Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River (61 page)

Grant glanced around again.
"Nothing?
No permits?"

Lloyd shook his head.
"As long as we don't try to land."

"Good."

Lloyd held up a finger. "There are other issues, besides the Mexicans and pissing off the Feds. I don't think my chopper's insured in
Mexico
."

Grant hadn't considered insurance. "How much would it cost to replace?"

"More than I'll make the rest of my life," Lloyd said.

"How about we worry about that problem later?"

Lloyd lowered his voice. "We'll need fuel."

"Can you get fuel in
Yuma
?"

Lloyd nodded. "Sure."

Grant lowered his voice. "All right, when we get to Imperial Dam, you take off and get some fuel."

"Won't it look suspicious, leaving you guys at the dam?"

Grant saw movement in Lloyd's eyes and looked over his shoulder to see both women exiting the restrooms.

Grant rushed his words. "Doesn't it need gas anyway?"

Lloyd winked.

"Hey, what are you guys whispering about?" said Agent Williams.

Grant stammered, embarrassed about getting caught.

Lloyd filled the silence. "We were just talking about how flattering those FBI coveralls look."

Both women looked at Grant, not Lloyd, and he felt his face flush.

Lloyd smiled. "No. That's not what I meant. What we were saying is that they're very practical in this hot weather, especially if you don't wear anything under them."

Grant saw Shauna gasp while Agent Williams looked over at her, then both women looked at Grant again, although this time Grant sensed that they were not sure whether to believe Lloyd.

Agent Williams shifted her look to Lloyd. "Are you messing with me?"

Lloyd shook his head.
"No, ma'am.
I have a policy to never mess with anybody who's packing." He pointed at her forty
caliber
Glock.

Grant wondered if Lloyd was making it worse, but the pilot didn't seem nervous. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself. During the standstill, Lloyd reached over and stole a couple more of the uneaten fries from the special agent.

She stared hard at him. It made Grant nervous. Finally her expression broke, and a slight smile appeared. "You touch one more of my fries, and I'll gun you down right here."

The pilot looked nervous for a second, pulling his arm back, then suddenly lurched forward, grabbing her whole carton of fries. She reacted as if she were under fire, broadening her stance and grabbing the handle of her weapon.

Grant saw a man at the next table jump in his seat, his eyes wide, and mouth hanging open.

Agent Williams released her hand from the weapon and pointed at Lloyd, smiling wider. "You're just lucky my gun was snapped in, or my reflexes might have taken over."

The pilot stuffed the fries in his mouth and took a swig of his drink. "That's the story of my life with women, just one snap away from the action."

Grant was laughing so hard he couldn't breathe. After he regained control of himself, he stood and gathered the garbage from the table onto his tray.
"Enough comedy.
Let's head out. We got another 80 miles to Imperial Dam."

The two women pitched in while Lloyd refilled his soda. A moment later Lloyd held the door and
they
all headed back into the desert heat.

* * *

3:45 p.m. - Border between the
United States
and
Mexico

The thin man passed from
Calexico
,
California
into
Mexicali
,
Mexico
. The security on the border reminded him of a two-way mirror, where you could see out, but not in. The entrance into
Mexico
was a straight shot; he hardly had to slow down. Yet cars were lined up for a mile going the other way, and he could see that each driver entering the
United States
was being stopped and questioned.

Before he crossed, he passed many stores that advertised Mexican car insurance. On all of his past trips he had always paid the money. He knew his normal car insurance wouldn't cover him in Mexico, and he'd heard the horror stories of Americans getting thrown into Mexican jails after an accident due to lack of insurance. It just wasn't worth the risk, not for twenty bucks a day.

But this particular trip was different. He had worried about all those things before when he couldn't afford to be locked up in
Mexico
. He could not afford to jeopardize his goal over a trivial issue such as car insurance. But this time when he pulled up to the insurance store, he sat in the car and wondered what to do. For the last year he had planned meticulously for this. It had consumed him. But today he realized that he had given no thought to his life after. To be honest, he was surprised to have gotten away with it, expecting to either be caught by the police, or more likely, killed. But he was not dead, nor incarcerated.

Sitting in the parking lot he realized that he didn't know what came next. One plan included heading farther south into Baja for a couple of days. He could camp and kill time until he felt safe crossing back into the
U.S.
But he had never spent any time thinking about the details, and realized now that he had no food, sleeping bag, or even water jugs for such an excursion.
And what of the car insurance?

Realistically, the police would eventually track him down. He felt sure of it. Yet now that he had made it this far, he wondered if there were things he should have done just in case he was successful. Fake I.D. would have been a good start. Maybe even airplane tickets out of
Tijuana
or Cabo San Lucas. But where would he go? And what would he do when he arrived? He had no money for a life of exile. But he couldn't really go back to work on Monday either. Or could he?

In the end, he bought the car insurance, a seven-day policy. If he wound up wandering around in Baja, at least he wouldn't be thrown in jail for an auto accident. He laughed at the thought of the FBI finding him in a Mexican jail, being held for a fender bender. Actually, if he told the Mexicans that he was the one responsible for releasing the
Colorado
, they just might let him go. It was an interesting thought. But how would he tell them? He didn't speak Spanish.

A horn honking behind him brought him out of his daze. He was in the wrong lane. He waved his arm out the window and moved left to where he should have been. The street signs were just different enough to give him an uneasy feeling when driving in
Mexico
. He rubbed his eyes and focused ahead.

Mexico
's Highway 5 headed south through
Mexicali
. After exiting the city, it would eventually run alongside the last of the
Colorado River
. Forty miles south of
Mexicali
, the river dried up completely. From there, the highway continued another fifty miles along the edge of the dried-up river delta, and eventually went through San Felipe on the coast of the
Gulf of California
. His map showed the road continuing south, finally linking with Highway 1 that stretched all the way to Cabo San Lucas, a thousand miles away at the bottom of the
Baja
Peninsula
. But south of San Felipe, the line on his map was small indicating a dirt or gravel road. Maybe he would head south after tonight. Cabo sounded like a good place to get lost. But the road was unknown to him, and it reminded him how little preparation he had made for success.

He glanced at his watch. There was plenty of time. A news report on the radio estimated the floodwater was traveling about twenty miles per hour. Another station said twenty-five. Either way, the water should reach the delta sometime late that evening. It would be better to have firm time estimates, but that was a luxury he didn't have. He would reach it in time; that was the main thing. He would be there to see the delta restored.

CHAPTER 36

4:10 p.m. - North of
Yuma
,
Arizona

From the helicopter, they could see the concrete structure of the Imperial Dam. Unlike the last two dams, Imperial was entirely concrete and stretched all the way across the small canyon, for a total length of over 3000 feet. In spite of its length, the dam looked unimpressive, only thirty-one feet tall in the middle, with slightly larger concrete head gates on both sides.

As they flew over the structure, Grant could make out three streams flowing from the dam. From west to east, the first and by far the largest was the
All
American
Canal
on the
California
side. Next to it, and only a third as big, was the remainder of the
Colorado River
. Then, on the far eastern shore, the
Gila
Main
Canal
flowed from gates into
Arizona
.

In the middle of the concrete structure, between the Colorado River and the
Gila
Canal
, was a thousand-foot-long section that was twenty feet lower than the rest of the structure. Water constantly trickled over this entire section, creating a green carpet of moss on the concrete slope down to the river below. This lower middle section at Imperial Dam was designed to handle any overflow and therefore acted as Imperial Dam's spillway system.

Most people know that dams will eventually silt up as the river deposits its dirt and debris into the mouth of the reservoir. After hundreds of years, the silt will eventually fill the entire reservoir, leaving no storage space for water and rendering the dam useless. Although Imperial Dam was only built in the late 1930s, it was already completely silted. Being less than thirty feet deep, the dirty
Colorado
made quick work of the small reservoir. Grant heard that only three small channels remained in the reservoir, one to each set of head gates, though he couldn't see them through the murky water. What he could see, however, was a huge patch of reeds and other water plants growing right out of the middle of the lake, leaving no doubt as to the reservoir's depth, or lack thereof.

A quick visual inventory of potential damage spots indicated a small mobile home development on the east bank of the reservoir, but most of it looked to be located at high enough elevations so as to not be affected by the next two months of flooding. Below the dam, however, it was obvious that everything would be underwater. A flat gully almost three miles wide, littered with willows and other brush, marked the original
Colorado River
channel. The gully looked to be just over five miles long before it opened into the farmland just north of
Yuma
,
Arizona
. Access roads, both to the trailer park and to the dam itself, connected to a small highway in the bottom of the gully, and Grant knew that both would shortly be inaccessible. Both sides of the dam were littered with police officers and their patrol cars, as Grant had seen at the other dams upstream.

Grant pointed to a gravel patch near the main head gates on the west side. "Put us down over there."

The helicopter banked immediately before descending to the gravel. Before anyone could exit, Lloyd's voice could be heard in the headphones. "You guys hop out. I'll run into
Yuma
and get some fuel. I should be back in an hour."

Grant looked over at the pilot and they made eye contact. "Okay, we'll see you in a while." Grant looked at his watch,
then
added, "Things should look different when you get back."

"Will I be able to land here?"

Grant looked
around,
trying to predict what would be flooded. He pointed just west of the concrete structure. "If not, that little knoll oughta work."

"10-4," said the pilot.

Before Grant removed the headphones, he heard Special Agent Williams' voice. "Look around in the
Yuma
airport for the FBI team. They should be arriving pretty soon in a private charter."

Lloyd looked over at Grant, his eyes prompting a response.

"Just do what you need to do," Grant instructed Lloyd. "If anyone asks, tell them we expect our flood by quarter to five, and we'll meet them at the
Yuma
airport sometime between 5:15 and 5:30."

Lloyd nodded, and the three passengers opened the doors and hopped out. Grant crouched and jogged from under the rotors, and by the time he was clear, the helicopter had already taken off. Grant watched the chopper disappear into the distance.

A middle-aged guy in a suit and tie approached with a policeman alongside.
"You from the Bureau?"