Firefox

THE ULTIMATE HIJACK Six hundred miles east of Moscow, the deadliest aeroplane in the world is being made ready for its final weapon trials. It is the Mig-31 - NATO codename ‘Firefox’- and with its 4,000-plus m.p.h. speeds, impenetrable antiradar screen and thought-controlled weaponssystem it poses the greatest threat to the global balance of military power since the atomic bomb.

There is no way that the West’s technology can catch up with the Firefox in time. Unless…

In desperation, a joint British Intelligence / CIA team devises the most daring undercover operation since the Second World War.

The best military pilot in the West must be smuggled into the Soviet Union and onto the closely guarded base where the ultimate warplane awaits its final proving tests.

His mission: hijack the Firefox…

FIREFOX is one of the most gripping aviation thrillers ever written. Taut, compelling and brilliantly researched, it moves at trans-sonic speed to a climax of explosive, nerve-shredding intensity.

First published by Michael Joseph Ltd 1977 

Copyright (c) Craig Thomas 1977 

Published by Sphere Books Ltd 

1978 TRADEMARK

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Set in Intertype Times 

Printed in Great Britain by C. Nicholls & Company Ltd 

The Philips Park Press, Manchester

I wish to acknowledge the invaluable help given to me, in time and expertise, by T. R. Jones, with all the technical matters connected with the experimental aircraft that features so prominently in the book.

I am indebted also for their assistance with matters geographical to Miss Audrey Simmonds and Mr Graham Simms; I would also like to thank Mr. Peter Payne, whose enthusiastic scepticism kept me alert, but hopeful, during the writing of the book.

I am indebted finally to various publications, particularly to John Barrori’s highly informative and invaluable book, KGB, and to the admirable series of Jane’s publications - particularly to current editions of All the World’s Aircraft, Fighting Ships, and Weapons Systems, from each of which I gleaned much valuable technical information.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.

W. B. Yeats

Craig Thomas Lichfield

The man lay on the bed in his hotel room, his hands raised like claws above his chest, as if reaching for his eyes. His body was stretched out, rigid with tension. A heavy perspiration shone on his brow and darkened the shirt beneath his arms. His eyes were wide open, and he was dreaming.

The nightmare did not come often now; it was like a fading malaria. He had made it that way - he had, not Buckholz or the psychiatrists at Langley. He despised them. He had done it himself. Yet, when the dream did come, it returned with all its old force, the fossilisation of all memory and all conscience. It was all that was left of Vietnam. Even as he suffered, sweated within its toils, a cold part of his mind observed its images and effects - charting the ravages of the disease.

In his dream he had become a Vietnamese, VietCong or peasant it did not matter - and he was burning to death, slowly and horribly; the napalm that the searching Phantom had dropped was devouring him.

The roar of the retreating jets was drowned in the roar of the flames as he singed, burned, began to melt…

In the flames, too, other times and other images flickered; flying sparks. Even as his muscles withered, shriveled in the appalling heat, he saw himself, as if from a point far at the back of his brain, flying the old Mig-21 and frozen in the moment of catching the USAF Phantom in his sights … then the drugs in Saigon, the dope that had led to the time when he had been caught in the sights of a Mig … then there was the breakdown, the months in the Veterans’ Hospital and the crying, bleeding minds all around him until he teetered on the verge of madness and wanted to sink into the new darkness where he would not hear the cries of other minds or the new shrieks of his own brain.

Then there was the work in the hospital, the classic atonement that had turned to a vile taste at the back of his throat. Then there was the Mig, and learning to fly Russian, think Russian, be Russian … Lebedev, the defector with the Georgian accent, they had brought in to coach him, thoroughly - because he had to be fluent…

Then the training on the American-copied Mig-25, and the study of Belenko’s debriefing, Belenko who had flown a Foxbat to Japan years before … and the days and weeks in the simulator, flying a plane he had never seen, that did not exist.

The napalm and the flames and Saigon…

The smell of his own burning was heavy in his nostrils, vividly clear, the bluish flame from the melting fat … Mitchell Gant, in his hotel room, burned to death in agony.

HEAD OF SIS TO PM - EYES ONLY

4/2/76

Dear Prime Minister,

You asked for fuller information concerning the Mikoyan project at Bilyarsk. I therefore enclose the report I received last Autumn from Aubrey, who is controller of the espionage effort there. You will see he has a rather radical suggestion to make! Your comments would be illuminating.

Sincerely, Richard Cunningham

EYES ONLY - HEAD OF SIS

18/9/75

My dear Cunningham,

You have received the usual digests of my full reports with regard to the espionage effort being made against the secret Mikoyan project at Bilyarsk, which has received the NATO codename Firefox’. In asking for my recommendations, I wonder whether you are sufficiently prepared for what I propose.

You do not need me to outline Soviet hopes of this new aircraft. Something amounting to a defence contingency fund has been set aside, we believe, to cope with eventual mass-production of this aircraft.

Work on the two scheduled successors to the current Mig-25, the ‘Foxbat’, has or is being run down; the Foxbat will remain the principal strike plane of the Soviet Air Force until that service is re-equipped with the Mig-31, the ‘Firefox’. At least three new factory complexes are planned or under construction in European Russia solely, one suspects, to facilitate the production of the Mig-31.

As to the aircraft itself, I do not need to reiterate its potency. If it fulfils Soviet hopes, then we will have nothing like it before the end of the eighties, if at all.

Air supremacy will pass entirely to the Soviet Union.

We all know the reasons for SALT talks and defence cuts, and it is too late for recriminations. Suffice it to say that an unacceptable balance of power would result from Russian possession of the production interceptor and strike versions of this aircraft.

With regard to our own espionage effort, we are fortunate in having acquired the services of Pyotr Baranovich, who is engaged on the design and development of the weaponssystem itself. He has recruited, as you are aware, two other highly-qualified technicians, and David Edgecliffe has supplied the Moscow end of the pipeline - Pavel Upenskoy, his best native Russian agent. However impressive it all sounds - and we both know that it is - it is not sufficient!

What we have learned, or are likely to learn will be insufficient to reproduce or neutralise the threat of the Mig-31. Baranovich and his team know little of the aircraft outside their own specialisations, so compartmented is the secrecy of the research.

Therefore, we must mount, or be preparing to mount within the next five years, an operation against the Bilyarsk project. I am suggesting nothing less than that we should steal one of the aircraft, preferably a full production prototype around the time of its final trials.

I can conceive your surprise! However, I think it feasible, providing a pilot can be found. I would think it necessary to employ an American, since our own RAF pilots no longer train in aerial combat (I am considering all the possibilities), and an American with combat experience in Vietnam might be best of all.

We have the network in Moscow and Bilyarsk which could place pilot and plane in successful proximity.

Your thoughts on the above should prove enlightening. I look forward to receiving them.

Sincerely,

Kenneth Aubrey

EYES ONLY - PM/‘C’

11/2/76

My dear Sir Richard,

I am grateful for your prompt reply to my request. I really wished to know more about the aircraft itself perhaps you could forward a digest of Aubrey’s reports over the past three years? As to his suggestion - I presume he is not in earnest? It is, of course, ridiculous to talk of piracy against the Soviet Union!

My regards to your wife.

Sincerely,

Andrew Gresham

‘C’/KA

13/2/76

Kenneth - I enclose a copy of the P.M’s letter of yesterday.

You will see what he thinks of your budding criminality! At least as far as aircraft are concerned. His opinion is also mine - officially. Privately, I’ll admit this Bilyarsk think is scaring the pants off me!

Therefore, do what you can to find a pilot, and work up a scenario for this proposed operation - just in case! You might try making enquiries of our friend Buckholz in the CIA, who has just got himself promoted Head of the Covert Action Staff - or is his title Director over there? Anyway, the Americans have as much to lose as Europe in this, and are just as interested in Bilyarsk.

Good hunting. On this, don’t call me, I’ll call you if and when!

Sincerely,

Richard

EYES ONLY - PRIME MINISTER

29/6/76

My dear Prime Minister,

You requested Sir Richard Cunningham to supply you with clarification of certain technical matters arising in connection with the aircraft we have codenamed the ‘Firefox’ (Mikoyan Mig-31). I suppose that this letter is an opportunity to further plead my cause, but I think it important that you understand the gravity of Russian development in certain fields of military aviation, all of which are to meet in the focal point of this aircraft.

Our information comes principally from the man Baranovich, who has been responsible for the electronics that make practical the theoretical work of others on a thoughtguided weapons system for use in high-technology aircraft. Baranovich cannot supply us with all the information we require even on this area of the Bilyarsk project, and we would be unlikely to successfully remove him from Russia, guarded as they all are in Bilyarsk. Hence my suggestion that we steal one of the later series of production prototypes, which will contain everything the Russians intend to put in the front-line versions.

Perhaps I should cite at this point an interesting civil development of the idea of thoughtguidance - the latest type of invalid chair being studied in the United States. This is intended to enable a completely paralysed and/or immobilised person to control the movements of an invalid carriage by positive thought activity. The chair would be electronically rigged so that sensors attached to the brain (via a ‘cap’ or headrest of some kind) would transmit the commands of the brain, as electronic impulses, to the mechanics of the wheelchair or invalid carriage. A mental command to move ahead, turn round, to move left or right, shall we say, would come direct from the brain - instead of the command being transmitted to wasted or useless muscles, it would go into the artificial ‘limbs’ of the wheelchair. There is no projected military development of any such system; whereas the Soviets, it would appear, are close to perfecting just such a system for military use. (And the West has not yet built the wheelchair.) The system which we are convinced Baranovich is developing seems designed to couple radar and infrared, those two standard forms of detection and guidance in modern aircraft - with a thoughtguided and -controlled arsenal aboard the plane. Radar, as you are aware, bounces a signal off a solid object, and a screen reveals what is actually there: infrared reveals on a screen what heatsources are in the vicinity of the detection equipment. For guidance purposes, either or both these methods can be used to direct missiles and to aim them. The missiles themselves contain one or both of these systems.