Authors: Richard Aaron
Getting in touch with the right person took a few minutes. Sandilands was not at work, or at home. Johnson got him on his cell, but the call was dropped and he had to redial. Another two or three minutes were lost in the fiddling. In the many hearings that would ultimately follow, much focus was placed on this time frame.
Turbee was back in mumble mode. His medication had kicked in, but the extra dosage he’d taken had had an adverse effect; instead of functioning more normally, he had slipped into a quiet, disconnected state. Looking at the floor and speaking to no one in particular, he said, “Why don’t you just open all the penstocks?”
Rahlson and George, both sitting next to Turbee, heard it. “What did you say, Turb?” asked George. Before he could respond, Johnson yelled to Dan.
“I’ve got Sandilands on the phone, Dan! Can I put him on the speakers?”
“Yes. Now please.”
“Hello Bill, been a long time since you and I have talked. How are things?” General Odlum opened up, once the call was connected.
“Jesus Christ,” Rahlson exclaimed. “Get on with it! There’s a sub in the water carrying a massive amount of plastic explosive. Dan. Call. The. Fucking. CAVALRY!” Dan, the General, and Sandilands all ignored him.
“Not bad. What can I do for you, Odlum?” responded Dr. Sandilands, his voice crackling and breaking up a bit over the control room speakers.
“We’re at TTIC, in Washington. The Terrorist Threat Integration Center. We’ve been following the trail of the stolen Semtex. We think that it’s now in a submarine in Lake Powell, heading toward the Glen Canyon Dam. We also think they might have a shaped charge explosive. Could a properly shaped explosive device destroy the dam, if you had, say, 4.5 tons of Semtex?” the General asked.
“Holy doodle,” responded Sandilands. “You guys have got a problem. The device would need to be properly shaped, and have the proper metals along its upper and lower walls. It would have to be machined with great precision. The construction would need to be perfect. And the device would need to be placed inside the dam. But if it were...”
“Suppose the device was in the interior of the dam. Like inside one of the penstocks, for instance. Could it destroy the dam then?” asked Odlum.
“Possibly. We’ve been developing some incredibly powerful shaped charge explosives. It’s amazing what you can do with these things. About three months ago we tested a device like that, and with less than 2,000 pounds of high explosive, we were able to blow through 25 feet of solid steel.” He paused for emphasis. “Twenty-five feet.”
“Of steel?” responded Dan, incredulously.
“Yes. Of steel,” affirmed Sandilands. “It’s highly classified. Up until now, I guess,” he continued. “A couple of our guys invented a new type of shaped charge. We call it a Tiani/Melvin Lens. It was developed by a team of highly skilled mathematicians and engineers. Down the center we used depleted uranium, a heavy metal, to increase the power of the device. We’ve got a couple of them sitting in inventory, actually. No guy off the street would be able to create or manufacture something like that.” He was silent for a second or two. The clock ticked to 10:39AM. “Umm. There is something you guys need to know.”
“What’s that?” asked Dan.
“We believe that a set of plans for the design of a T/M Lens may have been stolen. I’m not sure where they ended up. The FBI was involved in the case.”
“I can help with that,” said the FBI representative at TTIC, who had been quietly sitting at his workstation, taking notes the old fashioned way.
“You’re right when you say the FBI was involved,” he said. “We traced the theft to an Egyptian guy. Nasser somebody or other. He got them from someone at the Livermore Labs. It might have been the coinventor of the device, Mr. Tiani. We’ve been looking at some unusual spending habits of his in the past six months or so. We think that he gave someone else a computer key, allowing them entry to the server that contained the plans. We think the culprit emailed them to someone in Egypt, but we lost the trail there. With this computer-based theft, once someone has the information on a hard drive, it’s game over. You can’t control it or track it after that.”
The clock ticked to 10:40AM. Rahlson was drumming his fingers on his desk in disbelief and agitation. “Dan, God dammit, sound the alarm!”
“Quiet, Rahlson,” rebuked Dan. “We need the facts first. I’m in charge. We don’t want another
Haramosh Star
misadventure. The President was almost impeached over that.” Dan was now standing, ramrod straight, looking at the Atlas Screen. “George, get us in closer to the dam. Go ahead, General.”
Turbee’s mind was struggling to overcome the fog of too many drugs. He was still mumbling, this time a little louder. “Just open all the penstocks. No submarine of that size could withstand the turbulence that would create.”
“What, Turbee?” George asked again. Before Turbee could answer, General Odlum interrupted.
“OK,” said Odlum. “Bill, the question still stands. If someone made a device precisely in accordance with the plans you’ve developed, could 4.5 tons of Semtex destroy a dam?”
“Yes, I think it could,” said Sandilands. “What the device does is to focus the blast in a very narrow way. Almost like a knife-edge. All that power would be funneled along one plane. If you were to stand 100 feet behind it, you probably wouldn’t be hurt. But if you were 100 feet in front of it, it would cut you in two.”
“There’s 500 or 600 feet of concrete and steel above the penstocks. This device would cut the dam in two?” the General confirmed.
“Yes, I think so. It would be a very narrow blast. But the dam would be cut in two. Water pressure would do the rest,” Sandilands said slowly.
The room had become deathly silent. Everyone had stopped what they were doing and was listening to the conversation. The dam cut in two? And it might be only minutes away?
It was Rahlson who broke the silence. “I think Sandilands is right. The Glen Canyon Dam is done for unless the submarine is intercepted. But it’s much worse than that. If this happens, the dam will have a catastrophic failure. It will all go at once. Lake Powell will thunder down the Marble Canyon, and into the Grand Canyon. A massive amount of silt and mud will go with it, along with the remnants of the dam itself,” he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“The water will hit Lake Mead maybe an hour or two later,” he continued. “God alone knows what will happen there. Maybe the Hoover won’t be able to withstand the increase in water. Maybe it’ll go too, and then every dam on the Colorado below that. If that happens, there will be no power or water for years to come. Vegas will become a ghost town. Without water or air conditioners, it will be uninhabitable. The Emir was right. He will destroy Vegas. The city will slowly cook to death. He’ll destroy the Hoover Dam, and a lot more besides. And all of this may be minutes away. I don’t see how that can be prevented. That submarine is 300 or 400 feet below the water surface. We can’t send divers down that far. I think it’s game over, people. I think we’re done for.”
Turbee continued to fight an internal fight against the sleepy, drugged state that was threatening to engulf him. “Just open all the penstocks at once,” he mumbled as the clock ticked over to 10:42AM. Again no one heard him.
The control room had gone dead silent with Rahlson’s words. No one looked up. If Rahlson was correct, TTIC would be a failure, and worse yet, untold economic damage would visit the USA. Maybe fewer people would die than in past terrorist strikes, but the cost would be far, far greater. Through the past month, they had been continually one step behind the Emir, or whoever it was that had engineered this attack. The technique was classic. They were always looking at spot A, only to find that the Semtex was already in spot B. Right up to the present moment, when the military forces of the country were protecting the Hoover Dam instead of being where they were needed, at the Glen Canyon Dam.
“For fuck’s sake, will someone please call the goddamn cavalry!?” shouted a highly agitated Lance. He was standing now. “If some terrorist bastard is down there in Lake Powell with a sub and this shaped charge thing, will someone please blow it the hell up now? Please?!”
“We’ll see about that,” said General Odlum. “We’ve got a couple of Hoovers flying over Lake Mead. They’ve already been directed to the Glen Canyon Dam. And we have other firepower up that way from Edwards. Yes, the cavalry is definitely coming.”
“Hoovers?” asked George.
“Hoovers. Otherwise known as Vikings. Lockheed S-3B Vikings,” said Odlum. “They’re used specifically for the detection and attack of submarines. We had two of them patrolling the Lake Mead area already, to make sure that there was nothing illicit in the waters. Nobody really thought of patrolling Lake Powell.”
The S-3B Viking was an exotic, high-tech aircraft, if there ever was one. It carried a crew of four, including the pilot, copilot, tactical coordinator, and sensor operator. It had highly efficient engines, which sounded like vacuum cleaners when in operation — hence the nickname “Hoover.” The Viking’s powerful computer system processed information generated by acoustic and nonacoustic target sensor systems. The plane also possessed an impressive array of airborne weaponry and antisubmarine ordnance. One of these weapons was the AGM-84 Harpoon, a self-guiding missile that gave the Viking below-surface capability. This weapon turned on its seeker, located its target, and struck it, without further guidance from its launch platform. Once it was in the water, any target would have considerable difficulty avoiding the missile. General Odlum, who knew all these details, noticed his hands shaking as he dialed the numbers on the phone. The entire American Southwest would be depending on those very missiles for its future.
T
HE GENERAL UPROAR in the control room increased with every passing minute. Sandiland’s call was dropped at some point. No one but George and Rahlson heard Turbee, still mumbling to himself.
“Turb,” George finally asked, “why open the penstocks?”
“Because it’s a small submarine,” said Turbee, rousing himself enough to answer. “It will head toward a closed penstock. If it goes toward an open penstock, turbulence in the water will pull it in and destroy it. To be successful, it will have to go toward a closed penstock. If these guys are half as smart as they seem to be, the pilots of the sub will have received these as their most important instructions. It’s really basic, you guys. It’s our best bet. And I think it might be the only way to stop them, at this point.”
George and Rahlson, almost as one, yelled from their stations. “Open the penstocks! The turbulence will destroy the submarine!”
“What?” asked Dan, typically slow to react.
“Get the dam to open the penstocks! It’s your best bet,” urged George. He had exploded from his seat and sprinted toward Dan. Now he grabbed his arm and shook him.
Dan slowly extracted his arm from George’s grip and looked at Dennis Daley, who had come over from FEMA. “Can you get them to do that too?”
“I think so. Let me call FEMA headquarters.” He did so, but was then transferred from one station to another, put on hold, and then disconnected. Ten minutes later, he was still lost in the endless maze of Washington bureaucracy. When he was asked, at the hearings that took place in the months after, why he hadn’t simply called directory assistance, or Google’d the dam for the number, all he could do was shrug. It wasn’t policy to go around the other agencies like that. They had a protocol.
M
USTAFA WAS WAITING FOR THEM at the Page airport. The Ford screeched to a halt, and Yousseff, Kumar, Izzy, and Ba’al ran toward the idling Lear. The plane roared down the airstrip. When the rental agency clerk came running out of the terminal, he found the truck still idling on the runway, with no one else in sight. “You haven’t signed the paperwork...” he said quietly to himself.
It was 8:50AM, Mountain Standard Time, and 7:50AM in California. Yousseff’s second pilot, Badr al-Sobeii, already had the Gulfstream running when they arrived in Long Beach. Rika was by his side. Both were worried and stressed almost beyond endurance by the time the rented Lear finally taxied to a halt in front of the PWS hangar. Ba’al, Izzy, Kumar, and Yousseff disembarked. They wasted no time. The five of them, friends since childhood, boarded the jet. Mustafa cut the engines on the Lear, then ran to join them. Badr taxied out the second the door was closed.
T
HE VIKINGS arrived at the east end of the canyon within 15 minutes. It took a few more to reach their destination. There, just ahead, was the awesome structure of the Glen Canyon Dam — every bit as large and impressive as the Hoover. At 9:02AM, the two planes dropped four AGM-84 Harpoon missiles into Lake Powell, just upstream from the dam.
S
AM AND HANK watched the two jets fly overhead, pull a steep turn, and come directly back toward the dam at a low elevation. They saw puffs of smoke from each wing, and then watched four missiles enter the water and disappear from view.
D
EEP BENEATH the surface, Massoud and Javeed had cut though the last of the steel vertical mullions protecting the penstock. It was time to start the final transfer. This was the trickiest part of the mission. The payload was extremely heavy. The Ark itself weighed more than a ton, and the Semtex within it weighed 4.5 tons. It had been set on the roof of the Pequod as the little submarine was starting to descend, so that the buoyancy of the water lessened the pressure and weight of the load. According to physics and the engineers, this had been the only way to saddle the small sub with such weight. Moving it to its final destination would be just as complicated. The Ark was sitting on the small platform, equipped with small rubber wheels, that made up the Pequod’s roof. Javeed pressed a button, and the latches that attached the transfer platform to the sub were automatically loosened. The platform lifted up, away from the body of the sub.
Massoud positioned the Pequod so that the submarine was below the penstock entrance and the Ark itself level with it. The platform assembly on which the Ark was mounted had, built underneath it, two telescoping rails that extended a little more than 50 feet forward. Javeed flipped a series of switches on the console before him, and flawlessly, noiselessly, the two rails extended through the penstock cavity deep into the interior of the dam. As a final piece of wizardry, Kumar had created further extending tracks, along which the Ark’s platform would glide, traveling even deeper into the structure of the dam. The technology that had connected the
Mankial Star
to the
Haramosh Star
looked archaic compared to this, the final transfer. Power was provided to the platform for this process by a mini power cable, which connected directly to the powerful engines of the Pequod.
Now came the final hurdle. The ballast tanks of the Pequod were large and, at this point, full of air. Normally that would not be the case at this depth, but the weight of the Ark had required it. This had been the only way to keep the sub from sinking into the mud and silt at the bottom of the lake, trapped by the weight of its cargo. If the Ark slid off the sub willy nilly, the sudden change in weight and buoyancy would be so great that the Pequod would be wrenched upward in a wild and unpredictable course. The Ark would derail, and the mission would fail. Instead, as the Ark was slowly pushed forward into the penstock, controlled by Massoud, the ballast tanks were slowly discharged and filled with water by pumps controlled by Javeed. It was a slow and dangerous process, with the Pequod’s tail sometimes lurching upward, sometimes down. There were many times when one or the other of the
ji-hadists
jumped, sure that they had lost the precarious balance and failed at the mission. Gradually, however, the platform, with its deadly cargo, moved from the Pequod onto the rails that had been deployed within the penstock tunnel.
They had almost finished when a buzzer sounded, and a red light started to flash on the HUD.
“Countermeasures, Javeed,” said Massoud. “There are torpedoes in the water, coming toward us from the rear. They’ve found us.”
“Damn. There are four of them. We can handle two, maybe three, but four?” said Javeed.
“Peace,” responded Massoud. “We are in the hands of Allah. We are at the gates of Paradise.”
“Yes, brother, we are, but we have to deal with this before we go in.”
Almost three weeks earlier, in Kumar’s manufacturing facility in Long Beach, Yousseff had ordered Kumar to install two defense systems in the small sub. Kumar had tried to protest, but Yousseff would have none of it. “Two defense systems,” Yousseff had said. “At least two. Always a backup for the backup.”
And two they had. Javeed flipped a number of switches on the complex console. A large box that had been installed near the tail of the Pequod opened. The box had looked odd and out of place, and many people had questioned it, but the craft was not designed for appearances. The sides and roof of the box fell away, and four large mesh wings unfolded. In the center sat a small torpedo, which, with the flick of another switch, slowly began to rise. Each mesh wing unfolded until it was approximately ten feet by ten feet. The overall size of the structure was 20 feet by 20 feet. About the same size as the sub itself.
The design of the weapon worked. Once it was launched, three of the harpoons changed course and headed directly toward it. The onboard computer systems of the missiles were unable to differentiate between the dish system and the Pequod.
The fourth harpoon, though, continued on its steady course toward the Pequod.
“Watch out Massoud. The fourth missile still comes toward us.”
“Javeed, in our position we cannot be afraid to die. That is what we are here to do. Now let us wait until the fourth missile is 100 feet away, and we will use the second skin Kumar installed.”
Their HUD was registering in diminishing numbers the distance of the fourth torpedo. Javeed grew nervous, and soon found that he was unable to wait any longer.
“Now, Massoud. Now.”
Massoud flipped another switch, and the metal second skin on the rear of the Pequod was launched, meeting the fourth harpoon approximately 50 feet from the Pequod. Backups to backups.
All four of the harpoons exploded almost simultaneously. Three when they hit the mesh, and the fourth when it hit the second skin. The shock waves from the blast nearly destroyed the Pequod. The little submarine swayed violently back and fourth, and the Ark was nearly pulled from its platform. There were wrenching sounds as the bulkheads and rails were twisted by the force of the blasts. Some damage was done to the Pequod, and water came rushing in. A number of red lights started flashing, and for a second or two it appeared that they might lose power, but everything held precariously together.
“Keep going, Javeed. Remember the mission. Get the Ark into the tunnel.”
“I’m trying, dammit,” said Javeed. “But it’s hard to do it when you’ve almost been blown to Hell.”
“Blown to the gates of Paradise, you mean. That’s where we’re going.”
Water was pouring into the small cabin now, but they were able to continue their mission. Ultimately, Javeed was able to get the Ark completely into the tunnel.
“We are there, Massoud. Now let’s push her in.”
Massoud was able to detach the Ark and its platform completely from the Pequod, aside from the connecting electrical cable, which was now played out of the Pequod to give them more maneuvering room. Massoud raised the Pequod up eight feet and moved her forward. Once again, Kumar’s elegant and simple solutions to problems made the mission. The wounded Pequod began to slowly push the Ark’s platform forward, ever deeper into the penstock tunnel. Another ten seconds passed and they were completely inside.
A
T THAT MOMENT, Daley, the FEMA representative at TTIC, was finally put in contact with the foreman of the small crew looking after the Glen Canyon Dam’s operations that day. “Open all the penstocks. Open them now. You are under attack,” he shouted.
T
HE CLOCK ticked forward. From 9:03AM, to 9:04, to 9:05. Nothing happened. No one moved.
Y
OUSSEFF’S PLANE was over the Pacific at that moment, having taken the longer route to get back home to Pakistan. Yousseff had ordered Mustafa to get them out of American air space as rapidly as possible. Regardless of whose airspace they were in, he would be able to monitor international news feeds in this plane — a technological luxury that had cost him a few million dollars. And it was better for them, at this point, to be over international waters.
Yousseff was cool under pressure. He had demonstrated that to Marak 40 years ago, and countless times thereafter. But now he was starting to fidget. Nothing. No regular program interruptions. No CNN, NBC, CBS, or even Al Jazeera breaking news banners drifting across the bottom of the screens. Nothing.
“Dammit Izzy. Did we mess it up?” he asked his lifelong friend.
There was no response from the group; everyone was silent.
“Ease up Youss,” said Kumar, at length. “Give it a minute or two. And if we’ve screwed up, big deal. We keep going.”
“I’m not sure, Kumar,” said Yousseff. “Can you go back to the States? Can Izzy and Ba’al go back to Canada? And me? Most of the money is gone if the market doesn’t do what I’ve bet it to do, which it won’t unless Massoud and Javeed come through. Hell, we’d be lucky if we all ended up working for Marak, if this doesn’t work.”
Again there was no response. No one wanted to state the obvious — that it had been Yousseff’s decision, and ultimately his actions, that had put them all in this position.
“Be patient, Youss,” said Rika, who was also watching the less-than-perfect images of the world news feeds. Even with $10 million thrown at the technology of watching TV in a fast-moving jet, the results were hit or miss.
They all continued to watch the TV’s... 9:04... 9:05...
T
HREE PAST 9AM. Catherine had accepted Sandra Becker’s invitation to clean herself up a little. She was horrified when she looked in the small medicine cabinet mirror. No wonder the Beckers were freaked out. The mystery was that Duane Becker hadn’t actually shot her. If she had seen a stranger coming to the door in her condition, covered in twigs, dirt, and a sweaty layer of coal dust, she might well have shot first and asked questions later. Finally exiting the bathroom in a somewhat cleaner state, she agreed to a second cup of coffee. It was 9:04.
I
T WAS 11:04AM in Washington, DC. The TTIC control room had gone quiet, as had innumerable board rooms in Langley, the Pentagon, and of course, the Situation Room in the White House. Dennis Daley, the FEMA representative, had been able to get through to those in charge at the Glen Canyon Dam, but had been told that opening the penstocks was not a quick process. There was a collective holding of breath.
A
T THE New York Mercantile Exchange, a few futures traders were looking at what would obviously be a substantial profit that day. Who was the idiot who had sold short these contracts? At so high a margin? The same observation was being made at the Chicago Commodities Exchange, the London Metal Exchange, and in other of the world’s buy and sell arenas. Someone out there was clearly a few bricks short.
I
T WAS 9:04PM in Pakistan. Marak was sitting in his living room in Islamabad, watching a bank of TV’s. It was also 9:04PM in the mountains of the Sefid Koh. The Emir, looking to be in a black mood, and getting blacker by the moment, was watching his Internet connection, delivered by the servants of Satan themselves.
S
AM AND HANK had been waiting on the Glen Canyon Bridge with rapidly growing concern. A squadron of F-15’s had flown overhead, and appeared to be circling. Two Navy planes had dropped bombs of some sort into the reservoir. The helicopters were stationary, hovering directly behind the dam. The police had noticed their presence, and their apparently disabled truck, and were headed their way. The television camera was trained on the Glen Canyon Dam, and their uplink system was transmitting. It was now four minutes past the appointed time of detonation. Still nothing. But their orders, from Yousseff himself, had been very clear. Stay with the truck. Keep transmitting the images. They were soldiers in a much broader war, and they were not to abandon their post.
I
T WAS 11:04AM in New York City, where concerned engineers, working at the Rockefeller Center, were clustered around one of the hundreds of monitors in the central NBC newsroom.
“Johnny,” said Floyd, the associate producer, to the chief engineer on the floor that morning. “Are you saying that we don’t know who is transmitting that particular image to us? Seriously?”
“Yes, Floyd. Mind like a steel trap. You’ve got it. Someone has hogged one of our frequencies and is sending this to us,” answered John, gesturing to the screens in front of them. “How, I don’t know. The ’why’ is for you news guys to figure out.”
“We’ve got an uplink on location at the Hoover Dam right now. What we’re seeing on the screen, Johnny, is a dam. Is there some way that the uplink at the Hoover is sending this?”
“Floyd, you’re not an engineer, I know,” said an exasperated John. “But if you look at those couple of dozen monitors over there,” he said, chucking a thumb behind him, “you will notice that the images are profoundly different. It’s not the same dam.”
The alliteration that had had Turbee stumbling a short time earlier was starting to spread across the nation. First at TTIC, then through the Intelligence Community, then the military, and now at the nation’s news desks.