Smoke & Mirrors: A Novel [Paperback]

USJohn Ransey Miller's career has included stints as a visual artist, commercial photographer, advertising copy writer, and photojournalist. A native son of Mississippi, he has lived in Nashville, New Orleans, and Miami, and now resides in North Carolina, where he writes fiction full-time.Chapter One


The Mississippi Delta South of Memphis
Thursday

Rifle case in hand, a solitary figure moved among the trees and scrub brush made leafless by the season. The still, predawn air made fog as the man exhaled. The cold stimulated him. It brought back memories of the glacial eastern European mountains where he had spent his youth learning the art of murder.

Dressed entirely in camouflage, the man slowly and silently made his way through the woods on the damp leaves. Not that there was any danger here in this remote place. No enemy awaited him—only a target of his choosing, who was at that moment taking in and expelling a few last breaths. But being careful was reflexive. Caution made the difference between life and death.

The killer moved to the hide he had selected at the edge of the forest line—a sweet gum tree that had been felled by autumn winds. Kneeling behind the tree, he set his rigid case on the ground, unbuckled its latch, and lifted out the Dakota T-76 Longbow rifle topped with a powerful scope.

Although he much preferred operating at close range, he could nevertheless place a .338 Lapua Magnum round through a cantaloupe at twelve hundred yards. At three thousand feet per second, the bullet would punch a .34-caliber entrance hole in the target's skull, whereupon the hydrostatic pressure would literally hollow out the cranium, filling the air downrange with a vapor comprised of brain tissue, bone chips, and blood. Surviving such a cranial event was about as impossible as threading a needle in the confines of a dark closet while wearing boxing gloves.

The shooter gently leaned his rifle against the fl#C