Madirakshi needed no further prompting. The BMW roared away. Fernandez looked back as the car reached the corner—to see a huge explosion rip through the forest half a kilometer behind as the tanker blew up, a seething mushroom cloud of blazing orange and yellow rising into the night sky as flaming fuel rained down around it. A moment later, the blast reached him, an earthshaking thump followed by a thunderous roar of air being pulled in to feed the conflagration.
“Perfect,” said Fernandez. “Now for stage two.”
The BMW raced through the darkened forest, heading for the city of Florence as the trees behind it turned into a wall of fire.
The banging of the chair stopped as Braco Zec pointed his gun at the young woman tied to it. “Cut that out,” he said in fluent Italian. “I told you, do what we say and you’ll live.” He dragged the chair and its gagged occupant away from the wall, then returned to the small apartment’s living room. Six other black-clad men and their equipment occupied most of the space, but he pushed through them to the window, peeling back his dark balaclava to reveal a weather-worn face, hair shaved down to a gray stubble. Deep creases across his forehead showed that he had witnessed—and endured—far more than most men of his thirty-four years.
The mercenaries had taken over the apartment that afternoon, Zec tricking the woman into letting them in by claiming to be delivering a parcel. She had been selected during the operation’s exacting planning phase, being the only single occupant of any of the suitable top-floor apartments on the narrow Via degli Alfani. Considering what was across the street, it was perhaps inevitable that she was an aspiring artist.
He looked out at the eighteenth-century buildings: the museum complex containing the Galleria dell’Accademia. One of Florence’s top tourist attractions—and home to one of the world’s most famous pieces of art.
Their target.
Zec’s phone rang. Fernandez. “Yes?”
“We’re here. Let us in.”
The Bosnian craned his neck for a better look at the street below. Two figures passed under a streetlight, approaching briskly. Fernandez and the Indian woman. The creases in Zec’s forehead deepened. To him, Dagdu’s presence was almost insulting, a sign that their employer didn’t trust them to carry out the job without supervision. Weren’t all their previous successes, including stealing a set of terracotta warriors out of their museum in Xi’an, China, and removing one of Islam’s holiest relics from Mecca itself, enough to prove their prowess? And Interpol was no nearer to catching them now than after their first “commission” eight months earlier. Fernandez’s inside knowledge of how the police worked, how they thought, kept them several steps ahead.
He suppressed his annoyance—she was their paymaster’s representative, after all—and went back to the hall as the entry buzzer rasped. He pushed the button, then waited with slight anxiety for them to climb the stairs. If any of the other residents chose that moment to leave their apartment, and saw their faces …
But there were no such problems. The soft clump of boots outside, then a single sharp rap on the door. Zec opened it, and Fernandez and his companion entered.
The Spaniard shared a brief smile of greeting with his second-in-command. “Anything to report?”
“You’ve made the evening news,” Zec told him. “The fire’s spreading—they’re calling in fire trucks from every surrounding town. And,” he added meaningfully, “helicopters.”
“Excellent.” Fernandez dialed a number on his phone. “Status?”
“Air traffic control has our flight plan,” said the voice at the other end of the line. “We’re ready.”
“Then go.” He disconnected. “Where’s the roof access?” Zec pointed at a skylight. “Okay, let’s get into position.” He moved to address the rest of the team.
Madirakshi, behind him, looked into the bedroom. “What is this?” she snapped on seeing the prisoner.
“She won’t be a problem,” said Zec. “She hasn’t seen our faces.”
Madirakshi’s face was as fixed as her artificial eye. “No witnesses.” She stepped into the bedroom. The bound woman, facing away from the door, twisted against her restraints, making panicked noises. She didn’t need to understand English to recognize the dangerous tone of the new arrival’s voice.
“If you shoot her, the neighbors might hear,” Fernandez warned.
“I don’t need a gun.” She stopped directly behind the other woman, whose muffled cries became more desperate.
“Leave her,” said Zec, coming into the room. “I promised she would live if she caused no trouble.”
Madirakshi ignored him. She placed her fingers against her right eye socket—and pressed. There was a soft sucking sound, and with a faint plop something dropped into her waiting palm.
Her glass eye, glistening wetly.
Zec had seen many horrific things in his life, but the casual way the woman removed the prosthetic still produced a small shudder of revulsion. Disgust then turned to confusion as she took hold of the eye with both hands … and twisted it. There was a click, and it split into two hemispherical halves. What was she doing?
The answer came as she drew her hands apart. Coiled inside the eye was a length of fine steel wire. By the time Zec realized it was a garrote, Madirakshi had looped it round the defenseless young woman’s throat and pulled it tight.
“No!” Zec gasped, but Fernandez put a firm hand on his shoulder to pull him back. The Italian woman couldn’t even cry out, her airway crushed by the razor-sharp wire. She convulsed against the ropes. The chair thumped on the floor; Madirakshi pulled harder, sawing the wire through skin and flesh. Blood flowed down the woman’s neck. Her fingers clenched and clawed … then relaxed. One last bump, and the chair fell still.
Madirakshi unwound the garrote and turned. For the first time, Zec saw her face as it really was, a sunken hole with the eyelids gaping like a tiny mouth where her right eye should have been. Another revolted shudder, accompanied by anger. “You didn’t have to do that!” he said. “I promised her—”
“No witnesses,” the Indian repeated. She took out a cloth and ran it down the length of the blood-coated wire. The garrote clean, she recoiled it, then fastened the two halves of the eye back into a single sphere. Snick. Another practiced move, and with a small but unsettling noise of suction the prosthetic was returned to its home. “Now. You have a job to do.”
“We do,” said Fernandez before Zec could respond. He leaned closer to his lieutenant, adding in a low voice, “I think perhaps having a baby has made you go a little soft, Braco. If this is going to be a problem …”
“No problem,” said Zec stiffly. “But I promised her—”
“Never make promises you might not be able to keep,” Fernandez told him, before clicking his fingers. The men in the living room looked round as one, ready for action.
Ten minutes later, all eight mercenaries were on the apartment’s sloping roof.
Fernandez peered over the edge. Below, Madirakshi left the building. Relieved to be rid of her at last, he backed up and faced his team. “Ready?”
The responses were all in the affirmative. Each man was now armed, compact MP5K submachine guns fitted with laser sights and suppressors slung on their backs. Other pieces of gear were attached to the harnesses they wore; not mere equipment webbing, but parachute-style straps able to support their body weight, and more.
The Spaniard looked at his watch. Five minutes to get everyone across to the roof of the Galleria dell’Accademia, another five to eliminate the guards and secure the room containing their target, five more to prepare it—and themselves—for extraction …
Fifteen minutes to carry out the most audacious robbery in history.
He gestured to one of his men, Franco, who had already secured one end of a line inside the open skylight. At the other end was a barbed metal spear, currently loaded into a custom-built, gas-powered launcher.
Franco had already selected his target, a squat brick ventilation blockhouse
poking up from the Galleria’s roof like a periscope. He tilted up the launcher. Fernandez watched him closely. This was a “wildcard moment,” the biggest risk in any operation. If the brickwork was too weak to take the weight, if someone heard the noise of launch or the clang of impact and looked up at the wrong moment …
At least they could minimize the chances of the last. Franco raised a thumb. Another man, Sklar, held up a string of firecrackers, lit the fuse—and flung them down the street to the west.
There was a small square at the Galleria’s southwestern corner. The fireworks landed at its edge. People jumped at the string of little explosions. Once the initial fright passed, some onlookers were annoyed, others amused by the display …
But they were all looking at the ground.
“Now,” said Fernandez.
Franco pulled the trigger. There was a flat thud as compressed nitrogen gas blasted the spear across the street—and a sharp clang as the spearhead pierced the blockhouse.
All eyes below were on the firecrackers, though.
Franco put down the launcher and tugged on the line, gingerly at first, then harder. The spear held. He pulled a lever on the launcher’s side to engage a winch mechanism and quickly drew the line taut.
Fernandez gestured to a third man, Kristoff—the smallest and lightest member of the team. The German gave the line a tug of his own to reassure himself that it would hold, then clipped his harness to it and carefully lowered himself off the roof.
The others held their breaths. If the spear came loose, it was all over.
Suspended below the line, Kristoff pulled himself across the street. The cable shuddered, but held firm. Fernandez didn’t take his eyes off the spear. The crackle of fireworks had stopped, and now he could hear the crunch of broken bricks shifting against each other.…
Kristoff reached the Galleria’s roof.
Mass exhalation. Fernandez realized 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 kilometers 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 and 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 toward 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 onto 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 deep 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.”
Andy McDermott, The Pyramid of Doom_A Novel
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