WE DIVE AT DAWN
In my time I've stolen all kinds of cars; fast ones, old ones, expensive ones. And I've 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 Jane'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 vital 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 of military choppers flying in.
The Cargobob heavy lift helicopters carried the mini-sub on a hook slung under the chopper, with all its support gear and technicians inside. 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, patrolling the perimeter.
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.
The chopper carrying the sub dropped it into the water and a dinghy on the shoreline went out to it. It took a while to set it up and for one of the marines to get inside and set it up. We watched it do a couple of test dives and then the dinghy returned to the shore. 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, but somebody would have to be on top of it to attach the hook. That meant somebody needed to steal the sub to prevent it from diving, and all of this while coming under heavy fire. We'd need to work as a team, and we'd need to work fast, luckily two things we were very good at.
I told everyone to check their weapons and ammo and started looking for a chopper on the ground 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 risk hitting the glass on the front of the sub, or damaging it in any way 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. Stone found an RPG in the back and fired it at the chopper flying close by. He missed, but reloaded and took another shot. They were still too far away and the rockets being unguided meant Stone had almost no chance of scoring a hit. Stone repositioned to a better position inside the chopper's cargo compartment and started firing off rounds with his machine gun. I wound the rotors up to take-off speed and lifted the heavy bird off the ground.
The Marines returned fire and bullets began pinging off the outer plating of the helicopter. She was tough but she wasn't bullet proof. As several high-calibre rounds hit the engine compartment some of the engine gauges went into the red and I suddenly had my doubts that this plan was going to work at all. I flew over to where I'd last seen the sub, in time to see it pop up out of the water. Jane was trying to pry open the hatch as it surfaced, but the guy inside was somehow holding it shut. He was also powering the sub towards the shore for his mates to get a better shot at his attacker. Jane saw what he was doing and got herself around the back of the sub into cover, but I knew I had to do something quickly.
I pulled the trigger on the stick that released the hook underneath the Cargobob and flew in low, right between the mini-sub and the soldiers on the shoreline. It was a very risky strategy, but it gave Stone something to shoot at. He drew their fire away from the sub and 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. As the chopper went down Stone was wreaking havoc on the ground troops. He'd lobbed out some grenades and had reduced all the army vehicles to buying wrecks. With no cover the remaining marines were easy targets for Wilby up on the hill. 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 collective and felt the extra weight as I pulled the sub out of the water. The Cargobob's engines whined in complaint as I pulled on maximum power, but once I'd gained some height I was able to move into forward flight and gain a bit more lift.
There were still bullets flying in from the ground, but I was relieved to note that the glass in the cockpit was holding. I could smell burning oil and see thick black smoke pouring out of the turbines and every alarm was screaming out of the instrument panel, but we only had to make it to the ocean. In front of us was the hill that we needed to get over, and I pulled all the power I had to climb, but then I heard Jane shouting in my ear piece,
"We're not going to make it over the hill!" Then I realised she was still out there, hanging on to top of sub hanging underneath. I'd obviously not allowed enough clearance for the load slung below us, so I pulled to the right and made a circle as I climbed some more.
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 hot 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 them 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!"
On the second time around I cleared the hill, but the other chopper had caught up with us. As soon as the ground dropped away below us I pushed forward 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. Unfortunately that seemed to be the credo of one of the Army pilots who was tailing us. Stone kept firing but then let out a string of curse words at me when he realised what I was doing.
I brushed past the blade of one wind turbine by what felt like 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 that wasn't turning. I heard a massive 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 wind turbine 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 as the mass beneath started to swing one way then the next. I dare not ask whether Jane had been able to hang on, I would probably have lost it at that point if she'd been killed.
I turned parallel with the rows and flew us straight out of the wind farm. We were in clear air now and only a short distance from the ocean. We were just by the power station as one of the engines gave out completely and I lost most of my power. With the extra weight of the sub there was no way we could stay up and the wounded Cargobob started to drop.
"We're going down, I screamed. Got to drop the sub!" I pulled on the trigger that released the hook from its load and felt the failing helicopter get a little lighter. I hoped that momentum would be enough to get the sub into the water and watched as it broke free, with Jane still standing on top of it. I watched her dive making perfect Olympic Gold Medal winning entry into the water from what must have been fifty feet. 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 with two working engines and with no load he'd been able to catch up to us. The Marines on board opened up with heavy machine guns and started taking chunks out of our rear rotor assembly.
"Don't these guys ever give up," shouted Stone, "they must really, really not wanna lose this sub." He stopped firing and got into cover behind the bulkhead. "Come on boys, just a little closer."
We were completely out of options, the Cargobob was disintegrating around me and had more or less stopped being an aircraft. It fell out of the sky and skimmed the water, it was time to bail out. I undid my harness and kicked open the cockpit door, and caught a glimpse of Stone throwing something at the Cargobob that was still chasing us down. I watched him jump, feet first and holding his nose, but I had to stay on-board to make sure I splashed down clear of the others. I couldn't get out until the rotors had hit the water and stopped, or I'd get chopped into shark food.
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 end dropped. 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 bullets entering the water all around me and decided to sink down along with the helicopter. Once all the air had gone out through the side doors and the broken windows it started to drop into the murky depths below. I scrambled free of the aircraft and dodged away from the wreckage, trying to see how far away from the surface I was. My lungs already felt like they were bursting.
Then it was there, right in front of me, four bright lights and a perfect glass bubble with Jane sitting at the controls. The mini-sub moved over my head and stopped, then a hatch in the underside opened up. I frantically swam up to the circle of quicksilver it and popped my head out into the interior of the sub, gasping. Stone pulled me up and sat me in the seat at the front next to Jane. Then he shut the hatch in the floor, screwed it shut and sat in the 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 to the surface so I can get a signal on this," said Stone. Waving the detonator switch for the sticky bomb he'd thrown.
Jane slowly eased the lever in her left hand up 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 just below the surface of the water I could see the outline of the twin rotor chopper hovering above. Stone flicked open the safety catch on the detonator then pushed down hard on the button. The sticky bomb attached to 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 and it felt like being in an express elevator. The huge main fuselage of the Cargobob dropped into the water above us and was illuminated briefly in the lights of the sub. A quick turn on the rudder took us out of its path and Jane levelled us off a few feet above the seabed.
Jane opened the throttle little by little until she got the hang of steering the sub around the rocks and contours of the underwater landscape. We moved out from the shoreline and found deeper water where we could no longer see anything beneath us but darkness. Jane watched the magnetic compass and guided us north. There were a lot of gauges on the control panel I recognised from my experiences as a pilot, like rate of climb/descent, bearing, speed, etc. But in place of altitude there were two gauges marked 'Depth to Bottom', and 'Depth from Surface', this latter with a red line marking our crush depth at about 480 feet. There were also readouts for the compressed air reserve, C02 levels, battery 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 and to be sure no other Army choppers had followed us, we surfaced near the shoreline and tried to figure out where we were. I popped the hatch and climbed out to get some fresh air. Stone followed me up and we sat on top of the sub while Jane set a slow cruise speed on the surface.
"This thing is amazing," I said. "The perfect getaway vehicle." I checked the signal on my phone and called Wilby. He told me he'd got away fine, but from what he'd seen from where he was he could hardly believe we'd made it out alive. He'd gone back to the van and driven 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'd 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 and 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 just 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. 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 inside the cave. It had been a long night and 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.
I could scarcely believe half of the things we'd done, and somehow got away with, in the last few hours. They just seemed like a blur. Now, hopefully, we'd get a couple of days to rest before the next phase of the operation. I wish I knew what Lester had cooked up for us next, and hoped our luck improved a bit, but then I tried to remember why we were doing all of this. I drifted off to sleep dreaming of huge stacks of money, of fast cars, expensive yachts and of becoming the most famous, or infamous, criminal mastermind that San Andreas had ever known.