The Sacred Vault

by Andy McDermott

  Kristoff reached the Galleria’s roof.

  Mass exhalation. Fernandez realised he was sweating despite the cold. Kristoff detached himself from the line, then secured it around the blockhouse.

  Thumbs up.

  Fernandez hooked himself to the cable and pulled himself across, followed in rapid succession by the others. He checked his watch as the last man reached the Galleria. They had made it with thirty seconds to spare.

  Now for the next stage.

  He took out his phone and entered another number. He didn’t lift it to his ear as he pushed the final button, though. He was listening for something else.

  In a Florentine suburb three kilometres to the southwest, two cars had been parked, one at each end of an unremarkable street.

  Each car contained half a kilogram of C-4 explosive, wired to a detonator triggered by a mobile phone. The phones had been cloned; each shared the same number, ringing simultaneously.

  An electrical impulse passed through the detonator—

  By the time the booms reached the Galleria dell’ Accademia eight seconds later, the men on the roof were already moving towards their next objectives.

  They raced across the rooftops, splitting into four groups of two men each. Zec and Franco comprised one team, reaching their destination first as the others continued past.

  The pair dropped on to a section of flat roof where large humming air conditioning units kept the museum’s internal temperature constant. There was a small window just below the eaves of the abutting, slightly taller building. Zec shone a penlight inside. An office, as expected. A glance below the frame revealed a thin electrical cable. The window was rigged with an alarm.

  He took a black box from his harness, uncoiling wires and digging a sharp-toothed crocodile clip deeply into the cable to bite the copper wire within. A second clip was affixed on the other side of the window. He pushed a button on the box. A green light came on.

  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. Fernandez, meanwhile, shoved through a door marked Privato and threaded his way along a narrow corridor.

  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 figur
e 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 he and his men were wearing, designed to spread out the weight of the body over as great an area as possible when it was lifted.

  In the case of David, that weight was over six tons - plus the pedestal. But that had been planned for.

  The Spaniard gestured to the man at the control panel. He pushed a button. A hydraulic rumble came from the floor.

  Very slowly, the statue began to rise.

  At considerable expense, the Galleria had recently installed a system to protect David from vibrations, whether in the form of earthquakes, city traffic or even the constant footsteps of visitors. Powerful shock absorbers under the pedestal shielded it from tremors - but also allowed it to be elevated for those rare occasions when the statue had to be moved. At full height, there was just enough space for a forklift’s blades to slip beneath the base.

  That was all the space Fernandez needed.

  Zec and the other man at the statue pushed more straps, thicker still and bearing heavy-duty metal D-rings, under the base. Once that was done, they fastened them over the pedestal, then began to secure the harness to them.

  Fernandez took out his phone again, dialling the first number he had called earlier. The answer was heavily obscured by noise. ‘We’re less than two minutes out - but ATC’s issued an alert about us being off course.’

  ‘We’re almost ready,’ said Fernandez. ‘Just follow the plan.’ He disconnected, hearing knocking from the dome. One of the two figures outside gave him a thumbs up.

  Zec rounded the statue. ‘All set. I just hope the harness holds.’

  ‘It’ll hold,’ Fernandez assured him. He raised his voice. ‘Move back!’ Everyone cleared the area beneath the dome.

  The men on the roof had also retreated, one of them pushing a button on a control box—

  The explosive charges they had placed round the dome detonated as one.

  Glass panels shattered into a billion fragments, the severed steel framework plunging down into the gallery and smashing the marble floor. The horrendous noise echoed through the museum’s halls - followed by the piercing shriek of sirens as vibration sensors throughout the building were triggered.

  The police would be on their way. But with attention diverted by the forest fire to the east and the car bombings to the southwest, their response time would be slowed, their numbers reduced.

  And Fernandez and his men would be gone.

  The two men who had planted the explosives were already rappelling into the museum as the others quickly cleared wreckage out of the way. Even over the alarms the Spaniard could hear another sound, a thudding bass pounding getting louder and louder . . .

  The breeze blowing in through the hole was magnified a hundredfold as a helicopter surged into view overhead, the beat of its rotor blades shaking the air. The massive aircraft was a Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane, the machine’s name revealing its purpose: to lift extremely heavy objects.

  Like Michelangelo’s David.

  Cables dropped from the helicopter, heavy hooks on their ends clanging on the cracked marble. Fernandez and his men each took one line and pulled it to the statue. Six cables were attached to the D-rings on the base, while Kristoff and Franco scaled the pedestal again and hooked their lines to the webbing around the great carved figure itself.

  Fernandez moved back beneath the hole and looked up. The Skycrane had been painted dark green to match the livery of the Italian Forest Service’s fire-fighting S-64s, its radio transceiver hacked to give air traffic control the identification number of one of the real choppers. But where the Italian aircraft had giant water tanks beneath the long dragonfly spine of their fuselages, this had just a bottomless mockup, thin aluminium concealing a powerful winch.

  A wave from Fernandez, and the winch began to draw up the cables.

  The men took positions on each side of the statue, hands pressed against the pedestal. The cables pulled tight, the straps creaking as they took the strain. Fernandez watched the marble figure closely, hoping his calculations were right. If the harness didn’t protect David from the worst stresses of the lift, this would get very messy . . .

  The pedestal slid off the shock absorbers and ground noisily across the floor. Everyone pushed harder to keep it in a straight line as the lines tightened. They had to get the sculpture directly under the hole before they could escape. The cables scraped on the edge of the ruined dome, glass fragments and pieces of broken masonry raining down.

  The Skycrane rose, the statue jerking up and swinging half a metre before the edge of the base crunched against the marble. Fernandez waved angrily at the winch operator. Even minor damage to the statue would affect their payment.

  The winchman got the message. The statue lifted again, more gently. Another two metres to go before it was in position. The men kept pushing, guiding it. One and a half, one . . .

  The plinth thumped down on the broken floor, grinding glass to powder beneath it. Fernandez saw that the cables were more or less dead centre of the circular hole. ‘Hook up!’ he shouted.

  Each man attached his harness to the D-rings. Once they were all secure, Fernandez gave another signal to the winchman.

  The engine noise rose to a scream as the helicopter climbed.

  Another jolt as the statue left the floor - this time for good. Fernandez and his team were lifted with it. The noise and downwash from the Skycrane were horrific, but if everything went to plan they wouldn’t have to endure it for long . . .

  More power. The statue began to twist in the wind as it rose. Fernandez had expected that; there was no way to prevent it. All he could do was hope it didn’t get out of control.

  Four metres up, five, the ascent getting faster. The Galleria spun around them - and then they cleared the roof. They were out!

  He scanned the city as they continued to climb, the Skycrane lethargically tipping into forward flight and turning northwards. Strobe lights flicked through the streets leading to the museum. The police. Fernandez smiled. They were too late.

  There was one police vehicle that concerned him, though. Off to the southwest, he saw a pattern of pulsing lig
hts in the sky. Another helicopter.

  Heading towards them.

  As he’d expected, it had been called in to provide aerial support for the cops responding to the car bombs - but the Skycrane’s deviation from its course and the alarms at the Galleria dell’ Accademia had caused someone to put two and two together and realise that the explosions were, like the forest fire, just a diversion.

  The Skycrane picked up speed, Florence rolling past below. Not quickly enough. The police chopper would rapidly catch up with the lumbering Sikorsky - and for the plan to succeed, the next stage had to be carried out without witnesses.

  Fernandez looked ahead, eyes narrowed against the blasting wind. The city’s northern edge was not far away, twinkling lights abruptly replaced by the blackness of woods and fields as the landscape rose into the hills. No roads; only an aircraft could pursue them.

  But he had planned for that. Another member of his team was positioned on a rooftop at the city’s periphery, directly beneath the Skycrane’s course.

  The Sikorsky and its strange cargo swept over the urban boundary. The police chopper was gaining fast. Glaring blue-white light pinned the Skycrane from behind as the other aircraft’s spotlight flicked on, playing over the green fuselage before tilting down to turn the suspended statue a dazzling white.

  The police helicopter closed in—

  And suddenly dropped out of the sky in a sheet of flame, spiralling down to smash explosively into the woods beyond the city.

  Fernandez’s man on the ground had been armed with a Russian SA-18 anti-aircraft missile, the shoulder-fired weapon homing in on the helicopter’s exhaust and detonating over a kilogram of high explosive on impact.

  The Spaniard smiled. The Italian air force would now be called in to hunt down the helicopter - which was exactly what he wanted them to do. Because a few minutes from now, he and his men would be putting as much distance between themselves and the Skycrane as possible.