Into the Fire

CHAPTER SIX

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?