Tiger's Claw: A Novel

It took another thirteen minutes for the Raptors to close the distance, and Maili set up for a visual identification, putting Carling high and to his right while he turned left to close in on the formation. They used night-vision goggles to fly formation and for the visual identification. The NVGs had an effective range of about five miles for detection and two miles for identification, so he had to be patient. He spotted the formation right at five miles. “Tied on visual,” Maili reported. “You got me, Brewski?”

“Two,” his wingman responded. “Tied on visual with the bogeys too. Weird-looking aircraft so far.”

“Moving in,” Maili said, and he maneuvered in and above the formation. He wished the Raptor had a nice powerful forward-looking infrared and a searchlight for these identifications, but the NVGs did the job. “Okay, guys, who do we have here tonight?” He slid in closer and was soon able to get more detail . . .

. . . and suddenly he realized he was not looking at two planes in formation, but several! “Spyglass, Spyglass, One-Eight, this is not two aircraft, it’s . . . shit, it’s two formations of six aircraft, repeat, two formations of six in ‘V’ formations, twelve in all! They are large swept-wing jets and . . .” And the closer he got, the worse it got: “Spyglass, One-Eight, the two jets at the ends of each ‘V’ look like tankers, and they . . . they are tanking fighters! I see two . . . no, I see four fighters with each tanker! I count at least sixteen fighters up here, Control!”

“Do you have an ID on the large jets, One-Eight?”

“I don’t recognize them yet,” Maili said. “They look like old Stratojets, like big fighters, but I can’t . . . wait, I recognize them now—they’re H-6s! Control, I think they’re Chinese H-6 bombers! And the fighters they’re dragging look like J-20s!”

“Are you positive, One-Eight? Can you get a positive ID?”

“Stand by.” Maili swerved left and descended until he was below the southernmost formation. “Okay, it looks like they have two engines, one in each wing root, elevator midway up the vertical stabilizer, and . . . holy shit, Spyglass, they are carrying large missiles under the wing, repeat, three large missiles under each, they are all carrying missiles except the tankers! These guys are loaded up to their eyeballs! I cannot identify the missiles, but they are big and mean-looking! Request instructions.”

“Juju, this is Brewski,” Carling radioed. “Several of the fighters that were on the tanker are breaking off and climbing, heading northeast. I’m going to lose them in a second.”

“You still got me visual, Brewski?”

“Affirmative.”

“I’m coming up.” Maili turned away from the formation heading northeast and started a climb. “Join on me.”

“Two,” Carling acknowledged.

“Siren One-Eight flight, Control, we have contact with the aircraft that broke away,” the radar controller reported. “Four bandits, eleven o’clock, eight miles high, accelerating past six hundred knots.” A few moments later Maili’s radar warning receiver lit up. “Siren flight, Siren flight, we have music,” the controller said, using the brevity word that he was picking up enemy radar. A few moments after that: “Siren flight, eyeball, repeat eyeball!” “Eyeball” was the brevity word meaning that the controller determined that the AWACS was the enemy fighters’ target!

“Light ’em up, Brewski,” Maili said, activating his AN/APG-77 attack radar and electronic countermeasures system.

“Two.” Because they had the AWACS radar plane giving them vectors, that was the first time in the entire engagement that they had turned on their own radars . . .

. . . which meant that now for the first time the Chinese J-20 fighters realized that the Raptors were there. “Siren flight, be advised, several high-speed aircraft breaking off from the formations and turning northeast! Four . . . now six bandits, repeat six bandits, at your six o’clock, fifteen miles, accelerating!”

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, GUAM

THAT SAME TIME

“What the hell is it, Nash?” Warner “Cutlass” Cuthbert shouted as he trotted into the battle staff area. The alert siren was wailing outside. “What’s the alert?”

“AWACS reports they made contact with what appears to be twelve Chinese H-6 bombers, heading east toward Guam,” Lieutenant Colonel Nash Hartzell responded. “Four of them appear to be tankers. The other eight are each armed with six large missiles under their wings. They also report that the tankers were each refueling four fighters believed to be Chinese J-20s. Four fighters broke off from the formation and appear to be heading for the AWACS. Six other fighters are pursuing the Raptors.”

“Holy Jesus,” Cutlass breathed. “Scramble the alert fighters and . . .”

And at that moment, all the lights in the command center went out, and the siren outside stopped. “A power outage? Now? The weather is clear and a million!” Cutlass exclaimed. He picked up the telephone—dead. “What the hell is this?” He pulled a portable radio from a holster on his belt. “Security tower two, this is Alpha. What do you see?”

“Power’s out all over the place, sir,” the sergeant stationed on one of the security towers near the front gate replied. A moment later the emergency lights in the command center came on, followed a few moments after that with more lights coming on when the diesel-fired emergency generator finally kicked on. “Lights are out in town too. Front gate is secure.”

“Tell the flight-line security teams that we’re going to launch everything we have,” Cutlass said. “I want positive ID on anyone who steps on the flight line, but get the aircrews and crew chiefs to their planes as quickly as you can.”

“Got it, sir.”

Patrick McLanahan trotted into the command center, followed by Bradley, both in flight suits. A few moments later Ed Gleason, Sondra Eddington, Tom Hoffman, and several other Excalibur crewmembers came in as well. “What’s going on, Cutlass?” Patrick asked.

“We’ve got Chinese bombers inbound, Chinese fighters going after our AWACS, and right in the middle of it we lose power and phones,” Cutlass said. Their faces went blank in absolute disbelief. Cutlass found walkie-talkies and gave them out. “I need you guys to run out to the flight line and get the munitions loading crews away from the other Excaliburs. As soon as the munitions crews are clear, form a crew and get an Excalibur airborne. We’ll launch as many Excaliburs as we can.”

Patrick turned to Brad. “You stay here, Brad,” he said.

“Heck no,” Brad said. “I’m going with you!”

“It’s too dangerous,” Patrick said. “This is not a ferry flight.”

“And it’s not a combat mission either—it’s an evacuation,” Brad said. “I’m going.” Patrick was going to argue, but others were hurrying all around him, and he nodded and ran outside, with Brad right behind him. They piled into the back of a six-pack pickup truck just in time before the driver sped off.

THIRTEEN

OVER THE PACIFIC OCEAN, FIVE HUNDRED MILES WEST OF GUAM

THAT SAME TIME

“Fox three, Brewski!” Jimmy Maili shouted on the command channel. All four Chinese fighters were locked on solid on his APG-77 radar, and the fire control computer had selected the best targets. With the press of a button, the left main weapon bay door opened and an AIM-120D AMRAAM was ejected into the slipstream and homed in on its target, followed a few seconds later by another from the right-side weapons bay. He could see tiny sparkles in the distance and assumed it was the Chinese pilots ejecting flares when they got the missile launch warning.

“Siren flight, bandits still at your six o’clock, eleven miles,” the AWACS radar controller reported. The Raptor’s