Korea Strait (43 page)

“No common frequency?” Dan asked Jung.

“We don't communicate. Or, I should say—the only way I've communicated with them up to now is with shells.” Jung lowered the glasses and scowled. “I don't believe they are interested in talking. Perhaps not even capable of it anymore. These people are not quite human. They are robots, programmed with lies until their minds don't work in normal ways.”

Dan thought about that. This wasn't the urbane, tolerant Jung he'd seen up to now. “So, uh—are these navy? Or special ops?”

“I don't believe there's much difference. To tell the truth.”

Dan looked at the signalman, who'd abruptly stopped transmitting and was studying the conning tower through a massive pair of stand-mounted binoculars. “What are you sending?”

“A demand to surrender.”

“Then what?”

“If they refuse, we destroy them.”

Dan rubbed his face, trying to find something to say to that. Nothing came.

A dazzling pinprick ignited against black-painted steel, like a distant welding arc. He could read flashing light, not at a signalman's speed, but he could decipher it. But this was in Korean and he quickly gave up. Instead he accepted the binoculars one of the bridge crew handed him and leaned on the shield, checking the enemy out again as
Chung Nam
slowly closed over the ragged gray waves.

She didn't seem to have any way on at all. He didn't see the white kick of turbulence at her stern. The heavy, slow way she rolled, tilting drunkenly this way, then that, argued she'd lost power too. He saw no evidence of damage along the hull, though. It was smooth, both boxy and subtly streamlined, except for huge freeing ports. It looked very much like an old U.S. Guppy boat, except for a narrow upward projection of the periscope housing that he vaguely remembered was necessary because of the poor quality of Soviet optics. Another finned projection jutted from the bow; he called it as a sonar transducer.

Now he saw a second group busy on the after surface of the sail. They swung something up and steadied it. An automatic gun of some kind.

Jung looked up from the form the signalman's runner had brought down. Dan raised his eyebrows but the commodore didn't explain, just went into a long to-and-fro with Hwang. The chief of staff sounded agitated. Dan tried to leash his impatience. This was their enemy. And their lives at stake. Maybe the best thing for him to do was go below and turn in.

“Who the fuck are
you
kidding,” he muttered to himself.

“Excuse me, Dan?”

“Nothing, sir.”

The commodore squatted in the lee of the shield, his back to the wind, and shook out a silver-tip. The chief of staff bent to light it. Jung said around cupped palms, “They want
us
to surrender.”

Dan whistled. “Pretty ballsy.”

“Like I said: There's no way to talk to these people.”

Dan said, trying to pitch it as an offhand comment: “Well, seems to me they're talking now. They just aren't saying what we want to hear yet.”

Both Koreans regarded him. He pulled an arm across his forehead and tried to function. It was getting harder with each passing hour. “Uh, I was thinking. Usually the only way people act like this is if their families are threatened. Like, if they surrender, their relatives get shot. So how about something like this—you ask them again to give up. But say what you'll do is, put the word out that the sub and all aboard were destroyed in battle.”

Jung stood expressionless, smoking hard, but listening.

“In battle,” Hwang said, “or in a nuclear explosion?”

Dan saw an even better way to do it. “Yeah—or in some kind of low-order detonation. Hey—if it was a low-order det, that means it was the bomb design that was at fault.”

“They would blame their scientific establishment,” Hwang said, looking more interested. “And not the crew of the submarine.”

Jung cocked his head, but didn't look like he was buying it. He studied the Romeo, about seven hundred yards off now. Dan saw the wan ovals of faces turned their way. The thin lines of gun barrels. He leaned over to look down on their own forecastle.
Chung Nam's
stabilized 76mm returned the stare of the sub's machine guns, the long, tapered tube pointing easily up and down with the frigate's roll.

Finally the commodore nodded. Hwang already had a message started. Jung glanced at the pad when the commander was done. Nodded again.

A runner's boots banged on the ladder, and the shutter rattled again.

A staccato clatter from across the water echoed it. Binoculars up, Dan saw white water leap up beside the Romeo. A test, or a warning burst. Or both. He could hardly believe this. Torpedoes and guns pointed at them, powerless to move, and they were still defiant.

Of course, what they carried belowdecks might even the odds.

When the next reply came down the commodore and Hwang bent over it for some time. Their faces were a study in bafflement and rage. Dan tried not to look curious. He paced back and forth, the gratings clanging under his boots. The boots Mangum had given him aboard
San Francisco.
They fit better than he'd expected. He propped one on a stanchion base and examined it. Once you got salt into leather it kept coming to the surface. He'd rubbed it off a couple of times with a rag and fresh water, but there the ghost was again. He turned it to inspect the heel, then examined the other boot. He leaned against the shield and closed his eyes.

Jung said, louder than before, “Commander? Can I interrupt whatever it is you're doing over there?”

“Yes sir. Sorry, Commodore.” Startled awake—he'd actually been out, leaning against the shield—Dan blinked at the paper. “Uh—so what's he say?”

They were both staring at him, almost sullenly, though it could simply be the same utter exhaustion he felt. Hwang said, “We don't really know.”

“You don't know?”

“He won't communicate any further with us,” Jung said. His lowered eyebrows looked threatening.

“Won't communicate, sir?”

“Do you have to repeat everything I say? He won't talk. Not with us. Not with the ROKN.” After a moment the commodore added, frowning across the water at their nemesis, so long trailed, so suddenly revealed: “He will deal only with an American.”

GATHERED around Jung's chair in the pilothouse, Dan, Henrickson, Hwang, and the commodore debated it. As soon as he heard, Henrickson started shaking his head. “It's a trick. They want a hostage. Once they get their hands on an American, they've got a bargaining chip.”

Hwang said mildly, “I don't know about that, Monty. This is part of their usual bargaining posture. To show contempt for us. They did this at Panmunjom. Did it in the Four Nation talks, too.”

Dan looked on, arms folded, trying to figure it out. They could both be right. They could both be wrong.

The commodore cleared his throat and they fell silent. “Dan, what do you think?”

He rubbed his face. He didn't want to say it. He really, really didn't want to put himself in the situation. But he forced his mouth to make the words. “If there's half a chance to get our people out of this alive, Commodore… I'll go.”

“It will be at grave risk to you.”

He tried to muster some gallant rejoinder, but all his tired brain surfaced with was that great old all-purpose military response. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled. “Just one thing—”

“Yes?”

“I'd better have some more coffee first. Or they're not going to get much useful out of me.”

“Well, I don't like it,” Henrickson mumbled. “Once they've got you over there, we have absolutely no way of getting you back. They can shoot you. Torture you. Submerge again, with you aboard—”

Jung sat with head cocked, eyes closed. He spoke to Hwang, who turned and relayed orders to one of the crewmen. The man came to attention, snapped out,
”Jal al get seum ni da,”
and disappeared below.

When the long-faced steward came up he carried a cloth-wrapped bundle. He handed it to Jung. The commodore unfolded it, revealing a holster. He took out the automatic, worked the slide, and put the safety on. He wiped oil off it with the cloth and handed it to Dan. “Take this.”

Dan turned it over. An unfamiliar make, Korean, he guessed. He tried to hand it back, offering it butt first. “I don't think it's a good idea to go over there armed, sir.”

“I didn't ask for your opinion, Commander.”

That was pretty clear. Dan checked again that the magazine was seated and the safety was on, and tucked it into the small of his back, under his belt. When he'd carried the Presidential Emergency Satchel, and a sidearm to protect it, he'd found that was the only way he could carry a pistol and not have it come adrift on him.

Next up the ladder was the little guy from Yu's wardroom. The steward O'Quinn had saved, Dan remembered. He lurched, he sniffled,
but he was back in his white smock. Again he was carrying the silver coffee urn, the covered tray. Dan hoped they hadn't bothered with the sugar-cube ship this time. Seeing him, the server smiled and whipped off the napkin.

Dan closed his eyes. They had.

He took a big slug from the proffered steaming cup and almost choked: it was thick as syrup, boiled down nearly to solidity. They watched him gravely as he drank it off. It felt ominous, like a ceremonial send-off. It didn't help his already sizable reluctance. He shoved that cowardly, cringing Caliban back down into the shadows where it lived.

“So… shall I get going?”

Jung looked out at the waiting shadow. At last, he nodded.

A whaleboat had a mind of its own in seas like this. They were still eight, ten feet high, boiling in from every point of the compass. Dan crouched beside the helmsman as the latter wrestled the wheel. He felt like the Michelin Man in foul weather pants, foul weather jacket, then a life jacket over it all. Plus the pistol, and a portable radio in the pocket of the jacket. His boots were full of salt water again. When spray came over the bow he didn't bother to duck. Just bent his head and took the shower.

His neck ached, and he knew why. He kept expecting the black hull they steered toward, the sea, the air, to vanish in an incandescent flash. You won't feel a thing, he told himself. But the quickened corpse he rode kept flinching. His legs were rigid as iron and his breath came too fast. Now he wished he'd skipped the coffee. It sloshed sourly in a jittery gut, and the crazy seesaw of sea and sky didn't help.

They had four souls in the whaleboat: the big helmsman, a bowhook, another boatswain's mate type, and Dan. No visible weapons, and from the boat's staff flew not the ROK flag but a white one, made up at the last minute by Yu's guys from a bedsheet. This struck Dan as a cool touch. He'd never sailed under a flag of truce before.

He swung his gaze to the approaching conning tower, and the gun that tracked them from atop it. The sub was rolling violently. The gun crew were tethered by harnesses. One was just then being sick,
trying to catch it in his palm till the outboard roll, but not having much success. That was the only sign of human weakness in the dour visages that glared down as they neared.

A door slammed open at the base of the tower. Two men peered out. They wore blue cotton uniforms, a lighter hue than that of the South Koreans. One fingered a coil of line. They pointed alongside, gesturing furiously. The coxswain blipped the horn to acknowledge and swung to parallel the sub's axis. Someone else was shouting down from the tower but the helmsman ignored him. He gunned the engine, then throttled back as a copper-green swell mounted, hung, then broke, gnashing and foaming down the Romeo's deck. When it smashed into the tower the spray leaped many fathoms into the air.

Dan flexed his fingers. He had to make it on the first jump. If he didn't he'd fall between the whaleboat and the hull, and most likely get something crushed—his leg if he was lucky, his head if he wasn't.

He nudged the coxswain. When he turned his head Dan shoved the pistol into the Korean's pocket. The sailor twisted to look down at it, then at Dan, gaping.
”Jeon dae Jang,”
Dan yelled into his ear, slapping the bulge of the gun within wet cloth. Telling him it was the commodore's. The guy hesitated, then nodded. Boarding with a concealed weapon didn't seem like the way to build trust here. If any could be built, and he wasn't just setting himself up for a hostage situation.

The boatswain's bear-paw whammed down on his shoulder. Time to go. He unlocked his fingers and scuttled forward, then knelt in the bow. The boat zoomed dizzily, nearly level with the officers watching from the top of the tower, then sank away till the hull loomed over them. He examined green slime and razor-edged barnacles at close range.

“Yes, yes,” yelled the coxswain in his high voice, and drove in as they soared once more. The bow slammed against black steel so hard they all staggered. At that exact second the linesman on the deck slung the bight. The wet heavy line slammed Dan in the chest, almost knocking him down. But at the same moment the boatswain grabbed it, slipped it under his arms, picked him up, and threw him bodily over the bow.

He tried to get his legs around but instead took the impact with his
ribs. It felt like a truck crushing his chest, but he clung to the line with both fists, hard as he could. The line handlers braced their boots and got him in hand over hand. He slammed his arm against the steel of the door coaming, and couldn't suppress a groaned curse.

Then he was inside, his wheezing breath echoing in a cramped, dripping, dark, reeling, sea-smelling space that evidently flooded during submergence.

One of the guys who'd reeled him in threw him against the bulkhead. The other began patting him down roughly, grabbing his crotch hard, feeling behind his neck, the small of his back. His breath smelled like radishes and rotten fish. White sea-pimples circled his neck like a pearl necklace, and his face was hard and flat as a mechanic's hammer. He found the radio and shook it suspiciously, then handed it to the other guy. When he came to the heavy bronze USS
Horn
buckle he pulled it off, and Dan's belt with it. Dan grabbed for his pants with one hand and braced against the next savage roll with the other.