by Dirk Patton
As I neared the far end, Dog ran out to meet me. Rachel was right, he was definitely freaked out, and I was afraid I knew why. I nearly fell when he rammed his head into my hip, trying to steer me, or stop me. Pushing around him, I kept running, Dog so close to my side I had to concentrate to not trip over him.
“I think this dam is about to go!” I said to Rachel as I ran up and dropped to my knees next to the access panel.
It was a four-foot square piece of heavy, sheet steel, hinged on one side. Strong enough to support a vehicle driving across its surface. Probably intended only to be lifted by a crew with a winch or something similar. I hadn’t paid attention to the other one since Long and Sam had opened it, but looking at this one, I hoped I had the strength to move it.
Tiffany had jammed a screwdriver into the holes that would be used to attach a chain, creating a makeshift handle. Moving into a squat, I gripped it with both hands and pulled. The panel shifted and began to swing open. And it was fucking heavy! Grunting, I held on with everything I had and slowly stood, my legs shaking and the muscles burning from the exertion.
When I had raised it a foot, first Rachel, then Tiffany rushed to either side of me and placed their hands flat on the underside and pushed. With a screeching protest of rusty hinges, it rose to vertical, and I gave it a final shove. With a hard bang, it flopped all the way over and impacted the asphalt, bouncing once.
Breathing like a steam engine, I stepped aside as Tiffany dropped into the hole and began looking around with her flashlight. I heard a few decidedly inappropriate words come out of her mouth, then she stood up in the opening and looked at me.
“We’ve got a problem. This is a newer system. The depressurization valve is inside the tank and requires a specialized tool to operate.”
Of course it did.
“What about just bleeding the fluid out?”
I remembered how Scott had bypassed the hydraulics in Los Alamos. Tiffany was shaking her head before I finished speaking.
“Nope. It’s designed with a bleed valve inside the tank, so fluid isn’t spilled when you’re purging air. There’s no way to do this without the right tool or power to run the pumps.”
“Wait a sec,” Rachel said. “We’re standing on top of a hydroelectric generator. Right? Shouldn’t there be power?”
I looked at her for a beat, then turned to Tiffany. She might be young, but I’d never been an engineering student. That put her one up on me.
“The lake’s high because there’s no water going through. See those towers?” She pointed at four massive, cylindrical structures sticking out of the lake. “Those are the intakes for the turbines that generate electricity. They must be closed, because there’s no water coming out the downstream side. No flow, no power.”
“Do we go back?” Rachel asked after a long pause.
The two women looked at me, waiting for a decision.
“Will an explosion set hydraulic fluid on fire?” I asked.
“Depends,” Tiffany said. “I have no way of knowing what they’re using. There're fluids that are water based, and won’t ignite, but there’s also a whole range that will burn.”
I squatted at the edge of the pit, thinking for a moment. Dog nearly knocked me into it, shoving against my side with his head. He wanted us to get moving. I didn’t blame him.
“OK. What if we release all the mechanical locks, like you did at the other end, first? Once they’re open, tell me where to place some explosives so that the system is breached and drains of fluid. That should work. Right?”
Tiffany thought about it for several long seconds. Rachel, squatted next to me, looked back and forth between us as the young woman thought about my idea.
“It should, yes. And even if it ignites the fluid, we don’t care.”
“Exactly,” I said, smiling.
“Guess we’ve gotta try,” she said, grabbing the hammer and disappearing into the pit.
In a few seconds, I heard the muted bangs of her releasing the first lock. Standing, I turned to look at the dam and the dark surface of the water.
“Is this a good idea?” Rachel asked. “Is it worth the risk, or should we back off and head south on the other side of the river?”
She had voiced the thoughts that were going through my head. Sure, crossing here and heading through Arizona to Mexico would save us hundreds of miles and many hours the pilot probably didn’t have, but was it worth it? If this dam went as we were driving across… But then, if the dam failed…
“Here’s the problem,” I said. “Unless we head all the way to the other side of the coastal mountains in California, we’re in the flood zone if the dam breaks. There will be a wall of water sweeping all the way down the Colorado into the Gulf of California. We don’t want to be anywhere near that if it happens.”
“Is it any better in Arizona?”
“Yes. We head east before turning south. Any flooding would be contained well away from us by the terrain. Not so in California.”
Tiffany was still hammering away, and it took all of my self-control not to shout at her to move faster.
“What happened with the infected?” Rachel asked.
“Spookiest damn thing,” I said, shaking my head. “That last big groan freaked them out. Froze them in their tracks, then they turned and ran.”
“That’s not good,” Rachel whispered, staring at me in surprise.
I nodded, then shrugged my shoulders.
“Ready!”
We turned when Tiffany shouted. I quickly dropped into the pit and looked where she was pointing with her flashlight.
“There and there,” she said. “Take out those two valves and the whole system will drain. What are you going to use?”
I reached into my vest and pulled out two of the grenades I’d restocked with while fighting the females. Her eyes got big for a second, then she handed me the flashlight, turned without another word and scrambled out of the pit.
Shining it around, I didn’t see what I was hoping to find. Ripping open pockets on my vest, I dug through, but couldn’t find what I needed. A simple roll of duct tape. That’s all I needed to hold the grenades in place.
“Rachel!” I shouted. “Got any medical tape with you?”
“No,” she answered a moment later.
Crap. OK, make do with I’ve got. Cutting two, one-foot lengths of paracord, I tied the grenades in place. It took the right touch, and tape would have worked much easier, but I got it done. Making two more, much longer lengths of line, I threaded them through the grenade’s rings before carefully straightening the pins so they would pull easily.
Moving gingerly, I climbed back to street level, paying out the two lengths of line as I went. Waving the girls back, I moved as far from the opening as I could and waited until Rachel had gotten Dog to join her. He whined and sat on her feet, looking around with his ears folded against his skull.
“Fire in the hole,” I said, giving the two cords a sharp tug.
There was slight resistance, then they fell free. I heard the faint tinkle of the pins on the concrete floor of the pit as I scrambled away to open more distance. Five seconds later, the grenades detonated so close together that it was hard to distinguish the separate blasts.
We were well shielded from the concussive force and shrapnel but still felt it in our feet. A heartbeat later, flames shot out of the open hatch as the hydraulic fluid ignited. They receded briefly, then quickly grew in intensity as the system drained and fed the fire. The heat was intense, but we were all well back.
Tiffany’s attention was focused on the bollards, which after a few seconds began slowly retracting into the road’s surface. She turned to face me with a big smile on her face, jumping up to wrap her arms around my neck and give me a hug.
“We did it!” She shouted.
I hugged her back, then turned to look across the dam. I couldn’t see the rest of the group, and hoped they’d been able to move the crashed vehicle.
“Sam, you copy?�
� I called on the radio.
“Go for Sam,” he responded quickly.
“Clear on this end. You ready?”
“Yes, sir. We moved the wreck enough that we can squeeze by. We’re coming to you.”
“Copy,” I said.
I got Rachel, Dog and Tiffany moving, heading away from the dam. The bollards had fully retracted, the road now wide open for the rest of the team. There was no point in standing this close to the dam while we waited for them, so I led the way towards a large parking lot that had been built for tourists.
It was only a short distance, in a vehicle, across the top. I expected Sam would be leading the way, coming fast. We should be seeing the first Hummer at any moment.
Calling a halt once we were clear of the road, I turned to watch for them just as another moan started up. Dog whined, moving next to me and shoving his whole body against my leg. Rachel caught her breath and reached for my hand.
This sound was unlike any of the previous. It had the same low frequency, bass rumble, but there was also a high pitched scream, like the tortured souls of the damned. I spotted the lead Humvee, racing along the narrow roadway atop the dam. The moan suddenly stopped, leaving only the scream. An instant later, a crack sounded, so loud and violent it made me take a step back. Then everything went still and quiet.
The straining engine was loud in the night, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I could clearly see Sam’s face behind the windshield, and he was going to make it safely across. Only a couple of hundred yards separated us.
I heard the roar of jet engines an instant before a brilliant streak of fire rushed through the darkness to a point on the face of the dam just below the road surface. There was a thunderous explosion, an intense ball of fire instantly spreading to consume the Hummer. An instant later, a second missile flashed in and detonated within the fireball.
Screaming a warning into the radio, I snapped my head up in time to see a Russian Yak fighter bank sharply and turn to continue over the lake. Spinning, I grabbed Rachel and Tiffany and started running away from the dam. Dog raced ahead of us, and I looked over my shoulder as we opened up some space.
The fireball was subsiding, and I could just make out the road along the top of the dam, and the Hummer on it, through smoke and a cloud of pulverized concrete. Then, the entire top of the dam began tilting towards the empty, 700-foot-deep gorge on the downstream side.
“Oh my God, no,” Rachel breathed.
She was looking over her shoulder, too, and was slowing. I yanked on her arm to keep her running, desperate to reach cover before the fighter jet returned. We were in the open and would be sitting ducks for a strafing run. I risked another glance, hoping that Sam would make it across.
But, the tilt was increasing. Then, a huge section of the top began to slide. At first, it was a barely perceptible movement. The roadway was slipping towards open air, but the Humvee was still coming towards us, emerging from a thick cloud of debris that had been blasted into the air.
In slow motion at first, but rapidly accelerating, the upper thirty feet of Hoover dam broke free and began to tumble into the canyon below. Billions of gallons of water, suddenly free to flow, pushed against the indescribably massive chunk of concrete. Another second and everything was obscured by a cloud of roiling mist as the waters of Lake Mead rushed through the gap left behind.
23
Commander Jason Talbot, Captain of the North Carolina, wasn’t a happy man. For that matter, he was rarely in a good mood, or so it seemed to people who didn’t know him. But, he was one of the best submarine skippers the United States had ever put to sea. Meticulous attention to detail, and demanding near perfection from the men and women under his command and pushing them harder than they’d ever been pushed in their lives was the only way he knew how to operate.
Traits such as these can easily lead to resentment amongst the ranks, but he had repeatedly shown that he lived by the same high standards he expected from everyone aboard his boat. And while he might seem a rigid taskmaster to an outsider, he was the most upfront and fair officer any of them had ever encountered. He didn’t accept excuses, but he understood valid reasons. His crew loved him.
Times had been hard since the attacks on America and the spread of the virus across the world. Based out of Pearl Harbor, the majority of the crew had been able to talk to family members who lived in Hawaii. Not that there weren’t parents and siblings, and a few spouses and children who had perished on the mainland, but for the most part, none of them were dealing with the complete and total loss of their entire family.
That had softened the blow to morale, yet hardly eliminated it. The Captain himself had lost his wife, who was visiting friends in Denver when the attacks happened. His two daughters, both in their teens, had stayed behind in Hawaii to work summer jobs. Living in officer housing on the base, they had been watched closely by the Navy wives that lived around them. And, he’d gotten to see them once, briefly, when the North Carolina had put in for a restock of food stores.
A nuclear powered submarine can stay on patrol indefinitely, except for one small problem. The crew has to eat. The reactor provides endless propulsion and electricity, also powering a desalinization unit that produces unlimited fresh water from the surrounding sea. But, food. The only thing, other than the psychological pressure of being in a steel tube deep in the ocean for months on end, that could force a sub to return to port.
The North Carolina had been near the end of a planned 60-day patrol in the South China Sea when the nukes went off in New York, DC and LA. They had received new orders, scrapping plans to return to Pearl Harbor within the week. Joining with the hastily created NATO armada, they had fought the Chinese invasion fleet. By the time the battles were over, Captain Talbot had expended all of his torpedoes and Tomahawk missiles, accounting for seven of the enemy ships that were sunk. And the cooks were getting pretty creative with what remained in the mostly barren pantry.
A quick trip to Pearl Harbor to restock their stores was necessary. Surfacing near the entrance to Pearl Harbor, just after sunset, the North Carolina had taken aboard a pilot who was responsible for navigating the waters of the harbor and delivering the 8,000-ton boat safely to the dock. A veritable army of sailors was waiting with truckloads of provisions, ready to start loading the moment it was tied up. Food and medical supplies were brought aboard by hand, the Navy utilizing the tried and true method of a bucket brigade.
While the men sweated in the hot and humid night, a full complement of torpedoes and Tomahawks were loaded. Along with them came crates full of M4 rifles, 9mm pistols and thousands of rounds of ammunition. An American submarine typically only has a very limited armory with only a handful of rifles and pistols. Enough for the senior officers and NCOs to arm themselves in extraordinary circumstances.
But things had progressed well beyond extraordinary, and it had been decided that every crewman should have a weapon available in case the sub had to put to shore in a hostile environment. Which was pretty much anywhere other than Hawaii.
For the officers and crew who had family in Hawaii, their loved ones had been gathered by the Navy and brought to the dock for a brief visit while the submarine was in port. Wives and children were still in shock over what had happened but understood the necessity for them to put back to sea as quickly as possible.
Not knowing how long they might be at sea, enough provisions to feed the crew for eight months had been taken aboard. There was so much that berthing areas, passageways, and even the Captain’s cabin, were stacked high with boxes of rations. Emotions running high, the crew had boarded as soon as the loading was complete, and lines had been thrown.
The pilot took them back to open water, wished the Captain well and departed on a small boat that had trailed behind to pick him up. Twenty minutes before sunrise, the North Carolina slid beneath the waves of the Pacific and dove for the security of deep water.
Since that day, they hadn’t been back to port. Hunting and killing Russian
ships and subs had been their mission, and the Captain and crew had carried it out with deadly efficiency. Then, they’d received a new set of instructions over the ELF (Extreme Low Frequency) radio. The system, the only way to communicate with a submerged submarine, wasn’t impacted by the worm the Russians had introduced into the Navy’s digital Battlespace communications system.
But it was inherently inefficient, only able to transmit a few bits of data per minute, and the sub is unable to respond as an ELF transmitter is incredibly large. So, the North Carolina had received a message that took over an hour to download, instructing them to proceed to a set of coordinates in the Solomon Sea and wait at periscope depth to pick up a SEAL team.
Captain Talbot had received the message, but with no way to reply, it was taken on faith that the North Carolina would be at the correct location, on the proper day and time. The SEALs had jumped into the endless tracks of the south Pacific Ocean without any confirmation there was a ride hanging around to pick them up.
But the sub had been there. Now, they were racing towards the southeastern Australian coast with the SEALs aboard, and Captain Talbot had just finished reading the orders delivered to him by the Commander in charge of the team. The orders were directly from Admiral Packard himself and had left no doubt that time was of the essence. That was the reason for the North Carolina currently running at flank speed. And it was why Captain Talbot was unhappy.
“So, what’s so damn important, Commander?”
He was addressing the SEAL officer, seated across from him in his cramped cabin. A stack of boxes containing creamed corn separated the two men, like a tall, square table.
“We’re making more noise than my daughter’s stereo, running this fast. If there’s a Russian within fifty miles, they’re going to hear us. And, we’re deaf at this speed, too. We won’t hear a Russian, or Australian, until there’s already a torpedo in the water.”