Korea Strait (31 page)

“We should have maritime patrol air assets out of Chinhae, though. Whatever they give me, I will take tactical command and form an ASW strike group.”

“Sounds like a plan. When's the air coming available?”

“That is on its way.”

“And this second storm? ‘Callista'?”

“We won't start to see increased winds for another twenty-four hours.”

Dan thought it through as Jung smoked. Then cleared his throat. “Here's my recommendation, if you want it. I know you've probably already gotten started on most of it.”

“I'd like to hear your ideas.”

He took a deep breath. “First off, when your air assets report in, let them do the bulk of the radar flooding. Stand your gray-hulls off to the west, between this group and the coast. To kind of shepherd them away from it: if they get into shallow water, they'll be ten times harder to pick up.” Jung nodded slightly, and Dan went on. “We've got what, two hundred miles till the Strait? Crank up to twenty-five knots and head south. Set up a fuel rendezvous. Get a tanker out there to get everybody topped off. Request resupply on your torpedos and sonobuoys. Get helo detachments out here, as many as you can find decks for. Then set up another barrier around thirty-six north.”

But even as he spoke Dan became aware of a gap in his logic, a doughnut hole in what he was suggesting. They still didn't know where this group was heading, or what its tasking was.

There was only so much three diesel boats could do. The only plausible mission he could come up with for them in the Strait area was to interdict U.S. reinforcements coming into Pusan. But if that was the plan, the intruders wouldn't be in company, and they wouldn't have angled so far out to the east, all the way to Japanese waters, before zigging back toward land. They'd have slipped down the east coast one by one, hiding by day, snorkeling by night, and taken their positions silently and waited for the first MPS ship out of Guam to round Kyushu and heave over the horizon, wallowing-deep with vehicles and ammunition.

“But what are these guys trying to do?” Jung said, blinking reddened lids up at the growing radiance at the top of the ladderwell. “That's what's got me short-circuited.”

“Same here. But if we don't know, we don't know. The point of ASW operations isn't to guess enemy intentions.”

Actually, he thought, the point wasn't really to destroy subs either, though you didn't pass up the chance when you had it. It was to deny the enemy the use of them, to keep their heads down and so busy just surviving they couldn't act offensively.

If they could do that, and keep the southern ports open for the buildup and resupply, then no matter what the Communists did farther north, the Air Force would clobber the hell out of them on the way down the peninsula. Eventually they'd stop, be pushed back, and lose.

But this was the typhoon season, and it looked like an active one. What effect would that have on air support? And the carriers, the Air Force bomber squadrons from Okinawa, the long-planned U.S. surge—was it on its way? The massive artillery barrage everyone had always expected to signal Der Tag hadn't started. The tanks still hadn't crossed the line. The op plans had been written around those assumptions, and the planning and programming and budgeting and acquisition and time-phased force deployments and logistic arrangements had too.

But it wasn't playing out that way, and he found that far more ominous and sinister. It meant the other side had a strategy, a weapon, or an advantage that the Good Guys didn't know about; one the experts who'd gamed the Allied defense and counteroffensive didn't even suspect.

Jung climbed the ladder slowly, pulling himself up with muscular arms. Dan stayed at the bottom, relishing the steady cool current of relatively smoke-free air that streamed down it and at the same time worrying. He felt so fucking cut off out here. If he had just one comm channel that didn't run through the Koreans, he could at least ask what was going on. He didn't even have general news, to find out what the world reaction was. The Koreans, at least aboard
Chung Nam,
didn't publish anything like the daily bulletin a U.S. ship put out to keep the crew abreast of headlines and sports scores. It was a self-contained world, the way it must have been in the Pacific in World War II.

He looked up at the growing light, feeling alone. Feeling the sway and creak of the ship around him. A steel cocoon that protected him, but that for a couple of hours there had felt more like a magnet for torpedoes. He wondered howMofc Po's crew was doing. Creeping toward an island haven while war crescendoed around them. He hoped their bulkheads held, hoped they made it. He'd been in their shoes.

Now it was dawn, the break of another day that would probably
confirm war had come again. War with a savage enemy who'd planned and armed and trained for decades. He didn't feel ready. But probably not one of the hundreds of thousands of troops on both sides felt that way, not one of the thousands of sailors who must be putting to sea as news rippled across a stunned country. As the sirens wailed in Seoul, starting the evacuation.

He kneaded the back of his neck and yawned so hugely that his jawbone felt dislocated when it snapped closed.

Henrickson let himself out into the little enclosed space. “Dan? You okay?”

He tried to push the fear away. Tried to sound as if he weren't terrified. “Sure. Let's go see if Yu's boys are still honoring that coffee chit.”

From the way Henrickson eyed him, he didn't think he was going to make it as an actor.

H
E sat behind the black curtain in Sonar, hands on knees and hunched like a supplicant. He felt so hollow that if someone dropped in a pea and shook him, he'd probably sound like a maraca. He stared at what O'Quinn had just plopped in front of him.

“Go ahead, take it.”

“No, thanks, Joe; you need it more than I do.”

But it was something familiar, a touch of home. Sugar and peanuts and chocolate…

“Brought a damn case of them,” the older man said. “Never tell what kind of crap they're gonna dish up on these foreign deployments. Unbend a little, Commander. Have a Snickers.”

Dan unwrapped it slowly, torn between hunger and nausea. Took a tentative bite, and chewed.

Across the closet-sized space two sonarmen stared with absolute concentration at endless, similar, but never completely identical amber lines that slowly precessed from the bottom to the top of their screens. Dan liked their concentration. An enemy more dangerous than a shark lurked within that arcane glow. He hoped they saw it before a warhead triggered beneath the hull. A little electric fan bolted to the tape rack went
wrow, wrow, wrow.
Something electronic clicked knitting needles behind him. The console plate read “Signaal,” so it was part of the PHS-32 antisubmarine combat system. Dan wondered why they'd bought a Dutch sonar system. Then figured why not; Washington was weird about
what it would or wouldn't sell its allies. While losing absolutely no sleep over what its enemies bought, extorted, or simply stole.

“So what've we got?” the older man prompted, lighting a cigarette.

Dan pushed himself upright in his chair, trying to center through fatigue and sugar buzz. “Uh, we're steaming southwest along the coast, thirty miles west of the attack group's presumed centroid.”

“Thirty miles. Hunting a convergence zone?”

“Roger. This is where we figure the annulus ought to be. ROK MPA's over the group, radar flooding.”

MPA was maritime patrol air, aircraft with sonobuoys and magnetic anomaly-detection gear—equipment that read the local magnetic field, which would be distorted by the presence of a mass of steel, such as a submarine. “They're armed, right?” O'Quinn asked.

“Correct. Lightweight torps. Now, these bogeys have absolutely got to vent boat and recharge soon. I don't know what they're breathing down there; the way I plot their cycle, they're way overdue.” He woke up his notebook and brought up his calculations.

O'Quinn eyed the screen suspiciously. “I used a pencil and paper. Got the same answer.” He looked toward the plotting team. They didn't seem to be doing much. “Well, nobody ever said the Reds weren't tough. Maybe their commissars just told ‘em to hold their breath. What's Jung's scheme? He got one?”

“Refuel, rearm, pursue, and prosecute. Barrier ops in the Strait, backed up by whatever listening arrays they have on Tsushima. These guys are going to play hob with the reinforcement shipping if they get loose down in the East China Sea.”

“They're not headed for the China Sea,” O'Quinn said.

“What? That's where the heavy lift prepositioning has to come though. Equipment sets for two Marine brigades, heavy Army brigades—”

“I'd bet not. Know why? ‘Cause they'll figure the same way you just did. There's no way they're getting through the Strait, not with the defense the ROKs are gonna double-team down there. Maybe nukes could. Not diesels.”

“Then where are they going?”

“My guess, wherever they can screw us up the worst, laying mines. Remember Wonsan?”

“Wonsan? No. What is it?”

The older man blinked. His cheeks were mottled red. “Up on the east coast, where we tried to land in the last war. After Inchon. They mined it, big-time. Took the sweepers weeks to clear it out. And that was when we still had a minesweeping capability. That's their game. Something sneaky like that. Not go through the Strait.”

“I don't get the impression expected loss rates carry a lot of weight in the North Korean decision-making process,” Dan told him. “If they can insert just one Romeo south of Tsushima, we'll have to scrub out every square before the MPS ships enter it. That'll take major forces. Slow our buildup. And maybe just lose us the war.”

Dan explained what Hwang and Captain Owens had told him about the strategy for stopping an invasion. O'Quinn looked puzzled. “So what's the problem? If the Air Force is going to attrit the hell out of them?”

“Because most of the Air Force is based in Japan,” Dan told him. “What if the Chinese say: Hey, Tokyo, we don't want the U.S. flying out of those bases. Remember those missiles they fired over them last week? That was a signal, Joe. A clear threat.”

“You think so?”

“Absolutely. The Japanese already pulled their navy back to home waters. Think they'll risk a nuclear strike on the home islands, just to help the ROK? They probably care about as much for the Koreans as the Koreans care for them.”

“Which isn't much.”

“Exactly. Follow the logic. If the Air Force can't fly—and this new typhoon won't help—these people will get all the way down the peninsula before we can build up our heavy forces to stop them. And if they push us into the sea, it'd take a major amphibious landing to get back. Another D day. With casualties like D day.”

“No way De Bari's gonna go for that,” O'Quinn observed darkly. “That draft-dodging piece of shit. He'll just bitch to the UN. They should have impeached his ass years ago.”

Dan reflected that a sizable segment of the senior military leadership felt the same way. But right now that was beside the point. “So the Republic goes under, the Chinese move another piece forward, and we lose whatever face we have left in Asia. We've got to finish
this group off, Joe. We can't let a single boat get past the Strait and into open water.”

“You told me why,” O'Quinn said contemptuously. “All of which I knew. But you still haven't said how. Not with, what—four cans, and no helos? We'd have to get real lucky, real soon.”

Dan rubbed his nose, wondering if he could reasonably bum another Snickers from a guy he'd never gotten along with. “Yeah. I guess.”

“And, you know—I'm still wondering why it took two attacks to sink that one we got. Notice that?”

“Yeah. I did.” He'd done more than wonder: he'd run the numbers. The P
_k
, probability of kill, for a Mark 46 on a Romeo-sized target, beam on, at four hundred feet was 0.62. Which meant it shouldn't have taken two attacks, expending six torpedoes, to destroy it.

“Want another Snickers?”

He looked at it. “Uh… no thanks. Joe.”

“Go on. I got lots more.” O'Quinn grinned and waved it, like a treat before a dog. “Got to keep that strength up.” He laid it in Dan's lap, then sobered. As if remembering something less pleasant than ragging on his boss. “After all—we got a war to fight.”

DAN expected Jung to send an invitation to lunch, but none came. Finally he went down to the wardroom. Plain rice didn't revolt him, so he ate a small bowl. Then went to his stateroom. But then the candy and rice filled him to the point he found it hard to move his arms and legs. Or maybe it was just so long since he'd slept. His bunk crooned a siren's song. He pushed his shoes off and after a moment lay back.

A clutter of images flickered behind his closed lids. Some were of events that had happened. Others, of things that might. He tried to ignore them. He concentrated on his toes. Then, his feet. Gradually he moved up his body, tensing and then relaxing each muscle.

He jerked fully awake, bathed in sweat, staring at the overhead and choking with terror.

He couldn't shake the image of the flames last night, of the men silhouetted against them. It took him back to things he'd rather not remember. The fire aboard
Reynolds Ryan,
before the blunt bow of
a carrier smashed her under. The mine explosion aboard USS
Van Zandt.
The disaster aboard
Horn.

He'd seen things he didn't like to remember. Ashore too, in Iraq and in Washington and on an island in the South China Sea. But in a way
Horn
had been the worst. Because he'd been the skipper. He, personally, had put her in harm's way. He, personally, had sent men and women to their deaths.