THE HEIST
We all stood in my planning room, staring at the complicated diagram of times, maps and codewords written on the big board, each of us in turn repeating out loud what we had to do at each stage of the plan. Then Lester wiped everything off and told us to start again.
"We're going to go over and over this until everyone gets it right, with no mistakes!" Said Lester. He was more aggressive than usual. For all of the setup missions me and my crew had been on to secure our getaway, into the Sandking and then to the mini-sub, the really complex part of the plan was inside the Casino. This had been carefully worked out by Paige and Lester, based on all the intel about security and procedures that they'd been able to gather over the last couple of weeks. The plan seemed fairly water-tight (no pun intended), but they wouldn't be the ones who actually had to do it.
"Again!" Said Lester, and we repeated our individual roles from memory.
We'd all been given code names. A lot of the mistakes were from people forgetting to use them and this in particular was getting Lester madder than anything else. He'd explained that all the comms would be scrambled and our voices would be disguised to prevent the FIB tracing any of us after the heist, but one slip, mentioning someone's name, would be enough to bring us all down. Lester was 'The Dealer', Paige was 'Ace'. I was 'Jack', Jane was 'Seven', Wilby 'Nine' and Stone was 'Deuce'. The codename 'King' was reserved for the getaway vehicle itself. 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. Stone was her bodyguard and had to get her out of there before we triggered the alarm. Jane would be in the sub stationed off the Palomino coast. Only Me and Wilby would be inside the Casino, disguised as Bugstar pest control guys, with scuba suits under our coveralls.
When it got to 9pm, and about the fortieth run through, an alarm went off on Lester's watch.
"Time to move, everyone make one final check and then move to first positions." Everyone stopped talking and went through their inventory of equipment, weapons and radio gear. Then we all looked over each other's outfits looking for the tiniest thing that was be out of place or missing. Then we all got into the elevator and went down to the garage. Me and Wilby got into the Bugstars Van. Jane hopped onto her Bagger motorcycle. Stone, Paige and Lester all got into an anonymous looking dark blue Stanier. The doors opened and each of us drove out and went off in separate directions.
I took the van to the Vinewood Racetrack next to the Casino and dropped Wilby off by the main gate, then drove over to the other side of the freeway to the CNT building. While Wilby climbed up 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. She printed off a visitor's pass for me, which pretty much allowed me a free run of the building, including the roof. When I got up there I opened up my tool case and slotted together my heavy sniper rifle. It was three minutes to ten, the time when everything would begin, and it was just beginning to get dark.
I looked down the scope to see Stone and Paige arriving in the main car park of the Casino, having dropped Lester off at his control room. I followed them with the scope and tracked left to find the Casino and the Grandstand without taking my eye away from the sight. Wilby was in position, on the roof of the racetrack grandstand just to the north. 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, both together if possible.
"Nine Ready," Wilby signalled. I saw Stone pulling 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 'em," said Wilby.
"Wait for the clock, one more minute," I said, watching the time tick towards 10pm.
I counted off the last five seconds looking through the scope of the rifle, lining up my target at the base of his neck.
"3, 2, 1…" then I pulled the trigger. My guard dropped a split second after Wilby's. Stone broke cover and dragged the bodies out of the way, behind an electrical box.
"Ace, you're clear," said Stone. Paige took her cue to climb onto the roof and make her way to the main air conditioning unit. She opened the glass vial with the insects inside and dropped it 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. Now it was Stone's turn to take out some guys, but neither of them were armed, except with wrenches and a flashlight. Me and Wilby covered him in case something went wrong, but Stone caught them both by surprise. They hit the floor in seconds and Stone dragged the bodies over where he'd hidden the Merryweather guys. He grabbed their radio.
"This is maintenance," said Stone into the radio in a thick Liberty City accent, "main unit's down. She needs a new pump. Gonna take about an hour." There was chatter on the other end which Stone's mic couldn't quite pick up, but Stone gave us the thumbs up. It was time for the next phase.
Wilby started climbing down from the grandstand while I packed my sniper rifle away and went back down to the van. As the temperature in the Casino's vent system rose the insects 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. "Get to the service entrance at precisely 22:15." We already knew we had to do that, but Lester was worrying as usual. We got to the Casino's vehicle entrance right on the dot and pressed the intercom. Someone in security opened the metal gate and we drove up the spiral ramp which led into the Casino's own multi-storey car park. The first level was a Service Area where all the maintenance and delivery vehicles came in and out, including the armoured trucks that delivered the money. There was a normal rent-a-cop security guard, not a Merryweather, 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, then looked back at the guard. "You got here quick," he said.
"We were right around the corner," I said. "What's the problem?" He shrugged, but pointed to the service elevator. I parked the van in the space next to it and got out as one of the Casino managers appeared from somewhere.
"We've lost our air conditioning unit and now the place is filling up with flies," said the manager. "Nothing we spray them with seems to work. The customers are starting to complain, some of them are leaving. We could lose a small fortune if this isn't fixed." I smirked at Wilby and he grinned back.
I pulled open the back doors and we both dragged out the huge vacuum cleaner on wheels that was our shopping cart in disguise. Of course nothing was killing the bugs, they'd been genetically engineered at Humane Labs to be resistant to all forms of insecticide, except one. The package we'd picked up from the Labs had contained the only thing that would kill them, a genetically coded toxin which we'd diluted and filled two backpack style spray packs with. We'd also mixed in some chloroform 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 there first." He led us into the staff elevator and took us to the fourth floor. There were flies all over the walls, the ceiling and buzzing around in the corridor. This was the topmost floor where the Security Control room was, as well as all the manager's offices. The manager 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 from the same door I'd seen the maintenance guys emerge from earlier and saw 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 had to get us into the Counting room and the Vault. I waited a couple of minutes, slammed my fist onto the panels around the AC for dramatic effect, then climbed down the ladder.
"Yeah, they're in there all right, but I think the nest must be somewhere else, probably inside the building." The manager let out a frustrated sigh, swatting at a fly as it buzzed in front of his face.
"Just tell me you get rid of them. 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, putting on a breather mask. "You should clear the area, this stuff ain't good for you to breathe," I pointed at my spray pack.
"Ok, but we need to assign you each a security guard. They'll be able to let you through the 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 glimpse inside and could see 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.
"Stay back!" I told him. "Need to 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.
"Main Security room cleared," I said into my mic. This was the signal for everyone else to start the next stage of the plan.
"On First Floor, proceeding to Basement," replied Wilby.
I connected a neat little box of tricks that Lester had made to the audio feed on in the security room. This would now 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 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, and the override to the door lock system was in the Security Room.
I checked the ceilings and walls around the top floor for the tracking sensors Paige had told us about. There were twenty-four of them and they monitored the movement of the cash boxes throughout the building. I spotted one in the corner with two 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 in the hotter air up in the ceiling. People seemed oblivious to the heat and the flies and were gambling away their money like nothing was wrong. I pushed through the crowds and looked over at the Sandking, our Sandking, sitting up on its 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.
"Dealer, we have a big problem," I whispered. "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 didn't think we busted him out just to win a truck did he?"
"Couldn't we get him thrown out?" Said Wilby over the radio.
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.
"Wait, I just intercepted a call from one of the floor managers," said Lester. "He wants me to record the weirdo playing the Lady Luck machines."
"We don't have time for this," I said, "everyone proceed with the plan."
I got to the staff door on the other side of the floor, dragging the giant vacuum cleaner with me, then realised the door was locked.
"Ace, I need a door opened." I said.
"I'm busy, ask somebody else," shouted Paige. I waved at one of the attendants. I didn't have much trouble convincing them who I was or what I was doing here. They unlocked the door for me and I went into the storage room at the back of the main Casino floor and found the service elevator.
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. I realised that this was how they'd brought the Sandking in, from the service level 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, still wheeling the vacuum cleaner behind me.
"I just found the Guard Room," he whispered as I got closer. 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 of someone discovering them. I spotted 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," he said. I'd done at least six, which meant we'd covered more than half the internal tracking system.
I did the same thing to the Guard Room 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 it.
"Jack, Nine in the hole," I said, which was the signal to Paige.
"On it," said Paige. "Ok, you're in. GO!" 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 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 now nobody was behind them. I hesitated briefly before spraying them, thinking that I might just scare them a little instead. 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 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 hit the floor.
Once everyone was down we moved straight to the door at the back of the room. This led to an elevator 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. "They built this place with three part security all round. There must be another 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 it from 1 to 6.
"There's a dial and a bunch of dice on some buttons," I said. There was a long 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," Paige hesitated. "It means I know the guy who built this," she said absently. "Haynes?" said Paige. "Mike Haynes? He does mainly government contracts, this kind of stupid shit is his trademark. Impresses the big boys but doesn't actually do much."
"So what now?" I said.
"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, wait, I've got it," said Paige. "It's got something to do with days, number of days in a year, a 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."
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, 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.
"But 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, standing behind me.
"Then press the four, then the six." I turned 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."
"Gun-shot detector?" I said as the radio crackled.
"How do you reckon she know that code?" Said Wilby.
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 from the plans Lester had obtained 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 and when they saw two guys with breather masks wearing 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 almost in range to spray them, but they reacted before we could get to them.
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 ground, 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.
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 drifting in and out of consciousness.
If I could have gotten a signal, right at that moment I would have called an ambulance spent the next thirty years in prison to save my friend. I had to hope Wilby could 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 had a contingency plan for if someone got injured, I could switch Wilby and Stone around, I thought. The numeric 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, with no questions asked.
Suddenly the big vault door clicked open. There was a tiny room with the now familiar brown, metal cash boxes that I'd looked at in the photos, all stacked on their shelves. There were twenty-four full boxes. 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.
"EMERGENCY!" I shouted into the comm. "Nine's been hit, he's bleeding bad. He needs medical attention!"
"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. Ace will have to take Nine 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 and realises what's happening!" Said Lester urgently.
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 after him, 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 in 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! You fuck with a member of my crew, you fuck with me!"
"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, grabbing Paige's arm to pull her back from the ledge. He 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 a lot of them. 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 from behind, snapping his neck. I went for the other one with a swift hard punch 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 all 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 by now. It looked like another of the genetic traits they'd been given was the ability to breed in minutes. It was hard to believe that all of these had come from one vial. And still there were crowds of people in the Casino. The biggest group was gathered around the Lady Luck machines where Sento was, sitting 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 mob 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." I made a play of looking around and set my gaze on the Sandking. "They look like they're coming from over there." I looked up 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 millions 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 with the straps hidden in the base of the vacuum's drum. Once it was secure I got onto on of the ramps and edged along the side of the truck, pretending to look for a nest.
"Probably up here somewhere," I said, "near the engine or maybe inside the radiator." Stone followed me up the other side, to the passenger door. I ran my hand under the wheel-arch and felt for the handle of the concealed micro-SMG. Stone grabbed his gun from under the other wheel-arch and got in through the passenger door. Then I opened the driver's door and climbed in.
There were still too many people between us and the main doors, but I hit the starter bypass button under the dashboard anyway. 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 planted the accelerator into the plush carpeting of the footwell and the Sandking launched from the ramps, scraping the ceiling, sending electrical sparks and plasterwork raining down. Then its big wheels hit the floor just in front of the security desk. 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 they tore away like they were made of cardboard. We rolled over the top of a taxi waiting on the rank outside and smashed into the side of a limo, but the armour plating was doing its job and we still hadn't taken any damage. 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.