Tiger's Claw: A Novel

“State the purpose of your flight near our ships, please,” the Chinese controller radioed.

“Routine reconnaissance flight, carrier Zhenyuan,” the pilot replied.

“Are you armed, sir?”

“Negative,” Sanchez replied. “We are unarmed.”

“Please open your bomb bay and lower your landing gear, Five-One-Five,” the Chinese controller said, “so our fighters can visually inspect your weapons bay.”

“What?” Caraway exclaimed. “He’s nuts!”

“We cannot comply, Zhenyuan,” Sanchez replied. “That would be unsafe at our current airspeed, altitude, and weight. We are on a peaceful routine reconnaissance flight over international waters.”

“It is well known that your aircraft can be fitted with antiship cruise missiles in the internal weapons bay,” the Chinese carrier’s controller said. “Such aircraft are not permitted to fly within cruise missile range of our vessels or of our petroleum facilities unless their armament status is visually confirmed and your peaceful intentions verified. You must turn north immediately and exit this area. Continued flight in this area will be considered a hostile action and an appropriate response will be initiated without further warning.”

“Pilot, TACCO,” Sykes called on the intercom, “what do you want to do, Nacho?”

“The ROE says we don’t mess around with a couple of Chinese fighters on our tail,” Sanchez replied, referring to the Rules of Engagement operations plan briefed before each and every mission. “We briefed the possibility that we might get intercepted—just not by freakin’ naval J-20s. Cowgirl, send home plate a text and advise them of our situation. Troy, give me a heading back to the refueling track.”

“Not completely unexpected, especially since what happened last year,” Sykes said on intercom. “After what the Air Force did in the Gulf of Aden to the Russians, I’m surprised they let us get this close.” Tensions between the United States, Russia, and China following the previous year’s skirmishes in the Middle East had decreased markedly, but they were still uncomfortably elevated. “They definitely got the drop on us, sneaking up behind us.”

“Steering bug is on the air refueling initial point,” Lister said. Sanchez started a right turn to center up the steering indicator. As they turned, Lister turned in her seat to look out the windscreens and make sure the Chinese fighters were turning with them. The last thing they wanted was another midair collision like the one that happened in 2001 when Chinese J-8 fighters collided with a Navy EP-3 Orion patrol plane near Hainan Island, killing one Chinese pilot and forcing the EP-3 to land on a Chinese military base. The crew was detained for ten days and the plane for three months while the Chinese scoured every inch of it for intelligence and engineering information. “Hey, I don’t see our little friend anymore. Looks like he went home.”

“The one off our port side is gone too,” Sanchez said.

“We can expect some more little friends soon—we saw one ready to lift off the carrier,” Sykes said.

“What’s our range to the carrier, Beastie?”

“Forty-six miles,” Sykes replied. “Boy, I’d love for them to kiss my narrow hairy ass,” he went on. “Being forced to get jerked around in international airspace is bull. But we wouldn’t let them come any closer than a hundred miles from our ships, so I guess . . .”

And at that moment, completely without warning, the entire interior of the Poseidon went instantly and completely dark, the engines started to spool down, and the cabin depressurized.

“Holy shit!” Sanchez shouted, right after his last breath whistled out between his lips in a loud “BARK!,” and air that hadn’t leaked away instantly became a thick fog. Sanchez and Lister immediately slipped quick-don oxygen masks over their faces with well-practiced ease. “Troy, can you hear me?” he shouted through his oxygen mask.

“Roger!” Lister shouted back. She was surprised at how calm she felt—this was very much like a scenario they might practice in an emergency procedures simulator session. Strangely, the quiet inside the plane was eerily relaxing—or was that hypoxia kicking in, the sudden lack of oxygen lulling her into a false sense of security? She checked her oxygen regulator just to be sure it was working. “You got the plane, Nacho?”

“I . . . I think so,” Sanchez replied. He wasn’t yet sure. The full-color MFDs were dark, so he had to search for the standby engine instruments. “Christ, all the engine instruments read zero.” He moved the throttles. “No response to throttles, and flight controls feel like they’re in ‘mechanical’ mode.”

“The freakin’ batteries are off-line too?” Lister asked.

“We’ve got squat, Troy, except for standby pitot-static instruments—altitude, vertical speed, and airspeed,” Sanchez said. “Both engines flamed out, no battery power, no generators, no alternators, nothing! Let’s get the power back on, then do an airstart.” While Lister retrieved her paper emergency checklists, Sanchez immediately began doing the first few steps of the checklist by memory, shutting off the aircraft electrical systems, checking circuit breakers—several were popped, an indication that the aircraft had experienced a massive power surge of some kind—and preparing to recycle the battery and generators.

Richard Sykes, the designated message-runner between the cockpit and sensor cabin in emergencies such as this, entered a few minutes later wearing an oxygen mask and carrying a walkaround oxygen bottle in a green canvas sack slung over his shoulder. “Sensor cabin is secure, everything is shut down to shed the load, and everyone’s on oxygen and reporting okay,” he said. “No injuries.” He scanned the instrument panels. “You lost everything? Both generators and the batteries? Can you get them back online?”

“We’ll find out as soon as we reconfigure,” Lister said.

“Any idea what happened?”

“No friggin’ idea.”

“Need an extra hand up here?”

“No,” Sanchez said. “Better get strapped in. Tell the crew to run the ‘Before Ditching’ checklists, in case we can’t restart.”

Sykes’s mouth dropped open in surprise, but he nodded. “What about the classified stuff?” he asked.

Sanchez hesitated, but only for a moment before replying: “Better start destroying it. If we ditch, helicopters from that Chinese carrier will be on us in just a few minutes.” Sykes swallowed, finding his throat instantly dry, and headed back to the sensor cabin to order the crew to destroy the classified equipment and documents.

“Okay, circuit breakers reset, all systems in the ‘Emergency Power Distribution List’ are off, and sensor cabin main power buss is open,” Lister said, reading through the items in her checklist. “Ready to recycle the battery switch.”

“Here we go,” Sanchez said. “Battery switch off . . . battery switch moving to on.” He flipped the switch again . . . and nothing happened. “Oh, crap,” he muttered, then shut it off again. “Double-check everything, Troy.”

Lister swept the left and right instrument panels with a flashlight, confirming that all the switches and circuit breakers were in the proper position. “It all looks good,” she said. “What the hell happened, Nacho? What could have knocked out the generators and the batteries all at once?”

“The only thing I know is an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear detonation,” Sanchez said. “If we got hit by one of those, this goose is cooked. Even the standby instruments are out. I’m going to activate the ELT.” The ELT, or Emergency Locator Transmitter, was a battery-powered radio that transmitted a coded location signal that could be picked up by rescue aircraft, ships, or satellites. The transmitter was completely separate from the other aircraft systems, and the location signal contained the aircraft’s call sign and GPS coordinates to make it easier to find in a search.

“I’ll get my survival radio,” Lister said. She quickly unstrapped, donned her survival vest, strapped back in, then pulled out a portable combination radio/GPS/satellite messenger unit, powered it up, and waited for it to lock on to satellites. “Heading is steady at south-southeast . . . no, wait, we’re in a slight left turn.”

“I’ll keep the turn coming around and head north,” Sanchez said. He used the ocean horizon to judge a standard-rate turn, counted sixty seconds to himself, then rolled out. “How’s that?”

“North-northeast.”

“Close enough,” Sanchez said. He raised the nose a bit, but he didn’t want to risk slowing down below best glide speed. “How’s our altitude?”

“Nine thousand five hundred.”

“Speed?”