Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River (9 page)

By 5:00 a.m., he had the control panel open in the elevator, exposing the wires. He placed cones around the back of the trailer to discourage anyone from walking in. He hoped the guard wouldn't come back until he finished what he needed to do.

Out of the tool belt on his waist, he pulled a disassembled cell phone that had been wired into a small circuit board. He had already tested the phone back in Vegas, and he knew his modifications would work. He placed the phone up high, almost to the ceiling of the elevator,
then
duct taped it to the wall. He checked the signal strength and saw three bars, which was good enough, something he had worried about. Sorting through the wires from the control panel of the elevator, he found the two he was looking for. He bared some of the insulation from the two wires and then clipped a wire to each from the circuit board. He then quickly replaced the control panel. After close inspection, he saw that everything looked normal except for the two wires connected to the cell phone and circuit board. If anyone looked up, they would think it was a bomb. However, he had no intentions of letting anyone see it.

Now things would get exciting. He walked outside and peeked around the back of the trailer at the guard shack. He could see the guard was still in the shack. He knew he didn't have much time. He hustled back into the trailer, and removed the false wall, where the night before he had retrieved the single hair. Before, with the false wall in place, someone could have noticed that the inside wasn't even half the size of the outside. However, he had not intended to let anyone get a good look.

Now with the panels gone, a dozen white metal fifty-gallon barrels were exposed, stacked three wide, two high, and two deep. He used a special dolly with a lift jack to grab the first barrel off the top row. When he first tried to move the barrels back in Vegas he was surprised at how heavy they were, hence the expensive dolly. He wheeled the barrel down a metal ramp out of the trailer and right into the elevator. Laying it down on its side on the floor he shoved the barrel's bottom against the back of the elevator. A few minutes later a whole row of barrels were lying on their sides against the back of the elevator. He was on his way back to get the next barrel when he heard the security guard's voice.

"Everything all right in there?"

The sound made him freeze. He wiped sweat off his forehead,
then
poked his head out from behind the trailer. The security man had walked down the access road onto the dam, but headed west toward the visitor center door instead of toward the elevator.

He yelled out to him, "Yeah, I'm just checking everything right now."

The man waved and kept walking toward the visitor center.

He increased his pace on the remaining barrels. Fifteen minutes later he had all twelve barrels stacked, four wide and three high, against the back of the elevator. The elevator sagged slightly at the weight and no longer lined up perfectly with the floor. With the last barrel in place he removed the clamp off one of the top barrels and removed the metal lid. The inside was packed tight with what looked like dirty white crystals or pellets. The smell of diesel invaded his nostrils when the lid came off. He removed the remaining lids and tossed them in the small room outside the elevator shaft, the smell of fuel now strong in the elevator.

He hustled back into the trailer twice and retrieved the footlocker on one trip, and a car battery on the next. He set the car battery under the elevator control panel, and then opened the footlocker. He pulled a metal tube almost eighteen inches long and an inch in diameter out of the box. The tube had two wires hanging out of it. He forcefully rammed it in one of the barrels until only the wires were visible. The motion dislodged white pellets which trickled to the floor. He took no notice, continuing working until all twelve barrels had wires hanging out of them. He then spent the next few minutes wiring them together. He finished by connecting them to the circuit board and finally to the car battery. When he connected the car battery, a red LED illuminated on the circuit board.

He took a moment to check his work. The materials he used were all readily available. The white pellets were the hardest to get, and required that he make a purchase in
Utah
, using his grandfather's name for their farm in southern
Utah
. Even the farm stores wouldn't sell that much fertilizer to a city boy. The ammonium nitrate fertilizer was common enough, if you had a good reason to buy it. Of course his grandfather was too old to notice that it never made it onto the fields.

Although he had heard about ammonium nitrate being used for bombs, most notably the
Oklahoma
Federal
Building
, it had been a surprise to learn that ammonium nitrate was not the core of the bomb. The explosive part of the bomb was the diesel fuel itself. The ammonium nitrate only acted as an accelerant, providing an oxygen boost during the chemical reaction of the explosion. However, gasoline bombs, with and without the fertilizer, were not in the same league, as evidenced in Oklahoma, where the bomb sliced through ten stories of the Federal Building as if it were cut with a knife.

One of his biggest concerns for this bomb was channeling the explosive. Since the elevator shaft traveled down the downstream side of the dam, he needed the bulk of the explosion to be channeled upstream. That's why he pushed the barrels back against the back wall of the elevator, and left the fronts open. Explosions take the path of least resistance, and he hoped that the bomb would get plenty of upstream momentum before it hit the huge wall of concrete. It wouldn't do any good to blow the elevator shaft apart. He needed it focused upstream, to channel the explosion.

The detonators had been made using household chemicals and electronics. He had driven out in the desert one weekend and tried one and was surprised at how violent of an explosion the little suckers made. They needed to be pretty hot, to get the ammonium nitrate and diesel to react the way he needed it to.

Admiring what he had done in the elevator, he felt mixed emotions. On one hand it looked great. It had gone together exactly as he had envisioned it. On the other hand, he wondered if it would be enough. He needed to blast through nearly a hundred feet of concrete. Would any bomb be powerful enough to do that?

He reminded himself to keep moving, so he stepped out of the elevator and turned the key to let the door shut. He taped a strip of yellow stripping labeled CAUTION across the elevator door, although if anyone walked in, the smell of diesel would tip them off. He hustled out of the building and noticed that the security man was back in his shed. Walking around to the front of the trailer, he unhitched it. He wouldn't
be needing
it anymore.

The guard was waiting for him when he drove up the access road. But it wasn't Brian, it was someone else. His tag read "Jessie."

The new guard walked right up to the truck's window and looked inside. "What's wrong?"

He leaned out. "The good news is I found the lever that's starting to stick. That's probably why the
thing was hit and miss
. The bad news is I ran out of grease. I need to run into town for a second and get another tube of grease."

The guard checked his watch. "Everything's gonna be closed."

"I can get this grease at the gas station. I should be back in a few minutes."

The guard walked over to unlock the gate. "You gonna be done by eight?"

He responded out the window as he drove past. "Don't worry. I'll be miles down the road by eight. I guarantee it."

CHAPTER 6

6:00 a.m. -
Lake Powell
,
Utah

"Okay, everybody ready?" Without waiting for an answer, Greg turned the key and fired up the Mastercraft.

Paul stood on the deck of the houseboat and unwound the rope from the two cleats. He tossed the rope into the water-ski boat, pushed off, and jumped in. He sat in the seat facing backwards from Greg. Julie sat in the other front seat next to her husband, and Erika sat facing backwards from her. Erika was rubbing her eyes, still half asleep. Greg shifted to forward and idled away from the houseboat.

Julie felt bad that Max and Darlene were staying behind, although spending the morning with just Paul and Erika would be fun. She felt the boat throttle up, and her body was pulled back into her seat. Julie watched her husband. He looked over at her and smiled. She relaxed and took in the majestic scenery all around them. The rising sun cast long shadows in the canyon. It had been hard to get going so early, but it was worth it. She loved being in these remote canyons. She grabbed the armrest on her seat as the boat banked in to a slow turn around a bend. She looked ahead and saw another curve. Every time they left the houseboat, she meant to count the number of twists and turns it took them to get to the main channel, but she never remembered until they were half way. This time she remembered but didn't feel like counting.

She turned and glanced back over her shoulder at Erika, who was gazing up at the red rock walls behind. Erika looked tired and had not spoken since they woke. Paul and Greg looked calm and happy. Julie changed her mind. Let Max and Darlene enjoy the morning alone. What difference did it make that they were separating for the day anyway?

* * *

6:05 a.m. - Page,
Arizona

The man rode his motorcycle onto the
Glen
Canyon
Bridge
. The white truck was back on

Navajo Street

, safely parked inside the storage unit, away from curious
eyes. After riding over the bridge, he continued slowly up the hill. He glanced in his mirrors to verify no one was behind him. The image of hundreds of police officers, sirens wailing, kept projecting into his subconscious mind. However, a quick scan of the road ahead and behind revealed that he was alone. Page,
Arizona
was not an early-bird town.

Approximately fifty yards up the hill, he pulled over to the side of the road. He put the bike on its kickstand and dismounted. He left the engine running. He pulled a cell phone from an inside pocket of his jacket. It seemed to tingle in his fingers. He walked across the street to the other side where he had a better view back toward the Glen Canyon Dam. Every movement seemed to be playing in slow motion in his head. The sun had just poked its head above the horizon. The effect left the rock walls on the opposite side of the canyon in darkness while sunning the ground under his feet. He focused on the huge concrete structure. Night lights still lit the top of the dam. Everything looked normal. No blinking police lights, no sirens.

He held the cell phone in front of him and dialed the nine-digit number from memory. Before he hit send, he hesitated. He thought about the
Colorado River
. He fantasized about it breaking through all the man-made chastity belts blocking it from where it wanted to go. Maybe the city dwellers, especially the greedy Californians, would finally have to conserve a little, turn down the sprinklers, turn off the water fountains,
drain
some of the pools and artificial lakes. He snickered as a scene floated through his head of a big fat guy diving into an empty swimming pool, the guy squishing head first into the bottom of the pool and tipping over, like in a cartoon.

He stopped the images. He'd come here for a reason. None of it would happen if he didn't press the button. In a moment of frustration, his head told his thumb to press, but it wouldn't obey. How could it all fall apart now, at the final moment? The thought made him angry. His brain sent the signal again, and this time he felt the small button click under the pressure. He stared at it for a second then cupped it to his ear. He heard two rings, then a connection, then nothing.

In the west elevator of the Glen Canyon Dam, another cell phone, this one with wires hanging out of it, rang twice and stopped. Electricity from the phone's ringer traveled onto a small circuit board, through a voltage relay, then down two wires into the elevator control panel. The elevator reacted immediately by starting down. Simultaneously a digital timer started a very quick countdown. Since the elevator was near capacity, stuffed with twelve barrels of ammonium nitrate soaked in diesel fuel, the downward motion began with a jerk. The elevator continued to descend into the dam. Exactly 18 seconds after the cell phone started its motion, the elevator had traveled approximately two hundred feet from the top of the dam. At that moment, the timer expired. A very small electrical current traveled from the timer to a voltage relay. This relay sent a much larger current from the car battery to the homemade detonation devices tucked into each barrel of ammonium nitrate. The result was immediate and forceful. Because of the way the explosives were packed in the elevator, the energy of the explosion was channeled horizontally upstream toward the lake side of the dam.

The skinny man timed the 18 seconds on his watch. It seemed like an eternity. For an instant, he thought something had gone wrong. Then directly below where the vertical elevator disappeared into the dam, a ball of fire and concrete exploded out of the face of the dam. Chunks of concrete fell to the river four hundred feet below. An instant later the top of the elevator shaft on the top of the dam exploded upwards, scattering debris in all directions. A crushing sound wave followed both explosions. The skinny man ducked instinctively.