Tiger's Claw: A Novel

by Dale Brown

  “One-Eight, splash one,” Maili radioed. “Looks like the second missed. Jamming is heavy.”

  “One-Nine, splash one,” Carling reported as he saw the blinking coffin-shaped box appear around the first bandit. But he also noticed that the targeting cues around the other bandits had disappeared. “Lost radar data from the AWACS,” Carling radioed. He activated his AN/APG-77 radar to start searching for the Chinese pursuers . . .

  . . . and found them all around him! Like sharks closing in on a baby seal, the Chinese fighters had surrounded him. Carling shut off his radar, rolled inverted and dived five hundred feet, executed a hard right turn, waited a few heartbeats, then rolled wings-level and executed a hard barrel roll. If the bandit to his north tried to follow him down, he should be right in front of him when he finished the roll . . .

  . . . and when he turned on the radar again, there he was, less than four miles in front of him! Still inverted he radioed, “One-Nine, fox two!” he radioed. The fire control computer had already selected an AIM-9X Sidewinder heat-seeking missile from the left-side weapons bay and sent it into space. Carling immediately deactivated his radar . . .

  . . . but as he did he heard, “One-Nine, bandit, five o’clock high, eight miles!” from the AWACS controller. “Additional bandits now eleven o’clock nine miles and seven o’clock ten miles!” Carling immediately snapped into a tight climbing right turn, chasing after the closest target behind him . . .

  . . . but that was what the other Chinese J-20 fighters were waiting for. As soon as he made the turn he exposed his hot exhausts to the fighters off to his left, and two J-20s launched a volley of PL-9C heat-seeking missiles. The automatic countermeasures system aboard the F-22 reacted instantly, firing decoy flares and warning the pilot, and Carling executed a hard right diving break to escape the incoming missiles. But as soon as he did he presented a perfect radar target for the eastern bandit, who fired two radar-guided PL-12 missiles. Carling’s Raptor exploded after a direct hit.

  Meanwhile, Maili had killed another of the three remaining J-20s pursuing the AWACS plane. The two remaining Chinese fighters split up, both turning away from the AWACS. “Brewski, looks like the J-20s up here are turning your way.” No reply. “Brewski, how copy?”

  “Negative radar contact with One-Nine, Siren leader,” the controller radioed. Maili swore into his oxygen mask. “Warning, bandits, seven o’clock, fifteen miles and closing, numerous targets. Bandit at ten o’clock, six miles, still turning, heading southwest. His wingman is at your two o’clock, heading southeast.”

  “Spyglass, it looks like they can’t see me with my radar off,” Maili said. “How’s that datalink looking?”

  “It’s clear right now, One-Eight,” the controller said. “Vector left heading two-eight-zero, target will be at twelve o’clock, six miles. Intermittent heaving jamming on all frequencies,” the controller said. “The bomber formation is at your five o’clock, thirty miles—the heaviest jamming seems to be coming from them. But it’s getting less the greater distance you get.”

  Unfortunately, Maili thought as he turned to the new heading, it also meant that the bombers were getting that much closer to Guam. As soon as he rolled onto the new heading he saw a “SHOOT” indication on his multifunction display. He pressed the launch button, and an AMRAAM flew out of the left main weapons bay. A few seconds later he saw a bright flash of light off in the distance, followed by a brief trail of fire, then nothing except another blinking coffin on his display.

  “Vector left heading zero-five-zero,” the controller said. “Bandits will be at your twelve o’clock, nine miles. Additional bandit at your two o’clock, six miles high.” The threat warning receiver blared. “Bandit at your two o’clock is descending, appears to be diving on you. Two bandits at your twelve o’clock, eight miles, accelerating, climbing, range to Spyglass inside fifty miles.”

  Shit, Maili thought, and he pushed the throttles to zone one afterburner. The datalink was intermittent again, so he activated his radar, found the two J-20s closest to the AWACS plane, locked them up, and fired two AMRAAMs in quick succession . . .

  . . . but not before the Chinese J-20s fired four PL-12 radar-guided missiles at the AWACS plane. The PL-12s were some of the world’s most advanced air-to-air missiles. They had four different modes of guidance, and they used them all on this engagement:

  They first got the initial target position from the J-20s’ attack radar at launch. When Maili’s AMRAAMs hit home and the J-20s’ radars went down, they switched to inertial guidance mode to navigate themselves to a predicted point in space where their target might be. As they got in closer they switched on their own radars, discovered their target, and closed in for the kill. As soon as they activated their terminal guidance radars the AWACS radar plane began sending out jamming signals, dropping chaff and flares, and maneuvering as best as the big plane with its thirty-foot-diameter radome atop the fuselage could do, but the PL-12s used their fourth terminal guidance mode and homed in on the jamming signals themselves. Two of the missiles missed . . .

  . . . but the two remaining PL-12s were more than enough to do the job. They ripped into the Sentry’s fuselage, and their fifty-pound shaped-charge warheads and laser proximity fuses did their job, tearing the plane apart in seconds and sending it crashing to the sea.

  Maili saw the fireball off in the distance and knew he was too late, and he thought of that big plane and the over twenty crewmembers killed, but now was the time to figure out his next moves. He made a quick assessment of his situation: he had two AMRAAMs and one Sidewinder remaining. He was getting low on fuel, but that didn’t matter because they were all heading to the same place—the island of Guam. Turning for home wouldn’t do him any good if there was no home to go to.

  Maili was determined to take out as many Chinese bombers as he could. He still had four hundred and eight rounds of twenty-millimeter ammunition for his cannon, and he was even determined to kamikaze into another bomber if he couldn’t get their formation to break up and turn away.

  He turned in the direction that he believed the formation was located and activated his AN/APG-77 radar, and sure enough he painted the two V-formations just thirty miles to his southeast—they had not bothered to stray off their original course or altitude. He immediately locked up the lead bomber in the northernmost formation and fired, hoping that the sight of their leader going down would prompt the others to turn around or at least break up the . . .

  . . . and at that instant his radar picked up other air targets flying eastbound, going fast and accelerating, already approaching the Mach just seconds into their flight . . . cruise missiles, supersonic cruise missiles!

  “Warning, warning, any vessel, any command post on freq,” he cried on his command channel and the international emergency GUARD frequency, “this is Siren One-Eight, United States Air National Guard, cruise missiles inbound heading toward Guam, if you hear me, take cover!” He knew he was hundreds of miles from Andersen Air Force Base and well over their horizon, and without the AWACS plane acting as a communications relay for his Joint Tactical Information Distribution System no one else was receiving his radar imagery, but he just couldn’t remain silent while . . .

  . . . and then he saw an immensely bright flash of light and felt a tremendous whipsaw effect as his F-22 Raptor was blown apart by several Chinese PL-12 missiles hitting him simultaneously, and then he felt nothing at all.

  ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE

  THAT SAME TIME

  In the cockpit, Bradley switched the auxiliary power unit control switches to “RUN” and the battery switch to “ALERT,” then hopped into his seat and began strapping in. Down below, Patrick hit the “ALERT START” button on the alert control panel on the nose gear door, which immediately started both auxiliary power units and would initiate the engine start sequence on all four engines, then raced up the entry ladder. As he did a crew chief arrived, pulled the wheel chocks, and quickly checked for streamers, open access panels, or other
ground maintenance safety items. Planes were taking off from runway two-four left and right—the night air was thick with the smell of jet exhaust, and the noise was deafening.

  The crew chief donned his intercom headset. “Crew chief is up, sir!” he said. “Chocks are pulled! Bomb bay doors and all four engines are clear!”

  “Roger,” Brad replied. “Bomb bay doors coming closed!” and he hit the switches to close all three sets of bomb bay doors. Meanwhile Patrick entered the cockpit and hurriedly strapped in.

  “I’m up,” Patrick reported.

  “APUs are started, engine start sequence under way, bomb bay doors are closed, and chocks are pulled,” Brad said. “I’m strapped in and my seat is hot.”

  “Same here,” Patrick said. They both monitored the engine start, looking for any sharp upward spikes of engine temperatures that might indicate a hot start. As soon as all four engine temperatures stabilized Patrick radioed, “Cleared off, chief! Clear the taxiway.”

  “Crew chief clearing off. Good luck, sir.” Patrick hit the taxi lights and pushed in power, and the Excalibur was on the move. He could see the crew chief with his fluorescent orange batons guiding him out onto the ramp—Patrick and Brad were by far the first ones out of the parking area.

  Brad made sure the radios were configured. “Andersen tower, Masters Zero-Three,” Patrick spoke, “taxiing from the shelters, request immediate takeoff clearance.” Brad’s hands continue to fly around the cockpit, making sure switches were properly configured for takeoff.

  “Masters Zero-Three, Andersen tower, winds two-seven zero at eleven, cleared for takeoff, any runway.”

  “We’ll take two-four left,” Patrick said—their shelters were right at the end of runway two-four left, so it was a short taxi. On intercom he asked, “How am I looking, Brad?”

  “I think I got everything, Dad,” Brad said, “but check it first!”

  “Not enough time,” Patrick said. “Wing sweep, flaps, and slats are set—we’re going. Anything we missed we’ll take care of in the air.” At the end of the runway he made sure the flight controls were clear, checked around the cockpit quickly for anything obvious he could have missed, then smoothly pushed the throttles up to military power, checked the nozzle swing, pushed it up into zone one afterburner, checked gauges again, then into zone five. The Excalibur surged down the runway like a cheetah in full pursuit, and it leaped into the sky.

  Patrick raised the landing gear, retracted flaps and slats, then swept the wings back to cruise climb settings. “After takeoff checklist, Brad,” he said, and Brad immediately called up the proper page on one of his MFDs and made sure the computer had checked off each item in sequence.

  “Checklist complete,” Brad announced.

  “Thank you,” Patrick said. “Call up the northern emergency evacuation anchor—we’ll wait there and join up with everyone else once they make it off.”

  “Roger.” Brad quickly recalled and loaded the proper waypoints. Guam used several emergency orbits, called anchors, for everything from runway closures to typhoon evacuations. The northern anchor was twenty miles south of the island of Tinian; Tinian International Airport had a concrete and asphalt runway long and strong enough to land XB-1s. Saipan International Airport a few miles north of Tinian had a runway just as long as Tinian’s, but it was made of asphalt only and would not support even a lightly loaded XB-1.

  “Switch number one radio to the command post.”

  “Roger,” Brad said.

  “Control, Master Zero-Three.”

  “Zero-Three, Control,” the senior controller replied. “Read you three-by.”

  “You are weak and barely readable,” Patrick said.

  “We’re on portable radios—power on most of the base is still down,” a new voice that sounded like Colonel Warner “Cutlass” Cuthbert said. “I need you to stay within five miles of Andersen so we can stay in contact.”

  “Wilco,” Patrick said. “Are you in contact with the Patriot missile batteries?” There were four Patriot antiaircraft missile batteries nearby: three on Guam itself in the northern part of the island, one on the base, and one in the south, plus one battery on Tinian.

  “The Patriots are up and self-contained, and they have your Mode Twos,” Cutlass responded. The Mode Two was a coded transponder used to identify individual military aircraft.

  “How many made it off?”

  “The alert birds all made it—one B-1B, one B-52H, one B-2A, three XB-1s, two F-22s, two F-15s, and three KC-135 and one KC-10 tankers,” Cutlass said. “I put them in an orbit northwest of FISON intersection at ten thousand feet. We don’t have Center radar operating, so we’re trying to deconflict all the planes down here on paper and with the Patriot surveillance system.”

  “How many more made it?” Patrick asked.

  “None of the other B-52s are going to make it within the next thirty minutes,” Cutlass said. “We might get most of the XB-1s and B-1Bs off in thirty minutes, but that’ll be cutting it close. General, I’m going to put you up at twenty-five thousand feet right over the runway, and I’ll have you do a racetrack facing the west. I’ll keep the fighters with the alert bombers until someone spots something, and then I hope we can chase them down. Hopefully you can spot the H-6s or whatever they throw at us. We’re getting Wells and Wickham into the remote systems operator’s trailer to operate your weapons.”

  “Copy that,” Patrick said. He applied climb power and began a steep ascent to his new patrol altitude. On intercom he said, “Okay, Brad, let’s fire up the radar and find those bastards.” Patrick set up a triangular search pattern over the central part of the island so there was only one leg that the XB-1’s AESA radar would not be looking west.

  “Hoffman and Eddington are airborne in One-Four,” Cutlass said. “They’re going to be at twenty-one thousand feet, flying an opposite pattern as you so we always have at least one radar aimed westward.”

  “Copy that,” Patrick said. Brad had called up a “God’s-eye” view of the area around them on one of the center MFDs, and they could see all the planes orbiting around the island. The Joint Tactical Information Distribution System combined radar data from all the aircraft and from the Patriot radar into one, so Patrick and Brad could “see” the other planes even though they might not be directly scanning them with their own radar.

  Just a few minutes later they saw an extremely fast target moving in from the west. “I see something!” Brad shouted. “Moving fast, descending, heading right for us!”

  “Give me a heading of two-niner-zero, Patrick,” George Wickham, the remote offensive systems officer said. “Solid lock. Weapons coming hot, I’m warming up your AMRAAMs. Masters One-Four, take heading three-zero-zero, your weapons are coming hot too, stand by. Cougar Seven flight of two and Buffalo Two-Five flight of two, inbound high-speed bandits at your seven o’clock high, see if you can spot them.”

  Patrick had just barely completed the turn to the northwest when the forward bomb bay doors opened, and two missiles on streaks of fire blasted off into the night sky a few seconds apart, followed by two more several seconds later. They could see other streaks of fire from below them too as Hoffman and Eddington’s missiles went off in search of targets. The AESA radar data from the two XB-1s was being fed to the fire control computers of the F-22 Raptors and F-15 Eagles, helping their missiles to lock onto targets that were behind them, and seconds later their missiles were in the air as well, tracing huge arcs through the night sky as they turned to pursue their quarry.

  In less than thirty seconds, it was over—no more Chinese cruise missiles were detected and no more AMRAAM missiles were commanded to launch, and the forward bomb bay doors closed. “What happened?” Brad asked. “Did we get them?”

  “I don’t know,” Patrick said. He keyed the microphone button: “Control, Masters Zero-Three, how copy?” No response. “Zero-Three remote, Masters Zero-Three, Wick, how do you hear?” Still nothing. “This is not good.”

  “Maybe we’re
out of range,” Brad suggested.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Patrick said. “One-Four, this is Zero-Three,” he radioed on the secure command channel. “Any contact from Cutlass?”

  “Negative, Zero-Three,” Tom Hoffman responded. “Nothing from the Patriot engagement control centers either.”

  “I’m going to fly over the base and take a look with the Sniper pod,” Patrick said.

  “Roger. We’ll stay up here.”

  The entire island looked completely dark. Patrick could see a few lights on the base, but it too was mostly dark. He descended to a thousand feet aboveground, mindful of Mount Santa Rosa, Mount Barrigada, and other high hills and obstructions around the base, slowed to approach speed, sweeping the wings forward and lowering flaps and slats to get a good look.

  “One-Four, this is Zero-Three, I see several impact points,” Patrick reported. Brad seemed to be frozen in his ejection seat as he watched the horrific Sniper pod images on his multifunction display. “Looks like direct hits on the command center, several on the aircraft parking ramp, fuel farm, and transformer farm. Several aircraft on fire. One crater down about five thousand feet on runway two-four left, but it’s off to the side between the runway and taxiway and I think it’s passable or avoidable. Runway two-four right took a couple hits—I think it’s out of commission.”

  “Bastards,” Hoffman responded.

  On the secure command channel McLanahan spoke: “Break. Task Force Leopard, this is Masters Zero-Three, how copy?”