Reese approached. "I'm going back down to talk to my boys that just showed up." He motioned to the truck. "You staying up here or you want a ride?"
Blaine spoke to Special Agent Williams. "If you don't need me, I'll go with him."
The special agent shook her head at Blaine. "No, you can go. I'll catch up with you later." She looked at Reese and motioned around the ground. "I'll look around some more, see if I can find any more evidence before you guys trample it."
Grant didn't think there was anything he could accomplish below. "I'll stay up here too."
Reese nodded and he and Blaine headed for the pickup. Before they reached it, Grant heard the truck engines below shut off. In the absence of the sound of the engines, he heard a rumbling that he didn't remember from before. He turned his head to isolate the sound without any luck.
Grant cupped his hands and called out to the others. "Hey, what's that rumbling sound?"
He saw them turn and look around. Blaine pointed back toward the dam's concrete water works. "The spillways!" Blaine yelled. "They're opening them."
Grant turned. Three huge square head gates situated at the top of the concrete structure, each the width of three cars, were being slowly opened. An amazing amount of water was now sliding down the face of them and crashing into the pool at the bottom. The rumbling noise, similar to a waterfall, had come from there. They had waited as long as possible to open them, allowing more preparation time for the casinos and homes downstream. But Grant had warned the governor that they could only delay opening the spillways until Lake Mojave was full, which it now was.
When he looked back, Reese and Blaine were already in the truck and backing away from him along the crest of the dam. He saw Agent Williams walking around the crater, stopping occasionally to kick her feet in the loose debris from the explosion. He listened again to the rumbling water behind him, and then walked carefully over to the reservoir. He crouched down and looked at where the water met the dike. He watched it ripple onto the shore. After a few moments he gave up. It wasn't rising fast enough to see. However, the bank of Lake Mojave was dry less than six inches above the water line. He didn't remember ever seeing a wet band that small around any lake. That alone was enough evidence of how fast the water was rising.
In the meantime, the dump trucks had arrived, and one was already headed up the dam. A wave of tiredness rolled through him and made him look at his watch: 12:25 a.m., 1:25 a.m. in Denver. No wonder he was so tired. He considered sitting down somewhere and resting. He wiped sweat off his brow and thought about slipping under the covers with his wife in his air-conditioned bedroom back in Colorado.
The first dump truck reached the crest of the dam, made a three-point turn, then began backing across the dam toward the crater. The first bulldozer had climbed about halfway up the dam. Grant saw below that they were already unloading the second bulldozer, and the second dump truck had started up the hill. When the first truck had backed up to the crater, it stopped, engine running, and the driver climbed out of the truck and walked over next to Grant.
The man wore a stained cowboy hat and smiled broadly. "Where do you want this?" he pointed at the truck.
Grant fumbled for a response.
"Just kidding," said the truck driver. "Reese already told me to dump it next to the hole." The man tilted his head toward the spot. "Then the 'dozers can push it where they need it." The man looked down in the crater while he took off his cowboy hat and wiped his brow with his arm. "Looks like somebody almost drained the lake."
While they were both staring in the hole, they heard Reese honk the horn of his truck from below. Grant wondered what Reese meant for them to do.
The man donned his hat again. "That's the boss telling me to shut up, dump, and go get another load." He glanced down at the crater again, then trotted back to his truck.
The engine revved as the hoist tilted the bed of the truck. Grant stepped back a few steps. When the dirt began to slide out, the man pulled the truck forward slightly to spread the drop. When it was empty, he kept moving as the hoist lowered back to the normal position. As the truck headed back toward the west access road, Grant noticed the first bulldozer had crested the dam and was pivoting toward him.
Grant took the moment to inspect the pile of dirt that came out of the dump truck. He grabbed a handful and let some of it slip through his fingers. He squeezed and it compressed nicely in his hand. Reese had done a good job and got the right stuff. You put the wrong material in a dam, and you might as well not bother. Satisfied with the material, Grant walked over to the edge of the crater. He looked down, wondering again what might have been if the bomb had been slightly more successful. And then he saw it.
It couldn't be. He stood as close to the edge as possible. The glistening in the bottom of the crater had caught his eye. He needed a better look. He looked back and forth to find an easier way down, finally settling on a slightly more gradual slope on his right. The first step would be just over six feet, then a steep incline to the bottom.
He didn't have the right shoes for it, but he jumped anyway, spinning so that he was facing the bank and his toes, not his heels, would dig in and stop him. The bank wasn't as soft as he'd estimated and instead of digging in, his shoes slid down the embankment, throwing his upper body forward where the underside of his forearms caught much of his fall, scraping against the rocky dirt which tore at the soft skin. A yell escaped him before he rolled to his back and slid the final portion on his back, coming to rest near the bottom, dirty from head to foot with both arms bleeding.
Disregarding the pain, he moved quickly over to where he'd seen it, hoping even then that it'd been a mistake, a shadow maybe, or a darker clump of dirt. But it wasn't. No, it was a shallow wet puddle, a slow leak through the remaining portion of the dam. He stuck his fingers into the small puddle, hoping his eyes were deceiving him, but they weren't. Using both hands, he scooped away mud. He needed to see where the water was coming from and how much. He continued to dig with his hands, and at first he thought he had plugged it, but the dry dirt turned wet and a small stream of brown dirty water sprinkled down out of the hill.
Agent Williams called from above. "Hey, what happened? Did you fall?"
He didn't know what to say. "It's leaking," was all that came out.
And as he said it, he noticed the small stream had grown in the last few seconds. He bent over to make sure his eyes hadn't misled him and the flow increased noticeably again. He looked up at the twenty-foot section of remaining dike between him and the water and realized it wasn't wide enough. While he looked up, a clump of earth broke away and fell into the crater close to where he stood. Simultaneously he felt the unmistakable feeling of water on his right foot. When he looked down he saw his right foot in a new puddle. He could now hear the water trickling, even with the noise of the bulldozer's diesel engine and the rumbling spillways in the background. He wondered if the dike would hold until the bulldozer arrived, and decided suddenly that it wouldn't.
"Start waving your arms at them!" he yelled at the FBI agent who was still staring at him. "Wave them over here now. Tell them to hurry up."
He remembered the cell phone and frantically searched through his recently used numbers for the guard. Finding the number, he called and waited for the answer. While it rang, he felt water around his feet again.