automatic. He squeezed the trigger gently, feeling the weight necessary to fire a single round, and then depressed the trigger fully for automatic fire. It was a useful feature, giving him the option of firing either one shot or several without having to use the selector to change between fire modes. With a cyclic rate of nine hundred rounds per minute, the P90 could unload its fifty-round magazine in 3.3 seconds. The weapon fired a 5.7? 28 mm cartridge extremely accurately, even on fully automatic. Dispersion was minimal, thanks to the round’s low recoil impulse and the weapon’s twin-operating recoil springs and guide rods.
Victor checked the four fully loaded translucent polycarbonate magazines that mounted horizontally along the top of the weapon. He could see that the magazines contained white-tipped SB193 subsonic ammunition. Each bullet was boat-tailed with a lead core and had a projectile weight of 55.0 grains with 2.0 grains of powder, producing a muzzle velocity of just under one thousand feet per second with an effective range of fifty yards. A supersonic round was comparable to a 9 mm JHP in stopping power, but the subsonic SB193, though heavier than a supersonic 5.7 mm, had less than half the velocity. Stopping power therefore wasn’t going to be particularly high, but in Victor’s experience, whatever a bullet’s characteristics, two in the chest and one in the head stopped anyone.
He loaded a magazine and adopted a firing position. He looked down the P90’s unmagnified optical reflex sight. The reticule displayed a pattern of two concentric circles. The largest was approximately one hundred and eighty minutes of arc for fast target acquisition at long range and a smaller circle of twenty MOA surrounding a tiny dot at the centre of the field. Victor moved to the room’s wardrobe, opened it, and held the P90 in the shadows. The tritium cell low-light reticule appeared as two horizontal lines across the middle of the field with a single vertical line from the bottom of the field to the middle to create an open T-shape.
Victor removed the Gemtech SP-90 suppressor from the suitcase. He aligned it with the muzzle brake, pushed down and rotated ninety degrees clockwise to lock it in place. The unique mounting system enabled him to affix the attachment in less than two seconds, far faster than a traditional screw-on suppressor. The SP-90 added 7.25 inches in length and almost twenty ounces in weight to the P90. It also reduced the muzzle velocity of the SB193 round to 951 fps, but Victor found this had next to no negative impact on ballistics or accuracy in real-world situations. The plus side to the reduction in velocity was a suppressed P90 was even quieter than an MP5SD.
Victor put on the thermal imaging goggles, turned off the lights, and switched the goggles on. They detected the infared light omitted and the room became shades of black, grey and white. He released the P90’s magazine and checked the front of the weapon where the infrared wavelength laser aiming module was located beneath the barrel. The laser designator was integrated into the receiver and didn’t affect the P90’s performance in any way. Victor flicked the adjustment switch from off to high intensity. There was a low intensity setting too, but Victor didn’t plan on using the gun long enough for battery life to matter. He set the goggles so hot was displayed as black, cold as white.
A thin black beam, invisible to the naked eye, cut across the room and glowed where it struck the far wall. Victor swept the glow on to the television mounted on the wall. He squeezed the trigger, putting an imaginary burst into his reflection’s head.
Plastic explosives, a sniper rifle, two handguns, and a sub-machine gun.
Yes, Victor thought, probably enough weapons.
CHAPTER 18
Washington, DC, USA
Nelson’s Diner was a shiny sausage-shaped building a twenty-minute drive from Langley. Procter sat with a cup of coffee in a booth along the far wall from the entrance through which Clarke entered with his nose wrinkled at the smell of grease and frying meat. The place was almost full, lots of people like Procter who could do with losing a fair chunk of pounds. Clarke slid on to the vinyl-covered seat.
‘You might want to try acting more like you belong here,’ Procter said. ‘You’ll draw less attention that way.’
‘Well, I don’t belong, do I? Anyone can see that. Including you, I’m assuming. Which makes me ask, why here?’
Procter’s gaze strayed off Clarke. ‘Because this place makes the best steak sandwiches you’ve ever tasted. You should try one. It’s worth coming to work just to have one at lunchtime.’
Clarke glanced over to a table where a couple of guys in overalls were eating hamburgers with fries and a few token lettuce leaves on the side. The buns looked flat and soggy and the fries were anorexic sticks of potato in thick oil coatings. Behind the counter a wide, sweating Latino was flipping burgers. Grill fat sizzled.
Clarke grimaced. ‘I think I’d rather skip the stroke at seventy.’
‘Cut the bourgeois prejudice for once, Peter.’
‘So I’m prejudiced against plaque in my arteries. Sue me.’
A waitress appeared. She was tall, and young and pretty enough for Procter to quickly look her over, but too skinny around the bust and hips for him to look twice. Clarke paid her no attention.
Her smile was big and bright. ‘Get you coffee?’
Clarke nodded.
‘Another for me, please,’ Procter said.
She filled Clarke’s cup and poured Procter a fresh one. He added lots of cream and sugar. The diner did coffee thick, strong and exactly how Procter liked it. Just because it didn’t have an Italian name, come in a waxed paper cup and cost three times as much, didn’t make it inferior. Clarke took his black, as always.
‘How’s the coffee?’ Procter asked.
‘Like piss.’
‘Well, I’m buying, so you’d better enjoy it.’
‘We’re not here to discuss the quality of caffeine-delivery systems.’ Clarke put his cup back down. ‘What’s the situation?’
Procter said, ‘Thanks to information we sucked out of Xavier Callo, we’ve been able to make a lot of headway in a very short time frame,’ Procter began. ‘It seems that Ariff’s people have been negotiating with a Belarusian gangster named Danil Petrenko for some time now. Petrenko has access to big stockpiles of guns that Ariff wants to add to his collection. There’s a face-to-face going down in Minsk tomorrow night. Ariff is sending his top man to liaise with Petrenko. That top man is a Lebanese guy called Gabir Yamout. And yes, that’s the same Yamout who we know has been at Ariff’s side for years. Yamout is now Ariff’s business partner, according to Callo. They’re both Christians and are so close they’re practically family. Which is why I’m sure you’ll agree with me that Yamout makes the perfect target to take this thing of ours to the next level.
‘We don’t know how Yamout is travelling to Belarus, or where he’s staying, but what we do know is that Petrenko has booked the top suite at the Hotel Europe in central Minsk for a single night. Tomorrow night. So Tesseract will strike at the hotel while Yamout is there.’
Clarke’s long face was unimpressed. ‘I really don’t like the idea of a hit taking place at a hotel. Especially with such a short lead time. Could get messy.’
‘Tesseract said the same thing. Look, is it ideal? No, it’s not. But Yamout setting foot outside the Middle East is too good an opportunity to miss.’
‘A hotel hit will get airtime.’
‘I’m counting on it,’ Procter said. ‘It will be all over the news in Europe and therefore Ariff is going to hear about it very soon afterwards. And we want him to know with as little delay as possible.’
‘Okay,’ Clarke said, seemingly satisfied with the logic. ‘Yamout isn’t going to be travelling alone. Petrenko won’t meet him by himself. Could be a lot of guys there for Tesseract to deal with. Might be too much, even for your MVP.’
Procter shrugged. ‘I’ve got no reasons to doubt him. It’s not like he has to go through every single one to get to Yamout. Besides, if he can’t pull this kind of job off then it’s about time we found that out.’
‘So we’re gambling with his life now.’
‘If you want to put it like that.’
‘Tesseract is going to think we’re playing him.’
