THE SETUP
The call came late one evening.
"Hey it's Lester. I just heard a casino opened up in town. Apparently it pretty fun. Maybe you wanna check it out?"
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.
"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 100k," said Paige, "and there's at least twenty of them being held in the Vault at any one time."
"But, there's a problem," added Lester. Paige put up another photo. "Each box has a tracking device inside. The boxes are un-hackable in any sort of reasonable time that would let you open more than two or three of them before you were caught. You'd need so much explosive to get one of them open that you'd end up destroying 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 might be 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."
"And 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 I'd guess 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 you're probably thinking this job is impossible, right? 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 or tip off any of the numerous guards, or show up on the cameras? And even if by some miracle we do get out, how do we disable the tracking devices inside the boxes without destroying all 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. "Uh, 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 what, we dump them out at sea and come back for them?" I asked.
"We could do that, but we'd risk not being able to find them again, the trackers would go off-line. No, we're going to need a submarine, actually mini-sub. I happen to know there's one in storage at Fort Zancudo. Once the boxes have been compromised we can empty them and use the sub to 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. To get the mini-sub 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 stuck on the board next to this job.
"Stage two is to wait for the Army to investigate the crash and then go to the Reservoir and steal the 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, we're still working out the finer details, but remember that Sandking in the middle of the Casino? Well, we're going to switch it with our own, fully modded and with some hidden equipment inside. More about that later." There were no photos for this part of the plan.
Lester and Paige got up to leave and I walked with them to the door.
"I'll get the old crew back together, I'm sure they've gotten as bored with retirement as I have," I said.
"Good, get ready to move in the next two days. I'll send you all the details for the Zancudo job and what you'll need to do once the plane goes down. As for all the stuff inside the Casino, the actual Heist, most of that's going to be down to me and Paige, but we'll need you and your crew to do all the heavy lifting of course.
"You can trust us," I said. Just tell us what needs doing and we'll deliver you the goods!" I smiled.
