Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Color

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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.

Although the fireworks were impressive, they were less than he had expected and he felt certain the entire effort had been in vain. He strained to assess the damage, specifically if any water was leaking from the dam. Unfortunately, his view of the face of the dam was totally obstructed by a huge cloud of smoke. He stepped closer and craned his neck for a better look. The smoke swirled and for a moment he thought he saw something, then his view was blocked again. He needed to leave now, but he also needed to know.

Then he saw it: a single stream of water spraying from the small hole. It looked to be no more than two feet in diameter. He couldn't believe he hadn't seen it before. The pressure, 200 feet down in the reservoir, created a solid spray way out into the river, although because of his angle, it was impossible to tell the distance for sure. It was definitely far enough to clear the generation plants at the base of the dam.

As he watched, the water seemed to jerk, and change its trajectory. There was much more water now. He now estimated the column at least five feet in diameter. The jerking continued every couple of seconds, each time resulting in higher water flow. It reminded him of holding a frozen garden hose in the winter and feeling the water force the pieces of ice out the end of the hose.

He couldn't have hoped for a better result. The water tearing through the hole two hundred feet down in the dam was enough to continually carve at the dam. It would disintegrate rapidly. Not nearly as fast as an earth dam, but plenty fast enough. He had heard that if you could drill a small dime-sized hole through the face of a dam, the water rushing through the hole would eventually tear the dam apart. He would have loved to test that exact hypothesis, dangling from a rope from the top of the dam, but was fairly sure that the security people at Glen Canyon wouldn't have sponsored the experiment.

He watched for a moment longer. The water was now blasting. If only he could stay and watch it tear itself apart. He knew he could not. He needed to make St. George, Utah and I-15 before the cops figured out what happened and blocked the road, or the remainder of the week would be jeopardized. He turned and headed back toward the motorcycle. As he pulled back onto the highway, he glanced back at the rising sun. It was almost completely above the horizon. The LCD display of his digital watch showed 6:08 a.m. What a great day this was going to be.

CHAPTER 7

6:08 a.m. - Page, Arizona

Jim Nance heard the explosion while completing his security walk above the turbines in the base of the dam. Jim had worked graveyard security at the dam for three years without ever hearing anything that loud. He figured the sound came from the base of the dam and started running in that direction. When he arrived at the west end of the plant, he met Peter Hansen, a technician, running down the stairs from the control room.

The technician pointed toward the dam. "What was that? Something blow up?"

Jim nodded. "Sounded like it. From down there someplace." He pointed down the west elevator access hallway. "Is that where you were headed?"

Peter shrugged. "I don't know. I was just checking it out."

Jim continued jogging down the hall and Peter fell in behind.

They ran out the plant door, and across the walkway toward the dam. On their right a large expanse of grass had been planted on the roof of the structure to mitigate the dust. Jim reached for the glass door into the dam, and both men shot through. Jim led them down the long corridor. Up ahead, around the corner to their right, would be the west elevator. When the two men rounded the corner, they both stopped.

Water poured out of the west elevator shaft and smashed against the wall across the hallway. After hitting the wall, the water curled upwards ripping off ceiling tiles, and then headed down the hallway toward them. To Jim, it seemed like a dump truck had dumped a load of water at him, a dump truck with no end. Until now he had never understood why a deer would freeze in the headlights of an oncoming car. However, at that moment he understood the principle perfectly. He wanted to turn and run from this wall of water advancing toward him, but in spite of his desire, both he and Peter stood like statues while a large wave carrying a metal trashcan hit them head on. In the instant before the water hit, Jim heard his radio squawk, "The dam blew! Everybody get-"

Jim missed the rest when the wall of water hit him, but he could have guessed how the message ended anyway. The water knocked both men off their feet. In the fall, Jim dropped his radio and his head went under. He tried to secure footing to stand, but couldn't find traction on the wet tile. For a moment it felt like he was at the water park with his kids. The feeling of being carried, arms flailing and body thrashing, was similar. At a certain point, he realized the water had washed them around the corner and back down the long corridor, but he had no memory of going around the corner. He bumped into Peter several times, but not enough to hurt.

At that moment, Jim remembered the glass door at the end of the corridor, and he panicked at getting caught inside as the area filled with water. How would he open it? Then it hit him that the door opened out, and the water wouldn't have any trouble opening it. While he was thinking of just that, his head came up for long enough to see that they were almost at the door. He felt the water slow slightly, then suddenly accelerate again as he was sucked out the door.