroom was open. He slid down the deck, grabbed the jamb, and spun inside in a figure skater's pirouette as Yu started shouting orders.

He grabbed a chart rack and eased the door shut with his other hand and then stood in the dark, not reaching for the light switch, catching his breath and listening to Yu screaming on the far side of the partition. The deck came back level, though it was pitching heavily, a long slow climb and then drop. This was good. It told him her bow was pointed where it had to go. If the power held, if the helmsman could keep her into the swell, they should be all right. If the storm didn't blow even harder, that is, and he didn't really see how it could, since its eye, by Buys Ballot's famous rule of thumb, should be behind them now and dropping farther astern each hour.

He gave it two or three minutes and then came out the port door. This made it look as if he'd just come up off the ladder. He picked his way through the bridge team, who were clearing up debris, restow-ing gear, and swabbing up various fluids, to stand beside Yu, who was belted into his chair. “Captain.”

“Commander.” The skipper scowled at him. Seated in the elevated chair, he was eye to eye with Dan.

“Stabilizers go out?”

“We hit thing,” Yu said.

Kim made a report. Dan waited till he was done. “That's the flooding?” he said.

“Hole in port side, frame 15. That's where port stabilizer.” Yu coughed into his fist. He had half a cigarette in his mouth, but it was soaking wet and bent at a right angle. “Your nose,” the captain added.

When he touched it his fingers came away stained as if he'd been picking cherries. Yu sniffed and handed him a handkerchief.

”Kam sa ham ni da.
We hit something? Is that what you said?”

“I think floating container. We see sometimes off Japan. Japanese very careless. Russians too. All is under control. Kim
tae wi
take proper action. We are repairing, patching hole. All under control.”

Dan eyed Kim, who looked away. “Yeah, that'd do it,” he told Yu. A washed-overboard container, steel, sharp-cornered, loaded with who knew what. Every seaman's nightmare. He peered through the blurred disk in front of Yu, but couldn't make out much. Judging from the jolting, the skipper had her about twenty degrees off the seas. She was riding rough and pitching hard, but it could be worse. “Have you heard from the commodore?”

“He's in his cabin. I advise him of the situation.”

Dan offered the handkerchief back but Yu told him to keep it. The boatswain undogged the starboard door. The wind shrieked through it, and spray blew in as if pressurized. Yu cursed at him shrilly until he dogged it again.

“Are we on turbines?”

“Yes, turbines. Standard power.”

“Standard?”

“Too much and she makes boom boom,” Yu explained. He demonstrated with his hands. Dan guessed he meant slamming. “I will hold twenty degrees of the seas. Maybe try thirty.”

Dan had no suggestions. Her skipper was the best judge of how much she'd take. The boatswain handed him a damp festoon of toilet paper. He stared at it a moment, then wadded a sheet up and packed his nostril with it.

The Pritac crackled. The voice was nearly blotted out by the
whine of wind in the background. Yu stood in his chair to turn it up, riding the motion like a movie cowboy standing up in the saddle. Kim came over to listen.
”Dae Jon,”
he said.

”Monjae ka sang keot seo.”

Dan got the gist from their expressions: the message was from
Dae Jon,
and bad news. He wedged himself in front of Yu and plunged his face into the black rubber scope hood. It smelled like grease pencil, rubber, vomit. Jellyfish light ebbed and eddied, but he made out the smeared pip of the old destroyer. He ratcheted the knobs and got 275, about eleven thousand yards, if he had the right contact and the range wasn't in meters. He didn't think it was—the console looked like USN-issue.

“Eleven thousand yards, bearing two-seven-five,” he said. “A little aft of our starboard beam. Five and a half miles. Uh… about nine kilometers.”

“Eight point eight,” Yu corrected him. He bent to squint out the whirling disk. A comber towered ahead.
Chung Nam
pitched to scoop it up. Her bullnose cut a wedge from the sea and skyrocketed it toward the clouds. It broke apart and crashed aft, boiling, creaming. The lifelines submerged, drawing momentary lines on the surface before the wind obliterated everything and plastered foam across the windows. Dan noticed someone had rotated the gun mount to point aft.

“What was that message,
Hamjung?

”Dae Jon
is losing engine.”

He squinted into the ambergris light. Losing power in seas like this… in a ship that old… He bent into the hood again and ratcheted like grinding coffee. Giving Yu time to come out with a decision. That next contact was
McCain,
he thought.

When he looked back the flag captain was on the phone. To Jung, probably. He spoke and listened. Frowned. Rapped out Korean too fast even for Dan to catch separate syllables, then handed, almost threw, the handset at the lieutenant.

“What's he say?”

“We go take look,” Yu said. “But that is my decision, not commodore's.”

He snapped an order. The bridge team took on a collective silence. The helm servos groaned as the wheel came over. The wind keened, dead on, then shifted, like some experiment in stereo listening, to port.

Dan waited, but Yu didn't add anything. Finally he cleared his throat. “Should we ask
McCain
to help out? Or at least let them know
Dae Jon's
in trouble?”

Yu seemed displeased, a look Dan was getting familiar with. At last he gave a combined shrug and nod. “You do.”

He got on the Pritac and passed that
Dae Jon
was reporting loss of power and
Chung Nam
was heading to assist.
McCain
rogered and asked if they needed help. Dan glanced at Yu, but the skipper gave him no clue. Dan said, “Mike Romeo, this is TAG coordinator: guess that's up to you. Over.”