The Sacred Vault Read Free Page A

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 tchack s 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