Read Online Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper by Geoffrey Gray - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Geoffrey Gray
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houseboat near the University of Washington. She had been beaten, strangled, raped. She was a stewardess, and he suspects the killer was a passenger she met. The airlines are selling sex in their stewardesses, but what are they doing to protect them? So many of the stews tell the same story: small-town girls, left home to see the world before they got married. What about the creeps? The killers? And now parachuting hijackers?
On the police radio, there are more voices on the frequency. The feds want to know where the parachutes are.
With sirens flashing, state troopers descend on Issaquah Skyport, a parachute jump center twenty miles east of SEA-TAC airport. Inside, proprietor Linn Emrich hands the troopers two front or reserve chutes. These front chutes will clip onto the harness of the rear or main parachutes. A trooper puts them in the trunk of his car and speeds off to SEA-TAC.
The rear parachutes are already at the airport. Norman Hayden, a local pilot, sent them in a taxicab. Hayden recently purchased the chutes from Earl Cossey, a local parachute rigger.
Inside the airport, the bank officials from Seattle First National lug the ransom into the Northwest flight operations office. The bankofficials cut open a seal of the leather satchel and hand FBI boss J. Earl Milnes the canvas bag inside. Its dimensions are roughly a foot by a foot, and eight or nine inches tall. Milnes looks at the money. He does not count it. He hands the bag to Al Lee, Northwest’s director of flying. Lee lugs the sack of cash into the trunk of McKenna’s unmarked car, along with the rear parachutes, eight meals for the crew, and instructions on how to use a parachute.
Thousands of feet above them, in the cockpit of the Northwest jet, Scotty worries about the passengers. Won’t they get edgy when the plane doesn’t land? Won’t they start asking questions? Should he tell them the flight has been hijacked?
“You know, Scotty, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Rataczak says. “I know we picked up some good old Montana mountain boys and they’re pretty good sized, and they’re sitting up in first class and they’re on their second and third martinis. We don’t need them to look at each other and say, ‘Hey, let’s go back and get a hijacker.’ ”
The pilots have an idea. Why not ask him what he wants to do?
They call back to Tina. She asks the hijacker if he wants the passengers alerted.
“No,” he says.
She relays the message back. Now the crew needs a ruse to explain the delay. Rataczak switches on the in-flight intercom system.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “there’s been a slight mechanical problem. We’ve been asked to circle Seattle, to burn off excess fuel.”
A clap of thunder. The storm has hit. In the jet windows there are flashes of lightning against the dark sky. In the bulkhead row, prosecutor Larry Finegold can see them. He tries to make sense of what the pilot had just said. It doesn’t make sense. How could any mechanical problem on a jet be slight ?
He thinks, This is the one, oh boy, here we go, get ready to crash. He thinks about his wife. Sharon was in law school at Berkeley when they met. She had such long hair. He was a preppy in jeans and penny loafers. Once they started talking, he didn’t want the conversation to end. He couldn’t stand to be apart from her. After they met, he went with friends on a three-day fishing trip. After the first night, he made his friends dock. He hitchhiked to her dorm room and proposed. Now she’s pregnant with their first child. A boy, they’ve learned. His son.
The jet is shaking. More lightning. The cabin drops in spasms. His stomach is rolling like a waterbed.
Across the aisle, passenger Barbara Simmons wakes up from a nap. She looks out the window and sees the lights of the Space Needle. The futuristic structure was the tallest west of the Mississippi when it was built for the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. It is located several miles
On the police radio, there are more voices on the frequency. The feds want to know where the parachutes are.
With sirens flashing, state troopers descend on Issaquah Skyport, a parachute jump center twenty miles east of SEA-TAC airport. Inside, proprietor Linn Emrich hands the troopers two front or reserve chutes. These front chutes will clip onto the harness of the rear or main parachutes. A trooper puts them in the trunk of his car and speeds off to SEA-TAC.
The rear parachutes are already at the airport. Norman Hayden, a local pilot, sent them in a taxicab. Hayden recently purchased the chutes from Earl Cossey, a local parachute rigger.
Inside the airport, the bank officials from Seattle First National lug the ransom into the Northwest flight operations office. The bankofficials cut open a seal of the leather satchel and hand FBI boss J. Earl Milnes the canvas bag inside. Its dimensions are roughly a foot by a foot, and eight or nine inches tall. Milnes looks at the money. He does not count it. He hands the bag to Al Lee, Northwest’s director of flying. Lee lugs the sack of cash into the trunk of McKenna’s unmarked car, along with the rear parachutes, eight meals for the crew, and instructions on how to use a parachute.
Thousands of feet above them, in the cockpit of the Northwest jet, Scotty worries about the passengers. Won’t they get edgy when the plane doesn’t land? Won’t they start asking questions? Should he tell them the flight has been hijacked?
“You know, Scotty, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Rataczak says. “I know we picked up some good old Montana mountain boys and they’re pretty good sized, and they’re sitting up in first class and they’re on their second and third martinis. We don’t need them to look at each other and say, ‘Hey, let’s go back and get a hijacker.’ ”
The pilots have an idea. Why not ask him what he wants to do?
They call back to Tina. She asks the hijacker if he wants the passengers alerted.
“No,” he says.
She relays the message back. Now the crew needs a ruse to explain the delay. Rataczak switches on the in-flight intercom system.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “there’s been a slight mechanical problem. We’ve been asked to circle Seattle, to burn off excess fuel.”
A clap of thunder. The storm has hit. In the jet windows there are flashes of lightning against the dark sky. In the bulkhead row, prosecutor Larry Finegold can see them. He tries to make sense of what the pilot had just said. It doesn’t make sense. How could any mechanical problem on a jet be slight ?
He thinks, This is the one, oh boy, here we go, get ready to crash. He thinks about his wife. Sharon was in law school at Berkeley when they met. She had such long hair. He was a preppy in jeans and penny loafers. Once they started talking, he didn’t want the conversation to end. He couldn’t stand to be apart from her. After they met, he went with friends on a three-day fishing trip. After the first night, he made his friends dock. He hitchhiked to her dorm room and proposed. Now she’s pregnant with their first child. A boy, they’ve learned. His son.
The jet is shaking. More lightning. The cabin drops in spasms. His stomach is rolling like a waterbed.
Across the aisle, passenger Barbara Simmons wakes up from a nap. She looks out the window and sees the lights of the Space Needle. The futuristic structure was the tallest west of the Mississippi when it was built for the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. It is located several miles
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