A Huey helicopter flies over the Alaskan wilderness, its pilots looking for someone below. That someone, Major Mitchell Gant USAF (Rtd) (Clint Eastwood), hears the helicopter approaching and instantly breaks into a dead run back toward his cabin, where he takes a shotgun off its rack and cocks it. As the helicopter lands, Gant lapses into a post-tramautic memory of a nightmare that he lived through in Vietnam: shot down over the North in his A-4, he was being taken to a prison camp when two Hueys machine-gunned his captors. Gant suffered personal trauma when an overflying A-4 dropped an incendiary on the site, killing a little girl who stood around too long, watching the battle. Back in the present, Captain Arthur Buckholz (David Huffman) pulls Gant out of his episode and apologizes for the surprise.The next several scenes are back-and-forth cuts between the conversation between Gant and Buckholz, and a briefing being run by Kenneth Aubrey (Freddie Jones) of the British SIS concerning the Soviet Union's latest fighter/interceptor: the Mikoyan-Gurevich "MiG" Model 31, given the codename "Firefox" by NATO. Its capabilities seem otherworldly: total stealth, twin engines each delivering 50,000 pounds of thrust, combat ceiling 100,000-feet-plus, speed in excess of Mach 5 or even Mach 6 (and able to maintain it, no small feat), and a weapons and defense system able to read the pilot's thoughts and allow him to aim and fire his weapons without even having to press a button, thus affording him a 3- to 5-second reaction-time advantage over any opponent. NATO's descision is to send Gant in to steal a Firefox prototype right off the Soviet development base at Bilyarsk near the Ural Mountains.Gant resents the operation because he is being quite simply blackmailed; he has been allowed to live on government land which now will be sold out from under him if he does not agree to the mission. The NATO Air Force attache (Thomas Hill) resents it, too, because Gant has no experience as a spy and, worse yet, is subject to post-traumatic stress disorder and may crack at any time. They use Gant for two reasons only: he speaks fluent Russian and happens to be a perfect fit for the pressure suit worn by the MiG-31's prime test pilot, Lt. Col. Yuriy Voskov (Kai Wulff).Gant goes through several weeks of retraining, both in flying and in aerial combat, and briefings on his first required impersonation--as a corrupt businessman named Leon Sprague, known to be smuggling heroin into the Soviet Union. After his training is over he is sent to London where Aubrey gives him his final briefing on his objectives and he's disguised with a new haircut and a false mustache. Gant is also familiarized with the underground network group, who are mostly Russian Jews. Aubrey also hands him a one-way homing device disguised as a cheap transistor radio. What his handlers don't tell him, though, is that if anything compromises the mission, Gant will be left on his own.Gant lands at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, blusters his way through an unannounced customs search, and manages to leave the airport--with the "radio." He takes a taxi to his rooms at the Hotel Moscow, puts the radio into his pocket, and waits. Outside he sees three Soviet soldiers goose-stepping in formation while patrolling.In the meantime, at KGB Moscow Center on Dzherzhinskiy Square, Colonel Kontarsky (Kenneth Colley) of the KGB finalizes his plans to safeguard the MiG-31 prior to its trials the next day which will be conducted for the Soviet First Secretary. He also orders his second-in-command, Dmitri Priabin (Oliver Cotton), to arrest some underground members at dawn, but not to move before then. Kontarsky in fact knows all about the spy network funneling information from Bilyarsk out of Russia--but even he does not know what the CIA and the SIS really have planned.That night Gant walks out to the Krasnokholmskiy Bridge, under instructions to be there at precisely 10:30 with the KGB shadowing him -- he is ordered
Output: Who has got the wind of the operation and is already hot on Gant's tail?