Mitchell Gant

Mitchell Gant is a fictional character in a series of books written by Craig Thomas. His first (and best known thanks to a successful film adaptation) appearance occurs in the 1977 novel Firefox as a US Air Force major that steals a Russian MiG-31 Firefox fighter aircraft prototype.

Gant grew up in Clarksville, a small town in rural America and found himself drawn to flight when as a child after seeing a small airplane land at a local gas station in need of fuel. With few happy memories of Clarksville, Gant found his way into the United States Air Force, becoming a fighter pilot.

While flying combat during the Vietnam War, Gant's F-4 Phantom II was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. Gant ejected and was immediately captured, apparently by guerrillas. The arrival of allied aircraft saves Gant, but also traumatizes him - napalm dropped by one of the aircraft incinerates a young girl travelling with the enemy soldiers. The experience left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, causing him to have frequent flashbacks. He suffers from a recurring nightmare about himself being a Vietnamese and burning in napalm dropped by US aircraft.

After the war, he leaves the military and works for some time in a menial job in a Los Angeles pizza restaurant, which he describes as the only time that he left the military as he was trying to run from his problems. Eventually he is recruited by the CIA for their Firefox operation, supposedly because of his knowledge of Russian, his combat experience in Vietnam and his knowledge of flying Russian aircraft; he is already fluent in Russian (his mother was Russian) therefore only requires 3 months of training, learning to fly a replica MiG-25 as well as a simulator of the Firefox.

In Firefox, an Anglo-American intelligence scheme inserts Gant into the Soviet Union in order for him to steal one of the two prototypes of a revolutionary fighter plane, the MiG-31, NATO code name "Firefox" (not to be confused with the real MiG-31, a development of the MiG-25). After crossing the Soviet Union from Moscow to the airbase where the Firefox is being developed, with the help of various MI6 agents and several false identities; dissident scientists involved in the project create a diversion allowing Gant to steal the plane. He then deals with several obstacles and, after dispatching the second prototype in a dogfight, has apparently succeeded in his theft.

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