Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper (10 page)

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 north of SEA-TAC.

“Oh my gosh,” Simmons says to her husband. “Either we’re on the wrong plane or we’re being hijacked.”

One passenger gets out of his seat and marches toward the back. Tina gets up and intercepts him at row 14.

“I’m bored,” he says. “You have any sports magazines to read back there?”

She escorts him to the rear. She looks for a sports magazine. She can’t find any.

“How about the
New Yorker
?” she says.

In a nearby seat, passenger Labissoniere, the trucking lawyer, gets up to use the lavatory.

When he comes out, another passenger is blocking the aisle. He’s a cowboy type, wearing a Stetson. He’s furious, demanding that Tina tell him more about this “mechanical difficulty.” Why do they have to burn fuel? When will they be on the ground? Does Tina know
anything
?

Labissoniere notices the man in sunglasses sitting next to Tina. He seems amused by the cowboy’s antics. Then he gets annoyed when
the man won’t stop. He tells Stetson Man to go back to his seat. The hijacker and Tina are alone again.

“If that’s a sky marshal, I don’t want any more of that,” he says.

“There aren’t any sky marshals on the 305 flight,” she says.

He remembers something: his note. Flo has it. He wants it back.

Tina picks up the phone and tells the captain. She eases back into her seat. She asks the hijacker if he wants anything to eat or drink.

“No.”

She asks him about the passengers. When can they get off?

He goes over his instructions again. She needs to pay attention.

First, the fuel truck; he wants it out at SEA-TAC and ready to pump gas when the plane lands.

Second, the money; he wants the car carrying the ransom parked so he can see it from the windows at all times.

Third, her; he wants Tina to get out of the plane and fetch the bag of money.

She worries. The bag may be too heavy for her to carry.

“You’ll manage,” he says.

Once the money is on board, the passengers will be released. Then Tina will get the parachutes and meals. He also has Benzedrine pills in his pocket. He doesn’t want the crew to get sleepy.

The jet banks another wide loop.

Tina tries to chat him up.

“So, where you from?” she says.

He won’t tell her. He’s not that stupid.

She wants to know his motive. Why hijack this plane?

“Do you have a grudge against Northwest?” she says.

He looks at the stewardess, the sunglasses shielding his eyes.

“I don’t have a grudge against your airline, Miss,” he says. “I just have a grudge.”

December 7, 1942
Cove City, North Carolina

Ever since he was born, the old folks in the tobacco town said there was something about Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. that was not right. He could not speak properly. The cord under his tongue was too taut, so doctors snipped it and left him with a lisp. As a boy he got picked on and was always in fights. One reason for the birth defects, townsfolk surmised, was that the boy’s parents were first cousins.

The marriage was not stable. In town, it was an open secret that when Richard’s father, who went by the name Floyd, enlisted in the war, the boy’s mother, Myrtle, had an affair with her boss, Richard Edward Holland, who owned a local sawmill. When Richard’s father came home after two years in Belgium, Myrtle was pregnant. They eventually divorced, but there was tension in the house as they tried to raise two boys with different fathers.

Floyd would spank the younger boy, Russell. Myrtle protested, thinking Floyd was punishing him for her affair.

“That boy may not be your boy, Floyd McCoy, and you might not like him being around here! But he’s my boy, and from this day forward, you’ll never again lay a hand on my son,” Myrtle would say.

Instead of beating Russell, Floyd beat Richard. He could beat his own son, couldn’t he?

“During my formative years, it was still the in-thing to serve one’s country so at nineteen I followed my father’s footsteps and enlisted in the army,” Richard McCoy would later write. “After completing parachute school and volunteering for the Green Berets, then came two more years of advanced demolition and guerrilla warfare.”

When McCoy first arrived in Vietnam, in 1963, the country was
already chaotic. In the streets, Buddhist monks were lighting themselves on fire. The Green Berets conducted clandestine missions to stop the North Vietnamese and contain the spread of Communism throughout Indochina. President Kennedy deployed more troops and was assassinated later in the year. In the jungles, McCoy developed an ear fungus. Later, he was nearly killed in combat. Awarded the Purple Heart for his valor, McCoy was sent home to Cove City and spent a year recovering in a wheelchair. The fungus infection in his ear would not heal. Doctors could not figure out how to treat it.

Richard wanted to work in law enforcement. His family was Mormon, so after his recovery he moved to Utah and enrolled in Brigham Young University, majoring in criminal studies. In school, he met Karen Burns, a pretty blonde who was taken with McCoy’s war hero image and his ruggedly handsome good looks. They married and had two children, Chante and Richard Jr.

The marriage was tense. Money was tight. Richard was in school. He had National Guard duty. He was a Sunday school teacher on weekends. He didn’t have time for a job. Karen’s younger sister Denise was living with them, too. Richard was frustrated. He needed to escape. He decided to re-enlist on the condition that he be sent back to Vietnam. He missed the adrenaline of combat.

His first training was in helicopter flight school in Texas. Later, he went through six months of advanced training in Alabama. When he arrived in Vietnam, McCoy was like an aerial Rambo. He earned combat medals for his missions. In the summer of 1967, an American observation helicopter had an engine malfunction and was forced to land in enemy territory. American soldiers were stranded, waiting for the rescue helicopters. From the Army report:

Suddenly, the rescue aircraft lost power and crashed near the first aircraft, causing them both to erupt in flames. Due to the extreme danger caused by the burning aircraft plus the added danger of enemy intrusion, MCCOY placed his helicopter as near as possible to the downed aircraft. With complete disregard for his own safety, MCCOY leaped from the aircraft and worked his way through the dense jungle to his comrades. He immediately located the two survivors and led them to his waiting helicopter
.

In combat, there was a madness to Richard, who conducted his own bomb runs in his armored chopper. In November of 1967, an American compound had been overtaken by Vietcong. A thick layer of fog covered the ground, and low clouds covered the trees. Visibility was extremely poor, and there were no tactical maps of the area. From another Army report:

Flying by instrumentation and radio alone, MCCOY located the compound and came under automatic weapons and small arms fire. With the position of the compound marked by a flare and the firefight marked by tracer rounds, MCCOY began a series of firing passes, launching rockets until his ammunition was expended. Due to his courageous flight and highly accurate fire, the enemy was completely routed, leaving twenty bodies behind
.

His head. Back home again at Brigham Young, Richard suffers from migraines. He can’t think. He blacks out. He undergoes a series of medical tests and X-rays. Richard has a possible tumor in his brain, doctors find.

The prognosis is devastating. After so many years in school, and with his skilled training as a helicopter and fixed-wing pilot, Richard would have been highly employable in the FBI, or another law enforcement agency. Now Richard can never be hired. What if he suffers a blackout at the controls? His helicopter or plane could crash.

He’s lost everything. His marriage is fragile. His career is ruined. What can he do?

He considers suicide. Too cowardly, he thinks.

He becomes absorbed in school work. Better at least get his degree.
In one of his classes, Richard has to write a paper on how to deter the increased number of airplane hijackings.

“In working on the project, it was necessary to play the roles of the people involved,” Richard will later say. “The person I identified most with was the skyjacker.”

November 24, 1971
Aboard Northwest Orient Flight 305

In the air, the jet banks another turn. In the bulkhead row, prosecutor Finegold looks out the portal window for the roof of his house. In the rain, in the dark, he can’t find it. Behind him passengers shift uneasily in the powder blue fabric chairs and flip through Northwest Orient’s in-flight magazine.

Sitting in his seat over the wing of the plane, passenger Patrick Minsch, a heavy-equipment operator from Alaska, worries about his connection. In Seattle he is changing planes to go to his grandmother’s house in the San Juan Islands. The plane has been circling for three hours. He’ll miss his flight. He’ll have to spend the night in SEA-TAC. He looks out the window and sees the lights on the wing illuminate the rain streaking by. He feels the plane move.

Another loop. The jet banks again, over Everett, where Boeing’s 747 factory is located.

The 747 was a gamble that nearly bankrupted the company. In the recession, Boeing has been forced to lay off more than half the workforce. A company town, Seattle has the highest unemployment rate of any American city since the Great Depression. It’s over 12 percent. Aeronautical engineers with advanced degrees are forced to mow lawns to feed their families. Foreclosure rates skyrocket. Homeless shelters are at full capacity. Across the board, local budgets are slashed. Police officers in Seattle are placed on unpaid leave. Dope is sold outside drive-in restaurants.

Down near the piers off Puget Sound, the homeless sleep in wet bundles under the freeway as smack junkies warm their hands by oil-drum fires. An exodus is under way. A new billboard is up: “Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn off the lights?”

Outside the city, in old logging towns, the government is collecting on back taxes. Auditors snake through the maze of country roads in rural Washington where many loggers and their families are living
off the grid. The tax bills are higher than what many homes are worth. Laborers are forced to move, forced to sell. Locals vow to get back at the government for stealing their homes.

The hijacker wants to know what time it is.

After five, Tina tells him.

Five was his deadline. What are the feds trying to do? Stall?

For the first time, Tina sees panic on his face.

“They’re not gonna take me alive,” he says.

Tina calls the cockpit. The hijacker is starting to lose control. What’s the delay?