Gauntlet (62 page)

T
HEY’RE CRAZY about this diversionary tunnel stuff, George,” said Turbee. “No way that’s ever going to work. The extra drainage may even make the situation worse.”

“How so, Turb?” George asked.

“That drainage of water is from the bottom of the reservoir. If one wave in a series suddenly disappears because it has been sucked into the diversion tunnels, the subsequent wave has a greater distance to fall, and the kinetic energy from that will be even greater. Maybe half the waves will disappear, but the remaining waves will skyrocket in energy. We’re going to get constructive interference, on a truly massive scale. I don’t think the Hoover is going to be flooded to death. I think it will be pounded into obliteration. Everyone should get off that dam.”

“But what about the draining of Lake Mead?” asked Khasha. “Shouldn’t less water mean less danger?”

“I don’t know, but I doubt it,” replied Turbee. “I think the dam is toast.”

“How long, Turbee?” asked Rhodes. “Best guess.”

“It’s not going to hold. The velocity of those giant waves will become over 50 miles an hour. Some of those waves will be more than 300 feet high. Once they get to that point, it won’t take long at all,” Turbee replied.

“How long?” repeated Rhodes.

“Four or five of those suckers a minute,” said Turbee. “I have no idea. Pounding and running water are going to take it down, no question. It won’t go in the same way that Glen Canyon did, but then again, we now have Lake Powell and Lake Mead both knocking on the Hoover’s door. From there on, it will blow over everything else until it gets to the Sea of Cortez. And no one seems to have a clue.”

They continued to watch the footage of the rampaging water. Dan was once again nowhere to be seen.

C
ATHERINE had been watching the pandemonium on TV. “I could have stopped it,” she moaned. “I had a chance. But I didn’t. I did nothing. Nothing.”

“Now stop this, girl. I doubt that you could have,” replied Sandra Becker. “If you are going to hold yourself personally responsible for all of this, you will never be able to think straight again.”

They had been going back and forth on this theme for ten minutes when the telephone rang. Sandra picked up the phone and answered immediately. It was Big Jack.

“This is Admiral Leonard Jackson. Is Corporal Catherine Gray of the RCMP there with you?” he asked.

“Why yes, she is. Hold on one second.” She handed Catherine the phone and whispered, “Sounds like someone important.”

“Corporal Gray here,” Catherine answered.

“Very good, Admiral Jackson on this end. I will be sending a helicopter to pick you up in a few moments. We will land in the RV parking lot.”

For a moment Catherine couldn’t speak. When she finally found her voice, she asked, “Where are we headed?”

“Washington, DC,” came the reply.

“That’s lovely, Admiral, but I have my job to attend to back in the Kootenays. I need to get back to work.”

“I have spoken to your superiors about this, and specifically with your friend Indy. They all think it’s a fine idea for you to come to DC, young lady,” Big Jack boomed.

“But I need stuff,” Catherine stuttered. “I stink. I need a shower and a change of clothes.”

“Don’t worry, miss,” the Admiral replied. “All these things will be provided for you. This has been fully approved by the RCMP in Vancouver. We need both you and Indy at TTIC. Drug traffickers are involved in this plot. You two have already been tracking them, so you know more than anyone about it. Both of you can help us a lot. Technically, you have been seconded to TTIC for a few months. It’s all to the good, Corporal. The whirly is two minutes away. I suggest you say your goodbyes.”

Catherine hung up the phone slowly, shocked at the turn of events. “I guess that this is goodbye, Duane, Sandra. You have been truly wonderful, and I will never forget you.”

“Come and visit us sometime, missy,” said Sandra. “There’s always coffee here for the likes of you. You are a courageous young woman, and you’ve done amazing things today. You’ll be in our prayers, dear.” The older woman reached out to wrap Catherine in a maternal hug, worrying for a young person who’d gone through so much and was about to go through much more.

Duane, not prone to such emotional displays, contented himself with patting Catherine roughly on the shoulder. She looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears.

At that moment the distinct sound of a slowing army helicopter was heard from outside, and Catherine left the couple to jog lightly out to the central parking facility. The chopper came down in one corner of the lot, and Catherine ran, head down, toward the rear doors and climbed in. She was immediately given a set of headphones.

“Next stop, Washington, lady,” said the pilot. “Specifically TTIC. They apparently require your services over there.” He studied her for a moment. As a pilot at Nellis AFB, he had seen many strange sights, but this was a bit over the top. “You can clean yourself up a bit in the washroom when you get there,” he said dryly.

Catherine watched the mountains recede below her. Soon they were flying over the great flat lands that made up eastern Colorado. She’d never seen it from the sky, and thought that it was really too bad that she was too tired to appreciate the rugged beauty before her. She lay back, thinking that she should go over what had happened, to have her story clear and ready for the agents at TTIC. Within an instant, she was fast asleep.

R
ICHARD was in the air as well, stretched out on a medical pallet, and hooked up to an IV. He was being transported, via a military 747, to a military hospital in Kansas. He’d been taken to Ramstein Air Force base in Germany first, by a Gulfstream flight out of Islamabad. The pilot and crew of the Gulfstream had kept their radio on, listening avidly to the play-by-play report of the happenings in the Grand Canyon. Even in his seriously depleted state, Richard had been shocked and upset by the reports. He and Jennifer should have been able to stop it. True, they hadn’t known the way it was going to happen, but they’d known the general area of the attack. If they’d tried harder, gone faster, maybe they’d have been in time...

His train of thought had changed quickly from what might have happened to what had actually happened. The moment they’d arrived back at the Islamabad Embassy, Jennifer had kept her word and gone straight to Buckingham with a full report on Richard’s condition. He’d been undeniably heroic throughout their mission, she said, and she thought that he should receive commendation for his actions. It was, after all, his plan that had saved them. More importantly, she’d seen, first-hand, the addiction, stress, and depression with which he was living. Things that he had to wake up and deal with, alone, every day of his life. They’d formed a strong bond during their captivity and ensuing escape, and she’d come to care for the old Navy fighter. She wanted to see him taken care of. Buckingham had agreed wholeheartedly, and made a call directly to Big Jack to see it done.

After his arrival in Ramstein, and an hour on the ground, Richard had been loaded into the 747, to be taken to a top-notch government facility that looked after those who had walked the path that he’d found himself walking. The men transporting Richard had seen the mess he was and had their doubts, but these orders came directly from Admiral Leonard Jackson, the DDCI. Orders such as these were to be complied with promptly, and with alacrity. What they saw before them was a washed-up, bruised, broken mess of a human being. The guy didn’t look like he was worth saving. But if the Admiral saw some smidgen of hope in him, if he wanted to save this man, then they were not about to interfere. They had all been briefed on what Richard Lawrence had been through in the last 24 hours and had to admit, grudgingly, that it had been one hell of a situation. He and Jennifer Coe had been lucky to get out alive, and it sounded like a lot of the credit for their escape should go to Richard. So in Ramstein the crew watching after him had attended to their duties, placed Richard carefully on an Army 737, and sent him on his way to some destination in central Kansas, where the doctors would do whatever they could to fix him.

Before they allowed the plane to take off, they had recommended heavy tranquilizers for the man. During the hour he’d been on their base, he had been, like Catherine Gray in far off Arizona, rambling on about how the disaster was his fault, and how he should have been able to stop it. The medics at Ramstein agreed that it was unfair for someone in Richard’s condition to be awake and blaming himself for that sort of catastrophe. Richard began his journey to recovery, and what the men around him hoped would be a promising future, once again heavily medicated, in a deep sleep brought on by the military’s best tranquilizers.

A
DMIRAL LEONARD JACKSON strode purposefully into the TTIC control room, four hours after the destruction of the Glen Canyon Dam. He walked to the elevated desk that stood front and center of the Atlas Screen. Dan Alexander sat at that desk, watching with glazed eyes the footage of the Glen Canyon Dam falling apart. The Admiral was 67 years of age, but still stood straight and tall; he was in his military uniform and reached at least 6'. He came to an abrupt stop right in front of the TTIC director.

“Stand up, Danno,” commanded Jackson. “Now.”

“What are you doing?” growled Dan. “I’m trying to manage a crisis, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Yeah, sure. We’ll give you the gold star,” muttered Big Jack. “Now get up and listen good.”

The Admiral looked at Liam Rhodes, who had just entered the control room. “Liam, for the moment, I’m promoting you to acting director of TTIC. Dan Alexander’s presence here is under review due to his lack of experience and inability to deal with pressing situations. As demonstrated in the last two weeks.”

Dan still hadn’t stood up. At Big Jack’s words, he looked up at the looming figure in amazement. “You can’t do that, Jackson. I was appointed by the Senate subcommittee. Only they can fire me. Same thing as with Turbee. I fired him, the subcommittee made me take him back.”

Jackson almost laughed. “The review is on my recommendation, numbskull, and it is my recommendation that you be removed from command. There will be an official meeting on this sometime within the next week. For now, just pack your shit and screw off. This little agency could have stopped this attack.” He pointed to the 101’s behind the desk, raising his eyebrows and daring Dan to say anything else. “You should have listened to Turbee and his crew, instead of following your own dumbass instincts. Now are you going to go on your own, or do I have call some MP’s to ball-hoof you out the door?”

Dan said nothing, but grabbed a few pens, his laptop, and some knickknacks he had, and slunk out the door. Rhodes was wearing a lopsided grin as he watched the scene unfold. He turned to watch the former commander of TTIC exit the room, reveling in every moment. When the door finally closed behind Dan, he turned back to the room.

Seeing that he had Rhodes’ attention back, Jackson began listing names. “Turbee, Khasha, George, Rahlson, and Lance. Conference room A, please. Now. You too, Rhodes.”

Even Turbee could sense the urgency in the Admiral’s voice. He could hardly comprehend that everything was happening so quickly. Dan had been placed on suspension, and Rhodes was now the acting director. They were receiving orders directly from the DDCI. And they were receiving them by name. He took a deep breath and rose from his desk. When he and the others reached the conference room, they found Big Jack already seated, waiting to proceed.

“Here’s the situation, people,” he began. “We are uncovering, with record speed, traces of the evil bastards who have executed this terrible crime.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess,” said George.

“I’m not so sure,” said Big Jack. “A vehicle that carried the Semtex has been found, pushed over a cliff into Lake Powell, just north of the Glen Canyon Dam. In the glove compartment, the GLOVE compartment, we found a passport and a copy of the Koran. Through the passport, we were able to get the LA address of a man. We sent agents to go through his computer. Everything was encrypted at 24 bits.”

“No way,” said Rhodes. “That’s like saying it was coded with a Captain Crunch Decoder Ring. Nobody encrypts at 24 bits. With today’s computers, you could crack the code in 14 or 15 minutes. Anyone sophisticated enough to pull off this kind of an operation is going to be encoding at least at 96. And nobody leaves a fucking Koran and passport in a glove compartment.”

“I absolutely agree,” said Big Jack. “It’s all very simplified. Overly so, if you ask me. This trail also led us to some of the other people supposedly involved in this plot, and we were able to retrieve their hard drives as well. They were sent immediately to the NSA. So far we’ve only conducted a quick search, but what we’ve found is interesting,” he continued. “There are emails that lead to a number of individuals in the Karachi anti-drug police, and from there, to a number of drug lords in Afghanistan.”

“The whole thing sounds pretty fishy, if you ask me,” said Rhodes. “Way too easy. Way too neat.”

“Oh, it gets even better,” continued Jackson. “According to the emails, the whole operation was masterminded by a retired billionaire from Karachi. Some guy by the name of Nooshkatoor.”

“I remember him,” piped up Turbee. “He was the President of Karachi Shipbuilding and Engineering Works. A rival of Karachi Drydock and Engineering. KDEC was definitely involved in this attack. And they’re definitely owned and operated by some powerful people. Maybe Nooshkatoor made enemies in the wrong places, with people who were more dangerous than he realized. If it’s a fishy trail, and it leads too easily back to Nooshkatoor, maybe it’s because someone’s trying to frame him.”

Rhodes nodded. “That’s a good point, Turb. You’re getting better with this conspiracy theory stuff. Either way, we should be able to figure out how and why this trail was constructed, and maybe find the real perpetrators from there.”

“Get to work on that,” said Jackson. “I’m having the hard drives we found brought here. George, Turbee, Rahlson, I want you guys working on them. Dig up everything you can find, and track it. Find out where it leads. The President is going public with the passport in the glove box idea. He is going to say that all the conspirators have been found, and are either dead or incarcerated. It’s the easiest way to clean this up for the public. And there are some higher-ups who would rather let it end there. But I think we all know that it’s just bullshit. The people who are involved in this are brilliant. They’ve pulled this off, but they’ve made a mistake. They got sloppy when they framed someone else. I’m willing to bet that they’ve been sloppy in other places, and that they might have left a trail somewhere. From what I’ve seen, you six are the smartest people in this community. You are going to find whatever trail they left. No one is to know what you’re doing. Liam, you’re in charge. You will report directly to me.”