Spoils of War (A Soldier of Fortune Adventure #3)

By Peter McCurtin

Jim Rainey had fought in five wars, but the civil war in Lebanon is – and was – the bloodiest, most fiercely waged conflict in Middle East history. Christian against Moslem – and all armed to the teeth with the most modern weapons available. Rainey was getting good money from the beleaguered government, which was trying to build order from chaos, but there were times when the killing got to him. Rainey goes where the fighting is, no matter what the odds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Jul 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005726003

Peter McCurtin

Peter J. McCurtin was born in Ireland on 15 October 1929, and immigrated to America when he was in his early twenties. Records also confirm that, in 1958, McCurtin co-edited the short-lived (one issue) New York Review with William Atkins. By the early 1960s, he was co-owner of a bookstore in Ogunquit, Maine, and often spent his summers there.McCurtin's first book, Mafioso (1970) was nominated for the prestigious Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award, and filmed in 1973 as The Boss, with Henry Silva. More books in the same vein quickly followed, including Cosa Nostra (1971), Omerta (1972), The Syndicate (1972) and Escape From Devil's Island (1972). 1970 also saw the publication of his first "Carmody" western, Hangtown.Peter McCurtin died in New York on 27 January 1997. His westerns in particular are distinguished by unusual plots with neatly resolved conclusions, well-drawn secondary characters, regular bursts of action and tight, smooth writing. If you haven't already checked him out, you have quite a treat in store.McCurtin also wrote under the name of Jack Slade and Gene Curry.

Book preview

Chapter One

JOE MALTESE WAS a hired killer.

It was said that he knew over a hundred ways to murder a man, and that most of them were decidedly unpleasant. With stiffened fingers, he could end a victim’s life, it was reported, or with the shirt the poor fellow was wearing, or even with a rolled-up magazine. He was, in fact, deadly. When he was sent after a man on a binding contract, that man was as good as dead. Everybody who had ever heard of Maltese knew this basic rule, so that his very name, mentioned in the right circles, was enough to make syndicate bosses dab perspiration from their foreheads and politicians sketch out hurried plans for a quick trip to Mexico, or some other such end-of-the-world place.

In recent years, when Maltese had already been acknowledged as the best of his kind, he had turned his back on underworld contracts and specialized in political assassinations all around the world. There was more money in it. Governments, agencies, and powerful politicians always had the most money to spend, it seemed, when the job to be done was important enough. That was the way the world was, and Joe Maltese played that rule to his advantage.

It was while in Jerusalem on a brief business trip that I learned the bad news that Maltese had been sent out after me. I had heard previously that he was retired, but that story must have been invented by some hopeful banana-republic bureaucrat who worried about ending up on Maltese’s death list.

A foxy little sweetheart named Anna Khatib dropped the bomb on me quite inadvertently, one peach-hued dawn after we had spent a very lovely night together. I remember it very well. She was standing bronze-skinned and voluptuously nude at the hotel room window, having just got off the bed with me, and she had exposed herself to full view from the street. All any lucky herdsman had to do, walking along the narrow, cobbled thoroughfare on that early morning, was avert his eyes briefly upward to witness a vista more spectacular than the sun rising over Mount Zion in the opposite direction.

‘Ah, my beloved,’ she said in her throaty voice. ‘You fill my cup to overflowing.’ She stared out over the glowing rooftops.

‘I didn’t know I was that good,’ I said modestly. I studied her backside appreciatively from the big brass bed behind her.

‘Not you, lover,’ she said, turning towards me partially so I could see the sexy smile.

‘Oh,’ I said a little glumly.

‘I was talking about Jerusalem, Rainey. I suppose it can never be the same to you westerners as it is to us.’

Other women called me Jim, but this one had always used my last name, on my several intimate visits with her in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem over the past couple of years. ‘Come out of the window,’ I said. ‘I don’t want all the fellahin of the fertile crescent up here fighting over your obvious charms. I haven’t got desperate enough to run that kind of business, yet.’

‘It is the city of David and Solomon, Rainey,’ she went on. ‘Jesus was crucified here, and Mohammed ascended to Heaven from this place. But then you are not interested in these things.’

‘At the moment,’ I said, ‘I’m still very much impressed with my own ascendancy to Heaven, right here on this bed.’

She liked that. She forgot her rising sun philosophy and came back to the edge of the bed, smiling down at me. She leaned down and kissed me on a very erogenous zone, and her breasts hung in perfect arcs over my stomach. I caressed one affectionately.

‘You want another trip, Rainey?’ she purred, giving me the foxy smile. Her face was sensuous, with prominent cheek bones and large, dark eyes. ‘You want another Aliyah?’

An Aliyah was a going-up, both physically and spiritually. It was an appropriate word. Leave it to Anna to find just the right word. She was a language expert at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tel Aviv. I had met her there at an arms conference, and had tasted of her delights quite unexpectedly after that first meeting, and since that time I had never failed to inquire if the sweets were still available, when I was in Israel.

I pulled her down on to the bed beside me, and touched her warm lips with mine. She tasted damned good. ‘What do you think I am, Clark Kent?’ I whispered into her ear.

‘Ah,’ she teased, ‘you have petered out on me, Rainey. Just as the rising sun over the Bab-el-Wad is ready to infuse us with its new fire.’

I grunted weakly. ‘My fire will have to be stoked with a three course breakfast,’ I said lazily, stretching. Neither of us had got much sleep through the long and sensual night. ‘Even the mighty 747 has to touch down occasionally for refueling.’

She smiled, but then her pretty brow furrowed. ‘747. That reminds me, did that fellow from the airport get in touch with you at your hotel yesterday before you met me?’

‘Hmmp?’ I said, rolling towards her. ‘What fellow from the airport?’

‘The man who asked about you there. He did not call or come to your room?’

I propped myself up on my elbows, taking new interest. I was in Israel to sell the military on a new rifle I had acquired temporary distribution rights for, and the business was finished, and I knew of no one who would be flying in to Jerusalem to see me, for that business or any other.

‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Anna,’ I told her.

‘Ah. I should have mentioned it to you when I saw you last evening, but I forgot. This fellow heard me mention your name at the reservation desk. He had just got off a plane.’

Anna had had business at the airport yesterday in mid-afternoon, so I had asked her to make a reservation for me on a flight to London, where I was going to talk to a second party about the new rifle.

‘And what did he say?’ I asked curiously.

‘He said he had heard you were here for a while, and wanted to see you on business while he was here.’

‘Did he tell you his name?’ I asked.

‘No. After I told him where you are staying, he just walked off before I could.’

I pushed myself up to the headboard and leaned against it. A fellow comes into Israel at just the time that I am there for a few days, asks a total stranger where I am staying, and then takes off like a rabbit without identifying himself. In my business of professional soldiering, that sort of incident could add up to trouble of one kind or another. Because I had fought a lot of other people’s fights for them, all around the world, I had made some enemies. People who would not forgive and forget, when the fighting was over. Policemen had followed me halfway around the globe on occasion, and recently a sore loser in a civil war in Africa had reputedly hired an assassin to track me down and fill my belly full of lead. I had discounted that information as just ugly rumor, until that moment in the Jerusalem hotel room. I narrowed my eyes slightly on the girl named Anna, whose face now showed the beginning of concern.

‘What is the matter, Rainey?’ she asked innocently.

‘I don’t know for sure. What did this fellow look like?’

She shrugged her bronze shoulders and mumbled something in her native Hebrew. ‘Let me remember. He was a rather tall man, as I recall, and slim. But he gave the impression of—tough masculinity. Like you, Rainey.’

I ignored the compliment. ‘His face, Anna. What did his face look like?’

She looked at the ceiling, which was brightening with the new sun. ‘It was rather long and angular. A fine mouth and chin. But the eyes were too hard, Rainey, despite his stiff smile. Oh, yes. He had a scar.’

I tightened slightly inside. ‘Where?’

‘It ran across his left jaw, a wide one, and then crossed his ear, making a shallow gouge in it. It might have been a bullet wound, from some war.’

That was when I knew that Joe Maltese was after me. The description Anna gave fit him perfectly. I had never seen the man, but he had been described to me by several men who had. There was no mistake about it. The African politico had had more money to spend to get to me than I would ever have guessed. He had hired the best there was.

I sat there thinking. I had been at my hotel only briefly since Anna’s encounter with the grim reaper, Maltese. If Maltese had intended to come for me there, in a swift strike, he would have had no opportunity yet. I had been lucky.

‘Who is he, Rainey?’ Anna now asked.

I glanced at her, in distraction. ‘A very bad fellow,’ I said.

‘Does he want to hurt you?’

I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I touched her cheek. ‘Probably not. Let’s not talk any more about it. Are you ready to go have a big American breakfast?’

‘Are you sure it’s all right, Rainey?’

‘Would I lie to you?’ I said.

She reached over and kissed me slowly, and I almost forgot breakfast and Maltese. Then we got dressed and left her room.

Anna insisted on seeing me again that evening, because she was scheduled to return to Tel Aviv the next day. I worried about Maltese quite a bit, and about exposing Anna to danger, but she would not accept a negative answer, so we made a date.

When I arrived at my hotel room that morning, after leaving Anna outside a small branch office of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, I was very cautious about entering. If my guess was right, the world’s most proficient assassin was out to get me, and I could not be too careful. I drew the Star .45 automatic that I always carried with me, and opened the door slowly. There was no sound from inside.

I swung the door all the way open, and waited. Again, there was nothing. I entered and closed the door behind me. I checked the room out. It was a cheap hotel and there was no bath. I looked in a shallow closet. I was quite alone.

I holstered the compact but heavy pistol, and just stood there for a long moment. I was more tied up inside than I had thought. The knowledge that a man like Maltese is about to try to kill you works on you inside like acid. You have to admit to yourself that the chances of his success are pretty damned good. Even if he were dumb enough to challenge you openly and fairly, his chances would be good. But Joe Maltese was not dumb. He was craftier than any fox, and a more deadly hunter than any cat.

What can you say? He was good. He was the best.

I looked around the room. The bed was made because I had not slept in it. Some personal articles of mine still sat on a night stand, I went to inspect them and they appeared to be sitting in the same position they had when I left them. A package of American cigarettes, a lighter, a paperback book I had bought in New York at Kennedy Airport. It all lay there where I had left it. I knelt beside the bed and studied an overnight bag that sat there. It sat in exactly the same position in which I had left it. I pulled it out and examined it. The zipper was unzipped, but I had left it that way. I opened the bag, and looked inside. There were my toilet articles, all in their proper places. Or were they? I took a second hard look. A notebook of mine that I kept business addresses in had been in a far corner of the bag. Now it was hard up against a near corner.

I took it out slowly and opened it up. The second page was just slightly bent with handling. It had not been, when I put it away.

Joe Maltese had been there.

My mouth was suddenly dry. All the theory about Maltese being on the hunt was one thing. But the hard reality of physical evidence was something else. Believe me, only a fool is not afraid of the nearness of death. I had been shot at and had more men try to kill me than almost anyone I knew, and I was still afraid. Only an insane man would not be.

I rose and sat on the edge of the bed. Okay. Maltese had been there for me already. If I had been there at the time, I would most surely be warming a block at the morgue at that very moment. I would have had no warning, and would have been totally unprepared. That was the way Joe Maltese liked it. He had no interest in giving his victims a fair chance at life. His only interest was in making sure of his kill.

The phone on the night stand rang and almost gave me a coronary.

The rooms did not have phones, but I had had one installed for my brief stay. It rang again, and this time I did not jump. I picked it up cautiously. There was no booby trap. I answered it.

‘You are in, Mr. Rainey?’ It was the desk clerk downstairs.

‘No,’