Tiger's Claw: A Novel (16 page)

U.S. C
OAST
G
UARD CUTTER
M
OHAWK

S
EVERAL MINUTES LATER

“It’s a real miracle, Skipper,” the copilot aboard the HH-60 Jayhawk, Lieutenant Lucy Cross, radioed. “The survivor is a
woman.
She was wearing a flight helmet, so my guess is she was the pilot or copilot. I don’t know how she got out alive. She’s unconscious, and she’s got several broken bones, including a badly fractured neck, but she’s breathing.”

“How far out are they, Ed?” Doug Sheridan asked on intercom.

“Still thirty-five minutes, sir,” Edward Fells, the tactical officer, responded.

“Doctors and medics ready on the helo deck?”

“Medical crew standing by, sir,” the officer of the deck responded after radioing down.

“Victim is in cardiac arrest,” Cross radioed. “Stand by, Skipper.”

Shit, Sheridan thought, but this time he didn’t say it aloud. “Do what you can, guys,” he radioed. C’mon, darlin’, he thought, fight,
fight
! . . .

“Got her back, Skipper,” the copilot radioed a couple minutes later, the relief evident in her voice. “I think the ASTs just said she was in arrest so they could put their hands all over her chest.”

“Get your head back in the game, guys,” Sheridan said gruffly, but inside he was breathing a sigh of relief too, thankful that he had some of the Coast Guard’s finest aviation survival technicians serving on his cutter. The ASTs were the workhorses of Coast Guard aviation. They trained as hard as Navy SEALS, knew as much about helicopters as a mechanic, as much about emergency medicine as a paramedic, and as much about . . .

“
Bridge, Tactical, high-speed bogey, sixty miles south, low altitude, speed six hundred knots, heading right for us!
” Fells radioed.

“General quarters, man battle stations,” Sheridan said calmly. He was pleased with how relaxed he felt: just the simple act of talking to the crew about this very eventuality put him instantly at ease. “Stand by on the 76 to repel hostile aircraft.” The 76 was the ship’s 76-millimeter Otobreda Super Rapid dual-purpose gun, mounted on the bow. The gun could engage surface and air targets as far away as eighteen miles. The
Mohawk
also carried a Phalanx Close-In Weapon System on the stern, a radar-guided twenty-millimeter machine gun that could engage air targets as far as two miles away across the entire rear quadrant of the cutter. “Comm, radio on all emergency frequencies, high-speed aircraft, alter course immediately or you will be fired on. Advise the Jayhawk. Bearing on the bogey?”

“Bogey bearing one-niner zero, heading zero-one-zero, directly for us.”

“Helm, steer one-niner zero,” Sheridan ordered. He wanted to match the aircraft’s bearing in order to present the smallest profile possible to the attacker. “Range from bogey to Jayhawk?”

“Twenty miles, sir. The helo is directly between us and the bogey.”

He picked up the radiotelephone. “Mohawk Zero-One, Mohawk One, alter course twenty right to stay out of our line of fire.”

“Mohawk Air One, roger,” Coffey replied, his voice definitely on edge.

“Range to bogey?”

“Fifty miles.”

The officer of the deck handed Sheridan a white Kevlar helmet and streamlined auto-inflating life vest. “The
Mohawk
is at battle stations, sir,” he reported. “Weapon systems manned and ready. We are heading one-niner-zero, flank speed.”

“Very well.”

“Bridge, Tactical, the bogey is altering course!” Fell announced. “He turned hard right! He’s keeping the helo between him and us!”

“Why the hell is he . . . ?” And his eyes bulged in fear as he realized what the aircraft was doing: “Damn,
he’s going after the helo
!” Sheridan shouted. “Comm, send to Fleet and Area, unidentified high-speed aircraft pursuing rescue helo, request immediate help! Tactical, range from bogey to helo!”

“Eight miles.”

Sheridan picked up the radiotelephone. “Mohawk Zero-One, Mohawk One, you’ve got an unidentified fast-mover about eight miles on your tail and closing fast. Try warning him away on the radio—we tried, but maybe he can’t hear us. Make sure your transponder is on.”

“Roger.”

“Range between the bogey and the helo?”

“Five miles.”

Sheridan could hear Cross’s radio calls on the UHF GUARD emergency frequency, so there was no doubt she was broadcasting and could hear his instructions. “Range?”

“Two miles. His airspeed is decreasing. He may be closing in for identification. One mile. Radar returns merging.”

“Any identification on this guy at all?” he asked. “Is he . . . ?”

“
Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!
U.S. Coast Guard helicopter Mohawk Zero-One, two hundred and sixty miles north of Lincoln Island, catastrophic engine explosion, suspected air-to-air attack, we are going down, we are going down, Mayday, Mayd—”

And that was the last they heard from the Jayhawk.

T
HE
J
OINT
C
HIEFS OF
S
TAFF
B
ATTLE
S
TAFF
R
OOM
, T
HE
P
ENTAGON
, W
ASHINGTON
, D.C.

A
SHORT TIME LATER

“
We lost two helicopters?
” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Timothy Spellings, thundered. “Will someone explain to me
right now
how we can lose two helicopters from one vessel in the same ocean and we’re not in a state of war?” He looked around the conference table, fighting to regain his composure; then he said: “Ed, what’s the status of our surface forces in the South China Sea?”

“Sir, I ordered the Coast Guard cutter
Mohawk
to exit the area and head for Manila at best possible speed—I didn’t want it in the area facing off alone against that Chinese carrier,” Admiral Edward Fowler, the chief of naval operations, replied. “If there were any survivors from the crash, we’ll have to send out searchers from the Philippines. The
George Washington
carrier strike group is proceeding on course to the Poseidon crash site and is at battle stations, but they won’t be in position to launch aircraft for several hours.”

“If I was a suspicious guy, I’d say whoever is shooting down our aircraft did it precisely when we wouldn’t have any carriers in the area, Ed,” Spellings said. “What did the cutter report?”

“The
Mohawk
reported a fast-moving aircraft pursuing their helicopter before it went down,” Fowler said. “We believe the fighter came from the Chinese carrier
Zhenyuan.
”

“Damn it,” Spellings breathed. “I’ll brief the president. Send the latest position data to my tablet. We still have the Global Hawk up?”

“Yes, sir,” Fowler said. “It’ll be on station for about eight more hours, and another one is standing by at Andersen Air Force Base. E-2C patrol aircraft from the
Washington
should be ready to take over by then as well.”

“No aircraft gets near our planes or within a hundred miles of our ships without a Super Hornet on its tail,” Spellings said. “I’m concerned about carrier planes attacking that Coast Guard cutter. What other air defense aircraft do we have up?”

“None, sir,” Fowler said.

“None? Anywhere?” Spellings asked.

“Not readily available,” Fowler said. “We rely on carrier-based planes for much of our fighter air patrol activity because of the distances involved. The one exception is the bombers based on Guam—they routinely patrol all across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. They’re the only ones that have the legs to reach out that far.”

Spellings turned to the Air Force chief of staff, General Jason Conaway. “But those bombers don’t have air-to-air weapons, do they?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Conaway replied. “But they do have very long legs as Admiral Fowler said, as well as excellent radars and electro-optical sensors, pretty good intelligence-gathering and transmission capabilities, and of course if the balloon goes up, they’d be one of the best conventional platforms to get our first licks in. At least one stealth bomber is rotated in every six months.” He paused for a moment, then added, “The Air Force did have bombers fitted with air-to-air missiles a few years ago, but since the American Holocaust and the economic slump I believe that capability has been removed.”

“What fighter assets do you have that we can use now, Jason?”

“We can deploy some F-15 Eagles from Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam to Guam and set up an air defense zone until the Hornets from the
Washington
arrive, sir,” Conaway said.

“How long will that take?”

“Several hours to get them out to Guam, sir, and then a few hours to set up a patrol box.”

“What about getting help from the Philippines?”

“The Philippines has virtually no air superiority aircraft,” Conaway said. “Their money goes for counterinsurgency light attack aircraft. I think they still have F-5s, but they are day VFR aircraft only and probably don’t fly too far from shore.”

Just as well—Spellings hated the idea of relying on a foreign air force for air cover over his own forces anyway. “Get the Eagles on their way, Jason, and have them bring an AWACS radar plane with them. Ed, I’ll need a recommended comm plan between the cutter and the Filipinos so we don’t start firing on one another.” Conaway and Fowler picked up telephones to issue instructions. Spellings issued a few more orders, then adjourned the meeting and headed for the White House to meet with the national security team.

Conaway’s call was to Pacific Air Forces commander General George Hood in Hawaii. “How are you, George?”

“Fine, sir, thank you.”

“The chiefs just met here in the Tank,” Conaway said. “A Coast Guard search-and-rescue helicopter went down in the South China Sea a short time ago. Coast Guard believes it was shot down by a fighter from the Chinese aircraft carrier
Zhenyuan.
”

“Oh, shit,” Hood breathed.

“CJCS wants F-15s and an AWACS sent to Guam to set up a fighter patrol in advance of the Navy sending a carrier. What do you have available?”

“Stand by, sir.” The wait was not long: “I have the tanker support available to drag six Eagles out there, launching in about an hour. That’s a fairly routine exercise for us. One AWACS is available, and I can rotate a couple more out there in a day or two.”

“Get them moving.”

“Yes, sir. The Thirty-Sixth Wing usually handles these deployments, but if they’ll be doing regular patrols I’d rather put the fighters over on the First Expeditionary Bomb Wing side instead of with the normal transients. Colonel Warner Cuthbert is the commander out there; he’ll take good care of them, and there’ll be a lot fewer chances of fighter activity being monitored from outside the base.”

“Approved.”

“We may want to discuss regularly rotating fighters and AWACS planes out to Guam, like Cuthbert does with his bombers.”

“Write up a plan and send it to me right away,” Conaway said. “There wasn’t money in the budget to permanently station more jets out there, but now I think CJCS will be amenable to that idea, given what’s happened out there today. They might even give us back some fighters that were cut in the latest round of budget hack-jobs they did on us.”

“Yes, sir. After the alert notification about the Poseidon, Colonel Cuthbert on Guam submitted a plan to load up a few of his bombers with weapons. He’s got two B-1s, two B-52s, one B-2, and four tankers in his Continuous Bomber Presence task force. He wants to load up one B-1 and one B-52 and put the crews on alert, and keep the rest of the planes available for training but available to be loaded up on a moment’s notice.”

“That’s all the bombers we have out there?”

“That’s a third of the entire fleet that survived after the American Holocaust, sir,” Hood said. “The crews are on a pretty busy rotation schedule.”

“What does he want to load?”

“It’s a mix of JASSM cruise missiles, Harpoons, and mines,” Hood said.

Conaway thought for a few moments; then: “I’ll have to run it by SECDEF, and he’ll probably take it on up to the White House,” he said. “If word got out that we were loading up bombers with live weapons, the world will think we’re getting ready for war with China.”

“If it turns out China did shoot down that helicopter and possibly the Poseidon, too, maybe that’s what we should be doing.”

“I agree,” Conaway said. “But with just a handful of bombers and carriers deployed to the Pacific right now, there’s not much we can do if war did break out. It would take us months, maybe years, to gear up enough to take on China, even at sea. But tell Cuthbert I’m going to recommend approval and have his guys leaning forward ready to go. If the shit does hit the fan, I’d want those planes in the air soonest.”

“Roger that, sir.”

“Those bombers don’t have air-to-air capability, do they, George?” Conaway asked.

“I don’t know for certain, but I don’t think so, sir,” Hood replied. “I’ll ask Cuthbert when I talk to him.”

Conaway shook his head. “Jeez, George, I thought we had more assets out there,” he said. “I guess with all the activity in the Middle East over the past decade, we’ve let things in the Pacific and Asia slide a little.”

“Hopefully, if the budget situation improves, that will get fixed before something serious happens out here, sir,” Hood offered. “PACAF is very good at doing more with less, but the Pacific is a pretty big pond. We should be thinking about more things to beef up defenses around Guam and Hawaii: putting Patriot air defense missiles and maybe one or two Aegis antiballistic missile ships out there, and doing the same for other bases in the Pacific that we would need to disperse our forces, like Tinian.”

“Write it all up and send it in to Pacific Command and me right away, George,” Conaway said. “This is definitely the time to be asking for stuff like that.” He paused for another moment; then: “You know, George, SECDEF handed me a proposal not long ago from a company in Nevada that says they would refurbish, train, equip, and even operate a fleet of over twenty B-1 bombers in less than two years.”

“
What?
That sounds outrageous, sir.”

“I thought so too,” Conaway admitted. “I think SECDEF just wanted it off his desk—he passed it on without a recommendation. When I read the overview I almost pitched it in the ‘bullshit’ pile.”

“Almost, sir?”

“Almost. The reason I didn’t was because of the guy who wrote the proposal: Patrick McLanahan.”

“
McLanahan?
You’re
kidding
!”

“He’s the new CEO of the company that’s been building high-tech air and space toys for the Pentagon for years,” Conaway said, his recall of reading the proposal improving. “Apparently he got his hands on a couple B-1 airframes from AMARG, some new engines, and AESA radars. He’s got one flying now and one almost ready to fly, and he claims he can do the rest in less than two years. I believe your man Cuthbert flew with McLanahan and submitted his own report, and he was impressed. And get this: McLanahan’s doing the first two planes on his company’s dime—the Air Force hasn’t paid him anything yet. All we’re doing is giving him the equipment.”

“Still sounds too good to be true, sir.”

“Maybe,” Conaway said. “But you could make use of twenty B-1 bombers out there in your theater, couldn’t you?”

“Hell yes,” Hood said, “especially if they have air-to-air. Unless we get access to air bases in the Philippines, Brunei, or Vietnam, fighters are just too short legged to operate effectively in the South China Sea, and that will include the F-35—if we ever get any of those. PACAF relies on the Navy’s carriers to do the bulk of the air-to-air missions except for Hawaii, Alaska, and Korea.”

“And with the budget cuts, there are fewer and fewer carrier deployments in the Pacific and Indian Oceans,” Conaway pointed out.

“Exactly, sir,” Hood said. “If I remember, McLanahan was in command of that spooky black bomb wing that employed the high-tech B-1s and B-52s that had AMRAAMs and did everything else under the sun—he even put antiballistic missile lasers on a BUFF. If anybody can pull it off, he can.”

“I’ll have to dust off that proposal, give it a look, and pass it on up to CJCS and see what he says,” Conaway said. “After the shit that’s happened today, they might scrape up the money to rebuild some of those old Bones.”