Finally, moments too late, Jackson, Goldfarb and the others charged out onto the service road next to the conversion transformers.
Craig stared over the edge at the roiling water, gaping in disbelief at what the terrorist had just done. But the shock paralyzed him for only a few seconds before a greater horror struck. He turned and ran toward the others.
Now he knew the bomb was ticking. And with the militia man dead, they had very little chance of finding it in time.
CHAPTER 2
Swiping groggily with her left hand, Paige Mitchell missed turning off the alarm on her first two attempts. The room was dark, and she knocked over the glass she kept on the nightstand, spilling lukewarm water on the bedspread, the floor. That, if nothing else, woke her up.
Pushing aside the tropical bedspread, she leaned over and fumbled with the clock radio, finally clicking off the music. Red numbers blinked 6:45 as she turned on the light in the unfamiliar bedroom. Another hotel, another bed far from her home in Livermore, California. This was Las Vegas, at the Rio. Her bed sat on an oval pedestal; jungle-patterned curtains hung in front of a window that covered one entire wall.
Paige ran a hand through her mussed blond hair and made her way to the bathroom. Frequent travel was the price of her job working for the Department of Energy’s protocol office, a job that often didn’t seem like work at all, even if she had to walk on eggshells every day to keep the team of sometimes-volatile Russian disarmament inspectors on track, to soothe their indignant threats of pulling out.
Only a few more days, though. By the end of this week, the team would have gone through their paces, filled out the forms, and completed the treaty-mandated disarmament inspections, just in time for the international nuclear downscaling summit. The eight inspectors were scheduled to meet with the U.S. President late on Friday, when he made a quick stopover in Las Vegas, then depart on Saturday morning, when everybody could go home. Mission accomplished, the world saved once again.…
Last night, DAF manager Mike Waterloo, whom she’d known as “Uncle Mike” since she was a little girl, offered to help Ambassador Nevsky at the facility after hours, leaving her to babysit the remaining Russians. Once they got away from the bleak Test Site, the seven stuffy men had consumed their comrade’s share of alcohol, feeling no guilt about leaving their team leader behind to keep working. Paige had left the men to their own celebrations, returning to her room for a long hot bath and a good night’s sleep.
Still trying to wake up, she rummaged through the drawer and pulled out a sleek black one-piece swimming suit. Even with her frenzied schedule, Paige insisted on maintaining her own routines. She’d have time for a brief swim down in the pool, then she could pick up coffee and a bagel to take back to her room while she changed for another day at NTS.
She eased to the floor and started her stretching exercises, taking long, deep breaths. Paige held a hand over her head and slowly extended it until she could grasp her foot. She’d put up with the hectic schedule for four more days, then she would be glad to see the Russians off.
The phone rang just as she switched to stretching her left leg. The clock blinked 6:53 A.M. Had she ordered a wake-up call? But when she answered the phone, the voice on the line sounded worried. “Paige?”
“Yes,” she said, initially startled. “Uncle Mike? What’s wrong?”
“Can you please come out to the DAF as soon as possible.” He sounded grim. “There’s been an… accident. Last night.”
“An accident? What is it? Is everyone OK?”
“Ambassador Nevsky — he’s dead. As the DOE representative, please get over here as soon as you can. I need… I need your help, Paige.”
Shocked, she gripped the phone tightly. “I’ll be there within the hour.”
Before she hung up, he spoke in a voice that seemed stronger, as if he took heart just from knowing she was on her way. “We’ve got an international incident on our hands, and we need to move quickly — otherwise the whole disarmament process might blow up in our face.”
CHAPTER 3
Take charge. Think fast.
Craig Kreident couldn’t spend days pondering the ramifications of his decisions. Too many lives depended on his reaction time for him to hesitate. And he had to get it right the first time.
He pointed to Goldfarb, Jackson, and the other law-enforcement agents. “Fan out now. We’ve definitely got a bomb, but we don’t have a bad guy to help us track it down. The clock is ticking, people — move it!”
Garcia, the shift foreman, looked grayish and sick. He had seen the militia man throw himself backward into the churning water, and now he stared with disbelief at Craig’s pronouncement. “A bomb? For real?”
“Yes, sir,” Craig said. “Did you recognize that man?”
Garcia swallowed, then shook his head. “Didn’t look like anyone I know on shift.”
“Could have been an infiltrator,” Jackson suggested.
“Mr. Garcia, sir,” Craig said, trying to keep his voice calm; even a hint of uncertainty would rattle them all. “It’s time to evacuate your people from the dam. Get them away from here and up to safety. We don’t know how big the bomb is, or when it’s set to explode, or who could be hurt. Then I need you to help us out.”
With wide eyes, Garcia turned and ran for a facility telephone mounted in a utility shack.
Craig turned to the three Hoover Dam policemen. “One of you stop traffic on the highway. Get somebody up there to put up roadblocks. I don’t want anyone driving across this thing if there’s going to be an explosion.”
Robbins brightened as if he suddenly realized he would rather be stopping traffic than searching for a bomb. “I’ll do it.” He ran back to his police cruiser and leaped in.
“Jackson, where’s our backup? When is Explosive Ordnance Disposal going to get here?” Craig said, turning in a circle, trying to determine where best to begin their search.
Jackson glanced at the watch, pushing back the sleeve of his suit jacket. “The EOD team was on their way from Boulder City. Should be another fifteen or twenty minutes. We’ve got fifteen more agents coming in from Las Vegas, but we’re on our own for the time being.”
“Best we can do, I guess,” Craig said. “We have to be fast and efficient.”
Garcia trotted back up, cradling his yellow hardhat, his face flushed. “I sounded the evacuation,” he said, breathless.
Craig called out, “Mr. Garcia, help us think of where someone might place a bomb around here. Where would it cause the most damage?”
The supervisor looked up at the transformers, down into the channel of water where the terrorist had vanished, then up at the concrete expanse of the dam as though he couldn’t fathom anyone trying to destroy his precious machinery. “Do you want to cause structural damage, or knock out the power-generating capability, or flood water through the diversion channels?”
Goldfarb cleared his throat impatiently. “Hey guys, if I could make a suggestion while we’re looking inside — the Eagle’s Claw wants attention, right? They want to do something spectacular. They need to make a statement that’ll affect lots of people.”
“Like cracking the dam and flooding the southwestern United States?” Jackson said.
Garcia stuttered. “No way! You’d need to crash an airplane full of dynamite into the dam wall in order to cause that kind of damage.”