Thunder in the Morning Calm (20 page)

British Airways 777
en route from Tokyo, Japan, to Seoul, Korea

R
epeat, all planes in the area, be on the lookout for yellow …” Captain Martin Fletcher, the RAF veteran in command of the Boeing 777 owned and operated by British Airways, looked up and checked his coordinates. “By golly that looks like about ten miles from here,” he said to his copilot, Commander Todd Hemmings.

“Looks about right,” Hemmings said. “About ten miles to our south and about ten thousand feet below.”

“Be on the lookout. These single-engine puddle jumpers have no business over international waterways, if you ask me,” Fletcher said. He looked out and down. Mostly blue water below. A few clouds a thousand feet below, blocking visibility down to the surface.

“You really think a Beechcraft Bonanza is a puddle jumper?” Hemmings asked.

“Any rotary aircraft that tries to jump across international waters with only a single engine in my book becomes a puddle jumper.”

Silence.

“Hey, I think I see something down there!” Hemmings said.

“Where?”

“Check this out.”

Fletcher jumped from his seat on the left side of the cockpit and rushed over to the right side. He peered out over the shoulder of his copilot.

“Where?”

“Down there.” He pointed down, almost right below the aircraft. “Looks like a small yellow single-engine aircraft.”

He removed his aviator shades. “I see it.” From their altitude, it looked almost like a small plastic toy plane skimming across the water. But definitely, there was something. And then it disappeared behind the clouds.

“What do you make of that?” Hemmings asked.

“Don’t know,” Fletcher said, “but we’d better report it.”

Pohang Airport Control Tower
South Korea

P
ohang Control. British Airways Golf-Echo-Bravo Four-Eight-Heavy.” “Bravo Four-Eight-Heavy. Pohang Control. Go ahead.”

“Pohang Control. Be advised, we had a visual on an unidentified aircraft, fitting the description of the Bonanza you called in. The aircraft was below us, ten to twelve thousand feet, so it was hard to get a good look. We lost it under the clouds, but it was heading almost due north when we lost visual contact.”

The air traffic controller turned and waved at his supervisor. “Hey, boss! We have a call from a British Airways 777. The pilot thinks they saw something. Small yellow plane way below them. They said it was flying almost due north, then disappeared behind low clouds.”

The supervisor rushed back over to the controller. “When did they spot it? Before or after we transmitted our emergency call?”

“I am not sure,” the controller said.

“What do you mean, you are not sure?” the supervisor said, raising his voice.

“I assumed the spotting must have come after because the call came in right after our emergency notice went out.”

“Did you not clarify?” the supervisor screamed.

“No, I assumed,” the controller said.

“Look, I know you are new to this job, but you cannot assume! Lives depend on accuracy! Give me that microphone.” He snatched the mike from the controller. “What’s their call sign?”

“British Airways Golf-Echo-Bravo Four-Eight-Heavy,” the controller said. “British Airways Golf-Echo-Bravo Four-Eight-Heavy. Pohang Control!”

“Pohang Control. Bravo Four-Eight-Heavy,” the voice came back in a distinctive British accent.

“Following up on your report. Did you spot the unidentified small craft before or after our emergency notice?”

Static.

“Pohang Control. Bravo Four-Eight-Heavy,” the British voice said.
“We estimate that we spotted the unidentified craft one minute after you aired the emergency notice. Hope this helps.”

“Bravo Four-Eight-Heavy, thank you for clarifying. Let us know if you see anything else.”

“Bravo Four-Eight-Heavy. Will do.”

The supervisor set the microphone down, his voice tone now having morphed from anger to curiosity, which brought a temporary sense of relief to the controller, who had for the moment worried about losing his job for not asking a simple question.

“It makes no sense,” the supervisor said. “Why would they be flying north more than two minutes after declaring an emergency?”

“Perhaps the plane that the 777 spotted was not the Bonanza,” the controller said. “After all, the 777 was two miles above the surface of the water. Depending on the aircraft’s altitude, and with low cloud cover, a positive visual identification from that altitude would be a challenge.”

“Perhaps,” the supervisor said. “But yellow is an unusual color for an aircraft. This would make an identification a bit easier. And why would any small aircraft be flying that low so far out? And why heading north?”

“Good questions, boss,” the controller said. “If the heavy did spot the Bonanza, it is possible the Bonanza lost ability to steer the plane and could fly in only one direction. He was making a loop back to the west but was headed north when he declared an emergency and we lost him.”

The supervisor seemed to think about that for a moment. “That is possible, I suppose.” He put his hand on Kim’s shoulder. “I am sorry for raising my voice. This is a tense situation.”

“I understand, boss.”

“We need to message the ROK Navy and all vessels operating in the area to be on the lookout for wreckage.”

“Right away, boss.”

Beechcraft Bonanza G36
over the Sea of Japan

T
he Bonanza raced north, just over the surface of the water under a slight cloud cover. Rays of midafternoon sunshine streaked down through the spotty clouds. Patches of orange-blue sky colored the horizon to the west.

Gunner and Jackrabbit had again switched places. Gunner moved to the right cockpit seat and Jackrabbit moved to the back of the plane, where he continued unpacking the supplies and weapons in the three wooden crates, getting them ready for transfer to the Zodiac.

No boats or ships were anywhere in sight, which was a good thing, Gunner thought, relieved that they seemed alone in the world, undetected by enemy eyes.

Not much had been said since the fake power loss, as if each man had reverted to self-reflection.

“What’s the game plan, Jung-Hoon?” Gunner asked. “How much longer until we ditch the plane?”

“Our speed is two hundred miles per hour, and we have enough fuel for five hundred miles. We will continue on this course for one hour and hope that we are not spotted by surface craft. This course will keep us between ninety and one hundred twenty miles off South Korea’s coastline. Our main risk comes in about twenty minutes, when we will fly twenty miles east of Ulleung-do Island, which is seventy-five miles from the South Korean coastline.”

He punched a button and a GPS map appeared on the screen.

Flight path in Sea of Japan past Ulleung-do Island

“This is our flight path,” he said. “Bottom of the arrow is where we started our fake crash. We are flying at twenty-five feet on a course just west of due north, low enough that it is impossible for shore radar to pick us up.

“Right now, we are southeast of the island. In about twenty minutes we will fly past Ulleung-do. The island is jagged with many steep cliffs and craters. It has no airport and no radar. However, there are three ferryboats that run from the small fishing village of Dodong on the island back to the mainland. We will be close enough to the ferry lanes that we could be spotted, but we should pass at least ten miles east of the closest ferry lane.

“If we are able to clear Ulleung-do Island, we fly another forty minutes to the break point, about two hundred miles from where we called in the fake emergency. There we change course to the northwest and fly right toward the North Korean coastline. We arrive at the ditch spot, twenty miles off the North Korean coastline, just before sunset. It will then take about two hours to reach shore.”

The plane roared on to the north. “So how much risk do we run of being detected by North Korean radar when we get within twenty miles of the coastline?” Gunner asked.

“Risk would be low if we could stay at twenty-five feet because the curvature of the earth makes it difficult for shore radar to see us. But we can’t hit the water at this speed or we will break apart. I will have to bring us up to a thousand feet to get enough altitude to glide back down to the sea. When I bring the plane back up, that will make us visible to radar for a few minutes. Radar operators probably will see us for a few moments, before we drop back down. But even if they call for a search, it will soon be dark. Hard to conduct a search. We’ll have to sink the plane, just to be safe.”

Gunner wished they could somehow keep the plane … in case …

USS
Harry S. Truman
the Yellow Sea

A
dmiral Hampton stared through his binoculars out toward the east. Somewhere out there, beyond the scope of his binoculars, the cruisers and destroyers under his command had begun executing his orders to beef up the missile screen between the carrier and North Korea. So far, since that first attack, all had been quiet. No other missile barrages had been fired at the carrier.

The curtain of darkness would soon drape over the ships of the battle group, and Hampton worried about deadly missiles flying out of the night sky. He hoped his ships would make a better account of themselves if or when that happened again.

“Excuse me, Admiral.”

Hampton lowered his binoculars and turned around. His chief of staff, Captain Tony Farrow, had returned to the flag bridge.

“Whatcha got, Tony?”

“Sir, we have some information on the whereabouts of Commander McCormick.”

“Excellent,” Hampton said. “About time we got some good news. You ordered him back to the ship, I take it?”

An anxious look crossed Farrow’s face.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m afraid that the news on Commander McCormick is not good, sir.”

“Not good? What do you mean? Spit it out.”

“Well, sir, Commander McCormick apparently was on a private plane flying from the east coast of South Korea to Japan. The plane issued a distress call, then declared an emergency about halfway out. The South Koreans think the plane went down, sir.”

“What the …” Hampton ran his hand through his hair. “Are you sure about all this?”

“What we know, Admiral, is that a single-engine plane, a Bonanza G36, took off from a small airport in eastern South Korea, a place called Tongy’mak in Kangwon-do Province. The pilot filed a flight plan for Hamada, Japan. That’s about a one-hour flight to the southeast across the Sea of Japan, a little over two hundred miles, well within range of the Bonanza.

“Thirty minutes or so after takeoff — and I’m not clear on the time frame here — the pilot declared an emergency. Radar showed the plane losing altitude and then it disappeared from the radar screen.”

“Umph.” Hampton grunted. “Son of a —” He slammed his fist onto the back of his chair and stared out over the ocean. “Why in the world would McCormick be flying to Japan?” His eyes met Farrow’s.

“Well, you did sign the order for him to take leave, Admiral.”

“Yes, I did. I was trying to help the guy clear his head.” He slammed his hand onto the back of the chair again. “This is unreal. Now I’ve got to write a letter to his mother informing her of his death. As if she hasn’t already lost enough.”

Farrow waited for a few moments, then said, “Sir, there are a couple of odd things about all this.”

Hampton looked over at his chief of staff. “What do you mean?”

“Well, a British airliner claims to have spotted a small plane fitting the description of the Bonanza headed north just minutes after Commander McCormick’s plane declared an emergency.”

“North?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t understand that one. But at least it gives us some hope.”

“Yes, sir,” Farrow said. “One other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“A South Korean reserve unit reports that someone stole a cache of weapons earlier today. South Korean police suspect an arms dealer
named Kim. Police tracked this Kim guy to the same airport that this plane took off from. It appears that Kim was at the airport when the Bonanza took off.”

“So?”

“Well, the police were able to apprehend Kim. They did not find any weapons. The airport is small, sir. Very light traffic. The police suspect the weapons were on that plane when it took off.”

Hampton ran his hand back across the top of his head. “What kind of weapons are we talking about?”

“Small cache of light weapons, sir. A few M-16s. Handguns. Grenades. Some navigational equipment. That sort of thing.”

“Very odd,” Hampton said. He folded his arms and walked over to the window and stared out to the east. “I don’t have time for speculation, Captain. Do we have an approximate location of where the plane went down?”