Heist Online

by Victor Deckard

  “What are you going to say to him?” The girl asked.

  “I’m going to tell him that we’re going to give him a hard time,” McDermott said grimly. “I’ll tell him that we’re gonna spend every bloody moment in this game to harass him and that he better drop this game unless he wants to be killed every freaking day.”

  “I ain’t gonna constantly look for this bloke and kill him,” the girl said. “It’s so boring. Besides, I kinda like this bloke. He’s the only player who’s managed to outsmart us.”

  “If you guys don’t want to help, I’ll do everything on my own,” McDermott snarled. “I will do whatever it takes to scare that wanker away from this game.”

  “Don’t worry, pal,” the leader said. “We’ll help you.”

  I couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation because the three players went out of the house.

  I was extremely excited about what I had just learned. When I had planned to take one of them hostage, I hadn’t really expected that my idea would pay off in any way.

  However, I had just learned something about the British gang that nobody knew. The British players had been robbing other players since the very first day of the game release. They wore balaclavas and acted like your regular heisters. But I had found them out. I knew the truth about them now.

  The British players were no heisters.

  They were cops.

  They were cops who robbed players who played as heisters. For what reason did they rob them? What did they accomplish by stealing dirty money from heisters they couldn’t use? I didn’t know the answers to these questions yet, but I was going to dig it out sooner or later.

  Right now, I had to do something different. I delved into my duffel bag and removed an M4A1 with a stubby M203 grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel. I loaded a shell and ran out of the building.

  The three players had already reached their vehicle and were about to climb in.

  “Looking for me?” I cried out to them.

  The players instantly whirled around and saw me standing in the door. To give them their due, they recovered from the surprise extremely quickly. The players went for their weapons. Yet before they could draw their guns, I squeezed the trigger of the M203.

  The buttstock kicked against my shoulder with the force of a 12-gauge shotgun. There was a pop-plunk report as the 40mm grenade streaked across the air. It struck the right side of the vehicle. The distance was short but far enough. The grenade exploded on impact.

  A bright, red-orange fireball engulfed the interior and flames shot out the windows. The gasoline tank caught a moment later. The second brilliant explosion carved gashes in the asphalt as the heat and shock wave tore limbs from the bodies of the three players and scattered them in every direction. Glass and metal shards whistled through the air. The flaming wreckage from the vehicle flew in multiple directions. The strident blast rocked the nearest buildings, shattering the windows and setting off the fire alarms.

  The three players dead, I whirled around and burst into a race for the sports car, which was half a block away from this place.

  As I reached the car, I heard the police sirens in the distance. I jumped into the small vehicle and tore off before cops arrived on the scene.

  Chapter Ten

  The following day, Allison, Flynn, and I were in Flynn’s big SUV. We had just picked a legendary heist to play.

  > Name: Private Military Plane Heist (Legendary Heist)

  > Level Requirement: 20 (*)

  > Difficulty: Hard

  > Objective: Your goal is to steal as much money from the private military plane as possible.

  > (*) Note: This is a legendary heist, meaning you can pick this contract only if all members of your crew have already reached level 20.

  Initially, I didn’t want to tell my teammates about what I had found out about the British team so that their attention wasn’t distracted from the mission at hand. The Private Military Plane Heist was a very difficult mission, so we had to focus our attention entirely on the heist.

  However, considering what I had found about the British team yesterday, I couldn’t help but tell them everything. The British players were intent on interfering with my plans from that day on. So if they were going to attack us while we were doing the legendary heist and we weren’t prepared for it, we would be in trouble.

  So I told my teammates what had happened yesterday. Flynn said, “Yes, cops can track someone else’s cell phone. But to do so, cops need to know the person’s nickname and the number of his or her cell phone. If a heister finds out that his or her cell phone is being traced, they can buy another one with a different number.”

  I had no idea how the British players had managed to learn my nickname, not to mention the number of my cell phone. Neither did Flynn. We agreed that if the British players had managed to learn my nickname and the number of my cell phone, they might already know Flynn and Allison’s nicknames and numbers as well.

  So after we discussed the matter, we decided not to bring our cell phones on the legendary heist. Sure, cell phones were very useful in this game. For instance, heisters could use them to watch the feed from surveillance cameras. But if the British players could trace our cell phones, we had better ditch them temporarily.

  The Private Military Plane Heist was difficult enough without dealing with the British team. We wanted to eliminate any possibility of the British gang’s interference with our plans to play the legendary heist. So we decided to get rid of our cell phones before we started the mission.

  Then we discussed The Private Military Plane Heist itself. Flynn had played this heist one time during the beta test period. He and the random teammates he had played with had failed to accomplish this mission.

  “This heist consisted of two parts,” Flynn said. “The first part is to steal our way through the private military base toward the military plane. There’s a lot of money in the cargo bay of the plane. So we’re gonna need to board it. But all of this has to be done in stealth.”

  “Oh great,” Allison mumbled. “Just what I wanted.”

  “If we fail to do it in stealth,” Flynn continued totally ignoring the girl, “then the plane will immediately start to take off. If we don’t get on it before it takes off, the mission will be failed.”

  “I’m ecstatic,” Allison said.

  “When I played this heist during the beta test,” Flynn continued on, “my teammates and I came up with a plan of sorts. It was pretty simple, but it could’ve worked.”

  “But it didn’t, right?” Allison asked.

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because my teammates sucked. Truth be told, I was a newbie myself. But I’m much more experienced in this game now. And you guys are very capable players too. Probably the best players I’ve ever played with.”

  “Have I heard you right?” Allison asked, surprised. “Have you just said that I’m a good player?”

  “Yeah,” Flynn replied. “You might suck at stealth, but what you lack in stealth, apparently you more than make up for in other areas. You’re quite good at shooting. So yeah, when you don’t do some stupid mistakes like forgetting to attach a silencer to your pistol while on a stealth mission, you’re a pretty good player.”

  “Well,” Allison said, “that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever told me.”

  “So what the second part of the heist?” I asked getting the conversation back on track. “And what was your plan?”

  “So the first part is to get in the aircraft’s cargo bay,” Flynn said. “Once we initiate the mission, we’ll have about fifteen minutes to reach the military base and steal our way through the base to the plane. When time is up, the plane’s gonna take off whether we’re on board or not.”

  “And what’s next?” Allison asked impatiently. “I mean, what do we do after we board the plane?”

  “Then we’re gonna have to drop the money and jump
out of the airplane with parachutes.”

  “It’s starting to sound interesting,” Allison put in, her eyes sparkling with excitement now.

  “When the money and we land, cops are gonna arrive,” Flynn said. “That’s where the second part of the heist begins.”

  “How are they gonna learn where we land at?” I asked.

  “Dunno. Probably the pilot who’s an NPC informs them.”

  “What if we take him hostage?” Allison asked. “Hijacking the aircraft is gonna be so exciting!”

  “It’s impossible to hijack it,” Flynn said. “We won’t be able to get in the cockpit.”

  “That’s a shame,” Allison sighed.

  “The first part of the heist has to be done in stealth and the second part can be done only in loud,” Flynn said. “Even if we land in the middle of some forest where there are no NPCs at all, cops will know where exactly we’re gonna be. So there’s no way to avoid dealing with cops.”

  “Not that I complain about it,” Allison stated. “The more action, the more fun!”

  On the screen of Flynn’s cell phone mounted on the dash was the map of the playable area. A white circular line indicated the route the military aircraft would be following. Flynn touched the tip of his index finger to the screen and traced the route.

  “The plane’s gonna fly this way,” he said. “As you see, there’re a few small towns along the way. When I played with random players, our plan was to drop the money and bail out when the airplane was flying over one such town. The money got scattered all over the place. It more often than not does. So we had to run around the town grabbing the bundles of money and carrying them to a house of our choice. When all the money was collected, we were to hotwire some big car and drive away. Such was our plan.”

  Flynn went silent for a moment to let everything he had just said sink in.

  “But it didn’t work out the way he hoped it would,” Flynn said.

  “Why?” Allison asked.

  “Because we had to run around looking for the money while being fired at by cops all the while. Remember the armored cash transport heist? It was a difficult heist because we were constantly in the open. The same holds true for this legendary heist. Once we land, we’ll be in the open almost all the time. This is why this heist is so difficult for heisters to complete. But since you are good players, I think we’ll probably be able to do it.”

  I looked at the screen of Flynn’s cell phone. We had already picked the heist but didn’t initiate it yet, so we have as much time to think over our plan as we needed. I examined the list of additional assets we could purchase. An idea came to my mind. I took a minute to ponder the idea. Then I shared my thoughts with my teammates.

  “So what do you think?” I asked after I finished telling them my plan.

  “It’s a good idea,” Flynn said approvingly. “It may work.”

  As always, Allison expressed her opinion more emotionally than Flynn.

  “Sounds awesome,” she exclaimed. “That’s a really great idea, Striker. Let’s do this, guys! I can’t wait to begin!”

  “But if we go with this plan,” Flynn said to the girl, “then we might avoid dealing with cops whatsoever. There’ll hardly be any action. You okay with this?”

  She went silent for a moment. Seemed like she only now realized that we might be able to avoid fighting cops. Then a smile appeared on the girl’s face.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We can get action another time. I really want to try what Striker suggested. I saw something like that in an action flick once. Since then, I was dying to try something like this in real life.”

  “This is a VR video game, not real life,” Flynn commented matter-of-factly.

  “I know, but–– Gosh, stop being so critical. Let’s just begin, guys. This is gonna be doozy!”

  We made all the preparations for the legendary heist, then initiated the mission, and set off. About ten minutes later, we reached our destination.

  Flynn and I lay on our bellies on a small rise covered with bushes. We were intently watching the private military base on the other side of the rise. Military NPCs were patrolling the area. We also spotted several outer surveillance cameras. We took two or three minutes to locate the security building and take note of the NPCs’ patrol patterns.

  If we had still had our cell phones on us, Flynn could have deployed a quadcopter and had it fly in a circular manner over the private military base. It could have notified us if there were NPCs nearby. Moreover, we could have watched the feed from the quadcopter’s surveillance cameras.

  But since we had ditched our cell phones before we started the mission, we would have to rely only on our eyes and ears to detect NPCs when we entered the private military base.

  Allison was seated behind Flynn’s SUV that was parked out of sight at the base of the rise. Since the girl wasn’t very good at stealth, she would wait for us to get in the aircraft before jumping into action.

  We didn’t have much time left, so Flynn and I started to crawl down the rise on our elbows and knees. We reached a chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire, which surrounded the private military base. We cut a hole big enough for us to crawl through out of the fence. In a single file, we crept our way through the hole on all fours.

  After looking around to get our bearings, we picked the right direction and set off.

  Since both Flynn and I were very experienced at playing in stealth by this point, we managed to steal our way toward a small security building, successfully avoiding being seen by both NPCs and surveillance cameras. Undetected, we got in and took the camera operator hostage. With him tied and harmless, we didn’t have to worry about surveillance cameras anymore.

  We went out of the building, looked around to make sure no NPCs were nearby, and continued on. Unfortunately, as we stole our way toward the private military aircraft, a couple of NPCs spotted us. We had to knock them out and hid the bodies in nearby bushes, hoping we would get out of the base before they would come around or be discovered by other NPCs.

  Eventually, we reached the military aircraft. We climbed up the open hatch door and entered the plane’s cargo bay. At the far wall, there was a great stack of cash.

  “Allison, we’re in the plane,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, her voice coming from the earpiece in my right ear. “I’m coming.”

  “Be careful.”

  Flynn and I stayed in the aircraft’s cargo bay, looking out the open hatch door. We didn’t have to wait long. A few seconds later, we heard the alarm blaring. Almost instantly, the aircraft shuddered slightly and started to move.

  “Guy’s I’m coming,” Allison cried out.

  “You better hurry.”

  “Going as fast as I can!”

  Then we heard the crack of automatic fire.

  “Here she goes,” Flynn said pointing toward with his left hand.

  I saw the SUV dash around one building. The military NPCs were firing their assault rifles at the racing vehicle, the bullets pinging off the body of the car. Some of the slugs ripped holes through the sheet metal.

  The aircraft continued to gain speed. It wouldn’t be long before it took off.

  “She ain’t gonna make it,” Flynn opinioned.

  “If she doesn’t, we’ll have to resort to the plan your team came up with during the beta test.”

  “Yeah.”

  There were lots of military NPCs now. Moreover, they were extremely stupid. Most of them ran right into the vehicle’s path as if they were doing their best to get themselves killed. The SUV was swerving back and forth as the girl spun the steering wheel frantically, trying to avoid running over the NPCs. Although those were military NPCs, not civilian, we could still get a penalty for each killed military NPC.

  Driving in the zigzag pattern took a toll on the vehicle’s speed. If Allison didn’t accelerate, she wouldn’t be able to get to us in time.

  �
�Allison, you ain’t gonna make it driving like this,” I said.

  “But I’m trying––”

  “I know. Forget about it. There’s plenty of money in here. So I don’t think it’ll matter if you run over some of these idiots.”

  “Got it.”

  The SUV plowed through three or four stupid NPCs who jumped right in front of the racing big vehicle. The plane was moving at top speed now. Yet now that the SUV was racing in a straight line after the aircraft, it started to gain on the airplane. The vehicle was right behind us now. It was getting closer and closer. I could clearly see Allison behind the steering wheel now.

  Then the airplane started to take off. The next moment the two front big wheels of the vehicle hit the edge of the ramp and the SUV shot up the slope. Flynn and I jumped to the opposite walls of the aircraft as the big vehicle flew into the cargo bay.

  Allison applied the brakes and the SUV screeched to a halt just before the stack of the money. The plane was now in the air, quickly gaining altitude. The hatch door swung upward and closed with a clank.

  The driver’s-side door of the SUV swung open and Allison stepped out.

  “I did it, guys,” she exclaimed.

  Allison then turned and saw the money. “Wow. That’s really a lot of green.”

  We then grabbed empty duffel bags from the SUV, carried them toward the money, and started to fill them with the bundles of one-hundred banknotes. When we were done, we had ten full duffel bags. We carried them back toward the SUV and threw them in the back of the car.

  Since we didn’t have cell phones on us and there were no windows in the cargo bay, there was only one way to know where we were right now. I walked toward a small lever and pulled it. The hatch door of the aircraft started to swing downward. When it was wide open, I gingerly looked out. The airplane was flying over an open grassy field now.

  I turned around and said to my teammates standing behind me, “It’s time.”

  “We’re gonna do it now?” Allison asked excitedly. “Are we really gonna do it, guys?”