Adolf Hitler's scientists are on the verge of creating two atomic bombs. With Allied armies closing in on the German frontier in late 1944, Hitler approves a project called Vergeltungsnacht—Vengeance Night—to coincide with a planned counteroffensive in Belgium, a one-two punch that will give the Allies pause, maybe even cause them to sue for an armistice— and give the Germans a chance to regroup.
Through a well-placed asset code-named Sparrow—the Allies know of Hitler's efforts. What they don't know is how he plans to carry out the mission. Sparrow's real name is Elsa Grunewald, an Austrian lab tech and virulent anti-Nazi resistance member. When two American Liberty ship freighters are highjacked in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in late summer 1944, U.S. Army Intelligence and England's MI-6 suspect a connection. Two American intelligence officers, Wade Brogan and Derrick Merrill, are assigned to find out how far Hitler's efforts have gone.
What follows is a harrowing game of cat and mouse, chase and ambush, double-cross and betrayal as Brogan and Merrill, despite little commando training, are inserted behind German lines, first to determine the status of the German project and later, to try and stop it.
The stakes are high, as the Germans plan to use the high-jacked freighters to deliver atom bombs to two American East Coast cities. Winding up trapped on one freighter as it gets underway, Wade Brogan and Elsa Grunewald must overcome mutual suspicions, Elsa's fervent wish to escape Nazi Germany, and the ticklish nature of the German bombs, to prevent catastrophe from reaching America's shores. Agent Merrill is aboard the second freighter, with even less chance of success.
Somehow, some way, with detonation timers already set, Brogan and Merrill have to find a way to stop the Nazis from carrying out their mission and save tens of thousands of Americans from ultimate obliteration.