by Jenna Kernan
“Where is the cell-phone tower?” she asked.
Jack’s eyes widened and she had her answer. She knew before he spoke, the flaw in their plan becoming obvious too late.
“It’s right beside the power station at Skeleton Cliff Dam.”
She made the obvious conclusion from the siren and the absent service. The dam was gone. Between the dam and Piñon Forks lay twenty-two miles and one bridge. How long until millions of gallons of water spilling from Twin Mountain Lake filled the canyon? How long until the hydraulic head, the wave of water, reached them?
“Jack. I need mobile service to trigger the fuses.”
He stared at her and she could see the gasp, if not hear it. Then his jaw clamped shut and he pointed toward the door.
They ran to his SUV. Inside the compartment, the siren’s wail was muted enough to be able to speak.
Jack lifted his radio and called in to the station. Somehow Chief Tinnin was already there.
“I radioed the highway patrol boys. The dam’s gone. Used a school bus full of something, they said.”
“Kids?” she cried.
Jack relayed the question.
“They don’t think so. Empty bus. They were expecting a field trip. Let it right by. And the two highway boys both got off the bridge before it collapsed.”
Jack explained about the fuses.
“What do we do?” asked Tinnin.
“We need to get across the river,” she said.
“A boat,” said Jack. “Our patrol boat.”
They reached the police station. Already the town of Piñon Forks was responding to the siren and everyone was attempting to reach higher ground, choking the narrow, poorly maintained road that was the single evacuation route from town. One of the tribal officers was directing traffic, but Sophia knew it would be too little, too late. The flood would find them here in their vehicles and everyone would become just part of the rolling, tumbling debris sweeping down the canyon. Unless she could stop it.
Sophia knew the main charges were all in place. But without the initiator, the cell-phone call, the detonator would not fire and the main charge would not explode. She needed another way to start the explosive chain reaction.
At the station, she collected the two rolls of a thousand feet of nonel shock tubing. This was her nonelectric initiator, a modern-day version of a burning fuse, replacing the iconic wires and TNT blast box. Only this was faster because the hollow tubing was coated with HMX, military-grade explosives that relayed the charge from the blasting cap to the det cord, which fired the main charge. With luck, this length of cord would give the distance they needed to protect them from the flying debris and blast wave. Her training had taught her that it was the blast wave that killed most people. She also gathered additional fifty-grain det cord just in case. Det cord, short for detonation cord, looked like shock-tubing cord. But it had a key difference. It did not transmit the blasting caps signal to the booster and explosives. It was the explosive. Wrap it around a tree trunk and bye-bye, tree.
Jack helped her carry the supplies to his SUV. They found that Wallace Tinnin was already at the river in the police boat that they used to patrol the portion of the river that adjoined their tribe’s rez. The three of them loaded the blasting materials aboard.
Sophia climbed into the bow of the boat and sat facing Tinnin. He had a hold of the controls for the outboard motor and set them off the instant Jack had centered his body weight in the middle of the small craft, sitting on the white fiberglass livewell.
The chief ferried them straight across the river, but halfway to their destination the sirens went silent. The sound of the outboard motor filled the space as Jack and Sophia stared at one another.
“What happened to the siren?” asked Sophia.
“Not sure,” said Jack.
“They could have taken that out, too,” said the chief.
She had not thought of that.
“How long until it reaches us?” asked Tinnin.
“Depends on the size of the breach,” said Sophia. If it was only a minor hole, the flooding would be minimal and the water would rise slowly. If the entire hydroelectric dam was gone...she couldn’t imagine it. That huge grey structure, destroyed. But it could happen. Had happened to larger targets in military operations.
“I’ve had spotters from Tribal Thunder upriver since we identified the possible target,” said Tinnin. “Today, it’s Ray Strong. He radioed in. It’s gone. Dam, power station—all of it.”
And Ray’s pregnant wife and Lisa were likely in the snarl of traffic in Piñon Forks. Sophia felt the weight of their lives pressing down on her. They had to get to those detonators.
Jack and Tinnin stared at her as they jolted across the water—both seemed to be wondering if she could pull this off. She wondered with them.
“Okay.” She turned her mind to the math problem. Water, volume and force. “The water from the lake will be forced through the gap in the dam. The flood will move outward as well as downriver. It has to fill up the canyon,” she said. “There’s a bridge between us and the dam site. That will slow the water and block the debris for a while. When it fails, the debris will be rolling toward us with the water in a wave.”
“How long?” asked the chief again.
“Twenty minutes would be generous.”
She needed to bypass to ignition sequences set with cell phones. That meant getting up close and personal. Way too close and much too personal with the amount of explosives lining that cliff wall. It also meant that both she and Jack would need to be in different locations to detonate the two respective sequences of charges she had laid.
She looked to Jack and his troubled eyes told her that he had already come to the same conclusion.
“How are we going to do it?” asked Jack.
Sophia wondered the same thing.
“We will each need to trigger one of the sequences. I’ll take the first. You handle the second.”
Jack’s brow lifted as he seemed to realize that she had taken a more dangerous sequence.
“How about we reverse that. I’ll take the first. You take the second.”
“You can’t.” She was so glad to have a reason he would accept because she knew saying she needed to protect him would not fly. “I’ll never scale that cliff face in time. And you’ve done it before.” She pointed at the wall in question. The one he’d climbed as a young man. The first in his group to reach the top, he had said.
He could have driven upriver and over the bridge to reach the canyon ridge, if they had time. They didn’t.
“We should stay together,” he said, but he was accepting the truth. He needed to leave her to save his people. He didn’t like it but could find no alternative. They would separate to initiate sequences or they would let the river take it all.
“How long will it take you to get up there?” she asked.
Jack considered the problem. Studying the route once taken by the ancient ones to the cliff dwellings in the caves she was about to destroy. These were left by the indigenous people who lived in this place far before the Apache moved over the land bridge with the Athabaskan peoples to this place. There were steps cut into the inclines to ease the way for the women who carried water vessels on their backs. On the steepest sections, the steps had been worn smooth by the rubbing of countless hands and feet of those who walked here before.
“How much will I be carrying?” asked Jack.
She organized what he would need as Wallace Tinnin opened the livewell, rummaging past their gear for the nylon bag that held survival equipment. He dumped the contents of the red nylon bag onto the deck and began loading up the blasting supplies she selected.
Sophia spoke quickly, feeling the pressure of time pushed by the oncoming water. Jack knew how to set the charges. He had been with her but still she reviewed how to use the detonator after the shock tubing.
“Get behind whatever you can. Something solid and as far back as possible. You need something to br
eak the blast wave. Something solid and far back from the ridge.”
He turned to go and then did an about-face. Jack grabbed her wrist and tugged. Then he gave her a quick kiss and whispered, “Come back to me.”
She nodded. Her throat was too full of pain and grief to answer.
The chief pressed a radio into her hand.
“Tell us when you are clear.”
Jack was already scaling the steps. She watched him a moment more and then turned to Tinnin.
“I might not have time to get clear.”
He held her gaze. “Then radio us that you’re clear anyway. He won’t hit the initiator otherwise.”
She understood. Telling Jack she was safe would ensure that he initiated his sequence.
Sophia clipped the radio to her waistband, scooped up the roll of shock tubing and took the seat vacated by Tinnin. Then she pointed the flat skiff upriver, toward her position.
In her plan, they would be across the river in cover when she made the two phone calls to the burner phones to trigger the blasts. Then she would blow the sequence upriver first, blocking the flow of the river. The second sequence would bring down more of the cliff above and reinforce the existing temporary dam. Without the second blast, she was certain the force of water would at least break over the smaller debris pile. At worst, it would take the pile of rubble and use it like a scouring pad to wipe away every structure and living thing along the river.
Unfortunately, after setting her sequence, she would have to travel above the range of the first blast site. She’d have to face the ensuing floods from the riverbank or she would have to race under the cliff face that was destined to fall in the second blast.
How much time had passed? Ten minutes? Fifteen? It would be a miracle to just get to the cell-phone initiator before the waters reached her. She glanced back, seeing Jack scaling the steepest section of rock with Tinnin still far behind him. They’d make it to their position and then it would be a race to lay out the tubing and take cover. They had a chance.
Sophia continued running along the flat riverbank, her gaze searching for the flood.
“Not yet. Please, not yet.”
And then she saw it—the brown wave swept toward her from canyon wall to canyon wall.
Sophia reached the initiation site for the first blast and tied the tubing into the line she had set. Then she ran back toward the boat, unrolling the yellow tubing as she went. She threw the roll into the skiff and unrolled it into the river. Then she set the boat to drift. All the explosives were inside the tubing. It was waterproof, so no need to keep it dry.
Sophia glanced at the motor. If she engaged the motor, she could make a faster escape, outrun the cresting wave and possibly the debris from the second blast. But then the tubing might pull away from the initiator and there would be no first blast, no foundation for the second. Neither her sequence nor Jack’s would provide enough of a debris field to hold back what was coming. They needed both. So she drifted along in the current, faster than normal in the swell of water already lifting the river’s depth. As she went, she spooled out the tubing until she was directly beneath the site of Jack’s sequence. Sophia glanced at the approaching hydraulic head, judging the speed and distance it covered. She wouldn’t make it.
Then she lifted the radio. “Jack, over.”
He answered immediately, out of breath. “Here. We’re in place. Your position? Over.”
“I’m initiating first sequence now. You’re next. Over.”
“Are you clear? Over.”
“Clear. Jack, I see the flood. Initiate immediately after my blast. Over.”
“Roger that.”
Sophia couldn’t save herself. But she could save Jack and all he loved.
She hit the trigger. The tubing flashed a brilliant white as it carried the signal back upriver. A moment later rocks and debris shot into the air as the canyon wall collapsed into the river.
Sophia hit the throttle and flew downriver, knowing she’d never make it to the still water she could see beyond the rock wall engineered to collapse.
Chapter Twenty
“She’s done it.”
Jack and Tinnin took cover behind the wall of rock at the top of the canyon rim. From this position he could not see the river directly below him. More importantly, he could not see Sophia. But he could see far upriver to the narrow gap between the walls of rock, and he could hear the echoes of the first blast rumbling through the stone beneath his feet as the dust billowed up into the blue sky.
If she’d calculated correctly, rock from the lower bluff should have collapsed into the river, blocking its normal flow. His sequence of blasts would bring down the overburden and cliff rim to fall on top of the first mound of rubble adding weight, depth and height to the new temporary debris dam.
“Hit the charge,” said Tinnin.
Jack lifted the button. He needed only to press his thumb to send the canyon rim down into the river. But instead he held the control aloft and still, as if he, too, had turned to stone.
“Hit it!” yelled his chief.
“Hear that?” said Jack.
“What?”
“The motor. It’s the skiff.”
Jack dropped the control and stood. “She’s not clear. She’s still in that skiff.”
“Maybe.” Tinnin reached for the control and Jack snatched it back.
“She’s under us! We have to give her time.” If Tinnin thought to wrestle the control from Jack, he’d never make it. Jack faced his chief ready to fight to give Sophia the seconds she needed to escape.
But Wallace Tinnin did not lunge for the control, or take a swing at Jack. Instead he pointed upriver. Jack stepped back, suspecting a trick, a diversion to distract his attention for the moment his chief needed to make a play. Then he glanced toward the gap in the canyon. What he saw frosted his heart.
Brown water roared through the opening, blasting forty feet to the top of the canyon walls. The hydraulic head—millions of gallons with only one way to go, straight at his reservation.
The anguish surged with the flood waters as he realized he faced a devil’s choice. She could die in the blast or in the flood. He held the trigger in his hand and turned his gaze to his chief.
Tinnin lifted his chin, indicating the trigger. “That’s quicker.”
Jack turned back to watch the water. He could see pieces of metal in the debris field that Sophia had forewarned. Soon it would pummel everything below. Unless he stopped it.
He waited as long as he could, until the sound of the crashing wave drowned out the sound of her motor. Until the flood had reached the point where he could no longer see it run.
Jack pushed the trigger.
Tinnin jumped on top of him, upsetting his balance and forcing him back to cover. The earth beneath them heaved and groaned as the blast wave passed over them. Then the rock that had been there all Jack’s life, and the lifetime of every person who’d ever walked the earth, dropped away. Where it had been was only dust and gravel and chunks of stone flying high, up and up.
“Get down,” yelled Tinnin, pushing Jack’s head to the warm sandstone.
All about them the rocks fell, raining down like a meteor shower. Mercifully, the debris missed their heads, which were pressed close to the outcropping they had chosen for cover. But one hit Tinnin’s leg. He yelped and rolled from side to side as he clutched his thigh.
Jack checked his chief’s leg. The deformity of the tibia and immediate swelling made it clear that both bones of his lower leg were fractured, and he could not walk down the way they had come.
“Call for help,” said Tinnin. “Tell them I need transport.”
Jack crouched beside his superior.
“I can’t come with you, Jack. Go see if anyone is left down there.”
Jack lifted the radio, issuing a prayer under his breath before pressing the button necessary to transmit. Please let his dispatcher be there. Please let everyone be there. Please let Sophia’s death not ha
ve been in vain.
“Jack Bear Den, here. Are you there, Olivia?” Jack released the button and held his breath, waiting for their dispatcher to answer. As the seconds crawled by with the settling dust, Jack’s heart beat so hard he could not swallow.
“They’re not there,” he said to Tinnin.
“Try again. She leaves that radio on her desk all the time.”
“Olivia! Pick up! Are you there? Over.”
The radio squealed and then Jack heard Olivia, out of breath.
“Yes. We’re here. We’re all here! I was at the window. I can’t believe it. The rocks flew everywhere. It broke windows. But it worked. It stopped the water! Over!”
“Thank God,” said another voice. Ray Strong, Jack recognized, who had spotted the flood from far upriver and whose new wife was there in Piñon Forks.
Jack pressed the radio to his chest and bowed his head to also give thanks. But the tear in his heart grew wider and he pressed his hand to his eyes. He wanted her back. He wanted to tell her that he loved her and that he was so sorry for what he had done to her. If not for him, she’d be back on the job she loved, alive.
Tinnin put a hand on Jack’s shoulder.
“She’s a hero, son.”
He nodded and looked at the sky, still so filled with dust, it seemed like a cloudy day. He lifted the radio again and asked Olivia if she saw a boat on the river.
“A boat?”
“Our boat.”
“Not from here. No, Jack.”
“I see it.” Another voice broke in. “It’s Jake.”
That was Jake Redhorse—one of their newest and most promising hires.
“I’m at the river. I see the boat. It’s downstream on this side. Over.”
“Where’s Sophia? Over.”
“Checking. Over.”
Jack spoke to Olivia. He told her to call Kurt in Darabee and get the air ambulance ready.
“I’m not that hurt. It’s just a busted leg,” said Tinnin.
Jack glanced at his chief. “It’s not for you.”
Jack half expected him to tell him to give up. That all they’d find was Sophia’s body, if that. But he couldn’t give up.
