Wet Desert: Tracking Down a Terrorist on the Colorado River

by Gary Hansen

  "Our favorite guy," Bruce whispered.

  When Howard got within ten yards of them, he shooed Bruce away with his hand. "Go on ahead Bruce. I need a few words alone with Mr. Stevens."

  Bruce gave Grant a consolatory look and then continued walking to the car.

  "What's up?" Grant asked, not really caring since he would be gone for the next two weeks.

  "Grant, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but . . ."

  Grant knew what he was going to say before Howard finished. They couldn't do this to him.

  ". . .but plans have changed. It seems the commissioner doesn't think I've been here long enough to run things with . . ." He looked around as if he didn't know how to finish. ". . .you know, with everybody out of the country so long."

  Grant interrupted. "Are you trying to tell me you're canceling my Kenya trip?" He felt all the muscles in his face tighten.

  Howard backed up a step and smiled. "I thought you would be happy to be left in charge."

  Grant wondered if he had missed something. How could Grant be in charge, if both he and Howard were in America together? And then it hit him. Anger returned. His brows furrowed and he gritted his teeth, barely able to speak. Bruce had been right. "So you're taking my place?"

  Howard shook his head and actually waved his finger back and forth. "No. No, Stevens. You've got it all wrong. I'm not interested in Kenya. Who wants to hang around with a bunch of boring engineers? I'm leaving. I decided to take vacation next week." Howard shrugged. "Then you can manage America's dams without my interference. Besides, ever since I came out west, my wife's been nagging me to take her to Yellowstone, so we decided--"

  "How long have you known about this?" The thought of not going on the trip made Grant feel sick. He would kill to be able to discuss the challenges of building the Three Gorges Dam with the Chinese engineers. What about his safari in Tanzania? What would he tell his wife? Grant had spent a fortune on reservations for the week of personal travel. He had thought of nothing else but this trip for months.

  Howard read his mind and waved his hands back and forth. "If you're worried about your personal money, don't. The Bureau's gonna pick up the tab. I told Roland about your vacation and he said the Bureau would reimburse you. He's already approved it."

  That mitigated some of the anger, but not the emptiness. The disappointment was overwhelming. He needed to sit down. He kicked at a loose rock on the road.

  Howard pursed his lips in an expression that actually showed compassion. "Look, I know you don't like this."

  He didn't say anything. He knew Howard didn't care.

  His boss, who had never even attempted to talk to Grant as a friend, now confided in him like they were pals. "Hey, I'm not happy about this either. They told me that I didn't have enough time at the Bureau to be in charge. They wanted us to switch roles, me report to you for the week. But I told them to stick it, and took some vacation."

  Grant couldn't believe what he had just heard. They had actually suggested Howard report to Grant for a few weeks? Maybe Roland did know what he was doing. But even if the Bureau suddenly figured out they needed to leave a real engineer home, why did it have to be Grant? Roland and Grant had never seen eye to eye. Grant felt like Roland was too much of a politician, and Roland always thought Grant was too much of an engineer. Besides, unlike most of the others attending the symposium, Grant actually cared about the speakers, and the panels. He wouldn't be there just to schmooze.

  Howard continued. "Anyway, Roland's admin will brief you in the morning about any issues that could come up in the next ten days." Howard's eyes softened until they reminded Grant of a puppy. "And if anything does come up, here's my cell phone number." He handed Grant a card. "You can call me anytime. I'll be in Yellowstone with my family."

  Grant nodded. It seemed for a moment as if Howard was begging him to call, like a call might validate him somehow. It didn't matter though, because Grant wouldn't call Howard if his life depended on it.

  Grant pocketed the card. They stood and stared at each other for a moment longer, even though the conversation seemed to be over. Howard checked his watch. Grant turned to go.

  "Don't hesitate to call," Howard said.

  Grant walked away with his fists clenched. He resisted the urge to pick up a rock and throw it. He felt like screaming, but he held his composure. He walked stiffly for a few minutes before a thought struck him. Did Howard say he would be vacationing in Yellowstone? Grant smiled. Hadn't he read about grizzlies being re-introduced into the park? Grant smiled as he pictured Howard focusing his camera while a huge grizzly charged toward him.

  * * *

  12:30 p.m. - Grand Canyon, Arizona

  The water looked cold and dangerous. Only an idiot would dare swim out beyond the shallows without a life jacket, or some other flotation device. It would be suicide. The strong undertows would grab you, and pull you to the bottom before you knew what was happening. And then? Well, there wouldn't be anything after that because once the river had you, it would never let you go.

  The solitary man reached down and touched the river. He rolled the wetness between his fingers to determine the texture. Unable to detect any silt with his fingers, his hand went to his face, and he inhaled, smelling it. Nothing. He dipped his hand again, and this time licked the tips of his fingers, tasting. Ah, now he could just discern the silt in the water, his tongue finding a few small particles and detecting the expected salty flavor.

  Still crouching, he looked across the Colorado River to the other side, taking in the size, sensing the power. It was alive. He felt it. The river radiated power, especially the rapids. Unfortunately, even here in the Grand Canyon, the river was shackled, bound like a prisoner, unable to show its full strength. Others didn't notice, but he did. The concrete dams held it back. Sure the river ran a little stronger today than yesterday. But that only meant the flow through the turbines at the Glen Canyon Dam, some hundred and seventy-five miles upstream, had been increased, most likely due to a "hot one" in Phoenix, when the Arizonans cranked up the air conditioners. More electricity from the turbines meant more water downstream. It was as simple as that. The mighty Colorado River was a slave to man, caged and controlled.

  He stood and looked up the rock canyon walls rising thousands of feet on both sides of the river. Although he often visited the Grand Canyon, the immensity always inspired him. He tried to imagine the river carving the canyon over millions of years, an image that was impossible to visualize. But he knew it hadn't been this river; it had been a wild untamed river, over eight times larger during spring runoff, much dirtier, and powerful enough to constantly re-arrange the huge boulders.

  The best way to describe the man, if anyone cared to, was that he seemed unremarkable in every way. No facial features worth remembering, a plain face with plain brown hair. His clothes showed his familiarity with the desert outdoors, but again they were not fancy and were well worn. The only attribute that anyone would likely remember if they tried to recall the man was his build. He was uncommonly skinny. Skinny enough that almost all would remember it, if questioned. Then there were his eyes. Some might be unsettled by them, and they would be recalled as wild eyes.

  If anyone actually knew the man, they would likely describe him as obsessed with the Colorado River. He had studied it for years. He knew its history. Nobody cared more about the river than he did. Although he made a living as a technician in Las Vegas, keeping the casino lights flashing was only a job, secondary to his first love. Weekends and vacations were spent in the desert, the National Parks: Zion, Arches, Bryce, Canyonlands, and the Grand Canyon. Not just on the roads either, but in the backcountry. He knew them all, like a rancher knows his spread.

  At that moment the man worried about the Colorado River, about what it had become. Most Grand Canyon tourists thought the river looked impressive, but they had never seen it before the Glen Canyon Dam destroyed it.

  Before 1962, travelers described the river as a wild animal with rapids
three stories high. The pre-dam Colorado was extremely dirty, carrying millions of tons of silt and mud. When the river receded from high flows, giant sand dunes were left deposited on the banks, creating the perfect environment for wild flowers and swallows that used the mud for their nests. Now, without the spring floods, the sand had eroded away, and the wild flowers and swallows had disappeared. The silt, meanwhile, was trapped behind the dam, slowly filling GlenCanyon.

  He crouched back down and touched the water again. This time he held his fingers under the cold current. He didn't need a thermometer to know the temperature was in the forties. Too cold to bathe or swim comfortably. Since the dam was erected, it was always in the forties, forty-degrees Fahrenheit, plus or minus two, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. The temperature never changed at the bottom of a six hundred-foot dam.

  One advantage of a colder river was that it benefited the rainbow trout introduced by the park service after the dam was completed. Rainbows love cold water, and the oxygen it carries. Unfortunately, the native humpback chub, which had lived in the Colorado for thousands of years, did not like it. Almost extinct now, the chub all but disappeared after the river turned cold, their exit accelerated by competition from the rainbows.

  The man opened his pack. He gingerly moved the detonators and wires to the side, and reached for a clear Plexiglas container the size of a soda can. He uncapped it, and dipped it into the water. He recapped it and looked through it. Given some time, the silt would settle to the bottom, and he would be able to see exactly how much sediment was in the water.

  He heard footsteps on the gravel behind, and he whirled to see two hikers, a man and a woman, approaching from upstream. He lunged to his pack, quickly covering the detonators, and almost dropped the water sample in the process. Had the hikers seen the detonators? He did not think so.

  He studied their eyes to see if there were any signs that they had seen anything. The two did not look familiar, but that didn't mean they were not staying in the same campground. He had not talked to anyone. Leaving Las Vegas right after lunch the day before, he had driven straight to the North Rim, parked his truck, then made the long descent from the North Ridge via eight miles of winding trails to the river below, arriving in camp after dark. As the couple approached, the lady waved.

  "Hi. It's a beautiful morning, isn't it?"

  The skinny man stood and moved in front of his pack. He wiped his wet hand on his shorts and tried to think of a response. He didn't want a long discussion. "Yeah."

  The woman's smile seemed to connect both ears. She had a few highlights of gray just visible under the straw hat. She and her male partner both wore khaki shorts and new hiking shoes, most likely purchased for this trip. The bearded man with her kept looking around at the canyon with his hand on his chin. He looked as if he would be more comfortable with a pipe in his mouth.

  Neither the man nor the woman seemed particularly interested in his pack. Could that mean that they had not seen anything? Or were they just good actors?

  The lady asked another question. "See any rafters on the river yet this morning?"

  He looked across the river to avoid eye contact. "A couple."

  "You're staying in our campground around the corner, aren't you?" She pointed upstream. "We saw you walk past our tent. You like to get going early, don't you? Where you from anyway? We're from Los Angeles. It's our first time in the Grand Canyon."

  He wasn't sure which question to answer first. He hesitated then answered, "I like the peaceful mornings."

  Maybe she was asking so many questions because she had in fact seen the detonators. What if these two were really undercover agents from some law enforcement agency? Or more likely, maybe they were just snoopy people who would report what they had seen to the first person they saw.

  He quickly considered what to do. There was too much at stake to do nothing. What if he had to kill them? His knife was in the bottom of his pack and unreachable. He scanned the ground and saw multiple rocks the size of softballs. He looked up at the couple. The man was still gazing up the canyon walls. He was distracted. The woman seemed relaxed. What if he grabbed one of the rocks and bashed her in the head? That would do it. His hand twitched while he imagined her lying on the ground with a bloody crater on her head. He wondered if he would be able to get the man after the woman. The man's defenses would be up by then.

  "What are you doing with that water?" She pointed at the plastic container of silty water in his hands. "You're not going to drink it, are you?" She stuck out her tongue in distaste. The woman made it hard not to look in her eyes, as if her eyes were hunting his.

  He realized suddenly that these two had not seen the detonators. They were not a threat, and he would not need to kill them. They were just a couple of curious campers, happy to be in the Grand Canyon for the first time. Regardless, the encounter had made him nervous. He needed to move away from them and clear his head. He wondered how to end the conversation. "Well, I better go." He leaned down and zipped up the backpack, lifted it onto his shoulder, and walked past them. He held the water sample carefully in his hand.

  She yelled after him. "Okay, we'll catch you later in camp or something."

  From behind, the skinny man heard the man say to his wife, "I don't think he wanted to talk."

  "Really? Why would you think that?"

  He walked upstream around a bend in the river, away from the couple, away from people, until he was alone and could see a mile upstream. His heart was still beating fast. That had been too close, he had almost done something stupid, something that could have jeopardized everything he had worked so hard for. He had carried the detonators with him because he was too nervous to leave them in the truck, and that had almost screwed everything up.

  He gazed upstream. He tried to picture the dam. He couldn't see it, of course; it was almost two hundred miles upstream. But he knew what it looked like. The Glen Canyon Dam rose over six hundred feet and completely blocked the canyon. It trapped LakePowell behind it, with houseboats, water ski boats, and jet skis, all buzzing around like bees, with over three million visitors per year.

  What he had never seen, unfortunately, were the canyons themselves, under all the water. Only about a thousand people ever had, before the dam buried them forever. He read accounts of people lucky enough to have explored them including John Wesley Powell himself. They declared GlenCanyon one of the most beautiful places on earth. They described pink undulating sandstone walls, some striped, with rain forest-like jungles in some of the side canyons, and green fractures high on the walls nourished by seeping springs. The endless carved rock canyons contained lush overhangs and rock amphitheaters. But now it was all gone, forever. It made his stomach tighten every time he thought about it.

  Instinctively, he knew that it would be impossible to build the Glen Canyon Dam or most of the other fifty-three Colorado River dams today. Environmental impact studies would never allow them. Unlike in the early 20th century, modern politicians feared environmentalists.

  But, even though the government had stopped building dams, and society had decided dams were detrimental to the environment, they left the big ones standing. Now built, the dams were forgotten. Even the environmentalist groups like the Sierra Club or GreenPeace didn't waste resources trying to get rid of the dams. There were too many other issues brighter on the radar.

  Not that the man hadn't tried. Over the years, he had made his rounds in all the major environmental groups including the "Glen Canyon Institute," a group dedicated specifically to decommissioning the Glen Canyon Dam and restoring its canyons. But he finally realized the groups were all pissing into the wind. The issue didn't even register with today's politicians. Since lawyers had won most of the legislative seats in Washington and taken over the House and Senate like a virus, no risks were taken, no big decisions were made, good or bad. The bureaucracy was impenetrable. Decommissioning the Glen Canyon Dam was a fantasy.

  That's why, if it was to b
e done, it would need to be done another way. After much contemplation, the decision had been made. Preparations took over a year. The logistics were planned in excruciating detail. The Glen Canyon Dam would finally be decommissioned the next day, on Tuesday, June 22. The man would be there for the ceremonies. In fact, he would be in charge of the events. Because he was going to blow it up.

  CHAPTER 2

  2:00 p.m. - Lake Powell, Utah

  Julie Crawford took a deep breath. "Hit it!" she yelled.

  The ski handle in her hands jerked savagely. It felt like her arms were being pulled from their sockets. As her body dragged forward through the water, spray from the ski hit her directly in the face. She held her breath and closed her eyes as she always did. She could hear the roar of the boat accelerating. As the ski started moving through the water beneath her, she stood up in one fluid motion. The spraying water disappeared as the ski came up on plane. She caught her breath while the boat gradually accelerated to just under twenty miles per hour. She took a second to adjust her swimsuit. She could see the other five in the boat: her husband Greg, Greg's brother Max and his wife Darlene, and her best friends Paul and Erika Sanders. Julie's husband had a big smile on his face.

  Julie leaned back and slightly right. The ski reacted to the wedge and skied to the right. She cut over the wake of the boat, absorbing the bump with her knees. Outside of the wake the water was as smooth as a mirror. She traversed to the right until she was at a 45-degree angle to the boat. She reversed her lean and cut back toward the boat's wake, spraying water behind her. As she approached the wake, she reversed again and cut back right, more aggressively this time. The water was incredible. Only LakePowell had water this smooth in the middle of the day.

  The hot, dry desert air warmed her body. She relaxed and adjusted her hands on the rope handle. She took a second to glance up at the rock walls of the canyon. She loved the atmosphere. On her right side, a vertical rock cliff climbed toward the blue sky. The canyon walls, with their astounding variations of texture and red color, contrasted perfectly with the blue sky and cool water. They were miles back in one of the countless side canyons of the lake. Although there were probably thousands of boats at LakePowell, they had not seen anyone else for hours.