Mitchell Gant

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Mitchell Gant is a fictional US Air Force Major who stole the Russian MiG-31 Firefox fighter aircraft prototype in the Craig Thomas novel and Clint Eastwood movie of the same name. It is established that Gant is a Vietnam War veteran.

While serving in Vietnam, Gant's fighter was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, and he would have been taken as a prisoner of war had it not been for the arrival of allied aircraft. The experience left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, causing him to have frequent flashbacks.

In Firefox Down, the immediate sequel to Firefox (which, unlike its predecessor, was not adapted into a film), Gant was forced to land the MiG-31 on a lake in Finland, but it broke the lake's frozen surface and he was forced to abandon it. He was captured by Soviet forces, but escaped back into Finland and recovered the aircraft with the help of a Russian double agent named Anna Akhmerovna, who was killed before Gant could complete his mission.

Gant's next role was in the novel Winter Hawk. Originally, Gant's mission was to smuggle scientist and spy Filip Kedrov out of Russia, as Kedrov had information on a top-secret laser weapon the Soviet Army planned to use against the American space shuttle. However, Gant and Kedrov were both captured by the KGB, and unexpectedly ended up allying themselves with KGB Col. Dmitri Priabin (who had previously menaced Gant during the Firefox mission), after he was double-crossed by a GRU officer involved in the laser weapon project.

Gant's final appearance to date was the novel A Different War. In this novel, Gant has left the USAF and now serves on the National Transportation Safety Board. It is also revealed that he was an F-117 Nighthawk pilot and instructor during the Persian Gulf War.