128: Chapter 127 The Last Stop

The reserves of the two coal mines were quite decent, totaling over thirty million tons of bituminous coal. However, he didn't plan to develop them himself. After working at Hengyu Coal Mine for several years, the mere thought of coal mines made him feel a bit sick of them now. He planned to flip them directly to other enterprises for mining. As for the copper, gold, and diamond mines, he would hand them over to Dizang Company for development. He had established Dizang Company specifically to develop mineral resources, and Hao Linger had pestered him several times over the past few days; it was high time to get the main business off the ground.

The actual reserves of the massive oil and gas field in the Lake St. Lucia area far exceeded his imagination. It wasn't the one billion tons Ren Keyong had estimated, but thirty-five billion tons—equivalent to 22.5 billion barrels. Its economic value reached a staggering one trillion us dollars, making it a true super oil field. Of course, the actual value of an oil field couldn't be calculated that way; no single company could extract all the oil, and the oil layers were stratified by quality, with the bottom consisting of low-quality waste oil. An optimistic estimate would place the actual value of this field between seven hundred billion and nine hundred billion us dollars. Furthermore, the oil layer was six hundred meters underground. In areas near the oil layer with higher elevation than the surface of the oil field, Cao Xiao excavated several massive water storage layers. He placed over ninety billion tons of fresh water, obtained from separating seawater in his space, into them. He linked these storage layers to the bottom of the oil layer through rock fissures. By simply drilling a hole above the oil layer, the immense water pressure would create a self-spouting well, reducing extraction costs infinitely. Additionally, the waste oil at the bottom would precipitate a portion of heavy oil into the water. This made the extractable oil reserves even more abundant, increased daily output, and created a massive profit margin. Once production began, 'raking in the gold' would no longer be just a figure of speech—and the 'rakes' would be massive ones.

This didn't even include the natural gas. The area beneath Lake St. Lucia was an oil and gas field composed of multiple oil and gas reservoirs. The natural gas reserves reached over 170 billion cubic meters. At the current trading price of approximately 0.3 us dollars per cubic meter, the natural gas alone was worth fifty billion us dollars.

When Cao Xiao finished surveying the entire oil and gas field, he was tempted to swallow all the shares for himself. Possessing such a super oil field would bring him immense benefits, not just in terms of money, but because of the social status this oil would grant him. Thirty-five billion tons of oil could, to some extent, influence international crude oil futures trading, giving him a voice in the energy sector that could not be ignored. But this was just a thought. Being able to covertly obtain a portion of the shares was already a stroke of good luck. If not for a series of coincidences, such a massive benefit would never have fallen to him. He didn't have the capital to bargain with others; a person should know when to be content. Besides, as long as he took the time to search, he could find even larger deposits as long as they existed on Earth. The key was to have the capital and strength to protect them; otherwise, even if someone gave him all the shares, it would only invite disaster.

The next morning, Cao Xiao sent Dapu to the embassy to meet with representatives from China National Petroleum Corporation to finalize cooperation details and draft a partnership agreement. He didn't pay much attention to this; things had reached a point where he didn't need to worry much. Barring any accidents, he just had to wait to count his money in secret. Today was also the day the Tiandu Company employees' vacation ended. They were originally supposed to have two more days off, but after the Angress Family matter was successfully resolved, Cao Xiao contacted Zhou Zhengkun to notify the staff to return to work two days early.

The infrastructure for the oil field required the early assembly of construction teams, and some engineering machinery needed to be transported in advance. Today, Cao Xiao received a machinery procurement list, which was a reciprocal gift from the Africa branch of China National Petroleum Corporation. Therefore, Tiandu Company had to immediately start preparing materials and gathering manpower to create a construction plan based on the simple data provided by Cao Xiao's map. Furthermore, Cao Xiao would hand over the construction projects for the other mining areas allocated to Dizang Company to Tiandu Company. For a long time to come, Tiandu Company would be very busy.

After Cao Xiao informed several company executives of this news, they were all in a daze. With these construction projects and machinery procurement orders, they wouldn't have to worry about business for at least a year. Coupled with the fact that the Angress Family issue had been resolved without a ripple, the way they looked at Cao Xiao clearly held more awe and respect. They would no longer be foolish enough to treat Cao Xiao as an incompetent rich second-generation heir.

He spent the day at the company, arranging everything that required his decision. Then, unable to wait any longer, he returned to the villa to pack his luggage. After saying goodbye to Ren Keyong's family, he headed to the airport with six bodyguards to catch a night flight directly to Mogadishu Airport, the capital of Somalia.

During his spare time, he had already manufactured all the weapons and equipment for the mercenary group. However, they weren't the Star 1 series. The materials and manufacturing technology used for Star 1 type weapons were too advanced. The mercenary group was a mixed bag of personnel and frequently executed dangerous missions abroad; a slight oversight could lead to the loss of these weapons, or they might even fall into enemy hands. Therefore, the items he produced this time used original metal materials, with only slight improvements to the design to compensate for the performance defects of the original weapons as much as possible, without increasing their power or overall performance.

The template used for the pistols was the Beretta 9. The Beretta is one of the world's best-performing pistols, with a body length of 217 mm, an empty weight of 0.96 kg, a muzzle velocity of 333.7 m/s, and an effective range of 50 meters. It features high shooting accuracy, good maintainability, and a low failure rate. It is highly adaptable to harsh combat conditions such as sand, dust, mud, and water, and its barrel has a service life of up to 10,000 rounds. As standard equipment for military and police in many countries, the Beretta's performance and reliability are beyond doubt. It was very suitable for the mercenaries, and he was luxurious enough to equip the entire staff with them—something many countries' regular forces couldn't even achieve, let alone a mercenary group.

The assault rifle remained the G36, and for sniper rifles, he only produced fifty original TAC-50s. The personnel participating in this operation reached over a thousand, but they might not even be able to scrape together fifty reliable snipers. After all, a mercenary group wasn't a regular army, and qualified snipers weren't that easy to train. In addition, he produced fifty Minimi 5.56mm light machine guns, one hundred RPG launchers, and a large amount of multi-purpose ammunition.

Individual body armor was essential. Bulletproof equipment has six standard levels: Level I, Level IIA, Level II, Level IIIA, Level III, and Level IV. Protection capability increases from low to high. Level IIIA requires protection against 9mm submachine gun rounds with a velocity of 420 m/s; all levels below IIIA protect against 9mm pistols below 360 m/s. Level III protection involves adding two ceramic composite plates to the front and back of the vest; this level requires protection against 7.62*51 rounds at a velocity of 800 m/s, and common rounds from rifles like the AK-47 also fall within this level. Level IV also requires ceramic plates and must protect against armor-piercing rounds at 850 m/s. Cao Xiao naturally produced the highest Level IV individual body armor, including full-protection vests with a 0.8 square meter coverage area and groin guards, as well as bulletproof helmets. The ballistic layer used the best Kevlar fiber material. The issues of high material costs and manufacturing prices were non-existent for him. He collected the materials himself, and the energy required for production could be continuously obtained from seawater. Even if he had to equip a million-man army for a country, providing one for every person would be effortless. The two added ceramic composite plates were produced with improvements, having a thickness of only fifteen millimeters. The entire set of gear, including the helmet, weighed only 4.5 kilograms, yet the protective performance hadn't decreased in the slightest.

These conventional weapons were enough. He didn't need these mercenaries to storm heavily fortified positions; a few Vulcan Cannons would be sufficient for heavy firepower. Finally, there were the armored vehicles. Cao Xiao only prepared two types: an armored assault vehicle and an armored personnel carrier, both produced according to the templates he had scanned from the warships in the port.

For the armored assault vehicle, he chose the latest long-wheelbase version of the Mengshi. This newest long-wheelbase armored Mengshi had a curb weight of 4.8 tons, with the extra 1.5 tons of weight coming almost entirely from the reinforced body protection system. It utilized a Dongfeng Cummins turbocharged diesel engine, simultaneously possessing high mobility, fierce firepower, and protection.

Within a frontal distance of 100 meters, the windshield could withstand 7.62mm rifle rounds, and the body armor could withstand 7.62mm armor-piercing rounds. The sides of the body could resist 7.62mm rifle rounds at 100 meters. The bottom of the vehicle was fitted with V-shaped armor protection, which could effectively protect against the shockwaves of mines and other explosives.

The interior space could carry 15 people; including the driver, that was a reinforced infantry squad. Besides the driver and co-driver seats for 2 people, the other soldiers sat back-to-back, six to a side, disembarking for combat through the left and right side doors and the rear tailgate. There were hatches on the left and right sides of the rear roof, allowing soldiers to lean out and fire to the sides. A square hatch was set in the middle of the roof, serving as the port for the weapons operator.

The roof also featured a dual-use manual and remote-controlled weapons station. For remote operation from inside the vehicle, a small electro-optical targeting probe was positioned at the bottom right of the weapon mount. Soldiers could fire the weapon using a monitor and joystick from within the vehicle, or they could lean out to operate the station manually. The weapons station could be equipped with a 12.7mm heavy machine gun, a 35mm automatic grenade launcher, or a 120mm heavy rocket launcher.

Cao Xiao didn't make any modifications to the armored Mengshi; the materials and design were produced according to the original, and the internal weapon control system was directly copied. A C-language programming system was child's play for an optical computer from a higher-dimensional space, and he copied it completely without effort. He manufactured one hundred of these long-wheelbase Mengshis at once—fifty for current use and the remaining fifty as reserves for when the mercenary group grew larger in the future.

The armored personnel carrier wasn't a standard one but was modified from an ordinary civilian van. Forty-millimeter ceramic composite armor was added all around the body and chassis. The front and side glass were the best bulletproof glass, and the tires were bulletproof and run-flat, capable of achieving all-around frontal defense against 12.7mm armor-piercing rounds from sniper rifles. He converted the cargo box into a passenger cabin that could carry thirty soldiers at once. A Vulcan Cannon was mounted on the roof, and ports were reserved for rocket pods if necessary. There were also firing ports around the cabin, allowing it to be used as a machine gun bunker with no blind spots in an emergency. He produced eighty of these heavily modified personnel carriers. If all were used, they could transport 2,400 soldiers at once. Combined with the armored assault vehicles, this was equivalent to being able to transport an entire infantry regiment of over 3,000 people.

For now, Cao Xiao would not equip the Iron Fist Mercenary Group with other weapons like tanks, attack helicopters, or missiles. First, they were too conspicuous. The Iron Fist Mercenary Group's base was near Bosaso, a port city on the coast of the Gulf of Aden in northern Somalia. The Gulf of Aden is a vital sea route for cargo ships entering and leaving the Suez Canal. Due to continuous civil war, Somalia's social and educational systems had been collapsed for years, giving rise to pirates who hijacked and extorted merchant ships annually. Various countries had military forces escorting ships in the Gulf of Aden. If the Iron Fist Mercenary Group possessed powerful long-range weapons, they might seriously threaten the safety of the route, drawing the attention and scrutiny of multiple military forces. Every move they made would fall under someone else's gaze, which he didn't want to see. Furthermore, he had other considerations for the weapons and equipment of the forces under his command; he wouldn't strictly follow the development of current weapon systems but would lean towards intelligence and unmanned systems. Lastly, even if they were equipped with advanced weapons, the Iron Fist Mercenary Group didn't have enough personnel to operate them. Many mercenaries were illiterate; while they were fine with firearms, some automated weapons required professional skills to be used effectively, otherwise, bringing them to the battlefield would just be a joke.

The plane landed at two in the morning. After leaving the airport, he found a nearby hotel to rest until dawn, then immediately rented a helicopter to fly to Bosaso. Mogadishu isn't very far from Bosaso, but the terrible state of Somalia's roads goes without saying; taking a helicopter was more reliable. As soon as the helicopter took off, Cao Xiao activated the Detection Function—not to detect underground resources, but to guard against weapon attacks from the ground. Although the domestic situation in Somalia had improved to some extent in recent years, some illegal armed forces remained, and there were quite a few foreign armed forces like the Iron Fist Mercenary Group. Coupled with the complex situation in Somalia and occasional armed conflicts, flying a helicopter at low altitude was not safe.

Doing this brought an unexpected pleasant surprise. While admiring the ground scenery and local customs, he discovered many undiscovered and unmined underground minerals along the way, including iron, lead, crystal, fluorite, zinc, chromium, and nickel. However, he didn't collect them all; he only gathered small amounts of lead, zinc, chromium, and nickel—four minerals not yet in his space—to serve as raw material reserves for the industrial mother machine. The surprise was the discovery of a mica schist deposit a thousand meters deep in a mountain range, where he actually found high-quality emeralds. They were even the top-tier emerald beryl. Although Somalia is not a major emerald producer in the world, it does have some small-scale production, so finding emeralds wasn't entirely abnormal.