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engineering spaces have secured the hatches,” Heydrich said, “and jammed the dogs.”
    â€œYou know what to do,” Kolnikov replied.
    Heydrich turned to the nearest man wearing khaki. He grabbed him by the arm, then turned to a sailor wearing a sound-powered telephone headset. “Tell them they have ten seconds to open that hatch, and if they don’t, I shoot this man. Ten seconds later I shall shoot a second man. You will be last. Tell them to take all the time they want.”
    Heydrich put the muzzle of the pistol against the forehead of the sound-powered telephone operator. “If they SCRAM the reactor, we will kill each and every man on this boat. All of them. Every single one. The ten seconds start now. Tell them.”
    The operator was about twenty, with fair hair and acne. He began talking. He looked as if he were about to faint. Heydrich lowered his gaze to his watch, studied it. The talker was still delivering his message when Heydrich pointed the pistol at the man whose arm he held and killed him with one shot in the side of the head. The talker almost lost it on the spot.
    He began babbling to Heydrich and Kolnikov, “No, no, they are opening the hatch. They are opening it!”
    *   *   *
    On the bridge of John Paul Jones, the captain and watch team listened without breathing to the garbled sounds of Heydrich and the sound-powered telephone operator. The dead radioman’s foot rested on the push-to-talk pedal, so everything picked up by his lip microphone went out over the air.
    â€œAre they recording this in the radio room?” Harvey Warfield snapped to the OOD.
    The OOD spoke into the telephone she was holding against her ear. “Yes, sir.”
    The report of the silenced pistol was barely audible on the destroyer’s bridge, but the fear in the voice of the talker and Heydrich’s accented English came across plainly.
    Harvey Warfield had heard enough. “General quarters,” he roared. “All ahead one-third, Ms. OOD. Steer for the sub. Have the radio room send a flash immediate message to Washington telling them what’s going on.” The general quarters alarm began bonging away. The captain merely raised his voice to be heard above the hubbub. “Get some helicopters out here right now to sit on this sub and get the admiral at New London on the radio. Right now, people! Make it happen!”
    *   *   *
    The sullen men from the torpedo room and berthing spaces came slowly up the ladders and filed forward. The men from the engine room came through the reactor tunnel one by one. They looked at the dead men lying on the floor, at the Russians and Germans holding weapons, and filed on by.
    The last American out of the engineering spaces was a second-class petty officer named Callahan—Heydrich was behind him with a pistol in his back. “This is the reactor man,” he told Kolnikov in English. “He was at the panel.”
    â€œHalf of them out now,” Kolnikov told Turchak, “the other half later.” He held up a hand to Callahan. “Not you. You stay here.”
    At that moment one of the SEALs stuck a knife into a German and grabbed his weapon. Heydrich killed the American sailor before he could get his finger on the trigger.
    â€œGet them out of the control room,” Kolnikov roared. “Get some into the water and the others down to the mess hall. Make the men going into the water carry the bodies. When they are in the water, shut the forward hatch. Turchak, let’s get the boat moving.”
    He sat down at the control console and smoothly pushed the power lever forward a half inch. The motion of the boat steadied out. “Steeckt, up into the cockpit. Quickly now. We have no time to lose. Turchak, put the radar display on that screen right there,” and he pointed.
    *   *   *
    â€œ America is making way, Captain,” the OOD reported to