Pete turned and glanced at his crew. They were all there, sitting on the rows between the stone-faced Russian guards. Frank, Walt, Darwin, the Bloodhound.

He'd seen their look before. Their eyes begged for leadership – for a command decision that would suddenly make all this go away. They were looking to him for answers, but he had no answers, other than to wait and die.

Pete could bear their faces no more. He looked away, only to find the stares of the orphans that had been on board the Alexander Pop-ovich and then the Honolulu. Theirs were the looks of confusion – of fear. He felt a surging rage that the Russians would require them to behere for theater and political show. Then his eyes caught the face of the boy named Dima.

The boy's eyes – they looked almost crossed – were magnified by the gawky glasses on his face. These eyes he had seen before. They were the eyes of a son looking at a father figure. How strange – these longing eyes of the orphan. And then, it hit him. The orphan felt a bond with the man who had rescued him and Masha from the sea.

His son, Coley, had once looked at him this way.

Pete turned away, lest the international media spot the tears flooding his eyes.

The Al Alamein Gulf of Finland

Salman Dudayev looked up. Captain Sadir was climbing the ladder from the engine room to the main deck of the ship. Salman was under him and had just stepped onto the ladder when he heard Sadir yelling, "Who are you? What are you doing on my ship?"

The physicist double-stepped up the ladder behind the captain, quickly reaching the open air of the main deck.

Waving a pistol in his hand, Captain Sadir turned toward the stern area of the ship, toward a group of ten wet, dripping frogmen who had appeared out of the sea.

"Get off of my ship!" Shots rang out from the pistol. The frogmen ducked under and behind boxes and crates on the stern area and fired back. Bullets whined and ricocheted off the ship's steel superstructure.

Suddenly the captain's head exploded like a burst watermelon. His body flopped to the deck, pumping a stream of blood from the head wound.

Salman crouched low, and then took off across the deck, towards the hatch and the interior ladder that led back up to the bridge.

"You! Freeze!" He recognized the English from his days at MIT. Sal-man ignored the command. He sprinted through the sounds of bullets ricocheting through the steel superstructure. Salman ducked into the passageway and headed up the ladder.

The thunder of stampeding feet rumbled in pursuit behind Salman's back. He was a scientist, not an athlete, and they were closing fast.

To the bridge. He had to get to the bridge. He had to reach the detonator.

Leo, take your men below, " Lieutenant Mike Reel yelled at Lieutenant JG Leo Maloney. Maloney's men went down the hatch. Reel and his men sprinted after the man that got away.

"Stop! Halt!" Reel yelled. Reel was closing fast, but the man was not responding. From the rear, the man resembled the profile photographs of the Chechen physicist, Dudayev, that the SEALs had studied, but Reel couldn't be sure. The only thing Reel was sure of at the moment, as he scrambled across the deck, was this. The man wasn't stopping and he was heading in the direction of the bridge.

He was also sure that they were close enough to St. Petersburg that a nuclear fireball of sufficient magnitude would engulf or destroy the city. And the crew of a United States nuclear submarine was being held in that city.

"Stop!" Reel closed to within about ten feet of the man and squeezed the trigger of his Uzi. A burst of machinegun fire shot out over the sea.

The man kept running, then bounded up a ladder headed directly for a section of the bridge.

Reel's mind raced like the speed of light.

Racing, racing, the thoughts flew like electricity lighting a power grid.

Only a maniac on some sort of suicide mission would fail to stop at this point. Reel knew it in his gut. The guy was going for the bomb. He knew it.

But what if he were wrong? What if the guy was only a sailor scared out of his wits by some guy in a wetsuit who had just killed his captain?

Reel was the deadliest of warriors. He was a Navy SEAL. But SEAL or no SEAL, Americans didn't kill civilians. Not without good reason.

This was happening so fast. Reel bounded up the ladder, grabbing at the man's boot. It was just out of reach.

He heard the thunder of the boots of his fellow SEALs crossing the deck below.

The man reached the catwalk at the top of the ladder and rushed into the bridge. Reel ran in behind him.

It all turned slow motion now, almost like suspended animation in an underwater ballet.

Four men stood around the perimeter of the bridge. One had a gun. He swung it to point it at Reel.

Reel opened fire, bringing three of the men down. The fourth held his hands in the air. The man Reel was chasing raced across a bridge and lunged for an electronic box with a handle.

A detonation device!

The man's hands reached the handle.

Reel pulled the trigger, spraying bullets into the man's back. Blood oozed and splattered from numerous bulletholes in the back of his shirt.

The man slumped forward, his hands and body pushing down on the detonator.

"Dear Jesus, please help us!"

Flashing lights lit the detonator, yellow lights dancing up and down it like lights on a Christmas tree.

Reel squeezed his trigger and fired a wall of bullets into the detonator, then held his breath.

Leo Maloney and his men stormed down the ladder leading to the decks below. Their mission – to search each and every compartment of the ship. If nukes were on board, they would find them, or die trying.

Maloney was the first to hit the deck at the bottom of the ladder. He motioned Petty Officer McCants and two men to the left. Two other SEALs turned to the right. They jogged a few feet to the intersection of another passageway to their left. Maloney spotted two armed guards standing in front of a door.

"Put down your weapons!" Maloney ordered. The guards opened fire. The SEALs fired back, mowing the guards down to the deck.

"Let's go!" Maloney ordered. His men hurdled over the bleeding sailors and shot open the door.

A device was spread out on a long, six-legged aluminum table. Five large, stainless steel cylinders, each the size of a beach ball, were lined in a row along it, all connected with wires.

In an instant, blinking red and yellow lights lit on the device and flashing gadgets danced around the cylinders.

"It's arming itself!"

Maloney's stomach dropped from his body. He squeezed the trigger on his Uzi, firing every bullet left in his magazine at the device.

"McCants, shoot the thing!"

"Aye, sir!" Petty Officer McCants, in a blasting fury, emptied his Uzi submachinegun into the metal cylinders as well.

Electrical impulses, like tiny lightning bolts, shot back and forth between the cylinders.

"Lord in heaven, please put this thing out!"

The electrical charges continued for a moment, and then…

"Sir, I think it's dying!" McCants announced.

"Keep praying, sailor!"

Lights on the left side of the device went dark. The lights on the right side followed.

Then, silence.

Leo Maloney allowed himself a long exhale.

A familiar voice came through his headset. "Maloney. McCants. Report."

Maloney caught McCants' eyes. The rugged SEAL's forehead was beaded with large sweat drops, but a small smile crept across his face.

Maloney pushed the communications button on his headset. "I think we found the bomb, sir. Recommend we get our nuclear guys in here, ASAP, but I think we've disabled it."