Tiger's Claw: A Novel (27 page)

SEVEN

W
ARBIRDS
F
OREVER
A
VIATION
, R
ENO
-S
TEAD
AIRPORT
, R
ENO
, N
EVADA

T
HE NEXT DAY

Tom Hoffman found Brad McLanahan in the break room, sipping a bottle of water, surrounded by logbooks and paperwork. “Hey, Brad,” Hoffman greeted him. “Just get back from another early-morning lesson?”

“Yes, sir,” Brad said. He was wearing a white aviator’s shirt with epaulets and a captain’s four gold stripes on the epaulet tabs, silver civil aviation wings with a silver senior pilot’s star, a blue name tag, and a black tie—he looked every bit the professional aviator he had become. “Tom Cook. He wants to get his license on his seventeenth birthday, so he’s been taking dawn patrol lessons before school. You gotta admire that kind of drive.”

“I appreciate you doing that for him, Brad,” Hoffman said. “His grandfather is a good friend. Tom Cook lost his dad in Iraq.”

“I know. The kid’s pretty tough.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Unfortunately, typical pattern,” Brad replied. “He does real well when he can fly at least once a week, but if he drops to less than four lessons a month, we have to spend flight and ground time going over old stuff, and that’s a little frustrating for him. I bought him a PC flight simulator that he can play with at home to stay motivated.”

“Good idea.”

“If he comes in again this week, we’ll do a practice cross-country, and if he does okay I’ll sign him off for solo cross-countries, and then if he flies at least once a week, he should have no problem taking his practical before his birthday.”

“Sounds good,” Hoffman said. “With avgas prices going through the roof, I’m surprised anyone can still afford to fly. With all the junk going on with China and what seems like half of Asia, oil and food prices are going berserk.”

“Business really slowed down, didn’t it, sir?”

“Personal and some corporate flying have really tanked, and airplane rentals are almost zero, but higher-end corporate and cargo ops are hanging in there,” Hoffman replied. “The folks who can afford the warbirds and the big jets are still flying. But the ‘hundred-dollar hamburger’ fun flights that turned into the six-hundred-dollar hamburger have all but gone away.”

“The simulators are getting a good workout, though.”

“At least the pilots care enough about staying proficient to come in and get some simulator time when they can’t afford to fly,” Hoffman said. “Hopefully we’ll get a break with fuel prices soon.”

“It sure is looking weird,” Brad said. “I went to Walmart yesterday—the shelves are looking pretty bare all of a sudden.”

“Fewer container ships will risk sailing through the South China Sea with all the shooting going on out there,” Hoffman said. “I’ll bet it’ll start hurting China really bad if their exports dry up any more than they have already. The good news is, a lot of companies are talking about opening manufacturing plants in North America to replace the factories in China. We could actually get a boost in our economy. I’m seeing a lot of corporate execs coming out here looking for land outside Reno to build factories. I see good things ahead for America—we just need to hang in there.”

Hoffman held up an envelope. “I do have some good news for you, Brad. This is a first for me, in all my years of instructing: I’ve never seen an instructor get a tip.” He dropped the envelope on the table in front of Brad. “Only fifty dollars.”

“Fifty bucks is fifty bucks—I’ll take it!” Brad said happily. “The students lay out so much money for lessons, they never think about tipping—they think we’re all rich anyway. Who’s it from?”

“Jeff Keefe, your multiengine student,” Hoffman said. “He passed his check ride, no problems. He was so excited he could fly his own plane home he was dancing on the ramp. He included a card addressed to me with some nice comments about the work you did and the hustle, getting his multi in just one weekend.”

“He came prepared, he did everything I told him to do, and he worked his butt off,” Brad said. “He was a good student—he only tried to kill me once or twice.”

“He says he wants to come back for his instrument rating and maybe his commercial certificate,” Hoffman said. “We like repeat business around here.” He paused for a moment, then said, “You’ve been doing a hell of a job around here, Brad. The hard work is much appreciated. I don’t think there’s an assignment you’ve turned down.”

“I need the hours if I want to get my airline transport pilot rating sometime this decade.”

“You’re well on your way with that,” Hoffman said. “So much so that I’ve uploaded a new curriculum for you, if you’re interested. Take a look.”

Brad changed the page on his laptop computer to the new curriculum folder. His eyes grew wide as he read: “You’re kidding me, Colonel—this is the flight training program for the XB-1 Excaliburs!”

“Exactly,” Hoffman said. “Your dad’s bomber refurbishing program has been expanded and put on a crash schedule. He got more funding for XB-1s and even some money for XF-111s, and they want those planes out on Guam fast.”

“Cool. So I can fly an Excalibur or SuperVark to Guam?” Brad asked incredulously.

“You still need your ATP to be pilot-in-command,” Hoffman explained, “but we got special papal dispensation from the FAA for ferry flights originating at Battle Mountain destined for a military base or outside the CONUS or reverse: if you have more than five hundred hours total time, a commercial certificate, a multiengine and instrument rating, and at least two hundred and fifty hours in multiengine jets, and you complete that course, you can be first officer. You’ll have the total hours soon; we’ll get you more flights in the Lear 35 and Gulfstream to get the rest of your jet time; and you’ve done such a good job around here that you deserve a great big attaboy.”

“That’s awesome!” Brad exclaimed, hopping to his feet. “I can’t believe it!”

“The course is not hard, but it’s long and pretty in-depth,” Hoffman said. “We also have to send you down to Edwards Air Force Base for altitude chamber, life support, flight physiology, spatial disorientation, and ejection seat training, and we may send you to Fallon for the Navy integration training your dad set up, but you’ll enjoy the heck 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.”

256
TH
S
UBMARINE
S
QUADRON HEADQUARTERS
, K
AOHSIUNG
, R
EPUBLIC OF
C
HINA

A
FEW WEEKS LATER

“Try it? Absolutely I will, sir!”
Shàngxiào
(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
Zhongguó haijun gònghéguó,
or Republic of China Navy,
Zhōng jiàng
(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.”

“
Shì haijun, shàng jiàng,
” 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.