Page 91 of The 9th Man

—CBS News sponsored the test. My name was suggested as I participated in the Warren Commission test firings of 1964. Three marksmen fired at a fixed, non-movable target. I was the only one of the three to actually fire off three shots, within 5.6 seconds. None of us scored more than two hits on the target.

—Oswald was no marksman, yet managed to fire three shots and score two direct hits. Idea to see if trained marksmen can duplicate that.

—Eleven marksmen were brought in. Three H. P. White employees, three Maryland state police officers, a ballistic technician, two sportsmen, an ex-paratrooper just back from Vietnam, and me. None of us were told beforehand what we were doing so we would not practice. None of us were paid.

—Test started in basement range. Three shots to a target 150 feet away. Lighting terrible, targets riddled with bullet holes. No way to tell if we hit. Told not to be concerned. This was just a quick, controlled practice.

—They built a mock-up of Dealey Plaza complete with a 60-foot tower to replicate Oswald’s perch. Beneath stretched several hundred feet of railroad track down a slight grade similar to Elm Street. A small vehicle ran the rails with a silhouette target of a head and shoulders. Atop the perch was a plank that replicated the window sill Oswald used to rest the rifle. Quite a realistic test, all filmed by TV cameras.

—Difficult to make the shots in the few seconds allowed since once fired, the empty cartridge had to be manually ejected and a new round injected with a stiff bolt mechanism which caused the sights to lose the target, which had to be re-acquired.

—I was the only one of the eleven to hit the targeted head three times in 4.8 seconds, .8 of a second better than Oswald. Two others equaled Oswald’s actions of two hits.

—Test showed the rifle could be fired quick and accurate.

—All of which gave credibility to the Warren Commissions lone-gunman finding and dispelled any other explanation.

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Lancer

The notes were explainable—Simmons recounting his experiences—but the last part seemed out of place.

What was it?

He returned to the laptop and typed, finding an online complete text of the Warren Commission report. He opened the file to the report’s index at the back. He found theR’s and scanned until he saw the entry.

Rowland, Thomas.

He scrolled back to the page indicated and found the relevant words in the report. Jillian was reading over his shoulder.

Incredible.

“Thomas Rowland was one of the agents, on the ground, in the motorcade,” he said. “He was there. In Dallas. That day. Riding in the rear seat of the trail car.”

He could see the same question form in her mind as it was in his.

Three of these agents occupied positions on the running boards of the car, and the fourth was seated in the car.

That’s what the report had said about the agents who’d stayed out late the night before drinking.

Was the one seated in the car Rowland?

He worked the keyboard again to learn more about the murder weapon.

God bless the internet.

He recalled some, but not enough, as the Kennedy assassination had always held a fascination for him. The Oswald rifle was an Italian Fucile di Fanteria, an infantry weapon, Modello 91/38, manufactured at the Royal Arms Factory in Terni, Italy, sometime in 1940. The stamp of the royal crown and Terni, along with its serial number, had clearly identified it. A poorly made World War II surplus gun. Nothing state-of-the-art about it. It remained stored in a secure location within the National Archives and Records Administration Building in College Park, Maryland. The Warren Commission concluded that Kennedy was killed by a single bullet fired from that rifle. But other theories had blossomed through the years. The so-called grassy knoll shooter, the Badge Man, an individual wearing a police uniform and sporting a rifle, Umbrella Man, along with a hundred other possibilities. None of which had ever borne any fruit. Despite being repeatedly investigated by both the government and private individuals.

Was what Benji, Ray, and Eckstein were doing more of the same?

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