Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot Part 32

Most people live their lives as if the end were always years away. They measure their days in love, laughter, accomplishment, and loss. There are moments of suns.h.i.+ne and storm. There are schedules, phone calls, careers, anxieties, joys, exotic trips, favorite foods, romance, shame, and hunger. A person can be defined by clothing, the smell of his breath, the way she combs her hair, the shape of his torso, or even the company she keeps.

All over the world, children love their parents and yearn for love in return. They revel in the touch of parental hands on their faces. And even on the worst of days, each person has dreams about the future-dreams that sometimes come true.

Such is life.

Yet life can end in less time than it takes to draw one breath.

NOVEMBER 22, 1963.

DEALEY PLAZA, DALLAS, TEXAS.

12:14 P.M.

Antic.i.p.ating the arrival of the president of the United States, a married high school student named Aaron Rowland stands with his wife, Barbara, along Dealey Plaza. Looking up at the Texas School Book Depository, he sees a man silhouetted against a corner sixth-floor window. An avid hunter, Rowland recognizes that the man is holding a rifle at port arms-diagonally across his body, with one hand on the stock and the other on the barrel. This is how a U.S. Marine might hold his weapon while waiting to fire at the rifle range.

Rowland is fascinated, but for all the wrong reasons. "Do you want to see a Secret Service agent?" he asks his wife.

"Where?"

"In that building there," he replies, pointing.

Six minutes later, a full ten minutes before the motorcade reaches Dealey Plaza, Ronald Fischer and Robert Edwards, who work in the nearby county auditor's office, look up and see a man standing motionlessly in the sixth-floor window. "He never moved," Fischer will later remember. "He didn't blink his eyes. He was just gazing, like a statue."

At the same time, Howard L. Brennan, a local pipe fitter, uses his khaki s.h.i.+rtsleeve to wipe the sweat from his brow. This makes him wonder how hot it is. And so he glances at the Hertz sign atop the Texas School Book Depository's roof that shows time and temperature. As he does so, Brennan's eyes pick out a stone-still mystery man positioned to fire in the upper window.

But then comes the sound of cheering as the motorcade gets nearer and nearer. Down on Main Street, the crowds are lined up ten to twenty feet deep, and their roar echoes through the window-lined canyons of downtown Dallas. In all the excitement, the sight of a man standing in a window clutching a rifle is forgotten. The president is near.

Nothing else matters.

Lee Harvey Oswald would prefer to shoot while in the p.r.o.ne position. That is the optimum for a marksman. In such a position, the rifle is not supported by muscle, which can grow weary or flinch. Instead, when the body is belly-down on the floor, the hard ground and the bones of the right and left forearm form a perfect and stable triangle.

But Oswald does not have that option. He will have to shoot standing up. Yet as a veteran marksman, he knows to keep his body as still as possible. So now he leans hard against the left window jam and presses the b.u.t.t of his Italian carbine against his right shoulder. The scratched wooden stock of the b.u.t.t is against his cheek, just as it was for so many hours at the rifle range with the M-1 rifle from his Marine Corps days. His right index finger is curled around the thirty-three-year-old trigger.

Lee Harvey Oswald peers into his four-power telescopic sight, the one that makes John Kennedy's head look as if it is two feet away. Oswald knows time is short. He'll be able to shoot two shots for sure. Three, if he's quick. He has probably nine seconds.

Seeing his target clearly, Oswald exhales, gently squeezes the trigger, and even as he feels the recoil kick the rifle back, hard against his shoulder, he smoothly pulls back the bolt to chamber another round. He can't tell whether the first bullet has done much damage. But that doesn't matter. Oswald must immediately fire again.

The a.s.sa.s.sin is an impulsive man, and perhaps even more powerless to stop the flood of adrenaline that would course through any man's body after firing a high-powered rifle at the president of the United States. The instant a man commits such an act, his life is changed forever. There is no turning back. From that second on he will be hunted to the ends of the earth. Perhaps he will spend the rest of his life in prison. Perhaps he will be executed.

The smart thing to do after firing a shot at the president is to throw down the rifle and run.

But if the first shot somehow misses, just like that shot missed General Walker back in April, and the president lives, Oswald will look like a fool. And that's the last thing he wants. No, the plan is to kill John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And Lee Harvey Oswald will see that plan through.

He doesn't think twice. Oswald fires again.

The sound of the second shot is not drowned out by the crowd below. It is so loud that pieces of the plaster ceiling inside the Texas School Book Depository fall and the panes of the windows along which Lee Harvey Oswald stands rattle.

At approximately 8.4 seconds after firing his first shot, Lee Harvey Oswald pulls the trigger on the third. And then Oswald is away. He drops his now-unnecessary Italian carbine and steps from the tower of book boxes behind which he's been hiding. He races to get out of the depository.

Dallas motorcycle officer Marrion L. Baker has raced into the building and up the stairs. He stops Oswald at gunpoint on the second floor but then lets him go when it becomes clear that Lee Harvey is a TBSD employee.

Sixty seconds later, Lee Harvey Oswald steps out of the depository building and into the suns.h.i.+ne of a sixty-five-degree Dallas afternoon.

Against all odds, the a.s.sa.s.sin is getting away.

Earwitness testimony in Dealey Plaza will later confirm that three shots were fired from the depository. One of the shots misses the president's car completely, and decades later there is still speculation whether it was the first or third round. But the fact remains that two of the shots did not miss.

The first impact strikes the president in the back of his lower neck. Traveling at 1,904 feet per second, the 6.5-millimeter round tears through the president's trachea and then exits his body through the tight knot of his dark blue tie. No bones are struck, and though his right lung is bruised, JFK's heart and lungs still function perfectly.

The president is badly hurt, but very much alive. He has trouble breathing and talking as blood floods into his windpipe. Otherwise, the rifle shot will most likely not kill him.

The same cannot be said for Texas governor John Connally. His jump seat, immediately in front of the president, is three inches lower than where the president is currently sitting. Therefore, ballistics after the fact show that the bullet that pa.s.sed through Kennedy then entered Connally's back.

The governor had turned his body just before Oswald fired the shot. He was twisting around, trying to speak face-to-face with the president. Thus, the so-called "magic bullet" (which was traveling at slightly more than 1,700 feet per second) manages to pierce Connally's skin and travel through his body, exiting below the right side of his chest. But the magic bullet isn't finished. It then pierces the governor's wrist and deflects off the bones and into his left thigh, where it finally comes to rest.

The blow knocks Governor Connally forward, bending him double. His chest is immediately drenched in blood. "No, no, no, no," he cries, "they're going to kill us both."

Roy Kellerman thinks he hears the president yell, "My G.o.d, I'm hit," and turns to look over his left shoulder at the man whose Boston accent he knows so well.

Kellerman sees for sure that JFK has been shot.

President Kennedy and Governor Connally are just four miles from Parkland Hospital. There, a team of emergency surgeons can save their lives. It's up to Secret Service driver Bill Greer to get them there. But the driver of SS-100-X has also looked back to check on the president's status. This distraction means that the limousine veers slightly from side to side rather than speeding to the emergency room. When Greer turns back to the wheel there's still time to save the president. All he has to do is accelerate.

But the impact of what has happened has not sunk in. Not for Greer. Not for Kellerman. Not even for Jackie, who is now turning toward JFK.

And the presidential limo still travels far too slowly down Elm Street.

Secret Service special agent Clint Hill, in charge of the First Lady's detail, hears the shot and leaps into action. Shoving himself away from the running board on Halfback, the vehicle directly behind the president's limousine, Hill sprints forward in an effort to jump on the small step that sticks out from the back of the president's car.

Meanwhile, JFK is leaning to his left, but still upright. Jackie wraps her hands lovingly around her husband's face. The First Lady looks into the president's eyes to see what's wrong with him. The distance between her beautiful, unlined face and that of the tanned and very stunned John Kennedy is approximately six inches.

The torso of a normal man would have been shoved farther forward by the force of a bullet striking his body at nearly twice the speed of sound. This is precisely what happened to Governor Connally. If John F. Kennedy had been knocked forward, he might have lived a long life.

But now the president's long and painful struggle with back problems returns to torture him one last time.

The back brace that he is wearing holds his body erect. The president fortified its rigidity this morning by wrapping the brace and his thighs in a thick layer of Ace bandages.

If not for the brace, the next bullet, less than five seconds later, would have traveled harmlessly over his head.