Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River

by Gary Hansen

  Fred shook his head. "No, that's next week."

  Fred had scheduled a few days off. He had accrued too many days of vacation, and if he did not use them by the end of June, he would lose them. He had lost unused vacation days before, something that bothered his wife more than him.

  "Where are you going?" Jeremy asked.

  Fred moaned. "Nowhere special. The wife wants me to take her to see the inside of the new casinos. There are a couple of new ones that've been open for over a year that she still hasn't seen. The inside of one of them is supposed to be pretty cool. Least that's what she's heard. You been in 'em yet?"

  Jeremy shook his head. "Nah, I spend all of my gambling time downtown. The odds are better in the smaller casinos."

  "You gamble? I thought technical folks didn't gamble."

  "I dabble. Craps is a statistics game. If you know the rules and when to bet, you can increase your odds."

  Fred laughed. "You can increase your odds even more if you don't gamble."

  Fred looked over Jeremy's shoulder at one of the readouts. "Did you turn down Parker?"

  "Yeah, about an hour ago."

  Parker and Davis Dams were downstream from Hoover, but Fred's group controlled both via microwave communication from the Hoover control center. Davis Dam, almost seventy miles downstream from Hoover, created LakeMojave, and Parker Dam, another ninety miles farther, created LakeHavasu. Hoover of course, held back Lake Mead, the largest man-made lake in the United States. At over 110 miles long, with 9.3 trillion gallons, Lake Mead would cover the state of Pennsylvania with a foot of water. From the control room where they sat, Fred controlled the lion's share of the water in the lower Colorado River system.

  "No adjustment requests for Davis yet this evening?" asked Fred.

  "Not yet, but I expect one any minute," Jeremy replied.

  Fred turned to go. "All right, I'm gonna take a break for dinner."

  "Okay, boss."

  Fred took his lunch box from his desk in the control room and ambled down two stories of stairs out of the central plant. Walking through a hallway deep in the heart of the dam, he came to the elevator. He used his personal key to call it, then waited for it to arrive. He would have dinner on top tonight. He needed some air and wanted to enjoy what was left of the sun. The elevator took a few minutes to cover the six hundred vertical feet to the top of the dam. Unlike elevators in high-rise office buildings, he could feel this one accelerate up to speed. He was glad his wife wasn't with him. It would have made her nauseous. When the doors opened, he shielded his eyes. He had forgotten his sunglasses. He stepped out of the elevator and made sure the elevator was locked.

  Summers were always crowded at Hoover. Over a million people visited the dam annually. Since there were no major bridges across the Colorado River in the area, US-93 used Hoover as the bridge between Nevada and Arizona. The result was millions more people crossing the dam each year in cars.

  Fred waited for a break in the traffic, and then crossed to the upstream side of the dam. He then headed west toward the Nevada shore, where the visitor center was located. His walk was on a slightly elevated sidewalk with a concrete rail to keep him from falling into the lake. The walk along the rail offered a spectacular view of Lake Mead. Every now and then, Fred had to step down off the sidewalk into the road to get around a family or groups of tourists looking over the handrail. As he walked, he passed a concrete walkway that went straight out into the lake on his right. The walkway, blocked by a chain, led to two huge column-shaped towers. The first tower was about one hundred feet away from the dam and the second another hundred feet beyond the first.

  The two towers, and the two just like them on the Arizona side, were intake towers. Their purpose was to collect the water being routed to the turbines for generating electricity. The towers did not pull water from the surface, however. They pulled water from two inlets at depths of two hundred fifty feet and three hundred fifty feet. Pulling water from those depths avoided sucking fish and other debris into the turbines.

  When Fred neared the west end of the dam, he followed the edge of the dam around to the right. The sidewalk now took him away from the bulk of the crowds and past the old visitor center on his left and the snack bar on his right. Walking through the employee parking lot, he was now headed upstream on the Nevada bank of Lake Mead. The Nevada intake towers were still on his right. Up in front of him on the other side of the parking lot was the Nevada spillway.

  He found a bench that offered a good view of the spillway and the lake, then opened his lunchbox. He inspected the contents, wondering what kind of sandwich his wife had made, and was pleasantly surprised to find tuna. She must have run out of lunchmeat, the usual.

  As Fred ate, he studied the spillway. The tops of the spillways were twenty-seven feet below the crest of the dam. Each spillway, one on the Nevada side and one on the Arizona side, fed enormous fifty-foot-diameter spillway tunnels that disappeared into the canyon walls and exited at river level downstream from the dam. In front of each spillway tunnel was a large trough or ditch about one hundred fifty feet long with concrete walls on both sides to keep water out until the levels rose high enough to flow over, or spill into the spillways. In fact, Hoover's spillways were equipped with metal gates that rose automatically with high water, forcing the water another sixteen feet higher before it was allowed to flow into the spillways.

  Since the dam was built in 1935, only twice had the water been high enough to flow into the spillways: once, when the dam was first filled, and again in 1983, when high snowmelt in Utah and Colorado caused both Lake Powell and Lake Mead water levels to rise.

  Fred had witnessed 1983. Lake Mead had risen high enough that four feet of water flowed over the metal gates into the spillways for 60 days. He remembered it as quite a spectacle. During that year the Nevada and Arizona spillways together dumped twenty eight thousand cubic feet per second of water, more than doubling the normal Hoover Dam output. This, however, was less than five percent of the capacity of the spillways, which together could theoretically handle about four hundred thousand cubic feet per second, although that had never been tested.

  As Fred studied the spillways, he wondered what it would be like to see them perform to their potential. That was why he ate here. He liked to imagine seeing that much water blasting down the huge hole. Just thinking about it made him shiver. He wondered if he would dare stand so close, or whether he would feel inclined to stand back a little. Although he considered it unlikely, he wondered if Hoover's spillways would ever reach their potential. Maybe a huge flood in the Rocky Mountains would do it, but it would have to be a big one.

  After Fred finished his sandwich, he stood and walked over to the fence. He looked right down the fifty-foot hole. He'd give anything to see the spillways at their full capacity. After staring for a few minutes, he blinked, then turned and walked away, back toward the dam. Unfortunately, it didn't matter how bad Fred wanted to see it, because there was no way it would ever happen in his lifetime.

  CHAPTER 4

  7:00 p.m. - Page, Arizona

  As the man's car rounded the hill, the car in front slowed on the descent, forcing him to slow as well. As both cars drove onto the bridge, he glanced left and got his first good look at Glen Canyon Dam, his first look in the last several months anyway. It was always impressive, even though he couldn't see all six hundred feet down to the river from his angle on the bridge.

  Although he hadn't been to the dam for several months, he had seen it many times before. He had spent almost a year studying it and for one three-month period, he had spent almost every weekend in Page, Arizona. He took the tours on and in the dam, he hiked up on the hills and looked at it, he bought books which he read and re-read, attended lectures, and talked to everyone he could about how the dam worked. He even rented a boat and motored down next to it, although a barricade of buoys prevented him from getting as close as he wanted.

  As long as he could remember, he had always wished he could blo
w up the Glen Canyon Dam. But then, many others before him had wanted to do the same, yet the dam was still there. If it were easy, someone else would have already done it.

  During the months of planning, he came up with numerous ideas to destroy it; unfortunately, none of them were practical or feasible. His favorite idea had been the one from Edward Abbey's "Monkey Wrench Gang", where houseboats were loaded with explosives, floated down toward the dam, and detonated on impact. The skinny man was no genius, but even he knew that wouldn't work. An explosion on the outside of the dam wouldn't be enough. Even an airliner crash, like September 11th, wouldn't work. There was just too much concrete: sixty feet thick at the top, and 300 feet thick at the base. The airliner would just splat on the concrete and then slide down to the river below. Most people thought of concrete dams as walls, but that wasn't really true. Most dams were built more like pyramids. One couldn't hope to topple a pyramid from the outside. If you were to have any chance at all, you needed to blow it up from the inside. Even Abbey knew that.

  That led to all kinds of crazy ideas, like what if you sent a torpedo down one of the intake towers, so that it detonates inside the water works. But that would require an incredibly sophisticated bomb, tons of money, and, frankly, technology that he didn't understand. Besides, that level of sophistication would require that he work with others, something he was unwilling to do. He realized his lack of social skills, and his inability to include others without getting caught. No, if this were to be done, it would have to be done by him, alone.

  So he kept coming to Page. He knew there was a good idea out there somewhere. He just hadn't figured it out yet. He continued to research and study. He spent hours up on the hills, staring at it. One week, while home in Las Vegas, he overheard someone talking about listening to the police using a scanner from Radio Shack. After that, every time he watched the dam, he listened to a scanner while he watched. He listened to the tour guides talking to each other. He listened to the operators and technicians at the dam. And most valuably, he listened to the security guards talk to each other.

  He listened every weekend for almost a month. He learned all the guards' names, their interests, and their wives' and girlfriends' names. He actually started to feel like he knew them after a while. Then one night he heard something that gave him an idea, an idea that had grown with time. An idea that eventually had grown into a plan, a plan that tonight would be executed. Tonight would test both the worthiness of the idea, and his ability to execute it. A few hours from now, there would be no turning back.

  After the slow car crossed the bridge, it turned left onto a lookout point. The skinny man had spent many hours at that lookout. But tonight he had other plans. He accelerated up the hill. The highway veered right, and he saw the city of Page on top of the knoll.

  Suddenly, he wondered if his stuff had been discovered. What if the police were waiting? An ambush? When he turned left on

  Navajo Drive

  , he scanned the streets carefully. If he saw someone, he could just drive on, and hope they couldn't tie him to anything. Boat storage and repair shops lined the street. But, he saw no police cruisers, which allowed him to relax.

  Almost a half mile down Navajo, he turned left onto a small unmarked street, then a hundred yards later he pulled up to a chain link gate and stopped. A rusted sign on the gate said "PETERSEN SELF-STORAGE - Authorized Access Only". The skinny man put the truck in park and climbed out. He stretched. The drive from the Grand Canyon had taken just over two and a half hours. He walked over to the gate and inserted a key from his key ring into the huge padlock. When he rented the garage in the facility, over six months before, the owner had apologized for the padlock, saying that he would install security cards and an electric gate. But he knew better, even then. The owner was filthy and the whole place looked ratty and run down. Any upgrades would have been out of character.

  After unlocking the gate and swinging it out of the way, he pulled the truck inside and relocked the gate. Driving all the way to the back, past all the boats and motor homes to a row of rundown garages, he veered left at the end of the row, went another twenty yards, then parked in front of number seven.

  As he jumped out of the truck, he instinctively scanned in all directions. He fingered through his keys again and found the one for the second padlock, which he inserted in the lock on number seven. What if they were waiting for him inside the compartment? The thought made him tense. But the lock was dusty, making an ambush from inside unlikely. Nevertheless, he carefully scanned inside as he rolled up the door, and let the evening sun shine into the contents of the compartment.

  In contrast to the rest of Petersen Self-Storage, the inside of number seven was spotless. A large enclosed utility trailer was the only obvious occupant. The skinny man flipped on a light switch, lighting a single incandescent bulb, then pulled the door down behind him. Now completely secluded, he plugged a new orange extension cord into the outlet under the light switch and the whole compartment was bathed in fluorescent light from three separate fixtures, one above each side of the trailer, and one behind. The lights were his first improvement to the compartment. It was impossible to do precision work with bad light.

  He walked behind the trailer and saw the motorcycle was still there, helmet, gloves and leather jacket still sitting on the seat. He wondered if he should start it up and make sure it still ran, but that could wait. He instead found a third key and inserted it in the lock on the back of the utility trailer. The utility trailer was top-of-the-line. The sides and top were white metal panels, connected at the corners by rounded aluminum. The front top corners were beveled, round silver pieces. After removing the padlock on the back, he rotated a cast handle at the bottom of each door, which in turn maneuvered large vertical brackets that went all the way to the top of the doors, just like on the back of every eighteen-wheeler on the road.

  The inside of the trailer seemed much smaller than the outside. Like the garage, the inside of the trailer was immaculate. Black metal tool cabinets lined the left side, and on the right were a mixture of implements, including a small ladder, a stack of bright orange highway construction cones, a lab stool, a hard hat, a coiled extension cord, and a separate coiled utility light. Notably, each one of the items on the right had a special bracket or shelf designed to fit it exactly. Even the ladder slid into a long compartment along the bottom.

  The man ignored the items on the right, and the black metal drawers on the left. Instead, he stepped immediately past them to a small, knee-high, white utility box. Carefully he bent down and looked closely at where the top left rear corner of the box met the wall. He craned his neck until his eyes were inches away, then slowly a smile broke across what had been a tense face. Nobody had disturbed it. He reached down and retrieved the single hair stuck between the utility box and the wall. They didn't know.

  DAY TWO

  Tuesday, June 22

  CHAPTER 5

  4:00 a.m. - Page, Arizona

  The man turned off the alarm on his watch. It had been unnecessary because he was already awake and about. Sleep had been impossible, which was something he should have guessed before such a big day. However, he needed to perform flawlessly, in spite of the lack of sleep. Looking back, he should have considered sleeping pills, to guarantee he would be rested.

  The fluorescent lights fully illuminated the storage compartment. He only had a few more things to do, the next of which was to put the stickers on the trailer. They were about the size of a soccer ball. He removed the adhesive backing, and then placed one sticker on each side of the trailer. He stepped back and studied his work. He considered it a perfect rendition. The logo was simple, and had not been difficult to re-create. The designer in Las Vegas told him that his picture taken with a telephoto lens was of adequate resolution, and that the company's logo was simple anyway. He had two additional logos for the sides of the truck, although they were bigger, more like the size of a basketball, and made of a magnetic material.

&nbs
p; He looked around the compartment and decided everything was ready. He knew he should sit tight, but he felt too jittery to remain in the compartment any longer. Extinguishing the lights, he opened the garage's sliding door and looked out into the dark desert sky. In spite of the outdoor lights at the storage facility, the stars were clearly visible over the silhouettes of the boats and motor homes. The desert air was stifling even so early in the morning - between 85 and 90 degrees, he guessed. He placed the magnetic logos on the truck doors and was surprised at how hard they pulled when he held them close to the metal. He climbed in the truck, started the engine, and the headlights came on automatically. He would have preferred they had not, and hoped that no one else noticed.

  He maneuvered the truck into a better position to hook up the trailer, and then turned off the engine to kill the lights. Rolling the trailer forward enough to line up the hitch was no easy matter. In fact, for a moment he panicked and thought he wasn't strong enough to do it. However, after he strained and got it moving, it lined up perfectly over the ball. He hooked up the trailer lights, but passed on the safety chain. It would be a short trip.

  He jumped back in the truck and carefully pulled the trailer out of the garage. This time he left the truck running when he climbed out. He shut off the lights inside the storage compartment, which was now empty except for the motorcycle, and pulled down the door. He considered leaving it unlocked for later, but changed his mind and relocked the padlock. Back in the truck, he drove slowly up to the front gate. He left it running while he jumped out and opened the gate.

  As he turned off

  Navajo Drive

  and headed down the hill, he could see the brightly-lit Glen Canyon Dam. Even from miles away, the sight of it stirred strong feelings in him. He hated the dam, how it had screwed up the Colorado River, and buried GlenCanyon. But in spite of his feelings, he had to admit the dam was an amazing structure, one of the most amazing he had ever seen. It made him doubt what he was about to do. How likely was it really, that he could blow it up? The nagging notion that he had little chance caused him to consider giving up, to just keep driving, all the way back to Las Vegas, back to his 8-5 job, and back to a life without such unrealistic goals. Who was he anyway, to think he could pull it off?