Gunfire roared as blood spilled along the street.
The passing crowd screamed and scattered in all directions.
Faced with such ferocious firepower, seven or eight members of the Jewish gang, including their boss and lieutenants, didn't even have time to draw their guns before they were already lying in pools of blood.
Dix and his men, after emptying two rounds of magazines, didn't even glance back. They quickly drove away from the scene.
The whole process lasted no more than two minutes.
It was only about ten minutes after they left that the police, having received the report, arrived slowly at the scene.
And there were only two cars, four or five officers.
But this wasn't due to negligence by the Chicago police—rather, at the same time, in this area alone, over a dozen similar attacks had occurred.
Without exception, all of these locations were major strongholds of the Jewish gang.
The only difference was that in other locations, the attackers' firepower wasn't as intense—at most using submachine guns, unlike here, where even a machine gun had been deployed.
At this time, Dix's convoy had already arrived at an unmanned dock. All the used firearms and leftover shell casings were collected and loaded onto a waiting boat.
Then, someone piloted the boat into deep water and threw all the weapons overboard.
At the same time, part of the crew swiftly replaced all the license plates of the cars, and then drove off in different directions. These cars would be taken to different repair shops, repainted in various colors, leaving no trace.
Dix, on the other hand, brought Goss onto another vehicle waiting at the dock.
"How do you feel?" Dix took two bottles of whiskey from a case in the car, opened them, handed one to Goss, and asked.
"…It was shocking… I've only seen such scenes in the newspapers. It's a bit overwhelming!" Goss took the whiskey and took a hefty swig.
"Hahahaha, you'll get used to it, my good brother. Work with me—from now on, the entire Chicago underworld will be ours!" Dix laughed heartily, patting Goss on the shoulder.
Goss took another deep swig of the whiskey.
Though deeply shaken, the feeling was undeniably exhilarating.
What happened in Chicago seemed to trigger a chain reaction.
In the following days, several Jewish gang bosses in New York were assassinated—the attackers highly trained.
In Atlantic City, two major local Jewish gang leaders and their men were riddled with bullets in the middle of the night, car and all.
In Los Angeles, Benjamin Siegel, one of the most famous Jewish mobsters of the time, was sniper-shot from long range.
In San Francisco, the local Jewish gang boss's home was set on fire.
Jewish gang bosses across the country were being attacked one after another, soon drawing the attention of both the Italian Mafia and federal authorities.
The Mafia's concern was straightforward. Ever since the establishment of the Commission by Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky, the Italian Mafia and Jewish gangs had maintained close cooperation.
Many Jews served as advisors to the Italians.
With their partners under attack, they naturally couldn't remain indifferent.
As for the authorities, it was even more straightforward—so many people dying in broad daylight, there was no way they could just pretend not to see it.
Especially since many of them already had secret dealings with the Jewish gangs.
Preliminary investigations quickly uncovered a key detail.
All the Jewish gang members who had been attacked or assassinated were closely connected to Meyer Lansky, the most renowned Jewish mob boss in the U.S.
In plain terms, those killed were either Lansky's confidants or close friends.
In other words, the attackers likely had a grudge against Lansky but even so, it wasn't easy to pinpoint who was behind it.
After all, as the top Jewish gang boss in the U.S., Lansky had more enemies than could be counted.
However, judging from how highly trained all the attackers were—
Both the Mafia and federal authorities quickly suspected agents of "the Little Mustache" (a veiled reference to Hitler) and Hydra.
The reasoning was simple: the attackers were well-trained and exhibited a distinctly European military style—precise, swift, and methodical, the trademarks of soldiers or spies.
As for the motive, that was also clear: during the rise of pro-fascist groups in America like the Silver Legion, it was Meyer Lansky who, under the quiet support of the authorities, organized numerous Jewish gang members to fight against the Silver Shirts.
And they didn't even use guns—just fists and stares were enough to make the Silver Shirts afraid to show their faces.
During that time, Lansky also helped the FBI crack many German and Hydra espionage cases.
So in a sense, Lansky was a thorn in the side of German and Hydra intelligence operations.
At this point, neither the Mafia nor the FBI ever considered that this series of attacks was actually just a gang war meticulously planned.
The scale was too large, the targets too spread out, and none of the attacked Jewish gang properties, goods, or money had been touched.
This didn't fit the usual behavior of gang warfare at all.
Faced with this, the Italians quietly refrained from any extreme response, merely starting to take over the now-ownerless territories.
Meanwhile, the FBI ramped up checks on recent European arrivals.
And their investigations really did uncover quite a few spies.
Yet the wave of attacks was not over.
Because the man who should have been the central figure in all these cases—Meyer Lansky himself—had been overlooked.
Or rather, not so much overlooked as simply absent.
At the time these attacks occurred, Meyer Lansky wasn't even in the United States—he was in Havana, Cuba.
This period of Cuban history was marked by warlord rule.
American gangsters, thanks to bribery, operated in Cuba almost without restraint.
And Meyer Lansky was one of the main leaders in charge.
So he spent nearly half of each year in Havana.
But when news of the series of attacks in the U.S. reached Cuba, Lansky, as the boss, could no longer stay put—he immediately boarded a yacht to return to Miami.
Although the U.S. aviation industry had developed rapidly, international routes were still limited—only the Boeing 314 flying boat to Britain and a few routes to Canada.
Cuba, despite being close to the U.S., had no air routes due to its unstable political situation.
Travel between Cuba and the U.S. could only be done by ship.
Fortunately, Havana and Miami are less than 400 kilometers apart—a half-day trip by steamer.
When Meyer Lansky arrived in Miami, his men were already waiting at the dock in cars.
As the top Jewish gang boss, his security was naturally very tight: four or five vehicles, more than twenty men guarding him closely.
But just then, a Ford pickup carrying hay passing nearby revealed its true face.
As the hay on the back was lifted, a deadly weapon was suddenly exposed to Lansky and his men.
It was a weapon even more fearsome than the M1895 Dix had used in Chicago… the M1919!