FORT KNOX: THE PERFECT HEIST

CHAPTER 5

                                         Fracking The Hole
     How many times can a woman jump a man's bones in the woods? I'm worn out. Honest, once week would be nice, but three times in one day is enough for any male, unless you happen to be aged eighteen years, and even then you might need some Dexedrine, or do the kids call those pills uppers these days? Either way, I'm never into that sort of thing; I'm a good boy, seriously.

     We put our feet up until about 10:30, when the girls started fall through the door, carrying bag-loads of Victoria's Secret and other stuff. Sheila rushed over to see if her order had been fulfilled. The giggling is any man's nightmare. The men decided to play cards in Raza's cabin, and I decide to tag along. I'm not ashamed to tell you that I'm a darned good poker player and my presence is not overly welcome, for that very reason. At 2am, and, after losing my shirt, in a more or less deliberate fashion, we all returned to our respective beds.

     The morning is drilling time for both fresh crews, while the women set out to revive the American economy by spending as many green bills as they could shake a credit card at.

    Oddly, this morning is cooler than it had been for months, yet August is always the hottest month of the year. The number one crew worked vigorously, and were soon down to fifteen thousand feet, before the second crew took over and are into good lithology. With just two thousand feet to go, the crews started their horizontal drive before reaching the hoped for pay-dirt depth, at least that's what the company thinks, via Raza's second laptop.

     Meanwhile, my own crew of Ben, Raza and myself were well on our upward trek to entering the bullion depository of Fort Knox. We had twenty feet to go, when, collectively, we decide to trip out the pipe string, case and concrete, just in case there might be a leak of acid. We had to do things just right. However, I pointed out that things should change slightly. I made the decision to go the last twenty feet to just drill two feet into the bullion concrete. My reasoning being, that we could not be sure if the original builder had made a reasonable job with the foundation, thus there would be big trouble if they had made a slap-dash job of things. We could lose all the acid for not being diligent enough. It's thus agreed we should go in, then finish off with a brand new diamond bit drill that would make mincemeat of any re-bar we knew we were going to encounter.

  Tripping out pipe can be a laborious job but necessary, even with normal holes, but this casing had to be very well concreted or it could collapse and we need the bore plastic lined.

We'd but one chance at this. Bill had had the acid pumps well serviced with all new parts. We planned to drill two holes: the first to pump the freshly mixed acid into the bullion depository rooms, and the second hole to pump concrete into the rooms and force the dissolved gold out. The concrete would fill the bullion rooms leaving the inside of the depository a solid mass of concrete. The acid has a finite life, so we have to time this procedure down to the last minute. We would be capping and plugging the holes as we withdrew the string. The plan then, is to go back to normality, drill the required number of holes to the prescribed depths. Meanwhile the tankers would have been filled and readied for the journey to Oklahoma and our new premises. There is nothing like a plan, I mused. Dear reader, you now know what has to be accomplished.

     The second of our holes is to be drilled by Bill's crew from his Kelly, and this is all but a few feet from its goal. Again, when the concrete is injected, the amount is roughly equal to what would have gone down hole, so no-one would be any the wiser. Once again this hole would then be plugged and then carried on down to depth. The roustabouts drilled, but know very little about what goes on down holes they drilled. They men do as they are told and leave the technical details to their more educated betters. I mean no disrespect by this comment to any of my crewmen, more that company-man and his ream are specially trained in the dark arts of what happens beneath our feet; it's a science all its own.