CHAPTER 9
WHILE THIS went down in Tenley, a tall man stood alone in the dark, off the park, watching the black waters of the Anacostia River. The lights by this stretch of the river had been put out. Broken glass felt like crunchy pebbles underfoot. Listening, staring into the middle distance, he heard the launch before he saw her. The sound rose above the soft gulping of the waves. He spotted her by the soft secondary illumination; the eerie light retained by the pool of humid pollution that hung over the city. She was a small U.S Navy launch, doing the heave ho in the choppy backwash from the riverbank. She had two men on board, a petty officer, and a sailor at the tiller.
They took the mainstream downriver, doing it the Washington way, passing the decommissioned destroyer USS Barry. T
