Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River (52 page)

Afram, who had assured them his idea was best, rolled a large rock off the ledge that he had worked out of the hill. His lifejacket was wrapped tightly around the rock. The rock fell twenty feet before impacting rock below it. The collision sprayed dust in all directions and catapulted the rock farther down the canyon. In the next impact, it broke into two smaller pieces and the life jacket came off in another spray of dust. The two rocks continued rolling, unsettling other rocks in their path.

"Wave!"
Afram yelled.

All three stood and waved their arms. One of the rocks bounced all the way to the river and splashed. The helicopter slowed.

"They saw it!" Judy said, jumping up and down on the small ledge.

"Wave!"
Afram yelled again.

The helicopter veered as if it was searching for something. It climbed higher.

"Keep waving!" Judy encouraged. "They're looking for us."

The helicopter climbed and headed directly toward them.

"I think they see us," David said.

Judy shook her head. "Don't stop until we're sure."

The helicopter climbed higher and moved directly in front of them. David could see someone inside pointing at the three rafters.

"Hello." The sound was metallic and came from the helicopter's PA. A man inside the helicopter waved.

David had never been so happy in his life. The three rafters stopped waving, although Judy was still jumping up and down. The men in the helicopter pointed up at the rock cliffs. It looked like they were talking strategy. David realized the helicopter could not get close enough to help them without causing the rotors to hit the cliff.
The men inside continued talking and pointing.
The rafters waited.

The metallic voice returned. "Unfortunately, we are not going to be able to retrieve you from that location. We'll need to send another helicopter, one that can get you from above." He pointed up.

David felt disappointment that they would be on the ledge longer.

"Don't worry," the voice continued. "We'll be back." The man smiled widely. "Don't go anywhere while we're gone."

And with that, the helicopter flew up the river and was gone.

* * *

11:20 a.m. - Parker Dam, California/Arizona Border

Spillways one through four
were
now completely open and the volume of water was scary. Grant guessed that they were each running at eighty percent capacity, needing
Lake
Havasu
to rise only a few more feet to max them out. According to Shauna, just before Charlie opened the gates,
Lake
Havasu
was rising just under an inch every two minutes, which meant the full volume of water from
Davis
and
Hoover
was entering the lake. Opening the four spillways had slowed the rate considerably, but it was still rising. They needed the other spillway open.

Charlie's guys had rigged some scaffolding off the downstream side of the dam allowing them to climb down into the spillway itself. Grant now stood on the scaffolding inside number five, looking up at the stuck gate. The metal head gate was designed to slide down two slots in the concrete. Electric motors pulled huge chains to move the gate up and down. With the right side stuck, the left side had dropped enough to wedge the entire gate. One of Charlie's men had climbed up the ladder and was banging on the top of the head gate, where it was jammed. Now Charlie was worried about burning up the motors, since the one on the right started smoking during the last attempt. Obviously, the more pressure on the gate, the harder it would be to break loose, and the rising water on the other side wasn't helping. The worker on the ladder continued pounding mercilessly with the sledgehammer to break it loose. He stopped hammering for a second, mopped the sweat off his brow with his glove, and gave Charlie
a thumbs
up.

Charlie stood next to Grant, looking up at the worker. "You want to try it again?"

The worker nodded.

Charlie held a radio to his mouth and prepared to have someone inside the dam try the motors, when Grant interrupted him. "Can you separate the motors?"

Charlie shrugged and adjusted his glasses. "What do you mean?"

"Can you try raising it with just the left motor?" Grant pointed up at the top. "That might un-jam it."

Charlie relayed the request into the radio. The response came back that there was only one switch.

"Aren't there separate circuit breakers for each motor?" asked Grant.

The person on the radio answered that there were. Charlie thumbed the radio. "Turn off the right motor, then try to raise it."

They waited for a while then they heard the gate screech and Grant saw the left side move up slightly.

"Stop!"
Charlie yelled in the radio.

A couple of the men started cheering, including the man up on the ladder.

"Okay, now turn the right motor back on," Charlie said into the radio. He gave the operator a few moments to flip the switch. "All right, now try both motors down." He motioned for Grant to cross his fingers.

The gate started moving down. The workers cheered again.

"Stop!" yelled Charlie into the radio.

The gate stopped and Grant heard the response from the radio. "What's wrong now? Did it jam again?"

Charlie explained in the radio. "No. But we need to get out of here before you open it -- or you'll drown us all," he added.

That made perfect sense to Grant. He headed for the scaffolding, at the same time noticing the man with the sledge hurrying behind him. When Grant reached the top, climbing onto the safe concrete structure again, he saw Shauna and Lloyd waiting.

"So you fixed it?" said Lloyd.

"It's not open yet," Grant answered.

He turned to see Charlie climbing over the rail. He looked terrible. His un-tucked shirt was smeared with dirt and soaked with sweat under both arms and in the middle of his chest. The three other workers followed, handing the ladder up as they came. With everyone on the deck, Charlie first nodded at Grant,
then
keyed the radio. "Okay, we're all out. Let 'er rip."

Grant watched over the side of the dam at number five as the switch was activated. He could hear the metal gate moving. After only a few seconds the small stream exiting the spillway increased. The stream quickly grew until it was almost half the size of the other four.

Charlie's head showed up next to Grant's. He yelled to be heard over the water. "The right motor is smoking like hell."

Grant looked over at him. "What'd you tell him?"

Charlie grinned. "I told him to let it smoke. We'll replace the motor later."

The sound of the gate raising was barely audible with the noise of the water. But Grant knew it was still moving because the water exiting number five continued to grow, now almost equaling the other four.

Charlie's radio squawked something indiscernible and he walked to the middle of the dam where it was quieter. He said something into the radio, but Grant couldn't hear. Charlie looked back at Grant,
then
walked toward him. "We burned up the right motor. It's on fire."

Grant looked back at the streams of water blasting from the spillways. If number five's flow was less than the other four, it wasn't by much. He turned back to Charlie. "Is it all the way up?"

Charlie adjusted his glasses and shook his head. "It's still got a couple feet to go."

Surely, a couple of feet wouldn't make much difference. But Grant knew it was a wish more than a fact. Grant grabbed Shauna's arm and led her to the middle of the dam where the sound wasn't as loud. "I need you to watch the water levels, by the minute. Number five is jammed again and this time we're not going to be able to fix it."

"We're already monitoring the levels every minute. But Havasu needs to rise higher until the water reaches the tops of the spillways. Only then will the spillways be at full capacity. That's when we expect the water levels to stabilize."

Grant nodded.
"How soon?"

She looked at her watch.
"Next half hour?"

Grant nodded again. "Okay, keep me informed." He watched her turn and walk quickly through the police officers until she was out of sight.

Grant turned and looked at Charlie again. "Order a new motor and get it installed ASAP. These spillways are gonna be open for two months. The longer we wait to open the spillway that last two feet, the more likely the water is going to damage the head-gate. Besides, if it turns out that it isn't open enough, and water starts going over the top of the dam, you'll need that motor to fix the problem."

Charlie nodded and walked away. Grant returned to the edge of the dam and stood next to Lloyd, observing the water leaving the spillways. Both stared for a few minutes without saying anything. Finally Lloyd broke the trance. "All right, Mr. Stevens, what's next?"

Grant straightened and they both walked slowly across the dam. "As soon as Shauna's water levels start to stabilize, we're off." He pointed downstream. "With all that water, Headgate Rock Dam, fourteen miles downstream, is probably getting topped already."

"You can't do anything about it?"

"We already tried. We told them to dynamite it, you know, open it up to let all this water through. But they refused."

Grant saw Lloyd's eyes grow and his mouth contort before he continued. "It's not going to matter anyway. The water'll tear the dam apart in a couple of hours. It'll just flood a little upstream before it lets go."

"What's upstream?"

"The reservoir is called
Lake
Moovalya
. It's tiny compared to
Lake
Havasu
, or Mojave, let alone Mead. More like a wide spot in the river. There's not much on the banks. They might get a little flooding. It shouldn't last long, though. I think Shauna's numbers predicted that at full flow, it'd take less than fifteen minutes to fill up the whole lake and spill over the top of the dam."

Lloyd pointed toward Parker Dam's spillways. "Doesn't Headgate Rock Dam have spillways?"

"Sure. But nowhere near big enough to handle 500,000 cubic feet per second."

"Why not?
The other dams upstream got 'em."

Grant shrugged. "The dams downstream from
Lake
Havasu
were only built to divert water for irrigation and aqueducts. Relatively speaking, there was no intent to do water storage or flood management. That would be handled upstream, primarily at
Hoover
and
Glen
Canyon
."

"But what
about a disaster like
this?"

"You mean a complete failure of the Glen Canyon Dam? Believe
me, that
was never planned for at any of the dams, including
Hoover
. Keep in mind that all these dams -
Hoover
,
Davis
, Parker and even Headgate Rock - were all built before
Glen
Canyon
. So they were mostly worried about controlling spring runoff and generating electricity. Handling flood waters from a failed mega-dam wouldn't have even been considered."

"Well, right now, you're probably wishing they had been designed for it, aren't you?"

Grant considered Lloyd's comment. What if all the dams downstream were equipped with red buttons: press here to engage management system for failed dam upstream. It definitely would have made life easier over the last thirty-six hours. But realistically some disasters are too big to warrant contingency plans. What if all 747's were to crash in one day, or what if California's big earthquake finally hit and everything west of the San Andreas fault sank into the ocean, or what if all the nukes self-detonated? These are all "what ifs" that
are
too expensive and unlikely to prepare for. The strategy, instead, is to do everything possible to prevent the events from occurring, versus contingency planning for the events themselves. Grant would place the failure of the Glen Canyon Dam in this category. How could you possibly prepare for it?

Grant smiled at Lloyd. "Right now I'd be happy if we just end up saving
Hoover
,
Davis
, and Parker. I might get fired for it, but I expect the flood to wipe out all the other dams downstream.
That, I would consider a huge success, considering the cards I've been dealt.
We could rebuild all of the small dams in a year if we had to."

"Then why would you get fired for it? Aren't your bosses going to see it the same way?"

Grant smiled at Lloyd. "Is your boss logical?" He didn't wait for an answer. "No, this thing is going to be a media circus. When they finally get a death count from Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon, show video of all the floods including flooded farmland, floating houses, dead cows, damaged casinos, stranded houseboats, nobody's going to be saying 'just think how bad it would have been if Grant Stevens hadn't saved Hoover Dam'. They won't be looking for heroes, and if they do, it'll be some park ranger who dragged a fat lady out of the
Grand Canyon
before she drowned. More likely, the media is going to come down hard on the Bureau of Reclamation on this one. They'll want a scapegoat. And I can't see my boss volunteering."