Howard continued. "And besides, who approved building a dike on top of the dam anyway? That's going to cost a fortune."

Grant gritted his teeth. "The governor of Nevada approved it."

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment. Even though Howard was a little behind, it didn't prevent him from saying something stupid. "You got him involved? What the hell were you thinking?"

Grant spat the words out. "He was here when I got here. I didn't call him. Besides, I needed him to get things done."

Howard switched his line of questioning. "How high is the dike you're building?"

Grant knew where this was going. "Twenty feet."

"Twenty feet, what's that gonna do? How'd you come up with that number?"

Grant got angry and yelled into the phone. "We calculated the height we'd need based on the water levels at both dams. Why, how high do you think I should build it, Howard? Do you have a better number in mind? Or, do you want me to tell the governor to stop the dike? You want to make the decisions now? Go ahead."

Howard hesitated. "Well, it's just that . . ."

Grant couldn't stop himself. "It's just that you're great at complaining, but you don't have a clue what to do." Grant realized he had gone too far.

The retort came, but Howard's voice was weak. "Hey, I'm just thinking out loud here."

Grant resisted the urge to tell his boss he shouldn't think out loud - it tended to make him look like an idiot.

Howard changed the subject. "What did Roland say when he called?"

"He told me not to make any decisions."

Howard laughed. "Well, it sounds like you screwed that up."

Grant agreed, "I didn't have any choice. Something had to be done."

Howard's tone changed to consolatory. "Well, you better hope your ideas work, 'cause we both know what'll happen if they don't."

Grant summed it up. "Yeah. I'm screwed if I do, and screwed if I don't."

"When's Roland going to be back in the country?"

Grant wished he knew. "I have no idea. When I talked to him around 10 a.m., he was still trying to find a flight back from Paris."

"He hasn't called since?" Howard asked.

"No, he didn't call back, which I'm assuming means they're in the air. I figure he could be arriving somewhere between midnight and noon tomorrow."

"You think the dike will be done by then?"

"It better be. We expect overtopping before 6:00 a.m."

Howard asked a question that must have hurt. "How did you figure out when the water would arrive?"

Grant answered. "The bureau put together a failure study in the nineties for GlenCanyon. They modeled the whole thing. I have a table showing when the flood arrives at each location."

The phone went silent. Howard had finally run out of questions. Grant asked his boss a question he was afraid of. "What are you going to do? Are you coming here?"

Howard hesitated. "Well, we're here in Yellowstone. We drove from Denver. I'd hate to leave my wife and the kids. She doesn't like to drive. It's a long drive home with the kids."

Grant felt elated. Reading between the lines, it seemed like Howard was a little scared to come. Somebody might figure out he was over his head.

Howard continued. "But I guess I'd better at least check on some flights. Y'know with Roland coming and all. I - don't know. Do you need me?"

Grant shook his head. He wanted to laugh, but didn't. "You'll have to make that decision yourself, Howard."

His boss went silent for a moment. "All right, I'll look into some flights, and talk to my family. I'll call you later."

"Okay," Grant responded.

"Call me if anything changes."

Grant knew he wouldn't call, and he thought Howard knew that too. "Yeah. Okay, Howard."

"All right, I'll call you later." The line went dead.

Grant hung up the cell phone. He wondered how these guys with attitudes ever get anywhere. Wasn't it obvious to everyone? Yet there seemed to be at least one of these guys in every organization. And somebody had to have been stupid enough to promote them to a powerful position. The thought was mind-boggling.

Fred had been listening to the whole call. "That your boss?"

Grant nodded. "He's new at the bureau."

Fred raised his eyebrows. "New? Sounds like it. But he's your boss?"

Grant smiled. "It's a long story. He's not an engineer. He's a lawyer. Some congressman stuck him in our organization to look us over. He's a plant."

Fred shook his head. "You're kidding, right?"

Grant just shook his head.

Fred looked at his watch and then motioned to the door. "Come on. Let's go up to the casino and eat. You need to get out of here for a while."

Grant took one last look out at Hoover Dam and the partially constructed dike.

Fred grabbed his arm and pulled him. "Come on. This can take care of itself for a while. They can call us if they need us."

Grant felt wrong about leaving. What if something came up?

* * *

9:20 p.m. - Grand Canyon, Arizona

David wondered how much higher the water could rise. It had to already be four or five hundred feet above normal. There was no question in David's mind that the Glen Canyon Dam had broken. There was just too much water for any other explanation.

The canyon was now completely dark. Only the stars were visible. The entire group had retrieved their flashlights from their packs, but Keller had forced everyone to take turns to save battery power. David wore a headset light on his forehead, but it was currently not illuminated. At the moment, Sam was shining his up and down the rock walls, searching for handholds higher up.

They were close to getting rimmed again. The rising water had forced them against a vertical rock wall and it was David and Afram's turn to hold the raft. The two of them stood in waist-deep water, while everyone else sat inside. David felt the raft trying to pull him deeper into the water.

"It's too deep," Afram complained. "I can't hold it much longer."

Judy illuminated her flashlight. "Sam, look over there." She pointed her light at a small rock outcropping at eye level, off to the left of the raft.

Sam pointed his light at the same spot.

"Couldn't somebody climb up there?" she asked.

"Then what?"

She motioned upwards with her light. "You might be able to traverse up that ledge."

Sam shook his head. "I don't think you could make it. It's too narrow."

David's teeth chattered. "Try it! We can't hold on much longer." The water was almost to his waist and he had no leverage.

Keller helped Judy climb onto the outcropping. As soon as she found a place to grab, she pulled herself up. Like a spider, she clung to the rock and tried to traverse higher.

"It works," she said. "Somebody else come up."

Keller motioned for Sam to climb, then maneuvered to give him a leg up. Sam handed his light to Becky. Then with a boost from Keller, he reached for the wall as Judy had. But he missed the handhold. The action of Sam leaning against the rock was pushing the raft away from the cliff. David felt Afram stumble and lose his footing.

"I can't hold it!" Afram screamed.

But it was too late. Afram slipped into water over his head, and David couldn't hold the raft himself. It had almost pulled him deep before he let go. With the raft moving away, Sam fell into the boat and Becky screamed. Afram came up from underwater and stroked back to the rock wall.

Keller, Sam, and Becky were in the raft, and David, Afram, and Judy were on the rocks. And then the raft was gone into the darkness. Becky was screaming. There was no time to do anything. The beam from the flashlight hit David once more before the raft disappeared around the bend.

David wanted, needed, to yell out something, to scream at the top of his lungs. But nothing seemed appropriate. What could you say? Goodbye? Good luck? He heard Judy sob.

They were enveloped in darkness. Becky's screams eerily tapered off as the raft moved quickly downstream. David knew his friends would be dead in minutes, and the shock of that knowledge paralyzed him. After a while, they could no longer hear Becky screaming.

* * *

9:25 p.m. - Grand Canyon, Arizona

Keller regained his senses and took inventory. Only he and the couple were in the raft. The other three were behind on the rocks. He waited a few seconds for Becky to stop screaming, and then he barked out orders. "Find the paddles!"

She sobbed. "What good is that going to do?"

"FIND THEM!" he ordered. "If I die, I'm going to die paddling."

The girl shined her light on the floor and Keller saw paddles scattered around the boat. He grabbed one and made sure that Sam got another one. The girl was worthless. Keller straddled the right side of the raft. "Sam, you take that side," he ordered. Sam took his position.

"Shine the light out there and find someplace for us to land," he told Becky.

She obeyed. They drifted through the darkness. The sound of the waterfall was getting much louder.

Becky pointed the flashlight downstream toward the noise. "Is that --"

"FORGET THAT!" he yelled. "Shine the light at the shore. Try to find us someplace."

Keller expected Sam to defend her. He had been protecting her for the whole trip. But Sam said nothing.

"What was that over there?" It was Sam's voice.

Keller had seen it too. "Back to the right."

Becky moved the light and found a rock outcropping, jutting from the shore.

"We can make it!" Sam called out. "Paddle!"

Keller paddled, but he knew it was too far away. When they passed, they were more than three boat lengths from reaching it.

The waterfall noise had become much louder, and Keller knew the struggle was over for them. The currents were moving the raft farther into the middle of the channel. "Tighten your life jackets!"

The right side of the boat lagged slightly and he stroked twice to straighten it. He yelled to be heard over the water. "Okay, Becky, shine the light straight ahead!"

She did as instructed, and Keller saw the V shape of GraniteNarrows less than fifty feet ahead. He yelled loudly to be heard. "RIGHT SIDE PADDLE! LEFT SIDE PADDLE!"

Keller felt the water accelerate the raft as they were sucked into the narrows. Shooting through the entrance, he knew it was the fastest speed he had ever achieved in a raft. Becky was screaming again. Keller felt the wind on his face and the water on his feet. His hair blew back. He yelled at the top of his lungs and paddled harder. The raft bucked, but stayed in shape.

Suddenly, there was nothing. They were falling. The raft pitched backwards and Keller fell out. He felt mist in the air. He felt fear. He felt exhilaration. He felt peace when he hit the water. Then he felt nothing.

* * *

9:30 p.m. - Las Vegas, Nevada

Like a million other Las Vegas residents, the Van Buren family was glued to the TV. Just like when the war started, or the Los Angeles riots broke out, or even the O.J. verdict, this was a time when all the networks had abandoned their sitcoms and concentrated on the news. To the people of Las Vegas, this was not just any news, either; it was their news. It concerned their river, the Colorado, the one that provided their electricity and their water. It also concerned their dam, Hoover, which could potentially fail under the onslaught of floodwater en route toward it.

The Van Burens were not what you would call an ideal family unit. They consisted of a dad and three boys. No mom - she had run out on them fifteen years before. The two older boys and their father worked security at the casinos. Like his older brothers before him, the youngest boy played linebacker on his high school football team. The Van Burens were big. And they were pissed off that a bunch of terrorists thought they could get away with what they had done to the Colorado River.

When the news showed another camera shot of the floodwater in the Grand Canyon, Jeremy, the oldest son, set down his Budweiser. "If only I could get my hands on those towel-heads." He clenched his hands around an imaginary neck, and pretended to violently strangle the life out of the poor dumb sucker.

Milt, the father, tilted his beer at his son. "And we would do it for free, wouldn't we boys?"

All three boys nodded enthusiastically.

The TV then showed an aerial view of Hoover Dam, zooming in on the sand bag dike being constructed. The Van Burens had already talked at length about this dike, and whether it would work or not.

The TV switched to the mayor of Las Vegas. "Citizens of Las Vegas and neighboring communities, we need your help."

All four Van Burens stopped talking about strangling terrorists and listened closely.

The mayor continued. "Engineers estimate that we will need close to a million sandbags to build up Hoover Dam high enough to retain the floodwater. That is more than construction companies in the area can manage, so I am calling on you, the people of the great city of Las Vegas, to help us. We need all able-bodied men and women to bring your shovels and help us fill sandbags. We have set up a dozen locations around the city."

A list of locations showed up on the screen. The Van Buren boys noticed that the second spot on the list was a huge sandy hillside only a couple of miles down the road.

"So if you can help, please come prepared to work. We ask that all volunteers bring their own drinking--"

Milt shut off the television. "Come on, boys." He finished his Budweiser and tossed the can on the floor. "We got work to do."

CHAPTER 24

9:35 p.m. - Davis Dam, Laughlin, Nevada

The skinny man drove his other white pickup truck up to the police roadblock at Davis Dam and stopped behind a sport utility vehicle. The emblems on this second truck were not from Jensen Industrial Elevator like he used at the Glen Canyon Dam. Instead, the truck had the official blue oval logos of the Bureau of Reclamation, including the images of a mountain range. The large emblems made the truck look very official.

Although the highway normally continued up over the crest of the dam, the police roadblock now stopped traffic a half mile from the dam itself. The combination of police cars blocking the road, wood barriers, and orange cones set in a semicircular pattern left no doubt that they were not allowing traffic over the dam, but instead wanted them to follow the cones around in a small semi-circle and head back the way they had come.

He saw a policeman approach an SUV in front of the truck and motion around the cones. The driver of the SUV rolled down her window and pointed up over the dam. The skinny man cracked his window to see if he could overhear the conversation. Even through the small opening, he felt the stifling hot air outside. He could hear the policeman clearly.

"Sorry ma'am, but the road is closed." The policeman pointed down the hill. "The other bridge is only a few miles down the road."

The lady responded with animated motions from her hands, but the skinny man could not quite hear what she was saying.

"Ma'am, I understand it's an emergency, but all evacuations are being routed over the other bridge. We're not allowing any traffic over the dam." The policeman stepped back to end the conversation and motioned the SUV to continue back down the hill.

The SUV moved forward abruptly, the driver obviously unhappy, but the vehicle followed the cones around and headed back down the hill.

The skinny man's heart pounded as he pulled the truck up to the policeman and stopped.

The policeman tried to wave him around, but he didn't move, instead rolling his window all the way down and leaning out. The policeman reluctantly approached the window. "Sir, you can't stop here. All traffic-"

The skinny man pointed down at the door emblem. "I'm with the Bureau. They sent me down here to run some tests."

The officer hesitated, and then motioned for him to pull the truck forward and off the side of the road. When he stopped, a second man wearing a generic security uniform approached him. He noticed that the security man had a small Bureau of Reclamation patch above the pocket of his uniform. It was show time.

The Bureau's security guard was a short black man who looked like he was trying to grow a beard but failing. He leaned in the window of the truck. "About damn time somebody showed up. We were beginning to think nobody cared."

This surprised the skinny man. They were actually happy to see him. He stumbled slightly with his words. "Well, uh . . . I've been up at Hoover. They sent me down here to run some moisture tests." He reached for the fake Bureau ID in his pocket.

The guard perked up. "What's going on at Hoover? We ain't heard nothin' down here except on the radio."

He retrieved his identification, but this guy didn't seem like he cared, so he held it closed in his hand. No sense showing it if he didn't need to. The question about Hoover needed answering, although the skinny man hadn't really been there. Fortunately Hoover had been all over the television all day. "Well, you probably know they've been scrambling to get ready for the flood water. They dynamited the spillways this afternoon." He had heard about the spillways on the news. That had been a brilliant idea to save Hoover, one he never would have thought of. The possibility that Hoover might survive could screw up his whole plan. Hoover's collapse was an important domino in the chain.

The guard continued, motioning with his hand at nothing in particular. "They told us about the spillways. Our water level's been rising ever since. What about the floodwater coming down the Grand Canyon? When do they expect it to get to Hoover? And what about that thing they're building on top of the dam? Do they really expect that to hold anything?"

The skinny man had been glued to the TV and had the same questions. When would the floodwater arrive? Would the sandbag dike hold? Building the dam higher with sandbags was another thing he hadn't thought of. He could not imagine it actually working, not with all the water headed toward it from LakePowell. But what if it did?

He realized he was wasting too much time. "I know you have a ton of questions, but I'm kinda in a hurry. They want me to make some moisture measurements up on the crest." He pointed up. "This dam is gonna get a workout tonight and we don't want it to leak."

The guard stepped back away from the window. "How long you gonna be up there?"

He thought about it. "I don't know. A half hour, forty five minutes." He started to roll up his window, then lowered it again. "Hey, just so you guys know, to take my measurements, I'm gonna be drilling a couple of holes in the top of the dam. I need to make sure they're not seeping."

The guard smiled. "You the boss."

He put the truck back in gear and headed up the road. That had been too easy. He couldn't believe it. They had actually been hungry for news and interaction. That had worked to his advantage. He had not even needed the fake ID.

As the road wound its way to the top of the dam, he looked across and saw how well the dam was lit up. Too well, he thought. He was going to be out in the open. If somebody watched too closely, they'd figure out what he was doing. The road reached the crest of the dam and he drove across it.

Lights along the dam spilled out over the water and gave him a view of the water level. It had risen much higher than he remembered from his scouting missions. For the level to rise this fast, Hoover must be dumping an incredible amount of water. It didn't matter, though. It all worked into his plan. He needed Hoover to dump enough water to rupture the gravel dam he was standing on. Not that he could count on the water itself to do the trick. No, he was going to give it a little head start.

He drove to the middle of the dam and stopped in an area between two of the floodlights. The area wasn't dark, but it was the best he could do. He had already shut off the engine before he looked around, and had another idea. He fired the truck up again, and turned it around so it faced the other direction; the truck bed was now hidden from the security guards below. He opened the door and let the wave of hot desert air envelop him. He hopped out of the cab and stood for a moment staring out over the water of LakeMojave. The black water stretched beyond the reach of the dam's floodlights until it disappeared somewhere in the distance. He couldn't help but think about upstream at Hoover Dam, and the imminent flood. To him, the thought of the water coming was good. It was a satisfying feeling. In fact, he wanted the flood to hurry.

In preparation, just like when he scouted GlenCanyon, he'd listened for hours on a scanner to determine who was who and how they expected legitimate visitors to check in. And, like GlenCanyon, if you knew the right words, submitted the right paperwork, and dropped the right names, they let you in. That would change in the near future after they analyzed the events of the next couple of days. In fact, the policy would no doubt change after this particular visit. This would be his last freebie and he needed to make the best of it.

He walked to the back of the truck and opened the tailgate. He grabbed a long tool shaped much like a jackhammer, which he dragged from the truck. The tool had an auger where the bit on a jackhammer would be. Holding the tool by both handles, at about eye level, the auger could drill a six-inch hole five feet deep. He'd told the guard that he'd need to drill several holes in the dike to do the moisture absorption tests, so he didn't expect to raise any suspicion with the tool.

He pulled the crank on a small compressor in the back of the pickup and it came to life. He plugged the huge drill into the compressor and lugged it over to the waterside of the dam. He had to lift the tool over a waist-high cinder block wall that bordered the upstream side of the dam. He chose a spot as far from the boulders as possible, braced and pulled the trigger. The auger spun against the hard ground before finally biting in and began its slow drop into the roadbed. Gravel piled up around where the auger spun in. A couple of times the tool jarred his arms, almost tearing the handles out of his hands, but he was braced for it, and it caused him no problems. He had already practiced with the tool and knew what to expect when the drill hit rocks.

The oversized drill chugged deeper until the auger buried itself and the handles almost rested on the ground. He released the trigger, flipped a switch to reverse the auger, depressed the trigger again, and the drill climbed back out of the hole. Shutting it off, he lifted it carefully away, so as to not knock gravel back in the opening. He admired his work for a moment, but didn't tarry, knowing full well the first one was the easiest. He hefted the drill back over the wall onto the asphalt road. He lined it up with the previous hole, so he would have a line of holes from the wet side of the dam to the dry side. He pulled the trigger again, hoping there wasn't a concrete pad under the asphalt. The drill spun harmlessly for several seconds on the hard road before it finally grabbed and started sinking.

When he rented the tool, they had told him that highway construction teams used the same tool to bore through pavement all the time, and that he could dig through asphalt all day long as long as he didn't hit any concrete. He watched closely as the black debris came up out of the opening around the bit. Suddenly the debris changed to gray dust and gravel and he knew he was past the asphalt. No concrete pad. He had just relaxed his hold on the drill when it jammed, jerking his arms savagely before an override shut it off. Maybe there was concrete down there. He pushed the reset button and pulled the trigger again, but it jammed again. He reversed it, then tried once more. Same result. A feeling of failure washed over him and he wondered if this whole exercise had been in vain. What had ever made him believe he could succeed?

He gave up on that spot and reversed the drill, letting it climb out of the hole. He picked a different spot only two feet away. He let it rip again, and waited while the drill did its thing. He wondered if he would have the same result, but this time the auger kept spinning. It jerked hard a couple of times, but kept going until the hole was done. He wiped sweat off his brow. Working in the intense heat was suffocating. He looked out at the water of LakeMojave and briefly considered taking a dip to cool off, but instead he moved the drill to the next target. He repeated the process three more times, until a line of five holes stretched across the dike.

With his arms now shaking, he lifted the tool back into the truck and used his shirt to wipe more sweat off his face and neck. But the motion was a waste of time since his shirt was soaked too. He rummaged in the truck and grabbed another gadget, one he'd designed himself. It included a two-foot-long plastic tube, with a bucket on the top. At the top of the tube, right under the bucket, he'd mounted a ball valve. He opened another bucket and poured white pellets into his tool, filling the bucket on top. The substance, ammonium nitrate fertilizer, was the same as he had used at GlenCanyon. He carried the gadget over to the first hole, put the bottom of the tube in the hole, opened the ball valve, and felt the fertilizer drop into the hole. He shook it to get it all out. It took four more trips before all five holes were filled. Next he used the same tool to put diesel fuel into all five holes. He was almost finished.

He looked past the pickup toward the police roadblock, but the police were busy with a line of almost ten cars. Opening the truck's passenger door and reaching behind the seat, he retrieved five small cylinder-shaped devices with wires hanging out of them. He had designed these detonators himself, just like the ones he used at GlenCanyon. With a converted broom handle, he tucked a detonator in each hole with the wires hanging out. Holding the wires, he kicked the loose gravel back in the hole, stopping occasionally to use the broom handle to tamp the gravel. With all five holes done, he took a roll of wire out of the truck and connected all five sets of wires together. A small motorcycle battery and a timer completed the project.

He loaded the truck and shut the tailgate. He checked the guard shack one more time, and seeing nothing, bent down to set the timer. He'd planned on ten minutes, scripting the whole scenario, but his subconscious kept nagging him to do fifteen. He compromised at twelve. He pressed the button and a small red light illuminated while the digital timer started counting down from twelve. He immediately stood and walked around the truck. As he came around the back, he tripped on something. He looked down and saw the wires. Damn! With the timer still running, he quickly checked the connections between the five holes, making sure all five sets of wires were still connected. They looked fine.

He jumped in the truck, hoping it would start. Thankfully, it did, and he drove back along the dike. It took all his self-control to resist the urge to floor it and speed down the hill. When he finally pulled up to the roadblock, he could feel the hair standing up on the back of his neck. The Bureau guard stepped over to talk. The man had hoped to get waved through.

"What'd ya find out?" the guard said, looking in the back of the truck.

"Dry as a bone, just as I expected."

This seemed to relieve the guard. "I guess that's good news. This dam's likely to get a good work out for the next couple days with all the water headed our way."

The skinny man had a hard time not rushing his words. "Yeah. You know it."

"So ya think it'll hold?" asked the guard.

For some reason, the question caught him off guard. No, it wasn't going to hold. It would explode in eight and a half minutes and counting. For a moment his brain told him to warn the guy, tell him to get away as fast as he could, to not look back. He felt like screaming, "There's a bomb, you idiot! It's going to blow! Get out of here!" But he didn't. Instead, he responded in a calm, clear voice that surprised even him. "Yeah, it'll hold. No problem. But there's going to be a ton of water barreling out of those spillways."

"Unbelievable," said the guard, looking over at the dam itself. "Unbelievable."

The skinny man nodded. "You said it. Things are going to get a little crazy around here."

The guard smiled and stepped back, an unspoken signal that he was free to leave.

* * *

10:10 p.m. - Davis Dam, Nevada

Blaine Roberts leaned against a police car and sipped his coffee. They had been turning cars away from the dam for three hours straight and finally they caught a break. Maybe the word was finally getting around that they had closed the road across the dam.

What a night. He'd worked night shift security at Davis Dam for almost three years now. Nothing ever happened during the night shift. Then the disaster a few hundred miles upstream had changed everything. When he arrived at work at 8:30 p.m., the whole place buzzed like a stirred-up hornet's nest. They told him when he arrived that Hoover Dam, just sixty-five miles upstream, was going to try to catch all of the floodwater. Unfortunately for Davis Dam, that meant Hoover was dumping a ton of water, the most in its history - 250,000 cubic feet per second, ten times normal. It was going to get worse, too; when the water started to rise at Hoover, the flow would increase to almost 500,000 cubic feet per second. He summed it up to himself. Unbelievable.

They had told him that in reaction to what Hoover was doing, this afternoon they had opened all the water works at Davis Dam. Unfortunately that wasn't enough. The water in LakeMojave was still rising over eight inches per hour, targeted to reach the top of the spillways a little after midnight. With full spillways, theoretically Davis Dam should be able to match Hoover Dam's 500,000 cubic feet per second, and the water in the lake would stop rising. None of that had ever been tested however. Unbelievable.

In spite of everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off, the guy from the Bureau had been the first official visitor they'd had at Davis Dam today. Blaine was more than happy for the guy to go up on the dam and take some moisture measurements. Hell, he could measure all damn night if he wanted to, as long as he gave Blaine a heads-up if the dam was going to bust so he could get the hell out of here. It'd never bothered him earlier in the evening, but Blaine now wished the roadblock wasn't right below the earth dam. He'd prefer a place a little higher or maybe farther downstream.

When the guy from the Bureau returned from his inspection and his measurements, he had seemed calm and cool. He said the moisture tests went well, whatever that meant. The guy had acted like the whole thing was routine, as if he drove around taking moisture measurements every day in the face of dam failures. Blaine wondered if the guy would return later, when the spillways were going full blast. That was when the moisture measurements would mean something. The guy hadn't said anything about returning and Blaine hadn't thought to ask.

He stood and walked behind the police car to see if there were any more good donuts. The pink box sat on the hood of a second police car. He liked chocolate, but the only chocolate one left had coconut sprinkled on top, and Blaine was no fan of coconut. He grabbed it anyway because the sprinkles were easy to pick off. He leaned on the other car and looked up at the dam. He had never seen water in the spillways, not in his three years working here.

He glanced up at the gravel dike, holding back all the water in LakeMojave, just in time to see the explosion, a gray and black cloud shooting high into the air over the middle of the dike. Blaine instinctively ducked for cover. Looking back out to the dam he could make out rocks and other large clumps of material in the cloud. While Blaine watched, mesmerized, the sound wave hit him like a hammer, knocking him backwards. He dropped the donut. The intense pain in his ears caused him to drop the coffee as well in an attempt to cover them to protect them. He heard one of the policemen swear. He looked up at the dike again and saw that most of the debris had fallen, but a large cloud remained. He looked down at the ground and saw his spilled coffee and donut.

He articulated his feelings. "What the hell happened?" His ears were still ringing so loudly that ambient sounds were muffled.

Blaine looked around. He knew the techs were over by the spillways someplace and he'd seen Billy, the other guard, walk over there too. Ears still ringing, he pulled his radio from his belt and looked at the display, half expecting the thing to be busted. The radio blasted before he tried to talk into it. It was Billy. "Blaine, you okay?"

Blaine heard it, but just barely over the ringing in his ears. He turned up the volume and responded. "Roger, I'm okay, but my ears are ringing like a church bell. What happened?"

The radio squawked again. "We don't know what blew. From the control center, we heard it, but we couldn't see anything."

Blaine looked back up on the dike where the dust had mostly settled and now he saw a thirty-foot-deep, thirty-foot-wide notch in the dike. He keyed the mike. "Unfreakin believable, there's a big hole blown out of the top of the dam."

There was silence after Blaine's description before Billy asked another question. "Blaine, the techs wanna know if there's any water, you know, coming out of the notch."

Blaine looked hard, trying to see through the remaining cloud of dust. "It don't look like it."

There was silence again. Blaine guessed that Billy was talking to the techs.

Finally Billy said, "Blaine, the guys are going up to check it out. You'd better call Hoover and report it." The radio went silent for a second, then, "Maybe you'd better call the cops too."

Blaine looked over at the two cops working the roadblock with him. They both stared up at the dam with they're mouths hanging open. Blaine didn't think he would need to call them. But the call to Hoover was a great idea.

* * *

10:15 p.m. - Boulder City, Nevada

A waitress, probably in her fifties, far beyond the age to wear such a short, revealing cocktail dress, took their menus, then turned and headed back to the kitchen. Grant wondered how the casinos persuaded older ladies to wear those dresses. You'd think they'd go on strike or something. They were unionized, weren't they? Yet you saw it in almost all the casinos, especially the older ones.

At Fred's request, she had seated them where they could look out over the casino floor. An infinite number of lights blinked on and off, while the sounds of clinking coins and the distinctive cycling sounds of slot machines permeated the large room. Grant watched a fat woman on a stool between two slot machines feed coins into one, pull the handle, then feed coins into the other, while waiting for the three windows to sequence and stop.

The Hacienda Hotel & Casino sat on top of a hill offering a spectacular view of Lake Mead, just minutes from Hoover Dam. Fred told him that although listed in BoulderCity, the Hacienda was technically just outside the city limits, on county property, necessitated by an anti-gambling ordinance in BoulderCity, the only such ordinance in Nevada.

In the 1930s, in the midst of the depression, BoulderCity had been a private community, built to house workers and their families employed in the construction of Hoover Dam. When the construction companies ran the town, they outlawed booze, gambling, and prostitution. In fact, to discourage bad habits, the workers were paid with special Boulder money, only accepted in grocery and clothing stores in Boulder.

Fred laughed when he pointed out that it hadn't taken long for the casinos in Vegas to react, and accept the Boulder money. Consequently, citizens of Las Vegas, including prostitutes, casino workers, and liquor storeowners, often came to shop in Boulder for groceries or clothes, and spend the Boulder money. Once the dam was completed, BoulderCity transformed into a normal city, governed by elected officials, but the anti-gambling laws remained, something the citizens of Boulder were proud of.

As Grant scanned the casino floor, looking at the people mulling through the slots, video games, and card tables, he tried to discern their level of anxiety. The gamblers did not seem overly concerned about the impending flood on the Colorado River, or about Hoover Dam being closed. Because of the Hacienda's location, he guessed that many of the casino's occupants lived in Arizona. This was their state-line casino. However, they didn't seem panicky or even nervous, trapped in Nevada with their only bridge closed. They acted more like skiers, snowed in at the ski resort, forced to call their boss and request a couple more days off due to an unfortunate turn of events that ended up forcing them to extend their vacations.

When Grant looked back at Fred, Fred was smiling.

"What?" Grant said.

"You. What are you thinking?"

"Just that all these people . . ." Grant motioned at the gamblers, "They seem oblivious to everything that's going on."

"You jealous?"

"Nah. It's just hard to believe, with all that's going on less than two miles away. Most of these people look more concerned with whether or not they're going to lose five bucks in the slots." Grant took a sip of ice water. "It's just amazing."

Fred sipped his drink. "So how'd you get roped into this, anyway?"

Grant smiled. "I almost didn't. I was supposed to be in Africa with the rest of them. It was a last-minute thing to leave me in charge. Believe me, if they had an idea something like this was going to happen, they would have sent me to Siberia. They wouldn't have wanted me within a hundred miles of this thing."

Fred's brows furrowed. "Why not? You're doing a great job. Everything you've done has been right on."

The day had been such a whirlwind that Grant hadn't thought much about it. He did feel good about himself, though. He had made more decisions today than in the last fifteen years at the Bureau. It felt like a different job. When he joined the Bureau as a new civil engineer, he had dreamed about this life. Not the crisis management, but the offsite assignments at construction projects scattered around the country. He had always felt he would be in charge of a big dam, making the necessary decisions. But the 80's and 90's bore few new construction projects for the Bureau of Reclamation. For the last few years, Grant struggled to fit in. He wasn't good at politics. He'd even considered leaving. But today had been different, more like he envisioned fifteen years before.

Grant considered Fred's compliment. "I think it's a little early to say everything's going to work. Roland is never going to understand me blowing the spillways. Besides, if the Hoover-Two fails, I'll be the goat."

Ever since coming up with the dam extension idea, Grant kept imagining the rising water breaking through his sandbag dam. He thought it would work, but the image of it failing kept playing over and over in his mind.

Fred shook his head. "It's not going to fail. Besides, when it holds, you'll be hailed as a genius."

Neither of them said anything for a moment.

Fred finally broke the ice. "You're married, right? You got kids in Denver?"

Grant looked abruptly at his watch. He had forgotten all about his family. He glanced at Fred apologetically. "You know, I've been so busy, I never even called my wife. I should probably take a moment and give her a call. With the news and all, she's probably wondering what's going on."

Fred motioned away with his hand. "Sure. Take as long as you want."

Grant stood and walked over to a quieter place in the restaurant where the casino noise was muffled before punching his home number into the cell phone. She was probably already asleep. The phone rang twice before his wife picked it up.

"Hello?" Her voice sounded energetic, not sleepy.

"Hi honey."

"Grant!" she said, excited. "I wondered if you were going to call. We saw you on TV. The kids couldn't believe it. All the neighbors called. The news channels have been showing the dam breaking up all night. Wow, it's terrible."

The image of the Glen Canyon Dam breaking apart seemed like a lifetime ago. Grant had actually forgotten about the TV interview. The thought of his face being broadcast around the country was incomprehensible. He tried to remember what he'd said, but couldn't. It really didn't matter anyway; Roland wouldn't like it.

His wife continued, "I almost called you, but I wasn't sure it'd be okay. What are you doing now that the dam's gone?"

"I'm not in Arizona anymore. I flew to Hoover Dam this morning, right after the interview."

"Hoover? Isn't that where we went when we were in Vegas?"

He remembered the trip.

"Yeah, Vegas is about forty minutes away."

"What are you doing there? Did something happen there too?"

He laughed to himself that most people viewed a dam failure as an isolated event, not considering the inevitable destruction downstream from all the floodwater. "No, but it will. All the water from LakePowell is headed our way. We're doing everything we can to get ready for it. It's pretty hairy, actually. We're doing all kinds of crazy stuff."

His wife hesitated for a second. "Are you in danger?"

"No. Not really," he replied.

"How does it feel to be in charge?"

He thought about the question. The pressure had been intense but exhilarating. Even the governor of Nevada had acted on his decisions.

"A lot different than normal, that's for sure," he said. It was all he could think of.

She spoke boldly. "Well it's about time. You're smarter than those morons you work for anyway. They're just brown-nosers." She hesitated. "Have you heard from them?"

Grant realized he was nodding. "Yeah. Roland called this morning and Howard called an hour ago."

"Are they coming back?"

"Roland never made it to Africa. He's trying to get back here now. I expect him sometime tomorrow morning. Howard is still deciding." Grant laughed. "He's afraid to abandon his wife in Yellowstone. But I expect him, too. You know him, he can't stand being out of the loop, especially with Roland coming here."

"He's a creep, Grant."

"Yeah, I know."

The phone went silent again. Grant looked back at the table and he saw the waitress setting the dinner plates on the table. He didn't know what else to say. "Hey, I better let you go so you can get to sleep."

"When are you coming home?"

He wondered the same thing himself. Realistically, he might get stuck out here cleaning up messes for weeks or even months. "I don't know, honey. I'll call you tomorrow when I get a better idea."

"I love you," she said.

Her comment caught him off guard. The "love" words were not often verbalized in their marriage. "I love you too," he mumbled uncomfortably.

He hung up and wandered back to the table. Fred, already cutting into his steak, looked up and smiled when Grant returned.

"What'd she say?"

"She said all the neighbors saw me on TV."

Fred grinned and stuffed some steak in his mouth and responded while still chewing. "Can I wait and get your autograph after dinner?"

Grant laughed. "Yeah. Sure." He sat down and grabbed his steak knife and started to slice his steak when the cell phone rang. He looked at Fred apologetically. "Probably my wife again." However, when he saw the display, the number showed 702, a Nevada number.

He answered, "Hello?"

"Mr. Stevens?" the voice asked. It was a woman's voice that Grant didn't recognize.

"Yeah. I'm Grant Stevens."

The person on the other end sounded nervous. "You guys better get back here. There's been another bomb."

Grant dropped his knife on the plate. Fred looked up and stopped chewing.

"At Hoover?" Grant asked.

"No, Mr. Stevens. Downstream at LakeMojave. Davis Dam."

The information made no sense. Grant stood. "We'll get back as fast as we can."

Grant hung up the phone and looked over at Fred. "They blew up Davis Dam." Grant waited for Fred to stand, then turned to leave before remembering the check, which the waitress hadn't left on the table yet.

Fred, one step ahead of him, pulled his wallet from his pocket and pulled a twenty out and tossed it on the table, more than enough to cover the casino steaks.

At the last minute while standing and ready to go, Grant looked back at the steak and felt a huge regret, finally noticing how hungry he was. He reached down and cut a large slice and stuffed it in his mouth. Fred nodded and grabbed the rolls out of the basket in the middle of the table.

"Back to Hoover?" Fred asked, more a statement than a question.

Grant nodded.

CHAPTER 25

10:20 p.m. - Hoover Dam, Nevada

As soon as Grant and Fred walked back into the Hoover Dam visitor center, they tracked down the person who had taken the call from Davis Dam. The call had been taken by one of Fred's technicians. The woman explained that the guy at Davis was a security guard named Blaine. Grant dialed the number, and Blaine picked right up.

"Davis Dam. Blaine."

"This is Grant Stevens from the Bureau of Reclamation. I'm calling from Hoover Dam. What happened there, Blaine?"

"He blew the place up. Up on the dike. There's a big hole in it now."

He? The reference threw Grant for a loop, making him abandon his previous questions. "Who, Blaine? You said 'he' blew it up?"

Blaine's answer came back as if everyone should know. "The guy from the Bureau. He was just up there drilling holes in the spot where it exploded. He's the one that must've done it."

Grant was confused. "Bureau guy?"

"Yeah. He drove up here in a Bureau truck, logo and everything. Said he needed to take moisture tests and that he would be drilling into the dam."

Grant wanted to ask a million more questions about the perpetrator, now possibly an insider, but forced himself to focus on the damage. "Blaine, I'll come back to him later. What about the dam? You said something about a big hole. How bad is it?" He was afraid of the answer.

"It's big. About thirty feet deep and forty feet wide."

Grant concluded that the amount of water already flowing through must be incredible. "How fast is it washing out, Blaine?"

There was silence. "Whaddya mean?"

Grant explained. "Water. How much water is going through the hole and how fast is it growing?"

There was a moment of hesitation from the guard. "None. There ain't no water coming out yet, just a big notch in the dam. Hell, you think I'd be standin' here answerin' the phones if the dam was falling apart?"

This confused Grant. How could there not be any water? At the same time, he felt like he had just won the lottery. They might still be able to save Davis, something he hadn't even dared to consider since he first received the news of the explosion. "I'm confused, Blaine. You said there's an opening in the dam thirty feet deep, yet there's no water. That doesn't make sense. How could the water not be pouring out? The dam's almost full, isn't it?"

"I don't know Mr. . . . What'd you say your name was?"

"Stevens. Grant Stevens." Grant could sense the guy's excitement and forgave him for not remembering his name. "Blaine, has anyone gone up there and inspected it yet?"

"They're up there right now, Mr. Stevens."

"Can you connect me with one of them?"

* * *

10:30 p.m. - Davis Dam, Nevada

Billy Watkins walked up to the edge of the crater on top of Davis Dam. His nostrils flared at the smell of something he didn't recognize. It reminded him of the air after a thunderstorm, only this air didn't smell as clean. It had the same charged quality, but it was mixed with dust and a chemical smell, some of which still floated in the air. Billy stood tall and lanky in his security uniform. He had ratty, unkempt blond hair that wandered out from under his security hat, and he sported a thin mustache. Billy tried to make up for the thinness by letting it grow longer, but this only resulted in the hairs tending to mat together and highlight rather than cover up the thinness.

He peered down into the hole, bracing himself, not knowing how stable the bank might be. He jumped when his cell phone rang. He saw the others, Dennis the night shift technician and the two day-shift techs, glance over at his ringing phone. He picked it up. "Hello?"

The man introduced himself as a Grant Stevens from the Bureau of Reclamation. He said he was calling from Hoover and that Blaine had given him Billy's cell phone number.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Stevens?"

"Blaine told me that you are inspecting the dam. What can you tell me about the damage?"

Billy looked around, noticing that the crater was concentrated on the dry side of the dam. The notch didn't go all the way through to the wet side, which would have been a disaster. "We just got up here," he said. He described, as best he could, the huge crater and how it didn't reach to the wet side of the dam. While he explained the situation to the guy on the phone, he saw Dennis run over and pick up something. Dennis waved to him, motioning him over to look at what he had just found.

"Hang on, Mr. Stevens. Looks like Dennis found something." Still clutching the phone to his ear, he skirted the perimeter of the crater over to where the notch would have extended to the wet side. Dennis held the ends of two green wires that stuck out of the ground. Billy relayed the find to Grant.

"So one of his bombs didn't detonate?" Billy heard Grant ask into the phone, a conclusion Billy had reached independently.

"Yeah, I'd say that's what happened," he responded.

"Is the dam stable? Does it need to be reinforced?" Grant asked.

Billy looked around. He was just a security guard. How was he supposed to know? He brought the phone down and asked Dennis, "Hey, this guy wants to know if the dam needs shoring up. He's wondering if it might be weak enough to fail as the water rises."

Dennis shrugged, looking down at the water. "Gee, I don't know. Then again, it wouldn't hurt anything to shore it up, would it?"

Billy relayed the message to Grant. "Mr. Stevens, none of us are qualified to make that decision, but why not shore it up?"

Grant responded immediately. "You're right, Billy. Let's do it. I'm coming down there. I'll be in touch." He gave Billy his cell phone number in case anything changed and hung up.

Billy looked back at the crater, and imagined for a moment what might have happened if the bomb had worked as planned. He looked down at the dry riverbed below the gravel dike holding back LakeMojave. He tried to picture the potential destruction. He glanced downstream toward Laughlin. He knew the water would wipe out all of the buildings within his view. They had been lucky, very lucky.

* * *

10:45 p.m. - Hoover Dam, Nevada

Grant hung up the phone. Fred sat looking at him, having patiently listened to Grant's side of the phone conversation.

"So you're gonna go down there?" Fred asked.

"Yeah. We need to shore it up. We can't have it breaking when the water rises."

Fred pointed at him. "But what can you do?"

"That's where I need your help. Since Davis Dam is managed from here, where do you guys get the construction equipment, operators, and gravel?"

Fred sat back in his chair and shook his head. "Grant, that dam's old. I don't remember anybody messing with the dike for years. The biggest projects have probably been moving gravel around in the parking lot."

"Fine. Who'd you use to do the parking lot?"

Fred held out his hands. "Like I said, I don't know; probably some private company."

"All right, call the biggest construction company in Laughlin. Track 'em down and get 'em out of bed. Call the cops if you need to. Let's get them to the dam site as fast as possible. If you're not sure if there's any fill material available at the site, then tell 'em to bring some in dump trucks." Grant wondered if he'd missed anything. "Oh, and I need you to find a helicopter to fly me down there."

Fred took a moment and wrote down a few notes. "I know someone with a helicopter who can fly you down. When do you want to leave?"

Grant looked at his watch. "Immediately." Then he had another thought. "Wait, make that ten minutes. I have another phone call I need to make."

Fred hurried away, and Grant dialed the number from a note in his pocket. When the man answered, Grant spoke into the phone. "Hello, I'm trying to find Phil, of the FBI."

The special agent responded immediately. "Yes. This is Phil. Who's speaking, please?"

"Grant Stevens from the Bureau. I met you at the Glen Canyon Dam."

"Grant Stevens. Long time no talk. It has been a long day, hasn't it? How are things at Hoover, anyway? Did you think of something for my investigation?" The lifeless tone in Phil's voice told Grant that he hadn't rested either since it began.

"Let me guess - you guys haven't caught the bad guys yet, have you?"

"No, but we are working on a few leads." The agent didn't sound nearly as confident as his words.

"Well, I have another lead for you. They struck again at Davis Dam. Maybe twenty minutes ago."

The agent came to life, almost shouting in the phone. "How do you know it was him?"

Grant hadn't even considered it might be unrelated. "I don't. I just assumed."

Phil interrupted. "Where is Davis Dam anyway? How bad is this one?"

Grant was surprised Phil didn't know where Davis was. He was from California. "Davis Dam holds back LakeMojave. It's just downstream of Hoover Dam. You know - Laughlin, Nevada."

"How bad is it?" Phil asked again.

"As far as the damage goes, we got lucky. They found two wires sticking out of the ground, next to the main crater. Looks like at least one of the bombs didn't detonate. If it had, we'd have another dam gone, another big flood."

The phone went silent for a moment. Grant guessed that Phil took a second to process the information. "Grant, where are you going to be? I'd like my men to look over the un-detonated bomb, before it gets disturbed."

"A helicopter's flying me down to Davis Dam in a few minutes. We're trying to arrange for some construction guys with some front loaders and bulldozers. We need to shore it up, before it really does fail. I haven't seen the site yet, so I can't promise that we'll be able to do our stuff without disturbing it."

Phil sounded desperate. "Look, I just need a few minutes with it. How soon are your guys going to be ready?"

Grant knew he couldn't risk it. "Phil, we're just trying to round up the machinery as we speak. It'll probably be an hour before anything happens. But, I can't hold 'em. If you want to see it, then get one of your men out of Vegas and helicopter him down there now. The risk is too great if I wait." Grant was amazed at the way he was bossing around the FBI.

"Okay, that's fair. I'll try to get a special agent out of Vegas, pronto." Phil took a second, then continued. "Oh, and Grant, thanks for the call. I think I'll leave a few agents here and move the investigation your way, where the trail's still warm. Are you going to be at Davis for long?"

"No. I'll only be there for a couple of hours, until I feel the dam's safe. Then I'm coming back here. We've got a lot of water heading our way, and I'm setting up a science experiment to see if we can contain it."

"All right Grant, we'll see you soon."

Grant heard the connection drop.

Fred was waiting. "The helicopter's on it's way here. Are you ready?"

Grant looked around and considered the question. "Ready as I'll ever be."

CHAPTER 26

11:15 p.m. - Hoover Dam, Nevada

Grant felt his stomach turn as the helicopter lifted. It wasn't that he was overly susceptible to motion sickness. But he felt strange just the same. It had been a long time since he'd flown in a helicopter, maybe ten years, and never in a work capacity for the Bureau of Reclamation.

As they gained altitude, the left seat offered a great view of Hoover Dam and the frantic construction project underway. He could see that progress on the sandbag dike continued unabated. The top of the dam was a beehive of activity. If nothing went wrong, it should be completed in time. Again, he had to fight the image of Hoover-Two not being high enough, the floodwater spilling over the top, washing away the sandbags. But he did feel it would be high enough. They'd done the math multiple times. Nevertheless, the image kept coming, tormenting his thoughts.

The helicopter banked and the view of Hoover Dam rotated behind him, lost from sight. Up ahead, the clear night and partial moon allowed a haunting view into the dark chasm below of BlackCanyon. Occasional sparkles of light reflected off the Colorado River deep down in the canyon and showed the path carved by the river millions of years before. Eventually, as they passed the canyons and surrounding hills, the landscape opened up and began to flatten out. From here to the Gulf of California was all flat desert. Up ahead, far in the distance, Grant could make out a grouping of lights. He and the pilot both wore a set of headphones with a microphone extending from the left side. Grant shouted into his headset microphone, "Is that Laughlin?" He could hear his loud voice in the headphones at the same time.

The pilot, who had not yet spoken, responded, "Yeah, the first set of lights are from North Laughlin. The lights behind are from South Laughlin and Bullhead City, Arizona, which is below the dam; those casinos are on the banks of the Colorado River."

Grant quickly determined that if the Davis Dam broke, he would not want to be staying in South Laughlin.

The pilot and helicopter had come from one of the many Las Vegas tour companies, which were available for charter twenty-four hours a day. They flew Las Vegas visitors to a multitude of places including the Vegas skyline, Hoover Dam, Laughlin, and even the Grand Canyon. Fred said they were extremely flexible and would fly you almost anywhere you would pay them to go. For a little extra, negotiated by Fred, they had agreed to pick Grant up at Hoover and drop him right in the parking lot at Davis Dam.

Although it was too dark to tell, Grant wondered how much flooding would be occurring right now in the upper reaches of LakeMojave. With all the gates and spillways open at Hoover, the flow down the Colorado into LakeMojave dwarfed anything in the history of the lake.

For a moment Grant's thoughts wandered randomly, not dwelling on any one subject. Then he thought about the perpetrators of the two bombings, something he had been too busy to think much about. The bomb at Glen Canyon Dam this morning had been easy enough to explain. The dam had been considered a foreign terrorist target for years by the federal government due to its massive size and social prominence. Additionally, the environmentalists hated it passionately, mostly due to GlenCanyon being buried under LakePowell. Others claimed the Glen Canyon Dam was not financially feasible, and accused the Bureau of cooking the books to get it approved in the first place.

But why Davis Dam? Most people had never even heard of it, including FBI Phil who was from Southern California. It certainly didn't seem prominent enough to attract foreign terrorists. Why then would they want to blow up something no one had ever heard of? And as far as he knew, LakeMojave didn't bury any environmental treasures like LakePowell did.

He wondered briefly about whether they would blow Davis to kill someone downstream in Laughlin, but if that were the case, why Glen Canyon earlier that morning? Theoretically, it was possible that the casino owners in Las Vegas would want to destroy the casinos in Laughlin to reduce competition, but the idea seemed far-fetched. In his estimation, blowing up the Glen Canyon Dam would be much more difficult than Davis, even though the attempt at Davis hadn't been successful. No, Davis had to be part of a bigger overall plan. And if so, what could be their primary goal? If Grant were a terrorist, and had succeeded in taking out the Glen Canyon Dam, he would have celebrated and retired. GlenCanyon was the mother-lode of controversial dams. What more could they want?

Grant concluded that he did not have all the pieces to the puzzle, which simultaneously convinced him that more puzzle pieces would be forthcoming. In other words, more dams would be blown. He was now certain of it. They were now dealing with a serial bomber. A heightened level of anxiety settled over him. This wasn't over yet. Where would the next strike occur? He hoped that Phil and his FBI team arrived at Davis soon. They needed to talk. In fact, they needed to do more than investigate. They needed to beef up the security at more potential targets. If only he knew what those targets were.

The pilot pulled Grant out of his thoughts. "You can see the dam right up there."

Normally a statement like that was accompanied by a pointed finger or motion of the hand, but the pilot's hands were busy on the controls. Grant couldn't miss the dam a couple of miles away, completely lit up with strong lights, just as Hoover was.

* * *

11:50 p.m. - Davis Dam, Nevada

The construction guy stood waiting for Grant when the helicopter landed. Blaine, the security man, stood next to him. The construction guy introduced himself as Reese Burke and drove a four-door, four-wheel-drive pickup that looked remarkably like the one driven by the demolition guy at Hoover earlier in the day. Reese had a gut that wouldn't quit, making it impossible to tuck in the front of his shirt, and his pants hung very low, making Grant wonder how they stayed up at all. Grant made a mental note to look away if Reese bent over.

The construction man Reese accused the Laughlin cops of scaring him to death, waking him by banging on his front door. It had taken him another twenty minutes to gather his senses, decide what to do, and raise enough men to get things moving. Five dump trucks were loaded and en route, as well as two bulldozers and a front loader. The five trucks were expected any minute.

Grant looked around and saw that generally things looked normal at Davis Dam. To an unsuspecting eye, the dike looked normal and unharmed. The concrete waterworks gave no hint of the water building up behind them. He was anxious to get up on the dam and inspect the damage, but was delayed again when another helicopter approached and landed in the parking lot. Covering his eyes to shield the dust stirred up by the chopper, Grant saw a woman wearing blue FBI coveralls jump out, crouch, and run toward them. She carried a large briefcase. The helicopter, from another Las Vegas tour company, took off immediately, climbing back into the night sky.

After waiting a second for the noise to abate from the retreating chopper, Grant stuck out his hand and introduced himself.

"Special Agent Susan Williams," she responded. Grant noticed that her handshake felt firm, like a man's, which was surprising since her features were noticeably feminine. She had a plain but pretty face without blemish, long brown hair, and probably barely tipped the scales at a hundred pounds.

"You're the explosives specialist that Phil talked about?"

She nodded.

He glanced at his watch. "Wow. You got here quick."

Her gritted teeth showed her disapproval. "Phil told me you wouldn't wait for us, and that if I wanted to see the bomb site, I needed to get here before you. That didn't give me much time."

Grant felt the resentment and took note to walk on eggshells with her. "Well, I appreciate the effort." He pointed up at the crater on Davis dam. "Let's get up there and look around. We probably have about a half hour before Reese here," He motioned toward the construction man who was smiling broadly at the FBI woman. "will have bulldozers and trucks trampling the whole area."

The agent nodded anxiously. Grant turned toward the dam and had actually taken a couple of uncertain steps before he heard the security guard, Blaine, from behind.

"You can drive up over there."

Grant turned back in time to see Blaine point at where the highway climbed the west side of the dam.

Reese motioned toward his pickup. "Hop in. I'll take you and the girl up."

Grant thought he detected a brief look of resentment in the agent's expression at Reese addressing her as a girl, but it was gone before he could be sure.

Before she walked to the truck, she turned to Blaine. "Which one of you saw the bomber?"

Blaine's eyes went down as if he might be in trouble. "It was me. But he looked pretty official when . . ." His words trailed off.

"Come up there with us," she told him forcefully. "I need to ask you some questions."

Blaine nodded. "Sure."

Grant and Special Agent Williams reached Reese's truck at the same time and Grant went out of his way to offer her the front seat. She acted slightly irritated, but Grant thought he also detected a touch of appreciation as she consented and climbed in the front. The security guard climbed in the back with Grant. Reese had no sooner started the truck when she turned abruptly.

"Wait." She was looking in the back seat toward the security guard. "I need a shovel."

Reese slammed the truck in gear and took off, ignoring her. "Relax. I got shovels in the back." Grant didn't think Reese's mannerisms were earning him any points with the FBI.

When the truck leveled onto the crest of Davis Dam, Grant saw the water level was alarmingly high. The huge spotlights lit up the water for a hundred feet or so from the dam. Grant couldn't help thinking about Hoover Dam, just sixty-five miles upstream, dumping water at record levels. He looked out the other window, down the 200-foot-high gravel embankment. Although he knew the dike's height, looking down it at night made it seem much taller. He straightened up and looked ahead between Reese and Agent Williams and saw the large crater, just ahead.

"You see it, right?" he said to Reese.

"See what?" Reese joked, although none of the passengers laughed.

Agent Williams leaned forward, grasping the dashboard to get a better look. "Don't get too close. Stop about here." She didn't look at Reese, but kept her eyes on the crater.

Reese eased the truck to a halt. "Here?"

"Yeah, that's fine," she said.

Reese shut off the truck and all four of them hopped out.

The agent looked at Blaine. "How many people have been over the site since the explosion?"

Blaine responded, "Billy and two technicians."

"Did they drive up here or walk?"

"They walked. They came over from the generation plant. " He pointed toward the concrete structure that housed the turbines.

"So no other vehicles have been up here since the explosion?"

Blaine shook his head. "No. We're the first."

"Did they touch the wires?" she asked. Her presence was much more powerful than Grant would have guessed when he first saw her.

Blaine hesitated. "Yeah, I think Billy said they picked up the wires when they saw them." He looked around at Grant and Reese for support. "Sorry," he added.

Grant thought he saw her grit her teeth again.

"Don't worry," she said. "Hopefully we can still get a few good prints off the wires."

She started off toward the crater and stopped abruptly, turning around to face them. Although none of them had yet moved, she told them to stay put and give her a few moments alone on the site.

After she walked out of earshot, Reese spoke up. "Bossy little thing, ain't she?"

Grant guessed that in Reese's line of work, he seldom ran into women in powerful positions. He defended her. "At least she seems competent. Let's hope she gets some fingerprints or something else to catch our bad guy."

Reese lowered his voice. "Is this the same guy that wiped out LakePowell's dam this morning?"

The question surprised Grant. He shrugged his shoulders. "Hey, I'm not the FBI. I'm just a guy that works on the dams. But yeah, that's the speculation."

"Unbelievable," Blaine said from behind.

DAY THREE

Wednesday, June 23

CHAPTER 27

12:02 a.m. - Davis Dam, Nevada

Grant, Reese, and Blaine watched the FBI woman meticulously walk the area around the crater. She stopped occasionally, and with a huge set of tweezers, retrieved small objects and placed them in zip-lock bags. After she had spent a few minutes covering the area, she stood straight and glanced back at the men.

"Can we come over there yet?" Grant yelled.

She scanned the area under her feet, then looked back up and waved them over. "Bring the shovels," she yelled.

Reese grabbed two shovels out of the back of his truck, then the three men walked toward the crater and the waiting agent. The crest of the dam had been just over fifty feet wide. However, the explosion had carved over thirty feet away on the downstream side. At first glance, Grant guessed that there had been a line of explosive devices, and that one had not detonated. When they reached Agent Williams, she crouched, holding something. Grant saw two green wires sticking out of the ground, which the agent had wrapped in plastic to prevent further contamination. She asked for one of the shovels and immediately started trying to dig next to where the wires came out of the ground. The wires extruded from a hole drilled into the asphalt road, and the shovel made no progress. She swiveled around the wires, looking for a better angle, but the asphalt wouldn't give. Grant wondered what she would do next.

Reese walked up behind her. "That ain't gonna work."

She glared at him and Grant could tell she resented the man, but she stopped digging. "What do you suggest?"

Reese lifted his hat and swept his hand over his balding head. "I have some other tools, chisels and stuff that would work to widen the hole a little, but it'd take too long." He pointed from Grant to the crater. "We can't wait around for a couple of hours while you bring up a spoonful at a time." She glared at him, but he continued. "Why don't we just pull the thing out of the hole?"

She looked at Reese and frowned. "It's an intact detonator. I don't want to pull the wires out of it or I might damage it."

The comment made the construction man hesitate. "It ain't gonna blow up, is it?"

She shook her head. "No, but I need to get the detonator undisturbed if possible, especially if it's homemade, and we need to get a clean sample of the explosive material, which I'm assuming is ammonium nitrate fertilizer. That's what they used at GlenCanyon."

"Assuming it's the same guys," Grant added from behind.

Agent Williams and Reese both looked at Grant, but neither said anything.

Reese motioned toward the hole. "I got some long screw drivers and stuff that we can poke down there. If we can loosen all that stuff on top, you might be able to pull the detonator out without screwing it up too bad."

She gave in and nodded.

Reese scrounged around in the back of his truck and returned with the tools and a section of galvanized pipe. Reese knelt down to dig, but the agent handed him the wires, took the long screwdriver and began the excavation herself. In order to see better, she pulled a long metal flashlight out of her case, and shined it down the hole. She dug only a few inches, before she became excited.

"Definitely ammonium nitrate," she said enthusiastically. She carefully scooped small amounts into another zip-lock bag.

Reese watched her zip a bag closed. "You need that for evidence?"

She resumed digging. "We should be able to get a chemical signature off these samples. It could show whether it was the same batch as GlenCanyon." She glanced at him for a second. "We might even be able to figure out where it was manufactured."

Reese turned around and winked at Grant. "If I was married to her, I don't think I'd be sneaking around behind her back."

Grant noticed Agent Williams grunt a small laugh. It was the first sign that she might actually have a sense of humor. Somewhere behind, he heard a rumbling sound. He turned to see a large flatbed semi coming through the security gate with a huge bulldozer on the back. He saw two more trucks behind, one carrying a second smaller bulldozer, and the third with the front loader. He wondered how much longer Agent Williams would need.

"Hold it." She stopped Reese who was scooping debris away from the whole with his hand. She took the wires from him and gently tugged in various directions. "It's coming." She jostled it again, then carefully withdrew a black metal tube from the hole.

"Got it," she said and they all watched as she carefully coiled the wire and the detonator into a large plastic bag, trying not to handle it any more than necessary.

"Unbelievable," Blaine whispered from behind.

She retrieved a small dipper out of her case and scooped up more of the white pellets. These she put in a smaller plastic bag. She went down for two more scoops before she felt satisfied. She started packing the two bags back in the case when Reese interrupted her.

"Is that it?"

She looked up, obviously not as stressed as when she arrived. "Yeah, sure." She hesitated, staring at what she had in her hands, then looked up at Grant. "You guys can go ahead."

Reese walked back to his pickup to radio the truck drivers below. Special Agent Williams spent a moment measuring the hole with a small ruler, then retrieved a camera from her briefcase and shuffled around the hole taking multiple pictures.

With the explosive issue taken care of, Grant turned and studied the crater for the first time. At thirty feet wide, it covered most of the width of the top of the dam, leaving only twenty feet where they had dug up the explosives. It made him hesitate to step too close to the edge, afraid the bank would collapse and he'd fall into the crater. A glance upstream where the still, black water inched higher by the minute more than convinced him to count his lucky stars that the bomb in question had not detonated. If the explosion had gone as planned, water would be flowing over the dam and they would have lost Davis Dam.

Reese approached. "I'm going back down to talk to my boys that just showed up." He motioned to the truck. "You staying up here or you want a ride?"

Blaine spoke to Special Agent Williams. "If you don't need me, I'll go with him."

The special agent shook her head at Blaine. "No, you can go. I'll catch up with you later." She looked at Reese and motioned around the ground. "I'll look around some more, see if I can find any more evidence before you guys trample it."

Grant didn't think there was anything he could accomplish below. "I'll stay up here too."

Reese nodded and he and Blaine headed for the pickup. Before they reached it, Grant heard the truck engines below shut off. In the absence of the sound of the engines, he heard a rumbling that he didn't remember from before. He turned his head to isolate the sound without any luck.

Grant cupped his hands and called out to the others. "Hey, what's that rumbling sound?"

He saw them turn and look around. Blaine pointed back toward the dam's concrete water works. "The spillways!" Blaine yelled. "They're opening them."

Grant turned. Three huge square head gates situated at the top of the concrete structure, each the width of three cars, were being slowly opened. An amazing amount of water was now sliding down the face of them and crashing into the pool at the bottom. The rumbling noise, similar to a waterfall, had come from there. They had waited as long as possible to open them, allowing more preparation time for the casinos and homes downstream. But Grant had warned the governor that they could only delay opening the spillways until LakeMojave was full, which it now was.

When he looked back, Reese and Blaine were already in the truck and backing away from him along the crest of the dam. He saw Agent Williams walking around the crater, stopping occasionally to kick her feet in the loose debris from the explosion. He listened again to the rumbling water behind him, and then walked carefully over to the reservoir. He crouched down and looked at where the water met the dike. He watched it ripple onto the shore. After a few moments he gave up. It wasn't rising fast enough to see. However, the bank of LakeMojave was dry less than six inches above the water line. He didn't remember ever seeing a wet band that small around any lake. That alone was enough evidence of how fast the water was rising.

In the meantime, the dump trucks had arrived, and one was already headed up the dam. A wave of tiredness rolled through him and made him look at his watch: 12:25 a.m., 1:25 a.m. in Denver. No wonder he was so tired. He considered sitting down somewhere and resting. He wiped sweat off his brow and thought about slipping under the covers with his wife in his air-conditioned bedroom back in Colorado.

The first dump truck reached the crest of the dam, made a three-point turn, then began backing across the dam toward the crater. The first bulldozer had climbed about halfway up the dam. Grant saw below that they were already unloading the second bulldozer, and the second dump truck had started up the hill. When the first truck had backed up to the crater, it stopped, engine running, and the driver climbed out of the truck and walked over next to Grant.

The man wore a stained cowboy hat and smiled broadly. "Where do you want this?" he pointed at the truck.

Grant fumbled for a response.

"Just kidding," said the truck driver. "Reese already told me to dump it next to the hole." The man tilted his head toward the spot. "Then the 'dozers can push it where they need it." The man looked down in the crater while he took off his cowboy hat and wiped his brow with his arm. "Looks like somebody almost drained the lake."

While they were both staring in the hole, they heard Reese honk the horn of his truck from below. Grant wondered what Reese meant for them to do.

The man donned his hat again. "That's the boss telling me to shut up, dump, and go get another load." He glanced down at the crater again, then trotted back to his truck.

The engine revved as the hoist tilted the bed of the truck. Grant stepped back a few steps. When the dirt began to slide out, the man pulled the truck forward slightly to spread the drop. When it was empty, he kept moving as the hoist lowered back to the normal position. As the truck headed back toward the west access road, Grant noticed the first bulldozer had crested the dam and was pivoting toward him.

Grant took the moment to inspect the pile of dirt that came out of the dump truck. He grabbed a handful and let some of it slip through his fingers. He squeezed and it compressed nicely in his hand. Reese had done a good job and got the right stuff. You put the wrong material in a dam, and you might as well not bother. Satisfied with the material, Grant walked over to the edge of the crater. He looked down, wondering again what might have been if the bomb had been slightly more successful. And then he saw it.

It couldn't be. He stood as close to the edge as possible. The glistening in the bottom of the crater had caught his eye. He needed a better look. He looked back and forth to find an easier way down, finally settling on a slightly more gradual slope on his right. The first step would be just over six feet, then a steep incline to the bottom.

He didn't have the right shoes for it, but he jumped anyway, spinning so that he was facing the bank and his toes, not his heels, would dig in and stop him. The bank wasn't as soft as he'd estimated and instead of digging in, his shoes slid down the embankment, throwing his upper body forward where the underside of his forearms caught much of his fall, scraping against the rocky dirt which tore at the soft skin. A yell escaped him before he rolled to his back and slid the final portion on his back, coming to rest near the bottom, dirty from head to foot with both arms bleeding.

Disregarding the pain, he moved quickly over to where he'd seen it, hoping even then that it'd been a mistake, a shadow maybe, or a darker clump of dirt. But it wasn't. No, it was a shallow wet puddle, a slow leak through the remaining portion of the dam. He stuck his fingers into the small puddle, hoping his eyes were deceiving him, but they weren't. Using both hands, he scooped away mud. He needed to see where the water was coming from and how much. He continued to dig with his hands, and at first he thought he had plugged it, but the dry dirt turned wet and a small stream of brown dirty water sprinkled down out of the hill.

Agent Williams called from above. "Hey, what happened? Did you fall?"

He didn't know what to say. "It's leaking," was all that came out.

And as he said it, he noticed the small stream had grown in the last few seconds. He bent over to make sure his eyes hadn't misled him and the flow increased noticeably again. He looked up at the twenty-foot section of remaining dike between him and the water and realized it wasn't wide enough. While he looked up, a clump of earth broke away and fell into the crater close to where he stood. Simultaneously he felt the unmistakable feeling of water on his right foot. When he looked down he saw his right foot in a new puddle. He could now hear the water trickling, even with the noise of the bulldozer's diesel engine and the rumbling spillways in the background. He wondered if the dike would hold until the bulldozer arrived, and decided suddenly that it wouldn't.

"Start waving your arms at them!" he yelled at the FBI agent who was still staring at him. "Wave them over here now. Tell them to hurry up."

He remembered the cell phone and frantically searched through his recently used numbers for the guard. Finding the number, he called and waited for the answer. While it rang, he felt water around his feet again.

Billy, the second guard, answered.

"Billy, this is Grant up on the dam." He waved so the guard could see him. "There's a leak in the crater. I don't know how long it's going to last. Tell Reese to get his equipment up here fast."

He saw Billy run out of the guard shack and yell to them. He saw a radio go up to Reese's mouth. Grant looked over at the bulldozer coming toward him along the crest of the dam. He waved frantically at the man, pointing into the crater. The driver must have seen him because he craned his neck, then pushed a lever. Simultaneously, black smoke poured from the exhaust pipe and the bulldozer accelerated.

Grant turned and ran back toward the puddle, only to find himself in water up to his shins. He slogged through it toward the source, but when he arrived the water reached almost to his crotch and he had to reach underwater to feel the spring. With his hand he felt the water gushing out of the dam, but it felt different than spring water; it felt gritty and occasionally Grant felt small rocks wash past his hand.

"He's almost here," Agent Williams shouted from above. "Get out of there or he'll bury you!"

A much larger block of dirt caved off of the upstream side of the crater. Grant saw it out of the corner of his eye, but with both feet in the water, he couldn't move fast enough to evade it. He put up his arms and the dirt hit him head on, knocking him back into the water. He went under. When he tried to stand up, he realized his right leg was partially buried and he had to pull hard to get it out. He lost the shoe in the process.

The thought of getting buried alive by the bulldozer motivated him that he needed to climb out, but looking up at the sides of the crater and remembering his descent, he wondered how. Then he looked downstream and realized that was the answer. He slogged toward where the dirty water was now washing out onto the face of the dam. Grant felt a gush of water take his feet out from under him. Before he went under he saw another section of the dike between him and LakeMojave start to drop and he heard the female agent scream. For the next few moments he wasn't driving; he was just along for the ride. After he got his head back above water, he tried to grab with his hands and dig with his feet. He felt the water carry him along from the crater onto the outside face of the dam. He was dragged down the steep slope. For a moment he felt like he was on a waterslide, then he banged his arms on some rocks. He felt his big toenail tear out on the shoeless right foot. The thing that saved him was the water spreading out on the face of the dam. He stopped himself by grabbing a large rock with his right hand. Ignoring the pain now radiating out from multiple body parts, he quickly traversed across the stream to the dry incline and collapsed.

"Oh my! Are you okay?" Agent Williams had hurried down to where he lay.

He looked up at her. "Yeah," he said, although he really didn't feel okay.

She grabbed his hand. "You're a mess. We need to get you out of here." And to punctuate the statement, Grant felt water flow over his left foot as the stream expanded.

The ground vibrated and the diesel engine screamed as the bulldozer approached the flowing crater. The operator wasted no time, dropping the blade and pushing a swath in. Not waiting for the result, the machine reversed, backing up for another load. The bulldozer went back and forth multiple times until all the material from the truck was in the crater. Grant saw that the operator was getting the upper hand, as the stream diminished and finally stopped. Meanwhile, the second truck had arrived and the bulldozer waited while he dumped. The bulldozer then shoved it into the hole. When that material was in the hole, he started carving into the original dike, and pushing that into the hole. Before long the operator had built up the crater enough to drive into it and compress it, which he spent a while doing.

Grant lifted himself up, and felt what were going to be bruises. Agent Williams held his arm and they started the steep hike back to the crest. The operator stopped the bulldozer, left it idling, and jumped down and jogged over to where Grant and Agent Williams stood. "Wow, that was close. You okay, buddy?"

Grant nodded. "Just a little banged up." He pointed at the partially filled crater. "For a while there I didn't think you were going to be able to stop it."

The operator smiled. "For a while there I almost didn't. A few more seconds and it would have beat us. We'd be evacuating this place."

While they talked, Reese pulled his pickup behind the idling bulldozer and walked over. "Thanks for the heads up, Mr. Stevens. Good save." His eyes gave Grant a once over. "By the way, you look terrible."

Grant looked down and saw that his clothes were filthy. There was blood on both his arms and on his foot where he lost the toenail. "Thanks," Grant responded, managing a small smile in spite of the pain.

They were interrupted by the sound of diesel engines again and Grant noted that two more dump trucks had finally appeared below.

Reese looked over at Grant. "I'm gonna drive back down there and give my boys their marching orders. We're going to need more material than I thought. You want a ride, or you gonna slide down the face of the dam again?"

Grant couldn't imagine anything better than sitting back in the leather seats of Reese's truck. "I think I'll ride this time."

* * *

1:20 a.m. - Grand Canyon, Arizona

More than anything, David wanted to sleep. He wanted to crawl into his sleeping bag and get into the fetal position. Only then would it be possible to wake up and find that this all had been a bad dream. Besides, he was freezing. Even though he and Afram had been up on the ledge with Judy and out of the water for more than an hour, their clothes were still wet, and the night temperature in the Grand Canyon was cold.

As Judy had first anticipated, the outcropping enabled them to traverse upward to a small ledge where all three could sit down. Originally they had worried that the water would rise and rim them again, but that had not happened. The water had only risen about five feet farther after they lost the raft, and since then had actually receded slightly.

During the last hour, they had talked sporadically about their friends in the raft. All three agreed that their friends' chance of survival was minimal. Could they have survived going over the falls? Potentially, yes. Realistically, no. Could they have landed the raft someplace before they went through the narrows? Potentially, yes. Realistically, no. The logic had depressed them too much to allow long conversations on the subject.

David shivered and his teeth started chattering again. "I'm real cold. I don't know how I can make it through the night."

Afram agreed. "Me too."

Judy reached over David and motioned for him to move over so she could crawl in between the two men. "I'm cold too." She snuggled close to David. "We're going to have to share body heat to avoid hypothermia."

David embraced her and felt Afram do the same from the other side. The spot they were on was small and jagged and they were uncomfortable.

"And don't either of you try anything," Judy said jokingly.

David felt himself smile slightly for the first time since his friends died.

* * *

1:25 a.m. - Lake Powell, Utah

Julie cuddled Greg, draping her arm over him. Although the seats on the Mastercraft could be reconfigured into a comfortable bed, tonight she did not feel comfortable. It was not the seats; it was the way the boat was leaning. Gravity kept reminding her that her body was not level, which made her imagine they were on the verge of falling.

In the last three hours since they arrived in WahweapBay, they had been busy. First they had dropped off the rescued couple at the marina. Then they had retrieved Paul, Erika, Max, and Darlene from Castle Rock, and motored them over to the marina.

The marina itself was chaos. All of the docks were sitting on the ground. Although Wahweap's docks were capable of being adjusted for changing water levels, the water had dropped too fast, and they couldn't keep up. There were probably five hundred boats in the bay. Many sat high and dry on the banks below the marina; many more were crowded together on the water, and some motored around in the bay or parked on the shore. Just like in WarmCreekBay, trails of people hiked around the rocky shore toward the marina.

After an hour of talking to other boaters and deciding what to do, Greg had finally beached the Mastercraft at about 10:30 p.m. He parked it right next to the launch ramp for easier access. The Crawford's boat was one of many boats that had been parked nose-to-tail on both sides of the ramp. Since the water was now dropping almost twelve feet per hour, it was now stranded on the slope over thirty feet out of the water, with many boats parked behind it; hence the lean.

Greg had been right about the Wahweap launch ramp. It continued down with the receding water. He had also been right about the mossy growth. The ramp was covered in a thin film of slimy plant life that made the ramp slippery to walk on. The general consensus of all the boaters was that someone would clean the ramp in the morning, and everyone could begin retrieving their boats. The details of how everyone would get their boats up off the ground and onto their trailers was still being discussed. A crane had been suggested.

After Greg parked the Mastercraft and the water had abandoned it, the three couples discussed what would happen the next morning. It quickly became evident that it was not necessary for everyone to remain at the lake. Max and Darlene elected to head home. Although Greg argued it was not necessary, Paul and Erika decided to stay, primarily because Paul did not want to leave and miss out on the action of retrieving boats the next day. When sleeping arrangements were discussed, Erika had insisted that she and Paul sleep in the back of their van, which was at least oriented horizontally in the parking lot above.

Julie whispered to her husband. "Are you asleep?"

He rolled onto his back and looked at her. "No. It's too noisy."

She laughed. "I keep feeling like the boat is going to slide down the hill."

In the night air, they could hear conversations all around them from other boats. It seemed like no one could sleep. Julie's mind kept returning to the scene at the dam where they had rescued the other couple. In her head, the results were not always the same. Sometimes the boat stalled, or the water just pulled faster than the Mastercraft would go. Julie would be standing in the boat, drifting closer and closer to the edge.

"We could be here for days," Greg said. "There's no guarantee we'll get out tomorrow."

"At least we're here," Julie responded. "We could have been stuck at the houseboat, or at Warm Creek, or dead below the dam. There are a lot of people worse off than us. I'll take our predicament."

Greg spoke carefully. "It wasn't too smart. I can see that now. We could have died. I wasn't thinking."

Julie hugged her husband. "Maybe it wasn't smart. But we made it. And we're way better off, and that other couple is alive because of us. It might not have been smart, but it worked." She kissed her husband on the cheek. "It's behind us now, so try to get some sleep."

"I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep tonight."

"Then let's just snuggle."

* * *

1:30 a.m. - Davis Dam, Nevada

Grant stepped out the door of Davis Dam's generation plant into the night air. He felt much better. He had bandages on his arms and he was wearing dry clothes, albeit work coveralls that did not fit. Special Agent Williams and Blaine had bandaged him up from a first-aid kit in the plant. They dressed the deep scrapes on his arm with antibiotic ointment and wrapped them in large gauze pads. Blaine found a pair of running shoes in one of the offices upstairs. They were a size too big, but that actually worked in Grant's favor with the bandage on his big toe. Wearing the coveralls with running shoes looked a little strange, but Grant didn't plan on giving any more interviews, especially before he returned to Hoover and changed into his other clothes.

He looked back up to the crest and saw another truck dumping. Reese's men had already rebuilt most of the dike.

"Grant." A voice came from behind.

Grant turned and saw Phil, the FBI agent he'd met at GlenCanyon. "Special Agent Williams tells me that you saved the dam, but got beat up a little in the process." Phil reached out to shake his hand while Agent Williams and two other agents stood behind him. Grant thought he recognized the two men from Arizona the previous morning, but he wasn't sure.

"I'm a little sorer than yesterday, but I think I'll be okay," Grant responded.

Phil put his hands in his pockets. "Look, I know you said you'd be heading back to Hoover once things settled, but I wondered if we could sit down and talk before you leave."

Grant looked at his watch. He figured the floodwaters from GlenCanyon would have reached Lake Mead by now. The lake was probably rising by the minute behind Hoover Dam. He definitely needed to get back. However, it would be many more hours before the water rose above the concrete dam. And he wanted to talk to the FBI anyway. "Sure, I can give you a few minutes."

Phil pointed back at the metal door. "Special Agent Williams found a room in the building where she thought we could talk. With a conference table," he added.

They moved back into the building with Grant limping to keep up. As soon as they reached the room and sat down, Phil started firing questions. "I'm going to ask you the same question I asked at GlenCanyon this morning. Why would anyone want to blow up this dam?"

Grant scratched his head. "I don't know on this one, Phil.GlenCanyon has always been considered a target. The government even closed it to all tourists for over a year after September 11th. Plus, the environmentalists all hated it. But this dam . . ." Grant hesitated. "Most people haven't even heard of it."

"Then why Davis?" Phil pleaded.

"I was just thinking on the way down here - Davis Dam itself probably isn't the target. Not if you believe that the same guy blew both dams."

Agent Williams interjected, "Both dams were blown with ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Both dams were blown by a white guy in a white pickup. Both guys posed as if they should be allowed inside."

Grant glanced over at Agent Williams. It sounded pretty convincing when she said it like that. He nodded and looked back at Phil. "So, assuming it's the same group, with similar point men, then I don't believe that the two puzzle pieces fit yet."

"What do you mean 'yet'?" said Phil.

"I mean that the two, GlenCanyon and Davis, don't fit together by themselves, meaning I can't think of any one reason to blow those two dams. I have a sneaking feeling that we haven't seen all the pieces of the puzzle yet. I think there's going to be more bombings." Grant looked up to see their reactions. He didn't think any of them were surprised by his comment, although he'd made Phil hesitate before asking his next question.

Phil held out the palms of his hands. "What if Davis was an afterthought, a reaction because blowing GlenCanyon didn't achieve the goal the bomber intended?"

Grant didn't understand. "Gee, guys, I don't know about you, but if I were the bomber, I'd consider the bombing of Glen Canyon Dam a raging success. It's gone. LakePowell's draining." He looked at his watch. "Actually, 'mostly drained' is probably a better term for it."

Phil pointed at Grant. "What if you hadn't done anything at Hoover? What if the floodwater from LakePowell had breached Hoover as anticipated? What if Hoover had failed too? Your dam extension project at Hoover is all over the news. Maybe you stopped him from achieving his goals. What if his ultimate goal was Hoover?"

Grant hadn't considered that line of reasoning, but he still didn't think it fit. "If that were the case, why bomb Davis? That won't do a thing to Hoover." He hesitated. "But I see your point. Davis would've collapsed from all the floodwater spilling over Hoover. Although I have some issues, like the way he bluffed his way in here with Bureau credentials and everything. Normally, that would take days of preparation. I'm not sure he could come up with the ID's at the last minute like that. This feels more like part of his overall plan." Grant let the words settle, and he thought Phil looked as if he at least partially agreed.

Phil changed the subject. "You said that you think there will be more bombings. Why?"

Grant knew he'd have trouble explaining this. "Well, like I said, these two dams don't have much in common. One is huge and well known; the other small and unknown. One buried an archeological wonder and the other only raised the water in an obscure canyon." He hesitated, then looked straight into Phil's eyes. "Look, I admit that it's more like a feeling than logic, but I'm almost certain he hasn't shown all his cards yet. What we have now just doesn't add up."

Phil continued. "What do you think the results would have been if the bomber had successfully destroyed Davis Dam?"

Grant shrugged. "Well, it would've wiped out all the Casinos in Laughlin. There would be tons of flooding and damage in BullheadCity and around LakeHavasu. And most of the water would go right over the top of the next dam downstream, Parker."

"Who would be affected the most by that?" said Phil.

Grant looked around. "Boaters, I guess; water-skiers and vacationers, and everyone who owns a house on the banks of the Colorado River."

Phil grinned. "Exactly. And who was most adversely affected by draining LakePowell?"

Grant rubbed his chin skeptically. "So you think this guy's blowing up the dams because he hates boaters?"

Phil leaned forward. "Why not? It's something that both dams have in common. If you added up all the boaters on Powell, Mojave, and Havasu, you'd have a hard time finding three other lakes in the country with more boats."

Grant looked into Phil's pleading expression and understood immediately that Phil wanted to believe it, in a bad way. "I dunno, Phil."

Phil pleaded. "What if the guy's wife and kids were killed in a boating accident, Grant? What if a boat trailer came unhooked on the freeway and killed his mother?"

Grant could see the logic. A part of him wanted to embrace the theory, if for no other reason than to believe that the bombings were finally over. "Well, that should be easy to investigate. You should be able to get a list of boating related fatalities, right?"

Phil nodded. "I got a bunch of agents checking into it already. They were isolating the search around LakePowell. I just need to expand the search to LakeHavasu and LakeMojave."

"Better add Lake Mead," said Grant, with no enthusiasm.

"Good point." Phil jotted down some notes.

Grant hesitated to bring it up. "What about securing other likely sites?"

Phil was disappointed. "You mean if he tries to bomb other dams? Sure, we can do that. Where would you suggest?"

Grant started counting across his fingers. "Well, definitely all the dams on the lower Colorado, starting with Parker just downstream, Head Gate Rock, Palo Verde, and Imperial. But why not send a bulletin out to all dams, reservoirs, and lakes in the western United States? We could tell them to beef up security and watch out for persons masquerading as repairmen, Bureau of Reclamation, Fish & Game or anybody else who gets VIP access." Phil didn't seem that interested, so Grant continued. "Keep in mind that even if we accept the water-skier theory, his attempt at Davis has failed. He may need to strike again." Grant saw that putting it that way had gotten Phil's attention.

Phil instructed one of the other agents to write down Grant's suggestions. The agent asked Grant to repeat the names of the lower Colorado Dams, which he did. Phil asked if Grant could facilitate getting the information out to the dams via the Bureau of Reclamation. Grant gave Phil a contact at the Bureau to help him.

Grant asked another question nervously. "What about the whole international terrorist theory? Did you give up on that?"

Phil shrugged. "I have a whole team still investigating that scenario just in case. But it's not holding water." He smiled quickly as he realized the innuendo. "Solitary white guys at both dams, fertilizer bombs, big dam, little dam. It just doesn't fit."

Grant looked at his watch again and felt anxious. He needed to get back to Hoover. In spite of Phil's satisfaction with the anti-boater theory, Grant was sure more bombings were coming. He hoped that it was just paranoia, and that the destruction was over. The FBI, after all, was experienced at this kind of thing. Grant vowed to let them do their thing, their way. He had plenty to worry about already at Hoover. He stood, gingerly putting weight on his right foot, and reached out his hand to Phil. "I gotta go. I have to get back to Hoover. We've got a big morning ahead of us."

Phil nodded, also standing. "Well, we know how to get ahold of you."

Grant reached down to his hip for the cell, but it wasn't there. He looked back up at the FBI agents. "Actually, you won't be able to get ahold of me for a while. I lost my phone during my little accident." He motioned up toward the dike. "I'll try to get another one when I get to Hoover."

Phil nodded to one of the agents in coveralls, who unclipped his cell phone and handed it to Grant. Grant looked strangely at it, not knowing what to do. He was just about to hand it back when Phil held up both of his hands. "Hey, we can't afford to not be able to get in touch with you. Consider it a gift from the FBI. You can send it back to us when all this is over."

The agent who'd given it to him wrote down the phone number for him and made sure Grant knew how to work it. Phil turned and engaged one of his agents in conversation. Grant took the opportunity to sit back down and use the new phone to call Fred at Hoover to schedule the helicopter for his return flight. When Fred answered, he sounded like he had been asleep, but said he would arrange the helicopter and call back with the flight details. While Grant waited, Special Agent Susan Williams sat down next to him.

She checked the bandages on his arms and tugged at the wrapping on his left arm that was slipping down. "Good luck at Hoover," she said.

"Thanks, we'll need it." He held up his arms. "Thanks for bandaging me up. You went far beyond the call of duty for an FBI agent."

She stood and smiled down at him. "Not a problem. The government needs you at Hoover so it doesn't collapse. I was just doing my part."

Grant's eyes drifted to the black semi-automatic gun strapped on her hip. He remembered how rigid and tough she had acted when she first arrived, and how precise and meticulous she had done her job at the bombsite. But underneath the FBI facade, she had turned out to be personable, something he never would have guessed two hours earlier.

Grant checked his watch again. It was time to move on. He had forgotten to get an update from Fred about what had happened at Hoover since he left. Hopefully, no news was good news. Regardless, Grant was anxious to get back as soon as possible.

CHAPTER 28

2:45 a.m. - Davis Dam, Nevada

When the helicopter touched down in the parking lot, Grant shook hands with the FBI agents and the security guards, then hurried to climb in and sit down. His bandaged toe was throbbing. He would need Advil or something even stronger as soon as he reached Hoover. He buckled in when the pilot handed him his seat belt. When he pulled the door shut and put on the headphones, quiet enveloped him.

After the rotors accelerated, the helicopter rose gently and Grant felt himself relax into his seat. The altitude gave him a great view of Davis Dam. Down below he saw Reese leaning against his truck, talking to someone on a radio, and the bulldozers sweeping back and forth over the damaged section created by the explosion. They were past the critical stage. Grant relaxed for the first time in many hours. He closed his eyes to savor the feeling, and had difficulty re-opening them.

He pried open his eyes when he felt the helicopter lean forward and accelerate. By then they were headed north across the glimmering black surface of LakeMojave. He stared at the blackness ahead and rested his eyes again. The rhythmic thump of the rotors felt so relaxing. This time when he closed his eyes, Grant Stevens slept.

* * *

3:00 a.m. - Mohave Desert, California

The truck cut through the desert air at 70 mph and the radio blasted George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone." The skinny man sang along enthusiastically, " . . . I'm here to tell ya honey, that I'm bad to the bone. B-B-B-B-Bad, B-B-B-Bad, B-B-B-Bad to the bone." When the song ended, he laughed out loud. He slapped the dashboard and yelled as loud as he could. His neck and shoulders tingled so he shrugged them a few times. He didn't remember ever feeling this much energy. It felt wonderful. A road sign shot past on the side of the road. He was getting close. Reluctantly, he turned off the radio and tried to relax. He didn't want to miss the turnoff.

Since he had planted the bomb at Davis Dam, he had traveled back to Vegas for more supplies before heading south again. His ammonium nitrate supply was almost depleted, but then again, who would have ever thought he would be able to accomplish so much with so little. Back in Vegas, it had taken only forty minutes to restock the truck. He almost stopped at McDonalds before realizing that this could possibly be his last meal. So he drove on, and instead chose an all-night restaurant, with a steak and jumbo shrimp, the big ones, not those little dinky ones they give you on the all-you-can-eat special. He put the whole thing on the card. Why not?

By the time he gassed up the truck and bought a Big Gulp for the road, it had been almost 1:00 a.m. After driving south for several hours, he had turned west away from the Colorado River on Highway 62. That had been almost twenty minutes before. If he continued that way, he would eventually end up in Palm Springs, but for now, he had another destination in mind.

Ideally, he would have loved to stop and blow up Parker Dam, but he figured by then it would be heavily guarded, along with all the other dams on the Colorado River. They would be on to him by now, and a little less trusting of white pickups with explosives.

On the desert highway, with no traffic, he drove with the brights on, and easily spotted the gravel road on his right. He slowed and turned onto the bumpy road and headed up a slight incline for a quarter mile. Up ahead, barely visible in the night, was a string of four large culverts stretched across the top of the road, causing the road to dip to get under them. He slowed, turned off the gravel road, and pulled up alongside the culverts and shut off the truck. He opened the door and climbed out into the desert air. When the door light extinguished, it was just him, the moon, and the stars. He took a few steps away from the truck, unzipped, and drained his radiator while his eyes adjusted. By the time he was done and had zipped up, his eyes were more dilated, and with a little help from the moon he saw the outline of the hills clearly, and could even pick out sagebrush on the hillside. He spun and looked back toward the Colorado River and LakeHavasu, over fifty miles away, and scanned for lights. But he saw nothing, which was not surprising since there were hills in between.

He took a few minutes and looked around, allowing his eyes to further adjust. He could just make out Highway 62 as it carved through the small valley. Finally, after he procrastinated as long as he could, he walked to the back of the pickup and grabbed a shovel and his cowhide gloves. He pulled on the gloves and carried the shovel over to the first of the four large metal culverts. The culverts were eight feet in diameter each and carried the water from the huge canal over the gravel road. If he had continued driving straight, he would have driven under them. Each one was almost thirty feet long.

He moved under the culverts, until he found a spot where the dirt angled down enough to give him a couple of feet of clearance to dig. When he dropped the shovel head to start digging, he heard a distinct buzzing sound. He jumped back, but after his nerves settled, he returned, bending down for a better look. The moon and the stars did not provide enough light under the culvert, so he reached the shovel where the sound seemed to be coming from and swept it out. He got it on the third sweep. Without a flashlight, he couldn't be sure it wasn't a Mojave Rattlesnake, but considering the location and the size of the snake, he felt confident he was looking at a Western Diamondback, almost a four-footer. Shaken from getting dragged out of its hiding place, the snake took a moment to coil again and resumed rattling. With the gentleness of a mother, he carefully scooped up the snake in his shovel, carried him over to the sagebrush in front of the truck, and let him go. No sense killing the poor thing.

He returned to the spot and started digging a hole under the culvert. When the hole was approximately two feet in diameter and eighteen inches deep, he moved to the second one. This hole ended up being slightly more difficult, the dirt being harder for some reason. He continued working and finally, with all four holes dug, he walked back to the truck and drank some of the melted ice and water in his Big Gulp. He took off his t-shirt and wiped sweat off his face. In the distance, he saw the lights of a car coming down Highway 62. He rested a moment while he watched the car get closer and finally pass by. They would never be able to see him up here on the hill, he knew, unless he turned on a light.

He carried two of the white buckets over to the culverts, uncapped them, and dumped a bucket of ammonium nitrate in each of the first two holes. A second trip for two more buckets and all four holes were done. A blue bucket of diesel was next. He poured it on top of the ammonium nitrate. The one bucket was enough to douse all four holes. He put all the buckets and lids back in the truck. He returned and poked one of his detonators in each hole, and wired them together with strands from his spool of wire. Finally, he hooked up the batteries and the small timer. Again, he felt tempted to set the timer short so he could witness the destruction, but Davis Dam had been too close for comfort. He stuck with the plan and set it to twenty minutes, enough time to get miles down the road. Long before anyone figured out what happened, he would be deep into California.

He pushed the button, causing the red light to illuminate and the timer to start counting backwards from 20:00. He walked quickly back to the truck and was just about to jump in when he saw car lights in the distance. He knew if he opened the car door and jumped in, the lights would give him away, so he had no choice but to wait. Unlike the car he had watched earlier, this one seemed to take forever. When the car finally passed, he considered jumping into the truck immediately; maybe they wouldn't be watching their mirrors. He felt glad he didn't, however, because he saw another car behind. This time his heart raced as he watched it slowly get nearer. He thought about stopping the timer, but he didn't. His heart beat loudly when the car appeared to slow in preparation to turn onto the gravel road. But when the car passed, he realized it had only been his imagination.

He only waited until the car was a few miles down the road before jumping in the truck. Let them watch their mirrors. He started the truck and slammed it in reverse, backing it under the culverts. He pulled it into drive and sprayed rocks everywhere as he accelerated back down the gravel road. The truck jarred as he bounced onto the highway and headed west toward Los Angeles. They would be watching for him if he stayed too close to the Colorado River. His plan was to take the long way through L.A. down to San Diego, then back east to the river.

He was miles down the road when he saw the next car, and he was miles farther when his watch told him the explosion had occurred.

* * *

3:15 a.m. - Hoover Dam, Nevada

Grant awoke at the slight jar of the helicopter landing. He had wanted to inspect the progress of Hoover-Two from the air, to get a better perspective of the progress. But, unfortunately, he slept through the whole thing. Grant had never been a night owl, preferring to be in bed snoring long before 11:00 p.m. In fact, his wife and kids complained every year when he insisted on celebrating New Year's Eve at 10:00 p.m. with New York, and then going to bed. He hadn't made it to midnight on New Year's Eve for years. He had never gone an entire night without sleep and he tried to ignore his body's desire for more. Hopefully the short nap would help. When he tried to step out of the chopper, the throbbing pain in his foot reminded him of the ordeal at Davis Dam. After the helicopter departed, he headed down the stairs from the top of the visitor center parking structure.

After being waved past security in the visitor center, Grant walked straight to the big windows looking out over Hoover Dam. The first ten-foot phase of the dike looked complete. It stretched all the way across the dam from the Arizona side and butted into the cliffs on the Nevada side. The manner in which the artificial light cast shadows on the sandbag dike gave Grant the impression that the dike was not an addition, but part of the structure itself. The texture of the sand bags from a distance reminded him of scales on a lizard. As he stared outside, Fred and Shauna arrived and joined him at the windows.

"The progress is amazing," he said excitedly to Fred and Shauna. "It looks incredible."

Fred nodded. "Yeah, I think we're going to make it."

"What happened to you?" Shauna's eyes were large and filled with concern.

Grant glanced down at the bandages on his arms, the coveralls, and the oversized tennis shoes. "Ah, well, I had an accident down at Davis."

She interrupted him. "I can see that. What'd you do?"

He took a few minutes to explain to Shauna and Fred the sequence of events at Davis Dam. Shauna cupped her hands over her mouth when he explained how close the dam had been to breaking, and how he was swept out over the rocks by the water.

"So what's wrong with you?" Fred asked, pointing at the bandages.

Grant held up his arms. "Oh, they're just scraped up. It's not as bad as it looks." He pointed at his shoes. "It's my foot that hurts, where the toenail was ripped off. Do you have anything? You know, Advil or something?"

Fred nodded. "We'll find you something."

Grant looked over the dike to the water. "The water's way up, isn't it?" He turned and looked at Shauna.

"It's risen about ten feet in the last three hours," she said.

Grant returned his gaze to the ongoing construction. "Is that within our projections?"

"It's close. We actually expected it to be a few feet higher by now. I think we'll be okay."

"Are the spillways at capacity?" asked Grant.

Fred answered. "Not yet, not for another hour or so." All three sat silent for a few moments before Fred spoke up. "You know, I haven't checked them for over an hour. You wanna go look?"

"Absolutely," Grant said, moving away from the windows.

"You guys go ahead," Shauna said. "I need to finish my downstream calculations."

The two men headed out the door, Grant limping on his sore toe. As they walked out of the visitor center, Grant saw a truck had just unloaded sandbags and a group of National Guardsmen scurried to place them on the dike. The old man was still on the dike with the bullhorn, and barked instructions when somebody placed a bag incorrectly.

Fred detoured around an empty truck and found a spot of partially constructed wall where they could climb sandbags to get over Hoover-Two. As they crested the dike, Grant heard it. It reminded him of a gigantic waterfall. After they descended the other side, the rumbling increased with each step. Grant felt his excitement build as they walked past the snack bar. When they came around the rock cliff and looked over the fence, Grant had to catch his breath.

The water was still ten feet from the top of the fifty-foot-diameter spillway tunnel, but the amount of water moving into it was staggering. The tunnel's steep fall, coupled with the sheer volume of water, created a strong suction, and the sound of air being pulled into the hole alternated with loud "wuf" noises as air pressure occasionally pushed spray back up the hole. Part of Grant wanted to turn and run to save himself from getting sucked in. The other part wanted to stay and stare for hours.

Fred cupped his hands and yelled to be heard. "Impressive?"

Grant only nodded and returned his eyes to the water. They both stared, not saying anything, knowing that they were both witness to something never before seen at Hoover Dam. In 1983, the only other year the water reached the spillways at Hoover, it had only been one tenth of what they were seeing now. The spillways had never been full.

They remained standing, unable to move, mesmerized by the scene. Finally, Fred touched him on the shoulder to get his attention, and motioned with his thumb. "You ready?"

Grant nodded and reluctantly pulled his eyes from the spectacle. Neither spoke as they walked back toward the visitor center. When they climbed over the wall of sandbags, they stopped to admire the work in progress. Grant followed Fred over to a National Guardsman who looked like he was in some sort of supervisory role. The three men shook hands.

"How much longer for this phase?" Fred raised his voice to be heard over the trucks.

The guy looked at his watch. "Probably less than an hour." He looked at Fred. "Will that be soon enough?" Grant could see the concern in the man's face.

Fred filled in the details. "Yeah, that will be fine. The leading edge of the floodwater hit us a couple of hours ago, so we expect the water level to start rising very fast now." He pointed over at the parking lot and the snack bar by the spillways. "It'll probably flood the concrete by 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. Peak flow into Lake Mead will be a few hours after that. That's when the water will be rising the fastest."

The guardsman cupped his hand by his mouth to be heard. "What about the ten-foot dike? When will the water go over that? When do we need to have the second phase of sandbags done?"

Fred deferred to Grant who answered the question. "We don't expect peak levels until late this evening. But the levels should be almost as high as the current phase of the dike by noon. Is that a problem?"

The man looked at his watch, then smiled nervously, obviously not completely comfortable. "It'll be hard to estimate until this phase is done and we start building the taller dike. We'll have to see how fast that goes."

The man hesitated before asking the next question. "You think it'll hold?

Grant responded, "It'll hold as long as the water doesn't get too much higher than fourteen or fifteen feet over the original dam." He smiled and put his palms together as if in prayer. "And our calculations say it shouldn't."

The soldier laughed. "I just hope your math is better than mine."

* * *

4:15 a.m. - Mohave Desert, California

The red Chevy Cavalier barreled down Highway 62 at almost 90 m.p.h. Milton Jessop was in big trouble. He told his wife he would be home before she went to bed, and now it was almost 4:30 in the morning. Home for Milton was Palm Springs, and he guessed he had another hour to go. She would be mad enough that he had been gambling, but when she found out about the two hundred bucks he lost on the blackjack table, she just might kill him. He floored the Cavalier to see if he could get it over ninety. He figured he was unlikely to encounter a cop on this stretch at night. At this hour cops were more likely to be snoozing in their cars or sampling the merchandise in some all-night donut store.

Milton looked ahead and saw something glistening across the road. It almost looked like water. Milton had lived in the desert his whole life and he knew a mirage when he saw one. When heat waves radiated out of the desert, it looked just like water. However, Milton could not remember ever seeing a mirage at night. He wondered if the alcohol in those complimentary drinks at the casino was playing with his mind. One strange thing he noticed about this mirage, besides it being at night, was that usually they moved away from you as you approached them, kind of like rainbows, but this one seemed to stay put.

Suddenly, Milton wondered if it wasn't a mirage at all, but real water. But where would enough water come from to create a lake in the middle of the Mojave Desert? He had no idea.

When Milton finally realized it was real water, it was too late. He slammed on the brakes. The car skidded a few feet before it hit the water. At almost ninety, the small Cavalier hydroplaned easily, shooting across the top of the water. The back end came around on Milton and he tried to steer out of it; however, the effort seemed to backfire as the small car swapped ends. At least he hadn't hit anything. But then the car left the road and the tires dug into the deeper water. The motion flipped the car and it rolled twice before sliding to a stop upside down and sinking into waist deep water.

Upside down, Milton touched himself to make sure he was still alive. The left side of his head hurt. He must have hit it during the roll. As the car sank, water poured through the broken right window. Milton decided he'd better get out or he would drown. When he reached for the seatbelt release his head went underwater. He found the latch and when it released he fell on his head. The Cavalier was cramped and he gulped water and almost drowned before he turned upright. Finding the door release, he pulled. Nothing. He braced himself and pushed with his feet while pulling the lever and finally the door released with a loud screeching noise.

Milton stumbled onto his feet and found himself standing in three feet of water. He saw lights coming toward him from another car and he sloshed farther away from the road in case there was another crash. This car slowed, however, and stopped. Once Milton decided he was in no danger, he found the submerged road and waded back to where the vehicle had stopped.

"Are you okay, buddy?" the man asked, walking in front of a black SUV with its hazard lights blinking.

Milton put his hand up to the left side of his head. "Yeah, I think so."

"Didn't you see the water?"

"Not until it was too late." He looked around and saw water in all directions, illuminated by the lights of the SUV. "Where'd all this come from?"

"The aqueduct probably broke," said the man.

"Aqueduct?"

"Yeah. The California Aqueduct runs right along the hill over there." The man pointed up on the hill.

Milton should have known. He knew about the California Aqueduct. It was one of the main sources of water for Los Angeles from the Colorado River. Without it, Palm Springs would be even more of a desert than it already was. It's just that his head was a little foggy. Milton wondered what they should do. "Should we report it?"

"Definitely." The man headed back toward his car. "I've got a cell phone. Looks like we're the first ones here."

Milton looked around again. He tried to see the other side of the water, but the SUV's lights were not bright enough to reach. He wondered briefly if his wife would go easy on him now that he was hurt, then decided not. He was lucky to be alive, but his wife would not see it that way. She might still kill him. And another thing - Milton had thought about it for a while now and he was pretty sure there were no mirages at night.

CHAPTER 29

4:30 a.m. - Hoover Dam, Nevada

After Grant returned to the visitor center, he found his suitcase and changed out of the coveralls into a clean pair of slacks and a polo shirt with the Bureau of Reclamation's logo on the breast pocket. He ran a brush through his hair and adjusted the bandages on his arms. He tried his shoes, but they fit too tight on the swollen toe, so he put the oversized jogging shoes back on.

When Grant walked back into the lobby, he saw the governor had returned, surrounded by his entourage. The group huddled around someone that, at first, Grant didn't recognize. However, as he and Fred walked toward the group, Grant saw that the man shaking hands with the governor was his boss Roland Blackwell, the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. Grant felt a knot in his stomach. He hadn't expected the commissioner for another hour or more. The flights and connections from Paris must have gone well. While still shaking hands, the governor led the commissioner over to the large windows. Grant thought they looked good together, Roland and the governor, both wearing suits, and both completely comfortable rubbing elbows with other politicians. Grant saw the commissioner's eyes pass over his with recognition. The commissioner looked slightly angry. Grant knew immediately that was a bad sign.

The governor swept his arm across the panoramic view of the dam. "As you can see, my boys have almost completed the first phase of your dam extension project." He paused for effect.

Roland looked at the sandbags stacked across the top of Hoover Dam as if he were seeing a ghost. He hesitated, then reacted angrily. "Dam extension? Who authorized that?"

The governor's eyebrows furrowed. "Uh . . . the Bureau did." He spotted Grant and Fred, motioning toward them. "Mr. Stevens, come over--"

The commissioner cut him off and took a couple of steps toward Grant. "You authorized this?"

Grant looked up into his boss's eyes. "Yes, sir. It was the only thing we--"

"You're fired," the commissioner said quickly.

Grant heard the words, but couldn't believe it. "What?" he said.

"You heard me. You're done. I remembered specifically telling you not to make any big decisions until I got here." He turned to walk, then faced Grant again. "And you go off and come up with this crazy scheme. Unbelievable." Roland turned and started walking.

The governor watched in disbelief, then quickly grabbed Roland's arm. "Whoa, hang on a second there commissioner." Roland turned to face him. "Am I hearing that you don't approve of Mr. Steven's dam extension idea?"

"I'd call that an understatement. I've been in the Bureau for twenty five years and I've never seen anything so stupid." One of Roland's sidekicks nodded to reinforce.

The governor looked briefly at Grant, then back at the commissioner. "What should he have done?"

"Well, not that!" spat Roland, pointing again at the dike.

The governor's lips formed a sinister smile. "That's not what I asked, Mr. Commissioner." He paused for effect. "What would you have done, if you would've been here?"

The commissioner stammered, "Well, I uh -"

The governor, sensing the vulnerability, piled on. "Commissioner, as the governor of Nevada, I am formally requesting instructions from the Bureau of Reclamation. I have the bulk of LakePowell, which I am told . . ." He looked briefly at Grant. ". . . constitutes almost two full years of Colorado River flow, barreling my way as we speak. I need your organization's expertise to tell me how to save my communities, here and farther downstream. You have just insinuated that your employee gave us bad instructions. Please tell us, commissioner, what should we do instead?"

While waiting for an answer he knew wasn't coming, the governor motioned toward Grant and Fred. "Can I assume that you do not trust the calculations of your team here? If not, then how long do we have until the flood water peaks?"

Roland Blackwell looked around confused for a second, then glared at Grant. "When did you tell them the flood would arrive?"

Grant's mouth still hung open from being fired. He looked at his watch and tried to get his brain moving again. "Uh, in the next few hours, I think."

"You think?" the commissioner bellowed.

The governor raised his voice. "Commissioner Blackwell, we have two or three hours to high levels. What are your instructions? Do you wish me to halt construction on the dike we are building?"

Commissioner Roland Blackwell looked scared. "There's not enough time to make any intelligent -"

The governor raised his voice. "Do you want me to halt construction?"

Roland must have realized the hole he'd dug himself into. "I need to confer with my team for a few minutes."

The governor folded his arms as if he were waiting.

"In private!" said the commissioner. He looked around. "Don't you have a room someplace?"

Fred motioned to the small theater they'd been using as a conference room. Roland and his two sidekicks started walking. Grant stood still. The three men had barely disappeared into the theater before one of them stuck his head back out.

"Stevens, get in here!" he said.

The governor held out his arm to block Grant. "I thought you just fired this man?"

The Bureau man's head disappeared for a moment, and then reappeared. "You're not fired Stevens. Now get in here."

Grant walked into the small conference room to find them all sitting, Roland massaging his temples with both hands. Grant shut the door behind him and one of Roland's men motioned him to a seat. In spite of the way he'd been treated, Grant understood how the commissioner felt. He was in over his head. The modern Bureau focused on politics, budgets, and schmoozing, not flood dynamics and disaster mitigation. However, compassion or not, the commissioner had already jettisoned him with little concern for Grant's well-being. Grant knew he had to tread very carefully for the next few minutes.

The commissioner started talking without looking up. "You've put me in a difficult situation here, Stevens."

Grant wanted to point out that he felt like he was in an even worse situation, but thought better.

Roland looked up at him. "What the hell is that dike out there? How did you come up with that crazy scheme?"

Grant tried to choose his words carefully. "I used the Bureau's research from the late nineties. According to the report, over sixty feet of water would breech Hoover, or about two million cubic feet per second."

Grant saw Roland's jaw drop, but he kept going. "As you know, that would wipe out Hoover, and most of the dams downstream." He paused in case the group had any comments, but they remained silent. "We knew that water levels in both Mead and Powell were below maximum due to the drought, so we had to estimate the new flood levels compared to the research. With the lower levels, we calculated just over fifteen feet would still overtop, which I reduced a few feet by blowing the spillways." Grant hadn't meant to talk about the spillways yet.

The commissioner's head came up. "What? What do you mean 'blowing the spillways?'"

Grant wanted to get the subject back to Hoover-Two, but didn't know how. "When I arrived here yesterday, they weren't dumping as much water as I told them to. I'd called them from GlenCanyon and told them to open everything, all the gates. But when I arrived, the governor was here, preventing them from opening the gates. They wanted more time to evacuate downstream."

"Yeah?" Roland prompted.

"Well, I had to explain to the governor what would happen if he didn't start dumping immediately." Grant smiled a little. "I had to scare him. I asked him if he wanted to take responsibility if Hoover failed and wiped out everything downstream."

"Go on." The commissioner looked perplexed. "What about the spillways?"

"Well, after we convinced the governor to open all the gates, we were still only dumping about 75,000 cubic feet per second. And I knew that the spillways could handle almost 400,000 between them, but by the time the floodwater arrived and rose high enough to spill, it'd be too late. So I convinced the governor to bring in a demolition team and open 'em up."

Stuart Jaconi, one of Roland's sidekicks, shook his head. "How many dollars worth of damage do you think you caused?"

Grant tore into him. "Less than what it would've cost to rebuild Hoover and the other dams downstream."

"You don't know Hoover would have failed. We don't even know if your numbers are right."

Roland held out his hand to call off Jaconi then looked back at Grant. "Did anyone check your numbers?"

Grant nodded. "Of course. Bruce's team checked 'em. We're within a couple of feet."

"What difference did you say blowing the spillways will make?" Roland asked hesitantly.

"We figure that by the time the water is high enough to go over the dam, we will have dropped the lake almost three feet."

Roland surprised Grant by his next comment, and judging by their expressions, he surprised his men also. "I'm not sure I would have done it, but I understand your logic in opening the spillways." He pointed out of the room. "Now I want to hear about that sandbag circus out there."

Grant continued. "Well, we still expected between ten and fifteen feet of water to spill over the top of Hoover, and even that, we knew, would take out Davis Dam downstream and cause millions of dollars worth of damage to Hoover, especially the generation plants. We felt that even ten feet topping Hoover could potentially break it, especially since it will be topped for almost two months."

Jaconi interrupted. "How could you be sure Davis would fail?"

Grant talked down to him like he would to a child. "Davis Dam is a land fill. It's made of dirt. How much water over the top do you think it could stand?"

"I know what a land fill is," he retorted, but he immediately shut up.

"Go on, Stevens," the commissioner urged.

"We knew that Davis was a goner, but I was surprised to find out that Davis held over three times as much water as LakeHavasu downstream. Therefore, when Davis failed, it would definitely take out Parker Dam downstream with it."

"What about the dams downstream from Parker?" asked the commissioner.

"Oh, we'll lose them regardless," Grant stated unemotionally.

Jaconi stood. "How can you be sure of that?

Grant faced him. "Easy math, Stuart. Their spillways aren't nearly as big as Hoover, Davis, and Parker. Since the big spillways will be running at capacity, the smaller dams will definitely get topped."

Roland put his hand over Jaconi's, an unspoken command to shut up. "Please continue, Stevens."

"Anyway, we were fairly certain that we couldn't save Davis and Parker. We were concentrating mostly on how to mitigate the damage. It was frustrating. Finally, in desperation, we concluded that if Hoover were only fifteen feet higher . . . and . . ." Grant motioned toward the dam. "In fact, the more we thought about it, the more we realized we might be able to save all three dams with a twenty foot dike."

The commissioner thought about it. He looked around at the others who were silent, then looked back at Grant. "What if the sandbags don't hold?"

Grant shrugged. "Then ten feet of water would spill, the same as if we hadn't built it." Grant stood on his feet, sucked up the pain from the sore toe, and walked over close to the commissioner and leaned down close. "But what if it does hold, Commissioner?"

Roland turned and scanned the eyes of his men, then looked back at Grant, hesitating for a few moments. "Stevens, I'm going to let you keep working on the dike." He rubbed his temples again. "Things aren't as bad as they seemed when I first arrived. I'll tell the governor we are proceeding." He looked directly at Grant. "But make sure it doesn't fail. I don't have to tell you that the Bureau can't win in this deal. The publicity from GlenCanyon and the other dams downstream that we're going to lose is going to kill us."

Grant nodded.

The commissioner stood and walked toward the door, then stopped and turned. "Stevens, you should probably know that the Bureau could have done much worse than what you've done here."

"Thank you, Commissioner." Grant marveled that the conversation had gone so well.

* * *

5:30 a.m. - Hoover Dam, Nevada

When Grant walked out of the conference room, Fred was waiting for him. He looked nervous. He immediately walked over and grabbed Grant's arm. "He blew up the California Aqueduct."

"What?"

"They called right after you guys went in the conference room. I've been waiting for you to come out. There's been another explosion. Somebody blew up the aqueduct."

Grant felt confused. "Where did this happen? Do we know if it's the same guy?"

"It happened about fifty miles west of LakeHavasu. Out in the desert. There's water all over the place out there."

Grant considered the repercussions. "How does this affect us? The dams downstream?"

Fred hesitated. "Well, they obviously had to shut the pumps off in Havasu. I'm not sure what you're getting at."

What did this have to do with the other bombings? He had the next piece of the puzzle, but he wasn't sure where or if it fit. "I'm not sure I know what I'm getting at either. I'm just trying to figure out why. What does this have to do with the other explosions?"

Fred didn't respond; he just looked puzzled.

Grant continued thinking out loud. "So what is the net result of shutting off the pumps?"

Fred shrugged. "I guess it's going to make the flood downstream a little worse. You know, since all the water that was in the aqueduct is now going to stay in Havasu."

Grant considered the idea, then looked back at Fred. "I wonder if that's it. After the bomb at Davis Dam, he must of figured we'd step up security on the other dams. Could this guy's motivation be to flood the hell out of the lower Colorado? I wonder who he hates down there?" Grant pulled the cell phone off his belt. "We need to call Phil. These are all questions for the FBI."

Phil picked up on the first ring. He sounded as if he were losing the war. He had already heard about the bombed aqueduct and had already dispatched a couple of agents to the site. However, they didn't have high expectations on collecting evidence. Police reports from the site reported that water had washed much of the hillside away, not to mention the small lake created in the surrounding area.

"What's next?" asked Grant.

"We need to get together again, talk some more," said Phil.

"I can't leave here," Grant responded. "The water from GlenCanyon is starting to arrive and Lake Mead water levels are rising by the minute. Things are going to get a little dicey."

"That's fine. The trail's cold here anyway. I'm coming to Hoover. You guys have been hearing stuff before us."

Grant hesitated for a second. "Look, I don't want to tell you guys how to do your job, but -"

Phil interrupted him. "No. Go ahead."

"Well, one thing we shouldn't wait to discuss is that our bad guy must have guessed we'd beef up the security around the dams. So that might be the reason he switched to the aqueduct. I think it's only reasonable --"

"I'm way ahead of you. There's another one farther down, isn't there? I agree; I can have the police tighten security there, too."

"There's more than one, Phil. There's a couple that go to Arizona, including the Central Arizona Project, CAP, and one that goes to the Indians. There's another huge one called the AllAmericanCanal that goes to Imperial Valley. That one even splits and sends a fork over to Palm Springs. And then there's the Gila, another big one, but it's in Mexico."

Phil didn't say anything.

Grant continued. "The bottom line is, these things stretch for hundreds of miles through the desert. The police aren't going to be able to guard 'em. The bombers probably waltzed right up to the last one. It's in the middle of nowhere."

"I see your point."

Grant continued. "Look, I still don't know this guy's motive, but he seems to be concentrating on the lower Colorado River. It's almost like he wants to damage something or somebody downstream. I think we need to get aggressive. Shut down all the roads in and out. String the National Guard along the aqueducts. You name it. Our targets cover a lot of space out there."

"That's going to be tough, Grant. They are still trying to evacuate many of those cities downstream. There are thousands of people on the roads. We can't impede the evacuations."

Grant rubbed his forehead. "I know, I know. But we have to try. Maybe you can randomly stop some of them. Who knows, we might get lucky at a roadblock somewhere. Isn't that how they caught the guy that blew up the Oklahoma Federal building?"

"We'll see what we can do, Grant."

"What about the dams and aqueducts in Mexico?" Grant asked.

Phil hesitated. "You know the FBI can't go into Mexico."

Actually, Grant didn't know. "But this is an emergency."

"Grant, the FBI cannot go into Mexico. We have no jurisdiction. Their government will have to handle it."

Grant hated politics, but saw no way around this one. "Well, have we talked to them yet? We need to at least give them a heads up."

"Not yet. I'll need to make some calls to the big wigs. It won't be my decision. In the meantime, I need some help with maps of all the aqueducts, something I can pass to local law enforcement."

Grant knew Phil wouldn't like the answer. "Phil, the Bureau doesn't handle the aqueducts. In fact, I'll bet every one is handled by a separate agency or municipality." He hesitated. "But I can give you a contact at the Bureau, somebody who should at least be able to help accumulate the info, or if nothing else, send you in the right direction."

"I appreciate it, Grant."

Grant gave Phil the number of a woman in the Denver office. Since it wasn't even 7:00 a.m. in Denver, he told Phil where she lived, so he could call information if necessary. He added her supervisor's info just in case.

When Grant hung up the phone, Fred stood nearby waiting. "Did he take your advice?"

"Yeah, kind of. I recommended some big stuff like the National Guard. But that's over his head. He'll need to bring in his superiors."

Fred smiled. "You want to go for a walk again?"

Grant stood, stretched, and tried to stop a yawn that wouldn't quit. "Sure, what's up?"

"The spillways are now full." Fred looked like a kid with his first bicycle. "You wanna go look at 'em again?"

Disaster or no disaster, Grant wanted to see them as much as Fred did.

"Let's go."

* * *

6:15 a.m. - Hoover Dam, Nevada

With the sun having just risen above the horizon, a large group followed Grant and Fred out to the Nevada Spillway, including Governor Jenkins and Commissioner Blackwell and their entourages. A man and a woman with cameras and a separate guy with a video camera had materialized from nowhere and joined the caravan. Grant noticed that there were two helicopters hovering over the dam shooting pictures of the sandbag dike. Both of them, a white one and a blue one, had logos of news organizations stenciled on the sides.

When they reached the dike, Grant saw that a makeshift stairway had been built with sandbags, up one side and down the other, to facilitate the crossing. He wondered whose idea it had been. The large group meandered over the wall and through the parking lot toward the Nevada spillway. Grant noticed that the water had risen to within a few feet of the top of Hoover Dam, burying the fifty foot white band of rock normally seen around the perimeter of Lake Mead. A few more feet and it would flood the parking lot where they stood.

As they walked closer, the rumbling noise increased until it vibrated the ground. When they reached the chain link fence surrounding the spillway, Grant saw the water now higher than the fifty-foot-diameter spillway tunnel. The water level was slightly lower near the tunnel itself, dropping a few feet, as the spillway was taking the water faster than it flowed down the channel toward it.

The volume of water movement was intimidating. Commissioner Blackwell was holding the fence so tight that his knuckles were white, one foot next to the fence and one noticeably behind, in case a quick exit became warranted. He looked shaken, as if he had just seen a ghost.

Governor Jenkins smiled and talked to someone near him, but his high eyebrows showed that he too wasn't completely comfortable.

"You're finally looking at 200,000 cubic feet per second," yelled Fred from a cupped hand. "More than Niagara Falls."

Grant only nodded, gripping the fence tightly himself.

"These spillways have waited almost seventy years to show their stuff." Fred's voice faltered with emotion, and his eyes looked misty.

An incredibly loud screeching noise made the whole group jump and then cover their ears. A large whirlpool had formed above the spillway tunnel and the noise continued for several seconds before it and the whirlpool both disappeared.

After the group regained its composure, the photographers moved everyone away from the governor, then took some pictures of the governor with the spillway behind. The guy with the video camera unfolded a tripod and another person held up a poster-sized card. The governor buttoned his coat and checked his tie. A small microphone was clipped on the governor's lapel. Grant figured that the governor was going to make a statement.

Sighting the large group, and sensing something was up, the two news helicopters moved from the crest of the dam over near the spillway. Both had tethered cameramen hanging out open doors. They jockeyed for position in the small space.

With wind blowing his hair and the loud rumbling, the governor began. "It's just after 6:00 a.m. at Hoover Dam. As we speak, Lake Mead rises at a staggering rate as it combines with the water from the Glen Canyon Dam and LakePowell. Since the tragedy upstream yesterday, the water has traveled over three hundred miles, having passed through the Grand Canyon." The governor motioned to his side. "Behind me is the Nevada spillway."

The governor hesitated as some wind buffeted him. The noise had also increased, not from the water, but from the helicopters. Grant felt a brief wet spray and looked up. Both helicopters had come in much closer, too close. He couldn't believe they dared fly so close together. Their rotors seemed only a few feet apart.

"Get them out of here," the governor yelled, waving his arms.

Most of the group reacted and waved frantically at the choppers. Both aircraft hesitated, as if waiting for the other to move first, but then gradually moved a short distance away.

The governor brushed at his hair, then quickly regained his composure. "Behind me is the Nevada Spillway. It is mirrored by its counterpart over on the Arizona side. As a tribute to the many thousands of dedicated men who risked their lives in the construction of this dam, these spillways are now running at full capacity for the first time ever. Only in the spring floods of 1983 have these spillways ever been needed, and then at only a small fraction of what you see now. I'm told the current flow is approximately 200,000 cubic feet per second, each." He emphasized the last word with a smile. "Together, they are passing almost forty times the normal flow of the Colorado River."

"Over the next few hours, these two spillways will likely save Hoover Dam, the first great dam in the world. They will allow us to move the floodwater downstream in a controlled manner."

Grant wondered how the governor could consider forty times normal flow a controlled manner.

The governor continued. "I regret that you cannot all come here yourselves and see this amazing spectacle. Unfortunately, the situation precludes that possibility."

"As your governor, I would like to personally thank all of you who heeded last night's call for volunteers to fill sandbags. Without you, our efforts to save Hoover Dam would surely have been in vain."

The governor's face became very serious. "The next few hours at Hoover Dam will be critical. The water will shortly rise above the original structure and will test the integrity of our sandbag extension. As your governor, I commit to make every attempt to keep you informed. May God be with us." He remained still for a moment, then drew his finger across his throat.

Many in the crowd clapped, Grant among them. Another whirlpool formed and repeated the loud screeching noise, but this time the group knew what to expect, and as quickly as it formed, it disappeared.

Roland worked his way over to Grant. "Pretty amazing, isn't it?"

Grant nodded. "Incredible."

"What'd you think of the governor's speech?"

"Pretty good, in spite of the helicopters."

The commissioner looked back out over the spillway. "About this morning." He looked back at Grant. "I was caught off guard."

Grant knew Roland was struggling, but still didn't want to let him off the hook. He let it drag out for a while, and then smiled at him. "You should be sorry."

Roland smiled back. "Don't get cocky, Stevens. Only time will tell if your little sandbag dam will hold."

But Grant knew that if the dam extension held, as he expected it would, he would have saved all of their butts. And he figured Roland knew that too.

* * *

6:20 a.m. - Grand Canyon, Arizona

David felt Judy stretch. Although he was not asleep and in fact had not slept all night, he kept his eyelids closed and chose not to stir.

Judy sat up and then jerked savagely. "Oh my . . ."

"What's the matter?" Afram asked.

David and Afram sat upright to see what Judy had reacted to. David gasped and pulled himself away from the edge. The sun was just beginning to rise up in the top of the canyon, providing barely enough light to see below. During the night, the floodwater had receded dramatically, dropping hundreds of feet. They were now stranded on a ledge with no way to go either up or down.

David looked below and saw all the places where they had climbed the night before as the water pushed them higher and higher on the canyon wall. He couldn't help but scan downstream to see if his friends had somehow landed before reaching the narrows. He saw no raft or sign of them.

"Now what?" Afram asked.

Judy craned her head upward. "We might be able to -"

"We're not going anywhere," David said. "We're staying right here."

Judy pointed above. "If we could just make it up to that ridge, we might be able to traverse -"

"Judy, if we fall, we'll be dead. We're almost three hundred feet in the air."

She looked ready to argue. "Then how are we going to get out of here?"

Afram pointed down at the river. "There will be search teams looking for survivors. They'll find us. We'll just have to wait."

David nodded in agreement.

"What if they don't?" she asked.

"They have to," David answered. "Because we can't get down."

CHAPTER 30

7:00 a.m. - Hoover Dam, Nevada

At 7:00 on the dot, Phillip Sutherland and a dozen other FBI agents arrived in the Hoover Dam visitor center. The agents quickly claimed a small room as their own, setting up a folding table and chairs. It seemed like every time Grant saw Phil, different agents accompanied him. He wondered briefly where they had sent Special Agent Williams, who had inspected the bomb the night before at Davis. She was probably out looking for evidence on the California Aqueduct bombing.

Phil looked the way Grant felt. His eyes had rings under them and lacked the sparkle of when they'd first met. His hair looked oily and uncombed. His tie hung loosely around an unfastened top button. He slouched over the table and held onto the coffee mug as if it alone were holding him up.

Grant felt tired too. His lack of sleep was wearing on him. At least the Advil had dulled the aches and pains from Davis Dam.

Phil motioned at a seat with his coffee mug.

Grant sat, and his body thanked him. Two of the other agents, previously standing, sat at Phil's sides.

Phil spoke mostly to his agents. "Okay, as Mr. Stevens put it, we just got the third piece of our puzzle. So how does blowing the aqueduct fit in with the bombs at GlenCanyon and Davis Dams? What are these guys trying to accomplish and why?"

Although spoken to the agents, Grant knew the question was meant for him, even though he didn't have the answer they wanted. "Well, before, when it was just dams, you thought it might be aimed at boaters or vacationers. The aqueduct definitely doesn't fit in that scenario. The only thing we came up with is that one of the main results of all three bombings is more water is channeled downstream. It's like they want to flood somebody or someplace downstream." He looked up at them. "I know it's kinda flimsy."

"Can't that still be interpreted as going after boaters? What about the boaters downstream?"

Grant shook his head. "The vast percentage of recreation takes place in the big lakes: Powell, Mead, Mojave, and Havasu. There's not nearly as much recreation south of there."

"What's down there, then?" Phil's voice showed frustration.

"Not much; there's only a couple of hick towns and an Indian reservation before you get to Yuma, Arizona."

"Farmers?" Phil asked.

Grant nodded. "Yeah. The Indians farm a little. One of the small dams diverts irrigation water to them. But overall, the land's pretty barren."

"What about Yuma?"

"Yuma's small, less than a hundred thousand people. There's some farming around Yuma though. Why? Do you think they might be after the farmers?" Grant hadn't considered that.

"No, I'm just thinking out loud. Why else would they want to flood Yuma? What about Mexico?"

Grant laughed briefly. "The Mexicans would love to be flooded."

Phil didn't laugh. He didn't even smile. "Why? What do you mean?"

The thought sunk in and Grant wondered why he hadn't thought of it before. "The Mexicans don't get hardly any of the Colorado River, and what little they do get, they pipe over toward Tijuana in a big canal. The whole area south of Mexicali is barren."

"What do you mean, what little they get?" Phil asked. "The river's huge."

"Not by the time it gets to Mexico. We take most of it. The GreatAmericanCanal diverts most of it before the Colorado gets there."

Phil wiped at both of his eyes. "Most of the river? How can they do that? Isn't it regulated?"

"Every drop," explained Grant. "We have a treaty with Mexico that stipulates they get at least 1.5 million acre feet per year. But, that's not all - by the time the Colorado River gets to Mexico, the salinity is so high that the water's not drinkable and will kill most crops."

Phil looked surprised by this. "And they put up with this?"

Grant shrugged. "Oh, they've been complaining for years. Finally, the U.S. had to guarantee the purity of the water at certain levels, and one of Imperial Dam's main purposes at the border is to desalinate it before it gets to Mexico."

"Isn't that expensive?" asked Phil.

"It's the biggest reverse osmosis desalination plant in the world. I think I heard that the U.S. spent over a hundred and fifty million dollars to build it, not counting yearly operating expenses."

"So Mexico is still not happy with their allotments from the Colorado River?"

"I don't think happy would be the right word. They know they're at the end of the line. I'm sure they'd like to have a lot more. But they're probably happy that what they do get is guaranteed, both in quantity and quality. At least that's something."

"So could this be some pissed-off Mexicans? Could they be our bombers?" Phil didn't sound very convinced.

"I don't think so. Remember that both of our bombers were white, and had credentials," Grant pointed out.

"What about an American group that's sympathetic to the Mexicans?"

Grant shook his head. "I can't imagine a group of Americans being sympathetic enough to blow the Glen Canyon Dam for Mexico."

Phil stood abruptly. "Then what have we got?" He walked around his chair, and leaned on it from behind. "Motive?" He let the word hang in the air. "What's the motive here? Do we have any idea? How about objective? We don't even know that." He paced over to the wall and stared at it for a second, finally returning. "GlenCanyon, then Davis, then the aqueduct. What's next? Can we at least figure that out?"

Grant shrugged. "Well, we don't know for sure. But like I said this morning, all the other aqueducts and dams downstream have to be considered targets."

Phil motioned his hand at Grant. "I forwarded your National Guard idea, but I haven't heard back yet. However, my superiors liked it. The FBI is trying to set up a conference call with Mexico this morning to fill them in on what's going on. Hopefully it's not the Mexican government behind this, or we'll be feeding information to the perpetrators."

Grant didn't believe Mexico was behind this, and he didn't think Phil did either.

"What about boat accident data?" Grant asked. "You were going to try to find out how many people had been hurt in boating accidents on the lakes."

Phil scratched his head. "There were thousands of accidents on the two lakes, plus a ton more where car accidents involved trailered boats. It's going to take a long time for my people to filter the lists. Anyway, now that he's blown the aqueduct, I'm not sure this guy is after boaters."

They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Fred poked his head in. "Sorry to interrupt, but you asked for updates." He waited for objections before proceeding. "The employee parking lot is underwater and the level will be higher than the original concrete dam in a few minutes."

Grant smiled at Fred and nodded. "Thanks, Fred. I'll be out in a while."

Fred withdrew and shut the door. There was no doubt that Fred was restless, but Grant thought it was more than that. In addition to the fear and anticipation, Grant sensed that Fred was just plain excited, glad to be there, to be a part of it. His face had shown it at the spillways, just like his voice now. The funny thing was, to a lesser extent, Grant felt the same way.

Phil took a long swig on his coffee mug. "If you need to go, don't let me stop you. But if you have a minute, I need more info from you dam guys." He smiled. "No pun intended, of course."

Grant nodded.

"I need to know what's going to happen today. Where's all this water going to end up? When will it hit? Damage estimates, etc." He pointed casually at Grant. "Are you going to hang around here all day, at Hoover? If not, where are you going to be?"