The Minotaur (Jake Grafton #4) by Stephen Coonts

Stephen Coonts's first novel, Flight of the Intruder, was hailed as one of the best novels ever written about flying and the camaraderie of men at war, and became an immediate international bestseller. His second novel, Final Flight, was an even bigger sensation, and demonstrated that Coonts can write classic page-turning suspense to match the very best writers in the field. Now, in The Minotaur, he has produced his best novel yet, a riveting story of a top secret Advanced Technical Aircraft and the hunt for a Soviet mole.

Jake Grafton, the hero of Coonts's previous novels, is back! After flying A-6 Intruders in Vietnam and, seventeen years later, commanding an air wing aboard a supercarrier in the Mediterranean, Grafton - now grounded - is assigned to the Pentagon, where he is in charge of developing the navy's new top-secret attack plane, the A-12.

Faced with political and technical problems at every turn, Jake soon finds himself drawn into a hunt for the Minotaur, a mole hidden in the Pentagon who is selling America's most precious defence secrets to the Russians. The FBI's chief spy-catcher is hot on the Minotaur's trail - or is he? Just who are the traitors in the Byzantine world of technocrats, politicians, and multi-billion-dollar defence programmes? Four people are dead and a test pilot is near death before Grafton homes in on the shocking identity of the minotaur - and his even more chilling motives.