McKee moved down his list of prospects. He knew the Enterprise and its fighters might be close enough to help. So he placed a call to Honolulu, trying to reach a good friend, Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, commander in chief of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. McKee had a novel proposition for Sharp: that he, an Air Force general, be given operational control of the Enterprise, the Navy’s most prized asset. Then McKee himself could order carrier planes into the air. But Sharp was in Vietnam conferring with Army commanders there. A deputy took McKee’s call and flatly refused his request.
That left McKee only one card to play: his F-105 fighter-bombers at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, more than 1,100 miles from Wonsan.
Air Force Major John Wright was in his wing commander’s office at Kadena when the call came in.
The wing boss picked up the phone and sat bolt upright. “Yes, sir,” he said. “No, sir. Yes, sir.” A pause. “Yes, sir, I know where it is. Yes, sir, we can get planes over there right away.” A couple more “yes, sirs” and he hung up, cursing vehemently.
“Do you know that someone stole a Navy ship?” he asked Wright.
“What kind of ship?”
“I don’t know, but the goddamn Navy just got one of their ships stolen.”
The caller had been McKee, who wanted as many fighters as possible sent aloft as soon as possible. They were to fly to Osan Air Base, refuel, and immediately take off to attack the North Korean gunboats herding the Pueblo. The wing commander put Wright in charge of the operation.
The 38-year-old Texan quickly assembled several other officers from the 18th Tactical Fighter Wing to go over their available aircraft. A maintenance officer made a few hasty calls and said he could pull together a dozen F-105s. Half of them were airborne in training exercises. Several more were being repaired. Wright decided to launch the planes in pairs, as fast as they could be readied. The major and his wingman would bring up the rear.
The first two F-105s blasted off from Okinawa at 4:11 p.m., afterburners punching them into the sky with a deafening roar.
In his war room outside Tokyo, McKee received the liftoff news with mixed emotions. Time was running out for the Pueblo. The Okinawa jets needed roughly two and a half hours to get to where the ship was believed to be. But with a refueling stop at Osan, McKee’s pilots had little, if any, chance of reaching Bucher and his men before nightfall, when a rescue attack was no longer feasible.
“Those poor bastards,” the general muttered to no one in particular. “What’s happening to them?”
CHAPTER 5
WE WILL NOW BEGIN TO SHOOT YOUR CREW
“I protest this outrage!” Bucher yelled at the North Korean aiming the gun at his head. “We are a United States ship operating in international waters and you have no damned right to attack us like this. As captain, I order you to get off my ship at once.”
The communist officer gave no sign of comprehension. His soldiers moved quickly to take control of the Pueblo. They forced some sailors back to the fantail and made them sit, shivering, on the cold steel deck. Others were ordered to the well deck near the bow. The boarders tied the Americans’ hands and blindfolded them with torn bedsheets. Anyone who resisted was instantly bludgeoned with the butt of an AK-47 or kicked with a heavy boot.
The two North Korean officers shoved Bucher up to the pilothouse. One pointed at sub chaser No. 35, still flying FOLLOW ME pennants, and indicated with vigorous hand motions for the captain to get his boat moving. Bucher ordered all ahead one-third, telling his helmsman to steer in the gunboat’s wake. The other communist officer pantomimed for Bucher to turn off the sole radio transmitter that was still intact and crackling. When he refused, the North Korean promptly clouted him in the head with his pistol and ripped out the power cord himself.
The skipper then was prodded at gunpoint toward the aft machine-gun mount and told to remove the frozen tarp draping the weapon. He again shook his head no and again was pistol-whipped.
Blindfolded on the fantail, Schumacher heard the sickening smack of steel against bone. Along with about 15 other crewmen, he squatted on the icy deck, hands tightly bound. A soldier had fired a terrifying burst from his automatic rifle over their heads, making sure they got down and stayed down. In minutes the Americans had been snatched from the snug, seemingly predictable world of the Pueblo and thrust into a dark parallel universe of fear and uncertainty. No one spoke. On the well deck, where about half of the crew sat in rows, the stench of a fresh bowel movement filled the air.
Schumacher kept telling himself it was all a bad dream. How could a bunch of goons from some tin-pot country take over with such impunity a ship belonging to the world’s most powerful navy? He wondered whether the communists planned to machine-gun the entire crew. Or maybe they’d just let the Americans freeze to death on this windswept deck and toss the rigid corpses overboard like so much old furniture.
The North Koreans ordered sailors from both ends of the ship to the forward berthing compartment, where at least it wasn’t as cold. Schumacher’s supercharged thoughts and emotions crashed into one another like bumper cars at some crazy amusement park: Anger collided with fear; frustration piled into bewilderment. He couldn’t figure out what the North Koreans hoped to gain by seizing the Pueblo. Were they trying to incite a new war with the United States? Did they think they could exchange the crew for a lucrative ransom? The U.S. government would never cave in to such extortion. So what was their game?
The spy ship crawled toward Wonsan. From the pilothouse Bucher could see the jagged silhouettes of mountains turning reddish purple in the twilight. He figured his ship was barely inside the 12-mile territorial limit and a good 20 miles from the port of Wonsan, at the far end of its deep bay. He remembered Kamiseya’s hopeful words—AIR FORCE GOING HELP YOU WITH SOME AIRCRAFT—and ransacked his brain for more ways to stall. His eyes swept the darkening horizon, straining for the electrifying sight of F-105s with cannon ablaze. If the jets did come, he’d grab the loudspeaker mike and shout for his men to attack their captors. A bloodbath would ensue, but he thought his guys could win.
About nine miles from shore, a communist officer jerked the annunciator to all-stop. A torpedo boat pulled up to the Pueblo’s stern and deposited a second boarding party, led by a North Korean colonel with scars on his face and neck that marked him as a veteran soldier. A translator who resembled the actor Maximilian Schell accompanied him. The Americans later nicknamed the pair Colonel Scar and Max.
Max’s English was a little stiff but his meaning was clear: “You will conduct us through a complete inspection of this ship at once and without any tricks of concealment,” he told Bucher. “At once! Go now!”
“Tell your colonel I demand that all his people leave my ship immediately,” the captain shot back.
The interpreter related the message to Colonel Scar, who ignored it. “Go now!” Max repeated. A soldier kicked Bucher in the lower back for emphasis. The North Koreans had brought a civilian pilot, and he pushed Bucher’s helmsman out of the way and rang up all-ahead-flank.
The captain led the North Koreans to the passageway where Duane Hodges lay on a stretcher, unconscious.
“I need medical attention for this man and several others whom you wounded,” Bucher told Scar. The colonel didn’t reply and barely glanced at the mortally injured sailor. The soldier kicked and shoved Bucher on toward the mess.