The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [5]
Franco took out a pair of wirecutters and with a single snip severed the cable between the clips.
The light stayed green.
Zec touched his throat-mike to key it. ‘We’re in.’
Inside the museum, lights of the halls and galleries were dimmed to the softest glow. Had it been up to the curators they would have been switched off entirely, to prevent the artworks from fading, but the security guards’ inconvenient human need for illumination had required a compromise.
The Galleria dell’ Accademia is not an especially large museum, so the nightwatch usually consists only of six men. Despite the cultural value of the exhibits to the Italian people, this seemingly small staff is not an issue: any kind of alarm would normally result in a rapid police response.
But on this night, the police had other concerns.
Two guards entered one of the upper floor galleries. Familiarity had turned the art treasures into mundane furniture, the monotony of patrolling the halls punctuated only by check-ins with the security office. So the unexpected crackle of one man’s walkie-talkie got their attention; the next check wasn’t due for twenty minutes. ‘What’s up?’
‘Probably nothing,’ came the static-laden reply. ‘But Hall Three has gone dark. Can you look?’
‘No problem,’ said the guard, giving his companion a wry look. That passed as excitement in their job: checking for faulty light bulbs.
They made their way to a short flight of steps. It was immediately clear there was something wrong with the lights in Hall III, only darkness visible beyond the entrance. One guard took a torch from his belt, and they advanced into the gallery.
Nothing seemed out of place in the torch beam. The second man shrugged, turning to try the light switches—
A pair of eyes seemed to float in the blackness before him.
Before he could make a sound, he was hit in the heart by two bullets from Zec’s MP5K, the suppressor muting the noise of the shots to nothing more than sharp tchacks. His partner whirled - and a gloved hand clamped over his mouth, Franco’s black-bladed combat knife stabbing deep into his throat.
Both bodies were hauled into the shadows. Zec pulled up his balaclava and took the dead guard’s walkie-talkie. ‘Something’s buzzing,’ he said in Italian, the radio’s low fidelity disguising his voice. ‘The camera might have shorted out. Can you check the system?’
‘I’ll run a diagnostic. Hold on.’
Zec dropped the walkie-talkie. The computer would spend the next thirty seconds checking the various cameras and alarms around the building, eventually coming to the conclusion that the camera in Hall III was malfunctioning - unsurprising, since he had shot it.
But while the computer was busy, the security systems would be down.
He keyed the throat-mike. ‘Two down. Go.’
Fernandez and Sklar were suspended on lines hanging from the roof on the southern side of a courtyard, waiting for Zec’s signal: the instant it came, Fernandez kicked open an upper-floor window and swung inside, unslinging his gun. The Ukrainian jumped down beside him.
He and his team had reconnoitred the Galleria multiple times over the past month, and he knew exactly where he had entered the building - the upper level of the main stairwell. Right now, another team was also entering on the ground floor.
This part of the mission was a hunt - and a race against time. Find the remaining guards . . . and kill them before they could raise the alarm.
Fernandez knew where two of them would be - the security control room. He and Sklar hurried down the staircase. The position of the remaining two guards was another wildcard, which was why he had chosen entry points that would let his team spread out as quickly as possible. Speed and surprise were everything - it only took one guard to push a panic button . . .
They reached the ground floor. Fifteen seconds before the cameras came back online. Sklar hared off into the main entrance hall.