Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River (36 page)

He walked to the back of the truck and opened the tailgate. He grabbed a long tool shaped much like a jackhammer, which he dragged from the truck. The tool had an auger where the bit on a jackhammer would be. Holding the tool by both handles, at about eye level, the auger could drill a six-inch hole five feet deep. He'd told the guard that he'd need to drill several holes in the dike to do the moisture absorption tests, so he didn't expect to raise any suspicion with the tool.

He pulled the crank on a small compressor in the back of the pickup and it came to life. He plugged the huge drill into the compressor and lugged it over to the waterside of the dam. He had to lift the tool over a waist-high cinder block wall that bordered the upstream side of the dam. He chose a spot as far from the boulders as possible, braced and pulled the trigger. The auger spun against the hard ground before finally biting in and began its slow drop into the roadbed. Gravel piled up around where the auger spun in. A couple of times the tool jarred his arms, almost tearing the handles out of his hands, but he was braced for it, and it caused him no problems. He had already practiced with the tool and knew what to expect when the drill hit rocks.

The oversized drill chugged deeper until the auger buried itself and the handles almost rested on the ground. He released the trigger, flipped a switch to reverse the auger, depressed the trigger again, and the drill climbed back out of the hole. Shutting it off, he lifted it carefully away, so as to not knock gravel back in the opening. He admired his work for a moment, but didn't tarry, knowing full well the first one was the easiest. He hefted the drill back over the wall onto the asphalt road. He lined it up with the previous hole, so he would have a line of holes from the wet side of the dam to the dry side. He pulled the trigger again, hoping there wasn't a concrete pad under the asphalt. The drill spun harmlessly for several seconds on the hard road before it finally grabbed and started sinking.

When he rented the tool, they had told him that highway construction teams used the same tool to bore through pavement all the time, and that he could dig through asphalt all day long as long as he didn't hit any concrete. He watched closely as the black debris came up out of the opening around the bit. Suddenly the debris changed to gray dust and gravel and he knew he was past the asphalt. No concrete pad. He had just relaxed his hold on the drill when it jammed, jerking his arms savagely before an override shut it off. Maybe there was concrete down there. He pushed the reset button and pulled the trigger again, but it jammed again. He reversed it,
then
tried once more. Same result. A feeling of failure washed over him and he wondered if this whole exercise had been in vain. What had ever made him believe he could succeed?

He gave up on that spot and reversed the drill, letting it climb out of the hole. He picked a different spot only two feet away. He let it rip again, and waited while the drill did its thing. He wondered if he would have the same result, but this time the auger kept spinning. It jerked hard a couple of times, but kept going until the hole was done. He wiped sweat off his brow. Working in the intense heat was suffocating. He looked out at the water of
Lake
Mojave
and briefly considered taking a dip to cool off, but instead he moved the drill to the next target. He repeated the process three more times, until a line of five holes stretched across the dike.

With his arms now shaking, he lifted the tool back into the truck and used his shirt to wipe more sweat off his face and neck. But the motion was a waste of time since his shirt was soaked too. He rummaged in the truck and grabbed another gadget, one he'd designed himself. It included a two-foot-long plastic tube, with a bucket on the top. At the top of the tube, right under the bucket, he'd mounted a ball valve. He opened another bucket and poured white pellets into his tool, filling the bucket on top. The substance, ammonium nitrate fertilizer, was the same as he had used at
Glen
Canyon
. He carried the gadget over to the first hole, put the bottom of the tube in the hole, opened the ball valve, and felt the fertilizer drop into the hole. He shook it to get it all out. It took four more trips before all five holes were filled. Next he used the same tool to put diesel fuel into all five holes. He was almost finished.

He looked past the pickup toward the police roadblock, but the police were busy with a line of almost ten cars. Opening the truck's passenger door and reaching behind the seat, he retrieved five small cylinder-shaped devices with wires hanging out of them. He had designed these detonators himself, just like the ones he used at
Glen
Canyon
. With a converted broom handle, he tucked a detonator in each hole with the wires hanging out. Holding the wires, he kicked the loose gravel back in the hole, stopping occasionally to use the broom handle to tamp the gravel. With all five holes done, he took a roll of wire out of the truck and connected all five sets of wires together. A small motorcycle battery and a timer completed the project.

He loaded the truck and shut the tailgate. He checked the guard shack one more time, and seeing nothing, bent down to set the timer. He'd planned on ten minutes, scripting the whole scenario, but his subconscious kept nagging him to do fifteen. He compromised at twelve. He pressed the button and a small red light illuminated while the digital timer started counting down from twelve. He immediately stood and walked around the truck. As he came around the back, he tripped on something. He looked down and saw the wires. Damn! With the timer still running, he quickly checked the connections between the five holes, making sure all five sets of wires were still connected. They looked fine.

He jumped in the truck, hoping it would start. Thankfully, it did, and he drove back along the dike. It took all his self-control to resist the urge to floor it and speed down the hill. When he finally pulled up to the roadblock, he could feel the hair standing up on the back of his neck. The Bureau guard stepped over to talk. The man had hoped to get waved through.

"What'd ya find out?" the guard said, looking in the back of the truck.

"Dry as a bone, just as I expected."

This seemed to relieve the guard. "I guess that's good news. This dam's likely to get a good work out for the next couple days with all the water headed our way."

The skinny man had a hard time not rushing his words.
"Yeah.
You know it."

"So ya think it'll hold?" asked the guard.

For some reason, the question caught him off guard. No, it wasn't going to hold. It would explode in eight and a half minutes and counting. For a moment his brain told him to warn the guy, tell him to get away as fast as he could, to not look back. He felt like screaming, "There's a bomb, you idiot! It's going to blow! Get out of here!" But he didn't. Instead, he responded in a calm, clear voice that surprised even him. "Yeah, it'll hold. No problem. But there's going to be a ton of water barreling out of those spillways."

"Unbelievable," said the guard, looking over at the dam itself. "Unbelievable."

The skinny man nodded. "You said it. Things are going to get a little crazy around here."

The guard smiled and stepped back, an unspoken signal that he was free to leave.

* * *

10:10 p.m. -
Davis
Dam,
Nevada

Blaine Roberts leaned against a police car and sipped his coffee. They had been turning cars away from the dam for three hours straight and finally they caught a break. Maybe the word was finally getting around that they had closed the road across the dam.

What a night. He'd worked night shift security at Davis Dam for almost three years now. Nothing ever happened during the night shift. Then the disaster a few hundred miles upstream had changed everything. When he arrived at work at 8:30 p.m., the whole place buzzed like a stirred-up hornet's nest. They told him when he arrived that Hoover Dam, just sixty-five miles upstream, was going to try to catch all of the floodwater. Unfortunately for Davis Dam, that meant Hoover was dumping a ton of water, the most in its history - 250,000 cubic feet per second, ten times normal. It was going to get worse, too; when the water started to rise at
Hoover
, the flow would increase to almost 500,000 cubic feet per second. He summed it up to himself.
Unbelievable.

They had told him that in reaction to what
Hoover
was doing, this afternoon they had opened all the water works at Davis Dam. Unfortunately that wasn't enough. The water in
Lake
Mojave
was still rising over eight inches per hour, targeted to reach the top of the spillways a little after midnight. With full spillways, theoretically Davis Dam should be able to match Hoover Dam's 500,000 cubic feet per second, and the water in the lake would stop rising. None of that had ever been tested however.
Unbelievable.

In spite of everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off, the guy from the Bureau had been the first official visitor they'd had at Davis Dam today.
Blaine
was more than happy for the guy to go up on the dam and take some moisture measurements. Hell, he could measure all damn night if he wanted to, as long as he gave
Blaine
a heads-up if the dam was going to bust so he could get the hell out of here. It'd never bothered him earlier in the evening, but
Blaine
now wished the roadblock wasn't right below the earth dam. He'd prefer a place a little higher or maybe farther downstream.

When the guy from the Bureau returned from his inspection and his measurements, he had seemed calm and cool. He said the moisture tests went well, whatever that meant. The guy had acted like the whole thing was routine, as if he drove around taking moisture measurements every day in the face of dam failures.
Blaine
wondered if the guy would return later, when the spillways were going full blast. That was when the moisture measurements would mean something. The guy hadn't said anything about returning and
Blaine
hadn't thought to ask.

He stood and walked behind the police car to see if there were any more good donuts. The pink box sat on the hood of a second police car. He liked chocolate, but the only chocolate one left had coconut sprinkled on top, and
Blaine
was no fan of coconut. He grabbed it anyway because the sprinkles were easy to pick off. He leaned on the other car and looked up at the dam. He had never seen water in the spillways, not in his three years working here.

He glanced up at the gravel dike, holding back all the water in
Lake
Mojave
, just in time to see the explosion, a gray and black cloud shooting high into the air over the middle of the dike.
Blaine
instinctively ducked for cover. Looking back out to the dam he could make out rocks and other large clumps of material in the cloud. While
Blaine
watched, mesmerized, the sound wave hit him like a hammer, knocking him backwards. He dropped the donut. The intense pain in his ears caused him to drop the coffee as well in an attempt to cover them to protect them. He heard one of the policemen swear. He looked up at the dike again and saw that most of the debris had fallen, but a large cloud remained. He looked down at the ground and saw his spilled coffee and donut.

He articulated his feelings. "What the hell happened?" His ears were still ringing so loudly that ambient sounds were muffled.

Blaine
looked around. He knew the techs were over by the spillways someplace and he'd seen Billy, the other guard, walk over there too. Ears still ringing, he pulled his radio from his belt and looked at the display, half expecting the thing to be busted. The radio blasted before he tried to talk into it. It was Billy. "
Blaine
, you okay?"

Blaine
heard it, but just barely over the ringing in his ears. He turned up the volume and responded. "Roger, I'm okay, but my ears are ringing like a church bell. What happened?"

The radio squawked again. "We don't know what blew. From the control center, we heard it, but we couldn't see anything."

Blaine
looked back up on the dike where the dust had mostly settled and now he saw a thirty-foot-deep, thirty-foot-wide notch in the dike. He keyed the mike. "Unfreakin believable, there's a big hole blown out of the top of the dam."

There was silence after
Blaine
's description before Billy asked another question. "
Blaine
, the techs wanna know if there's any water, you know, coming out of the notch."

Blaine
looked hard, trying to see through the remaining cloud of dust. "It
don't
look like it."

There was silence again.
Blaine
guessed that Billy was talking to the techs.

Finally Billy said, "
Blaine
, the guys are going up to check it out. You'd better call
Hoover
and report it." The radio went silent for a second, then, "Maybe you'd better call the cops too."