Winter Hawk

On the eve of a groundbreaking summit on global arms reduction, the American President learns of a secret Soviet project to elude the treaty by placing laser weaponry in orbit. Too late to back out of a treaty that will hand global supremacy to the Soviets, the President pins everything on an almost impossible plan to sneak into the Soviets' secure launch complex in Central Asia and recover a deeply placed mole who has proof of the Russians' plans. If the plan, codenamed "Winter Hawk" succeeds, the Americans will have the political muscle to close a loophole in the treaty against space-based weapons. Until that point, "Winter Hawk" sounds like any of a number of technothrillers appearing in the waning cold war days of the late 1980s. Except... Except that Thomas is on form in "Hawk", creating a top-notch successor to "Firefox", in which nothing goes right and the main characters fully realize the ends they must go to complete their mission. The plan involves flying into the Soviets' central Asian bastion in stolen Russian helicopters. Unknown to the Americans, their mole has already been arrested by the KGB who lay a trap for the all-but-certain extraction; unknown to the KGB and other high-ranking Soviets, the secret laser satellite figures into a larger plan concocted by the Red Army with dire implications for Russia and the West; and most importantly, the pilot assigned to the mission is the not-quite-heroic Mitchell Gant, the unlikely hero of "Firefox", while the KGB officer in charge is Dmitri Priabin, whose lover was killed helping Gant escape Russia in "Firefox Down". With these characters and others, Thomas conjures up a complex setting of shifting alliances within the secure Soviet launch compound, and crafts sophisticated characters who are both loyal Soviets even as they are growing tired of feeding their lives to The State. Thomas spares us the Hollywood simplicity of spy thrillers and instead gives us an endless series of challenges - the desperate theft of the Russian helicopters, the desperate flight to get the choppers to their initial points in Pakistan, the flight across Soviet-occupied Afghanistan's airspace, getting in and out of the Soviet Cosmodrome and the impending launch of the laser satellite - that will keep you guessing. "Winter Hawk" is an epic cold-war novel that cannot be missed.

After his big action epic, The Bear's Tears, which featured a plethora of his recurring characters, Craig decided to give Mitchell Gant another go, the hero of Firefox and Firefox Down. With the exception of a couple characters from the first two Gant books, there's only all new characters in this one. You won't even hear a mention of Kenneth Aubrey. The plot starts out with a Russian scientist who has been giving information to the West for some time now about a new Soviet spaceshuttle fitted with a laser weapon the Russians are preparing. Of course, if you're familiar with the Craig formula, the Russians wouldn't dare do this unless it was on the eve of a new treaty that is to be signed with the Americans. The Americans, hearing the information from their defector/scientist, want absolute proof that this is true, so they send Mitchell Gant into Russia to get the scientist and the evidence. But complications soon arise as the scientist gets nervous and has to go on the run when he gets caught accidentally overhearing something he wasn't suppose to. The book also finishes off the sub-plot from Firefox Down involving KGB agent Dmitri Priabin. Priabin is overseeing the completion of the laser-weapon, but he soon finds out that the the higher-ups of the GRU have their own plans for it. And things get even more complicated for him when he finds out Gant is around, who he still blames for the death of his girlfriend in Firefox Down. Another great one from Craig. Thumbs up!

In "Winterhawk", the Americans are desperate to pluck from deep within Soviet territory a Russian scientist offering the west proof that the Soviets will launch a laser satellite, an orbiting battlestation, on the eve of a major new arms treaty. Too late to back out of the treaty, the Americans face the prospect of Soviet military supremacy established in orbit and working its way down to the surface. Their only way-out: use a captured Russian helicopter flown by a crack CIA pilot deep into the Soviet military-industrial spaceflight complex near baikonour and rescue the man and his photographic proof. Were "Winterhawk" the work of any other writer, the CIA pilot would be some handsome but rule-flouting ace hotshot who doesn't let politicians or bureaucrats get in the way of mission he just knows he can pull-off. But "Winterhawk" is the baby of Craig Thomas, and the maverick is none other than Mitchell Gant, the burnt-out Vietnam air-war vet who barely survived "Firefox" and "Firefox Down". Almost saturated with a mentality of defeat, Gant remains ready to thrown in the towel, almost begging for the missile or bullet or karate chop that will end the mission...and his misery.Reuniting with KGB Col. Priabin from "Firefox Down", "Winterhawk" becomes someting of a sequel to that book and the final leg in a loose trilogy begun with "Firefox". Thomas usually arranges his books into loose arcs (like those involving the Russian, Petrunin, and Babbington, the British turncoat of "Lion's Run", "Wildcat" and "Last Raven"), but there's an insistence on linking the books in time ("Winterhawk" is meant to occur within two years of "Firefox Down", though the earlier book occurred no later than 1983 when Andropov was still KGB chief, and the events of latter book - including CD's and the Russian space shuttle are clearly late 1980's) and in meaning - with the bloodlust that Gant unwittingly inspired in Priabin in the last book is too great a factor in this one. Yet Thomas knows better than to write incomplete books, and "Winterhawk" remains absorbing on its own terms. His writing remains crisp, his prose fast paced and his perspectives delightfully claustrophobic. Nobody knows what's about to hit them. Thomas' charachters drive this book, perhaps more than those of "Firefox" and ist sequel - while Gant ruled those books, there isn't a charachter in "Winterhawk" who doesn't threaten to conquer the rest and impose his stamp on the bulk of the novel. When the brutish, almost simian Red Army Col. Serov meets his fate, I almost cried at the possibilities of his appearance in another Thomas epic that will now never be. Bringing the crew together not only creates a perfectly spaced and timed plot, but creates perhaps the most cinematographic of Thomas' novels. Instead of building a tale around the hero's sitting in a chair (admittedly an ejector seat within a high-performance jet, but sitting all the same), we have Gant racing through the industrial space co

This time Mitchel Gant flies an antiquated Mil-24 deep INTO Russia for an extraction. Firefox fans should like this if only to read more of Gant's exploits. It is slightly outdated but should still prove entertaining.

If I remember correctly, this would be the third Gant book. People who have read or seen Firefox should like this if only to complete Gant's story. Not so much on the "techno" part of the techno-thriller genre but pretty interesting from the logistical point of view.