That was the moment—it always happened—when he felt his mouth go dry. Bone dry.
Reggie, who normally served as standoff sniper, almost always used an old AK-47 he had had for fifteen years and kept honed to perfection. Nothing fancy, just deadly accuracy. Today, however, he was keeping it in reserve, since this was close quarters. At the moment he was going with his sentimental British favorite, an Enfield L85A1 assault rifle that was the last product of the old Enfield Arsenal. Its special sling meant it could be carried behind his back, and it was short, virtually recoilless, and a marvel to behold on full-automatic.
For his own part, Armont had a Steyr-Mannlicher AUG assault rifle, augmented with a Beta hundred-round C-Mag supposedly only available to government organizations. He didn't like to bother changing clips, which annoyed him as a waste of precious time, and the circular, hundred-round dual magazine gave him—so he claimed—all the firepower he needed. Besides, he liked to say, if a hundred rounds weren't enough to take down an objective, then you hadn't planned it right and deserved to be in the shit.
He gave five clicks into his walkie-talkie, which meant five seconds, then stood back as Reggie got ready to blow the C-4.
7:10 a.m.
"Looks like you got it right," Peretz said with a crooked smile. He was examining a fax whose letterhead read Banco Ambrosiano, Geneva. Ramirez had just passed it over, and the correct account number was there, together with the amount in dollars. His piece of the money, his bigger piece, had been transferred to the separate account he had specified. By now, according to the instruction he had left, it was already on its way out. Home free.
He counted the zeroes again, not quite believing it. The villa he had set his heart on was his. He had just acquired four hundred million dollars. Some countries weren't worth that much, for godsake.