Into the Fire

CHAPTER TWELVE

“Message from the Korean commodore, ma’am.” It was the leading radioman calling on the IVOX, the interactive voice exchange phone, the primary internal comms net on the LCS as well as on most U.S. Navy ships.

“It’s just ‘the commodore,’ radio. What do you have for me?” Kate Bigelow replied.

“Ah, yes, ma’am. From the commodore: ‘Keep station smartly.’”

“Acknowledge message and thank you.”

She looked over to the OOD, who looked up from his screen showing the radar display. She merely shrugged. They were on station or very close to it. It seemed, Kate mused, station keeping was more important than locating mines. Since Milwaukee and Defender had met up with the six Korean minesweepers sixteen hours earlier, they had been maneuvering in the exercise area in what seemed to be a command and control exercise. Commodore Park had been ordering his vessels and the two American ships around like a fleet battle admiral. Kate knew that for these small vessels steaming in the open sea for several days was an exercise in itself, and much of their presence there was just being at sea with their South Korean allies. Still, she had to wonder if he was riding close-herd on her just because she was a woman. Park had not been nearly as directive with the captain of Defender, who was male, as he had been with her. And their adherence to their assigned station had been the same. Defender’s skipper was good, but then so was she. Kate Bigelow had long ago stopped taking offense at all but the most blatant sexist treatment. When it came to performance, she knew she could hold her own and then some. But this commodore was, for this exercise, her senior officer. He didn’t write her fitness report, but for the time being, she was under his orders.

Milwaukee, Defender, and the Korean minesweepers were operating some seventy miles west of Inchon and forty miles south of the Yeonpyeong Island group. These islands, of which only two were inhabited, had been awarded to South Korea under the terms of the cease-fire that put the Korean War on hold. This placed the MINEX ships in international waters, south of the Military Demarcation Line, or maritime border claimed by North Korea, as well as the Northern Limit Line established by the United Nations. In times past, U.S. and South Korean ships had challenged this maritime border and steamed up to the U.N.-established line, but then those were fleet combatants, not a poorly armed mine-hunting flotilla. This exercise was being conducted in waters that were considered international by all parties — at least until North Korea came up with another bizarre maritime claim. They were also waters that were the sea-lane approaches to Seoul and Inchon, which were the likely areas where the North Koreans would sow their large inventory of mines if war ever erupted. They had rendezvoused with the South Koreans the previous afternoon and were scheduled to begin mine-hunting operations later that day. Knowing she would be continually on the bridge for the exercise, Kate was about to go back to her stateroom for a short nap when Lieutenant Ashburn approached.

“Morning, Skipper.” Bigelow had a good read on her people, and she could tell Ashburn had something on his mind.

“Morning, Eric. Something up with the gear?”

“I wish, ma’am. I just got this in from Seventh Fleet.” He held out his iPad with a message on it. She took it but focused on him. “Seems that there’s an unusual amount of naval activity in and around the Haeju naval complex. It looks like a number of North Korean naval vessels are putting out to sea or getting ready to put to sea. Seventh Fleet staff duty officer says there’s nothing urgent here, but I thought you’d like to know.”

She took the tablet, read it, and handed it back. “What’s your take, Eric?”

Ashburn shrugged. “I don’t know, Skipper. Now that the Reagan strike group has cleared the area, maybe they think it’s okay for them to leave safe harbor. Maybe the supreme leader wants some of his ships to watch us hunt mines. It wouldn’t be the first time they crowded us during an exercise.”

Bigelow considered this. “Send a priority message to Seventh Fleet asking them to keep us advised on North Korean naval-unit locations and movements.”

“Yes, ma’am. Do you want to info Commodore Park on this?”

“No. For now, let’s keep the South Koreans out of this.”

Aaron Bleich was huddled with two of his analysts. It was 1815, but there was a burst of traffic that began around 1600 that had held their attention. The two analysts were playing with Op-Center proprietary software that performed a continuous sweep of all U.S. intelligence collectors and more than a few belonging to the Chinese, including the Chinese Ministry of State Security. They also monitored the traffic coming out of the State Security Department of North Korea. Some, but not all, of the Chinese and North Korean chatter could be deciphered in-house by Bleich and his Geek Tank. Bleich had alerted Chase Williams that he might have something for him by early evening, and Williams made sure not to leave the building.

“What do you think?” Bleich asked his lead hacker, a twenty-something who owned two felony convictions for busting into corporate databases and would probably be doing time right now had Aaron Bleich not pulled him back from the dark side and put him to work.

“The land-based, unit-communication anomalies are still in place. Units are still moving, but there is an absence of communications chatter between the People’s Army headquarters in Pyongyang and the field units. Given how hierarchical they are, this in itself is strange. The only radio chatter we’re now picking up is from their naval headquarters at Nampo. The transmissions are all coded, and we’re working on that, but they are decidedly short in duration.”

Bleich gave this a moment’s thought. “Okay, keep me informed.” He stepped away and took the cell phone from his belt. All Op-Center staffers had their cell phones imprinted with a secure, limited-range transmission channel for internal use. He keyed a number that was answered on the second ring.

“What do you have, Aaron?”

“Nothing definitive, boss, but there are too many North Korean units moving, both on land and at sea, for this to be a routine military-training exercise. And they’re still observing a near communications blackout. The only transmissions going out are to naval units, and those units responding are at sea. All traffic is short and coded.”

“You mean short as in orders to execute a previously planned standing order?”

“That is a definite possibility. But something’s up; as of yet, we just don’t know what.”

“I see. Will you be staying with this?” Chase Williams asked.

“Absolutely. I will have a rotating watch team on this, and I’ll not leave the tank here until this thing sorts itself out, one way or another.” Williams said nothing for several moments, prompting Bleich to see if he was still there. “Sir?”

“Have you backfilled Roger yet?”

Bleich hesitated a moment, realizing he had gone right to Op-Center’s director before looping in his boss. Williams was gently nudging him to remember to do this. “No, sir, not yet, but I will immediately.”

“Good. Thanks for this and keep me informed as things progress. In the meantime, draft up an intelligence summary, run it by Roger, and have him pass it to our liaison at the Pentagon.”

“Understood, sir.”

Williams rang off, paused for only a moment, and then hit a coded number on his cell phone.

“Boss?” Brian Dawson knew something was up, and he too had made no move to leave his desk at Op-Center.

Moments later, he was in Williams’s office and they were planning their next move. It did not take them long to agree on what needed to be done. Fifteen minutes later, just as he was finishing dinner and preparing to help his daughter with her homework, Major Mike Volner got a call from Dawson. Shortly before midnight, Volner and his JSOC team lifted off from Pope Army Airfield in a C-17 bound across the North Pole for Kadena Air Base on Okinawa. Brian Dawson and Hector Rodriguez were already on an extended-range G-5 that, after a refueling stop at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, would meet Volner’s C-17 at Kadena. On Aaron Bleich’s recommendation, they had taken along one of his analysts to serve as a communicator and an on-site intelligence presence. The JSOC element was armed to the teeth with a flyaway communications package and contingency equipment. Dawson and Rodriguez had only their field gear and iridium satellite phones, but the analyst had a small communications suite with a real-time voice and data link to Bleich and Op-Center. The three also carried presidential warrants that allowed them to go where they wished and do what they wanted to do on any American military installation. It also bound any regional commander to, within reason, give them whatever they asked for. Williams and his team at Op-Center would be in constant communications with the two aircraft.

His teams in motion, Chase Williams began to compose one of his infrequent POTUS/Eyes Only memos to the president. We were a bit slow out of the chute sending our JSOC team downrange when the crisis broke in the Middle East and we almost let the president down. I’m not going to let that happen again, Williams found himself thinking.

Shortly after the two Op-Center aircraft reached cruising altitude, Milwaukee and Defender began to look for mines while the six South Korean minesweepers steamed smartly about in formation. Commander Kate Bigelow began her long vigil on the bridge, and her crew began to work port and starboard mine-hunting watches, twelve hours on duty, twelve off. And every hour on the hour, Commodore Park radioed to see if they had located any mines.