FORT KNOX: THE PERFECT HEIST

CHAPTER 2

                                         LOOKING AT THE SITE

     Three days had passed when, after some cleaning of clothes and personal equipment, I noticed two pickup trucks had entered the site. The brothers, Bill and Ben Travers, hugely popular company-men in their own right, known for being fair, honest and looking after their crews. They had to dodge the trucks leaving the site for their new destinations under the edict of a young company-man on his first job. My cabin would go with me to the new Kentucky site and would be the last to be hauled away, so I'm more than relaxed and I have plenty of room for my guests. Bill and Ben were not Texans, but Sooners from Oklahoma, well versed in bad formation drilling and proud of their achievements. Bill had finished working in the Sweet Smell field, just south of Tulsa, while Ben had just finished a third gas well, on the Glory Be, an oil field a little west of Bill's site.  

The brothers seemed to enjoy working bad ground, as we called tough formation working. I stood at the cabin door and called out the usual greeting of "What bitch let you two renegades loose here?"

     "Gottera been the same friend to tha bitch that tossed y'all into this dung heap!" replied Ben, the thin, blond, sinuous six-foot seven inch giant with a characteristic grin, and Bill is his double, something that unless you knew which one, due to an accident on his first day working on a rig, had an ear missing, hidden under their long, unkempt hair, one would be at a loss to know who is who. I knew, for Bill had to move his head a little to listen.

     "Sures does look kinda as ugly lookin as he is last time we set eyes on him, Ben. Sure-e-does, don't e?"

     Both men held out a hand, and, as is protocol, I took the hand of eldest by three minutes, Ben. I shook his hand, pulled him close and hugged him. The same procedure went for Bill, and as they stepped inside they were tossed a can of cold beer from the direction of Raza, who hugged the brothers while spitting into an empty beer can.

     Bill and Ben were a double act of the worst kind, twins by birth and by nature, always looking out for each others backs, and I loved them to bits. The only problem I ever encountered from them is their propensity to tell the most darned awful jokes that had me cringe with embarrassment.

     Bill, Raza, Ben and myself would alternate our crews in four six hour shifts. The owner agreed to pay the crews as if they were working a twelve hour stint, so as to keep up the enthusiasm for the arduous task ahead. This is not unusual, especially when this pay-dirt is expected to return more than a handsome profit, more than twice the return for the work put in, and the product is expected, eventually, to be almost three times that of any American field, but, as with all oil and gas companies this is top secret information. Not even the man who mixed the drilling mud is allowed to tell anyone what he is using down the hole and this is to be no exception.

     We all sat down to a few cold beers and to let off steam, tell a few yarns and fill each-other in on the events since we last laid eyes on one another, when, BOOM! From the window came an orange flash, an ear-splitting hiss, with men shouting and screaming to get the hell out of there. We all ran to the door and made our way outside. The noise subside to the sound of a 100 ton mobile crane's engine. The driver turned off the engine to a quiet of birdsong. I gazed over to the wellhead and noticed all is fine. I had at first imagined the Christmas tree had sheered of and mud escaping under enormous pressure; it wasn't, and my racing heart beat started to calm down. The crane's driver sheepishly strolled over to the group of four company men stood staring at him.

     "I'd like to think there is a good explanation for this Harry. What the hell happened?" I asked looking about and seeing nothing obvious to the naked eye. Harry is here to pull the young Billy Anders from the mud pit. Billy is just thirty two years of age, when he'd suffered a heart attack and died, while driving a fifty ton bulldozer. The whole lot is well and truly stuck, and only the big crane is strong enough to accomplish this lift.