“Maybe not,” replied Hank. “Look along the center. From the midline, about a third of the way up. Isn’t that a thin line of water? Look closer, Sam. Do you see it?”
“Yes, I see it. But it’s tiny. That won’t amount to anything, will it?” asked Sam. The two were yelling at one another, their ears still ringing from the percussion wave and the roar of the blast.
“Maybe it’s a trick of perspective and distance,” Hank answered. “The dam is so huge that the water doesn’t look like much, but maybe, maybe it’s bigger than it appears. Give it a minute or two.”
They sat on the bridge, still stunned from the blast, watching the dam.
“What the hell was that?” asked Floyd, looking intently at the video signal that had somehow been transmitted via satellite to the NBC New York offices, in the Rockefeller Center. A flash of light appeared to spring vertically from the center of the dam. Then the picture shook, until, within a few seconds, the camera was once again steady on the gigantic dam. There was, for whatever reason, no sound coming from the transmission.
“Floyd, you’d better run and get the boss,” said John, slowly. “I think someone’s just attempted to blow up one of America’s major dams.”
“But it’s still there, John.”
John, being an engineer, immediately saw what other people continued to miss. “See that dark gash across the centerline over here?” he said, pointing to a thin, dark line on the dam face. “I think the dam’s been cut by an explosion. A shaped charge explosion, if I’m remembering my engineering correctly. See this distortion over here? Probably caused by water squeezed through the breach under high pressure. A slightly different camera angle would show it for sure. If I’m right, the structure of this dam has been profoundly compromised, and the thing is probably a sitting duck. The news brass’ll want to know about this. Quick.”
The ferocity of the blast carved a gash, eight feet wide, that led from Penstock Four all the way up to the crest of the dam, cleaving the structure in two, from the upstream face to the downstream face.
The line that Hank and Sam had noticed was the water rushing through this breach, under immense pressure, and being ejected several hundred feet beyond the dam face. While it was just one relatively narrow gash, the integrity of the dam had been fatally compromised. The engineering principle was akin to a double door system. If the doors were connected together, through an interlocking system, it took a lot of energy to force them open. The interlocking mechanism was strong enough to hold it all together. But if the system was disconnected, or the locks were unhooked, a slight breeze would cause the doors to swing apart. And this was exactly what was happening to the dam. The west and the east halves of the structure were no longer connected. Enormous force was being applied to the upriver face, and the dam’s strength was now greatly diminished. Thousands and then millions of gallons of water were rushing through the breach with every passing second. Chunks of concrete were being ripped out of the dam and smashed against the rapidly fraying dam walls, hastening the erosion.
After 30 seconds, the dam catastrophically failed. The 1500-foot long structure blew apart in one horrifying action. Millions of tons of concrete and rebar blasted high into the air as the full fury of the Colorado River, dammed for too many years, found release.
57
At Rockefeller Center, the pressure was rapidly notching higher. “Holy holy,” was all Floyd could say, watching the explosion of concrete and water on the screen in front of him. “I don’t care if we haven’t found the producer. I don’t care if he’s taking a crap someplace. We are going live with this right now. We are going to break into the normal feed. Right now. RIGHT NOW!” he yelled. The technicians shrugged and broke into the regular programming.
The anchormen and women were still on the set, and didn’t quite know what to make of Floyd’s ranting. But none of them had reached the upper echelons of the mighty corporation’s news group by being slow on the uptake. The lead anchorwoman immediately noticed the astounding images being played on many of the huge plasma screens that littered the main newsroom floor.
“Good morning America,” she began. “We interrupt regular programming to bring you extraordinary images currently being transmitted to us. We are not yet sure of the locale, but we believe this to be the Glen Canyon Dam, on the Colorado River. What you are witnessing appears to be the catastrophic collapse of this dam, probably occasioned by an incendiary device of some sort. We repeat that this is probably the Glen Canyon Dam, and definitely, definitely not the Hoover Dam farther downstream on the same river.” She looked directly into the camera and went for gold. “While we are awaiting further verification, we do not believe that these images are a hoax. They are real, and they show the catastrophic collapse of the Glen Canyon Dam.” She knew that if that statement proved to be false, she would end up doing the weather on some northern Canadian channel. If it was the truth, she would be promoted above anyone else for her quick thinking.
As the anchor was ad-libbing on live TV, Floyd was on the phone with the producer of the helicopter crew currently in the air above Boulder City. “Get your asses up to Lake Mead and to the Glen Canyon Dam, now!” he all but shouted. “We think the dam has collapsed as a result of a terrorist attack. You guys are at the wrong damn dam. Go, go, go!”
The Glen Canyon Bridge was itself a marvel of engineering. It was one of the highest single-arch bridges in North America. It was completely constructed and assembled in California, then disassembled, trucked to the Glen Canyon, and reassembled. Completed in 1959, its construction enabled transport of concrete and steel across the canyon, which permitted construction of the dam to proceed. The bridge was superbly engineered, and was able to withstand huge loads and earthquakes. It was not, however, engineered to withstand the enormous assault that was now heading toward it.
Sam and Hank had been ordered by Yousseff to stand by their post, no matter what, for at least ten minutes after the explosion. The images must be transmitted, he had said. The world must witness this. It was the Emir’s wish. The two men were still following their orders, but with growing apprehension. The breach in the dam, from thin knife wound to total collapse, had occurred in under a minute. They were stunned by the explosive force of the collapse, and were now beginning to wonder about the fate of the bridge itself. While the explosion of water was taking place well beneath the bridge’s supporting arch, the canyon walls had never endured forces of that magnitude before.
“Bridge is shaking a lot, Sam,” said Hank. “I’m not sure it’ll hold together.”
Sam was attempting to mentally assimilate what had just happened. He was experiencing what the survivors and neighbors of terrorist attacks across the world had dealt with millions of times over the past years. The scope of the collapse of the Glen Canyon Dam was so enormous, so loud, so breathtakingly huge, that it was beyond comprehension, even though he had been forewarned of the event.
“Holy shit, Hank. Were we just involved in doing this?” he asked. “I can’t believe what we’re seeing.”
“Believe it. We will be heroes back home.”
“I’m not sure we’re going to get home,” replied Sam, finally looking away from the dam. “Feel the bridge.”
The shaking of the bridge was intensifying. Sam could see that the canyon walls between the bridge and the remnants of the dam were starting to disintegrate. Huge boulders were being knocked loose from both the east and west cliff walls, and mudslides were beginning to take out the soil.