Gauntlet (59 page)

“It’s a different damn dam,” breathed Floyd. “What on earth for? Who’s transmitting this?”

“We don’t know who’s doing it,” repeated John. “We don’t know why. I’m pretty sure I already told you that. But there could be a huge story here. I’m going to get some more engineers in on this to try and sort it out. But you guys need to be recording every second of this, and your news guys shouldn’t stray too far.”

A
T 9:04AM, Javeed pushed the Ark to the very center of the Glen Canyon Dam. The darkness and silence around them were unworldly. Perhaps they had failed and were already dead, he thought. This was Hell. Cold, deathly silent, dark, and full of fear. He searched his heart, but couldn’t find any regret at the thought of failing in the mission.

Massoud checked the dials and the now only partially functional HUD. “We’re there, Javeed. It is time,” he said.

Javeed nodded and reached for the large button just below the HUD. He had started to doubt the mission, and his part in it, and was anxious to finish things before he thought any further. He pressed the button. Nothing. Pressed it again. Still nothing. He pounded it with his fist, desperate to have this done. Nothing.

Massoud gently pushed Javeed’s hand away. “You must push it gently. Like this.”

It was 9:06. Massoud reached for the button, and gently pressed it. Everything disappeared in a radiance of light.

T
HE MOMENT OF TRUTH came at 9:06AM, Mountain Standard Time, when Massoud pressed the red button on the console before him. This sent an electric impulse to an extremely accurate digital distributor, which sent simultaneous signals to five equidistant capacitors. Those, in turn, sent more powerful pulses to five detonators, set along an elliptical path within the Ark. Kumar had made sure that all of these electronic components functioned perfectly.

The five detonators each simultaneously developed small pressure waves. As these pressure waves traveled through the Semtex, the material was compressed and heated, causing complex nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon bonds to rupture, creating enormous amounts of energy. This created even greater pressure waves as the chain reaction ripped upward through the Semtex, moving at a high rate of speed. Almost instantaneously, the detonation wave hit the first of the many elements precisely crafted into the lining of the Ark. Once it reached the cone liner, the detonation wave created a planar plasma jet, moving at over six miles per second. Because of the complex internal geometries of the Ark, the jet was flat, and almost laser straight. As the other elements of the Ark were caught up in the blast, they too were converted to plasma and ejected upward, but at a slower rate. This resulted in a jet of energy that stretched up for hundreds of feet. The jet was followed by steel, molybdenum, and gold, all traveling in its path at slightly slower speeds. When the leading end of the jet struck the soft concrete of the dam, pressures of tens of thousands of atmospheres were produced. Pressures of this magnitude far exceeded the yield strength of the concrete, which flowed like water out of the jet’s path. This process, called hydrodynamic penetration, lay at the center of the destructive power of the Ark. The factors governing the process were linked together by the complex equations that had been developed by Tiani and Melvin. If the two scientists had been correct, the destructive power of the Ark would be enough to slice through the dam like a knife through butter.

At that moment, Sam and Hank were on the verge of being arrested. The cavalry was coming, all right, and it was coming for them. Three police cruisers, sirens blazing and lights flashing, had just raced onto the bridge. For a brief second, Sam thought of throwing himself off the edge. But he’d never been trained in the craft of the suicide bomber. In fact, he’d never meant to
be
a suicide bomber. Why had he become involved with the Emir in the first place? he suddenly wondered. What misguided boyhood mistake had led him on this path? This ugly introspection was cut short by a blinding flash of light, followed almost immediately by the ear-splitting roar of an enormous explosion. The percussive wave was so powerful that it knocked both men backward. Sam saw what appeared to be a gigantic pillar of fire rising from the dam’s crest to the heavens. The two helicopters closest to the blast were knocked violently backward, and fell into the waters of Lake Powell.

“Allah be praised,” breathed Hank.

“Holy shit,” said Sam, who had become better versed in the American tongue than his friend.

“They did it,” said Hank, overjoyed that two of their countrymen, whom they had sat with just five hours earlier, were now dead. “They are heroes. They did it.”

“Yeah, and now they’re dead. But the dam, Hank, the dam is still standing. Look at it,” Sam said, pointing.

Sure enough, the Glen Canyon Dam still stood. There was a tendril of smoke curling irregularly from the center of the dam crest, but that was all.

“Maybe not,” replied Hank. “Look along the center. From the midline, about a third of the way up. Isn’t that a thin line of water? Look closer, Sam. Do you see it?”

“Yes, I see it. But it’s tiny. That won’t amount to anything, will it?” asked Sam. The two were yelling at one another, their ears still ringing from the percussion wave and the roar of the blast.

“Maybe it’s a trick of perspective and distance,” Hank answered. “The dam is so huge that the water doesn’t look like much, but maybe, maybe it’s bigger than it appears. Give it a minute or two.”

They sat on the bridge, still stunned from the blast, watching the dam.

W
HAT THE HELL was that?” asked Floyd, looking intently at the video signal that had somehow been transmitted via satellite to the NBC New York offices, in the Rockefeller Center. A flash of light appeared to spring vertically from the center of the dam. Then the picture shook, until, within a few seconds, the camera was once again steady on the gigantic dam. There was, for whatever reason, no sound coming from the transmission.

“Floyd, you’d better run and get the boss,” said John, slowly. “I think someone’s just attempted to blow up one of America’s major dams.”

“But it’s still there, John.”

John, being an engineer, immediately saw what other people continued to miss. “See that dark gash across the centerline over here?” he said, pointing to a thin, dark line on the dam face. “I think the dam’s been cut by an explosion. A shaped charge explosion, if I’m remembering my engineering correctly. See this distortion over here? Probably caused by water squeezed through the breach under high pressure. A slightly different camera angle would show it for sure. If I’m right, the structure of this dam has been profoundly compromised, and the thing is probably a sitting duck. The news brass’ll want to know about this. Quick.”

T
HE FEROCITY of the blast carved a gash, eight feet wide, that led from Penstock Four all the way up to the crest of the dam, cleaving the structure in two, from the upstream face to the downstream face.

The line that Hank and Sam had noticed was the water rushing through this breach, under immense pressure, and being ejected several hundred feet beyond the dam face. While it was just one relatively narrow gash, the integrity of the dam had been fatally compromised. The engineering principle was akin to a double door system. If the doors were connected together, through an interlocking system, it took a lot of energy to force them open. The interlocking mechanism was strong enough to hold it all together. But if the system was disconnected, or the locks were unhooked, a slight breeze would cause the doors to swing apart. And this was exactly what was happening to the dam. The west and the east halves of the structure were no longer connected. Enormous force was being applied to the upriver face, and the dam’s strength was now greatly diminished. Thousands and then millions of gallons of water were rushing through the breach with every passing second. Chunks of concrete were being ripped out of the dam and smashed against the rapidly fraying dam walls, hastening the erosion.

After 30 seconds, the dam catastrophically failed. The 1500-foot long structure blew apart in one horrifying action. Millions of tons of concrete and rebar blasted high into the air as the full fury of the Colorado River, dammed for too many years, found release.

A
T ROCKEFELLER CENTER, the pressure was rapidly notching higher. “Holy holy,” was all Floyd could say, watching the explosion of concrete and water on the screen in front of him. “I don’t care if we haven’t found the producer. I don’t care if he’s taking a crap someplace. We are going live with this right now. We are going to break into the normal feed. Right now. RIGHT NOW!” he yelled. The technicians shrugged and broke into the regular programming.

The anchormen and women were still on the set, and didn’t quite know what to make of Floyd’s ranting. But none of them had reached the upper echelons of the mighty corporation’s news group by being slow on the uptake. The lead anchorwoman immediately noticed the astounding images being played on many of the huge plasma screens that littered the main newsroom floor.

“Good morning America,” she began. “We interrupt regular programming to bring you extraordinary images currently being transmitted to us. We are not yet sure of the locale, but we believe this to be the Glen Canyon Dam, on the Colorado River. What you are witnessing appears to be the catastrophic collapse of this dam, probably occasioned by an incendiary device of some sort. We repeat that this is probably the Glen Canyon Dam, and definitely, definitely not the Hoover Dam farther downstream on the same river.” She looked directly into the camera and went for gold. “While we are awaiting further verification, we do not believe that these images are a hoax. They are real, and they show the catastrophic collapse of the Glen Canyon Dam.” She knew that if that statement proved to be false, she would end up doing the weather on some northern Canadian channel. If it was the truth, she would be promoted above anyone else for her quick thinking.

As the anchor was ad-libbing on live TV, Floyd was on the phone with the producer of the helicopter crew currently in the air above Boulder City. “Get your asses up to Lake Mead and to the Glen Canyon Dam, now!” he all but shouted. “We think the dam has collapsed as a result of a terrorist attack. You guys are at the wrong damn dam. Go, go, go!”

T
HE GLEN CANYON BRIDGE was itself a marvel of engineering. It was one of the highest single-arch bridges in North America. It was completely constructed and assembled in California, then disassembled, trucked to the Glen Canyon, and reassembled. Completed in 1959, its construction enabled transport of concrete and steel across the canyon, which permitted construction of the dam to proceed. The bridge was superbly engineered, and was able to withstand huge loads and earthquakes. It was not, however, engineered to withstand the enormous assault that was now heading toward it.

Sam and Hank had been ordered by Yousseff to stand by their post, no matter what, for at least ten minutes after the explosion. The images must be transmitted, he had said. The world must witness this. It was the Emir’s wish. The two men were still following their orders, but with growing apprehension. The breach in the dam, from thin knife wound to total collapse, had occurred in under a minute. They were stunned by the explosive force of the collapse, and were now beginning to wonder about the fate of the bridge itself. While the explosion of water was taking place well beneath the bridge’s supporting arch, the canyon walls had never endured forces of that magnitude before.

“Bridge is shaking a lot, Sam,” said Hank. “I’m not sure it’ll hold together.”

Sam was attempting to mentally assimilate what had just happened. He was experiencing what the survivors and neighbors of terrorist attacks across the world had dealt with millions of times over the past years. The scope of the collapse of the Glen Canyon Dam was so enormous, so loud, so breathtakingly huge, that it was beyond comprehension, even though he had been forewarned of the event.

“Holy shit, Hank. Were we just involved in doing this?” he asked. “I can’t believe what we’re seeing.”

“Believe it. We will be heroes back home.”

“I’m not sure we’re going to get home,” replied Sam, finally looking away from the dam. “Feel the bridge.”

The shaking of the bridge was intensifying. Sam could see that the canyon walls between the bridge and the remnants of the dam were starting to disintegrate. Huge boulders were being knocked loose from both the east and west cliff walls, and mudslides were beginning to take out the soil.

“Look there,” Sam shouted above the roar of the water, pointing to the east canyon wall. “It’s starting to crumble. This bridge is going to go, Hank. We have to get off!”

“Yousseff said to stay by our post,” said Hank. “We’re here because everyone followed the battle plan. He said stay here.”

“Yeah, but this thing is going down. Look there. The cops realize it. We’re the only ones stupid enough to be up here. We’ve got to get out of here or we’re toast. I didn’t sign on to die,” shouted Sam.

With those words, there was a terrible scraping sound of metal on metal, and the eastern portion of the bridge suddenly lost its foundation, dropping almost 50 feet straight down toward the now raging water. It left the bridge moored and grounded only at its western end.

“I’m done here,” yelled Sam, starting to run, now about ten degrees uphill, toward the western end. “If you don’t come with me, Hank, you’re dead.”

The truck had already started to slide down the bridge, toward the destruction and mayhem below. Hank had been working to keep the camera trained on the dam, holding it by hand. Looking around him, he thought about it for a second, and then deserted their post, running after Sam. The moment he left the camera, it rocked back and forth violently, and within seconds, flipped over on its tripod.

B
ACK IN THE CBS STUDIOS in New York, John saw the camera view rock, slant, and go vertical. For a second or two the images it transmitted were sideways. Suddenly the signal was snuffed out altogether. John fiddled with some controllers and dials but could not bring the signal back.

The on-set anchor did a splendid job of tying the story together with what they were getting from the helicopter, now heading at maximum speed, cameras on, over Lake Mead and eastward toward the Glen Canyon. The NBC technical assistants were able to splice and remix the feed in record time, and the network began to show the dam explosion, and the devastating collapse that followed over and over, in greater detail, with close-ups and, of course, in slow motion. NBC had just lucked into the story of the year.

S
AM AND HANK did not make it. The bridge, attached to solid land only on one end and buffeted by the always-present canyon wind, began to sway back and forth, and up and down. More and more of the steel I-beams that kept the structure intact were starting to buckle and bend under the unnatural forces being placed upon them. The east end of the bridge dropped down further, another 100 feet or so, leaving Sam and Hank with a climb upward of 30 degrees to reach the western bank of the canyon. As the canyon walls continued to wash away, the eastern end of the bridge dipped closer and closer to the uncaged waters of Lake Powell, now rushing and seething through the canyon below.

They were within 50 feet of the western bank when the unfettered eastern end of the bridge finally came into contact with the water. When it did, an entire section of the bridge was lurched powerfully downstream, wrenching loose the steel beams still embedded within the western canyon wall. With a terrible screaming of metal on metal, the eastern end of the bridge was pulled downstream, ripping the western end out of the canyon wall.

“We are martyrs, Sam,” yelled Hank, desperately hanging on to a girder, swaying back and forth hundreds of feet above the raging waters. “I will see you in Paradise.”

“I was kind of hoping for a cold beer and a good woman at the end of a hard day,” Sam yelled back, knowing that this would not be so.

Sam’s last memory was of hanging on to the bridge railing, just before the entire structure was ripped loose. Then the entire bridge was sent tumbling, scraping, and tearing its way down toward Marble Canyon. Sam’s body was smashed by metal beams and chunks of concrete long before his mind could grasp the fact that he was going to die. Hank met a similar fate.

D
UANE, SANDRA, AND CATHERINE rose as one when they saw the blinding flash, and heard the sharp crack, followed by booming, rolling echoes of thunder, coming from the south.

“Oh my God, Duane. Is it really happening?” Sandra gasped.

“I think it is,” said Catherine, crushed that she had not been in time. “I could have stopped it if, if...” Her voice trailed away. She had run 6.8 miles an hour. She could just as easily have logged sevens. She hadn’t pushed. She had stayed in the five-ton truck too long. She had started to enjoy the cat and mouse game with the drug runner, she had let the cell phone die, she had dropped the GPS unit, she had...

“Honey, honey,” said Sandra, circling her arm around Catherine’s shaking shoulder. “You’re beating yourself up over this. From what you’ve been telling us, you have gone miles above and beyond the call of duty. If you had gone by your job description, you would be sitting in a donut shop in Fernie right now, rather than here trying to save a country that’s not even yours.”

She was interrupted by more booming explosive sounds, echoing again and again over the expanse of Wawheap Arm. The sounds were so powerful that the windows rattled, and the dishes danced in the kitchen cupboards.

“Oh my God,” exclaimed Duane. “I’ve never heard anything like this. Never.”

The booming and shaking took many minutes to subside. The three were hanging on to one another, looking out toward the reservoir, when the earth finally stilled beneath their feet.

“Thank God that’s stopped,” breathed Catherine, who had grasped Sandra Becker’s hand in hers, and was leaning up against Duane for support.

“I’m not so sure it has,” said Duane.

“What do you mean?”

Duane silently pointed at a half-finished cup of coffee resting on the kitchen counter. At first Catherine didn’t understand the gesture, but a closer examination revealed tiny concentric wavelets dancing within the cup. The shaking had not stopped at all.

“And look at that,” he said, pointing to the reservoir on the other side of the road. “Look at those leaves.”

Again Catherine had to squint to catch what Duane Becker’s eagle eyes took in. Then she saw it. A few leaves in the reservoir itself were lazily starting to drift toward the south.

“Things haven’t stopped at all,” he said, holding on to his wife’s other hand, thinking of a huge wall of water rushing toward the Grand Canyon. “In fact, I do believe they’re just beginning.”