On vacation in Tel Aviv, former American test pilot Kaz Zemeckis spots something falling in the sky: a MiG-25 Foxbat, the Soviet Union’s most advanced fighter plane, seemingly shot down over Israeli airspace. The pilot of the plane is Alexander Vasilyevich Abramovich, known as Grief, and he’s willing to defect to America, offering the Foxbat as enticement. Soon, Kaz is accompanying Grief to Area 51, where the two pilots work to disassemble the MiG-25 and incorporate its secrets into the new American F-15 Eagle. But Grief has an ulterior motive, which will pit the two pilots against each other.
A cutting-edge jet. Two ace pilots from opposite sides of the Iron Curtain. A race between US and Soviet agencies to gain the upper hand in the Cold War. These are the elements of Chris Hadfield’s second novel, The Defector, a technothriller whose accuracy is vouchsafed by Hadfield’s storied career as a test pilot and astronaut. These are also the components of Firefox by Craig Thomas, a novel first published in 1977 and made into a film of the same name. Both Firefox and The Defector draw inspiration from the real-life story of lieutenant Viktor Belenko, who landed a Foxbat in Hokkaido, Japan, on September 6, 1976, defecting to the West and giving the Americans their first chance to examine the MiG-25 up close.
