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Chapter 55
A graveyard?” said Harvath.
DeWolfe sca
“How’d he get a car in there at night? Don’t they close the gates?”
“I asked one of the SIOC guys about that and he told me that the place is open around the clock.”
“What about security?”
“Nonexistent.”
“And dead men tell no tales,” said Harvath as the pieces began to come together. Congressional Cemetery was only about three miles from the White House and half that distance from the Capitol. In fact, every major city the Russians had put sleepers in probably had some sort of cemetery close to its most populated area. Suddenly, the sleepers buying flowers didn’t seem so strange anymore. “I want the exact coordinates of where that car was parked. Have the NEST team ready to move and get SIOC to pull some real time thermal imaging of the cemetery from the National Reco
“TheNRO? Why not use the HRT bird?” asked DeWolfe. “It has second generation FLIR and can be over the target area in less than fifteen minutes.”
“No. No helicopters. Tell SIOC it has to be satellite. If Draegar’s there, I don’t want him to have any clue that we’re coming. He’s switched cars now, which means he’s being even more careful. Find out the make, model, color-everything about the car Patrick drove-and put out an APB. If anyone sees it, they call it into SIOC, but under no circumstances are they to try to stop it. Got it?”
“Got it. What are you going to do?”
“I’ve got a score to settle for an old friend.”
As the MH-6 Little Bird helicopter raced them due east for the Anacostia Naval Station, Harvath explained that Congressional Cemetery got its name not because one necessarily had to be a member of Congress to be buried there, but rather because of its proximity to the Capitol and the government’s frequent use of it over the last two hundred years.
Alexandra was not completely unfamiliar with the Congressional Cemetery and made mention of the fact that the gravesite of former FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover had been a favorite clandestine meeting spot for KGB operatives throughout the seventies and eighties. As interesting as that fact was, Harvath had a feeling they weren’t going to find Draegar just leaning against Hoover’s tombstone.
Landing at Anacostia, Harvath received word that the NRO satellite had failed to locate any human heat signatures in the cemetery. They did, though, pick up a warm car engine not too far from where Air IQ had placed Draegar’s rental over the last two nights.
When Harvath asked if the engine was ru
The Anacostia Naval Station was three miles downriver from the Congressional Cemetery, and Harvath had been serious about keeping any u
Because of his bad ankle, DeWolfe was forced to sit this one out. Everybody else, though, was onboard, their minor injuries all but forgotten as they focused on what lay ahead.
The fifteen-foot black Zodiac combat rubber raiding craft was ready and waiting for them as they made their way down to the river. Harvath and the rest of the team checked their weapons and their communications gear one last time before pushing off. If anything needed fixing or replacing, now was the time to do it. Once they were underway, there was no turning back, not for anything.
The silenced outboard drove the heavily reinforced, inflatable craft quickly up the Anacostia. They beached the boat just under the Pe
Based on maps of the cemetery, it had been decided that the best entry point would be over the south wall. Harvath radioed SIOC for a final Sit Rep off the satellite before they went in. “Negative,” came back the voice from SIOC. “The graveyard is still cold.”
No kidding, thought Harvath as he took a deep breath before scaling the wall.
Once on the other side, the team fa
It had been decided that Harvath and Alexandra would check out Mausoleum Row, while Morrell, Avigliano, and Carlson went to investigate the nearby car, which was parked unusually close to the grave of J. Edgar Hoover.
The team split up and Harvath and Alexandra cut across a wide, grassy expanse. As they passed, the headstones glowed a ghostly greenish-white through their night-vision goggles. They hugged the side of a small road until they reached the first intersection, and Mausoleum Row.
The vaults were built into a small hill with regular graves just above and behind them. Harvath was about to try the first iron door when he noticed the second mausoleum’s door was slightly ajar. He traded Alexandra the Beretta carbine for the pistol, which was much more suited for going into such a tight space, and had her stand guard outside.
He listened at the door for several seconds until all he could hear was the pounding of his own heart as the blood rushed in and out of his ears. Harvath grabbed hold of the door with his free hand, and slowly pulled it back, praying there wouldn’t be any loud squeal of metal on metal that would give them away.
The old door cooperated and didn’t make a sound. It effortlessly swung back as if on freshly oiled hinges. As Harvath stepped inside, he suddenly realized what the jacks in the trunks of the sleepers’ cars had been for. Still secured upon their stands, two hydraulic jacks balanced a marble faceplate easily weighing three or four hundred pounds. Harvath maneuvered around the heavy piece of marble and found a stone bench behind it, which he stood upon to look into the open crypt halfway up the wall.
Instead of a coffin, the crypt contained a sophisticated communications array. It appeared he had discovered how Draegar pla
Harvath wanted Alexandra to see what he was seeing and engaged his throat mike, but there was no response. He was about to try one more time when he heard what he knew in the marrow of his bones was a grenade being rolled into the vault. Without thinking twice, he dropped onto the stone bench behind the faceplate, opened his mouth, closed his eyes, pushed his fingers as far as far as he could into his ears and curled into the tightest fetal position a man had ever attempted.
Harvath had worked with demolitions before, but never in his life had he been so close to such an overwhelming explosion. Despite his desire to keep his mouth open to help equalize the pressure, he bit down so hard he thought for sure he had cracked all of his teeth. The pain of the blast was so intense it felt as if a hand had reached up inside him and was flattening all of his organs. And as for deadening the sound by plugging his ears, he was confident that even Quasimodo himself had never experienced the ringing he was now host to.