Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River (25 page)
Read Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River Online
Authors: Gary Hansen
Greg cursed, which was something he never did. "We'll have to go the rest of the way on foot."
"How far are we?" Erika asked from behind, her voice cracking in mid sentence.
Greg looked around. "We've got to be close. It can't be more than a couple more bends up the canyon." He bit his lip when he finished
talking,
something Greg only did when he was nervous. "Why aren't Max and Darlene here, waiting for us?"
Paul shrugged. "They should be here, unless they got a ride with someone else."
"Or unless something's wrong," Julie added. "We better park the boat and get going." She had an overwhelming feeling that they needed to hurry.
Her husband turned and looked at her. "We can't leave the boat Julie. Somebody's going to need to stay with it."
"Why?" Erika asked.
"The water's dropping too fast," Greg answered. "We'd get back here and find the boat high and dry. Then we'd never get out of here."
Julie looked back and forth between the other three. "Then who's staying? You want me or Erika to stay?"
Erika pointed back toward where they came. "I can't drive the boat back through that."
Julie realized immediately that she couldn't either. She was great with the boat out in the open, but in close proximity to anything, Greg always had to maneuver it. "It'll get trickier as the water drops." She looked at her husband. "You better stay with the boat."
Greg looked unhappy, but he nodded, having come to the same conclusion. She could tell he was worried, and that was enough for now.
"Besides Max and Darlene, what do we need to bring back?" Julie asked.
Greg counted on his fingers. "Truck keys, my wallet, your purse -"
"What about clothes?" Julie asked her husband.
He shrugged. "Don't try to carry too much."
She looked around the boat for a second, wishing she had a list.
He pointed back the way they had come. "I need to move the boat back out of here before the water gets any lower. You're going to need your shoes." He pointed at the rocks.
The comment made perfect sense. Julie reached down and grabbed her sandals. Not great for hiking, but they would have to do. She looked at Erika and Paul who both wore flip-flops.
"You guys
be
careful," Greg said. "And hurry."
She kissed him on the cheek then slid over the side into the water, holding her sandals up so they'd stay dry. Erika and Paul followed. As soon as they were away from the boat, Greg backed it away from them. Julie swam a few strokes toward a rocky strip poking out of the water, then climbed up on it and started walking toward the shoreline in front of them. When she looked back, the boat was already pointed the other direction, Greg was standing on the seat looking at the water in front, steering the boat with his left hand. She waved but he wasn't looking.
* * *
3:10 p.m. -
David decided he liked Ralph. They'd been talking about ten minutes since the rafters returned to where the Germans were sunbathing. He was extremely friendly. Not like the stereotype of stiffness and arrogance he'd expected. Then again David didn't know why he'd expected Germans to act any different anyway. After all, how many had he actually met? He liked Anna too, even after she put her shirt on. She was much quieter than Ralph though, speaking only when spoken to. At first David guessed she didn't speak very much English, but after hearing her
speak
, she proved she was as fluent as Ralph.
Ralph had been asking questions about the rafting expedition. "So what will be the total duration of your river trip?"
"Thirteen days," said Afram.
"And where do you sleep?"
"There are campgrounds all along the river. We stop, setup camp, and sleep on the sand in our sleeping bags."
"Do you recommend the river trip?" Ralph wanted to know.
Afram looked around at the other rafters. "Yeah, it's great.
Real relaxing.
But if you want to go, you have to get reservations early, like a year in advance."
"How did you determine -"
"The internet."
Afram interrupted. "We searched around until we found the deal we wanted."
David started to get up. "Why don't you and Anna come down to the rafts and we'll introduce you to Keller. Maybe he has a business card he can give you."
Ralph and Anna both agreed enthusiastically and the group, including their new friends, started back down toward the river.
* * *
3:15 p.m. -
The sound of jackhammers echoed off the canyon walls upstream from Hoover Dam. Todd's crews, one on the
hole
should be drilled. If there was a science to where Todd had them drilling, Grant didn't recognize it. The holes seemed fairly random. They were focused around the bottom and sides of the wall, with a few vertical lines of holes in the middle, which Grant assumed, were to break up the big wall segments. Each hole was drilled at a slightly downward angle.
After forty-five minutes of the noise, the sounds stopped. The workers climbed a ladder out of the spillway. They unloaded boxes marked with a yellow triangle on the side of each box and the words "Danger - Explosives." Grant noticed the workers jockeyed the boxes around as if they were just normal building materials.
He pointed the boxes out to Todd. "Aren't you afraid that stuff will blow up when you throw it around like that?"
"Nah, this stuff is completely stable, even after we add the
propellant,
it doesn't get dangerous until you detonate it."
"So why the big warning labels?"
"Government mandates it. Some desk pilot that didn't know anything about explosives decided we better handle them like eggshells." Todd smiled at Grant. "The markings do tend to keep people away and make the psychos trying to steal it a little more visible."
The men handed the boxes down into the spillway. Then one by one they opened the corner of each box and poured what looked like a coarse white powder in each of the holes on the wall. Grant now understood the drilling had been aimed downward so the powder would go into the hole; it would have been harder to fill horizontal holes. It took over ten minutes to fill all the holes with explosives.
When the holes were full, they passed the remaining boxes up the ladder. The hard hats immediately passed down a few five-gallon gas cans and began pouring the liquid in the holes.
Grant again approached Todd. "Is that just gasoline?"
He shook his head.
"Kerosene.
It burns hotter than normal gas."
"What else do you put in there?"
"That's it. Just the detonators and we're done."
The workers passed the cans up and Todd passed one box, again marked as explosives, down into the spillway. The workers took the detonators and stuffed them in the holes. One guy worked behind them, linking the wires coming out of the detonators together. A longer wire was used to extend from the last detonator up the ladder to where Todd was standing. The box was passed up the ladder, the workers followed, and the ladder was pulled out of the spillway. The workers loaded the remaining materials in the truck and drove the truck out of the parking lot. Todd stood holding what looked like a transistor radio in one hand and the wires in the other.
"This is where you can blow yourself up if you don't know what you are doing. I suggest you guys clear out of here."
Grant didn't need any more encouragement. Fred and the other staff from the dam started walking across the parking lot to where the hard hats were waiting. Grant walked over to one of them.
"What's he doing now?"
The man pointed. "That little unit in his hand is the receiver for the detonator. First he'll hook it up to the big battery by his feet. It will make some lights illuminate. He'll verify that the detonation light is not illuminated, that would be bad. If it's not, he'll hook up the wires and flip a switch to activate the receiver."
As the explanation was finishing, Grant saw Todd set the box down walk over to where they were standing.
Todd nodded. "Okay. We're ready on this side." He reached down and unclipped his radio. "Steve, how're things in
The radio responded. "Yeah we're just waiting for you."
"Okay, I'm gonna blow this side and see if it works, I'll give you the word."
"We'll be waiting."
Todd took another black box out of his pocket and flipped a switch. Grant saw a green light illuminate. Todd pressed another button and a red light started blinking. Without looking back Todd yelled, "Cover your ears." He waited a couple seconds and pressed another button.
Grant saw gray and black dust shoot high in the air in multiple directions. A fraction of a second later, the sound of the explosion reached them. The dull noise offended Grant's ears even though they were covered. He felt the impact of the explosion over his entire body, especially in his chest. As he dropped his hands he heard a sparkling sound like crystals and looked to his right and noticed that some windows were broken in the snack bar. While Grant was still verifying that he was alive, the workers jostled past him, jogging toward the spillway, led by Todd. Grant followed.
When he reached the spillway, he could hear the water and loud banging noises like rocks hitting each other. Most of the wall had been opened up. Rebar was hanging from the walls on both sides. The water was dragging and rolling concrete remnants of the wall into the huge spillway. The moving water seemed to be clearing out most of the concrete dust in the air. The water level appeared to be about half of the way up the culvert. But even that was an amazing amount of water to behold as it crashed down into the spillway. Each Hoover spillway was capable of almost 200,000 cubic feet per second, about the same as Niagara Falls, and he guessed it was currently running at about half, which was more than the total amount of all Hoover's turbines combined, plus the twelve outlets spraying across the canyon. He estimated the spillway, plus all the other gates that were open, had increased the normal downstream flow from
him,
and the parking lot as well, down its fifty-foot hole.
Todd walked a few steps away from the spillway and lifted his radio to his ear. "There were a few big pieces of wall that didn't break up, but they fell over. The water will do the rest. Go ahead and blow your side."
A few seconds later Grant saw the dust shoot into the air on the other side. Todd headed for the diesel pickup "Come
on,
let's go see how that one looks." The workers piled into the back of the truck, while Grant and Fred squeezed into the front.
The hole on the
With the water flow on this side only slightly less than the other, and adding the two together, plus the twelve outlets in the canyon, Grant came up with a little over 250,000 cubic feet per second being dumped. He walked over to the hood of Todd's truck and took out a piece of paper. He borrowed a calculator from Todd. He multiplied the number by 60 twice to get cubic feet per hour,
then
divided it by a conversion factor to get acre-feet/hour. By this time, Fred, Todd and the workers had huddled around to see the result. He then divided the number by the total acreage of
"A little over two feet, maybe closer to three feet when you consider that the spillways will double as the water starts to rise." Grant got a couple blank looks from the huddle, so he continued. "The level of the lake, I was trying to figure out how many feet we are going to drop the lake before the flood arrives."
Grant saw that the group was largely unimpressed. They didn't get it. He completed the explanation, while looking straight into their eyes. "When a wall of water flows over the top of the dam for ten days straight, it will be three feet smaller because of what we just did. It might save the dam."
Many of them turned their heads toward to crest of the dam. Grant knew they were trying to visualize water flowing over it. When they turned back, a couple of them had mouths hanging open. He thought that they now understood.