Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River

by Gary Hansen

  Grant looked around and saw that generally things looked normal at Davis Dam. To an unsuspecting eye, the dike looked normal and unharmed. The concrete waterworks gave no hint of the water building up behind them. He was anxious to get up on the dam and inspect the damage, but was delayed again when another helicopter approached and landed in the parking lot. Covering his eyes to shield the dust stirred up by the chopper, Grant saw a woman wearing blue FBI coveralls jump out, crouch, and run toward them. She carried a large briefcase. The helicopter, from another Las Vegas tour company, took off immediately, climbing back into the night sky.

  After waiting a second for the noise to abate from the retreating chopper, Grant stuck out his hand and introduced himself.

  "Special Agent Susan Williams," she responded. Grant noticed that her handshake felt firm, like a man's, which was surprising since her features were noticeably feminine. She had a plain but pretty face without blemish, long brown hair, and probably barely tipped the scales at a hundred pounds.

  "You're the explosives specialist that Phil talked about?"

  She nodded.

  He glanced at his watch. "Wow. You got here quick."

  Her gritted teeth showed her disapproval. "Phil told me you wouldn't wait for us, and that if I wanted to see the bomb site, I needed to get here before you. That didn't give me much time."

  Grant felt the resentment and took note to walk on eggshells with her. "Well, I appreciate the effort." He pointed up at the crater on Davis dam. "Let's get up there and look around. We probably have about a half hour before Reese here," He motioned toward the construction man who was smiling broadly at the FBI woman. "will have bulldozers and trucks trampling the whole area."

  The agent nodded anxiously. Grant turned toward the dam and had actually taken a couple of uncertain steps before he heard the security guard, Blaine, from behind.

  "You can drive up over there."

  Grant turned back in time to see Blaine point at where the highway climbed the west side of the dam.

  Reese motioned toward his pickup. "Hop in. I'll take you and the girl up."

  Grant thought he detected a brief look of resentment in the agent's expression at Reese addressing her as a girl, but it was gone before he could be sure.

  Before she walked to the truck, she turned to Blaine. "Which one of you saw the bomber?"

  Blaine's eyes went down as if he might be in trouble. "It was me. But he looked pretty official when . . ." His words trailed off.

  "Come up there with us," she told him forcefully. "I need to ask you some questions."

  Blaine nodded. "Sure."

  Grant and Special Agent Williams reached Reese's truck at the same time and Grant went out of his way to offer her the front seat. She acted slightly irritated, but Grant thought he also detected a touch of appreciation as she consented and climbed in the front. The security guard climbed in the back with Grant. Reese had no sooner started the truck when she turned abruptly.

  "Wait." She was looking in the back seat toward the security guard. "I need a shovel."

  Reese slammed the truck in gear and took off, ignoring her. "Relax. I got shovels in the back." Grant didn't think Reese's mannerisms were earning him any points with the FBI.

  When the truck leveled onto the crest of Davis Dam, Grant saw the water level was alarmingly high. The huge spotlights lit up the water for a hundred feet or so from the dam. Grant couldn't help thinking about Hoover Dam, just sixty-five miles upstream, dumping water at record levels. He looked out the other window, down the 200-foot-high gravel embankment. Although he knew the dike's height, looking down it at night made it seem much taller. He straightened up and looked ahead between Reese and Agent Williams and saw the large crater, just ahead.

  "You see it, right?" he said to Reese.

  "See what?" Reese joked, although none of the passengers laughed.

  Agent Williams leaned forward, grasping the dashboard to get a better look. "Don't get too close. Stop about here." She didn't look at Reese, but kept her eyes on the crater.

  Reese eased the truck to a halt. "Here?"

  "Yeah, that's fine," she said.

  Reese shut off the truck and all four of them hopped out.

  The agent looked at Blaine. "How many people have been over the site since the explosion?"

  Blaine responded, "Billy and two technicians."

  "Did they drive up here or walk?"

  "They walked. They came over from the generation plant. " He pointed toward the concrete structure that housed the turbines.

  "So no other vehicles have been up here since the explosion?"

  Blaine shook his head. "No. We're the first."

  "Did they touch the wires?" she asked. Her presence was much more powerful than Grant would have guessed when he first saw her.

  Blaine hesitated. "Yeah, I think Billy said they picked up the wires when they saw them." He looked around at Grant and Reese for support. "Sorry," he added.

  Grant thought he saw her grit her teeth again.

  "Don't worry," she said. "Hopefully we can still get a few good prints off the wires."

  She started off toward the crater and stopped abruptly, turning around to face them. Although none of them had yet moved, she told them to stay put and give her a few moments alone on the site.

  After she walked out of earshot, Reese spoke up. "Bossy little thing, ain't she?"

  Grant guessed that in Reese's line of work, he seldom ran into women in powerful positions. He defended her. "At least she seems competent. Let's hope she gets some fingerprints or something else to catch our bad guy."

  Reese lowered his voice. "Is this the same guy that wiped out LakePowell's dam this morning?"

  The question surprised Grant. He shrugged his shoulders. "Hey, I'm not the FBI. I'm just a guy that works on the dams. But yeah, that's the speculation."

  "Unbelievable," Blaine said from behind.

  DAY THREE

  Wednesday, June 23

  CHAPTER 27

  12:02 a.m. - Davis Dam, Nevada

  Grant, Reese, and Blaine watched the FBI woman meticulously walk the area around the crater. She stopped occasionally, and with a huge set of tweezers, retrieved small objects and placed them in zip-lock bags. After she had spent a few minutes covering the area, she stood straight and glanced back at the men.

  "Can we come over there yet?" Grant yelled.

  She scanned the area under her feet, then looked back up and waved them over. "Bring the shovels," she yelled.

  Reese grabbed two shovels out of the back of his truck, then the three men walked toward the crater and the waiting agent. The crest of the dam had been just over fifty feet wide. However, the explosion had carved over thirty feet away on the downstream side. At first glance, Grant guessed that there had been a line of explosive devices, and that one had not detonated. When they reached Agent Williams, she crouched, holding something. Grant saw two green wires sticking out of the ground, which the agent had wrapped in plastic to prevent further contamination. She asked for one of the shovels and immediately started trying to dig next to where the wires came out of the ground. The wires extruded from a hole drilled into the asphalt road, and the shovel made no progress. She swiveled around the wires, looking for a better angle, but the asphalt wouldn't give. Grant wondered what she would do next.

  Reese walked up behind her. "That ain't gonna work."

  She glared at him and Grant could tell she resented the man, but she stopped digging. "What do you suggest?"

  Reese lifted his hat and swept his hand over his balding head. "I have some other tools, chisels and stuff that would work to widen the hole a little, but it'd take too long." He pointed from Grant to the crater. "We can't wait around for a couple of hours while you bring up a spoonful at a time." She glared at him, but he continued. "Why don't we just pull the thing out of the hole?"

  She looked at Reese and frowned. "It's an intact detonator. I don't want to pull the wires out of it or I might damage it." />
  The comment made the construction man hesitate. "It ain't gonna blow up, is it?"

  She shook her head. "No, but I need to get the detonator undisturbed if possible, especially if it's homemade, and we need to get a clean sample of the explosive material, which I'm assuming is ammonium nitrate fertilizer. That's what they used at GlenCanyon."

  "Assuming it's the same guys," Grant added from behind.

  Agent Williams and Reese both looked at Grant, but neither said anything.

  Reese motioned toward the hole. "I got some long screw drivers and stuff that we can poke down there. If we can loosen all that stuff on top, you might be able to pull the detonator out without screwing it up too bad."

  She gave in and nodded.

  Reese scrounged around in the back of his truck and returned with the tools and a section of galvanized pipe. Reese knelt down to dig, but the agent handed him the wires, took the long screwdriver and began the excavation herself. In order to see better, she pulled a long metal flashlight out of her case, and shined it down the hole. She dug only a few inches, before she became excited.

  "Definitely ammonium nitrate," she said enthusiastically. She carefully scooped small amounts into another zip-lock bag.

  Reese watched her zip a bag closed. "You need that for evidence?"

  She resumed digging. "We should be able to get a chemical signature off these samples. It could show whether it was the same batch as GlenCanyon." She glanced at him for a second. "We might even be able to figure out where it was manufactured."

  Reese turned around and winked at Grant. "If I was married to her, I don't think I'd be sneaking around behind her back."

  Grant noticed Agent Williams grunt a small laugh. It was the first sign that she might actually have a sense of humor. Somewhere behind, he heard a rumbling sound. He turned to see a large flatbed semi coming through the security gate with a huge bulldozer on the back. He saw two more trucks behind, one carrying a second smaller bulldozer, and the third with the front loader. He wondered how much longer Agent Williams would need.

  "Hold it." She stopped Reese who was scooping debris away from the whole with his hand. She took the wires from him and gently tugged in various directions. "It's coming." She jostled it again, then carefully withdrew a black metal tube from the hole.

  "Got it," she said and they all watched as she carefully coiled the wire and the detonator into a large plastic bag, trying not to handle it any more than necessary.

  "Unbelievable," Blaine whispered from behind.

  She retrieved a small dipper out of her case and scooped up more of the white pellets. These she put in a smaller plastic bag. She went down for two more scoops before she felt satisfied. She started packing the two bags back in the case when Reese interrupted her.

  "Is that it?"

  She looked up, obviously not as stressed as when she arrived. "Yeah, sure." She hesitated, staring at what she had in her hands, then looked up at Grant. "You guys can go ahead."

  Reese walked back to his pickup to radio the truck drivers below. Special Agent Williams spent a moment measuring the hole with a small ruler, then retrieved a camera from her briefcase and shuffled around the hole taking multiple pictures.

  With the explosive issue taken care of, Grant turned and studied the crater for the first time. At thirty feet wide, it covered most of the width of the top of the dam, leaving only twenty feet where they had dug up the explosives. It made him hesitate to step too close to the edge, afraid the bank would collapse and he'd fall into the crater. A glance upstream where the still, black water inched higher by the minute more than convinced him to count his lucky stars that the bomb in question had not detonated. If the explosion had gone as planned, water would be flowing over the dam and they would have lost Davis Dam.

  Reese approached. "I'm going back down to talk to my boys that just showed up." He motioned to the truck. "You staying up here or you want a ride?"

  Blaine spoke to Special Agent Williams. "If you don't need me, I'll go with him."

  The special agent shook her head at Blaine. "No, you can go. I'll catch up with you later." She looked at Reese and motioned around the ground. "I'll look around some more, see if I can find any more evidence before you guys trample it."

  Grant didn't think there was anything he could accomplish below. "I'll stay up here too."

  Reese nodded and he and Blaine headed for the pickup. Before they reached it, Grant heard the truck engines below shut off. In the absence of the sound of the engines, he heard a rumbling that he didn't remember from before. He turned his head to isolate the sound without any luck.

  Grant cupped his hands and called out to the others. "Hey, what's that rumbling sound?"

  He saw them turn and look around. Blaine pointed back toward the dam's concrete water works. "The spillways!" Blaine yelled. "They're opening them."

  Grant turned. Three huge square head gates situated at the top of the concrete structure, each the width of three cars, were being slowly opened. An amazing amount of water was now sliding down the face of them and crashing into the pool at the bottom. The rumbling noise, similar to a waterfall, had come from there. They had waited as long as possible to open them, allowing more preparation time for the casinos and homes downstream. But Grant had warned the governor that they could only delay opening the spillways until LakeMojave was full, which it now was.

  When he looked back, Reese and Blaine were already in the truck and backing away from him along the crest of the dam. He saw Agent Williams walking around the crater, stopping occasionally to kick her feet in the loose debris from the explosion. He listened again to the rumbling water behind him, and then walked carefully over to the reservoir. He crouched down and looked at where the water met the dike. He watched it ripple onto the shore. After a few moments he gave up. It wasn't rising fast enough to see. However, the bank of LakeMojave was dry less than six inches above the water line. He didn't remember ever seeing a wet band that small around any lake. That alone was enough evidence of how fast the water was rising.

  In the meantime, the dump trucks had arrived, and one was already headed up the dam. A wave of tiredness rolled through him and made him look at his watch: 12:25 a.m., 1:25 a.m. in Denver. No wonder he was so tired. He considered sitting down somewhere and resting. He wiped sweat off his brow and thought about slipping under the covers with his wife in his air-conditioned bedroom back in Colorado.

  The first dump truck reached the crest of the dam, made a three-point turn, then began backing across the dam toward the crater. The first bulldozer had climbed about halfway up the dam. Grant saw below that they were already unloading the second bulldozer, and the second dump truck had started up the hill. When the first truck had backed up to the crater, it stopped, engine running, and the driver climbed out of the truck and walked over next to Grant.

  The man wore a stained cowboy hat and smiled broadly. "Where do you want this?" he pointed at the truck.

  Grant fumbled for a response.

  "Just kidding," said the truck driver. "Reese already told me to dump it next to the hole." The man tilted his head toward the spot. "Then the 'dozers can push it where they need it." The man looked down in the crater while he took off his cowboy hat and wiped his brow with his arm. "Looks like somebody almost drained the lake."

  While they were both staring in the hole, they heard Reese honk the horn of his truck from below. Grant wondered what Reese meant for them to do.

  The man donned his hat again. "That's the boss telling me to shut up, dump, and go get another load." He glanced down at the crater again, then trotted back to his truck.

  The engine revved as the hoist tilted the bed of the truck. Grant stepped back a few steps. When the dirt began to slide out, the man pulled the truck forward slightly to spread the drop. When it was empty, he kept moving as the hoist lowered back to the normal position. As the truck headed back toward the west access road, Grant noticed the first bulldozer had crested the dam and was pivoting tow
ard him.

  Grant took the moment to inspect the pile of dirt that came out of the dump truck. He grabbed a handful and let some of it slip through his fingers. He squeezed and it compressed nicely in his hand. Reese had done a good job and got the right stuff. You put the wrong material in a dam, and you might as well not bother. Satisfied with the material, Grant walked over to the edge of the crater. He looked down, wondering again what might have been if the bomb had been slightly more successful. And then he saw it.

  It couldn't be. He stood as close to the edge as possible. The glistening in the bottom of the crater had caught his eye. He needed a better look. He looked back and forth to find an easier way down, finally settling on a slightly more gradual slope on his right. The first step would be just over six feet, then a steep incline to the bottom.

  He didn't have the right shoes for it, but he jumped anyway, spinning so that he was facing the bank and his toes, not his heels, would dig in and stop him. The bank wasn't as soft as he'd estimated and instead of digging in, his shoes slid down the embankment, throwing his upper body forward where the underside of his forearms caught much of his fall, scraping against the rocky dirt which tore at the soft skin. A yell escaped him before he rolled to his back and slid the final portion on his back, coming to rest near the bottom, dirty from head to foot with both arms bleeding.

  Disregarding the pain, he moved quickly over to where he'd seen it, hoping even then that it'd been a mistake, a shadow maybe, or a darker clump of dirt. But it wasn't. No, it was a shallow wet puddle, a slow leak through the remaining portion of the dam. He stuck his fingers into the small puddle, hoping his eyes were deceiving him, but they weren't. Using both hands, he scooped away mud. He needed to see where the water was coming from and how much. He continued to dig with his hands, and at first he thought he had plugged it, but the dry dirt turned wet and a small stream of brown dirty water sprinkled down out of the hill.

  Agent Williams called from above. "Hey, what happened? Did you fall?"