The black metal-and-plastic assault weapon looked like an oversize M-16 but fired 12-gauge shotshells semiauto, three-round bursts, or full-auto bursts. A box magazine held seven standard or Magnum rounds. Lyons had used an Atchisson in the Amazon, when Able Team and their Xavante allies fought Khmer Rouge slave-raiders. In three vicious, no-quarter firefights, in the rain forest, on a moonlit river, in a warlord's fortress, the Atchisson meant the difference between victory or death.

"This one has a fourteen-inch barrel and a telescoping stock." Konzaki pressed a lever and pulled out the tubing of the buffer-spring stock assembly to full length.

Lyons took the Atchisson, tried the weight and balance. "Like a CAR-15." He jerked the padded buttplate against his shoulder, tried a snap-aim on the band saw. Then he pressed the release lever, slid in the stock and held the gun at waist height, assault style.

"Lighter than the other one," he commented.

"Less barrel, less plastic and steel, more titanium," Konzaki said. "The rate of fire and the shot patterns created by the short barrel give the weapon an awesome potential value in an urban firefight. After I read through the debriefing reports of the Amazon action, I went ahead with this SWAT version."

"What that Atchisson did to people and things… You just would not believe it."

"Yes, I would," Konzaki replied, his words sober, without enthusiasm or humor, simply stating a fact. "And I also went back to work on the Berettas."

Konzaki palmed his wheelchair's thin tires in opposite directions, spinning the chair about. Rubber squeaked on the concrete as he propelled himself the length of the workbench. He skidded to a stop at a cabinet.

For a moment, Lyons hesitated. In the long last morning of horror in the slave-city of the Chinese plutonium lord, Lyons had cursed the Beretta. The silent 9mm autopistol required perfect head shots for an instant kill.