Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River (30 page)

CHAPTER 20

6:15 p.m. -
Hoover
Dam,
Boulder
,
Nevada

It'd taken only fifteen minutes to persuade the governor, although Governor Jenkins still didn't think they could build it fast enough. In the end he had convinced himself that even if they didn't finish building up the dam in time, whatever they did finish would delay the floods downstream. Grant, Shauna, and Fred stood in the hallway of the visitor center and plotted how to accomplish their task.

Shauna shook her head. "It won't work."

"It has to," Grant said.

"But Grant, when you build a land fill dike, you have to build it slowly, and wet it, and you have to use non-permeable soil. If we rush it, it'll leak."

Grant knew she was right. They couldn't just throw it together, even if they compressed it with bulldozers. If the soil allowed water to seep through, it would wash out. He wondered if they would find the right kind of soil around
Las Vegas
, where as far as he knew, everything was sand. And everyone knows you can't build a dam with sand.

Grant held out his hands. "How do they build those dikes around the
Mississippi River
when it floods? It seems like they're always trying to protect some town from getting flooded by the river. Don't they need to be built fast?" He felt helpless. He had convinced the governor, but now he wasn't convinced himself.

"Seems like all the ones I see on the rivers in the
Midwest
are built out of sand bags," Fred said.

Grant and Shauna both looked up at him.
Sandbags?
It just might work. Heaven knew there was certainly plenty of sand around
Las Vegas
. Besides, building a dam out of sand bags would be faster since the layers would not need to be meticulously compressed with heavy equipment. The more he thought about it the more excited he became. A sandbag dike might even hold up if it were overtopped by a foot or two. It could even hold water while it was being built. The question was
,
where would they get enough bags, and the labor to fill them?

* * *

6:20 p.m. -
Lake Powell
,
Arizona

Julie guessed they had been in the traffic jam at Gregory Butte for almost an hour. They were almost out. The narrowest point had only enough room for ten boats to go through the turn at a time. Unfortunately, about 50 lines were merging into the small space. And after living in
California
, Julie knew what happened during rush hour when cars needed to merge. Boats were even worse. It was like a herd of sheep trying to get through an open gate. Julie was glad the bumpers were out because the Mastercraft had been bumping other boats for an hour. Finally they were only a few boats away. Greg let the boat on his left go past.

"We're next," Greg said. "Everybody sit down."

Paul climbed down off the bow and started pulling in the bumper pads from both sides. As the boat on their right pulled out, Greg pulled in behind it. They idled slowly at first around the bend with the boat almost touching on both sides. As the canyon turned straight again, it widened. As a result, the boats were able to spread out and speed up. Greg gave the boat some throttle.

Julie had been on many crowded lakes before, but nothing compared to this. There were probably between 15 and 20 rows of boats, all going as fast as possible. Greg tried to stay in the wake behind the boat in front of him, but many others were swerving back and forth passing each other. That many boats, traveling that fast, made for rough water. Julie saw Darlene and Max hanging on tight as the boat jarred up and down, sometimes with loud banging noises. Personal watercraft darted between the boats. It reminded her of the motorcyclists in southern
California
that dart between the cars on the freeways. Even though it was perfectly legal in
California
, she was always afraid one would go down in front of her and she would run over it.

Julie felt Greg swerve hard right and looked up in time to see a stalled boat in front of them. A family with kids was standing up waving their arms to be seen. She guessed Greg had missed the boat by less than ten feet. The family would be lucky if they lasted another five minutes before they got hit. When Julie looked back, the stranded boat had disappeared, lost in the chaos behind them. Julie offered a silent prayer for the small family.

* * *

6:30 p.m. -
Grand Canyon
,
Arizona

David looked around. The sandy beach where they had landed was now completely underwater. David and Keller were standing in waist-high water while holding the raft. Everyone else had already climbed in, not because they wanted to go anywhere in the rubber boat, but because they couldn't stand the cold water. David could feel the cold swirling around his thighs and felt it sapping the heat out of his body. He sensed his teeth were close to chattering.

For the last few moments he had been thinking about the final scenes of the movie Titanic, when thousands of passengers froze to death in only a few minutes in the icy water. How ironic was it that this could happen in hundred-degree desert air? Although David could see no ice floating in this water, he knew most of it came from the bottom of the Glen Canyon Dam, and was probably in the forties. He wouldn't freeze to death as fast as the victims on the Titanic, but he would die of hypothermia just the same if he stayed in the water long enough. As he felt the water creep up around his waist, he wondered how long he could last. 45 minutes?
An hour?

Afram peered down at him. "You want to switch?"

David shook his head. "Wait 'til my teeth start chattering."

Afram nodded, but nobody laughed at David's attempt at humor, not even David.

"We're not going to be able to do this much longer anyway," Sam pointed out. "The water'll be too high in a few minutes."

Judy pointed toward the main channel of the river. It was running even swifter than before, and new rapids had emerged where the river had been smooth. "Well, we can't go out there, either."

Becky sobbed, "Why is the water doing this?" Sam put his arm around her.

David agreed. "They should have warned us if they were going to let this much water out of the dam."

When Keller spoke his teeth chattered. "I don't think this is a controlled release."

"What do you mean?" Judy asked.

Keller continued, "The water must be 50 feet above normal, and we are more than a hundred miles downstream. Opening a few head gates wouldn't have done that."

"Then what could it be?" Afram asked.

Keller looked reluctant to speak, and his teeth continued to chatter. "I wonder if the dam broke."

"What?" David heard himself say.

Everybody talked at once and no one could understand.

Finally, Afram spoke. "If the Glen Canyon Dam failed, then we haven't seen the worst yet. The water will get a lot deeper, won't it?" The question seemed to be aimed at Keller.

Keller nodded. "Keep looking for handholds, or places we can climb. If the dam really broke we'll need to climb out of here."

The group craned their necks upward looking for anything.

Afram pointed about twenty feet above.
"If we could just get up there.
It looks like we might be able to hike a little from that ledge."

Sam stood up in the raft. "Yeah, I think he's right."

David and Keller, with their backs against the rocks, could not see where the others were looking.

"Unfortunately, these two can't hold the boat while it rises another 20 feet." Judy said angrily.

Afram pointed at something above them. "See that rock outcropping up there? What if I get the rope around it? We could tie up the boat,
then
everybody could get in."

"Try it," Becky said, wiping tears from her eyes.

David's teeth chattered while he watched Afram make a loop in the end of the rope. Afram secured the loop with a square knot. David was no Eagle Scout, but he felt pretty sure that there was a better knot than a square knot for the situation. Afram must have been thinking the same, because he added a double knot to make sure. Nobody spoke while he coiled the rope, hesitated,
then
tossed it underhand. David knew Afram had missed without seeing it; he could see it in Judy's face, which contorted before the rope fell back down in the raft. Afram picked it up and tried again. Same result. Sam wanted a turn, and Afram gladly conceded the rope. The water had risen above David's waist, and his teeth were chattering uncontrollably now, but no one noticed. He hoped one of these cowboys learned to lasso quickly, because he didn't think he or Keller would be able to hold the boat much longer.

* * *

6:50 p.m. -
Lake Powell
,
Utah

Julie looked up at the vertical rock walls on both sides of them. After clearing the traffic jam at Gregory Butte, they had been able to go fast for a while before traffic thickened and the water became rougher, forcing Greg to slow again. But the landscape was changing. Just south of Gregory was
Padre
Bay
, the largest open area of water at
Lake
Powell
. Normally,
Padre
Bay
by itself would be a huge lake, but with the water levels so low, most of it had disappeared.
The main river channel, normally too far underwater to be visible in the bay, now cut back and forth like a snake.
Access to what was left of the bay had been reduced to numerous channels. Most of these channels were
impassable,
however, since the amount of water draining from Padre into the river was so great. Attempting passage would be like running upstream through rapids.

Greg slowed slightly as they rounded a bend. Up ahead on the left, a waterfall about ten feet high flowed from a side canyon into the main channel. The volume of the waterfall was staggering, and the boats ahead were steering as far to the right as possible to avoid getting sucked under the falls and capsized. Julie cupped her hand over her mouth in horror as she saw a boat upside down next to the falls. She couldn't see anyone in the water, but if they were not wearing life jackets, she wouldn't be able see them, would she? She tried to imagine the Mastercraft being pulled under the falls and taking the brunt of the water. She suddenly knew that the people in the boat were dead.

As they pulled alongside the capsized boat, Greg had to actually accelerate to pull away from the current that pulled them toward the falls. Julie saw what looked like a life jacket bobbing. Her first thought was that somebody was still stuck in there, being bobbed like a toy up and down under the falls. But then she saw the life jacket was empty. She wasn't sure whether it was good or bad. Where were the people?

"Man, that's amazing," Paul said.

Greg nodded. He pointed to the hull of the boat floating upside down. "It looks like it's at least a twenty-footer."

Paul shook his head. "Wonder why they let it get too close."

Greg shrugged. "Maybe they stalled it or something. Without an engine, it would suck you in."

Julie thought of the family they had
passed,
the one whose boat had stalled in the middle of the channel and Greg had swerved to miss. What would happen to them when they drifted down here? She thought of the little girl clutching her mother. Julie suddenly realized this would not be the last waterfall. All the bays, canyons and side chutes off the river would eventually have to drain into the main channel. Over the next several hours, the
Lake
Powell
channel would become a gauntlet of waterfalls.

CHAPTER 21

7:00 p.m. -
Hoover
Dam,
Boulder
,
Nevada

Grant looked at his watch. This was taking way too long. After everyone agreed a dike made out of sandbags would work, the calls had gone out all over
Las Vegas
. They expected trucks to start rolling in any minute, but so far nothing. Based on quick estimates from the construction companies, there were somewhere between 75,000 and a 150,000 bags available in the
Las Vegas
area, although only a small fraction were already full. The remainder would need to be filled. Even if they were full, Grant knew that wasn't nearly enough. A few more calls located a distributor in
Los Angeles
and a manufacturer in
Salt Lake City
. The manufacturer was already closed, but the owner had been located on a cell phone and he was arranging to get enough staff to ship his entire inventory. Between the two companies, Grant figured they could get another million bags. Speed was a big issue, but cargo planes would be used from both locations. Grant went out on a limb and said the Bureau would pay, and Governor Jenkins pulled a few strings to make it happen.

In the meantime, the construction companies didn't think they could possibly fill a million bags before 5:00 a.m., which was the goal Grant gave them. They estimated they would be lucky to fill a tenth of that. The problem had then become how to fill a million bags in the next ten hours, bags that probably wouldn't be in
Las Vegas
for a few hours.