Korea Strait (39 page)

Its breath swept over him, icy, misting, and with it came a terrible aching emptiness in his head. Cylindrical tanks tumbled end over end in unnatural slow motion. They tolled and clanged like the iron bells of hell as they caromed and pinballed through the maze of rails and gratings, valves snapping off, spraying out whatever they were discharging. Some kind of gas—

He didn't see where the spark came from, only felt its instantaneous expansion into a bloom of yellow-white flame as overwhelming as the noon sun, ramming toward him through the beveled air. The shock blew him into a darkness as solid as if both his body and his instantly extinguished mind had been frozen now and forever into black everlasting ice.

H
E came to surrounded by creaking, whimpering, the crash and shush of seas going past. And the loveliest music ears could register: the faraway clatter of diesels, the muffled pulse of turning screws. He lay without moving, mind at first drifting, then as he returned sending queries to the outskirts. His arms and legs sent back the dull aches of bruises and sprains. His back hurt. His lungs burned. His worst fear was that his neck might've been injured again. The last time, he'd nearly been paralyzed. But when he wiggled his toes he could feel every itchy fiber of a cheap wool blanket.

He snapped his eyes open and half pushed, half rolled out of the bunk. Just as he started to fall his hand flew out, faster than thought, and snagged the bunk frame.

He was on a top bunk in the frigate's little sick bay. The whimpering came from a seaman whose ribs were being wound with yards of elastic bandage. Other Koreans sat about on the tile deck, nursing splinted arms, mashed fingers, bandaged heads.

The little corpsman who'd attended him before, the one they called “doctor,” looked up at Dan's sudden near precipitation down out of the overhead. He smiled, cheeks wrinkling, and gave him a long, incomprehensible oration, complete with gestures. Dan could only nod and smile back. The tickle in his chest grew and he coughed and coughed. Then swung his legs over the edge and made as if to climb down. The other patients stared at him. Then, under the urging of the doctor, they stood—those who could—and helped ease him down,
one with an unsplinted arm, another turning a bandaged shoulder away to let him lean on the other.

He teetered on the tilting deck, clinging to the bunk frame, and felt the world slip away again. The black loomed and wavered around him, shot through with golden lights.

The doctor waved something acrid under his nose. It stung like being teargassed, and he gasped and blinked. He pushed it away and staggered toward the door. Halfway there he realized he was still in his skivvies.

HENRICKSON did a double take when Dan wobbled into CIC. Dan had to admit that in the South Korean-issue coveralls, with most of his hair burned off, he must be a sight. “Commander. Uh, great to see you made it. They said you were hurt. Where'd you get the cool duds?”

“Sick bay.”

“And the thong sandals? Which are cute, by the way. Specially with the white socks.” The analyst steadied him as he winced his way down into a chair. “Sure you're okay? Looked like that hurt. That cough doesn't sound too good, either.”

“They gave me some white pills.”

“Hwang said you got knocked out.”

“Yeah, but I'm okay.” He blinked and got back a very bad image: a pair of boots disappearing into a black maw. “Joe! Where's O'Quinn? You seen Joe? He was down there too.”

“Haven't seen him. Wasn't he with you?”

“For a while.” O'Quinn hadn't been in sick bay, which probably meant nothing good. He tore his mind away from that hellish last image, tried to Velcro it again to the tactical situation. Which was still, as far as he knew, critical. “I see we're under way again.”

“Diesels only. Turbines are out of alignment.”

“Fuck. That limits us to—”

“About fifteen knots, yeah. But at least we're not pinned in the troughs. Like we were there for a couple of minutes. She damn near went over.”

He'd definitely take the diesels over nothing. The rolling was still violent, though; gear and trash littered the deck, shifting underfoot
with every roll; it was obvious without asking that the stabilizers were still down. He didn't mind. His inner ear seemed to prefer a rhythm, even if violent, to a motion it couldn't predict. He noted power was back, too. The radars were on, the lights were bright and steady, the overhead speakers hissed.

He kneaded his face. “Okay. What's happening with the task group?”

Monty laid it in in broad strokes.
Kim Chon
and
Cheju
were thirty miles ahead, following the predicted course of the remaining subs. The PCC was very low on fuel, as was the flagship herself. “Fifteen percent last I heard. Even if we had the turbines, we couldn't run them long.”

“That's not very fucking much fuel. You can't go down to zero, not in heavy seas like this. Even in a new ship.”

Henrickson frowned. “You can't?”

“Sludge, Monty. Especially for a diesel, you don't want to suck up whatever comes out of the tanks with those last few gallons.”

“Huh. Then we got even less than I thought. Anyway, we're headed two one zero. That gives us all this motion, but Jung's determined to hang on. Just limping along after the other guys in the task group. If he could get a helo out here, I'm sure he'd have crossdecked long ago.”

Dan was starting to ask about remaining weapons loadout when the commodore appeared at the doorway. He clung there through a roll, then came the rest of the way in. He stood swaying, glaring fixedly at the plot. Then saw Dan, and worked his way over, holding equipment as he progressed, as the space rolled and pitched and heaved and yawed around him. Dan noticed a slick of water sheening the deck. Where had that come from? CIC was many feet above the waterline. He tried to get to his feet but Jung's palms pressed his shoulders down. “Commodore,” he said.

“Did the doctor release you, Commander?”

“Not exactly. Sir.”

“I see.”

Close up Jung was stubbled gray. His eyes looked like the flash hiders of overheated.60s. Dan thought about asking him about O'Quinn, but decided to keep the question for someone from ship's company. The commodore lowered his voice. He added, “A Romeo ran aground off Kanjolgap. North of Pusan.”

“Trying to slip down the coast?” Henrickson said.

“Apparently. Very close inshore.”

Dan deep-kneaded his neck, trying to corral his thoughts. “You think, another infiltration team? Trying to land near Pusan?”

“That I don't know.” Jung thrust his hands into his pockets and came out with a crumpled pack. He fished one remaining silver-tip out and Bogarted it, blinking across the compartment. He seemed to lose the thread, then flinched and shook himself like a wet Labrador. “We're not getting much out of Seoul just now. I do have a channel to CNFK. An aide there. We're close enough I was able to get him on my cell.”

“That's got to be one good cell phone,” Dan said.

“We are actually not that far from the coast here. But it is a good phone, yes. Samsung—Korean-made.” Jung smiled; then his eyes went dead again. “He told me ROK Marines stormed the sub. The crew fired back. The last few killed each other as they were boarded, rather than surrender. No one survived.”

Dan found himself remembering the distorted face that had charged at him out of the darkness. “Yeah. They tend to do that. Was there anything—interesting—aboard?”

“Not in the sense you mean.” Jung closed his eyes, swayed as they rolled; Henrickson reached to steady him. Dan realized the commodore was close to losing consciousness. He spoke like a player with dying batteries. “Nothing radioactive. Only small arms, light machine guns, supplies. Burst-transmission radios.”

“An observation party,” Henrickson said.

“You think so?” said Jung.

“That makes four,” Dan said. His head was clearing a little. “One sub sunk the night
Mok Po
got torpedoed. The second, the one we destroyed yesterday. One aground at Kanjolgap. That leaves one boat out there.”

“There could be more,” Henrickson put in.

Jung seemed to remember the cigarette stuck to his lip. He lit it and gazed around the compartment before coming back to them.

“We've been tracking these guys for three days,” Dan pointed out. “You're right, there could be more. But I think we'd have come up with them if they were there.”

“We never detected the guy who shot us up last night,” Henrickson pointed out.

“We've just been through a fucking typhoon, Monty. Sea state's been shit. He obviously snorkeled at the height of the storm, when we couldn't see squat on radar.”

“It's hard to snorkel in heavy seas.”

Dan couldn't help blinking at that statement. “These guys have been doing a lot of difficult things, Monty. Haven't you noticed? Including figuring out some way to reduce the probability of kill on our torpedoes to about a third of what it's supposed to be. And picking exactly the right weather and political conditions to stick it to us and snap it off.” He lifted his head, making the connection. “Commodore—did the marines find any evidence of new countermeasures? When they searched this sub that beached?”

Jung said that was a good question; he'd have Hwang call back and ask. If necessary, they'd ask for a technical team to be dispatched.

“We could really use anything they can tell us,” Dan told him. “But that's how he got past us, and how he almost clobbered us, too. We're so dependent on sonar and radar that when conditions deteriorate, we lose our ability to play. He was snorkeling and spotted us through his periscope. He pickled a couple off and got lucky. I think there's just the one guy left. But he's the one with the ball.”

“The ball?” Jung said.

“The nuke,” Henrickson interpreted.

“Oh.” Jung closed his eyes and burned another half inch of the cigarette. He swayed, letting the smoke jet out through his nostrils, and sighed. “The ball,” he muttered.

“Head for Pusan,” Henrickson murmured.

Filled with sudden dread, Dan limped over and searched until he came up with a chart. “Where are we now, sir?” he asked Jung. A nicotine-stained finger made a brown mark forty miles southeast of Ulsan.

Chill harrowed Dan's spine. Pusan was the next city down the coast.

“There are also—there are also reports of preparatory fires along the DMZ,” Hwang said. “And aircraft flights.”

Dan and Henrickson exchanged glances. “Artillery?” the analyst asked. The commodore nodded.

Dan rubbed his face hard, again. Whatever the doc had given him wasn't just aspirin. Not only were the aches and pains going away, he
was starting to float. The golden cloud effect. But he had to stay centered. Artillery along the DMZ… which would be probing fires at first, to trigger the South Korean counterbattery radars and localize them for destruction. Same with the overflights, to pinpoint hidden radars and missile batteries so they could be targeted and destroyed.

It was the long-awaited run-up to war. The savage bloody tragedy of Korea was repeating itself. Driven by madmen, invited by weakness, facilitated by divided counsels and halfhearted attempts at appeasement. Even through the golden glow he felt sick. As soon as the glare of nuclear fission lit the hills of Pusan, the barrage would begin. Maybe the ROK Army and Air Force could still hold the enemy's armored thrusts. Maybe America could even muster its will, as it had before in the face of disaster, and stem the offensive. Develop alternate ports, reinvade, at what sacrifice of blood and treasure he could not even imagine.

No matter what the outcome, hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, would die.

If only they could have stopped this thing. And they almost had! They'd taken out half the group. The Korean marines had captured another. “There's only the one left,” he muttered. But his lips felt like they weren't wired to his brain anymore.

“There's
Chang Bo Go,”
Henrickson offered. “She's still patrolling off the entrance.”

“If we detect, I will go in,” Jung said. His expression left no doubt what he meant. If he got the faintest sonar return, the vaguest hint of radar contact, he'd drive into the attack. And once engaged, prosecute to the finish.

But Dan had no doubt the men below them were just as determined. Corner them, and they'd trigger their weapon. Toss that ball they'd carried so far and so long, for the ultimate score.

They were all, all of them, locked into the game. There were no more options. Only the two stark, remaining consummations.

Pusan destroyed.

Or the last Romeo, and with it the whole task group, obliterated in one burst of nuclear light.

He scrubbed his face through the silken veil of the drug, trying desperately to drag something useful out of his woolly brain.

If only there were
some other possibility…

. . .

A couple of hours later one of the Kims told him the aft repair party had found his man. Since “his man” could only be O'Quinn, Dan went to sick bay at once.

The retired captain was lying, eyes closed, in one of the lower bunks. They had an oxygen mask on him and an intravenous drip going. Beard stubble was black and gray against cyanotic skin. But he didn't seem to be wounded. At least, Dan didn't see any bandages. He bent to place his mouth beside the oil-smeared ear. “Joe, you okay?”

No answer, not even a flutter of the closed eyelids. He was breathing, with harsh ragged snores on the intake, but Dan didn't know what to make of the blue skin. Dan couldn't make out a lot of what the little doctor was trying to tell him, but the guy kept pointing to his chest and making mock coughs.

“Was there anyone with him?”