Firefox (novel)

Firefox is a thriller novel written by Craig Thomas and published in 1977. The Cold War plot involves an attempt by the CIA and MI6 to steal a highly advanced experimental Soviet fighter aircraft. The chief protagonist is fighter pilot turned spy Mitchell Gant. The book was subject to a 1982 film adaptation produced and directed by Clint Eastwood who also played the role of Gant in the film.

Plot summary

The book focuses on a fictional MiG-31 aircraft developed by the USSR during the Cold War. The highly advanced fighter aircraft (given the NATO code name "Firefox") includes a form of stealth technology that makes it completely undetectable to radar and is capable of attaining hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 or more with a range in excess of 3,000 miles. Its weapons are controlled by the thought impulses of the pilot, allowing them to be very rapidly aimed and fired.

Faced with an aircraft which will give the Soviet Union the ability to completely dominate the skies, the CIA and MI6 launch a mission to steal one of the two Firefox prototype aircraft. The first section of the book details how fighter pilot Mitchell Gant covertly travels to the Soviet Union. Gant is ideally trained to steal Firefox, having already trained to fly in captured Soviet planes. He is a native speaker of Russian. But he is also scarred by his experiences in Vietnam, including his capture by Viet Cong after being shot down, an ordeal exacerbated when the enemy guerrillas are wiped out almost immediately by napalm from an American air strike.

With the help of a network of dissidents and sympathizers, he makes his way to the Bilyarsk air base on which the two prototype aircraft are being developed. With the assistance of some of the Jewish dissident scientists forced to work on the project, Gant is able to penetrate the base and successfully steal a MiG-31 when the disloyal scientists start a fire in the aircraft hangar as a diversion. They are all shot just as Gant takes the aircraft.

The second section of the book deals with Gant's flight. Here the novel focuses on military technology and tactics. Gant first heads east to the Ural Mountains, then turns south toward Turkey. The Soviet officers charged with intercepting the Firefox reason that Gant must escape north to the Arctic or south to Turkey, a NATO member. He lacks sufficient fuel to escape east to China, and even with stealth capability would never risk the dense Moscow defenses to the west. Gant encounters an Aeroflot jetliner and makes certain he is seen, then vanishes north. As a result, the Soviet Air Force concentrates its search effort to the south.

On his way north Gant hugs the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains (to defeat Soviet acoustical listening stations) but is spotted and fired upon by a SAM station equipped with infrared search sensors. Gant decoys the incoming antiaircraft missiles by destroying a hapless TU-16 Badger that happens upon the scene by chance. The Soviets then redirect their search efforts to the Barents Sea area of the Arctic.

Gant leaves Soviet territory and enters airspace over the Barents. Proceeding as briefed by his British handlers, he is homing in on a friendly radio beacon using a portable receiver. His fuel dwindles, causing him to climb into the thinner air at altitude where his engines run more efficiently, when a cruiser of the Soviet Navy spots him and fires missiles, and launches a helicopter. Gant dives, releases decoys, destroys the helicopter, and evades the missiles. Nearly out of fuel, the homing beacon indicates for Gant to put down on an ice floe and he joins up with an American submarine which has surfaced through the ice pack. The Soviet cruiser which Gant earlier eluded closes in on their position while refueling and rearming of the Firefox proceed. At last, just minutes before the cruiser's surviving helicopter arrives to inspect the American submarine (which the USN commander claims is merely a weather research expedition), Gant takes to the sky and heads for friendly territory to the west.

Soon after the second Firefox prototype surprises Gant, overtaking him from behind and launching missiles which he evades (the Soviet dissidents failed to destroy the second Firefox). Dogfighting desperately with the second MiG manned by an untired pilot more thoroughly trained in the Firefox aircraft, Gant accidentally destroys it when he reflexively orders his plane's thought-controlled weapons system to eject a decoy flare. The flare is immediately ingested by the jet intake of the pursuing MiG, triggering an internal explosion that destroys it. Free of pursuit, Gant continues on his journey.

Characters

• Mitchell Gant – American fighter pilot and spy, protagonist
• Kenneth Aubrey – British spy master
• Colonel Kontarsky – Soviet head of counterintelligence at the Bilyarsk air base
• Dmitri Priabin – Soviet intelligence officer serving under Colonel Kontarsky at the Bilyarsk air base.
• Peter Shelly – British agent
• Charles Buckholtz – American agent with the CIA
• General Med Vladimirov – Soviet Air Force commandant of the "Wolfpack" tasked with stopping Gant.
• Air Marshal Mihail Ilyich Kutuzov – Soviet Air Force chief
• Yuri Andropov – Head of the KGB (as he was when the novel was written in the mid-1970s)

Origin of the story idea

By the time Thomas began writing Firefox the Soviets had introduced into operational service the MiG-25 Foxbat, the fastest reconnaissance bomber and interceptor in the air, with a top speed of Mach 2.8. Its appearance in the USSR and the Middle East (overflying Israel with impunity)^[1][2] caused a stir in Western aviation and intelligence communities.^[3] Thomas' fictional MiG-31 was depicted on the cover of many printings as the Mig-25. At the time of the book's first issue in 1977, stealth technology was a subject of top secret research in defense establishments and had not been operationally deployed (though the Lockheed SR-71 did exhibit stealth-like features). The publisher of the book's first paperback edition, Sphere, gambled on recent real-life events – the defection in 1976 of the Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko to the US via Japan, to risk a 250,000-copy printing. Although not technically minded, Thomas was able to steep his books in intricate detail, the result of meticulous research. The background material for Firefox was provided by friends formerly with the RAF, and the Russian setting was derived from guidebooks and photographic books. He could not afford to visit Moscow.^[4]

Adaptations and sequels

Firefox was made into a movie by Warner Brothers based on the novel and released in 1982. Clint Eastwood was the director, producer, and played Mitchell Gant. The novel Firefox Down is a continuation of the story of Firefox, beginning at the moment at which the previous book had concluded.

Many of the characters of Firefox and Firefox Down return for the novel Winter Hawk (1987) and A Different War (1997).

Release details

• 1977, USA, Holt Rinehart and Winston ISBN 0-03-020791-6, Pub date 1 August 1977, hardback (First edition)
• 1977, UK, Michael Joseph ISBN 0-7181-1570-8, Pub date 8 August 1977, hardback
• 1978, UK, Sphere ISBN 0-7221-0445-6, Pub date 27 July 1978, paperback
• 1978, USA, Bantam Books ISBN 0-553-11820-X, Pub date ? ? 1978, paperback
• 1988, USA, Time Warner ISBN 0-7515-1138-2, Pub date 1 January 1988, paperback (reissue)
• 1992, USA, Chivers Audio Books ISBN 0-7451-4096-3, Pub date ? December 1992, Audio book cassette (narrated by Stephen Thorne)

References