It's 1942 and the Nazis are racing to be the first to build a weapon unlike any known before. They have the physicists, they have the uranium, and now all their plans depend on amassing a single ingredient: heavy water, which is produced in Norway's Vemork, the lone plant in all the world that makes this rare substance. Under threat of death, Vemork's engineers push production into overdrive. For the Allies, the plant must be destroyed. But how would they reach the castle fortress set on a precipitous gorge in one of the coldest, most inhospitable places on Earth? Enter Leif Tronstad, a brilliant Norwegian scientist who narrowly escaped his country to bring word to the Allies of the plant's importance--and how to infiltrate it. Together with the British Special Operations Executive ("the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Tronstad recruits a disparate band of patriots and plans a mission that many believe impossible. Based on a trove of top secret documents and never-before-seen diaries and letters of the saboteurs, this is an arresting chronicle of a brilliant scientist, a band of spies on skis, perilous survival in the wild, sacrifice for one's country, Gestapo manhunts, soul-crushing setbacks, and a last-minute operation that would end any chance Hitler could obtain the atomic bomb.--Dust jacket.

The water -- The professor -- Bonzo -- The dam-keeper's son -- Open road -- Commando order -- Make a good job -- Keen as mustard -- An uncertain fate -- The lost -- The instructor -- Those louts won't catch us -- Rules of the hunter -- The lonely, dark war -- The storm -- Best-laid plans -- The climb -- Sabotage -- The most splendid coup -- The hunt -- Phantoms of the Vidda -- A national sport -- Target list -- Cowboy run -- Nothing without sacrifice -- Five kilos of fish -- The man with the violin -- A 10:45 a.m. alarm -- Victory.