Too Far Gone (38 page)

About the Author

JOHN RAMSEY MILLER's career has included stints as a visual artist, advertising copywriter, and journalist. He is the author of the nationally bestselling
The Last Family;
of three Winter Massey thrillers:
Inside Out, Upside Down,
and
Side by Side;
and a stand-alone crime novel featuring FBI Special Agent Alexa Keen,
Too Far Gone. Upside Down
was nominated by the International Thriller Writers for the Best Paperback Original Award. He is at work on his next Winter Massey thriller,
Through & Through,
coming from Dell in 2007.

A native son of Mississippi, he now lives in North Carolina with his wife and writes full-time.

Also by John Ramsey Miller

SIDE BY SIDE

UPSIDE DOWN

INSIDE OUT

THE LAST FAMILY

Available from Bantam Dell

If you enjoyed John Ramsey Miller's
exciting new crime novel, TOO FAR GONE, you won't want to miss any of his bestselling thrillers. Look for them at your favorite bookseller's.
And read on for an exciting early look at the next electrifying thriller,

THROUGH
&
THROUGH

A Winter Massey Novel

         

         

         

Coming soon from Dell Books

Through & Through
by
John Ramsey Miller

Coming soon

1

The Mississippi Delta
South of Memphis
December

The hunter pulled off the gravel road, parked his vehicle among the trees and scrub brush made leafless by the season, and climbed out. There was a sharp bite in the cold predawn air.

His breath made thin fog that leaked from his nostrils and seemed to hang in the stillness.

Going around to the back of the SUV, he opened the rear door and took out his tools.

Dressed warmly against the cold, he slowly made his way through the woods on the damp leaves. Not that there was any danger here in this remote place, and no possible enemy seeking him out, just a target waiting for a well-placed, precision-loaded high-powered rifle round.

The hunter moved to the hide he had selected at the edge of the tree linea thick sweet gum tree felled by winds. He knelt beside the tree, set the hard case he carried on the ground. Opening it, he lifted his Dakota T-76 Longbow rifle topped with a powerful Zeiss scope, which he had sighted in for the range of the shot he intended to make with it. At that range he could place a hand-loaded roundtraveling at over 3,000 feet per secondthrough a ballistic vest or through a skull. For this shooter, shattering a porcelain saucer at the distance this shot called for was no more difficult than flipping a cigarette through a discarded tractor tire leaning against a barn five paces distant. He had done this before and knew that the .338 round would hollow out the organic shell, filling the air downrange for thirty feet with a vapor comprised of brain tissue, bone chips, fluid, and blood. Surviving such a cranial event would be impossible.

The hunter leaned his Dakota gently against the fallen tree's trunk so he didn't jar the scope. Reaching into the bag, the man pulled out a canvas sandbag and placed it on the tree. Using the back edge of his right hand he chopped a channel into the center of the bag before setting the gun's stock into the groove.

Opening a small container, he removed and rolled the ends of each of the foam earplugs into points, licked the tips, and slipped them into his ear canals. There was the familiar crackling sound as the plugs expanded to fill the spaces. He slipped on his wool watch cap to warm his ears. Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he removed his thin leather shooting gloves and slipped them on.

Drawing back the gun's bolt and pressing it forward, the hunter watched as the brass case of the top
most shell slid from its home in the magazine and vanished from sight into the firing chamber. He engaged the safety, brought the butt firmly against his shoulder, lowered his cheek to the cold synthetic stock, and closed his left eye. The scope's lens surfaces were slightly fogged, but in a few short minutes the temperature differential between the case and the air would equalize and they would clear.

Ready now, the shooter, seated on the cold leaves behind the fallen tree, chewed on a toothpick, and waited patiently for the morning light to gather and for his target to come into sight. He yawned into his gloved hand and, as he rubbed his hands together briskly to generate heat, kept his eyes focused downrange on the killing zone.

What do you feel when you take a human life?

Recoil.

2

Winter Massey used his Surefire flashlight sparingly, as he led Faith Ann Porter along a logging road that had been cut through the hardwood forest decades before. Their footsteps were all but silenced by the dew-dampened leaves, and their warm breath created plumes of vaporlike smoke in the air.

Winter carried a rifle slung over each shoulder. On his right was a Tikka T-3 stainless in 30-06, and over his left he wore a .270 Browning A-bolt. Each gun was equipped with a telescopic sight. Faith Ann had fired the .270 on numerous occasions and Winter knew that the girl could put a shot within an inch of
the target's center at 100 yards. The question was whether or not she could place her shot as accurately when she was firing at an actual living animal as opposed to a printed cross on paper.

Faith Ann, a thin-framed, fair-skinned thirteen-year-old with an elfin face featuring large blue eyes and soft red-blonde hair, stopped at the base of the steel ladder that was misted with a coating of dew. The rungs led up twelve feet to a platform with a wide padded bench. A shooting rail covered with padding designed to keep exposed water pipes from freezing surrounded the platform. Hung from the shooting rail was a burlap skirt that served to protect them from the wind, help hold in their scent, and prevent sharp-eyed prey from spotting their shapes and movements as they waited. The stand, positioned against a hickory tree, was secured to its trunk by nylon straps.

After Faith Ann climbed into the stand, Winter used the karabiner on the rope hanging from the stand to clip the carrying handle on the rucksack Faith Ann had worn to the stand. From the platform, she pulled the rucksack up into the stand the way they had practiced the day before, and she unhooked it quietly before lowering the rope so Winter could attach the karabiner to the sling on her unloaded Browning. Hoisting up her weapon, she unhooked it and again lowered the rope so Winter could attach his T-3. Climbing up to join her in the stand, he pulled his gun up.

After he was seated beside her and had closed the burlap skirt, Winter loaded both guns deliberately and silently. Chambering a round in each, and engaging the safeties, he propped the weapons against the
railhers in front of her, his before himand they settled in to wait. Inside the pack were additional hand warmers, face shields, energy bars, water in plastic bottles, and other accessories necessary for the long hours they might have to spend in the stand. Winter carried a custom drop-point hunting knife in a sheath.

The pair wore electronic earplugs designed to amplify ambient noise but to close when detecting sudden loud noise, like ear-damaging gun reports.

Faith Ann had completed the safety course required to obtain a hunting license and both her uncle, Hank Trammel, and Winter had spent time working with her to hone her shooting skills with the .270 until they were sure she could shoot accurately enough to take a deer. It had been a short course because she was a natural, and her groups at one and two hundred yards had been tighter than those of her teachers. Faith Ann could hit a deer in the vitals at two hundred yards or better, but as to whether or not she could actually shoot one was a question only opportunity would answer.

As the sun rose, the Mississippi woods around the field, and then the field itself, came slowly into focus. The bright green field, planted with rye, clover, and alfalfa, was a natural bowl bordered by two ridges that ran east to west. The thick woods on the slopes leading down from the ridges fed water down into the field when it rained, and filtered deer into the field in the evenings. There they would feed on the grasses planted for the single purpose of attracting game. At either end of the field were impenetrable thickets where deer bedded in safety.

At the edge of the plot directly across from the
stand, a line of tall bamboo formed a natural fence. In other places, the perimeter was laced with thick and thorny growth. The trees on the ridges grew close enough together to allow the animals a sense of security, but far enough apart so animals could be seen moving and to allow a hunter to make a killing shot between the trunks. The creek, less than a hundred yards away to the south, provided fresh water. The food plot was both a perfect habitat and an ambush point extraordinaire.

As light gathered, Winter could make out the black shapes of several grazing deer, and saw that none were bucks. Some of the animals were noticeably smaller than the othersyearlings the size of large dogs. Whitetail doe were social creatures, and their offspring often remained with them even though they were no longer suckling. A pair of button buck yearlings romped at one end of the food plot, butting heads and ramming each other playfully. Someday they would mature and the fighting would be in earnestcombat over does ready to breed. Mature males lived solitary lives in the safety of the thickets, feeding only at night except during the rut, which was now in full swing. During the winter ruts they chased after any doe in estrus. Normally male deer were wary, bedding down just before sunrise and rising just before sundown and moving as little as possible during daylight hours. Toward the end of the rut, as fewer doe remained in heat, the males ranged farther and wider to seek them out.

From the stand, it was seventy yards directly across to a major ruba cypress sapling in the bamboo whose bark had been rasped off by a mature buck polishing the moss from his antlersthe ground
before it was stripped bare by his large forehoofs and the tree bark impregnated by the musk transferred from the hairy, circular tarsal scent glands on the animal's hind legs. Scrapes were designed to attract does in heat. At this point in the rut, the animal who'd made this particular scrape might be miles away checking other of his scrapes, like a fisherman might change favored places on a lake. Deer hunting held no guarantees, but if a hundred things went right, a careless buck might make an appearance within the range of a well-placed bullet in the daylight hoursespecially in this area of mostly private property, where there were relatively few hunters putting pressure on them.

According to the hoofprints near the scrape, the animal who tended it was huge, his hoofs measuring over three inches. The depth of the prints, too, revealed him to be a heavier than usual animal. Faith Ann had nicknamed the scrape maker Rudolph, and although they hadn't actually seen a large buck on their visit that autumn to check on the food plots scattered around the property, Winter was sure the placement of the stand was as perfect as possible to ambush the deer.

Faith Ann slowly turned her head and smiled warmly at him, her face pinkened by the chill and framed by the camouflage fleece hood. The mittens on her hands and the bottoms of her boots held chemical warmers to fight off the penetrating cold that could become unbearable as time passed.

In the distance a gunshot cracked like dull thunder. That shot was followed a few seconds later by a second. The grazing animals in the food plot did not seem to notice, but as daylight was building, they
were moving toward the edges of the field, having satisfied their hunger and feeling a need to rest and digest in the thickets' cover.

Movement on the ridge to their right drew the two hunters' attention where four does were moving cautiously down the slope among the trees. Winter felt Faith Ann stiffen as she slowly lifted her rifle and turned the barrel toward the animals so she could evaluate each through the telescopic sight. As they watched the does, a buck came over the ridge and trotted warily after them, head up, ears flickering, nose sampling the air. Winter's heart quickened as he studied the eight-point.

A single anonymous gunshot boomed hollowly from the east signaling that a hunter on the adjoining property had decided to take an animal.

The buck stopped and lifted his head to sniff the still air, expelling a thick cloud of steam through his nostrils. In a loose pack, the four does trotted down toward the field, and several of the grazing deer that had remained in the plot spooked and darted into the cover. The button bucks, rightfully fearing any approaching buck, bounded off and vanished through the bamboo curtain. Fifty yards away, the eight-point moved broadside to the stand. Flicking his tail, he lowered his head, and Faith Ann, doing as Winter had instructed her, used this opportunity to fix the crosshairs of her scope on the area just behind his shoulder where the fist-sized heart pumped and the lungs filled and deflated.

While Winter was waiting for Faith Ann to make the shot, a rustle across the field caught his attention. He turned to see a second buck break from the bamboo wall. The massive deer's coat was dark, almost
black, and the golden antlers growing from his skull looked like tree limbs. Like a stallion, he trotted straight into the middle of the field toward the does, now clustered nervously at the edge of the field.

“Hold up,” Winter whispered. “Very slowly, look in the field to your left.”

Faith Ann turned and saw the other buck.

Winter held his breath, his own hand closing around the stock of his rifle to lift it. If she missed or couldn't bring herself to shootwhich happened even to seasoned hunters faced with the prospect of taking such an animalhe would make the shot for her. If she missed, he would have a second or two before the animal bolted, and he would either fire before it took off or let it go. Winter would never fire at an animal in flight for fear of wounding without killingsomething a conscientious hunter didn't do.

In all the hunts he had made during his lifetime, Winter had never witnessed bucks in combat over does, but he knew that was exactly what was unfolding before their eyes. He counted the points on the rack of the larger deer and came up with twelve. A second count turned up two more tips. Fourteen points with perfect symmetry was a rarity.

“What are they doing?” Faith Ann whispered.

“They both want the girls,” Winter said.

Head erect, the eight-point marched into the field, placing himself between his harem and the mature interloper. Like gladiators, the two males faced off and circled each other, sizing up the opposition. Rudolph had perhaps three years and forty pounds on the eight-point. The beam distance between the outside edges of Rudolph's heavy rack was at least twenty-four inches, the eight point's maybe sixteen. Rudolph's muscles
were better defined, his neck half again as thick. It was like a hound facing off with a Mastiff.