Killing Kennedy

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 sunshine of a sixty-five-degree Dallas afternoon.
    Against all odds, the assassin 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 passed 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 God, 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