Nang then wiggled backward, crouched, and yelled.
“Shaft bearing is secure!” he said. “The shaft is stopped.”
“We’re safe then,” Yoon said. “At least for now.”
CHAPTER 2
Yoon watched Nang stagger to him while balancing against the steepening decline. He estimated that the Kim had assumed a twenty-degree down angle.
“Head forward and level the deck,” he said.
Nang departed, and a new person took his place beside the lieutenant. The young face of Seaman Hong appeared smashed and swollen behind a mask.
“What should we do now, sir?” he asked.
“Get the men tending to any wounded,” Yoon said. “I’m fine. Check the others.”
While the youngster surveyed his shipmates, Yoon saw that his surviving men appeared uninjured.
Then Nang returned, his eyes wide behind his mask.
“Sir, don’t panic. I’m fixing the problem.”
“What is it?”
“Our depth.”
Yoon bore the pain of twisting to view the gauge behind his shoulder. He read the value, and coldness consumed him. He whispered the number.
“Five hundred and fifty meters.”
“But we’re rising, sir. I’m pumping water off. I know I made a mistake by taking us too deep, but I’m fixing it now.”
Yoon waved his palm and shook his head.
“You almost killed us. By our design depth limits, we should already be dead. But you can’t blame yourself. You kept us from surfacing, and we are still alive.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m taking us up slowly. Look, we’re at five hundred and twenty meters now.”
“I will trust you. Looking over my shoulder is excruciating. Come. Help me to the control room. We’ll keep rising, and then I’ll take us shallow to ventilate.”
“We have no propulsion, sir. The shaft is severed and useless. We’re stranded!”
Dead in the water, betrayed, and outnumbered by a factor of hundreds of potential hunters in the enemy’s fleet, Yoon felt overwhelmed. But he had survivors to lead, and he would give them every chance to return home.
“But we have our ship back,” he said. “We may be stranded and with structural damage due to the depth excursion, but we have communications and an arsenal. No matter who may pursue us, I refuse to die without a fight.”
An hour later, he pressed his pectoral muscles into the crutches Nang had retrieved from the medical locker. With a new oxygen-generating canister in his mobile breather, he inhaled his facemask’s fresh air and leaned over a sonar display.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Nothing?” Nang asked. “I can’t see us being that lucky.”
“I see a half dozen fishing vessels, but there’s nothing with the clean propeller blades of a warship. And no sounds of aircraft.”
“Can you really hear aircraft on sonar, sir?”
“Depends how close they are. Same with warships. But let’s call it a blessing that our sensors hear nothing of the sort.”
“We’re going shallow, then?”
“We have thirty minutes before sunrise. It’s now or never. Man the ship’s control station.”
Nang sat before a panel.
“I’m ready, sir.”
“Make your depth twelve meters.”
“Make my depth twelve meters, aye, sir.”
The senior chief jostled a joystick, pumping water from centerline tanks into the sea.
“Slowly, senior chief. We can’t correct any overshoot by driving ourselves back down.”
“Slowly, aye, sir.”
He released the stick.
“Twenty meters, sir. Eighteen. Sixteen.”
“Too fast! Flood the tank!”
“Flooding. One thousand kilograms of water… two thousand.”
“Stop!”
“Holding at fourteen meters, sir.”
“Pump five hundred overboard.”
Nang jostled the stick.
“Thirteen meters. Twelve and a half. We’ll hit twelve soon.”
“Raise the induction mast.”
A hydraulic servomotor clicked over Yoon’s head.
“Induction mast is raised.”
“Commence snorkeling.”
The ship shuddered with the gentle, sound-isolation mounted vibration of a diesel engine.
“Do you want to raise the periscope, sir?”
“No. I don’t want to increase our radar cross section.”
Clean air displaced the floating gray clouds. The lieutenant looked to Seaman Hong, who stood by his side.
“Give it a test.”
The youngster pulled the mask from his face, inhaled, and started coughing. He pressed the plastic back into his cheeks and gasped for breath.
Yoon wanted to lower his induction mast to eliminate the risk of eyeballs, radar systems, and infrared sensors seeing it, but he remained patient, optimizing his opportunity to clean the air.
Ten minutes later, the atmosphere appeared pristine.
“Try it again, Hong.”
The seaman nodded, lifted his mask, and expanded his lungs.
“It’s fine, sir.”
“Secure snorkeling. Lower the induction mast.”
Servomotors clicked again.
“Help me with my mask, Hong.”
Yoon winced as the seaman pinched a tuft of his hair while lifting the straps from his head. He wiped sweat from his cheek onto his coverall sleeve and scratched his nose.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, sir. It’s good to breathe real air again.”
“Right,” Nang said. “That’s much better.”
“Now you can inspect the hull,” Yoon said. “Pick a patch of hull between ribs and peel back the lagging, senior chief.”
“What am I looking for?”
“I’m afraid you’re looking for warping.”
“Are you serious, sir?”
“We hit nearly six hundred meters before you pulled us out of our descent. I’m serious. The metal of our hull can’t withstand that much stress and retake its normal shape. Take a look.”
Yoon watched Nang crawl behind a tactical system console and prop his back against one of the ship’s circular ribs. He pulled a flashlight from his jumpsuit, turned it on, and popped it into his mouth. Flipping a corner of insulating lagging, the senior chief craned his neck and stared.
He wiggled free and returned to Yoon.
“You’re absolutely right, sir. If the rest of the ship is like what I just saw, we must look like a big metal concave caterpillar.”
“That’s why our next step is calling for help,” Yoon said. “We’re stranded and damaged structurally.”
He had loaded a message into the Kim’s radio queue, and he decided to send it to a satellite from his radio mast. The electromagnetic burst would be detectable to eavesdropping systems, but he needed to take the risk.
“Raise the radio mast.”
A servomotor clicked.
“The radio mast is raised, sir.”
“Transmit one outgoing message.”
“The message is transmitted, sir. Satellite confirmation is verified.”
“Lower the mast.”
The finality of taking his last calculated risk calmed him. If calling for help had doomed him to being discovered, he would die knowing he had given himself a chance to be rescued.
Accepting his decision, he sought productive activity to make the Kim seem more like a combat vessel and less like a coffin.
“Senior chief,” he said, “gather the men and start placing the deceased into the freezer,” he said.
“I’ll see to it,” Nang said.
As his traumatized team dragged their former friends into cold storage, Yoon pressed buttons on a console, invoking a chart. He studied sea currents to predict his drift over the upcoming days.