Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper (13 page)

The plane is not moving. Why aren’t they moving?

Tina calls Scotty. The pilots are filing their flight plan.

“Never mind,” the hijacker says. “They can do that over the radio once we get up.”

Tina wants to know what he will do with the bomb.

“Take it with me, or disarm it,” he says.

Tina worries about the aftstairs. If he doesn’t put them up before they land, they could get damaged.

“Go to the cockpit,” he says. “Close the first-class curtains. Make sure nobody comes out.”

She leaves. In first class, she looks back. She can see he is standing up. He has a shroud line in his hand. He is tying the money bag to himself, running the rope around his waist. She closes the curtain.

The rain is light. The wind speed is ten knots, from the southeast. Clouds are scattered at 2,500 feet. Visibility is seven miles. The night is black.

From the cockpit, the pilots can see the high beams of the detective’s unmarked car.

“Yeah, say, this is Al again. I’m down here in a car.”

“Yeah, Al. We’re all set. We’re going to crank the engines. You’ve probably heard me say he’s indicated that he wants the show on the road, so we’re going to get her cranked up here and pick our clearance in the air.”

“Or maybe you can get him downtown toward Portland. He might get homesick and want to land there again, I don’t know.”

“Well, we’ll hope for something to happen here, that’s all. You go ahead and pull out. We’re going to get cranked up here now. So we’ll see you later.”

“Yes sir.”

“Ground, no force on 305. Be advised that I will be trying to make her up to altitude any way we can. Any other restrictions that may be imposed upon us?”

“No restrictions at all. You fly in the best way you can do her.”

“And, 305, there’ll be people with you all the way down.”

The company is a pair of F-106’s, interceptor turbojets designed to shoot down bombers with air-to-air missiles. If the Northwest pilots lose control of the jet and Flight 305 is headed into a populated or residential
area, the F-106 pilots could be ordered to unlock their weapons systems and take the jet out.

At SEA-TAC, agents are busy debriefing passengers and Flo and Alice about the hijacker. What color was his hair? Did he speak with an accent? Was he wearing a wedding ring?

On the runway, Flight 305 picks up speed. Soon the nose is up and the wheels are off the ground.

In Portland, outside the Guard hangar, the giant blades of the Huey are spinning. Himmelsbach and a partner hop in the cockpit. As they rise, winds from the storm bully the chopper around the airfield. Himmelsbach can see the lights of the Portland suburbs. He thinks he sees his house. His wife and daughters are probably inside preparing a turkey. He was supposed to have been home hours ago.

Happy Thanksgiving, he thinks.

The chopper picks up speed. They try the radio, but the frequencies are different. There is no way to communicate with the Northwest pilots. Himmelsbach looks out into the night. He can see nothing. They are moving 120 knots into the storm. They are moving too slowly to catch Flight 305. Above the chopper, somewhere, the F-106 fighter jets are moving too fast. To maintain any radar reading on the passenger jet, the fighter pilots are forced to carve wide turns, snaking through the night sky. As they make these S-turns, Northwest 305 comes in and out of their radar screens. They are losing him.

Other jets join the aerial posse. In Boise, Idaho, a pair of F-102 interceptor jets is dispatched. The F-102’s cannot make contact with Flight 305, either.

To the west, Norman Battaglia, a National Guard flight instructor, is on a night training mission in a T-33 reconaissance fighter plane. The training mission is canceled.

“We want you to tail an aircraft,” an air traffic controller says.

“The one that’s hijacked?”

“That’s the one.”

In the sky, Battaglia positions the T-33 about three quarters of a mile behind Flight 305. It’s hard to keep up. The Northwest jet is moving so slowly. And, every forty-five seconds or so, the plane changes courses. Battaglia tries his radio to contact the Northwest pilots. It doesn’t work. The frequencies are also different.

In the cockpit of Northwest 305, the phone is ringing. It’s
him
again.

He needs help with the aftstairs.

The pilots relay the message over the radio.

“Fourteen miles on Vector 23 out of Seattle. He is trying to get the door down. The stew is with us. He cannot get the stairs down.”

“After a while, someone will have to take a look back there and see if he is out of the aircraft.”

“Miss Mucklow said he apparently has the knapsack around him and thinks he will attempt a jump.”

The pilots notice a change in their instruments.

“We now have an aftstair light on.”

Copilot Rataczak picks up the receiver to use the jet’s intercom. The air swirling around the cabin must be fierce, a tornado of wind twisting up and down the aisles. Rataczak calls back into the cabin as if trying to reach a man trapped in the belly of a mine.

“Can you hear me? Is there anything we can do for you?”

The hijacker picks up the cabin phone.

“No,” he says.

With the aftstairs released, the temperature in the cabin must be far below freezing. In the cockpit window, pilots look at their thermometer. The reading in the sky is minus seven.

It’s also loud. The jet’s engines are blasting away.

Rataczak calls back into the cabin again.

“Everything okay back there?”

“Everything is okay.”

The jet is moving south. The flight crew notices another change in reading.

“We’re getting some oscillations in the cabin. He must be doing something with the air stairs.”

Harold Anderson, flight engineer, checks his instrument panel. The cabin pressure gauge is spiraling out of control.

Rataczak calls back again on the interphone.

“Sir?”

There is no response. Tina picks up the plastic receiver.

“Sir?”

Underneath the jet, the lights of the cities in Oregon pass: Portland, Salem, Eugene. The configurations of the plane keep the jet moving slow and strain the engines. In Northern California, an HC-130 rescue plane is dispatched from Hamilton Air Force Base, as well as another pair of F-106 interceptor jets. At Red Bluff, California, the pilots and the jets following them turn east, approaching Reno on the Nevada border.

Time to descend. Time to refuel. Tina calls back into the cabin.

“Sir, we are going to land now. Please put up the stairs. We are going to land anyway, but the aircraft may be structurally damaged. We may not be able to take off after we’ve landed.”

Northwest officials in Minneapolis and air-traffic controllers in Reno want to know if the hijacker has jumped from the plane.

Tina uses the intercom phone again.

“Sir?”

The screech of the dangling aftstairs against the runway in Reno sounds like a car crash. Police cars trail the jet to ensure the hijacker does not roll out onto the tarmac. The Northwest pilots are talking with Reno Approach.

“See any sparks coming off the tail at any time on touchdown?”

“Negative. None at all. The only thing that’s visible on the tail is lights on your ramp.”

“Roger.”

“I do see some sparks now, just a few, trailing you as you’re taxiing in.”

The plane rolls to a stop.

Scotty turns and unlocks the cockpit door. He calls out into the cabin.

“Sir?”

Tina is behind him. She calls out over his shoulder.

“Sir?” she says. “Do you want us to refuel?”

Scotty inches into first class. The seats are empty. He creeps forward into the cabin. He is facing the first-class curtain. He unhinges the clasp. He pulls the curtain back.

“Sir?”

The so-called Bing Crosby sketch was the first composed by the FBI.

The Bing Crosby sketch with sunglasses.