Korea Strait (25 page)

“Nonetheless, it might be DPRK,” Hwang finished.

“Like the Sang-o off Sokch'o,” Dan put in.

They both looked at him. “It might be,” the tall Korean said mildly. “They also dispose of other types. As you know. Many minisub-marines… but I do not really think anyone would put one of them so far out to sea as this.”

Dan wasn't so sure. Judging by the the way they scuttled their own subs and shot each other to avoid capture, he wouldn't put venturing that far offshore past the North Korean Special Forces. “These are the Yugos you're talking about? The minisubmarines?”

“I've heard them called that,” Jung said, “but I don't think there's a Yugoslav connection. The North has about fifteen. They use them for penetrations and covert ops, along the coast.”

Hwang said, “They have twenty-plus Romeos and a few Whiskeys. Either of those could be capable of operations that far out at sea. If it is the Northerners, I believe it would be one of these types.”

“Whiskeys” were fairly large submarines, as diesel-electrics went; they were a Russian design about twice the displacement of a World
War II U-boat. About equivalent to the Tangs and Barbels, the few U.S. diesels that had been lingering in the twilight of their service lives when Dan had joined the fleet. Romeos were a bit larger, a bit quieter, an improved design; both the Chinese and North Koreans had built copies. He said, “That'd make more sense. Again, based on the transit speed at detection.”

Jung said, “Either of you see a reason why we shouldn't edge over there and see if we can pick it up?”

Dan said, taken aback, “Well, sir—I thought we were going to try to resume where we left off in the exercise. Proceed to the free-play phase.”

“Can we free-play with an unidentified contact?”

Dan stood fidgeting, unsure how to answer. From the technical point of view, his response should be a flat no. They wouldn't know signal strength, or target geometry. They wouldn't have a 19 aboard their submerged quarry to pinpoint and record its location minute to minute. They wouldn't know its plans to evade, its attack tactics, or really anything else from its point of view.

True, in a general sense the best training was against a real opponent. But they weren't out here just to train. According to Owens, he was actually evaluating the ROKN's readiness for war.

In the end he decided the only truthful response was, “No, sir, we can't. Not and fulfill the data-gathering requirements for a solid quantitative analysis.”

The commodore considered, not looking happy. Finally he said, “It's a real-world submarine. Possibly an intruder.”

“I understand that, sir. It doesn't change what I just told you. And we don't
know
it's an intruder. What the Japanese passed us was only his course on detection. He could be headed back to China now. Or even Russia—their Pacific Fleet's starting to revive a little.”

“Let's do a message.”

Hwang whipped out his notebook and prepared to copy. Jung went on, “To Fifth Flotilla, info First Fleet, CINCROKFLT, COMNAV-FORKOREA, and whoever you think needs to know—”

“Seventh Fleet, COMPACFLT. TAG as well,” Dan put in.

“Of course. Propose we steam to intercept. Meanwhile we will move the comex of our first event thirty miles to the east. That will place us within two to three hours of the extended course of this
contact.” To Dan he added, “I know the SATYRE is a valuable exercise, but it is still only an exercise. If Seoul orders me to intercept, I'll have to obey. I'll try to position us so either option is possible.”

Dan said reluctantly, “I guess I can't argue with that, Commodore.”

Jung smiled, but it was a strange expression. He brushed at his lips as if ashamed of it, then made a shooing motion. The chief of staff bowed instantly and left. When he was gone the commodore said, “What is your agenda here, Mr. Lenson? Why is completing this exercise, getting your precious data, so very important to you?”

“I don't have an
agenda,
Commodore. It's just my assignment. That's all.”

“But you seem so exceptionally—determined. No matter what. Typhoons. Mechanical failures. Putting up with our Korean food—”

“Your meals are delicious—”

“Embarrassments—such as your subordinate getting it on at the memorial ceremony. Oh, yes, I heard about what you said to the security officer. Very clever. But it makes me wonder, why? What is driving you so hard?”

Dan stuck his hands in his back pockets. Time to prevaricate for the Cause. “It's my job, sir, as I said. And I'm a stubborn guy.”

“Obviously it's brought you far. So many decorations. Such a distinguished career.” Dan couldn't tell if there was sarcasm there or not. So he didn't answer that one. After a moment Jung added, “And you're bending your efforts now to developing shallow-water tactics against diesel-electric submarines?”

“That's what TAG wants me to do. Sir.”

“Hostile submarines? Or only friendly ones?”

When he didn't answer Jung went on. “Do you see why I ask?”

Dan said doggedly, “There're just too many ifs in your argument, Commodore. If we knew for sure it was headed our way—if we knew for sure it was Chinese or North Korean—then I'd say you had a point. Till then, as far as I can see, our mandate's to continue with the SATYRE. As close to the way it was originally planned as we can.”

Jung looked toward the horizon. He tapped a cigarette out of the pack and lit it. A thin stream of smoke unreeled on the wind. He didn't say anything more. And after a while, realizing he wouldn't, Dan bowed and left him.

. . .

HE was in CIC when a warning rumble sounded, so loud Henrickson looked over from the sonar console. “What the hell was that?”

“Uh—gangway,” Dan said, lurching to his feet. Clinching desperately to hold in a sudden overwhelming spasm, he broken-fielded it for the little closet one deck down. He just made it when the world exploded.

An hour later, after repeated attempts to leave followed by decisions he'd better not, he reeled out and stacked himself against a bulkhead. He mopped his forehead with the last sheet from the last roll in the stall. It had been close. From not being able to shit at all, to not being able to stop. He felt like a fired cartridge. His gut still cramped though there was nothing more to expel. He made it to his stateroom, chased out the steward, who was cleaning the sink, and rolled onto the bunk.

Cradling his stomach, he tried not to groan.

HE spent the rest of the day in his bunk, in the head, or in rapid transit between the former and the latter. Toward late afternoon a double dose of Henrickson's Imodium locked the gates at last. He couldn't face dinner, though. An orange pop was all he could stomach.

Well after dark he ventured out, still shaky, to find no one he knew on the bridge. The chief in CIC avoided his eyes. But there was O'Quinn, unshaven, hunched morosely over a mug of coffee and smoking the free Korean cigarettes. Dan nodded warily. “Joe.”

“Commander. Feelin' any better?”

“Some, I guess.”

“See why I stick to food I bring with me?”

Dan didn't point out that he had to eat with the commodore, that part of the job here was to cement relationships with the host navy. If they could do that, everything else—data gathering, sharing tactical insights, accepting corrections and new initiatives when they were developed—got easier. But O'Quinn just didn't accept alternate points of view. So be it; he'd ask for someone else for his next team deployment. A wave of weakness hit, and he suddenly had to either sit or fall. He slid his chafed butt onto a stool and blotted cold sweat off his forehead.

“You look punk, Commander.”

“I'll be all right. What's going on? Get the planes fixed?”

“They're back on line. Can't you tell? Noisier now, but they should work.”

“Great. What happened? What'd we hit, anyway?”

“The hole's a perfect triangle. They've got a concrete patch on it. Should be good till we make port again. Only thing I can figure is the corner of a floating container. The planes were trying to correct for the impact when one of those big breakers hit from the other side. Bent the shafts, popped the splines, but the breakers blew before anything got really tore up.”

“Uh-huh. Okay. How about the exercise?”

They spent the next few minutes going over the status of play. The transmission runs were over. A limited event was going on with
Chang Bo Go.
O'Quinn said he'd told Carpenter, over
on Dae Jon,
to run a systems test on his 19, make sure everything was good to go after taking so much spray and rain during the storm.

“Did we check ours?”

“Soon as the rain stopped.”

“Good. Good.”

O'Quinn's glance licked across his. “You don't expect too fucking much from me, do you, Lenson?”

“I expect the same effort I look for from the other folks on the team, Joe. But you don't make yourself the easiest guy in the world to work with.”

“Would there be a point? A promotion, maybe?” He snickered. “I can just see it. Joseph Regale O'Quinn, head of tactics development at TAG. Head of personnel. Or maybe—how about—how about, accident prevention.”

“Lay off it, Joe.”

“Fuck it.” O'Quinn wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and lit another free smoke. “Fuck it. Fuck it up, fuck it down, fuck it all, all around…. Okay, what's next?”

Dan asked if he'd heard anything more about the Japanese contact. O'Quinn reached for a clipboard. “Yeah, we got something on that. I plotted it. Here it is. The Japs are prosecuting. Holding it down. Got a destroyer out there, but it's mostly sonobuoy tracking by air, and some location data from this SOSUS network they've got in the Sea of Japan.”

SOSUS was shorthand for undersea surveillance, arrays of fixed listening hydrophones and a shore-based computer to process their outputs into usable data. Dan went through the traffic, looking at O'Quinn's plot from time to time. “There's two of ‘em out there,” he said after a couple of minutes.

“That's what I thought too. Looking at it close.”

Though the Japanese didn't say it in so many words, the location data jumped about so much there had to be two contacts, not one. It even appeared that at one point, one had popped up its snorkel to draw off a plane that was getting too aggressive on the other.

He frowned. Two submarines, apparently running in company. And though the reported courses varied—it looked like they were trying to evade their trackers—the overall course made good still looked generally southwest.

“They don't say whose they are. Or what class. Not in these messages.”

“Right, just ‘unidentified submarine.' And you know why,” O'Quinn said.

“Why?”

“Because if they identify them, they have to do something about them. Call somebody down. And the fucking Japs just don't want to stick their dicks into that shithole.”

Dan swallowed. His stomach, already tenuous, didn't care for that image. Nor for the stale smoke and old whiskey smell O'Quinn was putting out. He switched to a small-scale chart and tried to puzzle out where their trespassers could be headed. Once past Tsushima and the Strait, they'd be in the East China Sea. From there, he guessed, Tsingtao or Shanghai if they were Chinese; the fleet bases there. If they were North Korean, he had no idea where they were headed. Perhaps to the same ports—they were Beijing's clients, after all. If they were Russian, he guessed they'd make a hard port turn, through the Nansei Shoto and out into the Pacific.

“Hey, and you watch,” the older man added. “Once they leave that exclusion zone of theirs, the Nips will drop them. No hot pursuit for them.”

Dan's gut knotted painfully. He had only minutes before the white bus would leave again. “What's your call? On nationality?”

“I figure they're Russkis. Probably Kilos. Headed down past Taiwan on their way to a little R&R in Vietnam.”

“Oh yeah?” Dan looked at the plot with new interest. Kilos were old friends. Old enemies, actually. Running into a couple might yield useful data. “Let's go in the sonar shack.”

They got down the classified references and read up on the Whiskey, Romeo, and Kilo classes. The sonarmen played comparison tapes as they all listened, noting the characteristic tonals both snorkeling and running silent, electric motors only, on the battery.

But then his gut twisted again, and he had more pressing things to think about. Such as whether he could get to the can before he wiped out another set of shorts.

HE was in there when someone knocked on the door. “Occupied,” he yelled.

They knocked again. “I'm fucking
in here,”
he shouted.

“Is that Commander Lenson?”

“Yeah.”

“It's Hwang Min Su, Dan. Just thought I'd let you know. We got a reply to the commodore's message asking for direction. COMROK-FLT orders him to steam to intercept the contacts off Honshu. Try to pick up from the Japanese. If they continue toward the Strait. And if the Japanese have not lost them by then.”

“Oh yeah?” A disappointment, but not unexpected. After the storm, the Japanese and Australian withdrawals, all the other problems, it was finally time to write SATYRE 17 off. He'd done all he could. Washington would just have to make its decision without his input. His disappointment was suddenly eclipsed by the sensation a sea anemone must feel when a little Greek boy pries it off its rock and sucks its guts out.

“Dan? Are you all right in there?”

He grunted through the closed door, “Yeah. So—the exercise is off.”

“Well, officially just suspended. For forty-eight hours.”

“Okay. Thanks for telling me.” He raised his voice. “Oh—what's Leakham doing?”