Killing Kennedy

pretty sure that the guy is firing an Italian carbine. It appears that the rifle’s barrel has been sawed off to make it shorter, but it’s still longer than Sterling’s Winchester, by a few inches. Judging from the number of scratches on the stock, the precocious Dallas teenager suspects that the weapon is army surplus. It’s even got a sling to make it easier for an infantryman to carry and a four-power telescopic sight to make the target seem closer and easier to shoot with pinpoint accuracy.
    “Daddy,” Sterling whispers to his father. “It looks like a 6.5 Italian carbine.”
    The man shoots. Flame leaps from the end of the gun, thanks to its shortened length. Sterling can actually feel the heat from the blast. The gunman removes the spent cartridge and places it in his pocket as if he doesn’t want to leave behind evidence that he’s been there. Sterling finds it unusual that the shooter does this after each and every round.
    The teenager is impressed that almost all of the shooter’s bullet holes are clustered around what would be the eye if the paper target were a real man.
    “Sir, is that a 6.5 Italian carbine?” Sterling asks the stranger.
    “Yes, sir,” the man responds.
    “And is that a four-power scope?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    The shooter stays just long enough to fire only “eight or ten” shots, in Sterling’s estimation—just enough rounds to ration his ammunition while ensuring that his rifle and scope are accurate.
    Sterling will later testify that this man is Lee Harvey Oswald.
    *   *   *
    On that November Saturday, the front page of the Dallas Morning News features a story on President Kennedy’s visit to Dallas, which is just six days away. The paper speculates on the route Kennedy’s motorcade will follow through the heart of the city. Air Force One will land at the Love Field, and from there the president will travel to a large commercial center known as the Trade Mart, where he will give a speech. On the way, he will pass the Texas School Book Depository, the workplace of Lee Harvey Oswald.
    Oswald is an avid newspaper reader and has known for quite some time that John Kennedy is coming to Dallas. On this day, Oswald has decided to spend the weekend in the city rather than journey out to the suburbs to see Marina and their daughters.
    Oswald turned twenty-four just one month ago. He has little to show for his time on earth. He is losing his wife and children. He works a menial job. And despite his keen intellect, he has no advanced education. He doesn’t know whether he wants to be an American, a Cuban, or a Russian.
    Still, he longs to be a great man. A significant man. A man whose name will never be forgotten.
    John Wilkes Booth, in the days before he shot Abraham Lincoln, also longed to be such a man. And just as Booth practiced his marksmanship at a shooting range days before the assassination, so, too, does Lee Harvey Oswald.
    Thirteen-year-old Sterling Wood is the first person impressed by Oswald in a long time. For today, Oswald was truly great—great at firing several shots through the silhouette of a man’s head.
    *   *   *
    The destruction of Camelot might have begun with the Bay of Pigs, when John F. Kennedy made a permanent enemy of Fidel Castro and infuriated his own Central Intelligence Agency.
    Or it might have started that October night in 1962 when JFK severed his ties with Sam Giancana, Frank Sinatra, and the Mafia, then stood back and did nothing as his brother Bobby zealously prosecuted organized crime.
    Camelot’s demise could have originated during the Cuban missile crisis, when JFK scored a decisive public relations victory over Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Empire, while at the same time frustrating his top generals and what Dwight Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex” for refusing to launch a war.
    The destruction of Camelot could have begun in any number of ways.
    But in fact, it begins on November 18, when Special Agent Winston G. Lawson of the Secret Service advance team, Forrest V. Sorrels of the Secret Service’s Dallas office, and Dallas police chief Jesse Curry drive ten very carefully selected miles from Love Field to the Trade Mart. “Hell,” says Special Agent Sorrels, glancing up at the thousands of windows looking down on them, “we’d be sitting ducks.”
    Nevertheless, the agents decide that this will be the presidential motorcade route.
    Anytime the president of the United States drives