“Why not?”
“There’s not enough of the stuff. Not enough punch,” said Turbee slowly, still trying to do the math.
“Come on, Turb. There are more than four tons of it. Look what a few ounces of it did on the Lockerbie 747 disaster. This stuff is powerful.”
“Yes, but I don’t think it’s powerful enough,” Turbee responded. “The Hoover is an absolutely massive structure. That Semtex will cause substantial damage, but I don’t see how it could possibly cause a catastrophic failure. Maybe some dams, but not the Hoover. And the Lockerbie thing, that was just placing the explosive in exactly the right spot. An ounce could do it if it were to take out the computers controlling the plane. But not this dam.”
“Are you sure, Turb?” asked George.
“Well, do you remember when all of this started, there was a betting pool in Vegas about how large the crater would be when the original 660 tons was detonated in the middle of the Libyan Sahara? I don’t normally bet, but I did in that case.”
“Yes, Turb, as I recall you came in second. Some housewife beat you by quite a bit.”
“That’s beside the point,” Turbee responded. “The blast was way bigger than anyone expected, because of the way they stacked the Semtex and put in the fuses. And don’t even get me started on the fact that they were 4.5 tons short. What I’m saying is that losing that bet pissed me off. I wanted to know why I’d lost, so I started doing some research about Semtex and what it could do. Read everything I could find about the damage it can cause. I think I’ve become a pretty good authority on the depths and diameters of craters created by bomb blasts. And there is absolutely no way that 4.5 tons of Semtex can take out that dam. No way.”
“Care to explain?”
“Well, George, for starters that dam is ridiculously over-engineered. It’s unbelievably massive, because when it was built it was a project to kick start things during the Great Depression. At its base it’s more than 600 feet thick. That’s 600 feet of solid concrete and steel.”
“Yes. And?”
“According to the site dedicated to the dam, it has a unique design feature. It’s built out of gigantic concrete and steel blocks.”
“How do you mean, Turb?” This came from Rahlson. He’d been following the conversation from the next workstation over, and decided to get involved.
“The dam was built in blocks or vertical columns, varying in size from about 60 feet square at the upstream face of the dam to about 25 feet square at the downstream face. Adjacent columns were locked together by a system of vertical keys on the radial joints and horizontal keys on the circumferential joints.”
“Go on,” urged Rahlson.
“Sure. So the Hoover dam is constructed with interconnected concrete blocks. Then cement grout was forced into the spaces created between the blocks. The contraction of the cooled concrete between the blocks formed a very strong monolithic structure.”
“How would it compare to other large dams built around the world?” asked George.
“I’m not an expert, but I’ve been checking on the Internet. Many dams have central cores that are filled with earth or stone. The Hoover doesn’t. It’s solid reinforced concrete through and through. Four and a half tons of Semtex might put a hole 20 feet deep and 50 or 60 feet across, but that’s it.”
“You’re saying that the stolen Semtex cannot in and of itself cause the catastrophic failure of the Hoover?” Rahlson asked slowly.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Unless the Semtex were somehow taken inside the dam, through one of its internal piping structures, and even then, it’s doubtful,” Turbee added. “There is no way that Semtex can do what the Emir says.”
“The Emir’s people can’t take anything inside Black and Boulder Canyons,” said Rahlson, referring to the two canyons that separated the dam from Lake Mead. “There are dozens of patrol boats and submarines in the water there. The canyons, and the dam intake towers, are protected like Fort Knox. He cannot take that volume of Semtex into the inner workings of the dam.”
Rahlson called Dan over, and explained the essence of the conversation to him.
“You’re saying, kid, that there’s not enough Semtex blow the dam?” Dan asked.
“Yes, sir, I’m saying that.”
“Well there you go, it’s just as I said. It must be a nuclear attack after all,” said Dan smugly.
“I don’t think so, Dan,” responded Turbee. “There has been zero real Intel about that. It was all a ruse.”
“Then what the hell are we missing?” Dan shouted.
“I don’t know, sir, I just don’t know.” Turbee looked at the close-up of the Hoover that George had displayed on the Atlas Screen. “Pull it back a bit, George,” he said. “I want an overview. I want to look at it from a distance for awhile. We’re missing something.” He got up on top of his workstation, stood up, crossed his arms in front of him, and gazed, as if in a trance, at the Hoover Dam and the areas surrounding it.
It had been a miniature submarine that brought the Semtex to the wharf in Stewart, BC. The Hoover Dam was now the Emir’s target. Again, the presence of water. Mulling these things over, his mind returned to the first message that Goldberg had delivered. The attack would be “by water,” Goldberg had said. The Karachi Star Line was involved, somehow. Drug smugglers were involved, and their preferred method of transporting drugs was by water. There had to be something else. What was he missing?
53
Massoud and Javeed were approaching the dam from the north. At the dam site, they were more than 300 feet beneath the surface. They could hear the metal skin of the small craft creaking and groaning under the pressure. Despite the noise, they both trusted that Kumar had readied the sub for this mission. He knew the depths to which the Pequod could travel, and had reinforced the skin and increased the size of the small bulkheads, to keep them safe no matter how deep they went. They were deep enough now that the only illumination came from the craft’s forward lights. The HUD told them that they were within a few hundred feet of the dam itself, but they still couldn’t see it. The tricky part of the trip was still to come. Penstock Three, Four, or Five, Yousseff had told them. Any of these three would do. But the penstock needed to be closed. If they chose an open penstock, they would be sucked into the dam, and the Pequod and its precious cargo would be destroyed.
A sophisticated program designed by Kumar’s software engineers showed relative water flow, and indicated whether a penstock was open or closed, displaying the information on the HUD. Critical exterior features of the dam had been programmed into the HUD’s hard drives. Amazingly, even after the recent attacks on American soil, it was possible to obtain this kind of critical design information on much of the nation’s infrastructure over the Internet. The complete plans of a number of dams spanning the Colorado River had been available to the brilliant Egyptian and Saudi engineers who had conceived the mission. They had studied these plans very carefully, again and again, over the past months.
Javeed played with the keyboard in front of him, and the outlines of the dam appeared, complete with the eight penstocks. They were color-coded to show whether they were open or closed. Penstocks One and Eight were orange, Two, Six, and Seven were red, and Three, Four, and Five were green.
“Take the middle one,” he said, pointing at Penstock Four. “Safest bet.”
Massoud operated the controls, and deftly brought the Pequod to within 50 feet of the monolithic structure. The water of the Colorado River was extremely murky around them, and in the darkness they still couldn’t see the dam ahead of them. They had to rely on the graphics of the HUD to provide them with accurate information for navigating.