The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (15 page)

Despite an all-star cast that included Rosey Grier and Yvette Mimieux in addition to Heston,
Skyjacked
was a dreadful movie riddled with plot holes. Based on a pulp novel called
Hijacked
, the movie was a halfhearted whodunit in which the skyjacker initially communicates his threats by anonymously scrawling messages on a lavatory mirror. It is no great shock when the culprit is revealed to be a stereotypically frazzled Vietnam vet, played by the thirty-one-year-old James Brolin. Upset over his treatment by the Army, Brolin’s character decides to escape to the Soviet Union, where he is certain that he will be given a hero’s welcome. His daft plan unsurprisingly fails, though not until the Boeing 707 is on the ground in Moscow.

Holder was fascinated by the cheesy
Skyjacked
, for he saw himself in Brolin’s morally wounded soldier. Both had gone AWOL upon returning from Vietnam, and both felt disrespected by the Army. In one scene, as the pilot played by Heston bends down to help a dying FBI agent out of the plane’s luggage hold, Brolin’s character kicks him in
the ribs. “That’s what you get for doing your duty,” he sneers as Heston doubles over in pain. “It’s standard.”

As the movie’s climax nears, Brolin changes into his Army dress uniform so he can meet the Soviet elite in style. Holder liked that cheeky touch; shortly after seeing
Skyjacked
, he retrieved his own dress uniform from his parents’ house and had it cleaned and pressed. And he purchased a set of silver captain’s bars from a military surplus store, to affix to the uniform’s collar; he felt the hijacking would go more smoothly if he
masqueraded as an officer.

That weekend Holder told Kerkow they should go out for a special dinner, as he had something important to discuss with her. His parents chauffeured the couple to Anthony’s Fish Grotto on North Harbor Drive, a San Diego institution known for its seafood cocktails. The meal was quite an extravagance given the sorry state of the couple’s finances, but Holder swore there was good reason for the splurge.

Midway through dinner he reached across the table and motioned for Kerkow to take his hand. The moment had come for him to invite her to join Operation Sisyphus.

Holder did not delve into too many operational details—those were his responsibility, and his alone. But he gave Kerkow a rough idea of what he had in mind, beginning with his plan to hijack a Hawaii-bound jet from Los Angeles; he explained that such a plane would be guaranteed to have the range necessary for the mission.

Once he had command of the plane, he would order it flown to San Francisco International Airport, where he would exchange half the passengers for Angela Davis and a sizable amount of money. They would then head for North Vietnam, stopping in Honolulu to refuel and release the remaining passengers. As they approached Hanoi, Holder would request that Prime Minister Pham Van Dong come to the airport to greet Davis and offer her political asylum. Once he knew Davis was in good hands, Holder would make a public show of donating the ransom money to a Vietcong leader, as a way of assuaging the guilt he felt over his role in the war.

But the hijacking would not end in Hanoi. After dropping off
Davis and the ransom, the couple would fly to Australia, where Holder claimed they would be allowed to homestead in the Outback. They would get married and then send for his twin daughters, whom Kerkow would help raise as her own.

And they would live happily ever after.

Kerkow had never heard anything so incredibly far out. She had always known that Holder had a defiant streak, but this plan was the stuff of true rebellion. There was only one way she could possibly respond to such a deliciously extreme proposal.

“So, what do I
wear to a hijacking?”

T
HERE WAS MUCH
to do in those final days of preparation. One of the biggest obstacles that Holder and Kerkow faced was poverty—dinner at Anthony’s Fish Grotto had all but wiped out their meager cash reserves, and the tickets to Hawaii would cost in excess of five hundred dollars. Kerkow called her ex-roommate Beth Newhouse to beg for a loan but
was coldly rebuffed.

Kerkow then came up with a crafty idea: she would purchase the tickets at the San Diego airport on the morning of the flight, using a check that would inevitably bounce. If questioned, she would claim to have dropped a paycheck into a Security National Pacific Bank deposit box that very morning. By the time the airline uncovered the lie, she said, their connecting flight would already be en route from
Los Angeles to Hawaii.

Pleased with the viability of this ticket-buying scheme, Holder briefed Kerkow on how else he expected her to aid the hijacking. The couple would sit apart and pretend not to know each other upon boarding the aircraft. After he executed the takeover, she would remain incognito in the main cabin, keeping an eye peeled for trouble. This role would be especially important while the plane was on the ground, for Kerkow would be responsible for alerting Holder if any FBI agents came
sneaking through the exits.

Holder, meanwhile, would communicate with her over the
flight’s public address system. He would refer to her by the code name “Stan”—a sly tribute to Holder’s best friend in Vietnam, Stanley Schroeder, the eighteen-year-old private who had been
killed by a booby trap.

On May 31 Kerkow skipped her planned flight to visit her father in Seattle. That afternoon Holder called United Airlines’ central ticket office in Chicago and booked two reservations for travel to Honolulu on June 2; payment would be made at the airport ticket counter. But after consulting some astrological charts a few hours later, he had a change of heart. He called back United and moved up the reservation by twenty-four hours, so that he and Kerkow would be departing
the very next morning.

But when he awoke before dawn, Holder decided he couldn’t leave without bidding farewell to his family. He had his father come pick him up, stating that he wished to see the twins. At his parents’ house, Holder announced that he and Kerkow were about to depart for Australia, where they planned to marry and live off the land. Marie and Seavenes thought this sounded absolutely crazy, but they had come to expect such erratic behavior from Roger since his return from Vietnam. Marie agreed to drive the couple to the airport at seven a.m.
the following morning.

That night at the apartment on Lauretta Street, Kerkow cheerfully packed a suitcase for her new life as an Australian homesteader. She knew nothing about the country but assumed there would be ample sun and swimming opportunities. Her clothing choices leaned toward the lightweight—two floral tops, leather Italian sandals, a pair of green knit shorts, a
blue Beachmates bikini.

Holder did not bother with luggage. He would travel with just two carry-on items, a small black valise and a Samsonite briefcase. The valise would contain his planning materials—his notebook, the explosives manual, his ransom notes, his favorite astrological charts.

The briefcase would contain his bomb.

R
OGER
H
OLDER LEANED
close to the bathroom mirror, inspecting every crease and decoration on his Class A Army dress uniform. He rubbed spit on the silver aviator wings pinned to his jacket and fine-tuned his necktie’s Windsor knot. Then he delicately cleaned the amber lenses on his wire-rimmed eyeglasses so there would be no spots or smudges. He couldn’t bear to look anything less than perfect for Operation Sisyphus.

As he bent down to buff his black shoes, Cathy Kerkow banged on the bathroom door. “Hey, hurry up in there,” she said. “I have to shit.” Holder hated it when Cathy talked like that; he liked to pretend that beautiful ladies were pristine creatures. He bashfully opened the door to find her holding a cup of breakfast tea. She had chosen a slightly hippie-ish ensemble for the momentous day: purple hip-hugging slacks, a chunky brown belt that she had crafted herself, and a light pink blouse. Like Holder, she wore modish eyeglasses, though their temples were obscured by her cascading brown hair.

Kerkow giggled at the sight of Holder in his uniform. “You look like a robot!” she squealed, then kissed him on the cheek. Holder was unsettled by her breeziness; he worried that she might be underestimating the significance of their mission.

It was 6:15 a.m. on June 2, 1972. The couple’s first United Airlines
flight of the day, from San Diego to Los Angeles, was scheduled to depart in
less than three hours.

U
PON DISEMBARKING AT
Los Angeles International Airport at 9:25 a.m., Kerkow announced that she once again had to use the rest-room. Holder, who was traveling under the pseudonym “C. Williams,” promised to wait for her by their arrival gate.

As the waiting Holder lit a Pall Mall, a man in a steel-blue blazer approached him and asked if he was Captain Williams. When Holder replied in the affirmative, the man identified himself as a United customer-services representative.

“We have a bit of a situation we need to discuss here, sir,” the representative said, doing his best to sound respectful of Holder’s apparent military rank. He explained that there was a problem with the check that Catherine Marie Kerkow had written at the San Diego airport. At the behest of a suspicious United ticket agent, Security Pacific National Bank had carefully reviewed its records concerning Kerkow’s most recent withdrawals and deposits. The bank had concluded that her account was actually $2.97 overdrawn; as a result, United could not possibly honor her $580.83 check. The representative politely asked Holder to hand over the couple’s tickets for their connecting flight to Honolulu.

As Holder pleaded ignorance regarding the state of his girlfriend’s finances, Kerkow returned from her trip to the ladies’ room. She swore to the United representative that the bank was mistaken, for she had dropped a paycheck into a branch deposit box that very morning; her check would no doubt clear by day’s end. But the United representative would not be swayed by her fibs or her feminine charms. Kerkow and Holder had no choice but to relinquish their tickets.

To make matters worse, the representative told Kerkow that her checked luggage was already in the process of being transferred to the Honolulu-bound flight and thus could not be retrieved. She would
have to contact the airline’s baggage-handling department to arrange for the recovery of
her personal effects.

It was not yet ten o’clock in the morning, and Operation Sisyphus was already going awry.

Having grossly misjudged the banking industry’s efficiency, Holder and Kerkow ordered Bloody Marys at an airport bar and chewed over
what to do next. They worried that the police would be called if Kerkow tried to pass a bad check at another airline. Yet postponing the mission was not an option: the jury in the Angela Davis case was slated to begin its deliberations
that very day.

Their situation seemed hopeless until Kerkow remembered something: the Western Airlines ticket that her father had sent her, the one she had neglected to use two days earlier as she prepared for the hijacking. It was still in her purse.

Kerkow went to the Western ticket counter and asked if she could exchange her unused round-trip ticket to Seattle for two one-way tickets. The agent said that would be fine, then advised her that she was entitled to a twelve-dollar refund—the flight from Los Angeles was slightly cheaper than the one from San Diego. He also suggested that the couple could travel for even less if Holder took advantage of a special Western offer: military personnel who flew standby were entitled to half-price fares.

Absolutely not, said Kerkow. They needed guaranteed seats on the next flight to Seattle—Flight 701, scheduled to depart at 12:50 p.m.

The ticket agent gave the couple a cursory once-over as Kerkow filled out her refund application. Nothing about their behavior struck him as odd. Unlike four of their fellow passengers on Flight 701, Holder and Kerkow were not selected
for additional screening.

Boarding passes in hand, the couple returned to the bar for one last preflight cocktail. When they were finished, they coolly parted ways: they would henceforth pretend to be strangers to each other, until the last passengers had been freed en route to North Vietnam.

As she stuffed her copy of the latest
Playboy
into her purse, a
grinning Kerkow said a few last words to Holder: “Nigger, you’d better not run off on me.” The slur was a private joke between them, a way they poked fun at
their racial mismatch.

The flight boarded at 12:35 p.m. There were no assigned seats: he took 18D, on the aisle, while she chose 22D. Approximately fifteen minutes after they settled in, the jet’s wheels pulled free of the runway. Operation
Sisyphus was a go.

H
OLDER WAS ACHING
for a taste of marijuana, just a few quick tokes to soothe his nerves. He had a cigarette pack full of joints in his breast pocket, but there was no way he could sneak a puff in the lavatory without
attracting unwanted attention. He settled instead for a second round of bourbon, brought to him by a shapely blond stewardess who said her name was Gina. A bump of turbulence caused her to splash some liquor on Holder’s jacket, an accident for which she profusely apologized.

“Don’t worry about it at all,” said Holder. “
No harm done.”