Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River (29 page)

Paul stood up on the bow. "Did you hear whether any boats went over the dam?"

He shrugged. "Nah, I ain't heard of any. Course I imagine that they wouldn't be talkin on the radio much if they was getting sucked over the dam." The guy chuckled at his own humor.

Greg seemed perplexed. "So you say that for all practical purposes, the radio is silent from the rangers?"

The bearded man motioned with his beer again, causing some to spill out. "This morning, they
was
all over the radio, telling folks the dam broke, but to stay put, ya know, not rush back to the marinas. But every time they said to stay put, about a million people would try to talk to 'em at once.
You couldn't understand nothin.
Everybody wanted to know when they'd get rescued and everything. Finally, I bet most started worryin how they was going to get their boats up seven hundred feet up sheer rock onto their trailers to go home. They figured the rangers didn't have a plan for that yet. And they
was
right. You sit around too long and your boat is gonna be high and dry. Then if ya ever get out alive, you're gonna hafta hike fifty miles back to visit your boat next year. Cause if you don't move it now, it'll be there forever, and the Indians'll be painting teepees and deer on the side of it."

Julie grimaced at the comment.

He continued and motioned around at the mass of boats with his beer can. "Just like me, all these people said to hell with the rangers. If ya want to get out
a this
bathtub before it drains, ya gotta get out now, while the gettin's good."

Julie noticed that while he had been talking, his red boat had been creeping forward in relation to the Mastercraft, and another boat was sliding forward to replace it. Ironically, Julie had a knack for always picking the wrong line at the grocery store, the bank, or even on the freeway, but why did it have to happen here? At this rate, it could take over an hour to get around the bend, and then how many more bends would there be beyond this one?

Somebody from another boat asked the bearded man a question that Julie couldn't hear and he walked to the other side of his boat to answer. Julie glanced back at the people in the boat that replaced him. The guy driving the new boat tipped a blue hat stenciled with the letters 'BYU.'

"Where you guys from?" he asked.

Greg pointed at Paul. "They're from
Southern California
." He pointed at himself and Julie. "And we're from
Phoenix
." He pointed to Max and Darlene. "And they're from
Las Vegas
.
How about you?"

The man didn't have to answer for Julie to know they were from
Utah
. The friendly looking guy's t-shirt was also stenciled with 'BYU.' A very petite wife, who's skin looked so white and pasty that it was obvious she never got out in the sun, sat in the other front seat, and five kids, including a couple of teenagers, were sitting on a pile of bags and suitcases stacked in the back of the boat. The teen-agers were unusually clean-cut with no goofy hair, tattoos, or piercings.

The man pointed north. "We're from
Provo
, just south of
Salt
Lake
. We come down here every year for a week. At least we used too.
Doesn't sound like we'll be back next year."

"You guys have a houseboat?" Paul asked.

"Had one.
It's grounded upstream in one of the canyons. We came back from water-skiing and found it sitting on some rocks. We tried to pull it back in the water with the boat and a water ski rope. All we accomplished was to break the rope. How about you guys?"

Greg explained. "We were headed back from Hole in the Rock this morning, when we figured out something was wrong. We had to get gas at Dangling Rope, and then we had to hike a couple miles up the canyon to find our houseboat. We were trying to get some stuff out of it when it slid down the hill and broke to pieces. We're a little bit worried about the deposit."

"Thank heavens for insurance." The man grinned.

Julie wondered if the
Utah
man was an insurance salesman.

Paul continued. "We just hope it's covered. This is one sequence of events we didn't count on when we signed the waiver."

As they talked to the
Utah
man, she noticed that they were drifting ahead of him. Maybe they picked the right line after all.

* * *

5:45 p.m. -
Grand Canyon
,
Arizona

David and Afram were positioned on the front of the raft. Both had coils of rope in their hands.

"Get
Ready
!" said Keller.

Since they had been unsuccessful at beaching the raft, the plan was for David and Afram to try to jump onto the beach and pull the boat in by the ropes. It had been Afram's idea. Keller had initially resisted, but had finally caved when they missed two more potential landing spots.

"Right side paddle.
Left side paddle," Keller yelled, as he tried to position the raft close enough to the shore for them to jump.

"We're down two paddlers," Sam complained. "
and
our arms are dead."

David looked back at Sam. It was unusual to hear him complain, but his face looked pale and sweat ran down his forehead. Becky looked even worse.

"Get ready." Keller said.
"Paddle!
Come on."

David could see the transition from rocks to sand up ahead. It looked like they might be close enough this time. He adjusted the rope in his hands and re-checked the bottom fastener on his life jacket, just in case.

"Okay, everybody paddle hard. Let's get em as close as possible," Keller encouraged.

David watched the sand approach, faster than he wanted.

"Ready . . ." Keller called out. "Set . . ."

David put his foot up on the edge of the rubber boat, ready to jump.

"GO!"

David thought he was ready, but Afram jumped an instant before, which jostled the boat just enough to make David's foot slip on the slick rubber. The result was a pitiful head first plunge off the front of the raft which immediately ran over him. The cold water shocked him, and he resisted the impulse to gasp for air. When he popped up, he was under the raft and rammed his head into the bottom. However, while he was under the raft his feet found sand. It was shallow. He let the boat pass over him and he tried to stand, but the current was too strong. He pushed toward shore with his feet. He saw that Afram was up on the shore now, trying to pull the rope. Everyone in the raft was looking at Afram.

David pushed toward shore until he could stand. Then he quickly ran through the shallow water up onto the beach.

"Pull, David. Help him." It was Keller's voice.

David pulled as hard as he could, but he realized immediately that he and Afram would never be able to pull the boat against the strong current. It was pulling both of them at a fast walk toward the rocks at the other end of the beach.

"Dig in when I tell you." Afram said over his shoulder.

David leaned back even more and prepared to dig in.

"Now!"
Afram said.

David dug in his heels and saw Afram do the same, but they were both pulled vertical immediately. David saw large rocks ahead and knew that the whole effort had been in vain. He wondered how he and Afram would get back in the boat. Then while looking at the rocks he saw something. He stopped pulling, letting his rope go slack.

"Hey, what are you -"

David crossed under Afram's rope and ran toward the rocks. "Come on," he said.

Afram figured out what he was doing and followed.

When David reached the rocks, he wrapped the rope around a large rock twice. Afram did the same on another rock. Not a second later both ropes were pulled tight, but they held. In the water, the raft stopped with a jerk and slid quickly over against the rocks. The others in the group yelled their approval and climbed out of the raft onto the rocks. A moment later Keller and Sam reached them. Together the four men were able to pull the now empty raft back upstream and onto the sandy beach. David collapsed on his back in the sand.

"You kinda did that the hard way, didn't you?" Judy smiled at him from above. "That whole under the boat thing was planned, right?"

David laughed. "At least we made it, and we're safe."

Not if the water gets any higher." Keller said. He pointed at the beach where they had just landed. They all looked. If the water rose another twenty feet, the sand would be underwater, and then they would be floating in a small canyon with vertical rock walls on all sides.

* * *

5:50 p.m. -
Hoover
Dam,
Arizona

"You want to do what?" The governor put his hands on his hips.

"We want to extend the height of the dam another twenty feet." Grant pointed out at the concrete dam.

"What good is that gonna do?"

Grant tried to choose his words carefully. "Governor, we're in a dry year. Luckily both Lake Mead and
Lake
Powell
are lower than usual. The Bureau's study in 1998 assumed both lakes would be full, as a worst case. We've run some new numbers based on the newly opened spillways and the extra capacity available in
Lake Mead
. If we're right, only about ten or fifteen feet of water will end up going over the top of
Hoover
."

The governor's eyebrows furrowed as he tried to understand the reasoning. "That's good, isn't it?"

"Yeah.
It means that the overtopping won't be as bad as I originally told you."

"Then why do we need to do anything?"

Grant started ticking off his fingers. "Two reasons, governor. First, even ten feet going over
Hoover
could still break it apart. Second, even ten feet would definitely take out Davis Dam
downstream,
and Parker too."

The
governor' s
face lost some color and he wiped his hand across his forehead. "If the water breaks though Davis Dam,
Lake
Mojave
's going to drain out and flood Laughlin?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Hell, most of the casinos are below the lake. It'd wipe em out. Laughlin would be obliterated."

Grant knew Laughlin's casinos were going to be destroyed either way with all the water that would be going downstream, whether or not Davis Dam failed. But, he didn't want the governor to worry about that yet.
"Exactly, governor."

"That's billions of dollars." He looked at Grant and his voice changed from bewildered to harsh. "What makes you think
Davis
's gonna break? How can you be sure?"

"It's a landfill dam, governor. It can't withstand overtopping."

The governor looked as if his home had just fallen into the ocean. "So what are you guys suggesting?"

Grant jumped back into the conversation. "We think if we can build up the top of Hoover Dam by another twenty feet, we can hold the flood water in Mead. And save Davis and Parker." The tone came out almost pleading.

The governor looked confused. "Is there enough time? The concrete wouldn't even have time to set."

"We're not going to build it with concrete. We're going to build a landfill dike on top of
Hoover
."

Fred looked at Grant with a questioning expression. "Landfill, do we have enough space?"

Grant grabbed a piece of paper off the table and turned it over so he had a blank sheet. He drew a cross section of a dike. When he graduated in civil engineering and joined the Bureau over fifteen years ago, he'd had high hopes of designing huge engineering marvels like
Hoover
and Glen Canyon Dams. Finally he would build his first dam. With the governor and Fred looking over his shoulders, he estimated that he would have at least thirty seconds to perfect his design. "Okay. The standard formula for a land fill dam is a three to one ratio of substrate to the height of water you want to contain."

"So to hold ten feet of water it needs to be thirty feet wide?" The governor pointed at Grant's picture.

Grant smiled.
"Kind of.
I'd like a little bit of a safety margin. In case the water is over ten feet."

Fred nodded. "The dam is about forty feet wide at the top."

"Then let's use it all. We can build it twenty feet high and forty feet wide. Then we'd be able to contain almost fifteen feet of water. If it gets any higher than that, we'll be in trouble." Grant looked up for approval.

All three men looked at each other, waiting to see if there were any arguments.

The governor looked at his watch. "Is there enough time? It's already 6:00."

Grant's stomach felt like something was boiling inside. They expected the water to rise above the top of
Hoover
early the next morning. According to Shauna's latest calculations, they had roughly twelve hours to build the dike. "There's only one way to find out."