Into the fire, p.4
Into the Fire, page 4
Fen Dou’s master had not only young mouths to feed but also aging parents to care for. He was determined to get his bonus.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM
November 5, 1000 Eastern Standard Time
Midway through the second year of his term as president, Wyatt Midkiff kept wondering when it would get easier and overseas concerns would abate enough to allow him to pursue his expansive domestic agenda. His administration had been rocked by the bombings of the NFL stadiums during his first year in office and then shocked again the past spring by the reprisal attacks on several malls in the Washington, D.C., area. All told, over two thousand Americans had died at the hands of foreign terrorists for hire on his watch.
The retaliatory strike against Iran had served notice that the United States would avenge attacks on its citizens and actually brought a modest extent of goodwill from most of the Arab nations in the Gulf. They all feared Iran and its desire to dominate the region but didn’t have the military wherewithal to take on the Persian state. But there was no denying the United States was not the superpower it once was. And that too was happening on his watch.
The previous administration had set in motion drastic cuts to the U.S. military budget, the sequestration debacle had made that worse, and spiraling costs for military weapons and manpower had strained the ability of the U.S. military to maintain the status quo. His predecessor had announced the United States’ intent to rebalance the Asia-Pacific region and to move substantial forces to that region to show the nations of that part of the world the United States intended to remain a Pacific power. But military budgets were under strain, and the ability to maintain the existing state of affairs, let alone add forces, was a stretch at best, a fantasy at worst.
For a while it had not mattered. But China’s military budget continued to grow at a double-digit rate, and China continued to arm its client states, like North Korea, with modern weaponry. U.S. allies in the region began to ask uncomfortable questions when they saw scant evidence of the U.S. initiative to rebalance the Asia-Pacific region. The hints of greater accommodation with China by even some of the United States’ staunchest allies were becoming more evident.
But this meeting of the president’s senior policy and military advisors was not about China, it was about North Korea. The Hermit Kingdom was acting increasingly irrationally, and U.S. allies and friends in the region—especially South Korea and Japan—were becoming increasingly worried. North Korean provocations—from capturing the USS Pueblo in 1968 to shooting down a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft the next year to North Korea’s strident insistence on the need to field nuclear weapons as a defense against “U.S. imperialism” to the sinking of the South Korean corvette, Cheonan, in 2010 to others—had been going on for almost half a century. But things had gotten worse under the leadership of North Korea’s young, untested, leader, Kim Jong-un.
The faces gathered around the table in the secure conference room in the White House Situation Room were grim. After a nod from the president, his national security advisor, Trevor Harward, opened the meeting. “Mr. President, as you recall, you asked for a constant drumbeat of meetings with your Asia-Pacific intelligence experts. We set up this meeting because there is emergent information we needed to bring to your attention.”
“I’ve been reading your memos, Trevor, as well as the ones Adam has been sending me, but I welcome you bringing everyone together to give it to me right between the running lights.” President Midkiff had attended the University of Florida on a Navy ROTC scholarship and had served on naval surface combatants for four years after graduating. He liberally sprinkled his conversation with Navy lingo.
Harward looked toward the director of national intelligence and nodded. Adam Putnam began. “Mr. President, as you know, North Korea is as unstable under Kim Jong-un as it has been at any time in its history since the North invaded the South over six decades ago. Most of what Kim has done has been internal—like having his uncle and his ‘regent,’ Jang Song Thaek, murdered in late 2013—”
“I remember reading reports he was supposedly thrown to a pack of hungry dogs and family members were forced to watch,” the president interrupted.
“Yes, Mr. President, you’re correct, though those reports were not completely verified by the intelligence community. Not only that, but sources we trust tell us, soon after that, Jang’s sister, Jang Kye-sun, and her husband were executed.”
“As crazy as this all sounds, Mr. President,” Harward added, “for a police state like North Korea, none of it should surprise us. Kim was his father’s youngest son and came into office with no street creds among North Korea’s political or especially its military leadership. He likely figured he would be marginalized by the military unless he took dramatic action to assert his authority. Jang was the perfect target.”
“Okay, I’ve got all that. But now you all are concerned there’s a new problem that goes beyond just a young leader trying to consolidate power. Adam?”
“I was coming to that, Mr. President. After getting over the shock of seeing Jang, who was chairman of North Korea’s National Defense Commission, murdered by the young supreme leader, North Korea’s military came to realize they could influence Kim to take a harder line against the West. Officers who were seen as supporting Kim and who were moderates were forced to retire for health or other bogus reasons.”
“I’m not clear yet why we have an imminent crisis,” Midkiff probed. He didn’t like to keep interrupting his senior advisors, but Putnam tended to take a while to get to the point.
“Mr. President,” his national security advisor replied, “as we’ve briefed you already, North Korea has been shifting ground and naval forces around in peculiar ways that have even Adam’s most talented analysts stumped. Overarching all this is the North Koreans’ history of engineering provocations to keep the nation’s citizens alarmed about United States and South Korean ‘imperialism,’ and for the past several years things have been pretty much same-old, same-old.”
“But not any longer?”
“No, sir. As we have briefed you, these military moves have been perplexing. Coupled with that, late last month, the last senior military leader who was thought to be a moderating influence on Kim, Vice Marshal Sang Won-hong, deputy chief of the general staff of the Korean People’s Army, was murdered.”
“The report I got said it was staged to look like a robbery, but our intelligence community didn’t believe it.”
“Yes, Mr. President, but the feigned robbery was clumsily done at best. Sang had been increasingly outspoken regarding the need for restraint and had Kim’s ear.”
“But if he was a fan of ‘restraint,’ how did he ever climb that high in the North Korean military? Surely the KPA would have cut him from the herd long ago?”
“You’re right, Mr. President,” Putnam continued. “Sang only began to do this about two years ago. His call for restraint was short-term and tactical. He was one of the principals who brokered substantial arms imports from China, and he envisioned a ramp up in these arms transfers once North Korea began selling massive amounts of gas reserves from their offshore fields to China. He simply was calling for time for the KPA to learn to use these newer, more sophisticated weapons and adapt their operational plans and tactics to accommodate the new technology—”
“And that got him murdered?” The president interrupted again.
“Yes, sir,” Putnam continued. “You know how North Korea’s military, reserve, and paramilitary forces suck the life out of the North Korean economy. Their people are increasingly desperate, and recent famines have caused unprecedented suffering. The majority of the KPA’s senior leadership think periodic provocations against the United States, South Korea, and Japan are the only way to keep the North Korean people focused on an external threat and not on their own misery.”
“They’re a police state. Can’t they control the message and tell the people what they want them to hear without creating external provocations?”
“Ten years ago, yes, sir. But with the Internet and smartphones, more and more North Koreans are able to connect with the outside world,” Putnam continued. “What they learn is so startling to them they quickly spread this word throughout informal networks.”
“Mr. President, I think part of Adam’s point is just how desperate conditions are in North Korea,” Harward added. “There are well-documented reports the North Korean diet has been well south of a thousand calories a day for at least a decade. More recently, some reports have pegged that number as approaching five hundred calories a day. Tens of thousands of people are reported to have starved to death in the most recent famine. We can get you additional information on this if you like, sir…”
“No, I get it,” Midkiff interrupted. “You’re concerned North Korea’s military needs to do something provocative against the West to divert attention from what their people have to endure. Tell me what you’re seeing and why we need to keep an eye on it.”
“Yes, Mr. President.” Adam Putnam motioned to one of the Situation Room staffers, and a PowerPoint slide appeared on the large screen display at the far end of the Sit Room.
CHAPTER SIX
SOUTHERN YELLOW SEA
November 7, 1030 Korea Standard Time
Commander Kate Bigelow paced Milwaukee’s bridge, forgoing the comfort of her captain’s chair. She was impatient and knew she didn’t hide it well.
They had attended the initial, mid, and final planning conferences for this exercise with their South Korean and Japanese allies. She had put on her dress uniform for all the required social functions that accompanied these exercises, “polite chitchat on steroids,” she called them. They had read all the planning orders, operational orders, execution orders, and the like governing the exercise. Her operations officer had subjected her wardroom to countless sessions of “death by PowerPoint,” going over all the nuances of this international exercise. But they hadn’t done a thing yet!
She tempered her impatience with the geopolitical realities of the situation and reminded herself of the advice her first skipper had given her to “eat your own dog food.” Only days ago she had pointedly reminded her exec in time of war that their allies, especially the South Koreans, would be the ones responsible for mine-clearing operations in the waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula. So at issue is not how well we can sweep mines, but how well they sweep mines, she had told him. Now she needed to take her own counsel.
It occurred to Bigelow that the South Korean commodore, Captain Park, who was in charge of the mine-hunting and mine-clearing part of the exercise, was maddeningly methodical. He seemed to be more about “process” than about getting anything done. And then there was the multilayered U.S. chain of command, which didn’t make things easier. There was commander, U.S. Pacific command—PACOM—the Hawaii-based combatant commander responsible for the entire region. Next there was commander, U.S. forces, Korea—USFK—the U.S. Army four-star general responsible for the almost thirty thousand U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula. There was commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet—COMPACFLT—another Hawaii-based four-star commander in charge of all U.S. naval forces operating in the Pacific region. Directly under him was commander, U.S. Seventh Fleet—COMSEVENTH FLEET—based aboard USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19), home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan. Each level wanted to be kept informed and could weigh in with added direction.
She continued to pace, shaking her head. And those were only the really senior masters she had to report to! Under all of them, there was her squadron commodore back in Singapore, in charge of all the LCS ships forward-deployed there, as well as the LCS squadron commodore back at their permanent home base in San Diego. Afloat for this exercise there was the commander of the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group, the U.S. Navy SOPA—or senior officer present afloat—for the overarching exercise they were a minor part of. And that didn’t even include the multilayered South Korean and Japanese chains of command in the region. Byzantine, she found herself thinking.
“Captain.”
No response.
“Captain?” Bigelow turned toward her officer of the deck, Lieutenant Junior Grade Zack Weaver.
“OOD, what’s on your mind?”
“Captain, you wanted to know when we needed to increase speed so we can do the PASSEX with the Reagan strike group. We’ve got her on this screen if you’d like to take a look.” A PASSEX—or passing exercise—was a pro forma exercise when ships of the same tactical group, or for that matter different groups, passed each other within visual or line-of-sight radio-communications range. For the junior commander in each PASSEX, there was implicit—and sometimes explicit—pressure to look sharp while they were under the gaze of a senior commander. Kate Bigelow wasn’t worried about the PASSEX, but neither did she want it sneaking up on her two-ship flotilla.
“Right, let’s do it,” Bigelow replied, glad for a respite from worrying about something she couldn’t do anything about anyway.
They bent over the electronic display and her OOD showed her the path that would take Milwaukee and Defender north to pass close aboard the main body of ships that would be steaming south for the next portion of the exercise. Reagan strike group had just spent several days in the Yellow Sea working with ROK air force units out of several bases on South Korea’s western coast. She tapped her finger on the display about three-quarters of the way along the route that would take them up into the Yellow Sea.
“Yes, ma’am, you’re wondering about the storm that’s been hammering the Northern portion of the Yellow Sea and Korea Bay. It’s moved west, and the weather guessers are saying it will continue to do so and likely make landfall around Dalian, China, in about thirty-six hours. We’ll keep on top of it, though.”
“Don’t trust the weather guessers, Weaver?” Bigelow said, smiling.
“Not so long as they’re living in a warm building at Fleet Activities Yokosuka munching donuts and drinking coffee.”
“Ah, Weaver, we need to work on improving your view of humanity,” she replied. “But you’re right to keep an eye on it. We check with Defender to see if they’re okay on fuel if we kick our speed up a bit?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re all good on gas.”
“Great, give the order. Let’s go join the big boys.”
* * *
Well north-northwest of where Milwaukee and Defender were steaming to join their exercise, aboard the Chinese hydrographic vessel Fen Dou, the first mate was working mightily to carry out the orders the ship’s master had given him. He had doubled the number of men on deck heaving on the lines that lowered their survey gear into the water and had made sure they all had safety harnesses to connect them to the ship’s superstructure.
He had done all that, but now he was beginning to lose confidence in the master’s judgment. The seas had, indeed, intensified to sea state 8, and the master’s zeal to continue to do this survey work despite the harsh weather made no sense. Nor had the master taken his advice to move to calmer waters to survey there. He promised himself he would look for another vessel to sign on with next time they were ashore.
“Careful there with that,” the first mate shouted to the lead man tending the line and controlling the gear they were trying to swing over the side of the Fen Dou. He strained to make his voice heard above the howling wind and the crashing waves. “Slower, slower with the swing, and watch out for the ship’s rolls.”
The six men on deck tried to comply, but their task was becoming more and more impossible.
“I said slower!” the first mate shouted again at the top of his lungs as he roughly grabbed the lead line tender by the shoulders. “You’re about to lose control of it.”
Just then, Fen Dou wallowed in the quartering sea, and the marginal control the men had maintained over the heavy gear disappeared.
“Watch out!” one of the men shouted.
Momentum and the laws of physics took over, and the gear swung wildly, crashing into the superstructure of Fen Dou.
What happened next occurred in the blink of an eye but seemed to take place in horrifyingly slow motion.
The massive survey gear crashed down on deck, pinning one of the deckhands underneath. Instinctively, two of the men tending the support line unbuckled their safety harnesses and slid across the heaving deck to come to the aid of their mate. They grabbed the huge survey gear and tried to lift it off the man who was writhing in agony. They strained to no avail but knew they had to keep trying before the heavy gear crushed the life out of the man. They had no warning when the ship lurched wildly as it was engulfed by a rogue wave. They lost their footing on the slick deck, and the wave swept them over the side.
Shocked, the first mate pushed, shoved, and somehow got the remaining men on deck inside the ship’s superstructure. Then he made his way up to Fen Dou’s bridge.
“Captain, you saw what happened!” he shouted at the master. But the man seemed frozen in place.
“Captain!”
“I know, I know. We lost two men over the side. Is everyone else all right? I couldn’t see everything that happened down there.”
“One of the men was crushed by the survey gear. I don’t know if he’ll make it. But captain, we need to turn around and look for the two men who were swept overboard. They won’t survive long in this water.”
The ship’s master just stared straight ahead and held on to a stanchion to keep from falling over as the Fen Dou now bucked wildly.
“Captain, we must turn around!” the first mate shouted, now only a foot from the master and also holding on to keep from falling down.
“I can barely keep steerageway in these seas. If I try to reverse course, the seas might cause us to broach, and I can’t risk that. We’ll go down.”
The first mate moved to protest but stopped. He knew his captain was right. He said a silent prayer for his lost mates and then left the bridge to see about the injured man, fearing the worst. Three men dead, and for what?
