Then Allison finally leaned out the side window and sighted the pickup truck ahead of us. The big squad automatic weapon roared as she depressed the trigger, spraying the truck with lead. The two players were forced to get back in the car.
The hail of the heavy-caliber rounds peppered the pickup truck. It seemed to be reinforced with armor as the slugs bounced harmlessly off the body of the truck. However, the armor plating couldn’t withstand such an onslaught for long. The rounds Allison was firing started to punch holes through the body of the truck.
Then her big weapon ran dry and the girl got back in the car to reload it. The two passengers of the pickup truck took the opportunity and opened fire on our car again. I ducked my head as enemies’ bullets flew all around me. The windshield exploded in a thousand glittering shards.
I whipped a Beretta 93R from its holster, stuck the pistol out the broken windshield, and started returning fire in three-round bursts. Some of the bullets I fired pinged off the bed of the truck and some others arced through the rear window into the cab. As I triggered another burst into the truck, I saw an explosion of red mist as one of my bullets drilled into one player’s throat. The player dropped out of sight. I couldn’t tell for certain if he was dead, but he was severely wounded, that was for sure.
As I squeezed the trigger another time, my pistol clicked on an empty chamber. The handgun had run dry. I hit the magazine release button with my thumb, ejecting the spent mag onto the floor of the car. I then stuck the handgun in my lap and pulled a fresh mag from the pocket of my jacket. I slid the magazine into the pistol butt, took the pistol in my right hand, tapped the mag into place on the dashboard, and then hit the slide release, chambering a round.
Allison had already reloaded her weapon and we both opened fire on the vehicle ahead of us. The two players started to return fire. But they were firing blindingly, their guns stuck out the rear window. One of our bullets hit the hand of one player and it disappeared from sight in an explosion of crimson haze.
The black truck was in really bad shape. I was sure that either it would stop working any minute now or some of our bullets would take the driver out. He or she was fortunate to avoid being hit so far.
But then something unexpected transpired. Some of the enemies’ slugs penetrated the front tire of our car. I tried to get the vehicle under control in time but failed to do so. The truck swerved off the street and smashed into the wall of a nearby building. I was thrown against the restrains of my seat belt.
Instead of getting away, the truck turned to the right and disappeared into a narrow alley.
“Let’s go get’m,” Allison yelled enthusiastically as she reached for the door handle.
However, I didn’t think it was such a good idea. Those players seemed to be trying to lead us into a trap. But before I could voice my thoughts, she was out of the vehicle.
Cussing under my breath, I jerked open the driver’s-side door and leaped out. Allison was already halfway to the mouth of the alley. I darted after the girl. Since I wasn’t wearing any body armor and totting too heavy weapons, I caught up to her very quickly.
As we reached the mouth of the alley, I heard some noise coming from it. I stopped Allison who was about to dart around the corner. Half a second later, a yellow sports car burst out of the alley. As it passed us, I caught a glimpse of the skull design mask that the driver was wearing. In the back of the car were the other two players.
The yellow sports car hit the road, made a tight turn, and took off, leaving rubber marks on the asphalt. We fired at the small car, but it was so fast it disappeared in the distance in a matter of seconds before our bullets could inflict any damage on the vehicle.
The nearby NPCs screamed in panic and ran away as soon as they saw us firing at the sports car. We were still wearing masks, so our nicknames were concealed. But some of the civilians would surely call the police. We had to get out of here fast.
Luckily, there was a big enough SUV parked close by. We hot-wired the car, pulled alongside our crashed vehicle, and started to carry the bags with the paintings from the latter car to the former one. In the distance, the police sirens could be heard. We had to really hurry so that to get out of this street before the cops arrived.
Once we threw the last bag in the SUV, we jumped in the car and tore off with a screech of tires. As we drove away from the scene, I glanced in the rearview mirror every now and then. However, there were no police cars behind us. Soon we didn’t hear the police sirens anymore. Seemed like we managed to get away before the cops even arrived on the scene.
Ten minutes later, we pulled up alongside the van, carried the bags from the SUV, and put them in the van. After it drove away, a message popped up in my HUD.
> Mission Accomplished
> Money stolen: $10,000,000
> Money laundered: $5,000,000
> Penalty: –$200,000 for the two civilians killed
> Gang members survived: 2
> Money earned: $2,400,000
“It was them, right?” Allison asked, excited.
“Yeah,” I replied. “It was the British gang. This time those jerks miserably failed to rob us.”
“Yeah. We’re awesome!”
“About the yellow sports car. It couldn’t just happen to be there. They knew that it would be in that alley, so it must’ve been their car. I wonder how many such getaway cars they have stashed around the city.”
“Yeah. But we’ve finally gotten even with them Brits. That’s the most important thing. They’re going to think twice before robbing us again!”
Unlike Allison, I wasn’t satisfied. True, we had managed to make those players run away from us. However, we still didn’t know anything about them. Who they were? For what purpose had they been robbing other players? How come they always knew whereabouts of heisters who carried stolen money or valuables? Allison didn’t seem to care about these questions, but I really longed to find the answers to them.
We wanted to call Flynn to tell him about our recent encounter with the British gang and its outcome, but since we had already talked to him earlier today, we couldn’t reach him again. For prisoners, telephone calls were limited to just a few minutes a day.
Allison wanted to do more heists, but I was tired, so I bade her farewell and logged off. The next day, Allison and I met in the game again. We called Flynn.
“Hey, how are you doing?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said.
Before he or I could say anything more, Allison exclaimed, “We’ve played the Art Gallery heist yesterday and managed to complete it in stealth.”
“Great,” Flynn said without enthusiasm.
“Guess what happened when we were driving to the van after we robbed the place,” Allison continued without noticing Flynn’s lack of interest.
“Dunno.”
“We ran into the British gang,” Allison exclaimed. “They were planning on robbing us again. Guess what happened next?”
“Considering how exciting you are, you managed to kill them or something like that, right?” Flynn said.
“Actually, we didn’t kill them,” Allison replied. “But we made them eat our bullets and they ran away from us like yellow bellies. We gave chase to them, of course, but they changed cars and got away in some kind of a sports car. Had they not had the car nearby, we would’ve wasted them assholes!”
“That’s great,” he said impassively. Something clearly troubled him.
“Is everything okay?” I asked him.
“Well, kinda.”
Alison finally picked up on his grim mood.
“Other prisoners give you a hard time, huh?” She asked mockingly.
“Quite the opposite,” he replied. “That’s the problem. There’re no players except for me.”
“Are you there all alone?” Allison asked surprisingly.
“Yeah. I had absolutely nothing to do. I just stay in my cell all day long, lying on my bunk and look
ing at the ceiling. Boredom drives me crazy. You can’t even sleep in this game to pass the time.”
“Our offer still stands,” I said. “We can get you out of there if you want.”
Allison’s eyes lit up. “Yeah. Like a prison break. How about that?”
Flynn went silent for a moment. “I don’t know, guys. I would acquire the wanted level and my nickname would turn red. You know what that means, right? It’d be very hard to play. I would hardly walk around the city without some NPC informing on me to the police.”
“There’s a way to get rid of the wanted level and clear your nickname, so to speak,” I said. “I read about it in the FAQ.”
“Yeah. I know. One needs to pay a lot of money to get rid of the wanted level. I don’t have that much at the moment.”
“We could get you out of the prison and then do some heists. We could buy a car with tinted windows so we could drive around the city without NPCs seeing you.”
Flynn gave it some thought and said, “I don’t know, guys. Maybe. You know what? I’m gonna sleep on it, as it were. Call me tomorrow and I let you know about my decision, okay?”
“Okay.”
The next day we called Flynn as we had promised. However, he said that he didn’t want to be extricated from the prison after all. He said that he kinda got used to it, so he could put up with several more days spent in prison. Allison was disappointed, of course. She had really wanted to get him out of the prison because it could have been a promising venture.
Allison and I played together for a few more days. Since Flynn was still doing time, we had to play with some random players. Luckily, most of them were no longer newbies but more or less experienced players, so we managed to successfully complete most of the missions we took on. Although Allison didn’t like stealth much, we nevertheless played some heists in stealth sometimes and even managed to complete them without raising the alarm.
I soon leveled up from 13 to 18, which gave me five skill points. Since I hadn’t spent the skill point after I leveled up to 13, I had now six skill points to assign. I examined the last branch of the skill tree once more.
> Level 11 Branch
> Name: Rise and shine
> Description: You can revive gang members at a distance by shouting to them. It works even if a downed gang member is behind such an obstacle as a wall.
> Cost: 3 skill points
> Name: Relentless
> Description: When downed, you can use your pistol and revive yourself if you manage to kill an enemy.
> Cost: 3 skill points
> Name: All for one
> Description: If one of the gang members gets apprehended, you or the other member of your crew can trade one of the hostages for his or her safe return.
> Cost: 3 skill points
> Name: Interrogation
> Description: You can integrate a downed enemy so that you and your teammates acquire an ability to temporarily see all enemy players’ whereabouts for 60 seconds.
> Cost: 3 skill points
> Name: Converted
> Description: You can intimidate a hostage into fighting on your side for 60 seconds. It only works with one hostage at a time.
> Cost: 3 skill points
Since each of these skills required three skill points, I could learn only two of them. Each of the five skills seemed to be very useful to me, so I called Flynn to ask him for advice. He said that Converted was pretty much useless because NPCs were crappy shooters. Even if I were to convert a security guard, he or she would more often than not miss what they aimed at. So ruled that skill out.
The same held true for the Interrogation skill. Sure, this skill could be useful sometimes, but we didn’t really need it. For one thing, while the skill showed the exact positions of cops, it lasted only for sixty seconds. And for another, Flynn could deploy sticky security cameras anywhere he wanted so we could watch the live video feed from them. So basically his surveillance cameras and the Integration skill did the same thing. Which was why I ruled this skill out as well.
Flynn suggested I learn Rise and shine. He said that it was probably one of the most useful Shot Caller’s skills. It would allow me to raise downed teammates by shouting at them if they weren’t too far from me. I learned that skill.
According to Flynn, the All for one and Relentless skills could be useful in certain circumstances as well. But to kill a player from a pistol when downed, one had to be really good with handguns. And I was a crack shot with pistols, which was why I often used a Sig Sauer as my secondary weapon.
But since it was a team-based game, I decided to learn All for one skill. It could be very beneficial for our team. If I had had this skill learned when we robbed the armored cash trucks, we could have taken some NPC hostage and then traded him or her for Flynn and he wouldn’t have been in the prison right now.
After Allison and I assigned the skill points, she said that she had to go. I said goodbye to her and she logged off. I was pretty tired, so I decided to call it a day as well.
When a player entered the game, he or she appeared where he left. I made a point of leaving the game only when my character was in the safe house. However, there wasn’t any particular reason for my doing so. I just liked my safe house. I had been spending lots of money on it, constantly upgrading it. It was much more spacious now than it was when I just started playing Heist Online. I had spent a lot of money on designing and furnishing my safe house.
Moreover, there were plenty of various weapons and ammo in there. Having extra guns in your safe house was very useful. For example, when we had played the armored cash truck heist, I got killed. After reviving in my safe house, I just grabbed one of the guns and set off for the intersection where my teammates were fighting the cops. If hadn’t had extra guns, I would’ve had to buy some weapon and might not have been able to get to Allison’s aid in time.
Also, I had upgraded the garage as well, which was situated above my safe house. It was very spacious now. There were five cars in the garage: an armored SUV, a luxury sports car, and three plain getaway cars, which could easily blend in with the city traffic.
There were also lots of hidden security cameras and motion sensors installed around my property. If one of those devices spotted an intruder, I would get a text message about it. I also could watch the live feed from the cameras in my safe house on my cell phone.
So after Allison left the game, I got in my car, mounted my cell phone on the dashboard, and headed for my safe house. I didn’t watch the feed from the cameras in my place at the moment. I had no reason to do so. I hadn’t gotten any warning text messages, so nothing indicated that there might be something wrong in my safe house right now.
As I drove through the streets, I spotted a silver sedan behind me. It was driven by a player, for sure. NPCs drove very slowly and carefully. As to me, I drove pretty fast. The needle on the speedometer wavered between sixty-five and seventy. Moreover, I barreled through red lights and ignored every road rule in the book. The silver sedan did the same thing as it continued to follow me. I accelerated, slowed down, wove in and out of traffic, took left and right turns at intersections. The silver sedan was constantly dogging my car. It kept about fifty yards behind me. The driver was male, but I couldn’t make out his features.
In the end, I just pulled over and looked in the rearview mirror to see what the player would do. He pulled to the curb behind me as well. I stared at his car for half a minute, then jerked the driver’s-side door open, got out of my car, and strode toward the silver sedan. My right hand slid behind my back and gripped the butt of a Sig Sauer tucked in my pants.
The engine of the silver sedan roared as the car suddenly whipped from the curb and lurched forward. For a moment, I thought that the player was going to run me over and got ready to leap to the side. However, the driver steered the car into the middle of the road.
As the sedan drove by, I caught a glimpse of the driver. He was in
his mid-twenties. He had a very stern face and his black hair was cropped short. He didn’t so much as glance at me as he drove by. Since the car dashed past me very fast, I wasn’t able to notice his nickname.
In hindsight, I should’ve paid attention to his nickname, not his facial features.
When the car disappeared in the distance, I returned to my car and slid behind the wheel. As I drove through the streets, I constantly looked around and cast glances in the rearview mirror. However, the silver sedan was nowhere in sight.
Before returning to my safe house, I tooled around the city for half an hour, just to ensure nobody was following me. When I was completely sure that the silver sedan was gone for good and no other car dogged me, I headed for my safe house.
When I approached the building where my lair was situated, I had a gut feeling that something was wrong. I pulled alongside the curb on the opposite side of the street from the building and just sat behind the wheel, looking around. As far as I could tell, there were no players nearby. However, with each passing second, the feeling only strengthened. Something seemed wrong, but I could not put my finger on what it was.
I reached for my cell phone to watch the feed from the cameras in my safe house. However, there was no feed. The surveillance cameras were dead. Either broken or disabled.
The driver of the silver sedan had been following me for a reason. That was for sure. But for what purpose had he dogged me?
Then a thought struck me. He hadn’t been trying to kill me. Neither had he been trying to follow me stealthily. Instead, he had put himself out to make sure I had spotted him.
Why?
Because he been trying to distract me.
He had known that I had been headed for my safe house. I couldn’t tell how, but somehow I was sure that the player had known where I had been going. And he had known that I wouldn’t go to my safe house while being followed by some suspicious player.
Heist Online Page 18
