(A/N: Yo! Sorry I haven't updated in a while! here's the next part though!)

Sly Cooper: Armed and Dangerous

Tampico, Mexico

20 miles offshore

3:17 am

1 week after the London job

A light gleamed through the foggy gloom of the Mexican waters, then quickly went out. Many more times it did this, alerting any other ships nearby of its presence. A foghorn blew, startling a few seagulls off a buoy and into the dawn sky. On deck of the ship in question, two smaller lights tried helplessly to poke through the humid atmosphere, smoke trailing from both.

Mikhail finished his cigarette and flicked the butte into the foamy waters, then turned to go back inside while Dimitri, also finished with his cigarette, simply pulled out and lit another one and continued smoking. The panther sighed, tasting the nicotine and tobacco coating his throat and lungs. He really should get off the stuff. They weren't called 'death sticks' for nothing.

Down in the cargo hold, Julio, Bentley and Penelope were all typing on laptops, hooked up to a wireless connector that was connected, illegally of course, to a military network provider, allowing them around the world Internet. The military, of course, had yet to find out about this, but it worked for now.

Julio was currently searching through land deeds and profit records of various businesses in Mexico City, and wasn't surprised to find that they gave no clue whatsoever to what businesses Muggshot owned. He probably had bought them all under different names. Possibly the names of a few men that worked for him. After stumbling on this thought, he'd run it by Bentley and Penelope, who were currently searching the Mexican Interpol's records, running by all the names that were on the land deeds. They had yet to see the results of the search.

Half a dozen feet away, Marty was cleaning his Tommy gun for the fourteenth time. Caroline counted it when he'd put the submachine gun down, waited a few minutes, then picked up the dirty rag he'd been using and go at it again. She sat next to him, leaning against the wall--no, bulkhead, she reminded herself. Stupid ship terms--and watching him, getting conversation out of him from time to time. A Webley semi-automatic top loading revolver sat in her lap, unloaded of course. That was part of their agreement; Marty and Julio's, not hers. No ammo until the shots started to fly.

As Marty finished up, he finally simply packed away the Tommy gun, then sat in an uncomfortable silence. Finally, after about five minutes, he turned to another gun case, this one for handguns, and extracted two customized firearms; twin semi-automatic .50 caliber Beretta handguns, each with twelve shot magazines. Marty had adjusted the triggers to such sensitivity that such touching them would set them off. The guns had been packed away for quite some time, since Marty had gotten shot in the left hand once and hadn't ever really thought of taking the guns back out again, and the grease on the pistols had attracted so much dust and grime that the slides made a scraping noise every time they moved.

Taking the pistols apart, he began cleaning again. Cleaning a gun was sort of a Zen thing to Marty. After about twenty minutes of work on the first pistol, a Texan voice over the loudspeaker announced "Attention, all those of you below decks who want to get off, we're about five minutes away from the dock. Once there, you ankle biters had better get ready to roll, since it'll only take two or three minutes to dock and I want to get all that ammo you have out of here!"

Down in one of the cabins, Sly grinned and declared "He's just mad that we didn't tell him what the cargo was."

They were, indeed, illegally transporting all this ammunition, and the captain of the ship, an irritable, middle aged Blue tick hound, had objected very strongly when the first crate was opened in front of him, but a couple hundred American dollars, real this time, persuaded him otherwise.

Sly stood and stretched, reaching for his shirt, which had been tossed onto the floor. As he pulled the garment over his head and reached for his pants and shoes next, he looked to Carmelita, who was still asleep. He gently shook her awake, saying "Wake up, Spanish Eyes, we're docking soon."

Carmelita opened one hazel eye halfway, then closed it, saying "Five more minutes…"

Sly chuckled and said "That's when we're docking."

He got a swat in the face for his troubles.

Up in the wheelhouse, Captain Rex Cannings watched the shoreline. He never liked old Mexico, never liked New Mexico either, come to think of it, but all of this money for just one trip overseas was too much to put down.

The radio on the map table, where a seagull was working on chartering their next course. The captain picked it up, then winced as a stream of Spanish flooded into his ear. He never was good with Spanish. He did, however, manage to figure out what they wanted. He told the people on the other end, in broken Spanish, that their cargo was passengers and a few crates that he didn't know the contents of. He wasn't stupid. This wasn't the first time he'd done a gun-run. Finally, he was given clearance to dock.

"Helmsman, bring us in." he said.

"Aye, Captain," said the gecko at the wheel.

Meanwhile, on shore, in an air-conditioned SUV, a dog turned off a HAM radio, tucking the device away, then turning to the driver.

"Its set. Call in the cavalry."

The driver slid the window down slightly, tossed out his still-burning cigarette, then pulled out a cell-phone, speed-dialing a number.

The ship slowed speed to dead slow, finally coming to where it was to be berthed. Two sailors, both woodpeckers, leapt over the side, catching the ropes that were thrown after them, then tied the ship down as it stopped altogether. The gangplank was soon set down afterwards, and the process of unloading the cargo was underway. All the passengers lined themselves up on deck, all gazing out at the city. All were sweating in the immense heat, as well as the fact that some had to wear jackets to cover firearms they just could not drop. You can probably guess who they are.

Sly, Murray, and Penelope had been more than glad to shuck their guns, but if any of the McCoy Gang left the weapons behind, to them it would be like cutting off a limb. Marty sighed at that thought, wondering if he could drop his gun and leave it once he started his new life in America.

As the passengers started down the gangplank, Marty looked around briefly, noting all the crates at this part of the dock. Blinking, he looked back to the rest of the harbor. This part of the port hadn't been used in a while, he could tell. He also noticed that the other ships were all a fair distance from them. He frowned. Something just wasn't right.

Turning back around, he was just in time to see the tan cap of a Mexican police officer disappear behind a crate. He blinked again, thinking he had imagined it. Then, as he glanced around, he saw other flashes of movement. A cap here, a face there…a rifle barrel easing out from behind a crate.

Marty's eyes widened. The rest of the gang was grouped together on the dock, watching the ammunition crates being unloaded from the ship. The crates that the police were hiding behind were about ten feet from where the ammunition was being stacked, and there weren't that many crates to begin with. Only about twenty, and the last one was being unloaded.

The horse's hand went to his jacket and slowly undid the zipper…until he saw, plainly, a coyote rising up with a brand new T43 Shock Rifle, taking aim at Sly…

Marty never really knew what happened in the brief second when everything went to hell, even though, in the future, he would think on it time and time again. All he knew was that, suddenly, his gun was in his hand, his hand was up in the air, and he shouted "POLICE!" just as he fired off a single shot, into the air.

Then, every officer, all holding shock guns, sprang up from behind their crates, every gun barrel pointed at him, every sight set on him.

Then, he was hit with twenty 2,000 volt shock bolts. His whole body was electrocuted, his limbs rigid. However, that power had to go somewhere, right?

He was aware of his foot blowing up, aware of the blood that splattered on everything, aware of his gun exploding, aware of how his pinky finger and the finger next to it were blown off, saw them spiraling past his vision, but he felt no pain. In fact, he felt nothing at all. And suddenly, he knew no more.

As Caroline watched the ammo getting stacked up, she heard Marty shout "POLICE!" heard the single shot, and turned to see…nothing. Where Marty had been before, you could only see some shrapnel buried in the wood, a large scorch mark in a ring…and blood everywhere, as well as two of his fingers laying next to a crate, the bloody marks of where they'd hit still visible. And then she heard the splash. She hurried to the edge of the dock, saw a flash of brown in a mist of red, and without hesitation dove in.

At first, she couldn't see anything through the cloud of red, but after a second, her hand connected with something solid, and she grabbed it.

She felt leather.

Quickly, she tried to go for the surface, but realized that Marty's sheepskin coat and his remaining steel toed boot were weighing him down, and he was slowly sinking. Quickly, she pulled off the jacket, and it continued sinking, though the equine slowed a little. She could feel the carbon dioxide gathering in her lungs. She would have to breath soon.

The canine reached for Marty's remaining boot, feeling through the cloud of red, and managed to pull it off. The boot sank out of sight. Hurriedly, she pulled Marty up. She was almost there…and then she broke the surface, taking a deep breath. Her own boots were starting to weigh her down, so she quickly pulled on the laces, and the combat boots also sunk. She could hear shots up on the docks, and assumed that returning to the rest of the gang wasn't a safe decision. She started towing Marty, instead, over towards the end of the dock, hoping to find a place she could hide.

It was hell on Earth up topside. As soon as Caroline had jumped into the water, a large cougar with a Shock Rifle, undoubtedly the squad leader, had stood up and, in rough English, yelled "FREEZE! YOU'RE ALL UNDER ARREST!"

What did you expect happened next? Murray, Penelope and Sly had all hit the dock, so to speak, while everyone else drew. Carmelita had snuck away a Sig Sauer while everyone else was distracted, and she fired a few covering shots, taking cover behind a crate of ammo. Dimitri had gone for the Luger in his shoulder holster, which he had carried since Sly broke him out of Venice, seeing as how his Shock Bracelet had been confiscated, and made a run for the water, which was cut short by a shock bolt catching his tail. Dimitri was knocked to the wood, gun clattering away, which was grabbed up by Murray, who made a bull run for the police's hiding place. He took about five or six shock bolts, all spaced out, before he went down, falling face down a foot from a condor, who was staring at the hippo in shock before one of Julio's well aimed shots hit him between the eyes, splattering blood onto the bobcat behind him.

Mikhail was firing, reloading, and then firing again, catching one officer here, another there, two here, and repeating the aforementioned process before both guns clicked for the twelfth time. Instinctively, his hands went to his belt, where he kept his magazines, but only felt empty slots. Panicked, he felt the entire length of the belt, but it was the horrifying truth; he'd run out of ammo. A shock blast caught him in the chest, and he went down.

Julio peeked out, dodging back down as another shock bolt hit the crate he was hiding behind and dissipated. He crept around to the other side of the crate, easing his Buntline around the corner, then taking a breath, squinting at a patch of tan, then squeezing the trigger. The gun bucked, the patch fell away. Then, a blue blur zoomed toward him, and the wolverine was knocked back ten feet, still clutching his gun.

Carmelita watched as Bentley, who was putting his new wheel machine guns to work, hovered in the air briefly to dodge a shock bolt before another one caught in the chest. The turtle went flying, but when the chair hit the dock, the machine guns kept firing, peppering a box of ammo repeatedly.

Carmelita's eyes widened and she yelled "QUICK! INTO THE WATER!"

She sprinted for the sea, with Penelope right behind her. She blinked when she saw no Sly. Where the hell was he?

And then, Sly's hero moment was played. A smoke bomb went off behind the police lines, blinding the uniformed officers, some of whom were smart enough to run out of the cloud. However, the stupid ones ran out and fired into it. Soon, a crossfire was going, in which some of the officers got hit by stray bolts.

Finally, the cloud dissolved, revealing about five unconscious officers, with Sly in the center. It was obvious that some officers had been hit by the shock bolts, but others had, just as obviously, been knocked over the head by a certain C-shaped blunt object.

It was, at this moment, when the crate of ammo exploded.

It caught all the other crates in the blast, knocking Carmelita, Penelope, the wheelchair, and the unconscious forms of Bentley and Dimitri into the water. As the blood-warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico closed around her head, Carmelita wondered how anything could get much worse. She was about to get her answer.

(I'm evil, aren't I?)