“Are you going to stop this son of a bitch or not?” the chief engineer yelled, according to Bucher.
The captain claimed that with no specific command from him, Lacy then racked the annunciator to all-stop. Lacy would later insist Bucher told him to do so.
In any event, enginemen below immediately rang answering bells. The diesel engines abruptly halted; the ship decelerated rapidly.
Bucher turned his back on Lacy and walked to the starboard wing of the pilothouse. What the hell was he supposed to do now? If he kept running, the North Koreans could blast the Pueblo to splinters and kill any number of good men. Then, despite the bloody sacrifice, the communists would commandeer his ship and its classified treasures anyway.
The firing ceased as the ferret coasted to a stop. Bucher stood on the wing, temporarily paralyzed. A PT boat bobbed 40 yards off his starboard quarter, its gunners staring impassively at him through their sights.
Bucher felt utterly alone. His first mission as a commander had turned into a disaster. The comforting mantra that international law would shield him on the high seas, so often repeated by Navy brass, had been exposed as a foolish illusion. The Pueblo’s inability to defend itself, its lack of a rapid destruction system, the absence of air or sea forces to protect it—all the faulty assumptions and half measures and corner-cutting had caught up with the captain and his men with a vengeance.
Smoke from burning secrets billowed from the Pueblo’s flanks and topside incinerator. Bucher wondered whether the North Koreans had quit shooting because they thought they’d disabled his ship. Four of his five officers were with him in the pilothouse, but no one offered any advice about what to do.
The skipper looked at each man in turn. Lacy stood by the annunciator, staring out a window and rubbing his hands as if they’d been burned when he rang all-stop. Schumacher and Tim Harris seemed to be pleading silently for something more important to do than burn paper or write log entries. Murphy swayed unsteadily next to a dead radiotelephone.
Bucher was trapped. The communists were in a position to board the Pueblo at any moment. The only thing that mattered now was keeping classified documents and equipment out of their hands. The captain decided to play for time.
“Everybody not needed to work the ship will bear a hand at burning—everybody!” he told his officers. “What can’t be burned goes over the side. Never mind the shallow water. Now move!”
More signal flags rose on the lead sub chaser: FOLLOW ME—I HAVE A PILOT ABOARD. Bucher ignored the demand. He headed for the SOD hut to inspect the destruction efforts.
The scene there appalled him. Smoke filled the passageway outside the hut. Men coughed, cursed, and stumbled around in the choking gloom. The deck just inside the security door was covered with publications and files that had been dumped there to be fed into the wastebasket fires. Steve Harris and his CTs had flattened themselves on the floor during the last salvo and hadn’t budged even though the shelling was over. Bucher spotted the lieutenant wedged behind a rack of radio receivers.
The skipper yelled at Harris and his CTs to stand up. “The shooting has stopped, so get off your asses and get on with the destruction down here!”
Harris pulled himself out from the radio rack. His face was gray, and he coughed and wheezed as he spoke.
“Yes, sir, Captain—we’re getting it done!” he exclaimed. He started yanking open file drawers and dumping their contents on the deck. To Bucher he seemed dazed, on the brink of panic.
The CTs scrambled to their feet and resumed the frenzied destruction. One of them delivered a staggering blow to an electronic instrument with a sledgehammer, but couldn’t stave it in. Other men tore apart heavy bindings and stuffed chunks of paper into ditch bags to be heaved over the side.
Bucher hurried over to the two Marine translators, who were listening in on radio transmissions from the North Korean boats.
“Well, what about it?” he demanded. “Haven’t you guys been able to make out anything they’re saying out there?”
The Marines shook their heads in dismay.
Bucher shouldered his way into the crypto room. He was about to dictate another communiqué to Japan when Lacy called. The North Koreans were insisting that the Pueblo follow them, the engineer reported. The captain lurched out of the hut, trusting Harris to finish wrecking everything in it.
Back in the pilothouse, Bucher saw North Korean sailors angrily pointing at No. 35’s FOLLOW ME flags. He wanted to keep stalling without getting hit with a prodding barrage of cannon shells, so he rang up all ahead one-third. Inching along at four knots might give his men enough time to polish off the classified material before they entered communist waters. Also, there still was a chance that the cavalry—Navy destroyers or Air Force fighters—would show up. But if anyone was coming, they’d better get there soon. The North Koreans clearly meant to capture Bucher’s ship, not merely board it, and force it into Wonsan.
The Pueblo swung around in a wide arc and fell in behind the sub chaser.
Bucher told Murphy to get rid of all navigation records: charts, logs, loran fixes. The bridge was a blur of activity as sailors unearthed an astounding amount of paper that had to be done away with. The skipper joined in, shuttling publications to the incinerator outside. Smoke poured from the little furnace, but it could handle only three pounds of paper at a time, and only loose sheets at that. Thick manuals had to be torn into separate pages, one by one. Paper piled up far faster than it could be consumed. The ship had two shredders, but they were capable of chewing up only an eight-inch stack of documents every 15 minutes. And if the men in the pilothouse were having this much trouble, what was happening in the SOD hut, which held 50 times as much of this stuff? Bucher decided to stop the ship if necessary to buy more time—even if it meant getting shot up again.
“Captain, they are signaling us to put on more speed,” Lacy called out.
“To hell with ’em!” Bucher shouted back. He went to the starboard wing, where he saw North Koreans on the nearest PT boat gesturing at him to hurry up. The commander shrugged his shoulders, feigning incomprehension. The communists held their fire.
Bucher suddenly remembered he had classified materials in his stateroom and went below to destroy them.
Through the eye-stinging haze he saw dark figures setting fire to stacks of paper that kept arriving from the seemingly inexhaustible supply in the SOD hut. More than half of the crew seemed to be crammed into the mess deck and adjoining passageways. Some men were actively getting rid of classified materials, but others stood around, unsure what to do.
The captain buttonholed a sailor to come with him to his quarters. He threw open the door and his small cabin immediately filled with smoke. He groped for some confidential publications, his Navy records, and letters and photographs from his wife. He ripped up everything and passed out the pieces to be burned. Then he told the crewman to toss his personal sidearms, a Ruger .22-caliber pistol and a .38-caliber pistol, into the sea. He’d be damned if he’d let the commies get their hands on his cherished guns.
Bucher made his way back toward the pilothouse. He noted with grim satisfaction that two safes near his stateroom that had contained codes were open and empty. Secret papers still were being thrown into fires or packed into ditch bags; the sound of sledgehammers bashing electronics was audible throughout the Pueblo. With more time, the captain thought with faint optimism, maybe, just maybe they could get rid of everything. He rang up all-stop.