“They should be here within the hour,” said Christian. “I’ll make sure everyone has a place to lay their heads. They’re bringing the tents as well.”
“One thing still puzzles me,” said Rachel.
“Just one, babe?” smirked Chief.
“Well, lots of things puzzle me. But just one specifically about the burials and their desire to wipe them all out. If we hadn’t done the soil samples, just simply looking for minerals, we would have never known about the bodies.”
“Right,” nodded Christian.
“But why worry about it? I mean, no one would have ever known about it unless they were doing soil and geological sampling here. Even then, unless they happened to dig in that exact spot, which was a miracle that we did, no one would have known. So, why? Why get in such a fit about it now?”
Chief stared at Christian, then at Pat and Ernie.
“I don’t know but I think we need to find out.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When the second team arrived, they wasted no time in setting up camp in the forest of trees lining the properties of Pat and Ernie. It would be near to both farms but out of sight to anyone coming from the roads or driveways.
Before they could even dive into what had been found so far, AJ and Hiro were on the line with them.
“Something Rachel said had us thinking,” said AJ. “Why be worried about this at all? Why make such a fuss about the land, spend millions to buy it or destroy it, when no one would have known either way?”
“I assume that’s rhetorical and you have an answer?” asked Chief.
“We do. Santori has been expanding his assets and businesses. He bought Mexicali Oil and Gas, changing the name to SanOil.”
“Wait, I heard that Mexicali sold,” said Rachel, “but no one mentioned the name of Santori.”
“There’s good reason for that. The government didn’t want him to be any part of it. He paid off some people, put a fake board in place and through the miracle of the bad guy network, he now owns that oil company.
“SanOil discovered that there is a rich vein of oil stretching from Argentina north, through Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. It goes into Canada as well but there have been no signs of him attempting to buy land there.”
“So it is oil,” frowned Chief.
“We think so. He knew that in order to drill in the states, he’d have to have the U.S. government’s support and our geological survey teams going into the areas. His quick route was to eliminate the first problem, the finding of the remains, just in case there were bones.
“This vein is one of the largest we’ve seen in decades. It could mean billions of barrels each year, making the U.S. free from needing foreign based oil products.”
“Okay, so that makes more sense now,” said Rachel. “They need this land and they need to clean up their mess before they can even petition for the drilling of oil.”
“Drilling for oil will destroy these farms,” said Forrest. “I mean, they’d earn money from the rights for the wells, but these folks are farmers, not drillers. What will they do?”
“I don’t know,” said Rachel. “I think they’d have to talk about this as a town. It would change everything. You’d have drilling equipment dotting the landscape for as far as the eye could see. I can’t imagine that they would like that.”
“If all of this is true, it’s just shit luck that Nic buried the bodies where he did. Some of the oil vein falls directly beneath where he buried the bodies, others to the east or west but it’s too much of a risk to just let it go,” said Leif.
“Our mission just changed slightly. We still protect these farms but we need to be honest with the farmers and let them know why this man is coming for their land. The best way to do that is get the government in here to do the geological testing,” said Chief.
“I can make some calls,” said Rachel. He kissed his wife as she left the room and then looked at the others. “One other thing we need to think about. SanOil couldn’t drill without licensing in the U.S., which would require them to go through a lot of channels. We need to see if that process is already underway.”
The men stared at one another, understanding the implications probably better than anyone. Robicheaux Oil and Gas petitioned every single time they set an oil rig and they refused to drill unless the land owners were notified of the intent, paid fair value for the land and oil, or if they wanted to stay that they received the oil rights.
“We split up to these farms. Be honest. Tell them what we know so far and see how many would be interested in possible sales considering there is oil. The prices will go up dramatically for whoever gets the rights to the oil.”
It was late afternoon before everyone returned having spoken to the local farmers. It was a unanimous decision that drilling for oil would not be allowed if it damaged their farmlands. However, if stipulations were in place to protect the land, with high penalties if they did not, they might consider allowing pipelines to run beneath their land.
“SanOil isn’t going to give them those conditions,” said Chief shaking his head. “Once they have the right to drill, they won’t give a shit about anything else. Santori is seeing dollar signs and I suspect that someone else here in the U.S. is as well.”
