Gauntlet (56 page)

M
ASSOUD AND JAVEED were approaching the dam from the north. At the dam site, they were more than 300 feet beneath the surface. They could hear the metal skin of the small craft creaking and groaning under the pressure. Despite the noise, they both trusted that Kumar had readied the sub for this mission. He knew the depths to which the Pequod could travel, and had reinforced the skin and increased the size of the small bulkheads, to keep them safe no matter how deep they went. They were deep enough now that the only illumination came from the craft’s forward lights. The HUD told them that they were within a few hundred feet of the dam itself, but they still couldn’t see it. The tricky part of the trip was still to come. Penstock Three, Four, or Five, Yousseff had told them. Any of these three would do. But the penstock needed to be closed. If they chose an open penstock, they would be sucked into the dam, and the Pequod and its precious cargo would be destroyed.

A sophisticated program designed by Kumar’s software engineers showed relative water flow, and indicated whether a penstock was open or closed, displaying the information on the HUD. Critical exterior features of the dam had been programmed into the HUD’s hard drives. Amazingly, even after the recent attacks on American soil, it was possible to obtain this kind of critical design information on much of the nation’s infrastructure over the Internet. The complete plans of a number of dams spanning the Colorado River had been available to the brilliant Egyptian and Saudi engineers who had conceived the mission. They had studied these plans very carefully, again and again, over the past months.

Javeed played with the keyboard in front of him, and the outlines of the dam appeared, complete with the eight penstocks. They were color-coded to show whether they were open or closed. Penstocks One and Eight were orange, Two, Six, and Seven were red, and Three, Four, and Five were green.

“Take the middle one,” he said, pointing at Penstock Four. “Safest bet.”

Massoud operated the controls, and deftly brought the Pequod to within 50 feet of the monolithic structure. The water of the Colorado River was extremely murky around them, and in the darkness they still couldn’t see the dam ahead of them. They had to rely on the graphics of the HUD to provide them with accurate information for navigating.

At 8:05AM, the gigantic outline of Penstock Four suddenly appeared out of the gloom, directly in front of them. The three vertical steel mullions that transected the penstock opening would need to be cut before the mission could continue. The steel beams looked larger than they had on paper, but this eventuality had been planned for. One of the sub’s two cantilevered arms had a powerful, high-speed, carbide-tipped circular saw blade attached to it. In trial runs, it had been determined that each beam could be completely severed in under ten minutes — five minutes for the upper cuts, and five minutes more for the lower cuts. Javeed assumed the controls and was able, without difficulty, to perform this task. He had done the same dozens of times in the simulator. Massoud kept the Pequod stationary and perpendicular to the dam face. Each set about his task with confidence and precision.

S
AM AND HANK were waiting near Wawheap, in the smaller five-ton truck. It was 8:15AM, local time. The military air traffic was steadily increasing as they waited. A wing of F-15 Eagles. Helicopters. Then some Tomcats. Things were definitely heating up.

They had spent the last hour waiting in a nearly deserted campsite. The satellite uplink station that had been sitting in the rear of the truck had been checked and checked again. The video camera was tested, and then the sliding side door and retracting roof — last-minute improvisations designed by Kumar.

They packed up and left the campground, taking the winding Lakeshore Drive toward Highway 89. By 8:35 they had reached the highway. Sam made a left-hand turn onto the highway and, without saying a word, headed south toward Page. Looking toward the massive dam, they saw three large helicopters, stationary, almost at the water’s surface. A flight of five F-117’s flew low and slow, no more than 1,000 feet above the land. The two looked at each other. With the combined capability of the American Intelligence Community now searching for them, the plan, and its participants, would not remain secret for long. The issue was really whether or not the strike could get off the ground before it was stopped.

At 8:30AM, they crossed the bridge just east of the dam, turned around at the dam access road, and crossed the bridge a second time. Sam brought the truck to a halt in the center of the bridge, getting as close to the northern railing as he could. Thus positioned, he retracted the roof door and opened the sliding doors on the passenger side of the van. Wordlessly, Hank reached for the door handle. The passenger door could only open a foot before it hit the bridge railing with a sharp clunk. Hank squeezed through the opening, trying not to look down. The Colorado River, reformed through the dam’s penstocks, was more than 600 feet below him. In his younger life he had known the grandeur of the Hindu Kush, and had once even accompanied some friends from Jalalabad through the Path of Allah, in the Sefid Koh. The soaring heights there were much greater than what was now below his feet, but the drop still made him nervous. It was 8:45AM. Sam and Hank stood looking at the Glen Canyon Dam.

Suddenly Sam heard the sound of helicopters. Half a dozen, maybe more, were approaching the bridge from the north. At the same time, police vehicles could be seen racing from Page toward the dam access road, sirens blaring, lights flashing.

A small contingent of Marines were on patrol on the dam itself. Sam counted about 20 men, and armed Jeeps parked on both ends of the dam. Las Vegas was, as usual, hogging most of the attention, and while the Hoover Dam was looking like a staging point for a fresh Iraq war, the Glen Canyon Dam, northeast of its larger cousin, certainly wasn’t without its share of protection. The level of military protection in Nevada alone had increased dramatically. Most of the airspace now had increased restrictions. With the word from Canada being that the Semtex had come through Devil’s Anvil and into Montana, there were belated roadblocks being thrown up throughout the western states. The I-15 had become, much to the inconvenience of local residents, subject to tight restrictions. Izzy and Ba’al had left the Interstate just under the proverbial wire. Security in the American Southwest was now stepped up to its highest point. They’d barely made it.

Sam flipped the hood latch for the truck. Hank opened the hood from the outside and placed a slow-acting smoke generator in the recesses of the engine compartment. He then set up four orange triangles behind the truck. Sam activated the four-way flashers, and, by 8:47AM, they had created the appearance of a thoroughly disabled truck.

Sam activated two more switches underneath the dash of the truck. The scissors lift, much favored since Yousseff’s early days on the Indus River, began to rise from the floor of the truck’s cargo area. The uplink, using GPS technology, was quickly able to find the correct satellite — in this case, one from the Iridium system. Kumar’s technicians at PWS had been able to hack into this system without too much difficulty. Through the miracle of communications technology, the signal from the camera was directed from one Iridium geostationary satellite to the next, and to the next, until it reached the head offices of NBC, in New York. There had already been a number of “tips” coming from various sources, telling the station to be ready for an interesting satellite feed coming in at 11AM Eastern that day. It was said that it just might gain the dowdy old lady from Rockefeller Center a few more viewers.

Hank had finished setting up the triangles, and came back alongside the truck, pulling himself into the van through the side door. He checked the viewing angle of the DVD recorder, which was aimed directly at the center of the massive concrete structure just to the north of the bridge. He checked his Casio. It was 8:50AM.

Suddenly they both heard jet engines whining at an unusual frequency. Two military jets came roaring up Marble Canyon toward the dam. They were less than 500 feet above the bridge.

“Hey, Sam, they sound like flying vacuum cleaners,” joked Hank.

“Yes, they do. This could get very interesting,” replied Sam.

T
URBEE, after programming further searches for his web-bot, finally dozed off. He awoke as he usually did, sluggishly, with a headache, and his brain slightly unfocused. He knew the sensation well. His medications were out of balance. In younger years he would have screamed and thrown things, or curled up inside an oversized T-shirt in an effort to stem the painful barrage of unfiltered sensations. Now he just took a deep breath and looked around at an agitated and noisy control room. The big 101 screens were displaying the main news feeds, most of them live from Las Vegas. The Atlas Screen displayed a map of the western USA. A red circle surrounded Las Vegas. A red trail crossed the border in Montana and proceeded down I-15. Phones were ringing incessantly, Blackberries and computers were in overdrive, and a cacophonous commotion prevailed.

He reached toward the series of bottles that sat on his desk and took double doses of most everything he needed. He knew that he’d still be on a sharp edge, close to losing control, for at least the next hour. He resolved to do everything he could to keep himself under control, and looked long and hard at the cluster of computer screens in front of him.

From there his behavior became progressively more eccentric and bizarre. He got up and stood on top of his desk, looking down at the massive Atlas Screen, which was still centered on Las Vegas, with a 100-mile radius around it.

“George,” he said finally, “can you create a circular map, putting Las Vegas on the western edge and the east end of the Glen Canyon Dam on the other?”

“Can do, Turbee,” came the reply, and with a few keystrokes a map was created with Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam to the west, and Page, the Glen Canyon Dam, and Lake Powell to the east. The Grand Canyon bisected the map from southwest to northeast. Turbee gazed at the map for a good five minutes, entranced. Dan saw him — he was hard to miss — but sighed and ignored the unusual display. Turbee squatted down, peering at one of his computer displays, then stood up again.

“George,” he said in a sharp tone of voice. “Put a red dot at the following coordinates, please.” He read out the latitude and longitude coordinates, and a red dot appeared on the northern tip of one of the many arms and bays of the gigantic Lake Powell reservoir.

“OK,” Turbee continued. “Now put a red line showing the shortest route that can be taken by water from that point to the Glen Canyon Dam.” George complied. Turbee looked at the Atlas Screen for another minute, then at one of his monitors, then at the Atlas Screen again. He suddenly became extremely agitated, jumping up and beginning to yell.

“It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong! Wrong dam!” he babbled.

George looked over at him. “Keep it down, Turb. You’re pissing people off at the wrong time. We have major shit coming down the pipe.”

But Turbee was already waving frantically at Dan. “Wrong dam, Dan!” he yelled, when Dan wouldn’t come to him. “Wrong damn dam!”

“Turbee, shut up. We’re in the middle of a terrorist attack right now. Half of the world is calling, wanting to talk to us,” said an irritated Dan, nervously fidgeting with the keyboard before him.

“No, no. Dam, Dan, dammit! Wrong, Dan! Wrong Dam! Damn. Damn!”

Dan looked around the large control room. “Can somebody stuff a pill into the little bastard, or do I have to get him tasered again? Someone do something.”

Rahlson marched into the melee. “Dan, you almost got him killed ten days ago with the way you handled things. I think you owe him at least five minutes. I don’t give a rat’s ass what’s going on in Vegas or at the Hoover Dam. Shut the fuck up and listen to the kid. And if I hear you say anything else about tasering him I’m going to drop you down the elevator shaft. Got it, you pompous ass?”

When it looked as though Dan might continue to argue, Rahlson took a step closer, leaning in. “Have you got it asshole?”

Dan looked around the noisy control center, and could see that the tide was going with Rahlson. “OK, Turbee, five minutes. That’s all you’ve got.”

Turbee began slowly, halting and stuttering a bit. “It’s like this company in Pakistan. We’ve seen it before, like, we think it’s involved in drug trafficking, you know, Karachi Star Line. We’ve seen it lots of times before. There’s another company I found out about. It’s called KDEC, Karachi Drydock and Engineering. They build shipping parts. Looks like they’re owned by the same people as the shipping line. And a third company. A Californian company. It’s called Pacific Western Submersibles. These companies are all part of them.”

“Part of who?” Dan’s words were sharp and choppy.

“Them. The heroin smugglers. They’re related to them. They’re another arm. They are them.”

“Who the fuck is who?” Dan spat out the words.

“Nevermind the grammar, there, Dan,” said Rahlson. “Kid, you’re going to have to give the ass chapter and verse. Lives are at stake. How do you know that this Long Beach company is in league with this KDEC and the Karachi shipping line?”

“OK, yeah. OK. It’s like this.” Turbee felt his lips and tongue turn into sandpaper. He desperately looked around, and grabbed a cold cup of coffee from George’s desk.

“The banks. All three use financial institutions in the same three jurisdictions — Nigeria, Russia, and Lichtenstein.”

“That’s not–” began Dan, but one glance from Rahlson quashed the sentence before it was formed.

“Second point. Many of the parts and fittings used by PWS have been manufactured or machined by KDEC. I found that out be checking the RFID tags of containers of parts manufactured by KDEC and sent to the container facility at Long Beach.”

“So they buy parts from–” began Dan, but, at this stage, just the upward lift of one of Rahlson’s eyebrows stopped him.

“Third point. PWS makes small submarines. They’re used by the military, for scientific research, and for expensive tourist amusement toys at places like Cancun. Here’s a picture of their ’Model 12.’ If you look closely at it, and remember what Wharfdog Charlie had to say, you will see that–”