spotted and fired upon by a SAM station equipped with infrared search and track sensors. Gant decoys the incoming infrared homing missiles by destroying a Badger aircraft that chances upon the scene. Gant escapes, but the Soviets are now alerted to his heading and redirect their search efforts to the Barents Sea area of the Arctic. A Soviet missile cruiser spots Gant and attacks, firing missiles and attempting to launch a helicopter. Gant destroys the helicopter, but he is now nearly out of fuel so he climbs to stretch out his range. His receiver then detects the homing signal, directing Gant to an ice floe. Landing, Gant finds an American submarine bearing kerosene fuel and using the floe as an ad-hoc runway. The Americans rearm and refuel the Firefox, giving Gant the necessary range, but barely finish before the arrival of a Soviet submarine. Thinking that he has made good his escape, Gant finds himself under attack by the second Firefox prototype. Realizing that the Soviet scientists failed to destroy the second plane, Gant is forced to dogfight. The second MiG is flown by Firefox test-pilot Tretsov, who is more experienced in the Firefox aircraft and consistently outflies Gant. Nevertheless, after desperate manoeuvrers, Gant realises that the second plane has been destroyed – during the dogfight he reflexively ordered the thought-controlled weapons system to eject a decoy flare, which was immediately ingested by the second MiG's jet intake, triggering an internal explosion that destroyed it. Free of pursuit, Gant continues on his journey. Characters Mitchell Gant – American fighter pilot and spy, protagonist Kenneth Aubrey – British spy master Colonel Mihail Yurievich 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 Shelley – 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 interceptor aircraft in the world, with a top speed of Mach 2.8. Its appearance in the USSR and the Near East (overflying