Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Color

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

Grant reached out his hand. "Yeah. Grant Stevens." When they shook, Grant noticed the man's hands were sweaty.

"Name's Frank Kennedy. I'm the site supervisor for Imperial Dam."

"Nice to meet you, Frank," said Grant. He released the sweaty hand and wiped his on his pants. "What's happened so far at your dam?"

Frank pointed back toward the middle of Imperial Dam. "Well, in spite of how big that spillway looks, it ain't big enough for a half a million cubic feet." He looked up at Grant with an almost pleading look on his face. "You sure we're going to get that much water?"

Grant nodded. "Afraid so, Mr. Kennedy."

Frank glanced upstream.

Grant pointed north. "We just came from Palo Verde. We were there when they broke the dam. All that water's headed this way." Grant continued. "So your spillway won't handle it. What's the backup plan?"

Frank hesitated. "Well, our priority is to protect the canal and its desalinators." He pointed back toward the west end of the dam.

Grant's eyes were drawn to the head gates for the All American Canal, where the water was separated into three large ponds where the sediments were extracted. After the extraction, the sediment was flushed back into the Colorado River and sent to the Mexicans. He wondered if the Mexicans approved of the way the canal cleansed itself at the cost of dirtying their water. Kennedy had constructed a new dike almost ten feet high to protect the desalination ponds. Grant thought about the raging brown water racing down the riverbed below the Palo Verde Dam an hour before. Obviously, a ten-foot dike would not be nearly enough. He thought about telling Frank Kennedy, but decided there wasn't any point. It would just distract him from what Grant knew was a more important issue.

"What about opening up the dam a little bigger?" Grant asked.

Frank Kennedy looked back toward the middle of the structure, then back at Grant, a terrified look in his eyes.

"You did bring in some demolition guys like we told you to?"

"Yeah, they're here, but…" Frank couldn't finish the sentence. His eyes went down.

Grant shook his head. He felt the skin on his neck tighten. Nobody had guts anymore. He wondered if these guys would have reacted the same if they had seen the water pouring out of Lake Powell, or if they had seen the bodies floating in the water below Parker Dam, or the flooding below Palo Verde. He tried hard not to lose control. "Well, Mr. Kennedy, get 'em out on both sides of the spillway right now and start planting the charges." He looked at his watch. "We only have about forty minutes."

"But Mr. Stevens — "

Grant couldn't hold back. His anger took over as he shouted at Kennedy. "No buts, Mr. Kennedy! Get 'em out there right now! Either you widen the dam, or the river will, and the river most certainly will not do it the way you want it. It'll tear it apart in the place you least want it to."

"Where exactly should I ―"

"There's no time for exactness, Frank! You already pissed all your exactness time away. Get them to blow both sides of the spillway now." Grant saw the man look over at the dam with a blank look in his eyes. Grant couldn't stop himself. He reached out and grabbed the man's shoulder, a little too forcefully, and pointed to the concrete above the main river head gates. "There!" he said. He then swiveled toward the Gila Canal head gate on the other side. "And there!"

"But Mr. Stevens," pleaded the supervisor. "That will destroy both gates."

"I thought you wanted to save the All American Canal." Grant said, pointing back toward the settling tanks.

"Yeah, but what about the ―"

Grant stretched out his hands. "You can't save it all, Mr. Kennedy." He hesitated for a moment. "You'll be lucky if you save anything."

Frank Kennedy slowly raised a radio to his mouth. He pressed the button to talk, but looked like he didn't know what to say. Finally the words trickled out. "Okay. Let's send in the demolition guys. Split 'em up. Both sides of the spillway. Open it all the way from the Gila to the main river gates." His voice trembled when he finished.

He looked back at Grant. "I hope you know what you're doing Mr. Stevens."

Grant looked over and imagined water pouring over the top of the Imperial Dam. He looked back at Frank Kennedy. "Frank, I'm not worried about doing too much." He shook his head. "I'm worried we're not doing enough."

Forty minutes later Kennedy approached with his radio in his hand, his thumb on the button. "Okay. They'll be ready to detonate in a few minutes."

Frank Kennedy had changed in the last forty minutes. Once the decision was made to open up the dam, and the task switched from strategy to implementation, the man had acted like the supervisor he was. The indecisiveness was gone, replaced instead with pointing, directing, counseling, and tactical planning. Grant could tell the men respected Kennedy and responded to his directions. Obviously, the decision to blow up the dam, the dam he was in charge of, had been a little too much.

Grant was just about to respond, to tell them to go ahead and blast, when Shauna came running up. "Aren't you going to blow under the spillway? How come they're not putting any explosives there?"

Both Grant and Frank Kennedy stared at her for a moment before Grant answered. "What do you mean?" He motioned toward some dirt just downstream from the dam. "There?"

"No." She pointed at the center of the dam. "The spillway itself. If you blow the bottom out of it, the rest of the structure might survive." When both Grant and the supervisor mirrored blank stares, she continued. "You might not have to blow the head gates on both ends if you make the spillway deeper. It would be almost twice as deep," she added.

Grant felt confused. "But the dam is full of silt…" He realized his error as soon as he spoke. Yes, Imperial Dam was full of silt, but the floodwater would wash that out in no time. If they blew the bottom of the spillway, the spillway would be twice as tall, and would theoretically be able to flow well over 400,000 cubic feet per second. They could save the rest of the dam.

Grant looked at his watch, 4:50 p.m. Now they had less than an hour before the water arrived. "Shauna, that's brilliant. Where were you a half hour ago?"

Frank Kennedy shook his head. "That won't work. The dam's full of silt," he said, still looking confused.

"No, she's right," said Grant. "If we blow the bottom out of the spillways, the water will take care of the silt in no time. It would more than double the capacity of the spillway.

Frank nodded slowly, comprehension setting in. "She's right."

Frank lifted his radio to his mouth. He hesitated and looked at Grant who nodded confirmation. "Demolition team, hold everything. We have a last-minute change of plans. I need all available people to stop what they're doing, and instead, start planting explosives on the lower part of the spillway. We need the spillway to be deeper."

Grant heard a response from the radio, which he guessed was the guy in charge of the demolition team. "But Mr. Kennedy, isn't the water almost — "

Frank keyed the mike and shouted into the radio. "Yes, the water is almost here! That's why you need to hurry!"

"But if we're not done in time? Then we won't have blown anything."

Frank looked over at Grant.

"Have them leave a small team on the Gila side," said Grant quickly. "We can blow that as a backup."

Frank forwarded the instructions into the radio and almost immediately they saw the results as the men on the dam started hustling toward the center.

Grant looked anxiously at his watch again.

"I wish you still had your helicopter here so we could scout the water upstream," said Frank.

Grant nodded. He agreed. Hopefully Lloyd would be back soon. Grant wondered if the pilot had beaten the FBI to the airport.

The thought of sneaking past the FBI into Mexico was starting to bother Grant. What was driving him to do it? It wasn't his job to find the bomber. He had no expertise at apprehending criminals. But for the last two days, the FBI had shown no signs of solving this crime. They'd been two steps behind from the start. The FBI was better when they had time to do computer simulations, run background checks, and analyze information. This whole thing had gone down much too quickly. Grant realized it had been less than eighteen hours since the first bomb at the Glen Canyon Dam, and he was already over 500 miles from there. It felt like a lifetime ago.

And what about Mexico? It seemed like the FBI had no intentions of going past the border. Could they really trust the Mexican police to do this by themselves? What if Grant actually did sneak into Mexico and they found the bomber down there? The environmentalist would surely be there. Maybe they could follow him in the helicopter until the Mexican police could pick him up. But how could they communicate with the Mexicans on the radio? None of them spoke Spanish. What about Lloyd — did he? He had forgotten to ask the pilot. He wondered for a second what Roland and Howard and the other officers in the Bureau of Reclamation would think of his idea to go into Mexico after the bomber against the direct orders of the FBI. It was a line of thought that he did not want to explore. Frank's voice pulled him out of his thoughts.