Chapter 13 - The Ambush in the Gallery
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The second-floor portrait gallery of Whitaker Hall was a hundred-foot-long vaulted corridor lined with oil paintings of Evan’s ancestors and tall arched windows currently sealed behind black titanium storm shutters. Emergency red strobe lights pulsed rhythmically along the mahogany walls as the alarm sirens continued to scream.
When Evan and Grace eased open the heavy oak doors at the nursery end of the gallery, three of Arthur’s tactical contractors were already moving down the Persian runner toward them, weapons raised, having realized the nursery guard had missed his two-minute radio check-in.
"Contact at the nursery door!" the lead contractor shouted, dropping to one knee behind a marble bust pedestal and opening fire with a suppressed carbine.
Bullets chewed into the oak doorframe inches above Evan’s head, showering them in splinters as Evan and Grace dove behind the heavy velvet armchairs flanking the gallery entrance.
"Stay low!" Grace shouted, rolling sideways to the base of a stone pillar and returning two surgical shots that struck the lead gunman’s Kevlar vest, knocking him flat onto his back on the carpet.
The remaining two mercenaries immediately split up, one sprinting along the raised minstrel balcony above the paintings while the second laid down suppressing fire toward Grace’s pillar.
Above them on the balcony, the gunman leaned over the mahogany railing, aiming his laser sight straight down at the exposed back of Grace’s neck while she was pinned by the man on the floor.
"Grace, above you!" Evan roared.
Without hesitating, Evan lunged out from behind the velvet armchair, grabbing the heavy braided silk cord that held the gallery’s six-hundred-pound brass chandelier counterweight and slicing it cleanly with the tactical knife from the downed guard’s belt while firing twice upward.
The chandelier dropped four feet and swung like a wrecking ball across the narrow upper gallery, smashing into the balcony gunman’s chest and hurling him over the railing onto the antique dining table below.
Simultaneously, a single round from the floor gunman grazed Grace’s left shoulder, tearing the grey fabric of her uniform sleeve and spinning her against the marble pillar just as Evan vaulted over the armchair, tackled the remaining mercenary into the wainscoting, and knocked him cold against the floorboards.
Silence fell over the red-lit gallery save for the pulsing strobe lights.
Evan immediately dropped to one knee beside the pillar where Grace was leaning, pressing her right hand tightly over the bleeding graze on her upper left arm.
"Let me see it," Evan said urgently, pulling his clean linen handkerchief from his pocket and binding it firmly around her bicep above the wound.
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"It’s just a crease, Mr. Whitaker," Grace breathed through clenched teeth, already reaching down with her uninjured hand to snatch the master encrypted radio off the belt of the unconscious team leader. "Three minutes to noon. The security hub door is right behind that tapestry. Get inside and kill the jammer before the vault relay trips!"
Evan helped her to her feet, keeping one arm supporting her waist as they kicked open the reinforced door behind the tapestry and burst into the mansion’s central audio-visual control room.
