Boston Bust-Out (The Assassin Book 3)

By Peter McCurtin

Robert Briganti is the Assassin. Ruthless, indifferent to his own survival, he lives only to destroy the Mafia. This time, armed again with a private arsenal of handpicked superweapons, he mercilessly stalks his enemies in Boston: a vengeance hit that backfires into a bloody double cross and a no-exit syndicate death trap that Briganti knows he has to enter—or die.
High-octane action-adventure in the grand tradition of Don Pendleton’s THE EXECUTIONER!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005426255

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

IT HAD BEEN a near thing, Briganti thought, staring up at the hard sky of northern Maine through the heavy yellowing grass of late summer. Twenty miles away a jagged line of mountains showed on the western horizon. He could have killed those Massachusetts state troopers. It would have been easy. To kill them was his first impulse when the cruiser with the hopped-up engine and the screaming siren pulled alongside his car and motioned him to pull over. It would have been fish-in-a-barrel to pick up the Hi-Power Browning automatic lying on the seat beside him and to kill those two cowboy-hatted cops with no more than two shots.

He didn’t do it. Instead, he pushed the gas pedal clear to the floor and took off like a big bird. For a few minutes he got a jump on the troopers, but they were gaining fast. Then he saw a small, third-class road branching off to the right. At seventy miles an hour, he wrenched the wheel sharply and went into a wild, screeching skid that took all his strength to control. The state cops, not so brave, didn’t try to make the wild turn. Braking to a halt an eighth of a mile past the turnoff, they reversed against the traffic and took up the chase again. That gave him five minutes headway, all he needed. The small road headed back into Boston, and long before he got off Route 95 and onto I-A, he was able to lose himself in traffic.

He passed the turnoff to Logan Airport and drove into the city through the Callahan Tunnel. When he got to Park Square he abandoned the car. There was no other way: every cop in the state would have the car’s description and license plate number by now. The Massachusetts state cops were good: they would hunt him as if a bonus came with his death or his capture. When he abandoned the car he left his arsenal in the trunk. He hated to do it, but there was no other way. What the hell, he could always put together another arsenal.

He was passing through Boston on his way to Maine when the state troopers tried to put the collar on him. Now it was time to get out, before the state cops talked to the city cops and decided which way he was likely to jump.

It was getting dark when he left the car and walked along St. James Avenue to the Greyhound bus terminal. There was still some light left when he got there, but inside the terminal the scene was garish and neon-lighted. Fred MacMurray smiled down from a huge poster, extolling the incredible comfort of traveling by Greyhound. Briganti smiled sourly, thinking that it was unlikely that Fred traveled anywhere by bus, not even now when My Three Sons had been cancelled.

Briganti bought a ticket for Fort Kent, a Maine town on the Canadian border. The ticket-seller gave him the gate number and told him how long he would have to wait—ten minutes. Briganti waited without impatience. A black pimp with an Al Capone pearl-gray hat was pushing and slapping a fat white whore with puffy eyes while three city cops traded talk ten feet away in front of a newsstand. One of the cops, a young, mustached Spanish-looking guy who wouldn’t have looked out of place carelessly directing traffic in Juarez, turned and shook a naughty-naughty finger at the pimp, who grinned at the cop and gave an it’s-cool-baby gesture by making a circle of his index finger and thumb.

The pimp was tall, and the whore had to stand high on her built-up heels to kiss him on the cheek. The pimp and the whore went out of the terminal hand in hand. The cops looked after them, then went back to talking.

Briganti went to the gate and climbed aboard the bus, and in spite of Fred MacMurray it smelled like the old, high, narrow, long-distance buses of the forties. The great hunk of silvered metal had air conditioning, but it wouldn’t be turned on until the driver took all the tickets and all the passengers were in their seats.

That was how Briganti left Boston and went north, by bus.

He got off long before he got to Fort Kent and took a job as a hired man in Aroostook County, that huge, desolate, sparsely populated northern Maine county that is larger than some European countries. He could have stayed in Boston and given the cops the slip, but he knew now that he needed to get away from being the hunter and the hunted for a while. For a while he had to get away from the smell and the sound and the sight of death. Those cops had come close to nailing him, so he wasn’t working as efficiently as he had been in the past. That meant he needed to lie low for a while. He needed to be quiet, to work hard at something besides killing. He needed time to think—or maybe not to think.

Old Lem Perkins, who took him on as a hired hand—and no questions asked—lived alone on a big place that had once been a show place but hadn’t been kept up since the old farmer’s wife died five years before. In his youth the old man had been a drinker and a tobacco chewer, and now that his old woman was dead and couldn’t complain about such ungodly habits, Lem Perkins went back to drinking and spitting brown juice.

Lem Perkins was a lonesome old man and talked a lot, but Briganti liked him. Most of the old man’s stories were about hunting. To hear Lem tell it, there wasn’t a wild animal he hadn’t hunted, hadn’t killed. And when he got into the hard cider, he talked about hunting big stuff in Africa and India. Briganti knew that was bullshit because Lem Perkins had never been past the borders of the state of Maine.

But—Jesus!—the old liar could shoot. Briganti had seen the proof of that many times. And on this day in spring, he was out with Lem Perkins again while the old man demonstrated his skill with his finely tuned .22-250. He could put the tiny, fifty-five-grain hunk of pointed soft point through the eye of a needle at 300 yards, split a reed at 400. Briganti was one of the best shots in the world, but the old man taught him a few new tricks. Briganti didn’t mind that: he was glad to learn.

Sighting through the 20-power Bushnell scope, the old man could pick off a squirrel as easily as Briganti could waste a Mafia soldier, except that at 300 yards the old man’s target was hardly six inches high. To Briganti it looked no bigger than a pimple on a Syndicate killer’s nose.

There they were, lying on a rise behind a large, flat rock, Lem with his old .22-250, Briganti hefting a Winchester Model 70 in .243 caliber, topped by a big 24-power Redfield glass with its center dot aiming point.

A varmint was some 375 yards away, and Lem was carefully correcting his hold. He finished doing that and turned to grin at Briganti. Where do you want me to hit him? Upper teeth or lower?

Upper, Briganti said.

You got it, boy. The old man lowered his head to the scope, moved his legs to get comfortable, started to draw in his breath, so that the rise and fall of his lungs would not affect his aim. Watching, Briganti saw the old man’s finger start to whiten, as it drew tight against the trigger.

At that moment the old man died. A bullet came from out there somewhere, and instinctively Briganti rolled, putting the rock between himself and the direction from which the bullet had come. But even as he did, he felt the splatter of wetness in his face, and he saw blood dripping from a huge hole where old Lem’s left eye and ear had been.

It was like slow motion, the way the old man sagged into an inert heap, the blood soaking the ground around him. Another bullet shattered itself against the rock, just inches from the top of Briganti’s head. Then no more bullets came, and he peered around the side of the rock, steeling himself for the bullet that could rip his skull to shreds.

Two hundred yards away in a small cluster of trees he spotted them, two men. One of them was down on one knee, holding a pair of field glasses up to his eyes. The other man was lying prone on the ground, holding and sighting along a rifle. As Briganti watched, he saw the man with the glasses turn and make a motion. An instant later, the rifle spurted fire.

The bullet smacked the rock no more than two inches from his face and whined away to nowhere. Slowly, Briganti grasped his own gun and pulled it toward him. It was only a little .243 with a tiny 80-grain hunk of lead, no match for the heavy hunting piece they were using against him.

But that little .243 could shoot. By God, it could shoot! And with a muzzle velocity of 3,500 feet per second, it still carried a solid 1,350 foot-pounds of energy at the 200-yard range—more than half a ton of force.

The varmint gun was zeroed in for 300 yards. That meant it would shoot high at the lesser range. The trajectory midpoint was 4.7. So at 150 yards, the bullet would strike exactly 4.7 inches above the aiming point. At 200 yards, fifty yards beyond mid-range, it would have dropped slightly over an inch. If the gun was held three and a half inches higher than on target, he’d be dead on. Three and a half inches—approximately equal to the distance from the bridge of a man’s nose to the top of his skull.

Another bullet came at Briganti from the cluster of trees. It missed—high and to the left.

Briganti’s face twisted into a satisfied grin. He had them now. Three shots in the magazine and one in the chamber. Four cartridges—maximum for such an obviously big-bore gun. Right now they would have to stop and reload.

He slid around the rock, pulling the rifle tightly to his shoulder. He slipped the large glass mounted on the sight until it centered on the rifleman. Then he measured his aim. The distance between the top of a man’s head and the bridge of his nose. The tiny red dot in the center of the scope steadied on the hairline.

Drawing in air, he let some of it out, then held on as he tightened his muscles and froze them. Without panic or haste, his finger tightened on the ridged metal of the trigger.

Out there, the gunner was frantically stuffing new loads into the chamber.

Briganti squeezed the trigger and felt the walnut of the stock ramming backwards in recoil. A thin smile of satisfaction contorted his face as a small, dark circle of red appeared directly between the gunner’s eyes. The smacking sound of lead striking flesh and bone floated across the 200 yards of empty space. The gunner was completely dead long before his body stopped sagging.

Quickly, Briganti swung his light rifle to the right, chasing the second Mafia killer who was taking off in a wild zigzag run through the trees.

Briganti didn’t have time to aim carefully. He just pulled his sights, caught a fast glimpse of his target’s back in the powerful scope, and pulled the trigger. Once again, he knocked his man down with one shot. The man was face down in the dirt, legs kicking in agony, when Briganti planted the scope. He gave a professional nod as he spotted the hole in the doomed killer’s back, the dark blood leaking from under his left shoulder blade.

Bolting a new round into the chamber, he started slowly across the 200 yards that separated him from the two Mafia hit-men. He moved cautiously through the thick, yellowing grass, stopping now and then, to be ready to let loose another round. It wasn’t necessary.

When he reached the trees, he saw that the first man, the gunner, was obviously dead. The bullet had entered his brain through his forehead, and the expanding lead of the hunting round had mushroomed, tearing out the back of his head. Blood and brain tissue dripped from the waving grass a few feet away. Yeah, Briganti thought, once again a Mafia pig had started something he didn’t get to finish.

But the second killer was still alive, although he wasn’t ready to sit up and take nourishment. Thinking of Lem Perkins, Briganti kicked him in the side until he rolled over on his back. The lung shot brought frothy blood to his lips every time he exhaled. A fragmenting bullet drove bits of lead through a man’s body like secondary missiles. Though still alive, the Mafia pig was a goner.

The dying man’s eyes were closed in terror, and Briganti had to kick him hard to get them open. A few words—a plea for mercy—came from the man’s mouth. Briganti didn’t know what the pig was trying to say—too much blood.

Who sent you, pig? Briganti snarled.

The man just stared back dumbly, his moist, dark eyes jumping with fright.

Who sent you? Briganti lifted the rifle by the butt, as if ready to bash in the dying killer’s skull.

The killer’s mouth moved, and Briganti heard a half-drowned gurgle. He raised the rifle, and the dying man tried harder to be understood. This time only one word came out—Toriello.

Briganti knew the name and the man who went with it. Franco Toriello?

The dying man managed to nod his head a fraction.

Why?

Contract, the dying killer gasped.

Briganti said, How did he find me?

Even as he asked the question, Briganti knew he wouldn’t get an answer. He didn’t know whether the man was trying to answer, or to go on living. His head lifted up off the ground and hung there for a moment, then the breath went