“We’re screwed.”
Hazel was coming down the aisle. She stopped beside them and said, “Now that we’ve landed, he’s having me ask among the passengers for volunteers to be hostages. He’s going to keep ten people on the plane and let the rest go.”
“Then what?” Nolan said.
“He says he’ll let the hostages go when the ransom’s delivered. When we take off again, just the pilot and copilot and navigator and yours truly’ll be aboard. And the skyjacker, of course.”
“Has he made any more demands?”
“He wants two parachutes.”
“Why two?” Jon asked.
Nolan grinned. “Because he’s smart. He learned that trick from the best skyjacker of ’em all, of D. B. Cooper. Asking for more than one insures him that the chutes won’t be sabotaged.”
“Why?” Hazel wanted to know.
“Because with two parachutes, he might make somebody else jump along with him.”
Hazel still didn’t understand. “Certainly not the pilot or copilot or navigator,” she said.
Nolan nodded. “Certainly not.”
Hazel swallowed. “Let’s hope the powers that be don’t consider us flight attendants expendable.”
“Any other demands?”
“Just that we aren’t to reveal his identity to the other passengers. As you said, he’s smart. He figures the fewer people that get a good, long look at him, the better. This way, he’ll just blend into the crowd.”
Jon said, “I don’t know, he looks pretty obvious to me, with the wig and sunglasses and everything.”
“Not really,” Nolan said. “Most of the passengers on this plane are businessmen. They just figure him for some hippie kid or something; a fairly likely suspect, maybe, but not much more so than anybody else.”
“D. B. Cooper,” Hazel said, “was dressed like a businessman. Suit and tie, topcoat oxfords. Like most of the people around you.”
Nolan asked, “Has he told you where you’ll be flying yet?”
“No. Mexico, though, don’t you suppose? Parachute out into some flat area, where somebody’ll be waiting to pick him up?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m supposed to be asking for volunteers right now. But I’m not asking you. I don’t want you. Understand? We’ll have plenty of volunteer hostages, and I don’t want you two to be part of them. Especially you, Nolan or Ryan or whoever you are. I get the feeling you’re the hero type, and I don’t want you grandstand-playing me into getting blown to pieces.”
“I’m telling you, Hazel,” Nolan said, “that kid doesn’t have any damn bomb on board. Take it from me, I’m a judge of character if there ever was one. That kid just doesn’t have the balls for it.”
They’d been keeping their voices down anyway, but she leaned over and whispered, so as not to take any chance of ruffling the feathers of the nearby nuns, and said, “It doesn’t take balls to blow up a plane, dummy. Just a little dynamite.” And she headed back up the aisle, skirt flashing over those fine, long legs of hers.
“So what are we going to do, Nolan?”
“I’m glad Hazel gave us an out. A hostage is one thing we don’t want to be. We can’t afford to stay. Or you can’t, anyway. Now, soon as you get off this plane, you get your ass back to Iowa City, got me?”
“You got an idea, Nolan?”
“I might have.”
“What is it?”
“You just let me do the thinking, and do as I say.”
“Yeah, I know, I know, mine is not to reason why. You’re the mastermind and I’m the flunky.”
“Think of yourself as second in command, if it softens the blow.”
Thirty seconds later, the captain’s voice came over the intercom: He instructed all the passengers, except those who had volunteered to stay on board, to come forward and disembark. Everyone but the hostages began to rise from their seats, the businessmen straightening their ties, grabbing their briefcases; women fussing with their hair, tidying themselves in preparation for the photographers who’d be waiting out there; even the three nuns were smoothing out their habits. Everyone but the hostages, and the skyjacker of course, began to move forward.
Except Nolan.
Who slipped into the nearest of the two johns around the corner from their seat and, giving Jon a look that said, “Keep quiet and do as I told you,” sealed himself inside the cubicle.
And now Jon stood alone, at the rear of the aisle, everyone else trailing on up toward the front, excluding the handful staying behind; Jon began up the aisle, hesitantly, wondering what the hell to do.
He could almost identify with the skyjacker; they were about the same age, after all, and had both got in over their heads in daring, potentially violent endeavors in pursuit of riches. And Nolan stowing away like this meant one thing to Jon: the skyjacker was in for it. Nolan was going to do God-knows-what to that poor kid, and Jon didn’t know who to be more worried for, Nolan or that dumb-ass skyjacker.
And then a realization hit Jon, a short, hard jab that almost knocked him down: Nolan was wrong!
Nolan’s assumption that the skyjacker had not planted a bomb on the plane was clearly false. Otherwise, why would the skyjacker take the trouble to let the bulk of the passengers disembark here at the Quad Cities? The kid evidently had a conscience of sorts, and didn’t want to blow any more people to smithereens than he absolutely had to! The stupid fucking hypocrite.
Jon didn’t know what to do. Should he warn Nolan? Go back and tell him, explain the logic of it, pull him out of that damn can and fuck the money, just get the hell out of here? What good was Nolan going to do jumping the kid, anyway? Nolan! he screamed in his brain. There is a bomb on this goddamn plane!
But it was too late to go back. He was passing beside the seat where the young skyjacker was sitting calmly, just another brave volunteer hostage, as far as anyone could tell. A sudden rush of indignation ran through Jon. He wanted to grab that little shit by the shoulders and shake him till his wig fell off. What kind of fucking monster could do a thing like this? Didn’t the bastard have any respect for human life at all? How could the son of a bitch coldly plant a bomb on a plane and treat life and death like some casual goddamn thing?
Jon glared at the skyjacker as he passed him, but in the reflecting mirror-sunglasses, he saw only himself.
15
HE LOOKED OUT at the airport. It was a modest affair, two creamy-brown brick buildings joining a central tower, some hangars off to the side. You could set this airport down in the lobby at O’Hare and no one would notice. Its relative smallness was one reason he’d picked it. He’d chosen Detroit as takeoff point and the Quad Cities as ransom drop, partially because neither airport had been involved in a skyjacking before; the Quad City Airport was especially poorly equipped for such a contingency. He realized the money would probably have to be flown in from Chicago, but that was just a twenty-minute flight, and since he’d had the pilot call the demand ahead, the money could almost beat them there. Here at the Quad Cities, a skyjacking would be more than the local enforcement agencies could handle, and the people flown in on the spur of the moment from Chicago would be disoriented and, in teaming with local people, disorganized; by the time anyone was at all prepared to deal with him, he would be gone. But had he chosen O’Hare, for example, he’d have had to face a damn anti-skyjack task force.
He was more than aware of the harsh fate dealt out to others who’d engaged in this particular crime: there were so many instances of FBI snipers dropping skyjackers, he couldn’t keep them all straight in his mind, though one recent episode was vividly clear to him: a skyjacker had been cut in half, literally, by the close-range blast of an FBI agent’s shotgun. Consideration of such facts had led him to the choice of a relatively “small-town” airport, but even then, he knew that overconfidence was insanity. For that reason, he had sent the stewardess out to pick up the money. He was not about to stick his head outside the plane and get it blown off his shoulders by an F
BI marksman.
He watched as the attractive brunette flight attendant walked out on the runway, per his instructions (the transfer of money was to be made in full sight of the plane, in broad daylight), while a heavyset, sour-faced probable FBI man in a brown suit, carrying an attaché case and two parachutes, walked out from the airport complex and met her. He handed her the case of money so reluctantly, you’d have thought it was his, then gave her the chutes and headed back. She returned to the plane. No apparent attempt at trickery.
He smiled, sat back in the seat.
The flight attendant, Hazel, brought him the attaché case.
“Sit across the aisle,” he told her, “and open the case.”
“You want me to open it?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, but it might be sabotaged. I might snap it open and release a gas or something. I have to be careful, you can understand that”
“Of course,” she said.
She sat across from him, opened the case.
There was no gas, no explosion.
There was, however, a lot of money. Rows and rows, stacks and stacks, of green packets, packets of cash still in their Chicago bank wrappers.
“Shall I count it?” she said.
“Please. There should be ten thousand twenty-dollar bills.”
It took a while.
“All there,” she said.
“Thank you. Close the case, please.”
She did, and handed it to him. He laid it on the seat beside him, next to the tape recorder.
She looked at him strangely. She was a very pretty woman; striking eyes, the color of her name. She looked something like Carol, as a matter of fact, only brunette instead of blonde. She said, in a surprisingly kind voice, “What’s a nice kid like you doing in a situation like this?”
When he’d researched other skyjackings, he’d found that his goal was different from most. Funny, too, because his would seem the most likely goal. But it wasn’t. Many skyjackers did it for glory; he wanted none of that. True, the adventure of it had been appealing to him, but the publicity meant nothing. He had no desire to become a folk hero, à la Rafael Minichiello or D. B. Cooper; and he certainly didn’t want to see his name in the papers! Some skyjacked out of death wish, suicidal tendency; if he had any of that, he didn’t know it. Much skyjacking was political protest and/or the seeking of political asylum, the skyjackings to Cuba being the most obvious example of that. But there was no political motivation to his skyjacking, although a disillusionment with the American Dream had had something to do with his transition from straight, conservative citizen to air pirate. But who was not a pirate, after all, when the Establishment reeked corruption, from the White House on down? And he’d seen how the great capitalist system worked, hadn’t he? The protestant work ethic he’d obeyed so religiously, only to be swindled and squeezed and screwed out of his savings and his youth and his ideals by those good capitalists at Dream-Land Realtors. Still, he was no protester; he cared nothing for politics. His was an admittedly selfish goal he shared with few skyjackers; D. B. Cooper and a handful of others, that was all.
So, when the stewardess asked him for his reason, he was almost anxious to clarify himself.
“I need the money,” he said.
And she smiled—couldn’t help herself—and nodded, almost sympathetically. “I know what you mean,” she said.
He wanted to tell her that he didn’t want to hurt her, but he knew it would sound silly, hypocritical to the point of absurdity. But he really didn’t. And he didn’t want to hurt himself, either, but if they forced him to, he knew he’d have to consign this plane and the pretty stewardess and himself and all his hopes and dreams to a fiery hell. The only consolation was, it would be over in an instant. Like turning off a TV. Press the button, and boom. No pain.
He told her, Hazel, to let the hostages off the plane, and she made the announcement over the intercom, as the hostages were scattered all about the plane, having remained in their own seats, at his request. He’d felt it best not to let them huddle together, as people in such situations often do; that type of thing could lead to an uprising or some other sort of half-assed heroism, which he could do without.
He was glad to see the hostages go. Relieved. He’d felt the same earlier, when he watched the other passengers leave. It was as if a great weight on him was gradually being lessened. Now, with just the crew and the single stewardess left aboard, he felt almost at ease. The pilot, copilot, and navigator—and the stewardess, too, for that matter, much as he liked her—were the equivalent of military personnel who had taken on a risk-prone job and were prepared, to some degree, anyway, to die in the line of duty. His conscience was taxed far less by their presence than by that of the passengers. Having the passengers around him had proved much more disturbing than he’d expected. The possibility of pressing some buttons on that specially wired calculator and destroying the plane and people on it had been just that: a possibility, a hopefully unlikely eventuality that Those-in-Authority might force him to, if they were foolish. The responsibility would not be his. But once on the plane, with faces all around him, lives all around him, his emotionless, laboratory theorizing blew up in his face like a misjudged experiment; his rationalizations strained at the seams, as the faceless ciphers of his game plan turned out to be flesh-and-blood human beings, people, not pawns. And this hand had trembled around the plastic case of the calculator.
Now, though, the passengers were gone, the last remainder of them trickling out at the stewardess’ guidance, and the hand around the calculator no longer trembled—even if its palm Was a trifle sweaty.
With the hostages safely off the plane, the stewardess came to him for further instructions. He told her to inform the captain to take off immediately.
And they did. The stewardess remained in the cockpit, and he strapped himself into his seat while the plane taxied down the runway and lifted its nose in the air. Once the plane had leveled out again, he unbuckled and, taking along only the calculator, left his seat and went forward and knocked on the cockpit door.
The stewardess answered, and he told her to tell the captain to come out and talk to him.
He didn’t want to go in there, in the cockpit. He didn’t want to be contained in that small area with those three probably very capable men. And he wanted to show them, the captain especially, that he, the skyjacker, was in command now; when he told the captain to come, the captain damn well better come.
The captain came.
And said, “What’s our destination?”
“I think we’ll be going to Mexico,” he said.
“We’ll need fuel for that.”
“I know. You can refuel at St. Louis.”
The captain nodded.
“I would like all of you,” he said, and he nodded toward the stewardess, “to remain in the cockpit throughout the rest of the flight. Understood?”
They indicated they understood.
“Captain, I want you to fly this plane at low altitude and low speed, from here on out.”
“How low?”
“Five thousand to six thousand feet, speed one hundred and twenty-five nauts. Fly a straight course to St. Louis. I know the terrain. I’ll know where we are. No stunt flying, please.”
“You intend to jump?” the captain asked. “I thought you said Mexico. . . .”
“Maybe. That’s my concern. I think you can understand that it’s to my benefit to keep you, as well as the people you’ll be in constant contact with on the radio, in doubt as to exactly what my intentions are. By the way, you’ll notice very soon that the rear ramp exit is down. I’ll be lowering that ramp as soon as you return to the cockpit.”
The captain got a knowing look in his eye; what he knew was this: the ramp was ideal for use by a parachutist. Only 727s and DC-9s had such ramps.
“Do not assume, captain, that I’m going to jump immediately. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. But I am aware that a warning light on your panel lights up when the ramp is lowe
red, so I am lowering the ramp now, so that you will not be able to pinpoint when or if I’ve jumped. If I haven’t knocked on the door by the time we approach St. Louis, you’ll know I’m gone.”
“Which airport in St. Louis?”
“It doesn’t matter. The FBI will be at whatever place I pick. Tell you what. Feel free to select the one you like best. You’re the captain, after all.”
The captain’s eyes tightened, while the stewardess seemed almost to enjoy the put-down, and when the captain returned to the cockpit, she remained in the doorway to say something to the skyjacker. What she said was, “It’s a little late to be saying this, but try not to do anything you’ll regret.”
He smiled. “It is a little late for that.”
“Well. Enjoy your money, anyway.”
“Thank you. I’ll do my best.”
She disappeared into the cockpit.
He went back to his seat and waited while the pilot brought the plane to a lower altitude; then he walked to the rear of the plane to let down the ramp. Seats the flight attendants used during takeoff were folded against the door, and above that was the handle, which he pushed all the way to the left, pulling the door in; just outside the door, on the left, was the stair release control, a little box with a lever in it, which he pushed outward. The ramp lowered. There was an immediate suction effect, which he’d anticipated, and he braced himself accordingly. The wind noise and jet roar were deafening, but there was no pressurization problem at this altitude. Ears aching, face whipped by gusting air flow, he smiled out at the ramp, the little mini-flight of stairs that would allow him to jump from the plane with ease.
He went back to his seat, where the attaché case of cash waited. He took off the wig, the sunglasses. He stripped off the green corduroy shirt; beneath it he wore a thin black cotton pullover, long-sleeved, and the single emergency chute, strapped to his stomach. He wasn’t about to use the two chutes he’d asked for. He knew they would be bugged; they would be hastily but well armed with homing devices that could lead the FBI and everybody right to him. He would wait a while, and, one at a time, throw those chutes out, to send the posse on a wild goose chase or two.
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