THE CASINO HEIST
This is a fan fiction story based in GTA: Online. I wrote it in 2015, before the release of the Casino Heist DLC which came out in December 2019. I present it to you now so it may serve as a tribute to all the wonderful and memorable times I spent in GTA: Online.
The call came late one evening. It was Lester.
“I told you I’d call you when I had something else, well this is it!”
It had been a few months since me and my crew had pulled off the Pacific Standard Heist and yes, I was already bored with being a millionaire. I’d run out of things to spend my money on and I was itching for another job. “Meet me at my factory in half an hour, oh and wear a suit.” The location confirmed it; Lester’s old textile factory was the place he used for planning heists, so I knew this had to be something special. I got dressed and called a cab.
When I got to the factory Lester was already waiting outside. He’d bought a brand new car, from the proceeds of our last job no doubt. He tossed me the keys and climbed into the back seat.
“Drive us to the new Casino up at the Vinewood Racetrack.” The Casino had just re-opened after being closed for almost two years following a big profile robbery by a professional crew of eleven guys and I’d been hearing a lot of rumours about the new security system.
I pulled into the Casino’s parking lot. Lester told me to get his wheelchair out of the trunk and he hauled himself into it with a knowing grin. Then he had me push him up the main doors and we went inside.
The first thing we saw was the main lobby security area. It looked like something at an airport check-in with a metal detector, a couple of heavies in expensive suits and more video cameras than I could count.
“Are you members?” Said the receptionist behind the desk.
“Oh, it’s my first time,” Lester called from his chair, “where do I sign up?”
The receptionist came around the front of the desk with a clipboard and a pen and handed them to me.
“Oh ignore him,” said Lester, reaching up for the clipboard, “He’s my helper.” I was relieved that I wouldn’t be forced to hand over one of my fake IDs.
The receptionist watched Lester fill out his name, address, IRS details and email. Then she printed out a gold card with his name on it and handed it to him. I pushed him through the metal detector and immediately set off the alarm. One of the heavies waved a wand over Lester and me until he was satisfied that it was the chair that had triggered the alarm and that we weren’t armed, then waved us through.
I wheeled Lester around the main floor. There was a shallow ramp leading down into an ocean of slot machines, video lottery terminals and keno domes. There were side rooms with roulette wheels, blackjack tables and a bar at the back. The centrepiece though was a huge truck, a Sandking, mounted on a platform behind a row of slots with a banner proclaiming ‘Seven Kings - Wins A Sandking.’
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Said Lester as he noticed me staring at the massive truck. It would make a great getaway vehicle and I pictured myself filling it with bags of cash, climbing into it with my crew and driving it straight through the main doors. As it turned out, this wasn’t too far away from what we actually did, but the reality wasn’t quite so easy.
We played the slots, lost a small fortune on the roulette wheels and then moved over to the blackjack tables. We also learned that there was a suite of poker rooms upstairs, but we didn’t get the chance to go up there. Around two in the morning we noticed some of the staff were clocking off and Lester told me we were leaving. Once we got to the car he said,
“I need to get Paige a job in here, someone on the inside to figure out the finer details of the security system. Take my car and follow one of the dealers home. Be discreet, don’t do anything, just get me an address and text me. I’ll do the rest.”
I took Lester’s car and followed one of the blackjack dealers out to an apartment block up in Hawick. She pulled into the parking garage and I stopped across the street and pretended to take a phone call. I watched her go inside and waited for the light to come on, then I figured out the apartment number and ran across to the mail boxes to get the name. I texted all this to Lester and he called me back.
“Great, I’ll tie her up with some phoney tax-evasion charge or something to get her suspended on full pay. Don’t worry, nothing too serious. Once they get a look at the CV I’ve written up for Paige, or should I say ‘Melodie’, they’ll be offering her the job as replacement.”
* * *
More than a week went by before Lester called me again. He babbled about some stuff that was all completely over my head, but then he suggested he and Paige come over to my apartment so they could fill me in on the plan he’d come up with.
Paige Harris was Lester’s go-to girl for all things hacking. She could do most of the stuff he could, but her speciality was encryption. Maybe she’d take over from him one day, assuming any of us survived the job we were about to pull.
Paige walked in still wearing her blackjack dealer’s uniform, minus the waistcoat and bow-tie which she’d probably dumped somewhere the second she left work. Evidently she’d spent the last week in the Casino gathering intel on the security system, the surveillance network and the guards. She had a bunch of blurry close-up photos which she slapped onto the planning board.
“Now, this is the prize,” began Lester. “These boxes are what we’re going to be lifting out of the Casino,” He tapped his stick onto the picture of a brown metal case. “These are the cash boxes, filled in the Counting Room and then stored in the Vault,” he said.
“Each box holds about $100,000,” said Paige, “and there’s at least twenty of them being held in the Casino at any one time.”
“But, there’s a problem,” added Lester. Paige put up another photo. “Each box has a tracking device. Bullet proof, bomb proof and un-hackable in any sort of reasonable time that would let you open more than two or three boxes before you were caught. You’d need so much explosive to get one of these cases that you’d probably destroy most of the money inside. But, the good news is there’s no dye packs.”
“But tell him why there’s no dye packs Lester,” Paige glowered at him. Lester glowered back,
“Because it’s dirty money.” said Lester. “The whole Casino is a front for the FIB. A huge money laundering operation.”
Those three letters meant the job had just got a whole lot more complicated, and the consequences of ripping off the FIB, especially ripping off money that wasn’t insured or traceable, was that they’d be especially annoyed at us if we were caught, especially if we were caught after hiding the money somewhere, and they certainly wouldn’t be held back by certain ‘constitutional’ considerations when it came to finding out what we’d done with their loot.
Then I noticed that Lester was smiling, so I knew he’d already figured this out, or maybe he’d increased the dosage of his medication again.
“Of course, all this explains the new security system, and now we know why it’s there. None of this money is recoverable,” said Lester. “The FIB are syphoning it from a drugs cartel in South America through the Casino into some kind of Covert Operations Fund.”
“Which is why they really don’t wanna to lose it,” added Paige.
Lester opened a folder and read off a list,
“I mean this level of security is insane. It’s got a military grade system that can lockdown the entire building. If anything happens there’s an alarm under every table and all around the building which triggers six-inch thick steel plate over every window and door. There’s even audio pickups which can hear gunshots and trigger the Lockdown.”
“Plus there’s so many swinging dicks around every corner you’d never be able to take them all out without alerting the others,” added Paige.
“Right, those heavies we saw are actually mercenaries from Merryweather,” said Lester. “They haven’t officially been sanctioned to operate on US soil, yet, but it’s another piece of the FIB covert operation.”
“The Lockdown system means our first move has to be our last move,” Lester emphasised this by resting both his hands on top of his cane, sagely. “As soon as they realise something’s happening, they’ll hit Lockdown. If we go in all guns blazing they hit Lockdown, if we take the pit manager hostage they hit Lockdown, if we flood the ventilation system with nerve gas they hit Lockdown.”
“And that metal detector you went through can pick up electronic devices for rigging the slot machines or disabling the cameras or computer. There’s a detector at the staff entrance too,” said Paige.
Lester pulled a big floor-plan blueprint out of a tube and tried to hang it on the wall, but he couldn’t quite reach. Paige snatched it from him and attached it to the rail next to the planning board. The blueprint was of the entire floor-plan of the Casino, including the lower levels where the Counting Room connected to the Vault with an elevator. Lester stood up and strutted around the planning room.
“So right about now you’re probably thinking this job is impossible. Too much trouble and too risky. Even if we get into the impenetrable vault and steal the metal boxes containing the money, how do we get out without triggering any alarms of tip off any of the numerous guards, or show up on the cameras? And even if by some miracle we get out, how do we disable the tracking devices inside the boxes without destroying the money? Well, for every problem there is a solution, a ‘saline solution’ you could say, heh heh! Get it? As in ‘salt water’? Saline solution?” Nobody laughed at Lester’s attempted jokes, Paige just shook her head and sighed. “Eh, well anyway, the best way to open the boxes and kill the tracking devices inside, all at once, is to dump them in the ocean and take them down to crush depth. About four-hundred feet should to do it. So we’re going to need a submarine, actually mini-sub. There’s one at Fort Zancudo but we need to get it out of there before we steal it. Once the boxes have been compromised we can move them somewhere and hide them in an old wreck offshore, then get away clean. The sea water won’t affect the money, we can wash it clean later, make up your own ‘money laundering’ jokes for that one!”
Paige started writing out a list from Lester’s plan, with a photo representing each stage we’d have to complete before starting the Heist;
“Stage one, the Army Base at Fort Zancudo for the mini-sub. To get it out in the open so we can steal it we need to give them a reason to use it. You’ll have to break in, reset the navigational beacon and bring down one of their military jets into the Land Act Reservoir.” There was an aerial photo of Fort Zancudo next to this job.
“Stage two is to wait for the Army to investigate the crash and then go to the Reservoir and steal their mini-sub.” There was another photo of the Dam to the northeast of the city with the Reservoir behind it and then two smaller photos of the mini-sub and an Army Cargobob helicopter.
“Stages three and four are all about the getaway vehicle. Remember that Sandking in the middle of the Casino? Well, we’re going to switch it with our own, modded out and with some hidden equipment inside. More about that later.” There were no photos for this part of the plan and I guessed Lester was still working on the finer details. “All of the stuff inside the Casino, the actual Heist, that’s going to be down to me and Paige, we’ll need you and your crew to do all the heavy lifting of course, but I’m sure that by now you, you know, trust us to deliver you the goods!” Lester smiled broadly.
I’d learned never to question Lester’s logic, but breaking in to Fort Zancudo and NOT stealing the mini-sub seemed, well, kind of stupid.
“We can’t just steal the sub from Zancudo,” Lester told me when I asked him this very question. “For one thing we don’t know where it’s stored, and even if we did there’s a ton of support equipment that goes with it. On our own we’d never get it operational in time for the Heist. No, better to get them to bring it to us, all ready to go.”
The way we were going to achieve that was as convoluted as ever. First we’d steal a small jet from LSIA, fly it up the west coast, fake an engine failure and make a forced landing at the Base. Meanwhile, I’d jump out with a parachute, land somewhere near the tower and sneak into the comms room. That was the tricky part, rigging the base’s Instrument Landing System so it gave out a false signal, just off by a few degrees but enough that an incoming plane would be a couple of miles away from where it thought it was. In short, we were going to cause an air crash.
It took me a few days to round up the crew. At first, not all of them were as enthusiastic about getting back to work as I was, but after I told them about the two-million dollar take, they were as keen as ever. Of course, I didn’t tell them everything, only what they needed to know.
My crew consisted of my Sister Jane, our pilot. Wilby, an ex-military weapons expert and sniper extraordinaire and finally Stone, the heavy muscle from the mean streets of Liberty City and an explosives expert. (Of course, none of these are their real names, so don’t bother trying to look them up!)
I was dressed as an Army Colonel, Jane as a commercial pilot, Wilby as a businessman and Stone was supposed to be his bodyguard. We took a boat from the Marina to the south beach behind the Airport and climbed our way up to the security fence behind the hangars. It was already dark by now. Lester had timed it so there was a new moon and we were even getting some rain thrown in for good measure. We ran along the fence until we found the gate and Stone got the bolt cutters on the chain holding it, then we were in.
We were looking for the small terminal building that was used for the smaller passenger jets, the twin engined sixteen-seaters that are used for island hopping and short flights up north. There were only a couple of security guards around and we soon dropped them with silenced pistols. We were at the jet in no time and Jane quickly ran through the startup. I checked my parachute and my uniform. I didn’t want a loose patch or missing button to give me away once I got into the base.
We cleared the boundary of the Airport before anyone had a chance to notice us. After a minute or so there were frantic calls from air traffic control, but we ignored them. By the time they’d called in a stolen aircraft we would already have touched down at Zancudo.
Jane picked up some altitude and followed the coast. Once we were out near Fort Zancudo she shut down the port engine and made the emergency call.
“Mayday-Mayday-Mayday. Passenger Jet Lima-Sierra-Two-One-Seven-One - Engine failure. Making emergency landing at Fort Zancudo. Three persons on board.”
The tower at Zancudo responded immediately.
“Aircraft calling mayday - permission to make emergency landing denied. Repeat, DO NOT LAND. Continue to Sandy Shores airfield and land there.” The plane was losing height rapidly and Jane was already lining up her approach.
“Negative Zancudo Tower, we have one engine out the other is running hot. We’re coming down on your main runway.”
Jane tried to stay as high as possible before we passed the tower, but when I opened the side door it hardly looked like I’d have time to get the parachute open. I jumped anyway, and pulled the ripcord as I exited the door. I held my breath as I watched the ground rushing up to meet me and felt the parachute open not much more than ten feet above the ground. I was lucky enough to land on the patch of grass behind the tower, but if I was spotted now it would be all over. I rolled and stood up, but couldn’t see anyone around.
The jet’s wheels squealed onto the tarmac at it coasted to a halt at the far end of the runway. I could just make out vehicles and soldiers surrounding it and a few trucks and jeeps racing down to meet it. Everyone was so distracted by the plane I was able to stow my chute in a dumpster behind the tower, put on my Colonel’s hat and stroll up to the security room at the base of the tower.
The two guards outside saluted me and stood to attention as I walked through the doors. As they closed behind me I saw one solitary guard behind the desk, watching a bank of monitors showing the crew of the jet being escorted out of the plane at gunpoint.
The guard looked up and asked to see my pass. I took it out, a fake of course, showed it to him then showed him my elbow in the side of his head, followed by another sharp punch to his throat. He lay on the floor quietly choking. I looked to see if anyone outside had been alerted, but there was nobody else around. I switched off the x-ray machine and dragged him through it and into the elevator. I bundled him inside and stuck a proximity mine just inside the door. If he woke up, or if anyone called the elevator and got in, the whole lot would blow.
I could hear the eruptions of gunfire down the end of the runway as I ran up the stairway. There were six flights to the top and I was already out of breath by the time I was at the third level. I knew the crew would be taking on a whole platoon of marines by now and not being there to help them made me feel even more uneasy. The longer it took me to do my part, the more danger they’d be in, so I pushed through the pain barrier and ran up the next three flights in less than a minute.
When I reached the tower, I could hear voices in the room to my left. This wasn’t the room I was after, so I looked across the hallway and found the comms room. Inside were a couple of desks and a large bank of computer servers. Lester had told me what to look for and I went behind the racking to find the right machine to plug his little device into. I found it and hooked the little flash drive up, but froze as I heard two men walk into the room. They couldn’t see me behind the shelves, but they sat down at their desks. I couldn’t just stay here indefinitely, but I also couldn’t risk alerting the whole tower by shooting at them.
I stepped out from behind the racking and just stood there. One of them went for his sidearm and the other grabbed the door handle.
“At ease Lieutenant,” I said. “Would either of you mind explaining how I was able to gain access to this critical area completely undetected?” Each looked at the other.
“Colonel Sir? We weren’t expecting you until…”
“Always expect the unexpected soldier. Where were you both?”
“Sorry sir,” said the more senior of the two, “er, we went to get coffee.”
“Then next time, one goes and one stays! Your commanding officer will be hearing about this,” I shouted, walking confidently to the door, but then I remembered I still had one more thing to do. “Oh and Lieutenant, don’t you think it would be a good idea to disable the Surface to Air missile system during a training exercise? Or would you also like to be held responsible for the loss of several million dollars worth of military aircraft?”
The Lieutenant dutifully turned off the SAM system and I strolled back across the hallway to the stairs. It took everything I had to resist the urge to run, but if I gave myself away now we’d all pay the price. Once I hit the stairs I radioed in to see how the others were doing.
It turned out that I didn’t need to worry. They had taken an Insurgent and Jane was now driving it around the base with Wilby in the back and Stone on the turret causing havoc. The base was full of transport planes being loaded with supplies and vehicles and they’d driven into a hangar where one of the Titans was parked. One of the tank operators had tried to stop them and fired a shell into a bunch of fuel barrels which were now burning away in the middle the hangar, cutting them off the dozens of Marines trying to get near them.
“Everything’s set, the air defence system is off-line. I’m going to take one of the fighter jets,” I said. “Just get a plane or a helicopter and get out of the base any way you can.”
“Don’t worry,” said Jane, “I’ve got a better idea, I don’t need an aircraft to be able to fly. See you at the rendezvous point.”
I walked out of the main doors and everyone was running around in total panic. There were fire crews racing to the other end of the base and everything that could move was being rushed over to deal with the incursion. It was a short walk to the sheds where the P996-Lazers were prepared and there wasn’t even a guard on duty. I hopped into the cockpit of a jet, fired it up and blasted out of the shed, pulling back on the stick as the g-forces pressed me back into my seat. I gaining over two-thousand feet before I’d even reached the end of the runway. I looked out and below me I could see what Jane had meant about flying without a plane. She’d raced out of the burning hangar, along the taxiway and back around on to the runway, building up speed with Stone taking out anything that was following them with the vehicle’s turret. Jane pushed the heavily armoured Insurgent to its limit and hit the baffles at the end of the runway. They were big slatted metal structures, designed to deflect jet blasts, but I wondered if they’d be strong enough to take the impact of a four ton truck hitting them at high speed, but I guessed I was about to find out.
Sure enough, the Insurgent launched high into the air and cleared the outer fence, landing on the bank on the other side. Soon, they’d be in the Zancudo swamp and away clear, then all they had to do was lose the cops. I flew on, out past the prison and the wind farm, though I knew I’d have to bail out of the jet somewhere and parachute down to earth for the second time that night, but first I wanted to see if Lester’s insane plan had worked.
I went up to eight-thousand feet and reached the Dam. I pulled hard on the eject release and saw the detonation cord blew a zig-zag hole in the canopy and I was catapulted upwards. The jet, still on full throttle, flew out in front of me spiralling slowly out to sea. My parachute opened, suddenly leaving me in the silent still air above the city and the hills.
Then, in the dim light below me I saw it. The military jet inbound from the east and right on schedule, but four or five degrees off course thanks to our little modification to base’s ILS. The jet was already on its descent, too close to the hills behind the Land Act Reservoir. It clipped the top of the hill, throwing turf and metal parts into the air then exploding in bright orange flame. Both wings separated and the fuselage broke in two and slid down the hillside into the water.
I drifted down, over the surface of the water but there was no trace of an aircraft even having been there at all, save for a scar on the hill and a few rising wisps of smoke from the water. I passed over the dam and saw the racetrack and the casino. I landed on the other side of the hedge from the track, in the brush-land where the stream from the dam trickled out to the concrete channels. Somehow, we’d done it. We’d initiated the first part of the plan, but I knew that even more lay ahead. The things we would have to do next would make everything we’d just accomplished look easy.
Sure, I’ve stolen all kinds of cars; fast ones, old ones, expensive ones. I’ve also stolen trucks, buses, planes, and helicopters. I’ve even taken the occasional boat or two, but I’ve never, ever jacked a submarine.
It seemed that this was the part of the plan that Lester had left for us to figure out ourselves. Once the plane had gone down into the reservoir we had to move fast. As agreed, we all met up by the barrier on the back road that led up to the dam. I called Lester to tell him how everything at the base had gone, but of course he already knew.
“The helicopters with the mini-sub and the search team have just left Zancudo.”
We all got into my Sister’s van and drove up the dirt road to the top of the dam.
“Remember,” said Lester in all our earpieces, “don’t take the sub until it’s in the water and it’s working. It’s no good bringing it back here with a piece missing or without its fuel cells installed.”
I decided to split the crew up into two teams and sent Jane and Wilby to the eastern ridge after dropping off Stone and me by the main buildings. We ran along to the western side of the reservoir to the pumping station and found a place to hide. It was already starting to get light and it wasn’t many minutes until we heard the distinctive thud-thud-thud-thud of heavy choppers flying in.
The Cargobob heavy lift helicopters carried the mini-sub and all its support gear and technicians. There were also truck loads of Marines arriving and all kinds of other Army vehicles, until the whole area looked like a smaller version of the army base. Several of the choppers unloaded and then took off again, flying around with a armed Marines hanging out the side, as though they were expecting trouble.
Me and Stone decided to climb up onto the roof of the pumping station to get a better view. I could see Jane and Wilby perched on top of the opposite hill and caught a glint off Wilby’s sniper scope. I radioed them on our private channel and told them not to start anything until we were ready.
Before very long the mini-sub was in the water. We watched it do a couple of test dives and I noticed that there was only one guy inside operating it. I figured that the best chance to get the thing and escape would be to lift it out with one of the same Cargobobs that had flown it in. We’d also have to take care of the Marine inside the sub and I didn’t envy the person with that task.
I told everyone to check their weapons and ammo and started looking for a chopper that didn’t have too many Marines guarding it. Jane volunteered to be the one to take control of the sub while Wilby covered her from high up on the ridge. Meanwhile me and Stone would get the Cargobob and somehow take down the other choppers circling overhead.
I watched Jane run down the slope to the water’s edge. She was by far the best swimmer of the group. She’d left all her heavy gear in the van and taken off her jacket and boots. The only weapon she had was a knife, but I knew how good Wilby was with a sniper rifle. All Jane had to do was get to the hatch on top of the sub open and lure the Marine out. Of course, Wilby couldn’t shoot through the glass or damage the sub or the whole thing was pointless. Jane slipped silently into the water and dove under the surface.
I signalled to Stone to move out and we sneaked over to the chopper. There was a single Marine guarding it and Stone managed to take him down quietly with his pistol. I climbed into the cockpit, put on the harness and started the engines while Stone switched to his rocket launcher and tried to hit the chopper flying close by. He missed, but took another shot. They were still too far away and could simply dodge the rockets as they came in. Stone jumped into the rear compartment and started firing off rounds with his machine gun as I wound the rotors up to take-off speed and lifted off.
The Marines returned fire and bullets began pinging off the outer plating of the helicopter. Several of the gauges were already into the red, showing the results of the high-calibre rounds hitting vital engine components. I flew over to where I’d last seen the sub, in time to see it pop out of the water, with Jane still trying to pry open the hatch. The guy inside was somehow holding it shut and was also powering the sub towards the shore for his mates to get a better shot at his attacker. Jane got herself around the back of the sub into cover, but I knew I had to do something quickly.
I released the hook underneath the Cargobob and flew in low, between the mini-sub and the soldiers. It was a risky strategy, but I hoped it would give Stone time to take some of them out. At the same time Wilby took out the pilot in one of the choppers chasing us and it immediately went into a spin, crashing down into the reservoir behind us. By now Stone was wreaking havoc on the ground troops. He was shooting anything that moved and when I looked back all I could see was burning vehicles and smoke. We’d bought ourselves some time, but I knew there was only so much damage this helicopter could take, we had to get out of here.
I hovered over the mini-sub and felt the tug of the hook connecting with the attachment on top. Then I heard Jane through me earpiece telling me I was locked on. I pulled up hard on the stick and could feel the weight of the sub being pulled out of the water. It was swinging below us as I turned and climb away, but there was hardly enough spare power left in the damaged engines to gain much altitude.
There were bullets flying in every direction, the glass of the cockpit windows shattered all around me, but I kept focused. I could smell burning oil and see thick black smoke pouring out of the turbines. Every alarm was ringing on the instrument panel in front of me, but we only had to make it to the ocean.
I pushed on and as we increased speed we gained a little more lift. Then I heard something that almost made my heart stop.
“Pull up or we’re not going to make it over the hill!” It was Jane and I could hear that she was still out there, hanging on to the sub underneath. I pulled back on the stick and tried to wring every last ounce of power out of the engines.
I told Stone to take a look at the underside of the helicopter. He stopped firing and grabbed the rail next to the open door then hung himself out to look.
“Yeah, sub’s there with the guy still in it and Jane sitting on top of it gripping on to the cable.” Then I radioed Wilby and asked him what he could see.
“You’ve got two choppers on your tail, both with armed Marines firing heavy machine guns at you! I did some damage to one of them but I couldn’t take it down, sorry.” I knew I had to get rid of these choppers somehow before we reached the hideout, but I couldn’t pull too many sharp turns or Jane might fall off. Then I saw the wind-farm in front of me.
“Just hang on Jane,” I said into the comm. “Might wanna close your eyes!”
As I eventually cleared the hill I dropped off some height and picked up speed, making straight for the rows of windmills lined up in a staggered formation. There were very tight gaps between each row and the massive blades, each about five times the size and weight of our helicopter, chopped away at the edges of these gaps. Only the most insane or desperate pilot would try and follow us, but that was exactly what one of the Cargobob pilots did. Stone kept firing but even he let out a string of curse words at me when he realised what I was doing.
I brushed past the blade of one windmill by what felt like a few inches, then I flew right between the blades of the next by sheer luck. I dodged right to avoid the next tower and then took a path past one of the windmills that wasn’t turning. I heard an explosion behind me and looked back to see the twisted wreckage of one of the pursuing Cargobobs.
“Hey, keep your eyes on the goddam road!” Stone screamed through my headphones and I looked ahead just in time to see another windmill in front of me. I dodged again, but it was a tight turn. I felt the sub swing out and had to fight with the controls to keep the helicopter flying straight.
Fortunately I had turned us out of the row of windmills and into clear space, about a mile from the shoreline. We were just by the power station but as I flew towards it one of the engines gave out completely and we started to drop.
“Stone, Jane, we’re going down. I’ll drop the sub over the water!” It was the worst possible moment for the other Cargobob to show up, but that was exactly what it did. He’d flown the long way around the wind farm, but he had two working engines and wasn’t hauling a three-ton submarine underneath him. The Marines on board opened up with heavy machine guns and started taking chunks out of our rear rotor assembly.
“Great,” shouted Stone, “we could do with shedding a bit of weight,” He stopped firing and got into cover behind the bulkhead. “Come on boys, just a little closer.”
I was now completely out of options, the Cargobob was disintegrating around me and had more or less stopped being an aircraft. It was going to be falling out of the sky pretty soon. We cleared the power plant and I saw the yellow sands of beach beneath me. We’d barely made it past the rocks and into the slightly deeper water when I pressed the cable release button on the control stick. The sub broke free and I felt the helicopter suddenly get lighter. I watched the sub fall and Jane dive off the top of it making a perfect Olympic-style entry into the water from what must have been thirty feet.
I caught a glimpse of Stone throwing something at the Cargobob that was chasing us before launching himself into the water, feet first and holding his nose as he went. I knew I had to stay on-board to make sure I splashed down clear of the others. I couldn’t bail out either, not until the rotors had stopped. The Marines firing at me were even more of an incentive to stay inside in the relative protection of the cockpit.
At the last possible moment, just before the Cargobob hit the water, I pulled back on the stick and let the rear end take as much of the impact as possible. She skimmed along for a few feet and then the front dipped into the water. It was all very smooth and for a moment I simply sat there as it floated, wondering if the thing would ever sink. Then a wave hit the middle section and flooded the whole rear compartment. The pursuing Cargobob circled around and came back, right towards me, both of the Marines on board firing into the water. I took in a big breath and let the chopper pull me down.
I saw the path of the bullet splashes approaching and felt one punch a hole in the wall behind me. There was nothing I could do but sit there and wait for the Cargobob to sink. Once all the air had gone out through the side doors and the broken windows it started to go down though. Then it went down pretty fast. I tried to see where the mini-sub had gone as I pulled off my harness and could just make out something moving off to my left. Once the chopper had hit the seabed I swam out, desperate to get to the surface and take a breath. I couldn’t tell how far down I was, in that strange way that everything looks farther away underwater. I knew we hadn’t been very far offshore so I couldn’t be too deep down, but my lungs were already bursting.
Then it was there, right in front of me, with Jane at the controls. The mini-sub moved over the top of me and a hatch in the underside opened. I frantically swam up into it and popped my head out into the interior, gasping. Stone pulled me up and sat me in the seat at the front next to Jane. Then he closed the hatch in the floor, screwed it shut and sat in the little folding seat to the rear of the cabin. I took a good look around.
“What happened to the guy in the sub?” I asked Jane.
“He was unconscious when I found him. I dragged him out and dumped him,” said Jane. “I guess that fall must’ve knocked him out.”
“Bring us up so I can get a signal on this,” said Stone. Waving the detonator switch for the sticky bomb he’d thrown.
Jane slowly eased up the lever in her left hand and released a small amount of compressed air into the ballast tanks. We rose up a little and then tilted back as she pulled the joystick in her right hand that controlled the pitch of the sub.
“Just like flying a plane huh?” I asked her. She nodded,
“Twist the left stick for throttle and the right stick for rudder. See, easy!”
We got up to the surface and I could see the outline of the twin rotor chopper hovering above us. Stone flicked open the safety catch on the detonator and then pulled down on the switch. The sticky bomb on the helicopter exploded and debris and bodies rained down into the water.
“How fast can this thing dive?” I said. Jane tugged the left lever all the way back and the tanks flooded with seawater. We went down like an express elevator.
The main fuselage from the Cargobob drifted past in front of us and was illuminated briefly in the lights of the sub. The Army had lost a lot of aircraft in the last six hours and I imagined someone would be getting a major dressing down back at Zancudo.
Jane opened the throttle and we sped forward and down into the deeper water. When the ‘crush depth’ alarm came on she levelled off and tried to keep a steady course. There were a bunch of gauges on the control panel in front of us, just like an aircraft. Rate of climb/descent, compass bearing, speed, etc. But in place of altitude there were two gauges marked ‘Depth to Bottom’, and ‘Depth from Surface’. There were also readouts for the compressed air reserve, Co2 saturation, electrical power, and all kinds of others things I didn’t recognise. Whoever wound up driving this thing during the Heist would need to know it top to bottom and backwards. I would have to get Lester to let us take it out on some practise runs, if there was time.
After about twenty minutes of mucking about at the bottom of the ocean (just to make sure we weren’t being followed of course), we circled back around to the north and surfaced near the shoreline.
“This thing is amazing,” I said. “The perfect getaway vehicle.” Once I could get a signal on my phone I called up Wilby. He told me he’d got away fine, but he could hardly believe we’d made it out alive. He’d taken the van down to the service area on the highway and was sitting watching the Army, police, fire-crews, FIB and ambulances all racing around trying to figure out what had happened. Then I called Lester to give him the good news.
“Great work, I knew you could pull it off. Glad to see my faith in you wasn’t misplaced! Now, bring the sub to the cove and drive it right inside the cave. Paige is waiting for you. She’ll check it out, make any modifications we need for the heist.”
We followed the coast up and found the inlet to the cove. It got a lot shallower as we went inland until we could hear the sandbank scraping on the bottom of the sub, but Jane powered right over the top of it then turned towards the huge cave entrance. There, in a boat at the back, was Paige, looking as bored as ever.
“What took you so long?” She said as we floated in with me and Stone sitting on top with the hatch open. We pulled up at the back of the cave, behind a large rock which stuck up in the middle. It was a good hiding place. Nobody would find it here, especially if we kept it underwater and used the hatch underneath to get in and out.
Paige tied a rope around the clasp on the top and we all climbed down into the cool water. We were exhausted but we didn’t care. We swam out of the cave and flopped onto the small beach. We let the heat of the morning sun dry us as we lay there and waited for Wilby to come pick us up.
It had been a long night and I could scarcely believe half of the things we’d done in the last few hours. They just seemed like a blur. Hopefully we’d get a couple of days to rest before the next phase of the operation. I hoped everything would go as smoothly as these last two jobs had. Then I drifted off to sleep dreaming of wealth and fame. Of fast cars, expensive yachts and girls, and of money. Yes, lots and lots of money!
It was a rainy Monday morning when Lester and Paige showed up at my apartment. I buzzed them in, put on a fresh pot of coffee and showed them to the heist planning room. Paige slapped a photograph of a disheveled looking stoner onto the whiteboard and started writing out a bunch of stuff next to it.
“This is Austin Sento.” Lester began. “A while back he did a five stretch for tax evasion, but for the last couple of years he’s been living up in the hills with a bunch of cultists who call themselves the ‘Altruists’.” I looked more closely at the photo wondering what possible use this long-haired old guy in filthy clothes could be to us.
“Sento’s something of a legend in hacking circles,” said Paige. “An original. The kind who of hacker who could manipulate the phone system into giving him free calls when he was 13 just by using a whistle he’d found in a cereal box.” From her tone I could tell that Paige held Sento in high regard.
“But his speciality is slot machines,” continued Lester. “In fact, he’s the only person ever to find a vulnerability in the Lady Luck machine. You remember the ones we saw inside the Casino?" I nodded. "Sento's going to win the Sandking,” explained Lester. “And when he does, the Casino will order a replacement. And we’ll be there to switch that replacement Sandking with one we’ve specially prepared for the getaway.”
Then Paige stuck another photo up next to the one of Sento and I knew this was going to be a two-part mission.
“At the same time as you’re getting Sento,” Lester continued, “you’ll also be picking up some insects from Humane Labs. We’ve been thinking about how to get you and some of your crew into the Casino.”
“They’ve got their own in-house maintenance team,” said Paige, “so we can’t turn off the air conditioning and have you show up to fix it.” She was still working inside the Casino under an alias and learning everything she could about the security arrangements.
“But, what we can do is turn off the air conditioning and infest the building with thousands of genetically modified bugs!” Lester chuckled. “Then you guys show up as pest control and we’re in, well, you’re in. Me and Paige will be sitting outside, but don’t think we don’t appreciate all your hard work.” He laughed nervously as he and Paige made their way out of the planning room and back through the door to my apartment.
As usual, Lester had left the finer details of how to achieve these two tasks to me. Once they were both gone I spent the rest of the morning studying maps, doing online research and reading through old news archives. It seemed that a lot of hikers had been going missing in the mountains around the Altruist camp for years, so I reckoned the best way to get someone inside would be to get a couple of us up there with backpacks and pretend to get lost.
As for the Humane Labs, Lester had given me the name of a scientist who was willing to sell us the bugs, but to get inside the Lab we’d need to source a postal van and some uniforms. There had been a spate of thefts of postal vans in Paleto Bay recently and I hoped that one more wouldn’t attract too much attention from the local law enforcement. Neither task on its own would be too complicated, but as usual everything depended on putting the right people to the right tasks. After a little more planning I called up my crew to meet up at my place the next day.
I selected my Sister Jane and Stone to take on the Altruists job, while myself and Wilby would do the Humane mission. We checked our comms channels were all working and headed off up the GOH to Paleto in Jane’s Rancher. When we got to the side road which led up to the mountains Jane dropped us off and carried on with Stone up towards the Altruist’s camp. Me and Wilby walked along the highway until I found a suitable car for our mission; an Oracle XS. I broke in and hot-wired it.
Wilby and me cruised around Paleto looking for the Go Postal van, knowing roughly what it’s daily route was. We didn’t really take much notice at the time, but we passed several groups of guys standing around big SUVs. If we’d stopped to check them out we’d have probably realised they were groups of IAA agents, waiting to pounce on anyone who dared go after their postal vans. What my limited research hadn’t revealed was that the IAA were using the Go Postal network to secretly bring drugs into the country, then having someone rob them before they could be delivered. It was hard to know who was the more corrupt out of the FIB and the IAA, but sometimes it seemed like together they were responsible for more crime in San Andreas than me or any of my criminal associates.
After driving around for a while we found our truck out by the Up-n-Atom burger, parked off the main highway. We could see one guy sitting inside the van smoking a cigarette and the other at the concession stand buying hot-dogs. We thought it would be a good time to make our move so we put on our masks and drove in front of the van, blocking it from pulling away, but before we could even get out the driver hit the gas and smashed our car out of the way, leaving his buddy behind.
I backed up and went after the van. By the time we caught up to it we were almost back in Paleto and we had two of those SUVs on our tail. Wilby started firing, warning shots at first and then into the bodywork of the van, trying not to hit the tyres or cause too much damage. When we passed the gas station we met another of the IAA SUVs. It hurtled past us on the wrong side of the road and swung a handbrake turn. The driver of the postal van was panicking and weaved all over the road, desperately trying to stop us getting past him to get a clear shot.
The van swung around a tight corner into a side street and then around another, dodging the traffic. I backed off a little to give myself more room, but in the tighter back streets there wasn’t any. I mounted the kerb, smashed into a light pole, a bench, then a stop sign, sending debris flying everywhere. People ran into and from shop doorways, away from us and into our path. They screamed, they ran, they fell over then they got back up to do it all over again. They were just like the chickens that this town was so famous for.
By the time we’d made our second lap of the Fire Station, four IAA cars were behind us. Taking the van without attracting a lot of attention was going to be almost impossible, I was almost ready to give up.
“We need to box him in somewhere, an alleyway or a parking lot or something,” said Wilby. As though the driver had he’d heard us, he busted through a corrugated iron fence into a construction site.
I saw the exit he was heading for and took a shortcut over a pile of dirt and some foundations, destroying the car’s suspension but putting us between the gates and him. He swerved into a pile of wooden pallets then tried to back up, but Wilby was already out of the car. He placed a bullet into the guy’s head so cleanly that he didn’t even know he’d been shot. I looked around for the SUVs, but they’d all overshot and were still on the other side of the fence.
Wilby dragged the guy out of the van and got in. He backed it up and I jumped into the passenger seat, then we punched through the other fence onto the main road just as the IAA cars entered the construction site behind us. We headed north.
“How the hell are we gonna lose ‘em in this thing?” Said Wilby. The van was heavy, slow and handled like a ninety-foot yacht on a sea of jello. We passed the Dignity Village and I had one of my brilliant ideas.
“Swing around and take us back,” I said. I took out my 9mm and strapped on my seatbelt.
Wilby pulled on the emergency brake and jerked the wheel violently. I thought we were going to flip, but instead we made huge half-circle from one side of the highway to the other, scattering the oncoming traffic in every direction as they all tried to avoid us. The IAA cars all went in different directions, one slammed into a truck and trailer causing a pile-up on the southbound carriageway and the other three ended up off-road.
We were soon back at the entrance to the Dignity Village, a concrete tunnel under the railroad which led into a farmyard, now occupied by a group of anti-capitalist protesters. Wilby drove into the tunnel at full speed while I aimed my gun at the gas canister I’d noticed as we’d driven past. I hit it and a stream of flame immediately shot out the side. There was a second canister at the other end of the tunnel and I put a bullet into that one too.
As we drove over the small wooden bridge towards the barn I looked back and saw the first IAA car entering the tunnel, with the second and third close behind it. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. The first gas canister exploded and set off the fuel tank of the first SUV. It span sideways in the narrow tunnel and The cars following couldn’t do anything to avoid it. They T-boned the burning wreck, pushing it onto the second gas bottle just as that went up. The tunnel became a furnace of twisted metal and flames, nothing was going to be following us.
We carried on along the side of the barn, through the trees and up the embankment onto the railroad. We followed the tracks all the way south to the back road which led to the Humane Labs, watching the cops and firetrucks racing along the highway below us. We stopped by the corner to check the truck and change our clothes. We’d picked up a lot of dents and scratches on the postal van, but no more than on the average Go Postal delivery vehicle. Most of the bullet holes were on the passenger side so I hoped the security guard wouldn’t see them. I made a quick call to Jane to see how things were going with them, but there was no signal. From where we were they would be on the opposite side of Mount Chilliad.
It was a short drive down the access road to the Lab and we tried to look as much like feckless postal workers as we could. We pulled up at the gate and the security guard barely looked up from his iFruit phone. He leaned over and pressed the button that raised the barrier and we drove in. Lester had told me to go to Building 8, to the Genetics department, and meet a guy in a white lab coat smoking a cigarette. That could be almost anybody, I thought, but sure enough there was a guy standing outside on his own down at the end of the plaza. I took out the package with the money, or whatever Lester had stuffed in there (who knew with Lester, it might even be photos of the guy doing something fruity with one of his lab monkeys), and handed it to the guy just like any normal delivery. He told me to pull the van around to the loading bay and ask for ‘the parcel for Mr. Briggs’. I said nothing more and walked down through the staff car park, texting Wilby to meet me there.
The parcel was about the size of microwave oven and weighed about the same. It felt like there was a lot of packaging around it. We found out later that it was a small chiller unit with the samples of fruit flies kept in hibernation, plus a canister of specially formulated insecticide which would kill them.
We put the parcel in the back and drove out, up onto the main highway, and that was when we saw another IAA car. It followed us along the highway, through Grapeseed and along the dirt road that followed the shoreline of the Alamo Sea.
“What do you think,” said Wilby, “are we gonna take ‘em, lose ‘em or what?” Just then my earpiece crackled and Jane’s voice broke through the static.
“We’re at the end of the tunnel. We got Sento but there’s a big ugly mob looking for us, so hurry the hell up!”
“Stay in the tunnel, we’re nearly there” I said.
I had Wilby put on some speed, but it was tricky on the twisting loose-dirt road. I’d seen plenty of getaways go wrong along here with over zealous and inexperienced drivers in fast cars simply sliding off the road and down into the lake, but that gave me another idea.
“Quick, switch places,” I said to Wilby. He looked at me in disbelief, but knew me well enough to know I wasn’t joking around. When I got into the driver’s seat I started to pick up the pace, swinging the van around the corners like a Finnish rally driver.
The IAA car behind us was keeping up, but all I needed was for them to make one mistake. Then just by the fork in the road, where it branched off up to the Mount Chilliad tunnel, I slammed on the brakes and turned as late as I dared. The SUV missed the turning and swerved to avoid an oncoming motorhome, then skidded off the road and down the embankment. I didn’t look back to see the rest, and raced up the hill and over the bridge that led into the tunnel, hoping we could switch vehicles before the IAA caught up with us.
Jane’s Rancher was parked right in the middle of the tunnel with the engine running. We ditched the van and grabbed the parcel. Sento was on the back seat of the Rancher and Wilby and me got in either side of him.
“So what happened at the cultist’s camp?” I asked Jane.
“I don’t want to talk about it. I NEVER want to talk about it!” Was all she would say. I looked over at Stone and he fixed me with a thousand-yard stare.
“We saw things,” he said. “Things nobody should ever have to see.”
It was only when we pulled away that we noticed that the daylight at the end of the tunnel was gone. Then the lights lining the roof of the tunnel went off, and finally the engine of the Rancher cut out and all the electrics died, including the headlights. Even our phones and comms went off. Seconds later a set of headlights came on behind us and a car drove up and stopped about ten feet away. A woman got out, silhouetted in the lights. She stood there, like she was waiting for something.
“I’ll go and speak to her,” I said, finally breaking the silence.
I walked towards her. Two bodyguards, totally unseen in the darkness, came from either side and frisked me. I heard my gun clatter off to my left and the knife I kept sheathed at my back was pulled out and thrown away. The woman got back into the car and the bodyguards pushed me into the seat next to her.
“Someone’s been robbing our vans,” she said. It was too dark to see her face, but I recognised the voice instantly. “Nobody’s supposed to rob our postal vans except us?” It was the woman who’d given us the codes to the Humane Labs raid several months before and who’d met us by the reservoir after the mission. “So why did you do it? I mean you don’t need the money. What have you been doing I wonder? A visit to the Humane Labs, an old hippy, a stolen submarine?”
One of the guys outside passed her a smart phone through the open door.
“Oh, but not just any old hippy. Austin Sento! The ‘Game King’. Now why would you need a slot machine expert, genetically engineered fruit flies and a submarine?” I realised I hadn’t even taken a breath since I’d got into the car. I had to stay silent, I couldn’t afford to give her any clues, but it was obvious she’d worked it all out already. “Ah, the Casino! Yes, it has to be. You’re going to rob the FIB’s laundromat!” She clapped her hands together and laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. “Oh, that’s just wonderful! You know, if it were anyone else, I’d turn you in right away, have you renditioned to somewhere, but you might actually be able to pull this off. Is there anything else you need? Guns, vehicles, equipment? Really, just ask.” Without waiting for a reply, she signalled her bodyguards, who then bundled me out and pushed me back in the direction of our truck. I stumbled back to my crew and tried to think of how I was going to tell them about this new development.
I got into the truck and everything came back to life; the lights in the tunnel, the Rancher’s engine, even the light at the end of the tunnel had returned, but the car, the bodyguards and the IAA’s super-bitch were all gone.
“Who the hell was that?” asked Wilby.
“They know,” I said. “They know everything. We have to call it off. If we’re very, very quick, we might even be able to get out of the country.”
Of course there was no way we could leave. We either had to go ahead with the Heist or abandon it and face the dire consequences. If we we didn’t rob the FIB’s money laundering Casino the IAA would undoubtedly pull us in on multiple felony charges, and not just the ones we’d committed. On the other hand if we tried and failed facing the full wrath of the FIB would probably be an even worse fate. They’d want to make an example of us and try and dissuade anyone else who was thinking of ripping off their stash of secret money.
We decided, as a group, not to tell Lester about any of the IAA stuff. If he didn’t like the idea of the IAA getting involved on our end, he’d call the thing off entirely. He was a cautious man and nothing we’d done so far could link this job to him. I knew that was why he always outsourced everything. Without him we couldn’t pull this job off, so we had to lie.
Sento had been there in the tunnel with us, but he didn’t really know what we were actually doing and he didn’t know anything about Lester. At first he didn’t even know why we’d sprung him out of the Altruists camp, but when we got to my apartment and saw the Lady Luck machine that Paige had set up in my hallway, I think he started to get some idea.
As well as being a hacking legend, Austin Sento’s orchestral day job had been as virtuoso violinist. At one time he had been at the top of his profession, but he’d lost several fortunes gambling on slot machines. As he sank into debt his health suffered, his performing skills deteriorated and his career nose-dived. His hacking skills never suffered though, he was still sharp. By the time he’d lost his career, his house and his wife, he’d hit upon a fool proof way to beat one of the most popular gaming machines.
The Lady Luck was an old design, every bit as much of a classic to gamblers as a Declasse Tornado or Voodoo was be to me. It had been upgraded over the years with new electronics and software patches and other kinds of cosmetic improvements, but at it’s heart was still the same basic code that it had run on since the mid-eighties. And that was where it’s flaw lay.
Within minutes of walking into my apartment, Sento had begun playing on the machine. His hands moved up and down the keys while his eyes remained steady on the video display reels. The faces on the virtual playing cards flicked by with an artificial sound effect. Slowly after about forty minutes Sento had a full house lined up thousands of dollars banked up just waiting for him to hit the ‘Payout’ button.
“How old is this machine, is it up to date?” He jabbered.
“It’s what they use in the Casino up at the racetrack,” I said. It was actually one of their own machines that Paige had managed to redirect with a false maintenance order.
I watched him play it some more and noticed he still wasn’t taking the payout from the hands he’d won. His ‘Bank’ was building up to over twelve-thousand.
“This is the glitch,” he said, “integer overflow! Keep all your winnings, then wait until the payout hits $16,384!” He showed me the magic number rolling up in the corner of the screen as he made another full house, then everything went blank.
“What happened? Has it stopped working?” I asked. Sento sat back and waited, then the machine glitched back into life.
“It resets the memory, but look.” He pressed all of the hold buttons in turn, then off again, then he hit ’Spin’. Instead of losing the use of the hold buttons on the second spin they’d become a permanent function. He could make any hand he wanted at will.
“All we need is for you get seven kings, can you do that?” I asked him.
“Sure, I can get anything I want with this now. Why what we get for seven kings?” He asked.
“Oh, you get a brand new Sandking truck,” I said. “And we get over two million dollars,” I muttered under my breath.
“But I can’t drive,” said Sento.
My phone rang, an ‘unknown caller’. It was Lester. I went to my planning room, which I’d taken the precaution of locking, to take the call.
“It’s all set, we’ve got a date and a time. There’s just one last thing to get ready,” he said.
“Sento’s here,” I replied. “He’s just getting warmed up on the machine.”
“Good. Get him cleaned up and buy him some clothes, but don’t get rid of the beard or hair, we want to keep him unrecognisable. Take him to the Casino on Friday, then get down to Los Santos customs and be ready. Paige has written everything up on your board. There’s an envelope with all the details.” With that he hung up.
* * *
We cleaned Sento up and took him down to Ponsonby’s for a new suit. He ended up looking a little weird, which meant he’d fit right in in Los Santos. My crew went out to Blaine County and got hold of a Sandking XL and took it to the LS Customs next to Lester’s textile factory. This was going to be our getaway vehicle.
We’d use the Sandking in the Casino to get the money boxes to the mini-sub. For the last week I’d been flying around East Vinewood and to the coast working out my route. At the same time Jane had been diving all around the coast to find somewhere deep enough to get the mini-sub in, yet close enough to a high cliff so we could drive the truck off of it. We needed to get us away from the cops and maybe even fool them into thinking we’d driven into the ocean by accident, or out of desperation.
After I’d dropped Sento off at the Casino I drove down to LS Customs where our Sandking was now sitting with nine of the best mechanics we could find. They’d upgraded the truck’s engine, added a nitro boost, a bigger turbo, better brakes and fitted stronger suspension to take the extra weight of the cash boxes and armour plating. They’d also built in a false compartment under the rear seats to store scuba gear, and they’d hidden Micro SMGs inside the wheel arches so we could get to them inside the Casino if we needed to. Despite all this, from the outside the truck looked standard. All we needed now was to respray it and fit any optional extras to match it to the one we would be switching it with, and that was the tricky part.
Right now all we could do was wait for Sento to hit the jackpot. Jane and Stone were parked up in a Pounder delivery truck outside the Vapid dealership in Pillbox Hill. While Wilby was at the docks, hidden on top of one of the cranes looking out over all the brand new Sandking trucks which had been unloaded from the container ship from China (because even Vapid had stopped making things in the USA). Somewhere among the dozens of new trucks was the one destined for the Casino, but we needed a photo of the right one before we could make the switch.
Thanks to Paige, we knew that when Sento won the Sandking the Casino would call up for a replacement. With it being a Friday they’d want the replacement in before the weekend. Once Wilby saw which one they were picking up we’d respray ours to match using quick-drying paint and drive it down to the docks while Wilby stole the original.
Paige was on duty in the Casino and was giving us regular updates. Staff weren’t allowed to carry phones or other electronic devices on the Casino floor, so we were relying on her half-hourly smoke breaks. The last we’d heard Sento was still building up his payout pot towards the magic number that would trigger the glitch.
The waiting was the worst part of any mission. Hoping it all came together, not being there if there was a problem. I kept telling myself that I had a good crew, they could handle anything, but that meeting in the tunnel was still bothering me. I didn’t trust the IAA and I doubted they’d let us off the hook so easily. Maybe they’d let us steal the money then they’d rob us? It all made me uneasy, and it was a distraction that I really didn’t need.
As if to confirm my fears there was an unscheduled call from Paige.
“Sento’s having problems, the glitch isn’t working!” She said.
“Why, is it the machine? I thought they were all the same as the one you had shipped to me?” I said.
“There’s something different about them, maybe they’ve realised and patched them, I don’t know.” She rang off abruptly. If Sento couldn’t win the Sandking we couldn’t get our replacement in there and our getaway was busted. We’d never survive all those cops in an unmodified truck and the jump from the cliff into the deep water was just too far without the uprated engine and nitro. I radioed the others to tell them the bad news. I told them to sit tight and get ready for a long wait, but I knew this would make them nervous.
After almost an hour another call came in from Paige.
“We figured it out, the machines were set for a limited payout. All I had to do was reset the machine, I don’t think anyone noticed. Sento’s on his fourth king now.”
“Do you think anyone knows he’s cheating?” I asked.
“I don’t think so, but technically he isn’t.”
Sento had actually never been convicted of fraud. He’d explained it all to me one evening. In court his defence lawyer had maintained that all his client had done was operate the machine using its normal interface, he had not modified or caused the machine to malfunction in any way. His case was eventually thrown out, but the Casino had already confiscated his winnings. The problem was that the tax on those winnings was still due, and without the money to pay it he’d gone to prison.
Another hour went by and Sento made his sixth king. Then another half an hour later Paige called us to tell us he’d done it! Sento was now the proud owner of a $45,000 Sandking, whether he wanted it or not. He’d been led off to fill out the paperwork, but sure enough the Casino had put in the call to the dealership. Jane called in that the flatbed truck had left the dealership and they were now following it to the docks.
I told everyone in the workshop to get ready. They already had our Sandking masked up on a rig inside the spray booth. The computer controlled paint mixer was filled with the special quick drying paint. Jane told us when the flatbed had arrived at the docks then Wilby took over the channel to say he could see it. Meanwhile Jane drove the Pounder into position ready for the switch. I patched Wilby’s voice over the sound system in the workshop. Everyone listened intently for one single word, a colour, so the spray booth could run its program.
“The flatbed’s driving around to the row of Sandkings. He’s stopped. He’s getting out.” Wilby said. “He’s checking all the licence plates, looking for the right one.”
There was silence for almost a full minute, then Wilby’s voice broke through again,
“He’s got to the end of the row, right on the corner of the docks. Wait, the last truck, he’s looking all around it. I think it’s our truck!”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Haha,” laughed Wilby, “the guys complaining to himself about how he’s going to have to move about four or five trucks to get it out.”
“Dammit, tell us what colour it is!” I yelled at him down the line.
“Oh, it’s blue. With chrome detailing. I’ll send you the photo.”
The guy on the spray booth computer had already got the colour chart open and punched the correct ratios into the paint matching system. The machine sprang into life. Then Wilby’s photo came through and we saw the blue Sandking with chrome trim and a bed-cap.
“Remember, you got twelve minutes until it’s dry after it leaves the booth,” said the spray guy. I got my stopwatch ready. In the meantime everyone ran around collecting parts. Four guys pulled down a blue bed-cap from the storage rack. Another couple got the chrome vinyl ready for the detailing. The licence plate guy pulled down a blank and put it into his press. Someone shouted,
“Hey what wheels?” and I radioed Wilby.
“Get us a shot of the wheels!”
“Ok, I can’t see yet, he’s still only moving the first truck, he’s having to back it up past all the others.”
Eventually the second picture came through and the wheel guys had an argument about which ones they were. They didn’t have the right ones so one of them called their branch in Burton to send a set right away. The spray booth beeped and I started my stopwatch, but the paint guy said,
“Not yet, that’s just the first coat, there’s another layer to go on yet.”
“Wilby, just double check everything, tell us every detail on the truck you can see.” He read out a list of stuff and everyone checked they had the right items. The bedcap was hooked up to a cradle in the ceiling ready to be lowered down onto our truck. The spray booth beeped for the second time.
“Ok, now we heat treat it for two minutes!” said the spray guy. I asked Wilby how much longer he thought we had.
“Ok, he’s got two more Sandkings to move, then he’s going to be taking ours out of the row. How’s it going over there?”
“Just great,” I said. “Be ready to steal the truck, but not until I say.”
The longest two minutes I’d ever known followed as I waited for the door on the spray booth to open, but eventually it did. I set my stopwatch for twelve minutes and hit the start button.
“He’s getting into our truck now,” said Wilby, “he’s backing it out, very carefully.” Everyone helped to wheel the rig with the now perfectly blue Sandking on it out of the booth and into the fitting bay. Even before it had stopped moving some of them started tearing off the masking sheets. Four guys ran around behind them applying the chrome vinyl to the wheel arches and sills. The truck was already starting to look like the one in the photo.
“Dammit, there’s a bull-bar on the front.” Said Wilby. “He’s backed it around the corner and it’s got a chrome bull-bar on the front.” Everyone was already busy so I ran up to the racking at the back of the workshop, but I couldn’t see what I was looking for. One of the mechanics shouted at me, telling me which shelf it was on. I pulled a bull-bar down and hauled it around to the front of the truck ready to be fitted.
The van with the wheels skidded to a halt outside and more guys appeared to put them on like a pit crew. At the same time the bed-cap was lowered down onto the back and the last piece of chrome vinyl was stuck on. I climbed up into the cab and got ready to start the engine.
“Ok, he’s parked our truck up behind the flatbed, ready to load it. I’m climbing down.”
“We’re not ready yet, can you stall him?” I saw six guys at the front trying to put on the bull-bar, but it didn’t fit. I’d grabbed the wrong one from the shelf.
“I’m on it,” said another voice in my ear. It was Stone and he’d walked down from where Jane was waiting to where the Sandkings were parked. I overheard him speaking to the delivery driver, “Hey buddy, shift them trucks will ya. Put ‘em back into the row before one of my guys runs into ‘em.” The driver mumbled and groaned, but didn’t argue.
Suddenly I felt the truck drop down to the ground. The bull-bar was on, everything looked perfect and the lead mechanic made a circle in the air telling me to start her up. The mighty V8 roared into life and I checked my watch. There were still five more minutes until the paint was fully dry, but I could still drive it so long as I didn’t go too fast.
“Wilby, as he’s moving the last truck you take the Sandking. I’m on my way,” I said.
“Shouldn’t be too hard, this idiot’s left the engine running,” Wilby replied.
I drove carefully out of LS Customs and around onto the up ramp. When I got onto the main road down to the South Port I heard Wilby in my earpiece.
“Ok, I’m in. Hurry up!”
“Jane, you guys ready?” I heard an affirmative from her and put on some speed down the hill to the Port. I could hear the police sirens as I got closer, but I knew I had to stay out of sight of the cops. Right now they were chasing Wilby all over the docks, he’d have to keep driving in circles until I was in position. I took the road just to the right of the overpass and looped around into the Jetsam car park, hoping everyone would be looking the other way as I crept slowly along the container lanes.
I counted off the rows, looking at the letters painted on the ground, until I was at ‘F’. I saw the big delivery truck with its rear doors open and a set of ramps leading into the back, with Jane and Stone standing beside them. I pulled into a the gap just behind it, in between the containers. I signalled Wilby that I was in position and he started making his way over to us. Not only had both trucks been made to look alike, but we were both wearing the same outfit. We looked identical so that as he swung around and up the ramp into the back of the truck, Stone pulled the ramps away and Jane slammed the doors closed as I drove out of the gap.
There was scarcely a second between him entering the lane from one side and me driving out of it from the other. The cops were about two seconds behind and didn’t even notice the switch, so now they were after me. I checked my stopwatch and saw that there were still two minutes remaining. I had avoid slamming into anything and damaging the truck, but this wasn’t so easy. She was a real beast, with all the mods we’d made the thing had so much power that it could easily go into a slide if I gave it too much gas. I rounded a corner at the top of the container lanes and almost collided with a police cruiser. Instead of hitting it though, the truck’s massive wheels simply rode up over the car’s hood and crushed the windshield as I carried on.
The Police had gotten a road block on the exit road so I had to pretend like I was scared of them (I could have easily have crashed my way through them) and double back to the other side of the docks where the flatbed was parked. I turned an impressive four-wheel slide around the warehouse on the corner with the ocean on my right. The flatbed driver had moved his truck across the road and was standing there with a pistol aimed at my head.
I threw on the e-brake and slid the Sandking around while I bailed out. I heard gunshots, but thankfully none of them hit the truck, or me. I jumped over some crates and dived off the edge of the dock, plunging into the ocean.
I allowed myself to sink and saw bullets streaking past me in the water. I kept diving deeper, until I saw the bottom, then swam out. When my lungs finally forced me back to the surface I heard the sirens some way off in the distance. I looked back to see cops scanning the area around the edge of the dock and a Police boat moving in.
I dove back down and swam for the beach near El Burro Heights. By the time I’d got there Jane was waiting for me.
“It worked,” she smiled. “Stone’s following the guy now, he’s on his way to the Casino with our truck.” We walked up the steps to the Elysian Fields Freeway and saw Wilby reversing the purloined Sandking out of the back of the truck.
“We can use this one for a practice run,” I said. We all got in and abandoned the Pounder on the waste ground at the side of the road.
Now everything was in place. We’d got the mini-sub, the insects and soon the getaway vehicle would be in place. We’d also sourced a Bugstars van and the uniforms and the other supplies we needed. In less then 48 hours it would all be over and we’d either be millionaires or we’d be dead.
We all stood in the planning room, staring at the big board and repeating what each of us was doing at each stage of the plan. Then Lester wiped everything off and told us to start again.
“We’re going to do this until everyone gets it right, with no mistakes,” said Lester. He was more aggressive than usual and I wondered if it was the extra stress of taking on the FIB, or his ever-changing meds, or something else.
The complexity of the plan had only just become apparent to my crew. Up until now we’d busied ourselves with little details, mainly setting up the getaway while Paige and Lester worked on the actual heist.
“Now, again!” Said Lester, and we repeated our individual roles from memory.
Everyone had been given a code name; Lester was ‘Joker’, Paige was ‘Queen’. I was ‘Ace’, Jane was ‘Seven’, Wilby ‘Jack’ and Stone was ‘Deuce’. Lester would be sitting somewhere a long way from the action, co-ordinating everyone remotely. Paige would be on the roof of the Casino, tapping into the computer network with Stone as her bodyguard.
Me, Wilby and Stone were dressed as Bugstar exterminators, with scuba suits under our uniforms. Jane would be out in the mini-sub, waiting for us to jump the Sandking into the ocean off the Palamino Highlands.
When it got to 8pm we all set our watches, checked our equipment one final time and got into the elevator down to the garage. Me and Wilby got into the Bugstars Van, Jane was on her motorcycle and Stone, Paige and Lester got into an anonymous looking Stanier.
I took the van to the Vinewood Racetrack next to the Casino and dropped Wilby off by the main gate. Then I drove over to the other side of the Freeway to the CNT building. While Wilby climbed onto the stadium roof, I negotiated my way past CNT’s receptionist, telling her that I was here to check the bait traps. She made me sign in, but didn’t ask for any ID, then she printed off a visitor’s pass for me. This pretty much allowed me a free reign of the building, including the roof. I got up there and slotted together my heavy sniper rifle.
I looked down the scope and saw Stone and Paige arriving in the main car park of the Casino. Then I swung across to the other end of the building and saw Wilby on the roof of the racetrack grandstand. There were two suited Merryweather guards on the roof of the Casino that I could see. It was vital that we took them down as quickly and quietly as possible so we could shut down the air conditioning and Paige could get to work on hacking into the security system.
“Jack, in position,” Wilby signalled. I saw Stone pull himself up onto the roof from the south end. He and Paige had climbed up the wall next to the Casino’s multi-story car park, where the trees blocked the sightline from the security cameras. Stone looked around then dashed behind a generator into cover.
“Deuce, watch it, there’s two guards at the north end,” I said.
“I see them, but we have to take them together,” said Wilby.
“I’ll cover as back-up,” I said. I was a lot further out, but could still get a clean shot if someone missed.
“I’ll take the one on the left,” said Stone.
“Your left or mine?” said Wilby.
“Both of you shoot the one to your left,” I suggested.
Wilby and Stone counted down together,
“3, 2, 1…” then I saw both guards drop. Stone broke cover and dragged the bodies out of the way, behind an electrical box.
“It’s all clear,” said Stone and Paige climbed onto the roof and made for the main air conditioning unit. She dropped the glass vial with the insects inside into the unit then pulled out the power cable.
It didn’t take long for the Casino’s own maintenance guys to arrive, via a door in the side of one of the utility cabins. They walked over to the AC unit and started trying to fix it. That was Stone’s cue to move in and take them both down. Me and Wilby covered him again in case something went wrong, but Stone caught them both by surprise. He dragged the bodies over where he’d hidden the others then grabbed their radio.
“This is maintenance,” he said into the radio, “the main unit’s down, gonna need a new pump. We’ll be about an hour.” There was chatter on the other end which Stone’s mic couldn’t quite pick up, but Stone told us everything was on-plan. It was time for the next phase.
Wilby started climbing down from the grandstand while I packed my sniper rifle back into my toolbox and made my way back to the van. As the temperature in the Casino’s vent system rose the insects we’d put inside would come out of hibernation. Pretty soon there’d be an infestation of them and since the Casino didn’t have its own pest control guys, they’d put in a call to Bugstars, a call that Paige would intercept and put through to Lester.
By the time I’d driven around to meet Wilby at the entrance to the racetrack, we got the signal from Lester that the call had been put in.
“I told them I’d have someone there in five minutes,” Lester informed us. We waited about six or seven minutes before driving around to the Casino’s vehicle entrance. There was a spiral ramp which led up to the Casino’s own multi-storey car park. The first level was a Service Area where all of the maintenance and delivery vehicles came in and out, including the armoured trucks that delivered the money. There was a security guard waiting there for us. I rolled down the window and pulled up next to him.
“You the bug killer guys?” He asked. I poked my head out of the driver’s window, looked at the large ‘Bugstars’ logo printed on the side of the van, looked back at the guard and nodded. “You got here quick.”
“We were right around the corner,” I said. “What’s the problem?” He told us to park up by the service elevator. As we got out of the van one of the managers came over.
“We’ve lost our main AC unit and now the place is filling up with flies,” said the manager. “Nothing we spray them with seems to kill them, the customers are starting to complain.”
I opened the back doors and we dragged out the huge heavy vacuum cleaner on wheels that was our shopping cart in disguise. The reason nothing was killing the bugs was that they had been genetically engineered at Humane Labs to be resistant to all forms of pesticide. The package we’d picked up from the Labs had contained the only thing that would kill them, a genetically coded solution which we’d watered down and filled our spray tanks with. We’d also put in some highly toxic poison which could take out anybody we sprayed it at, but it would only work at close range.
I put on my spray pack and then helped Wilby on with his.
“Where’s your AC unit?” I asked. “We should check that first.” He led us into the staff elevator and took us to the fourth floor. There were flies everywhere, on the walls, ceiling and buzzing around in the corridor. This was the floor where the Security Control room was, as well as all the manager’s offices. The manager with us showed us the ladder which led up to the roof and I climbed up while he waited at the bottom with Wilby. I walked out onto the roof and met Stone and Paige.
“How’s it going?” I said.
“Nobody else has come up,” said Stone. Paige was busy on her laptop, which she’d hardline connected with the Casino’s security system. Paige was vital to the operation and to getting us access to the Counting room and the Vault. I gave it a couple of minutes then I climbed back down the ladder.
“Yeah, they’re in there all right, but I think the nest is somewhere else in the building.” The manager let out a frustrated sigh, swatting at a fly as it buzzed in front of his face.
“Well can you get rid of them, quietly? If we have to close, it’ll be my job on the line!” I patted him on the shoulder and assured him it would be fine.
“My partner here will go down to the ground floor and I’ll start clearing out this level,” I said, pulling on a breather mask.
“Ok, but we need to assign you with a security guard. They’ll be able to let you through the security doors,” the manager explained.
He made a call and a couple of big Merryweather guys came out of the Security room just down the corridor. I got a glimse of how many others were inside, it looked like two camera operators and maybe one more guard. Wilby asked the guy with him to lead the way and they went back to the elevator. I dragged the vacuum cleaner with me over to the ladder which led up to the roof and parked it. Then I made straight for the Security room with the guard right behind me.
“Gotta check every room,” I said to the guard. He put his card into the reader by the door and opened it. I pumped the lever on my spray pack to pressurise it and as the door opened I hit the guard and everyone in the room with the spray. It knocked them all out in a couple of seconds. They dropped to the floor, choking and gagging, then they stopped moving.
“Ace - security room’s clear,” I said into my mic. This was the signal for everyone else to start the next stage of the plan.
“Jack - on first floor, proceeding to basement,” replied Wilby.
I connected the audio feed that Lester had made to the system in the security room. This would allow Lester to take and respond to calls from the floor staff or other security guards when they checked in. Then I put one of Lester’s special ‘deadlock’ cards into the reader on the inside of the security room. I pulled all of the bodies inside, walked out and closed the door behind me. The deadlock would freeze the locking system as long as it was in the reader, preventing any other cards from opening it from the outside.
I looked around for the tracking sensors Paige had told us about. There were twenty-four of them and they monitored the movement of the boxes throughout the building. I spotted one on the ceiling, it had a dozen or so flies resting on it. I pulled out a spray can containing the special magnetic polymer Paige had made up and squirted it onto the sensor. The flies ignored it, but the red light inside the dome of the sensor began flashing. Paige had told us that if we sprayed over half the sensors, the system would stop working. If we didn’t disable this system then when we moved the boxes from the Vault and through the Casino we’d trigger the Lockdown.
I made sure the rest of this floor was clear, going through all the offices, finding more tracking sensors and spraying them as I went, then I grabbed the vacuum cleaner and made for the elevator. I went down to the first floor where the staff elevator opened into the stairwell. To get to the basement I needed to cross the main Casino floor to the service elevator. I pressed the button on the wall to let myself out and walked into the noise and heat of the Casino.
It was really warming up on the main floor and there were swarms of flies, though they were mainly flying around up in the ceiling where it was warmer. People seemed oblivious to the heat and flies, however and were gambling away their money as quickly as they ever had. I made my way through the crowds and looked over at our Sandking sitting up on the ramps above the slot machines. Then I froze in my tracks. Sitting there in front of the slots was Sento! He was punching the buttons on three machines at a time.
“Joker, we got a problem. Sento’s here and he’s trying to win our Sandking!”
“I don’t suppose any of you told him what his part in the plan actually was?” Said Lester.
“He must’ve known? Surely he didn’t think we busted him out just to win a truck?”
“Could we get him thrown out?” Said Wilby.
I moved in a little closer to see how close he was to winning. He’d got two machines already close to the 16,000 limit, but the one in front of him was already glitched. I also noticed a couple of security guys standing nearby, at a discreet distance.
“I just intercepted a call from one of the floor managers,” said Lester. “He wants me to keep an eye on the weirdo playing the Lady Luck machines.”
“We don’t have time for this,” I said, “proceed with the plan, Joker can deal with it.”
I got to the staff door on the other side of the floor, dragging the giant vacuum cleaner with me, then realised it was locked.
“Queen, I need a door opened.” I said.
“I’m busy, ask somebody,” said Paige. I waved at one of the attendants. I didn’t have much trouble persuading them why I was here. They unlocked the door for me and I went into the storage room with the service elevator in it.
I got inside and pressed the ‘B’ button. The elevator only served the Basement, First Floor and Service Level where our van was parked, but it was huge. This was how they’d brought the giant Sandking in, then out through a false wall which could be opened up when the Casino was closed.
I walked into the Basement corridor and looked around for Wilby. I saw him down the end of the corridor and walked towards him, wheeling the vacuum cleaner behind me.
“I just found the guard room,” he whispered as I got nearer. There was a sort of locker room/canteen area for off duty Merryweather guards. We both walked in together and saw there were four guys inside. Together we took them down quickly and quietly, but I was starting to worry that the more bodies we left lying around the greater the risk someone would discover one of them. I spotted some more sensors up in the ceiling and sprayed them with the polymer.
“How many of these things have you sprayed?” I asked Wilby.
“About eight,” said Wilby. I’d done at least six, which meant we’d covered more than half the internal tracking system.
I did the same thing with the keycard reader as I had in the security control room and deadlocked it from the inside. We moved on to the Counting Room and stood at the main door. I looked the security system over; a retina scanner, a fingerprint reader and a keypad, just as Paige had described.
“Ace Jack in the hole,” I said, which was the signal to Paige.
“On it,” said Paige. “Ok, you’re in.” She’d managed to get into the security database and add my biometrics to the list of people allowed entry. I put my eye over the scanner and my thumb on the reader. Then I tapped in the five digit passcode we’d agreed on - five zeroes. The large door to the Counting Room sprang open.
Inside there was a large table and three people. Two women counting up cash which had come in from the main floor and one man watching them do it. There were cameras on all of them, but nobody was behind them. I hesitated briefly before spraying them with the noxious chemicals, these were just regular folk, they weren’t Merryweather scumbags or cops, just people doing a dumb job for not much money. Wilby looked at me, waiting for me to make the first move. I think he knew what was going through my mind.
I considered letting them go, but I knew it would only take one of them to raise the alarm and it was over. Everyone would get caught and it would be my fault. Too bad. I sprayed the guy as he walked towards me, his mouth open to form a question. The spray hit him in the face and he choked and collapsed on the floor. Wilby sprayed the women and they died in seconds.
Once everyone was down we moved straight to the door at the back of the room. This led to an elevator down into the sub-basement. We were so close now.
“Ok, we’ve got a security system like before, retina, fingerprint, but no keypad.”
“You sure?” Said Paige, who hadn’t been able to access this part of the Casino. “There must be a third device?” I looked again.
“Here,” said Wilby, pointing to the other side of the doorway. There was a coloured dial and below it two rows of six buttons, each row had a different die face on from 1 to 6.
“There’s a dial and a bunch of dice on some buttons,” I said. There was a pause.
“Are the dice different colours?” Said Paige.
“Yeah, the top row’s red the bottom row’s blue. The dial’s all different colours too. What does it mean?” I asked.
“It means this was coded by Mike Haynes,” said Paige. “I might have guessed, this stuff is his trademark.”
“So what do we do?” I said, knowing that time was already running out.
“We could evacuate the building,” said Lester, “that would bring the guards up from the Vault, and they wouldn’t be able to lockdown the building.”
“No, I’ve got it,” said Paige. “It’s got something to do with days, the number of days in a year, different code each day. What colours does the dial have on it?” Paige asked. I looked closer. “Black, brown, red, orange…”
“Yellow, green, blue, violet, grey, white?” Paige read the colours on the dial without even being able to see it.”
“How did you know that?” I asked.
“It’s the resistor code, there’s ten colours right?” Now she was thinking out loud. “365 days in a year, 36 different combinations of two dice. Haynes loves all this kind of crap.”
While we were talking Wilby went around the room and searched the pockets of the dead staff members. He turned up a couple of keycards but nothing else useful.
“What about the retina and finger print scan?” Said Wilby.
“It’ll be coded to that manager guy probably,” I said. He went over to the manager and dragged him towards the door.
“Lester, what day is it?” Said Paige.
“Er, Sunday? The 6th?” Said Lester.
“No, the ‘day’! If January 1st is 1, the 2nd is 2.” Lester suddenly realised what she was talking about and scrambled for a diary.
“279,” said Lester.
“So number 279 in the sequence would be,”
“I got the fingerprint sorted,” said Wilby, “but this guy’s eyelids are swelled up from the spray.”
“No, ten colours and thirty-six combinations doesn’t fit 365 days,” said Lester.
“The Casino’s closed five days of the year,” said Paige.
“New Years, Christmas, Boxing Day?” I said.
“4th of July and Thanksgiving,” said Lester.
“But it’s October, so 279 minus 2?” Said Paige. “277 divided by 36 is?”
“7.69,” said Lester, who had now picked up a calculator.
“Turn the dial to blue,” said Paige.
“I think I have an idea how to get the retina,” said wilby.
“Then press the four, then the six.” I set the dial then pressed the buttons in sequence. I heard a very disturbing squishing sound to my left and concentrated very hard on the wall in front of me. The door to the elevator opened.
“We’re in,” I said.
“Hurry up! I think someone’s outside the security room,” said Lester.
“Deuce, go down and take a look,” I said to Stone. “We’ll be out of contact while we’re in the vault.” I dragged the vacuum cleaner into the elevator and Wilby got in next to me. I pressed the single button on the panel and we descended.
“By the way,” said Paige, “I reprogrammed the gun-shot detector. It won’t trigger the lockdown now.”
“How did she know that code?” Said Wilby.
“Simple,” Paige’s voice crackled in and out in our ears, “I was at University with Haynes and I happen to know he majored in electrical engineering and game theory.” But Wilby didn’t look convinced.
Since Paige hadn’t been able to access the Counting Room or the Vault in her time working under cover in the Casino we had no idea what to expect when those elevator doors opened. All we knew was that the Vault was buried thirty feet beneath the ground and had its own independent security system. We both primed our spray packs and when the doors opened we saw a brightly lit room which was completely white from floor to ceiling. There was a security door at the far end and two Merryweather guards standing either side of it.
They raised their SMGs as the doors were opening, probably as part of some operational protocol, but when they saw two guys with breather masks and Bugstar uniforms they looked a little puzzled. We stepped out of the elevator and I made sure the vacuum cleaner was blocking the door from closing. One of the guards said,
“Who are you? Where’s your security clearance?” We were just about in range to spray them with the toxic substance, but they were ready for us.
I was lucky and dodged out of the way of my guard’s firing arc as I sprayed him, but Wilby wasn’t as fortunate. I turned my spray onto the other guard to make sure he was neutralised, but by then Wilby was on the floor, bleeding from his leg and shoulder. I ripped off his breather mask.
“How bad?” said Wilby, through gritted teeth.
“It’s, not great,” I said, knowing I should have lied but at the same time I respected Wilby too much not to be honest with him.
I tried to stop the bleeding as much as I could. I packed out Wilby’s shoulder wound with some rag and zipped the SCUBA suit that he was wearing under his overalls over it. Then I tore off one of the shirt sleeves from the guard’s uniform and wrapped that tight around his injured leg.
“Can you stand?” I said, but he was already passing in and out of consciousness.
I didn’t even want the money now, all I cared about was saving my friend. Right at that moment I’d have called an ambulance if I could and spent the next twenty years in prison, but then I reasoned with myself that this wasn’t a good plan. I had to hope Wilby would be alright and carry on. I moved to the security door and hooked another of Lester’s gadgets into the card reader. It ran an algorithm that analysed the system and found six weak points, then listed them in order of how easy they’d be to hack.
I selected the first option and it ran a software package that filled the screen with a load of numbers. I’d have to switch Wilby and Stone around, I thought, as the sequence did its work. Paige could take Wilby out on her pre-planned escape route instead of Stone, then Stone could take over Wilby’s role. Maybe Lester knew how to get him medical treatment, no questions asked.
Suddenly the big vault door clicked open. There was a tiny room with the familiar brown, metal cash boxes stacked on their shelves. On the left were the empty ones, but ahead of me and to the right were twenty-four full ones. I threw them across the floor to the elevator. Wilby regained consciousness briefly and rolled onto his side. I ran to the elevator and bundled every box inside the empty cylinder of the vacuum cleaner. Then I clamped the lid closed and went over to Wilby. I dragged him inside the elevator and pressed the button.
The doors opened and I saw the Counting Room just as we’d left it, thankful that no alarms had gone off and the Lockdown hadn’t been triggered by anything we’d done.
“Jack’s been hit, he’s bleeding bad, he needs medical attention!” I said into my comm unit.
“Get up here,” said Lester, “we’ve got another problem.” I didn’t wait around to listen to what it was. I dragged the vacuum out of the Counting Room and into the service elevator, then I went back for Wilby. I took us up to the Service Level.
“Deuce, meet me on the fourth floor at the staff elevator. Queen will have to take Jack out with her.”
“Forget about that, Sento’s just won our getaway vehicle,” said Lester.
I saw our Bugstars van still parked where we’d left it and wheeled the vacuum over to it. Then I collected Wilby and made for the staff elevator.
“It doesn’t matter about Sento,” I said. “We’ve got the goods, we’re coming out!”
“But they keep asking for security to go down to get Sento, there’s only so long I can stall them before someone tries to get into the security room or realises what’s happening!” Said Lester.
On the fourth floor I met Stone, standing over the body of another Merryweather guard. We bundled Wilby up the ladder onto the roof then I climbed up, with Stone behind me pulling the guard up with one hand while climbing the ladder with the other. Paige had packed up her laptop into her backpack and was ready to go, but she needed Stone to cover her exit, that had been the plan.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She said. “You can’t switch things up now,”
“He’s been shot, take care of him,” I told her.
“That wasn’t the plan! If he can’t get out on his own, put a bullet in his head and everyone’s share goes up.” I thought she was joking around, but then it dawned on me, she was dead serious. Then I must have just lost it.
The next thing I remember is being on the edge of the roof with my hands gripping Paige’s flimsy T-Shirt and Stone trying to pull me back.
“If a member of my crew dies, you die! Do not fuck with me or my crew, you got that?”
“What’s going on!” Screamed Lester down the comm, “get out of there now!”
“Come on man, we’ve got a Casino to rob,” said Stone. He grabbed my arm and led me back to the ladder.
At the bottom of the access ladder we saw two more Merryweather guards getting out of the elevator. I wondered if these were the last two guards in the building, we seemed to have taken down more than a dozen. It was risky, but after what happened in the Vault I wanted to make sure we took them down clean. So far as I knew they still believed we were pest control guys.
“They can’t get the door open, something about a faulty reader,” one of the guards said to the other.
“Hey, have either of you guys seen the Manager?” We shook our heads and carried on towards the elevator. As we passed them, Stone turned and grabbed one of them from behind, snapping his neck. I went for the other one with an elbow slash to the back of the skull.
We dragged the bodies into the elevator with us and took them down to the Service Level. It was inevitable that someone was going to notice something soon, we had to move out. When we got to the van we stuffed the bodies of the guards in the back and locked the doors. I checked the cash boxes were still in the vacuum and dragged it into the service elevator. We took that down to the first floor and let ourselves into the main Casino.
The heat was the first thing that hit us, then the noise, then the flies. They were everywhere, it looked like another of the genetic traits they’d been given was the ability to breed in minutes. And still there were crowds of people in the Casino. The biggest group was gathered around the Lady Luck machines where Sento was, right in front of our getaway vehicle. We made our way over, dragging the wheeled vacuum cleaner behind us.
Sento was stuck in the middle of the crowd with a bunch of security people and floor managers on one side and a hoard of customers on the other. The argument seemed to be about Sento not being allowed to win his second truck of the week, while the customers complained that this was unfair and the Casino wasn’t playing by its own rules.
It was the perfect distraction, we couldn’t have come up with anything better ourselves. I waded in to the crowd and announced,
“Everybody move back, stand clear! There’s a nest somewhere in here and my guess would be it’s in that truck.” I looked at the huge Sandking proudly overhanging the row of slots, like it was about to leap off a cliff.
“In the truck?” Said one of the floor staff.
“It has to be,” I explained. “It was brought in here recently right?” I asked. “Imported from China I’m guessing. Probably loaded with billions of these little bugs,” I continued, dragging the vacuum around to the back of the Sandking. I got Stone to help me lift it into the tailgate of the truck, then I climbed in after it.
Nobody stopped us. I pushed the vacuum up to the front of the truck and locked it down. Once it was secure I got onto the ramp and edged along the side of the truck, pretending to look for a nest.
“Probably up here somewhere,” I said, “near the engine or inside the heater.” Stone followed me up the other side of the ramp, to the passenger door. I ran my hand under the wheel-arch and felt the handle of the concealed micro-SMG. Stone grabbed his gun from under the other wheel-arch got in through the passenger door. Then I opened the driver’s door and got in.
There were still too many people between us and the main doors, but I hit the starter button under the dashboard and the engine roared to life.
“Hey, you can’t…” someone started to say and I fired off the gun through the window. Everyone scattered, screaming and then the lockdown alarm went off.
I pushed the accelerator into the floor and the Sandking launched from the ramps, smashed into the ceiling, sending electrical sparks, ceiling tiles and debris raining down, then it hit the floor, just in front of the security desk where me and Lester had come in the first time we’d come here. The steel shutters were already a third of the way down the main doors, but I drove right at them, out through the lobby window.
We felt the impact on the roof as we smashed through the shutters but we were out. The truck rolled over the top of a taxi waiting on the rank outside and smashed into the side of a limo. I backed up and turned left, facing south toward our getaway route.
We had over two million dollars in untraceable cash in the back of a supercharged, bulletproof truck and every cop and FIB officer in the city had just been alerted to where we were. Now all we had to do now was make it to the ocean and the waiting mini-sub.
The Sandking’s engine sounded even louder under the canopy in front of the Casino. We roared under it then turned a sharp left, following the road around the side of the building to the tunnel. I could already hear sirens on the main road and there were a lot of them, but we weren’t going anywhere near the tarmac.
The tunnel brought us out into the paddock area in the middle of the Racetrack. We passed the buildings, up the side of the railings and splashed through the small lake, lining up for the grass bank. We jumped the railing and landed on the dirt track as two sets of flashing lights showed up on our left.
Two patrol cars had come in from the main road; the first of many. I swung right, following the track and keeping the cars behind us. Stone started firing out of the side window, but at the speed we were going he had no chance of hitting anything, at least not deliberately.
One of the cop cars followed us while the smarter of the two realised we’d be coming back around and tried to block the track by the main exit. By the time we came to make our first lap of the track more cars and an SUV had joined the roadblock. Bullets pinged off the hood as I drove straight at the obstruction. I looked for the weakest point between two cars and took the Sandking right over the top of them, heading for the stables to the north of the track.
Now everything was behind us. Cops scrambled back into their vehicles to chase after us and a couple of heavier vehicles, as well as FIB cruisers, joined the chase. At the end of the stables there was a gap in the fence then we were onto grass, a steep incline up to the top of the first hill. We didn’t even slow down as we powered up the slope, most of the cop cars got stuck at the bottom and a couple of the SUVs got tangled up in the mayhem.
By now a couple of police choppers had joined in.
“Want me to take ‘em down,” said Stone.
“Nah, they can’t hurt us. Anyway, we need witnesses.” Police marksmen were leaning out of the sides of the helicopters, but on the rough terrain we were a difficult target and I knew the Sandking could soak up anything they had to throw at us. “Hey, see if you can find out whether Paige and Wilby made it out ok,” I told Stone.
The plan had been for the roof team, originally Stone and Paige, to rappel down the side of the Casino just before we’d got onto the main floor. Paige and her ‘bodyguard’ were supposed to escape in a car we’d left parked in the North car park, before the alarm got raised, but with Wilby in the state he was I didn’t know if they’d been quick enough. I couldn’t afford to distract myself with such thoughts, but it was difficult.
We crested the top of the hill and bounded over the rocks on the other side, down towards the Land Act Reservoir where we’d jacked the mini-sub. I could see the water below us glistening in the moonlight. I took my foot off the accelerator and let the braking effect of the engine gently bring us back under control. When we reached the road at the bottom I saw more flashing lights, this time the red domes of Blaine County Sheriff cruisers.
I crossed the road, down into the soft mud that surrounded the reservoir. A couple of the cruisers tried to follow and immediately got stuck, the others pulled up and started shooting with pistols. I ignored them and carried on around the edge of the water, over to the opposite side of the reservoir. I slowed down and drove into the shallow water, crossing to the eastern bank. Water started coming up into the footwell, but the engine intake was still sucking in air. When the water was up to our knees I knew we'd gotten about as far as we could go. I turned a sharp left, scraping the front bumper onto the rocks. It was an almost impossibly steep bank, but I had faith. Began feeding in the power until I could feel the rear wheels gripping onto the bottom of the slope, then gave it everything it had.
The four huge tires dug into the earth and pulled us up the near vertical rock face. Every vehicle that had been behind us was now over half a mile away, unable to follow, but the choppers were still there. I looked out and saw one that was almost level with us, following the contour of the hill. He was no more than twenty feet away, I could see the pilot’s face and could probably have taken him out with my micro-SMG, but decided instead to concentrate on driving. The police snipers were shooting at the tyres and the engine, but most of there shots were missing. I wondered how much ammo they carried.
When we got to the top of the second hill I saw the ocean and the lights of the Palomino Freeway below. I put on some speed again and we flew right over the top of another line of cop cruisers on the dirt road that led to the dam. The truck got a little out of control on the way down the embankment, narrowly missing a tree and a rock, but when we’d flattened out I had it pointing vaguely the right way again.
“Lester says Paige and Wilby got out,” said Stone, and I felt a little less worried, but then I considered the possibility that Lester might just be telling me that to make me feel better, or maybe even Stone had made it up. If something had happened to Wilby, would either of them want to tell me?
We drove across the interstate and sent cars and trucks swerving in all directions. Then we crossed the median strip and caused more mayhem on the other side, slamming into a delivery van and losing our front wing in the process. By now the Sandking was pretty beat up; we’d lost a rear door, a couple of fenders and the hood, but she only needed to last another mile.
I looked for the train tracks and followed them up to the NOOSE building. We needed to get around the back and onto the road for the last part of our escape route. A couple of cop cars piled in behind us from the freeway but they hit the rocks and disappeared down the chasm between the railroad and the security fence around the NOOSE.
“Did you put on a wetsuit?” I said to Stone.
“Nah, I didn’t think I’d need it,” he said.
“You were supposed to put one on under your overalls, in case you got switched for me or Wilby,” I told him. There didn’t seem much point arguing about it now. “You know what to do?” I asked him.
“Yeah yeah, I know!” he assured me.
We passed the NOOSE building and I spotted the profile of our hill, silhouetted in the night sky. I aimed for the summit and had faith that our amazing Sandking would carry us to the top, but that didn't mean I wasn't nervous. We were so close now, all I had to do was clear the rocks beneath the cliff when we drove off it and hopefully Jane would be waiting for us.
I followed the ridge to the summit of the last hill and stopped. I had to hit the last part perfectly, and at over 100mph, or it would all be over. Everything depended on this. I looked around, there were no cop cars, though we now had four choppers buzzing around us. The marksmen had given up shooting and were waiting to see what our next move would be.
I gunned the engine then selected the high-gear ratio. The body of the truck rocked with the torque of the huge engine, I gripped the wheel with both hands.
“Let’s do it man!” said Stone, bracing himself against the dashboard.
At first I just let her roll down the slope, not even touching the accelerator. I didn't want any wheelspin, I had to maintain traction. Then I fed in some power while I lined us up just to the right of the rock sticking out of the water beyond the cliff’s edge. When I checked the speedometer we were doing fifty and there was no way to stop now. I pressed my right foot down, all the way to the floor, then I flipped open the safety catch on the nitro button.
When I saw the tree on the very edge of the cliff I lined us up to the left of it. The ground started to flatten out and the heavy truck was sinking down onto its big tyres. We were already going like a rocket, travelling at over 100mph as I glimpsed at the speedo, then I hit the nitro. We were pressed back into our seats as over three tons of truck lurched forward. Then it all went quiet. We went weightless as we went off the edge of the cliff. To my relief we were exactly where we were supposed to be, flying through the air sixty feet above the ocean.
Sand, waves and rocks all blurred past beneath us and we both took in a big gulp of air. I took my hands off the wheel and grabbed the hand holds, then wedged my feet on the dashboard. Stone braced himself for the impact too, closing his eyes and burying his head into his chest.
We plunged deep into the ocean, well clear of the rocks. We sank like a rock, and soon I could see the lights of the mini-sub coming towards us. I was so relieved to have made the jump that I'd almost forgotten what I was supposed to do next. Most of the truck’s windows were already smashed so the cabin had filled up with water pretty quickly. I turned around to see that the top part of the back seat had floated up to the roof, just as the mechanics had rigged it to do. In the hidden storage compartment was our scuba gear. I grabbed a tank and put the mouthpiece between my teeth, then reached back to get one for Stone.
When we finally settled on the bottom, we were both breathing from the tanks. I pulled off my overalls and fitted the fins onto my feet. I carefully swam through the smashed glass into the rear compartment and pulled the inner release on the bedcap. The whole thing floated off and Stone swam around from the side door. Jane brought the sub around and we started unloading the boxes.
The tracking devices would still be working, at least on some of the boxes, which meant we weren’t safe yet. We picked up each box and stuck them onto the magnetic plates that had been fitted to the sides of the sub. When all of them were attached we swam underneath to get in through the hatch. Jane opened it from the inside and helped us up.
“Glad you could make it,” she greeted us. The red interior lights made everything look strange, but I could still tell from Jane’s expression that something was wrong.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I was followed here. Not a mini-sub, I mean a real one. Where’s Wilby?”
“He’s okay, but he took a bullet, I sent him out with Paige.”
Jane took the pilot’s seat and I sat next to her. Stone opened up the flip seat in the back and sat down.
“How do you know there’s a sub?” I asked.
“They’ve been pinging me all the way from the cave.”
“You think someone’s told the Feds?” Said Stone. Neither of us knew.
We carried on, out to the deeper waters and dove down towards 400 feet. We followed the ocean floor as it fell away sharply from the coast. Once we passed 450 feet we heard the first of the boxes go ‘thud’. Then another one went, and another. Jane levelled us off at 480 feet and we waited, counting each of the imploding boxes until we got to 24.
“That’s all of them,” I said.
“Do we go up?” Said Jane.
“No, stay at this level, head north, up through that channel,” I said.
We tracked north, staying inside the underwater canyons that ran along the sea bed. After about ten minutes we turned in towards the coast and followed the floor up to around 100 feet. Jane pulled up then me and Stone put our diving gear on and went back out through the hatch. Once we were clear Jane pulled a switch, releasing the electromagnet which was connected to the metal plates. All of the boxes dropped away. I passed each one to Stone and he lifted them up through the bottom hatch, until all the boxes were inside, then we climbed in again and closed the hatch.
We carried on along the coast, as we had before.
“They can’t detect us in these deep valleys can they?” said Stone. “I mean, it’s like radar, too much terrain?”
“Maybe they’ll be able to hear us,” said Jane. As she drove, we started pulling the bundles of cash out of the boxes and packing them in bags. Eventually we dumped the empty boxes out through the hatch and counted up how much we’d taken.
“Over $2.4 million,” I announced proudly. All we had to do now was complete our vanishing act. “I need to see where we are,” I said. Over an hour had passed since we’d crashed the Sandking into the ocean.
We broke out onto the surface near to El Gordo lighthouse. The eastern horizon was already starting to glow with the first rays of the sun. We opened up the top hatch and gasped as the fresh air hit our tired lungs. Jane, who had been down in the mini-sub almost the whole night, pulled herself onto the top deck and stood up, stretching her arms and back.
“How much battery do we have left?” I asked.
“Check the gauge in the middle,” she said. There were readouts for compressed air (which was now recharging from the surface), carbon dioxide levels and battery charge. We only had about twenty percent of our battery left, enough for roughly one hour at full speed.
“Don’t forget, with three of us on board, plus the cash, plus those metal plates, we’re burning up the power faster,” Jane reminded me.
I looked for my phone, sealed in a watertight pocket, and was just about to call Lester when Jane suddenly jumped back inside.
“Shit!”
“What is it?” I asked.
“The sub, it’s there. It’s surfaced!” I poked my head out through the hatch and between the rolling waves I could see, on the eastern horizon, the unmistakable outline of a Los Santos-class submarine.
“Have they seen us?” Stone said. I could already tell that he wanted to jump out and swim for it, but I couldn’t risk him being captured. If the FIB got a hold of any of us now, it would be disaster for the rest of us. Far easier to just put a bullet in all our heads.
“DIVE!” I said to Jane and she couldn’t help smiling.
“Aye, Captain.”
We took the mini-sub all the way down to the bottom, but there was nowhere we could hide. They’d been tracking us this whole time. We couldn’t escape. Maybe we could get rid of the money somewhere, in a wreck or something and come back for it later. Maybe we’d be better to go back to the city and lose ourselves like we always did. We stayed submerged and followed the coast further north around Mount Gordo as we tried to come up with some plan, but I knew it was futile.
“What if we scuttle the sub and swim out separately, split up.” Said Jane.
“Only two sets of scuba gear,” I said.
“I could make it to the surface,” said Jane.
“Makes no difference,” said Stone. “That submarine out there can out-dive us, out-run us, out-gun us.” It wasn’t like Stone to admit defeat, but among all our many exploits together I could’t remember ever being in a situation as hopeless as this.
After going over everything several more times, we all had to admit that Stone was right. Then the battery died on us. As we got level with Procopio Beach the motor wound down to a stop.
“If we don’t blow the tanks now, we’ll sink,” said Jane. I gathered up the six bags of money we had and gave two each to Jane and Stone.
“Do it,” I said. “Abandon ship, every man for himself. Hide the money or risk getting caught with it, it’s up to you.” Jane pulled the emergency cable that dumped all of the remaining compressed air into the ballast tanks and the mini-sub rushed up to the surface. We all climbed out, me and Jane through the top hatch and Stone through the bottom. With both hatches open at the same time the sub flooded with water and rolled onto its side. We swam away in opposite directions but then heard the sound of an outboard motor.
There was a dinghy coming from the west. We assumed the worst and swam away but then Stone yelled out,
“Hey, look, it’s Wilby.” I had my doubts. Why would he be out here, alone, in a boat? It just didn’t make any sense. The dinghy’s engines cut out and it continued to drift between all of us. I could see now that it really was Wilby, but something looked odd about the way he was hanging on to the wheel. I could see his face, but he was wrapped in a big overcoat with the collar up. He looked very pale and he wasn’t moving.
Stone swam towards the boat and grabbed the rope on the side.
“No, it’s a trap!” I yelled, but too late. The dinghy erupted in a ball of white-orange flame. Me and Jane dove beneath the water, but still felt the shockwave. I was almost too stunned to keep holing my breath, but managed to get back to the surface again. We swam to shore and crawled up onto the beach. Looking out to sea there wasn’t a trace of the dinghy, the mini-sub, Stone, Wilby or the Navy.
The sun was over the horizon now. I wiped the salt from my eyes, and then I looked at my hands. They were dark green. I sat there for a minute, puzzling over everything I'd been in contact with since we'd hit the water. Jane’s hands were fine, but all over mine was a green dye, or some kind of ink. Then I opened one of the bags. It had been impossible to see in when we were inside the sub, with its red lights, but all of the notes were smudged. It was fake money, all of it! The whole job had been a waste of time.
The strange thing was that I didn’t even have the energy to get mad, or feel sorry for my dead crew mates. It all seemed to wash over me like the waves lapping up onto the beach. I couldn’t even begin to figure out who it had been who had sold us out, but somebody had.
I picked up my phone, called my mechanic and ordered up my favourite car, the Dewbauchee JB 700.
“We’ll have to leave town,” I said to Jane.
“Really?” She said.
“Actually we’ll have to leave the state, go on the lam for a while.”
“Actually, I was starting to get a little tired of this place,” smiled Jane.
I heard my car pull up on the road above us and we walked over to it. The mechanic was already gone, in his usual manner, and we got inside. I looked back as we drove away, wondering where we’d go and whether I’d ever see this place again. One day, I thought, but probably not for a while.