The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [6]
Another door. Five seconds left. He raised his gun and kicked it open.
The guard seated in front of the security monitors looked round in surprise—
Tchack. Tchack. Tchack. The guard crashed off his chair, arms spasming in reflexive response to the three bullets that had just slammed into his skull, splattering blood across the blank monitor screens.
Shit! Where was the other man?
The diagnostic ended, and the monitors came back to life. He spotted one of his men in the Sale Bizantine, another in the Sale Fiorentine. Where were the guards?
There - in the Salone del Colosso. Sklar would be closest to them—
Both guards fell, thrashing in their noiseless death throes as a burst from Sklar’s silenced MP5K cut them down. Confirmation came through his earpiece: ‘Two down.’
Just one man left - but where?
The answer was almost comical in its obviousness. Fernandez rushed out of the control room and headed back up the passage to another door marked WC.
He opened it. A small tiled room, two stalls, one closed . . .
The rapid tchacks from the gun were louder in here, echoing in the confined space. The stall’s wooden door splintered, a startled gasp coming from behind it - along with clanks of shattering porcelain and the dull thud of lead entering flesh. A trickle of water ran out from beneath the door, pinkish rivulets spreading through it.
Six guards dealt with.
Fernandez hurried back into the museum proper, turning left in the entrance hall and looking down the length of the gallery to see his target at the far end.
Michelangelo’s David.
Possibly the most famous sculpture in the world, the Renaissance masterpiece towered above its viewers, over five metres tall even without its pedestal. During the day, illuminated mainly by light coming through the glass dome in the ceiling, the marble statue was a soft off-white, almost blending into the blandly painted walls of the semicircular chamber in which it stood. But at night, side-lit and with its surroundings in shadow, the naked figure stood out starkly, appearing almost threatening, a faint sneer of disdain visible on the young future king’s lips as he prepared to face Goliath in combat.
To Fernandez, the image seemed appropriate. After all, he was the David who defeated the Goliath of the world’s combined law enforcement agencies . . .
You haven’t done it yet, he warned himself as he marched towards the statue, passing more of Michelangelo’s sculptures along the way. Three of his men were already waiting at David’s feet, and he heard footsteps behind - Zec and Franco. As for the last two team members . . .
He looked up at the dome, catching a glimpse of movement outside. They were right where they should be. Everything was on schedule.
‘You know what to do,’ he announced as he reached the statue. ‘Let’s make history.’
‘Or take history,’ said Zec. The two men grinned, then everyone moved into action.
One man ran to a control panel on one wall. It was protected by a locked metal cover, but a moment’s effort with a crowbar took care of that. The others went to the statue itself. Kristoff and Franco climbed on to the plinth, their heads only coming to David’s mid-thigh. They took out coiled straps, wider and much thicker than their own harnesses, and carefully secured them round the statue’s legs.
Once they were in place, Kristoff took out another coil and, keeping hold of the buckle at one end, tossed it upwards. It arced over the statue’s shoulder, dropping down on the other side like a streamer. Another man caught the coil and passed it back between David’s legs to Franco, who ran it through the buckle, connected it to the leg strap and pulled it tight. The process was repeated with a second strap over the other shoulder.
Kristoff quickly used the straps to scale the stone figure’s chest, hanging on with one hand as more straps were thrown to him. Fernandez looked on as his plan literally took shape before his eyes. The growing web was much like the harnesses