Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Color

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He scratched his chin. Maybe the All American Canal would have to survive. It was a thought that took the energy out of him, and put a knot in his stomach.

He reached forward and pulled the shift lever into reverse. Turning his head from the canal, he looked over his shoulder and backed away from the motor home. If only there was something he could do to make them shut the gates. But what would possibly make them shut down canals that furnished water for irrigation and drinking to so many people?

He slammed on the brakes. The truck skidded to a stop in the sand. Of course! Why hadn't he thought about it before? What would make farmers want to shut it off? How would you get households to demand that their drinking water was turned off? He laughed out loud.

He shifted the truck into drive and headed back to the freeway. He needed a phonebook. The phone number for Imperial Dam would be best, but even the cops would do. It was starting to look like God loved the river as much as he did.

2:05 p.m. - Hoover Dam, Nevada

Fred Grainger watched the national guardsman place the last sandbag on Hoover-Two. The soldier slid it effortlessly in the gap between the two other bags. And it was done. The dike was complete.

For the first time since the construction began, the mass of national guardsmen stopped moving. They hesitated, glancing back and forth between each other. Then they started yelling. Arms pumped into the air, whistles were heard, clapping. Fred couldn't stop the smile from stretching across his face. They had done it, and none too soon. The water in Lake Mead was still rising, and had eclipsed the original height of Hoover Dam hours ago.

An hour earlier it had been touch and go, as the water had reached the top of some of the sandbags near the visitor center, and started to flow over the first phase of the dike. Since the twenty-foot-high second phase started from the Arizona side, the section on the Nevada side, by the visitor center, was the last to be finished. For a half hour the team scrambled to keep up, and Fred had worried that the water would open a large gap and get ahead of them, but it didn't happen. The men stayed one step ahead of the water until the larger dike grew west and closed the weak point. Since then, the soldiers had been building the dike up to its full twenty-foot height.

Fred looked east to the Arizona shore, and admired the sandbag extension. From a distance, the sandbags blended together perfectly, and the dike looked like it was made of concrete, but with an interwoven texture where the bags fit together. Fred was proud of what they had done, and he wished Grant and Shauna were here to see it. So far it was working, just as Grant had planned. Lake Mead was higher than ever in history: crest plus almost eleven feet. Although the next few hours would be nerve-racking as the water continued to rise, Fred was confident that the dike would save Hoover Dam. With that thought in mind, he headed back into the visitor center to call Grant.

2:10 p.m. - Palo Verde Dam, California

According to their watches, the floodwater from Headgate Rock was due any moment. Grant did not expect anything spectacular. If everything went as planned, the water behind what was left of the Palo Verde Diversion Dam would rise between ten and fifteen feet for an hour or more, then gradually subside a few feet. The water being dumped through the head gates plus through the new notch in the dike would stabilize at just under 500,000 cubic feet per second, and remain like that for about two months. Five hundred thousand flowing through Palo Verde would be the most water in 70 years.

Lloyd stood next to Grant, watching upstream. Shauna had walked over by the reservoir and peered at a measuring stick again, while Agent Williams remained separated from the group, talking on her cell phone.

Don Simpson walked toward Grant and Lloyd from the house. The white dog followed him, wagging its tail. "I was just thinking," he said.

"I hate it when that happens," whispered Lloyd.

Grant laughed, but put his hand on Lloyd's to signal him to be quiet. "Thinking what, Don?"

The irrigation manager stopped in front of them. His cowboy boots weren't shiny anymore. "I was just thinking that when Headgate Rock broke, it let all its water out at once, just like we did. Doesn't that mean that we're going to get a tidal wave down here?"

Grant shook his head. "When we flew over it in the helicopter, it had already jumped out of its channel and spread out. Looked like it was going to flood all the Reservation farms upstream. Anyway, that will disperse it. We might get more water during the first hour, but I don't expect any tidal waves."

Grant felt a wet nudge under his hand and looked down at the dog's pleading eyes. He scratched behind its ears. Living clear out here, the dog probably only encountered visitors occasionally. But with all the people on the dam, the dog was getting lots of action. The dog had no sense of the flood to come. In a way, Grant envied the dog.

"It's started," yelled Shauna from the reservoir. "The level just rose an inch."

Grant saw a group of policemen sitting in the shade under the willow tree stand and move toward the water. Grant walked over to where Shauna stood.

She pointed at a measuring stick in the water. "Look at it for a second, you can almost see it rising."

Grant stared at the stick, while the water lapped against it. He couldn't see anything move, but sometime during the thirty seconds he stared, it went up another inch.

"See?" Shauna said.

He stood and looked upstream. One of his clearest memories from Headgate Rock Dam was the trailer houses being piled up against the railroad bridge. Although illogical, Grant couldn't help wondering if he would see a mobile home drift around the corner.

"Another inch," called out Shauna to a growing crowd.

Don arrived and stood next to Grant. "When will the peak ―"

"Another one," said Shauna.

"Now," answered Grant. "We only expect the peak to lag the leading edge by five or ten minutes."

"Two more," called Shauna. She pointed at the stick. "Now you can actually see it rising."

Grant looked back at the stick. Sure enough, he could see the water rising on the index marks. If he hadn't known better, he would have sworn it was the stick sinking into the mud, not the water rising.

He left the small crowd gathered around the stick and walked back to where he could look downstream. If the current had increased below the dam, it wasn't visible, at least not to him.

"What do you think?" Lloyd asked.

Grant shook his head. "I can't see any difference over here."

"Did you expect to?"

"No, not yet." Grant cocked his head around and looked downstream.

When they first arrived at Palo Verde, two clean green streams exited the dam, the river itself and a large canal. Both flowed in man-made channels, which only covered a small percentage of the original riverbed. Trees and other bushes grew in the other sections. Now, brown water covered the entire expanse, having toppled most of the trees. Brush poked up through the water in places and wet marks were visible on the banks.

"Looks kind of like a lull in the storm, doesn't it?" Lloyd said.

Grant looked back at Lloyd and nodded. "Yeah, hopefully whatever wildlife lived in the riverbed will take the hint and get out while the getting's good. Heaven knows there's not going to be anymore lulls for several months."

Lloyd pointed toward the slice where they broke the dike. "I have a question. What's going to happen to the dike, after two months of floodwater? Won't that tear it up even worse?"

Grant shrugged. "Sure. It'll probably be two or three times wider by August, when Hoover's spillways shut down. That's the whole reason we wanted a controlled break. Even if it grows by a factor of three, it'll still be a ways from the concrete structure and the head gates, and that's what we wanted to save."

Lloyd held out his hands. "It all comes from us taxpayer's pockets anyway, don't it?"

Grant laughed. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean I like the government throwing money down holes when people are stupid."

"Then why are you working for the Bureau? I bet you guys waste as much as anybody in the government."

Grant nodded. "You have no idea. I ask myself why I work there every day. Unfortunately, it's too late to go anywhere else."

Lloyd raised his eyebrows. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

"Sure. Where would I go? You think your company would hire a washed-up dam engineer as a helicopter pilot?"

"No, but there's got to be some place."

"Oh, it happens, occasionally. Other countries are still building dams. But then I'd have to move my family to Brazil or China. I could always try to slide sideways and become a bridge or freeway designer, but then I'd be starting over and competing with college grads."

Lloyd shook his head. "You're an engineer. You talk like you're all washed up."

Grant smiled. "I am. For the most part, American engineers as a breed are headed for extinction."

"What are you talking about? Engineers are the brains behind everything. They design our cities."

"Not if we can outsource it," Grant said. "Haven't you noticed how many electrical engineers have been laid off over the last twenty years? U.S. companies are figuring out that they can outsource more than labor to third-world countries. Have you called tech support for your computer lately?"