Sleepwalk (45 page)

They moved as quickly as they could, finally leaving the river when the bottom became too rocky for any of them to find a secure footing, and found a path that led along the riverbank, threading through the trees.

Ten minutes later they came to a dead stop. Twenty yards ahead of them the blank face of the dam rose up into the night, blocking their way.

Judith stared at the massive concrete structure, its surface looking almost glassily smooth in the moonlight. Then she heard Jed’s voice.

“This way,” he called out softly. He was moving quickly, heading off toward the north wall.

And then, finally, she realized where he was taking them.

Mounted in the concrete, starting about ten feet off the ground, were a series of metal bars—spaced about two feet apart—climbing up the face of the dam like a ladder. They ended at a small metal platform resembling a fire escape, a quarter of the way up.

“It’s an emergency ladder,” Jed explained. “We can climb up it, force that door, and get into the dam.”

Peter gazed up doubtfully. “If we can get to that first bar.”

“Take off your belt,” Jed told him, removing his own even as he spoke Peter hesitated, then did as he was told. Jed buckled the two belts together so they formed
a loop more than two feet long. “Let’s get me up there first, then Peter,” he said.

Peter stood close to the dam and laced his fingers tightly together. A moment later Jed placed his foot in Peter’s hands, and while Peter stood rigid, his back against the dam itself, Jed straightened himself up, keeping his balance by resting part of his weight against the concrete.

“A little higher,” Jed said, and Peter strained to raise the boy’s weight upward. “Got it,” Peter heard Jed say, and a moment later Jed’s weight lifted off him. Rubbing his hands, Peter stepped back and looked up.

Jed was hanging from the lowest rung. As Peter and Judith watched, he pulled himself up until his chin was level with the bar. Then, taking a deep breath, he let go of the bar with his right hand, which shot upward to grasp the second rung.

He repeated the action, and then managed to get his feet onto the bottom bar. “Easy,” he said. “Now toss me up the belts.”

Peter cupped his hands for Judith, while Jed waited, clinging to the second rung, the looped belt hanging down almost within reach. But Judith shook her head.

“You next,” she said. “Someone’s going to have to lift the last one, and I’m the lightest.”

Peter felt an urge to argue with her, but then realized argument would only waste time. Besides, she was right.

Judith cupped her hands, and Peter bounced tentatively for a moment, then launched himself upward.

He missed the rung by nearly a foot, but Jed had anticipated him, and Peter’s hand closed on the looped belts. He swung helplessly for a moment, but then, as Judith lifted and Jed pulled, he rose up until he could
grasp the lowest rung. He hung there, then pulled himself up.

Jed’s hand closed on the collar of his jacket, and a moment later Peter too was clinging to the ladder. Jed gestured upward. “Go ahead,” he said. “I can handle Judith.” Peter hesitated, then followed Jed’s orders.

Jed crouched low on the bottom rung once again, his right hand gripping the one above. Stretching downward, he lowered the looped belts until they hovered just out of Judith’s reach.

“Jump,” he said, making the single word an urgent command.

Judith took a deep breath, then hurled herself upward, her hands closing on the leather band. Jed grunted slightly as he absorbed her weight. His body tensed and he began slowly straightening up. He paused for a moment, then swiftly released the second rung to grasp the third. Judith was able to transfer one of her hands to the lower rung. Jed kept lifting, and finally Judith’s other hand came to the second rung. Releasing the belt entirely, she hauled herself up.

Less than a minute later they were on the balcony outside the door in the dam’s face. Peter, with only the bloody screwdriver as a tool, was working at the doorjamb, prying at the wood, slowly splintering it away. At last he got a purchase on the lock itself, and as he leaned his weight against the hardened steel of the tool, the lock broke free from the wood and fell away.

They were inside the dam.

“That way,” Jed said. There was a spiral staircase leading straight up, but Jed was pointing down a long, narrow corridor that curved away to the right, following the contour of the dam itself.

Jed began running along the corridor, and Peter and Judith followed him, Judith’s ankle jarring painfully every time she put her weight on it. Finally they came to a branch in the corridor and Jed stopped. When the other two had caught up with him, he pointed down the corridor.

“Keep going,” he said. “At the end, there’s another staircase. It’ll take you up to the top, near the south wall of the canyon. Then try to get to the pueblo.”

Peter’s eyes narrowed. “What about you?” he asked.

Jed took a deep breath. “I have an idea,” he said. “It might not work, but I’m going to try it.”

Now Peter did argue, but this time Judith intervened. “He knows what he’s doing,” she said. “He’s gotten us this far, hasn’t he?” She gazed at Jed for a moment, then turned away.

A moment later Jed was alone in the bowels of the dam.

Otto Kruger glared at Jesus Hernandez. A five-foot section of the PVC pipe had been cut away, and finally the ends of the cut cables were exposed. “How much longer?” Kruger demanded.

Hernandez shrugged. “Ten minutes. Maybe a little less.”

Kruger’s jaw tightened but he said nothing. As he turned away, something in the distance caught his attention.

Far away, off to the left beyond the mouth of the canyon, he saw a flashing red light moving across the desert.

A moment later he heard a faint siren.

Kendall, he decided, had finally called the police.

It wouldn’t be long now before it was all over, and Jed Arnold got what was coming to him.

Jed waited until Judith and Peter were out of sight, then moved quickly toward the main flume. He stopped dead as he came into the control area, for a man was sitting on a bench, chewing on a sandwich. The man looked at him, then frowned, as if searching his mind for some bit of information. Finally he got up and moved toward the intercom phone on the main control panel.

Jed’s heart pounded. The man was much bigger than he was, and built like an ox. But as Jed watched the way the man moved, he thought he understood.

“Stop!” he said, his voice firm.

The watchman froze in his tracks as if some internal switch had been thrown.

“They sent me to relieve you,” Jed said. “They want you to go home. Now.”

Unhesitatingly, the man returned to the bench, closed his lunch bucket, and walked silently past Jed, leaving Jed alone in the control room.

He stared at the large board covered with gauges and switches, and for a moment nearly gave it up. But
then he remembered Gina Alvarez and the strange, empty look in her eyes. If he failed, all his friends—almost everyone he knew—would soon look like that.

Eventually he too would be given one of the shots.

He shuddered, then put everything out of his mind except the problem at hand.

He moved to the main shaft and pulled the entry hatch closed, spinning the wheel in its center until it was dogged tight. Then he returned to the control panel.

To the left, mounted on the concrete wall, was another large wheel, nearly five feet in diameter, connected by a universal joint to a shaft that went straight up, disappearing into a pipe in the low ceiling. A thick chain had been run between two spokes of the wheel and attached to a heavy hasp mounted on the floor.

A padlock secured the two ends of the chain.

Jed tried the screwdriver first, sliding its blade through the hasp of the lock, then twisting. But he could get no leverage, and the lock simply twisted out of his grip.

He glanced around, then saw a toolbox sitting by the wall next to the flume’s hatch. He darted over to it, opened it, and pulled out the top tray. Beneath the tray he found a hacksaw.

He went back to the lock, tested the saw’s blade against the metal of its hasp, then set to work. After what seemed an eternity, the lock finally gave way, and he ripped the chain free from the wheel. Grasping the wheel with both hands, he applied his weight to it.

Nothing happened.

He climbed up onto the wheel itself, but even his entire weight resting on one of its spokes didn’t budge
it. Tears of anger and frustration welling in his eyes, he scanned the room for another tool.

He remembered.

He darted back to the flume’s hatch, spun its wheel and pushed it open. Inside, the flume was pitch-black but Jed ignored the darkness, stepping into it and groping along the wall until he found what he was looking for.

It was the same shovel he’d been using most of that day, still where he’d left it, leaning against the wall of the shaft. Grabbing it, he hurried back out of the hatch, dogging it closed once more.

Back at the immense wheel, he stuck the blade of the shovel between two of the spokes, then jammed it beneath the wheel’s axle. Now, with three more feet added to the radius of the wheel, his weight was enough to break it loose. It moved a few inches, and Jed readjusted the shovel, then applied his weight again.

A few more inches, but he was almost certain the wheel was moving more easily.

He abandoned the shovel, grasping one of the spokes of the wheel, and pulled down hard. The wheel began to turn, and far above, he heard a faint grinding sound. A few seconds later, as the floodgate forty feet below the lake’s surface began to lift, opening the inlets to the power flume, Jed could hear the first trickling of water running into the huge chute.

He kept turning the wheel, and the trickling of water grew into a rumbling, then a steady roar. Finally the wheel came to a stop. The floodgates at the top would be wide open now.

The noise was deafening, battering at his ears, and Jed was about to start his own dash for the surface when he thought of one more thing he could do. Scanning the
control board quickly, he finally found what he was looking for. There was a large lever, and when he pulled it, there was screech of protest before the enormous turbine at the base of the flume began to turn.

It emitted only a low growl at first, but as it began to pick up speed, its pitch quickly rose until it became a shrill scream floating above the roar of the moving water.

Suddenly there was a terrifying crash from somewhere within the flume. The sound galvanized Jed. Turning away from the control board, he raced out of the room and bolted down the corridor, turning left as he came to the main transverse that ran through the lower level of the dam.

His feet pounded on the concrete, but he could hear nothing except the roar of water, the scream of the turbine, and, increasingly, the terrible crashing sounds as chunks of concrete, torn loose from the damaged sides of the flume, struck the whirling blades of the turbine.

Jed knew what was happening—the turbine was flinging the concrete back, breaking some of it up, hurling fragments of stone and cement against the walls of the flume, damaging them even further.

Soon the turbine itself would begin to break up, and as its blades tore loose, the spinning monster would fall out of balance and begin tearing itself apart. And if it should come loose from its moorings before he’d reached the surface …

He blocked the thought out of his mind as he reached the base of the spiral staircase. His lungs already gasping for breath, his muscles worn first from the long day’s labor in the dam, then abused further by the climb down the canyon wall, he started upward, his
hands grasping the railing to pull himself up as his legs threatened to collapse beneath him.

Halfway up he tripped, pitching forward as his left foot missed one of the narrow steps, his head smashing against the sharp metal of one of the risers. Stunned, a wave of nausea swept over him and his vision blurred. He sank down on the steps, tears streaming from his eyes and mixing with the blood that was already running from a gash on his forehead.

Around him the cacophony built, battering at him.

He could feel the dam beginning to break up.

Judith stared in shock at the figure standing on top of the dam. She and Peter had emerged from the top of the spiral stairs only a few seconds earlier, and now she stood frozen, hardly able to believe her eyes.

“Brown Eagle,” she whispered.

Jed’s grandfather stepped forward. “I was in the kiva,” he said. “I saw …” His words died on his lips as he saw Peter Langston, but then his gaze came back to Judith. “I know what Jed is doing,” he said. Then he smiled. “I want to see it.”

A puzzled frown formed on Peter Langston’s face. He was about to ask the mysterious Indian who had appeared out of nowhere what he was talking about, when he heard a faint grinding sound.

It grew louder, and then Judith noticed it too. Instinctively she grasped Brown Eagle’s arm. “What is it? What’s happening?”

Brown Eagle’s smile broadened. “I think Jed opened the main shaft,” he said.

“The shaft?” Peter echoed. “Why?”

But Judith understood instantly. “They’re repairing it, aren’t they? If it’s not ready—”

“If it’s not ready, then it might tear the dam apart,” Brown Eagle said, his voice placid. “I suspect that’s what Jed is counting on.”

Peter’s eyes widened.

The roar of water into the flume was beginning to build, and as he looked over the edge of the dam, he could see water spurting out of the drainage spillway far below.

Suddenly lights came on, bathing the face of the dam, and at the other end, two hundred yards away, a man appeared, darting out of the control shack.

“Come,” Brown Eagle said. “We’d better get away from here.”

He started to move away, his hand on Judith’s arm, but she planted herself firmly. “We have to wait for Jed.”

Brown Eagle shook his head. “He didn’t want you to wait,” he said. “That’s why he sent you ahead.” But despite his words, he made no move to leave the dam. Instead, he looked over the railing, staring downward.