Page 22 of Cooper

They pushed the survey east, following the thickening trend, the fracture corridor, and the mineralized soil anomaly. Each new point confirmed the pattern. The shale was not a rumor; it was a major source interval with commercial promise, and the surrounding mineral signatures suggested additional wealth in metals used for alloys, batteries, catalysts, and industrial systems. The find was not merely valuable. It was strategically valuable.

Dana photographed the outcrop while Thomas recorded structural measurements: bedding angle, fracture orientation, joint spacing, weathering profile, slickensides, calcite veining, pyrite distribution, and visible mineralization.

“If the subsurface matches the surface,” he said, “this could support oil and gas development and a separate mineral program.” May gave him a sideways look.

“That is the professional version of screaming.”

By late afternoon, the team followed the unmarked road Morgan had found, moving carefully between ridges where the shale cropped out in dark shelves. The trucks rolled slowly, engines low, radios muted except for Chief’s clipped check-ins, while Tristan watched the high ground and Duncan tracked the road edge for fresh boot prints. Nobody said they expected trouble, but everyone had made room for it.

The first sound was metallic: a hammer striking stone, then another, then the grind of a small engine badly muffled under tarps. They rounded a bend and saw a cut in the hillside where no cut should have been, raw and fresh against the older weathered rock. The exposed face showed the same black shale interval they had sampled, but here it was hacked open in benches, its mineral-streaked waste piled beside fuel drums, crude shelters, and carts moving along plank tracks.

For several seconds, no one spoke. Hundreds of workers filled the illegal dig, some carrying sacks of dark shale, others sorting heavy mineral-rich spoil by hand beneath clouds of dust that would have failed any proper safety inspection.

Their clothes were worn thin, their faces coated gray, and the supervisors near the pumps and generators watched them with the bored impatience of men spending someone else’s lives cheaply.

Emma lowered the map as if it had suddenly become too heavy. Rachel’s grip tightened around the sample case, where the labels now felt less like scientific records and more like evidence.

“They already knew,” whispered Lindsay.

Thomas looked from the open trench to the workers bent beneath the dust and understood that the wealth in theground had not been waiting for discovery after all; it had been measured, taken, hidden, and paid for with the labor of people earning almost nothing to dig it out.

Getting Bianca’s signature was simply the final legal hurdle to ensure that all this was above board. But they hadn’t waited. They, whoever ‘they’ were, didn’t want to wait. Instead, they gathered those willing to work for pennies a day and began their exploration only to prove that the land was worth more than originally thought.

This had just become a political game and one they might not win.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“B-but how? How could they be digging already without anyone knowing about it?” asked Bianca, staring at the team who’d just returned.

“Anything is possible if you have the money and the backing. I suspect that your uncle had financing from the U.S. government, and maybe others, long before they knew you would have to sign off on the land,” said Thomas. “Right now,you are a very wealthy woman. You can openly claim the rights to that land.”

“I can’t. If I do, I’ll be dead within a week.”

“No, you won’t,” said Coop gripping her fingers in his own. “We’d protect you. But you do have the advantage right now because we have the data and data doesn’t lie.”

“He’s right,” said May. “We can prove that you gave us permission to survey the land and that our data shows greater wealth than initially suspected. We took pictures of the workers, who are there illegally, and you can stop it all right now.”

“Hey, Ham?” said AJ in that voice. It was a voice laced with a warning that whatever was coming next would not be liked. “Charlie Myles is on the line.”

“Fuck,” muttered Ham. He turned the screen so it only showed his face, Gator and Christian standing behind him, half in the screen.

“Senator, what can we do for you?” he asked.

“I was just wonderin’ where we were on finding that woman,” he said impatiently. Ham decided to play his game to the end, only he was going to hold all the cards.

“She’s just fine, Senator.” The senator’s eyes grew wide, half expecting denial and instead getting confirmation. “In fact, she’s recently become a very wealthy woman. See, we sent some folks down to gather data on the land that Pablo, you know Pablo Garcia, the man you’ve been meeting with to conspire to take the land. Anyway, we found more than we bargained for and we’re prepared to announce that data to the Argentine government and of course our own government.”

There was a deathly silence on the phone as the senators face became red, sweat beading along his forehead. He chewedthe inside of his cheek, pretending to stare down at the papers on his desk.

“You all think you’re very clever,” he finally said in a low voice. “You think you have this all figured out. Except you don’t. You know nothing. If you don’t sign over the land, the U.S. will declare war on Argentina.”

“For what reason? They’ve done nothing to our country,” said Gator.

“We don’t need a reason,” he smirked. “Haven’t you heard? We suspect a nuclear weapon. We suspect they’re hiding American citizens. We suspect, we suspect, we suspect. That’s all that’s needed.”

“We’ll expose everything,” said Ham, not budging. “All the conversations between us, between you and your peers. We tell all.”

“And you’ll be labeled as enemies of the state,” he said confidently.