Bioweapon by James Barrington & James Barrington

Author:James Barrington & James Barrington
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911420514
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 39

Cambrils, Spain

Wednesday

Semi­automatic pistols are rarely accurate beyond about twenty yards because the operating mechanism normally demands that the barrel is not rigidly attached to the frame of the weapon. And the slide which carries the sights – the thing you use to aim the weapon – is not attached to the barrel at all. There are exceptions, of course, the two most obvious examples being the German Luger and Mauser, both of which have fixed barrels. Revolvers, where the barrel is an integral part of the frame, are invariably more accurate weapons, but of necessity have a slower rate of fire and a much smaller magazine capacity, typically six or eight rounds as opposed to the fifteen or sixteen of most semi­automatic weapons.

The problem of accuracy is compounded in sub­machine guns, which can almost be considered to be fully automatic versions of semi­automatic pistols, but with much larger magazines. And they have another problem was well. With a pistol, when the shooter fires a round he brings the weapon back to the aim, which usually means lowering it because the recoil causes the weapon to rise, before he fires again. The moment the first round is fired from a sub­machine gun, the mechanism is already busy ejecting the fired cartridge case, loading the next round and then firing it. And every time the weapon fires, the recoil kicks the barrel a little bit higher, almost no matter what the shooter does.

The moment Richter heard the man with the Škorpion opening up, he knew the safest place to be was low down or actually on the ground, and preferably behind something large and metallic, like the heavy steel blade of a bulldozer, for example.

There was no bulldozer or anything like it in that street in Cambrils, but there was the Vauxhall that the three men had been driving. In the absence of any better ideas or any other places to seek refuge, and as a stream of nine-millimetre bullets slammed into the tarmac road surface and the walls of the properties on the other side of the street, Richter dived down behind the rear of the vehicle.

He knew perfectly well that the thin metal of the car’s body would offer almost exactly the same degree of protection against a bullet as a sheet of wet cardboard, but right then he was out of options. And although bullets don’t bounce off cars as so many people seem to think but actually go right through them, the engine and other heavy components under the bonnet would deflect or stop most pistol bullets. As would, perhaps surprisingly, the brake, wheel and tyre assemblies. At least for one shot.

As Richter crouched in the illusory shelter offered by the rear quarter of the Vauxhall, he realised something that didn’t make sense. He wasn’t Charles Vernon, so why had the man with the sub­machine gun opened fire at him? Unless he’d seen the Glock in Richter’s hand and guessed, entirely correctly as it happened, that he had had something to do with Vernon no longer being visible on the street.

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