Tiger's Claw: A Novel

out of all that. I’m on my way to Guam in an Excalibur tomorrow, and I’ll be out there to do some check rides. It should take you about a week to do the online course, another week for the simulator sessions, a week at Fallon, and a couple days at Edwards, and then I’ll come back to do the course in the jet itself and give you a check ride. It’ll be a good five weeks of training, but I think you can handle it. Interested?”

“Heck yes, I’m interested!” Brad exclaimed. “I’ll start the online course tonight.”

“The best news: hours as second-in-command time in the Excalibur count toward your ATP rating,” Hoffman added. “That’s ten hours per one-way ferry sortie from Battle Mountain to Guam, and if we fly you back on a company airplane and you get stick time on the return, you get more hours. Plus in the XB-1 you get to observe air refueling from the right seat—and if a willing pilot wants to give you some stick time, even behind a tanker, I wouldn’t object.”

“Cool!” Brad cried out happily. “Thank you, Colonel! I’ll knock this course out right away. What an opportunity! Thank you!”

“You deserve it,” Hoffman said. “The XB-1 will definitely water your eyes.”

256TH SUBMARINE SQUADRON HEADQUARTERS, KAOHSIUNG, REPUBLIC OF CHINA

A FEW WEEKS LATER

“Try it? Absolutely I will, sir!” Shangxiao (Captain) Yao Mei-Yueh replied excitedly. The young, short, slender officer had been standing at attention in front of the commanding admiral of First Naval District South of the Zhongguo haijun gongheguo, or Republic of China Navy, Zhong jiang (Vice Admiral) Wu Jin-ping, but after being asked a simple question by the admiral, he could hardly contain himself. “I was afraid we would appear as if we were cowering in front of the Communists!”

“As you were, Captain,” the admiral said, barely containing a smile. A few seconds after Yao snapped back to attention, he ordered him to stand easy, and Yao snapped to parade rest. “This is serious business, Captain. Patrols have spotted the Zheng He carrier battle group just one hundred and seventy-five kilometers to the south. They have so many patrol planes up that they are disrupting the wind patterns.”

“It does not matter, sir,” Yao said. “The Avenger’s gold crew is the best attack submarine crew in the world. We have four successful simulated torpedo attacks on their ships in the past year, including one on the Zhenyuan. We have never been detected.”

Admiral Wu liked confident, even cocky young officers, and Captain Yao was all that and more, which was why he was standing there this morning. “I know your operational record well, Captain,” Wu said. “This too will be a simulated attack on their battle group, first with simulated torpedo-launched Harpoon missiles fired within fifty kilometers of a ship, and then with torpedoes fired within ten kilometers of an escort . . .”

“Allow me to do a simulated attack on the Zheng He itself, sir,” Yao interrupted. Wu was not accustomed to being interrupted by a junior officer, and he was about to lash out, but Yao went on: “There would be nothing better than publishing an image of the Zheng He in my periscope crosshairs all over the world over the Internet!”

“This is not a game of taking embarrassing pictures of your children at their birthday party, Captain,” Wu said angrily, although he certainly liked his spirit, and he had to admit that was a good idea. “We want to gauge their search patterns, study their acoustic patterns and sonar frequencies, and gather as much data as we can on their patrol activities.” He paused, then nodded and smiled. “And yes, publishing a picture of their new carrier in the crosshairs of a Taiwanese submarine would certainly be welcome.”

“My pleasure, sir,” Yao said. “I promise a nice picture for your wall.”

“Just keep your attention focused on the task at hand, Captain,” Wu said. “I want your submarine back in one piece a lot more than I want a photo on my wall.”

“Do you believe the Communists would really attack if they detected us, sir?” Yao asked, his voice a lot more concerned now.

“Assume that they will, Yao,” Wu replied. “They are definitely acting more aggressive within the first island chain, although they have not attacked anyone except that American survey vessel.”

“And the Vietnamese frigate, sir.”

“There is no direct evidence that the frigate was hit by a Chinese missile,” Wu said, “although that is what everyone suspects. Assume they will attack if you are detected, and bring your ship back in one piece.” He stood from his desk, and Yao snapped to attention. “Good luck, Captain.”

“Shi haijun, shang jiang,” Yao said. “Yes, Admiral.” He saluted the admiral. Wu returned his salute, and the young officer departed.

Wu’s aide came into the officer a moment later. “The orders, sir?”

“Publish the orders immediately, all secure channels,” Wu said. He signed a piece of paper and then handed it to his aide. “The Avenger will be under way within twenty-four hours. Deploy the normal decoys and have the usual false radio broadcasts made.”

“Yes, Admiral,” the aide said, then departed.

In the outer office, the aide signed a custody log for the orders, added the verbal orders issued by the admiral, and then gave the orders to his runner. “Take these orders to Cryptology and have them coded and broadcast immediately,” he said. The runner signed the custody log and then placed the orders in a briefcase, and the aide locked it himself. Only he and the officers in charge of the various offices in headquarters that handled classified documents had the combination to that briefcase. The runner departed.

In Cryptology, the briefcase was opened by the duty officer and hand-carried to the first available encoding technician. Two computer programs were used in every encoding process. The first program generated the keys that were embedded in the preamble of the coded message and would be used at the other end to decrypt the message, and the second program used the keys to encode the message, which came out as a long string of numerals. The key generation program used a combination of the date-time group, originating author, recipient, and a random number generator of varying numbers of digits to create a key sequence, which was then passed to the second program so it could begin the encoding process. The computer doing the key generation and encoding was not connected to any other network, so it was impossible for hackers to intercept the key sequence. The key generation was invisible to the technician: all he saw was an error-checking readout that read the key sequence and computed a bit count that was either correct or incorrect. It was not possible to hack the computer itself, so the key sequence generation was totally secure . . .

. . . but inputting the parameters of the key sequence generation on a keyboard and displaying the bit count on the computer monitor could be hacked, and in fact it had been done many months earlier by agents of the People’s Liberation Army Navy. The regular secure keyboard and monitor had been replaced by unsecure but identical-looking machines that transmitted each keypress and every character on the screen, where agents outside the building could record the information. If the parameters going into the key generation were known, once the hacker received the bit count it was relatively simple for a fast computer to reverse the key sequence generation process and acquire the key sequence. Once the key sequence was known, any message transmitted using that key could be read with ease almost as quickly as the proper recipient could.

This was how, in less than two hours, the information on the planned movement of the submarine Avenger had made its way to the People’s Liberation Army Navy South Sea Fleet headquarters.

PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY HEADQUARTERS, BEIJING, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

A SHORT TIME LATER

“What did you say, Admiral?” Colonel General Zu Kai thundered. “Repeat!”