Into the fire, p.11
Into the Fire, page 11
“Captain,” O’Connor said in a low voice, “you can’t be thinking about a surface action with these frigates. They have two 100 mm guns and four 5 mm guns—each! We have a single 57 mm gun. We have no business mixing it up with them. We’re totally outgunned.”
Bigelow regarded him carefully. “What would you have me do, Jack?”
“Negotiate. Talk to them. Anything but challenge them like this. If we provoke them, they’ll fire on us, and we have one lousy gun.” As he spoke, a messenger from radio came up and handed Bigelow an iPad. She took it, scanned it quickly, and typed in a quick acknowledgment.
“Thank you,” she said to the messenger. Then, turning back to her executive officer, “Well, Jack, it seems the shooting’s already started. One of those corvette minelayers fired on a section of our F-16Es, and they fired back.” She lowered her voice a notch. “Look, I’m not looking to make this ship a martyr, and we will do all we can to avoid a confrontation. But we’re in international waters, and those sailors on the Defender are helpless. Their best offensive weapon is a fifty-caliber machine gun. I’ll not abandon them to the North Koreans.”
O’Connor took a step closer, making the mismatch in their sizes more apparent. “What about us? What about the sailors aboard Milwaukee?”
“XO, don’t think I’ve forgotten about them for one minute. But this is a United States warship, and our duty is clear. We’ll stand with Defender. Now, get with the program, Jack. You do your job, and I’ll do mine.”
O’Connor stiffened, but took a step back. “Aye, aye, Captain,” he said, and left the bridge.
Bigelow looked around and saw that the bridge GQ watch section was at their stations and in battle gear. Then she looked out to sea to the south. The weather was worsening, and the cloud cover was now down to three hundred feet, making it difficult for the air cover she had requested.
* * *
Staff officers and senior enlisted personnel were now streaming aboard USS Blue Ridge as it sat pierside in Yokosuka, Japan. The Seventh Fleet commander had ordered the Reagan battle group to head back toward the Yellow Sea at best speed. The staff intelligence section had shed no new light on the situation except to note that the North Koreans had mined the northern portion of the west coast of South Korea and that aircraft from the Seventh Air Force had disabled a North Korean corvette. Now word had just come in that two North Korean frigates were bearing down on an American–South Korean mine-hunting flotilla of eight ships—eight extremely helpless ships.
Vice Admiral Edmond Bennett had been in the Navy for twenty-six years. He was new to the Seventh Fleet, having come from a two-year tour in the Pentagon. Before that, he had commanded the Carl Vinson carrier strike group. He was a solid, seagoing officer; an efficient administrator; and, like all naval officers who rose to three-star rank, a capable politician. And he knew a nasty encounter at sea brewing when he saw one. He was discussing the matter with his chief of staff and his intelligence officer, both senior Navy captains, when Lieutenant Hugh Risseeau interrupted.
“Excuse me, Admiral, gentlemen, but you wanted to see anything new about the North Koreans in the Yellow Sea.” He handed Bennett a hard copy of a message. The admiral studied the sheet for several minutes and then passed it to his chief of staff, who then read it with the intelligence officer looking over his shoulder.
“This originated from an outfit called Op-Center,” the COS said. “I’m not familiar with them. Who are they?”
“And they seem to feel strongly,” the intel type offered, “the North Koreans are looking to capture one of our ships. Seems a little far-fetched to me.”
Ed Bennett was now more worried than he had been at any time since the crisis broke. He was far enough up the military food chain to know who Op-Center was and, more importantly, who was running it. As such, he was inclined to take the capture scenario at face value. Bennett, like every line officer at Seventh Fleet, or the entire Navy for that matter, knew the limitations of the littoral combat ship. And on his desk, he had a listing of the speed, armament, and combat capabilities of the Najin-class frigates. On paper, the LCS was terribly overmatched, the MCM ship slow and essentially defenseless. But capabilities only told a part of the story. Sometimes it was not how big the dog in the fight but how big the fight in the dog. In this case, what was the combat readiness of the crew, and how good was the captain?
“COS, get me a file on the skippers of our two ships over there, and I’m specifically interested in the skipper of the LCS.”
“Right away, Admiral.”
After they had left, Bennett asked for a line to the Pentagon operator. It took routing through several exchanges, but in a little less than ten minutes, he was put through to Chase Williams.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SOUTH KOREAN JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF HEADQUARTERS, SEOUL
November 13, 0645 Korea Standard Time
The dustup between the U.S. Air Force F-16Es and the North Korean corvette triggered the initial alarm bells to ring and ring persistently up and across multiple chains of command, from the Republic of Korea Navy (ROK Navy) command to the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) to multiple U.S. military commands. Those alarm bells intensified when the reports of the hostile actions of the Najin-class frigates hit the intel feeds. For the United States’ allies in the area—the Japanese and especially the South Koreans—those alarm bells were on steroids. Commodore Park minced no words in alerting his ROK Navy chain of command, and the panic in the voice of their on-scene commander got the full attention of watch standers at the ROK Navy headquarters in Gyeryong, South Korea. From there, the reports rocketed up to the headquarters of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of Republic of Korea in Seoul.
General Kwon Oh-Sung, Chairman of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived at his Seoul military headquarters and made a beeline for his chief of staff amid the growing chaos of their watch floor.
“Has the situation changed since you reached me at my home?”
“No, General. Navy headquarters is passing all reports from Commodore Park on scene up to us after they receive them. His ships are all steaming east at best speed.”
“What about the American ships? Are the North Korean frigates still threatening them?”
“We’re … we’re … not exactly sure. Commodore Park has been reporting on the status of his six-ship flotilla but hasn’t reported specifically on the Najin-class frigates since his initial report they were inbound towards the two American ships.”
Kwon considered this for a moment. He didn’t know Park personally; an ROK Navy captain was too far down in the food chain. But he did know his flag-officer counterparts in the ROK Navy. “Armchair admirals,” he called them when he was alone with his fellow ROK Army officers. With 160 ships, almost 100 aircraft, and over 75,000 personnel, the ROK Navy was sucking an enormous share of South Korea’s military budget away from the army and air force.
And for what? North Korea’s navy was little more than a joke in his mind. No, the threat from North Korea was the more than one million active and over seven million reserve and paramilitary forces under arms that could swarm across the border at any time. What was the ROK Navy going to do to blunt the assault across the DMZ? Hell, they couldn’t even protect their own ships. They let the North Koreans sink the ROK corvette Cheonan in their own home waters. General Kwon knew when the real fight came, the navy would be on the sidelines.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff of Republic of Korea was modeled on the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, but General Kwon’s responsibilities set him apart from his American counterpart. The American chairman was charged with providing advice to the U.S. president and secretary of defense but had no operational control over U.S. military forces; Kwon had operational control over all military personnel of the ROK armed forces. In a crisis, he was in charge, and he had no intention of abdicating that responsibility or surrendering any of his authority.
Kwon turned to the officer manning the command console. “Colonel, contact our navy command center. Tell them I want all on-scene reports from Commodore Park piped directly to this command center, not forwarded by them. Understood?”
“Yes, General.”
“Contact General Jeong. Tell him to scramble a flight of KF-16D’s from Seosan Air Base. Then have him call me here immediately after that.”
“Yes, General. What orders do you want me to give them once they take off?”
Kwon was simmering. They were in the middle of a crisis and a full-bird colonel was asking a question a private should be able to answer.
“Look at a map!” Kwon shouted, startling everyone in the command center. “You know where our ships are. You know where the American ships are. You know where the North Korean frigates and corvettes are. Tell them to head north by northwest and await further instructions. I want our fighter jets over our ships, and I want them there now!”
As the watch team scrambled to carry out the chairman’s orders, radios crackled in the background and watch standers updated electronic status boards. General Kwon Oh-Sung had served well over three decades in South Korea’s military. Almost thirty-five years on hair-trigger alert. He had less than a year before his tour as chairman of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff would end—and, with it, his military career. His legacy wouldn’t include standing idly by while his nation suffered another humiliation.
“Major,” he bellowed at the nearest watch stander.
“Sir!”
“I wish to speak with Admiral Cho immediately. Then I want you to arrange a conference call with my five operational commanders. Do it now!”
“Yes, general. And General Green is on the line holding for you.”
General Kwon paused for a moment. General Everett Green was the commander of all U.S. forces in Korea.
“Tell General Green I am busy. I will call him when I have a few minutes to spare.”
“Yes, General.”
* * *
Just over one hundred miles north of where General Kwon Oh-Sung was trying to take control of the situation he faced, General Lee Kwon Hui sat at his desk at North Korean military headquarters in Pyongyang and stewed. He had roughly dismissed his staff and told them he didn’t want to be disturbed under any circumstances. Now he just sat—and he worried.
He had recently returned to Pyongyang after his weeks-long negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. There, he and his delegation had received congratulations from North Korea’s political and military leadership for their successful arms-for-energy negotiations. Then, unexpectedly, he was granted a private audience with North Korea’s supreme leader, who had showered him with praise and given him a medal. That was all good—and well deserved, Lee thought—allowing himself a bit of self-congratulation. But as he rose to leave, the supreme leader’s parting words still rang in ears, “General Lee, you have done your job and now we must do ours. We will own the Korea Bay and the Yellow Sea. Fateful days are ahead.”
What fateful days? Pumping gas from the sea bottom for the next several decades? That was of no concern to a military man. What did concern him was what else was happening—events that were playing out in the dispatches that had crossed his desk and the rumors he was hearing from his military colleagues. The murder of Vice Marshal Sang Won-hong, deputy chief of the general staff, had started it all—but that was just the tip of the iceberg. There had been a dramatic series of firings and advancements in the North Korean military hierarchy over the past several months, and the top military leaders were all generals who had extreme enmity toward the West and especially the United States. Now there were massive troop movements and naval shifts that were puzzling and concerning. Own the Yellow Sea. What was that all about? Lee wasn’t senior enough to be party to any of the meetings and conversations that would explain all this—and he felt isolated and out of the loop. But he could change that. He knew whom to contact to find out what he wanted to know. His fingers flew over the keyboard of his secure computer. Once he had fired off several messages, he also had a phone call to make. For that call, he needed complete privacy.
* * *
Chase Williams had just returned to his office from briefing the president. He had presented Op-Center’s assessment regarding the developing situation in the Yellow Sea. The president was both cheered and frustrated: cheered because Williams was able to provide him with critical information his Geek Tank had generated, but frustrated because neither his intelligence nor military leaders could come up with the same information—at least not with the same fidelity or granularity.
Williams placed a call to Brian Dawson, who answered it on the second ring. “What’s cooking, boss?”
“How’s Kadena, Brian?”
“Oh, it’s a tropical garden spot, that’s for sure,” Dawson replied with only a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Any tasking for us for the situation with North Korea yet?”
“No, not yet. But I’m glad you all are downrange. The shooting’s started with North Korea, and it looks like we’re about to have a standoff at best—a shooting war at worst—at sea. I’ll keep you posted in real time, but right now it looks like the North’s hell-bent on attacking one of our ships—most likely USS Milwaukee—it’s a littoral combat ship—and maybe trying to capture the crew. We’re still trying to come up with the ‘why,’ and I’ve got Aaron and his team going full tilt. When I know more, you’ll know more.”
“Roger that, boss; we’re good here. Any other words of wisdom?”
“Yes, as I’ve advised you before, don’t let Hector talk you into a game of cribbage.”
As the line went dead, Dawson marveled at Williams’s ability not to be debilitated by a crisis.
But Chase Williams was not sanguine he had yet done enough. It troubled him, and troubled him deeply, that he didn’t know why North Korea was doing this—and why now. He wanted to know; no, he needed to know. He eased himself out of his chair and headed for the Geek Tank.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE YELLOW SEA, SOUTHWEST OF YEONPYEONG ISLAND
November 13, 1030 Korea Standard Time
Commander Kate Bigelow had brought Milwaukee to a heading of one-five-zero and a speed of ten knots. They were bow-on to the nearest North Korean frigate that was at twelve thousand yards and closing fast. She had maneuvered her ship to present the smallest radar signature to the North Korean frigates. The South Korean minesweepers had taken Defender’s lead and were making best speed due east for Inchon. They were still in sight but hull down and probably out of radar contact with the North Koreans.
Bigelow stood on the starboard outside wing of her bridge. Under her battle helmet she wore a headset and boom mic that connected her to her mission control center. With the foul-weather jacket and life vest worn over her coveralls, she looked like a preschooler ready to play in the snow. She had not needed her XO’s warning to tell her she was outgunned, but if it came to a fight, she was not without advantages over the two frigates bearing down on them. The first was that their 57 mm BAE Systems Mark 110 gun was probably better than anything aboard the frigates. They had more and bigger guns, but not a better one. Secondly, Milwaukee was built with flat-angled topside areas that gave it a low radar signature. The North Koreans would have a much more difficult time ranging her with radar than she would them. And, finally, there was speed. They’d not done a full power run with the MCM module aboard, but she felt Milwaukee held something close to a ten-knot speed advantage. She hoped it would be enough.
Kate Bigelow spoke into her boom mic and called the watch stander at the Main Propulsion Control and Monitoring System—the MPCMS for short—a console inside the bridge and right behind the OOD and JOOD consoles. The senior petty officer manning the MPCMS kept tabs on Milwaukee’s unmanned engineering plant. Now that they were at general quarters, her chief engineer had stationed himself right beside the MPCMS operator.
“MPCMS, Captain.”
“MPCMS, aye. Chief engineer is here with me, Captain.”
“Okay, Steve. Ready to answer all bells?”
“Yes, ma’am,” her CHENG replied. “Everything is online, and we can give you all we have.” All he had was a great deal—two Rolls-Royce MT30 gas turbines and two Colt-Pielstick diesels driving four Rolls-Royce water-jet propulsion units.
“Understood and thanks. Captain, out.”
She then turned to her comms officer. “We patched in?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’ve been monitoring their bridge-to-bridge circuit, and it’s on your handset.”
Bigelow paused. She was about to make the most important radio transmission of her naval career. With steel in her voice, she began. “North Korean frigate, this is the United States ship Milwaukee. We are conducting a military exercise in international waters. Please state your intentions, over.”
There was a long pause. Bigelow could imagine them looking for an English speaker and wondering about a female voice coming from an U.S. Navy warship.
“American navy ship. This is the captain of Najin Four. You are not in international waters. You are in the waters of the People’s Republic of Korea. You are ordered to stop and prepare to be boarded for inspection.”
Kate called her OOD. “Come right to two-seven-zero and make turns for twenty knots.”
“Najin Four, this is Milwaukee. May I know why you wish to board us, over?” She felt the ship heel to port in the turn and surge ahead as she waited for the reply.
“American warship. You are in our nation’s sovereign waters. You will stop immediately and prepare to be boarded and inspected.”
Kate stepped through the hatch and into the pilothouse. She looked at the LCD display in front of her OOD. The nearest North Korean frigate was just under ten thousand yards away, well within gun range—hers as well as theirs.
