Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Color

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The leading edge was small, only a few inches deep. It was traveling much slower than the twenty miles per hour he had heard on the radio. Of course, that was due to it spreading out on the delta. It meandered around small humps before rejoining itself. He was easily able to stay just out of its reach even in first gear, although jogging would have been a challenge. Tempting fate, once he allowed the water to catch his back tires, but when he accelerated, they spun and he wondered if he would be able to extract himself. He had to rock back and forth while feathering the throttle to get back ahead of it, and he felt lucky to have done it.

After a few minutes he saw water to the west, ahead of him. He felt stupid for screwing around. His only choice was swerve south, and go fast enough to get around it. He shifted to second, then third and applied full throttle. He rode that way for a few minutes. Eventually he could not see the water anymore. It was still coming, though. That he knew for sure.

He headed back west toward his truck, not straight toward it, because then the water would intersect him again, but at a southwest angle that would put him miles south of his truck. He rode this way for only a few minutes before he again saw the contrast of oncoming water. This panicked him and he veered directly south. The water was coming too fast for him to cross in front of it. He accelerated, but the four-wheeler bounced uncontrollably over the small dunes and he almost crashed. He slowed slightly and settled on what he considered top speed for the terrain. He knew it was not fast enough, though, and he had little hope of reaching his truck. After gaining some distance, he veered slightly southwest again, just in case.

CHAPTER 40

8:50 p.m. - The Colorado River Delta, Mexico

Grant looked ahead from the helicopter, but it all looked the same, and it was getting too dark. What if the environmentalist wasn't here? He had led this wild goose chase across the border for nothing. They would fire him for sure, and he would be the laughingstock of the Bureau. What if the Mexican police had already apprehended the man? Grant had never really given them a chance, but now he realized he might have underestimated them. They could have him in custody right now. Either way, Grant would look like an idiot, hijacking a helicopter and crossing the border against direct orders from the FBI. What had he been thinking?

"What's that up ahead?" Lloyd asked through the headphones.

Grant jolted in his seat. "What? Where?" He scanned the horizon for a person or some sort of vehicle. Maybe the environmentalist was driving a dune buggy like the protestors.

Lloyd motioned southwest of the helicopter, then quickly returned his hand to the controls. "Looks like bushes or something, in a line."

Grant saw what Lloyd was talking about. It was a line of bushes stretching north and south. At over a hundred miles per hour, the helicopter approached quickly and Grant saw that it was actually two lines of bushes with an expanse of dark sand in the middle. He recognized it immediately as the lagoon coming up from the ocean just south of the delta. The lagoon was mostly dry with only a few puddles, which told Grant the tide had withdrawn.

Lloyd slowed the helicopter. "Where now?"

Grant looked north. "I wonder how far the water is. It should get here pretty soon." He saw nothing, but it was dark and he knew the water was out there on the horizon, coming very quickly.

The helicopter hovered over the empty lagoon.

Grant pointed to the west shore, at the bushes on the shore. "He would be on that side."

"What makes you say that?" Special Agent Williams asked.

Grant considered the question. He had just assumed that the environmentalist would come from the highway on the west. He had no reasoning for it. In fact, the protestors had come from the east. "I don't know. I just figured ―"

Lloyd interrupted. "You want to follow it north or south? We don't have much longer until we won't be able to see a thing."

Grant wanted to follow it north. He wanted to see the floodwater, but Shauna pointed out the front of the helicopter.

"Look!" she yelled. "The water."

Grant saw it too. A long, dark line moved toward them over the gray sand, both in the lagoon and outside of it. They all watched it come, mesmerized.

"How fast is that?" Shauna asked.

Lloyd answered. "It's slow, not much more than ten miles an hour." The water passed under the helicopter and Lloyd swiveled it so they could watch it flow downstream.

"Follow it," Grant commanded. He pointed toward the west shore. "Over there."

The helicopter moved forward and they angled southwest. They followed the water for several minutes. Visibility had dropped to less than a hundred feet.

"How long do you want to keep this up?" Lloyd asked.

Grant didn't know what to do. Part of him wanted to tell Lloyd to accelerate off in some direction, any direction. But what good would that do? They were looking for a needle in a haystack.

Just ahead of the helicopter the lagoon widened in front of them. To stay over dry sand the helicopter veered west for a few minutes. Then, as they rounded the wider section of the lagoon, Lloyd again aimed southwest.

"What was that?" Agent Williams' voice boomed through the headphones.

Grant scanned underneath the helicopter. "What?"

"Over there."

Grant couldn't see where she was pointing and had no idea where to look.

"There it is again! It's somebody." She touched Grant on his right shoulder. "He's on your side. He's in front of the water."

Grant finally saw him. It was a man riding a four-wheel off-road vehicle. The man looked like he had his hands full trying to keep the vehicle under control as it bounced over small clumps of sand and dodged the sparse weeds and brush that grew throughout the dry delta. The man swiveled his head as if he had just noticed the helicopter, then swerved hard right and disappeared into the darkness.

"He's gone," Agent Williams yelled.

The helicopter moved in the direction where they had last seen him. Grant felt a wave of excitement. Could this be him? It made sense, except for the fact that this guy seemed so — he couldn't think of the word — well, weak. Or was he overreacting to how skinny the man was?

"Give me my gun back," Agent Williams said from behind.

Grant flinched. That thought had never occurred to him. Was she going to just shoot him from the air, without even finding out for sure if he was the right guy? Grant reached down on the floor between his feet and carefully brought the gun up and handed it over his shoulder to the special agent. He heard the mechanical sound of her checking the chamber.

Lloyd swept the helicopter back and forth along the front of the slow-moving line of water, but they saw nothing. They searched for what Grant thought to be five minutes, but he didn't trust his sense of time with his heart racing. It was almost completely dark. The man could not have gotten away. There was no place to go.

"There he is!" It was Shauna's voice. Grant saw her reach up and point over Lloyd's left shoulder.

The helicopter banked left. Grant saw him again. They were almost on top of him. The skinny man looked up at them for an instant, craning his neck. The quick look nearly cost the man, as the four-wheeler hit something and he was almost bucked off. He must have lost the accelerator in the motion because the helicopter passed over him and they lost him again.

"There he goes!" Agent Williams said. "Due west."

The helicopter swerved and Lloyd positioned himself approximately three car lengths behind the bouncing four-wheeler, enough space to react. The next time when the driver jigged left, Lloyd followed.

9:10 p.m. - Colorado River Delta, Mexico

He couldn't believe it. How had they found him? He swerved east again and applied full throttle. He bounced over a mound of sand and sagebrush and nearly crashed, which forced him to back off the throttle. The loud whopping sound of the helicopter told him that they were right behind him. He veered south. They were still there.

He applied more throttle and prepared for another swerve to lose them. He scanned ahead, but his visibility was almost nil. Up ahead he saw the lagoon widen in front of him. He was too far east. He would get trapped. He veered southwest and tried to close the gap before the water trapped him. When he finally rounded the corner of the lagoon, the floodwater had only been ten feet away. He stayed in fourth gear full throttle and aimed again in a southwesterly direction. He had to try to get around it. After running in the same direction for a few minutes and no longer able see the water behind him, he swerved west. The helicopter was right behind him.

Since his angle of due west was perpendicular to the direction of the water, he knew he couldn't hold his heading long, or the water would catch him. He was preparing to turn when unexpectedly the four-wheeler spun around in a huge spray of water. He grasped frantically to hold on. He was instantly soaked and he blinked to clear his eyes and gasped for air. He knew in no time at all the water would be too deep for the quad, so he slammed it down one gear and goosed the throttle, aiming in the direction he thought was south. The tires spun. He relaxed the throttle slightly and they bit. He felt the water behind him almost shoving the vehicle ahead. Miraculously, seconds later he was back on dry ground. The helicopter was still right behind him. He aimed due south, forgot the swerving, and accelerated. He needed some distance from the water before he tried anything else.