FORT KNOX: THE PERFECT HEIST

CHAPTER 1 (1 of 8)

                                                  FORT KNOX: THE PERFECT HEIST. 

                                                            Subtitle:  Liquid Gold

                             A SHORT NOVEL: BY ANTONY E BRADBURY  ©2013-17

                                                 PROLOGUE and CHAPTER ONE

                                                                       PROLOGUE

  I'm sat in a small diner in down town Conway, Arkansas, wondering how we managed to achieve so much. My small crew of hand picked men, roustabouts, sparks, mudders, loggers and drivers are the perfect bunch of sons of bitches you ever wanted to meet. To a man they would loan you their credit card if you were in need; yes sir, we were that close.

   I popped another tomato dipped fry into my waiting mouth and thought on. Well, rather than sit wondering what I was going to say to the girl about my cold fries, I might as well relate my story to the world. Oh, I'm safe, we all are. No one in Uncle Sam's office is going to look, nor, even if they did would they come to admit they had been robbed of every ounce of gold in the repository. As far as the US Government is concerned the gold is still safe and sound, locked away, along with the gold reserves held under protection for other countries. I guess that you must be thinking: Yeah, yeah, another story teller looking for a free beer in some smokey out-of-the-way backwoods red-neck bar. If only it were that way.

   Oh, I've not introduced myself. I'm Randy. My last name is of no consequence, so, for now Randy will suffice. I am, or was, a Company Man for a drilling company based in Texas. In case you don't know, the title is given to the most experienced man on the gas or oil drilling site. He's in charge of every detail of the drilling process. The Company Man (CM) is God. Well, at least on site. He reports back to the owners on a daily basis, sometimes hourly. When a million dollars a day (cheap rate) is spent drilling, the owners want a return on their investment. This means the CM will need to spend the owners money for them, an open credit card account, if you like. He organises the repairs. The repairs are mostly off site via suitable contractors. The CM will purchase goods and services and then account for them to the owners later, especially if a dry hole is the result.

   The CM is always in and out of the dog house, in more ways than one, I can tell you. Oh, for those of you who don't know, the Dog House is a little cabin perched at the base of the drilling derrick, just a few feet from the Kelly, it's where the drilling control log is kept, where the men have a coffee and piss out the hole in the back door. The Kelly is a plate that holds tight the drilling pipe, spins the pipe around and allows the pipe to slide down the hole during drilling operations. For now this is all you need to know, suffice to note that my story requires some understanding of a few system names.

  Drilling has a few secrets and mysteries, not least the owners never give away any information to a competitor, not even how many toilet rolls are in stock. I'm paid very well for my trouble but I could always fill a few holes with a few more dollars. The kids need their college fees paying, and, I would guess, that, after a house and vehicle purchase, school fees are a parents greatest expense.

                                               Chapter One

    Friday afternoon is always hectic, when men want to have a cook-out while the required weekly safety checks are carried out and I get really busy sending updated reports to the owners re the mud-logger's check-logs. The mud-logger is one of the most important men on site. Chips, as he sometimes known, looks at the rock chippings sent up from the drill bit, many thousands of feet below, under his microscope. When the expected hydrocarbons are detected in the formation, the gas in the mud is detected and sounds an alarm. All drilling stops, the pipes are tripped out and the owners smile.