VII - The Getaway

The Sandking's engine roared like a pissed off rhinocerous, crashing and smashing through everything that was in its way. I pulled a sharp left under the Casino's canopy and followed the side road around the side of the building, past the service entrance and down to the tunnel. I could already hear sirens on the main road, Police and FIB, and I knew the cops would have been given orders to shoot to kill, but we wouldn't be going anywhere near the tarmac.

The tunnel brought us into the paddock area in the middle of the Racetrack. At the side of us was the white railings of the racetrack itself, in front of us was the small lake. I drove through the shallow water lining up for the grass bank on the opposite side. The Sandking had so much power and was jacked up on such strong springs that it didn't need much coaxing to get it to jumped over the railing. We hit the dirt of the racetrack just as two sets of flashing lights showed up on our left.

Two patrol cars had come in from the main car park, and I saw even more cars behind them. I pulled on the handbrake and swung the truck right into the north stables. The cop cars followed us. Bullets pinged off the rear of the Sandking as I drove along the front of the stables and out towards the hill. We didn't even slow down as we powered up the slope, most of the cop cars and SUVs got stuck at the bottom, but by now a couple of police choppers had joined in the chase, which meant we could be spotted from the air while the ground units would be sent ahead to block us.

"Want me to take them choppers down?" said Stone, who'd obviously only memorised his own part of the plan when we'd been going through the heist back at my apartment.

"They're supposed to follow us, all the way to the cliff," I explained, between trying to keep the truck upright as we leaped over the summit of the hill and bounded over the rocks on the other side, down towards the Land Act Reservoir. "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, right 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, I knew that, but it was difficult.

We were in the same place now as where we'd jacked the mini-sub, but now it was dark. I could see the lake below us glistening in the moonlight, but there were huge boulders here and rough ground which could easily put us onto our roof if I wasn't careful. I backed off the accelerator and gently worked the brakes to bring us back under control. When we reached the road at the bottom I saw a line of flashing lights, this time the red domes of Blaine County Sheriff cruisers. They were coming in along the dirt road north of the dam, but I knew once we got onto the mud flats there was no way they'd catch us.

I crossed the road and carried on down into the soft wet mud that surrounded the reservoir. A couple of the cruisers turned off the road and immediately got stuck, while the others pulled up and started shooting with pistols. I ignored them and followed the waterline. The Sandking lived up to its name and splashed trough the silt and mud around the outside of the lake. At the eastern bank, there was a tricky turn that I had to get right. The water was shallow, but a few feet in the wrong direction and we'd into deeper water, and it wasn't time to sink the truck just yet. I followed the eastern bank about as far as we could, then slowed right down looking for the steep slope. I'd done my recon in a helicopter and then walked the route the next day, but in the dark it was hard to make out the exact bit of the route we needed to take. The cops were so far away by now that their shots couldn't even hit us, but the police choppers were circling and taking the odd pot-shot at us. The bodywork was armoured, but the glass in all the windows had now gone and one stray shot could do a lot of damage to me or Stone. Then the water receeded a little and I recognised the outline of the bank we were at the bottom of. Looking up I saw the almost impossibly steep bank and I turned the truck to get the front wheels in line, then I gave it everything it had.

The huge front tires dug into the rock and earth and pulled us up. As we tilted past forty-five degrees and then went closer to seventy or eighty, they began to spin and we started slipping. I was worried that if we went back too far we'd be going into the lake backwards, but I managed to throw on the brakes and stop us as we levelled out again. I looked at Stone and he was a white as West Vinewood coke. I half expected him to jump out and start making a run for it, I wouldn't have blamed him if he did. We'd been in tougher spots than this, but not by much. I tried to fight the adrenaline pumping in my veins and remembered my off-road training.I took it slower this time, feeling the grip in the front wheels through the steering as I crawled back onto the slope.

This time I managed to get the back wheels onto the slope before the front wheels span and the four wheel drive system started distributing the power to the wheels with the most grip. Me and Stone were both pushed back into our seats, it felt like the whole truck was standing on end, but we were still going up. Steadily the slope began to level out and the engine revs increased as this mighty beast fought with gravity and won. We levelled out on top of the hill and a whiff of ocean breeze hit me. I carried on over the peak of the hill and over the other dirt road. I looked out of my window and saw one of the police choppers almost level with us, following the contour of the hill. He could be no more than ten or twelve feet away, I could probably have taken him out with my micro-SMG, but instead I decided to concentrate on driving, speed would be our best defence now.

At the top of the hill I could see the Palomino Freeway below and beyond that the ocean. This descent was smoother so I poured on more power. We got a little out of control on the way down the embankment, narrowly missing a tree and a rock, but by the time 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 have wanted to tell me at this crucial moment?

We drove right across the interstate sending cars and trucks swerving in all directions. Then we crossed the median strip and did exactly the same thing on the other carriageway. A big Mule delivery truck came from my blindside and span us around, ripping off one of our front wings. Stone fired at the cab out of frustration, causing the driver to panic and leap out onto the highway, causing even more chaos. By now the Sandking was pretty beat up; we'd lost a rear door, a wing and the hood, but it only needed to last about another half mile.

I looked for the train tracks and drove up onto them, following them the short distance to the NOOSE building. We needed to get around the back and onto the access road for the last part of our route. A couple of cop cars piled in behind us from the freeway but they obviously didn't know the area very well and disappeared down the chasm between the railroad and the security fence around the NOOSE compound.

"Did you put on a wetsuit?" I said to Stone.

"Didn't think I'd need one," he said.

"You were supposed to put one on under your overalls, in case you got switched for me or Wilby. You know, the backup plan!" I shouted at him. There didn't seem much point arguing about it now. "Do you even know what to do when we hit the water?" I asked him.

"Yeah yeah yeah, I know!" He assured me.

We passed the security gates to the NOOSE building and I spotted the distinctive profile of our hill, silhouetted in the night sky. I aimed straight for the summit and hoped that our amazing Sandking still had enough life in it to carry us to the top. We were so close now, but the hardest part was going to be driving off the cliff and missing the rocks beneath. We hadn't actually gotten around to doing a practice run, and the extra weight of the money boxes and Stone (he was about fifty or sixty pounds heavier than Wilby) meant we'd need more power to reach top speed.

Again I slowed up on the ascent, following the ridge to the summit of the hill. I turned the truck east and stopped. I looked for the distinctive pillar of rock sticking out of the ocean. To the the right of that was a small tree, barely even visible from way up here, but to the left of that was our spot. I had to hit it perfectly and at over 100mph or we land on the rocks or in the shallow water, and probably explode. I looked around, there were no cop cars, but there were still four choppers buzzing around. The marksmen had stopped shooting, probably in the belief that we'd given up and were about to surrender.

I gunned the engine a couple of times and noted the revs were still up near the red line. The whole the truck rocked with the massive torque of the V8. I slotted the selector lever into the high-gear ratio then unscrewed the safety cap on the nitro boost. I gripped the wheel with both hands.

"Let's do it man," said Stone, bracing himself against the dashboard. At first, I simply let my foot off the brake and let her roll, barely accelerating, trying to keep the wheels from spinning and maintaining traction. Then I gradually put on some power, all the time lining us up to the right of the rock. I checked the speedometer and tired to gauge the distance then added more and more power. As the slope began to level out I buried my right foot hard into the floor an put my thumb on the nitro button.

Once I saw we were in line to the left of the edge of the cliff I hit the button. We went from 80mph to over 100mph in less than a second, and we were still accelerating! It was getting harder to control the three tons of truck as it lurched about on it's wrecked suspension, but this ceased to matter when we were off the edge and flying through the air sixty feet above the water. The beach, the rocks and then the waves all blurred beneath us. I took in a big gulp of air, took my hands off the wheel, my feet off the pedals and grabbed the hand holds.

It felt like we'd hit a concrete wall when we landed, but I knew it was water we'd hit and not rock. We sank pretty quickly thanks to having no windows left, courtesy of the LSPD. As I opened my eyes I saw that we were sinking down, we had made it to the deep part of the bay, right where we were supposed to be. Then I saw the lights of the mini-sub coming towards us and overcame my disorientation to remember what I had to do next. I turned around to see that the back seat had floated away, just as the mechanics had rigged it to, revealing our scuba gear in its hidden compartment. I quickly grabbed a tank and put the mouthpiece between my teeth, taking in the air to relieve my aching lungs. Stone managed to get his own tank a second later and I could see his mouth grinning around the mouthpiece. He gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up. I knew that despite everything he was having the time of his life. He lived for this kind of stuff.

When the Sandking finally hit the bottom and came to a rest we were both pulled off our Bugstar overalls and fitted the fins onto our feet. I carefully swam out through the smashed glass into the rear compartment and pulled the inner release on the bedcap. The whole roof floated off and Stone swam around from the side door. Jane brought the sub around to hover above us and I cut the straps holding the boxes. The tracking devices would still be working which meant we weren't safe yet. We picked up each one and stuck them onto the electro-magnetic plates that had been fitted to the sidepods of the sub. When they were all attached we swam up to the hatch in the underside of the sub and Jane opened it from the inside.

The internal air pressure prevented the water from flooding into the interior of the sub and it was always a slightly odd experience crawling up through the short tube. Jane helped us up,

"Glad you could make it," she said, though she looked a bit surprised to see Stone and not Wilby. I could tell from my sister Jane's expression that something else was wrong though.

"What's up?"

"I was followed here, by another sub. 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 clamped the hatch closed then opened up the flip seat in the back and sat down.

"Another sub?" I asked.

"They've been pinging me all the way from the cave."

"Could it be the IAA, or you think someone's told the Feds?" Said Stone. Neither of us answered.

We headed out of the bay and into the deeper waters. Jane very carefully dove us down. We could follow the ocean floor as it fell away sharply from the coast. We went to 400 feet and carried on. Once we passed 450 feet we heard the first of the boxes outside go 'thud'. Then another one cracked, and another. Jane levelled us off at 480 and we waited, counting off each of the imploding boxes until we got to 24.

"That's all of them," I said.

"Up?" Said Jane.

"No, stay at this level, take us north through the trench," I said.

There was long underwater canyon that followed the coast, something to do with the geologic faultline that the state of San Andreas sat on. After about ten minutes we came back up to 100 feet and turned in towards the coast again, waiting until we could see the sea floor. Jane pulled the sub to a stop up then me and Stone put our diving gear on and went back out through the hatch. Once she saw that we were clear Jane pulled a switch on the control panel which turned off electro-magnet and released the metal boxes. All of them fell away, kicking up the sand on the seabed. I swam over to them and passed each one up to Stone who then lifted them up through the bottom hatch to Jane. Once all the boxes were inside we climbed back in shut the hatch behind us.

We carried on north along the coast, as we had before.

"You reckon they can hear us?" said Stone. "In the trench I mean. It's like radar right, you know that terrain thing?"

"Nah, hydrophones, but similar principle," Jane replied. While she piloted the sub, me and Stone started pulling the bundles of soaking wet cash out of the boxes and packing them in bags. Once all the money was transferred we dumped the empty boxes out through the hatch and figured out how much we'd got.

"Over $2.4 million," I announced. "So all we have to do now is complete our vanishing act. I mean the cops must think we're dead and I'm guessing that whatever Jane's mystery submarine out there is, it probably only suspects theres something driving around out here." Over an hour had passed since we'd crashed the Sandking into the ocean and I thought it was probably safe to go up and see where we actually were.

We broke out onto the surface near El Gordo lighthouse. The eastern horizon was already starting to glow with the light of dawn. I popped open the top hatch and gasped as the fresh air filled my airways. Jane, who had been down in the mini-sub almost the whole night, pushed me out of the way and hauled herself onto the roof of the sub stood, stretching her arms and back.

"How much battery do we have left?" I asked.

"Stone, check the gauge in the middle," she said. On the control panel there were readouts for compressed air (which was now recharging from the surface atmosphere via a small compressor), carbon dioxide levels and battery charge.

"Says, about twenty percent," Stone called up.

"Maybe an hour, probably less with the three of us plus the cash on board," Jane said.

I looked for my phone, sealed in a watertight pocket inside my wetsuit 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 strained to look and between the rolling waves I could see, on the eastern horizon, the unmistakable outline of a Los Santos-class submarine.

If the FIB got a hold of any of us now, with their dirty money, it would probably be a life sentence for each of us. If we dumped the money overboard it would probably be even worse. Far easier to just put a bullet in all our heads than get flown out to some state sponsored torture centre as they tried to find out what we'd done with their illegal, untraceable cash.

I jumped in and closed the hatch. Jane crashed dived the mini-sub all the way to the bottom, but we were in the shallows. If they'd followed us this far, it meant they could follow us anywhere, there was nowhere we could hide.

"What if we scuttle the sub and swim out separately, split up." Said Jane. I knew at least one of us would probably get caught, but after going over all of our options, nobody could come up with a better idea. We carried on around the coast, tracking into the canyon and staying as close to the sub's crush depth as we dared. When the battery eventually died on us Jane pulled the emergency release on the compressed air tank which pushed all of the water from the ballast tanks sending us rushing up to the surface.

We opened the top hatch to see that we were level with Procopio Beach, up the coast from Paleto Bay. I gathered up the six bags of money we had and gave two each to Jane and Stone, tying the last two to my belt.

"Hide the money or risk getting caught with it, it's up to you two," I said. Me and Stone climbed out, while Jane unscrewed the bottom hatch and swam out underneath. With both hatches open at once the mini-sub flooded and rolled onto its side. We started to swim for shore, all in different directions, but then we heard the sound of an outboard motor.

There was a dinghy coming towards us from out to sea. I dived under, assuming the worst, but when I surfaced I heard Stone yelled out,

"Wilby! Hey, look, it's Wilby." My mind started racing with possibilities, about why Wilby would be out here in a boat, given the seriousness of the injuries he'd sustained in the Casino only a few hours before. The more I thought about it the less it made sense. The dinghy's engines cut out and it continued to drift towards us. The boat passed Stone and got closer to me and I could see, it was Wilby, hanging on to the wheel. He was wrapped in a big overcoat with a helmet on. He face looked pale. He wasn't moving.

As it slowed Stone started to swim up to the boat. He caught up to it and grabbed the rope on the side. I was about head towards it myself but then I noticed a tiny red blinking light, just below the waterline of the dinghy's hull.

"No, it's a trap!" I yelled. The dinghy erupted in a ball of white-orange flame as the bomb went off. I dove beneath the water, but still felt the shockwave. I was briefly stunned, but just managed to hold on to consciousness and struggle back to the surface again. I swam to shore and crawled up onto the beach to see Jane running down to meet me. Looking back out to sea there wasn't a trace of the dinghy now, nor the mini-sub, or Stone, or Wilby or anything else.

The sun was rising. I rubbed the salt from my eyes, and noticed my hands. Green, dark green. I sat there, puzzled, trying to think why that particular colour looked so familiar. When she got to me, I checked Jane's hands and they were fine, but all over mine was a green dye, some kind of ink. There were no dye packs in the boxes, nor in the bags. I opened one and pulled out a wad of notes. They were still wet, but so was the ink they'd been printed with. It was fake, all of it! The whole job had been a waste of time.

I flopped back onto the sand, exhausted. 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 someone obviously had.

With my last ounce of strength I pulled out my phone and called my mechanic. I ordered up my favourite car, the Dewbauchee JB 700.

"We'll have to leave town," I said to Jane.

"Shame," she said.

"Actually we'll have to leave the state, I doubt we'd be able to get out of the country though."

"Well, I was starting to get a little tired of this place anyway," smiled Jane.

When I heard my car pull up on the road above us we walked over to it. By the time we got there the mechanic had already gone, off on some other job probably. We got inside. The familiar feel and sound of the engine seemed to sooth me. I put her in gear and pulled away, onto the highway. I'd drive as far away as I could and find some new place to settle down, I thought. I wondered if I'd ever see this place again. Maybe one day, I thought, but probably not for a while.

THE END