Stephen Coonts (born July 19, 1946) is an American thriller and suspense novelist. Coonts grew up in Buckhannon, West Virginia, a small coal-mining town, and earned a B.A. degree in political science at West Virginia University in 1968. He entered the Navy the following year and flew an A-6 Intruder medium attack plane during the Vietnam War, where he served on two combat cruises aboard the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). He accumulated 1600 hours in the A-6 Intruder and earned a number of Navy commendations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross. (His navigator-bombardier was LTjg Stanley W. Bryant, who later became a Rear Admiral and deputy commander-in-chief of the US naval forces in Europe.)