Summary: Why do they keep letting Gavin fly the chopper?

Chapter 17

"Ryan, don't shoot already," Ray said, looking nervously out of his window at Ryan, who was hanging on to the car and aiming his gun out at traffic.

"I'm not shooting," Ryan said calmly. "I'm just suggesting shooting." Nonetheless, he lowered his weapon.

Jack made a mental note of the interaction. One of the things that had changed since Michael's heist was the Crew dynamics. Ray and Ryan were proving to be a good check and balance for each other, both listening to the other. It likely had something to do with their near-death Blaze of Glory last month. Ryan was also more receptive to the rest of the Crew after his brush with death and Ray was more focused. Gavin was suddenly finding himself slightly less ridiculed by Michael since he had managed to survive the last job and a touch more respected by the group at large since he alone had not betrayed anyone yet. Everyone was more inclined to listen to Geoff after his shocking admissions.

However, as Michael went racing around the corner towards a wall without hitting the breaks, Jack made sure he remembered that they were still the Fake AH Crew and you could never fully fix idiots. Himself included sometimes.

Michael turned from the wall at the last minute with a huge lurch and the car went up on two wheels, dumping Ryan and Gavin off. Jack, still distrustful of Michael even though he had allowed him to drive, wasted no time in popping his door and leaping out onto the sidewalk. The car righted itself at the last minute and slammed back onto all four tires, narrowly missing Gavin's head.

The entire Crew laughed at Jack's hasty exit. "Jack, you jumping out may have been the coolest thing I have ever seen," Michael said.

"You jumped out upwards like a rocket," Gavin added, picking himself up off the ground. Jack response was to grin and give a mocking salute.

"So all black," he reminded the Crew as they trouped inside the very fancy looking store.

"I don't think I am going to find a balaclava in this lovely store," Gavin muttered.

"You mean a European twinkie?" Geoff asked sarcastically. Jack flipped him off. He had made the joke when Ray had asked earlier what a balaclava was. It had been one of his better jokes.

The Crew browsed clothing, spending probably more than they were going to make on suits, shoes, and ties. While they browsed, Gavin piped up with his thoughts on the heist.

"So let's place bets," he said, trying on a black bucket hat and grimacing at himself in the mirror. His face and mouth looked all wrong these days. Too many face injuries in his line of work. "Do you think we'll get to the point where Jack can actually try and land this thing?"

"Yes," Ryan and Ray said at the same time without further elaboration.

"I think some people will," Michael said with a nervous look at Jack. Jack studied shoes and said nothing to waylay Michael's apparent fear for his safety. Jack didn't want to give the boy false hope. He was still back and forth on whether or not he should arrange an accident for Michael.

Geoff picked up on that tense moment and added his own thoughts. "I think we're gonna do it!" he cried cheerfully, giving Jack a pointed look.

Ray looked doubtfully over at Geoff, pulling a white suit jacket on over his tuxedo shirt. "I think the jet thing is where things are gonna go a little, uh…a little wrong."

"Ok," Jack said, pulling on his last item of clothing, a black vest, and turning to the group. "If something happens and I don't make the jet landing for whatever reason, then I want you guys to go find some jets. Ok?"

The Crew nodded and finished picking out clothes. The exited the store later all blacked out, except Ray who decided to go all white for a "ying and yang effect." Jack let it go. The drove to their old friend, the mask store, and bought masks, managing to only kill two people between the store and the mask shop. After a quick stop at Ammunation, they had completed the first part of their setup tasks.

"Let's head to the airport," Jack said as the piled back into the AH Mobile, Jack driving this time. It had started to rain, much to Ray and Gavin's disappointment as they were left outside to grip the edges of the car. As they approached the airport with a sharp turn, Gavin felt something thump into his chest lightly and looked down.

"Michael are you holding C4 against my chest?" Gavin demanded.

"No!" Michael said, not lowering the C4 and trying not to laugh.

Gavin glared. "Yeah you are!"

Michael and the others laughed as the airport came into view. Michael started to pull the C4 back inside, but Jack hit a large puddle and hydroplaned a bit, causing Michael to knock his wrist against the window frame and release the C4. It flew over the car, yanked by the air current from the car's speed and it hit the ground next to a helicopter.

"Whoops," Michael muttered just before the C4 ignited.

The chopper next to them in the airport immediately exploded, making Jack swerve as he dodge some debris.

"What the fuck just happened?" Jack asked, confused as the chopper burned feet from them.

"And why are their cops?" Geoff added as sirens split the air and lights started flashing behind them. They waited to see if the cops would go past them and respond to the explosion and were shocked when bullets rattled the windows.

"Oh fuck," Jack growled. "All right everyone hang on, we're getting in a chopper!" He accelerated the car and raced for the airport entrance. As soon as Jack slid the car to a stop, Gavin hopped down and jumped into the pilot seat as the others scrambled for the passenger and rear seats. The airport was suddenly full of cop cars and cops yelling and shooting at the Crew as Gavin brought the engines to life and lifted the chopper off the ground.

"Police chopper," Ryan announced hanging out of the side. "Shoot it!"

"Gavin, you need to go faster!" Jack shouted as bullets pinged around his head. "We need an angle to shoot from!"

Ok," Gavin said, yanking the controls sharply to the left. The chopper jerked left, tipping almost horizontal. Jack grabbed the edge of the chopper opening to prevent being flung into Geoff's lap while Ray lurched against his seat belt and kept trying to fire at the chopper.

"How's that?" Gavin asked.

"FUCKING TERRIBLE!" Jack roared.

"Ok, What about this?"

"Gavin,no!"

Too late. Gavin yanked the helicopter the other way and Jack was flung back towards the chopper opening. "Gavin you mother fuck-!"

He never got to finish. The rain slicked edge of the chopper slipped from between his fingers and Jack was flung out into the open sky.

"Jack!" Geoff shouted, diving for the chopper opening a Gavin turned them up right. "JACK!"

"Hang on!" Ryan shouted. He kicked the chopper door open and dove out the side, streaking through the air for the tumbling black dot that was Jack.

"Ryan, pop your god damn chute!"

Jacks' voice was immediately followed by a burst of color as he popped his own chute below Ryan. Ryan growled against the rush of air in his ears. "Why didn't you say you had a chute?!" he shouted to Jack.

"Why the fuck would you jump out of a chopper when I didn't?" Jack shouted back while he slowly drifted back to Earth. "What the fuck were you gonna do, catch me?"

"I was gonna try," Ryan mumbled before yanking the ripcord on his chest.

Up in the chopper, Geoff, Gavin, Michael and Ray were still under siege. Geoff, relieved that Jack was ok, resumed shooting while Ray tried to get an angle with Gavin's crazy piloting.

"Gavin fly forward!" Michael shouted in frustration. "We have to lose the cops! You are just flying straight up!"

"You can fly forward?" Gavin asked cluelessly.

"Oh God damn it, fuck this," Ray said and jumped out of the chopper himself.

"Great," Michael said as Ray tumbled down to earth. "Now we're the only ones left."

"I'm still here," Geoff said indignantly. "I'm not a bitch!"

"Gavin flung me out of the chopper, fuck you!" Jack said as he landed smoothly in the street, ironically right where he had parked his sports car.

"Good entrance!" Ryan crowed excitedly as the ground came rushing up to his feet. He was set for a smooth landing but instead he drifted into a puddle and slipped, winding up on his back in the grimy puddle with his parachute gently covering him like a blanket. Jack could not stop laughing long enough to ask if he was ok.

"I'm here!" Ray said, floating in. "Now I—oh no…"

Ray, much like Ryan, was set for an easy landing but instead of a puddle, a streetlight thwarted his intent. Instead, his parachute hit the pole and wrapped itself around it. Ray's entire body jolted hard from the sudden stop and the cables holding him to the chute snapped, dropping him ten feet to the ground on his back and quickly removing all air from his lungs.

"I'm here," Ray said weakly as he tried to breathe.

Jack also was trying to breathe, but it was mostly because he was laughing hard as the white blur that was Ray bounced down in front of his bumper.

"Fuck you, Jack," Ray grouched, rolling over and hauling himself upright, brushing off his once-was-white suit.

In the meantime Gavin decided they didn't need the helicopter so he jumped out. Geoff followed and Michael spent ten minutes trying to fly the damn thing before giving up and leaping out too.

"Hey look at me," Geoff said as he pulled his chute near the top of a skyscraper below. "I'm diving out and pulling my parachute five feet above Godzilla's knee."

"That's lame!" Gavin replied as he pulled his chute much closer to the ground. "My entrance is better—AUUUUGH!"

Much like Ray, Gavin "decided" to drift towards a pole. Unlike Ray who missed the pole and just suffered a fall, Gavin decided he wanted an up-close introduction with the traffic light he was headed towards. A face-first introduction.

Jack heard a loud clang as Gavin slammed face first into the traffic light and slowly slid down the pole before landing in a heap on the ground. His only thought was that it may in fact be possible to pass out from laughing at his idiotic Crew mates.

"All right," Jack said as the Crew convened on Jack's location after the unnecessary helicopter side quest. "Eagle One this is you," he said, indicating the liquor store they were standing in front of.

"Appropriate," Geoff said appreciatively. "Rob's Liquor. Rob's about to get robbed!"

"Would you be scared if five people wearing black walked into a thing with helmets?" Gavin asked, as they all piled back into their vehicles, stolen or otherwise.

"Well, I'm wearing white so it kinda offsets it," Ray pointed out.

Michael rolled his eyes as he joined Ryan in his stolen car. "Do you think Ray when you walked in they were like, 'Oh it's a ying and yang thing?'"

The gang followed Jack through Los Santos to see their targets. Ryan's was on San Andreas Avenue (another liquor store), Ray was assigned the gas station that had previously tried to blow him up and landed him and Gavin in the sewer, Michael was charged with the convenience store from their original heist, and Gavin was in charge of robbing another gas station—

"AHHHHAHHHH!"

"Gavin what the fuck?" Michael asked. They all turned in their respective vehicles to see Gavin come screeching to a stop inches from a gas pump.

"I almost blew myself up," Gavin said weakly. The other shook their head before moving on to Power Street to view Jack's landing strip.

During this drive around, the Crew had also incurred the wrath of several armed civilians, attracted the cops because of some inappropriate waving of C4 out the window of a car, watched Gavin get run down by two muggers, and laughed while Gavin tried to remove the door that someone had planted C4 on.

That someone was Ryan. In fact, most of the earlier mishaps had been caused by Ryan.

The Crew rode down Power Street while Jack narrated. "I'm going to be flying south to north," he said as they drove down a long open stretch of highway, also known as Jack's future runway. "There's this nice big runway here for me to land on. So I would like you guys to block off all the side streets with the big vehicles that you have to go get."

"So we're going to be defending and killing the cops while we clear the way?" Michael asked doubtfully.

"Do your best," Jack said unsympathetically. ,i And if you die in the attempt, so be it. We won't miss you.

So Jack may have been a little pissed at Michael still.

The others broke off from Jack as he headed to the airport, The Crew managed to procure several 18 wheelers and SUVs. Jack snagged a private jet from the airport and the Crew headed to their targets. As the others readied their weapons and slipped on their helmets, Gavin finally said what they were all thinking.

"If this works, I will be blown away."

It will work, Jack thought to himself. It had to. Not only did they need the victory for the Syndicate, but they needed to prove to each other that they could do this. They couldn't let more failure result in another incident like Michael's heist. They had to stand together or they were all going down.