At about the same time Cam and I are coming in to land at Harrisburg Airport, a disaster is unfolding at the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River.
It involves two boats. One is a pleasure boat, a Moomba Gravity, a bullet-shaped craft with sleek lines and a black over-rail. The second boat is a houseboat, no different from many others on the lake that day. Both boats are being remotely controlled, although nobody knows it at the time.
The houseboat appears first and cruises into Black Canyon, lumbering its way in the general direction of the Hoover Dam. When she reaches the centre of the canyon she turns abruptly, straight towards the dam.
At the same time the Moomba appears, racing past the other boat towards the security fence that cordons off the restricted security zone around the dam.
In the offices of the Hoover Dam Police, alarms are already sounding. On the top of the dam, tourists watch and take photos, some videoing.
The Moomba strikes the security fence and explodes, leaving a gaping hole. Through it sails the blunt prow of the houseboat.
The Hoover Dam Police are already on their way in a small, fast-moving cutter. No warnings are given, no attempt is made to cut the houseboat off. The police officers open fire with automatic weapons when the houseboat is still over a hundred yards from the dam. And then the disaster unfolds.
Experts will later determine that the houseboat was packed with one short ton of C4, stolen a few days earlier from the McAlester Ammunition Plant in Oklahoma.
The C4 detonates instantly and the earth shudders. The houseboat disappears in a bright flash of light, completely vaporised. The little police cutter is pulverised. Fragments of DNA are all that will later be found of the police officers on board.
The height of the dam above the lake is what saves the people on the dam from perishing in the initial explosion. The concrete wall deflects the force of the blast upwards and although it knocks everyone off their feet, it isn’t what kills them.
The shockwave of the explosion bursts through the waters of Lake Mead, creating a tsunami-type pressure wave that for a second is visible as a deep swell on the surface of the water, before it hits the dam.
The dam is solid, made of millions of tons of concrete, hundreds of feet thick. When the dam does not budge, the energy in that water sweeps upwards.
Those on the dam see it coming. A huge hand of water reaching up from the lake. Some try to run, others stand frozen in shock. Some may have had time for a prayer before they are picked up by the wave, only to be released once again in mid-air, as the water spews out over the top of the Hoover Dam into the canyon, hundreds of feet below.
The first news helicopters are arriving at the dam about the same time Cam and I are picking up our rental car at the airport.
An ‘act’ of terror, they will call it. It isn’t until the second bomb that they start using the word ‘campaign’.