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Castillo looked at him a moment, realized reluctantly that he was right, and nodded his thanks.
"Okay," Castillo said, starting for the door, "let's go."
"Sit down, Karl," Munz said. "I'll have something sent up."
"Alfredo, do you really think these bastards would try to whack me in a hospital cafeteria?"
"That seems to be the problem, doesn't it? If you don't have any idea who the villains are, then it's rather difficult to assess their plans or their capabilities."
Munz punched an autodial key on his cellular and told someone to go to the cafeteria and bring up some sandwiches-lomo sandwiches, if they had them, otherwise ham and cheese-coffee, and some very sweet pastry.
Castillo sat in Dr. Santa Claus's chair and looked at the bullet lodged in Betty's jaw. Jack Britton showed up at the same time as the sandwiches. He had a Madsen submachine gun under his arm, hanging from a web strap around his shoulder.
"She's in the operating room," Castillo told him without waiting to be asked. He pointed to the X-ray films and then the weapon. "Three wounds from one of those."
"From one of these?" Britton asked, incredulously.
"Yeah, from one of those. Where'd you get that?"
"Darby," Britton said. "He asked me if I could handle it, and I lied. I never saw one before. They hit Betty with one of these?"
"Yeah, a nine-millimeter model. And blew Sergeant Markham away."
"I heard that," Britton said. "What the fuck is going on, Charley?"
"I have no goddamn idea," Castillo confessed, and extended his hands for the Madsen. "Let me have that. I'll show you how it works."
Britton handed Castillo the submachine gun. He removed the magazine and checked to see that there was no cartridge left in the mechanism.
"Pay attention, Jack. You may have to use this," Castillo said.
"I'm all ears," Britton said.
"This is a Madsen M53," Castillo began, "caliber nine-millimeter Parabellum. This has a curved thirty-roundmagazine; the earlier models have a stick. It fires from an open chamber; in other words, to fire it, you pull the operating lever on the top to the rear…"
He demonstrated by pulling the operating lever back. It caught in place with a firm click.
"The first thing you do is take the safety off. In other words, move this thing to 'F'…"
He demonstrated the functioning of the safety control.
"Then you select auto or single-shot mode. This is the selector lever for that; 'A' stands for automatic…"
He demonstrated the function of the selector switch.
"Then you pull the trigger."
He pulled the trigger. The bolt slammed into the battery position.
"If there had been a loaded magazine in there, the bolt would have stripped off the top cartridge, shoved it in the action, and it would have gone bang. Then the bolt would return to the rear position. If you were in single-shot mode, to fire again, you would have to release your finger on the trigger and then pull it again. If you were in auto mode-your finger still holding the trigger to the rear-it would go bang-bang-bang at a rate of six hundred and fifty rounds per minute until you ran out of ammo. We try to teach people to try to get off three-shot bursts-it takes some practice-because otherwise, as when firing any other submachine gun, the muscles of the shooter tend to involuntarily contract, raising the muzzle, and you miss what you wanted to shoot."
He looked at Britton. "I hope you took notes. There will be a quiz."
"When you said 'we try to teach people,' you meant Special Forces, didn't you?"
Castillo nodded. "You've fired submachine guns, right?"
"Yeah. But not this one."
