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ONE
(1) My days are coming to an end. I won’t go into details. I’m fine with it. Time goes by as it does for all of us. Which is why I must get this down while I’m able to. It’s no longer necessary to keep it to myself.
(2) By now you may have heard of me. Every few years there’s a resurgence of interest. Folks want to know if I survived and if so then what happened to me after that?
(3) As the years go on, my fan club grows. There are blogs and websites dedicated to me. An abundance of merchandise with my image and name on it even if that name is not my birth name.
(4) No one who has known me since my leap from the plane on that dark, wet night is aware of my connection to that other name. In truth, I like it better than my own.
(5) For an hour these evenings, I sit in my recliner with a felt-tip pen and yellow pad of paper. With the best of my ability, my trembling hand prints the events before and after the day that changed my life forever. My process is slow. My memory isn’t as sharp as it once was.
(6) As you see, I structure this in a way that makes it easy for me. I hope it’s understandable. On occasion I nod off in the middle of a sentence. The pills I take have that effect.
(7) When I’m done, I set the pad in a cardboard box, cover it with books, and return it to the closet. I don’t put it on the computer. I may live alone—it pains me to tell you my second wife died four years back—but I want to make sure there’s no chance of its discovery by my children, my neighbors here in the retirement community, or one of the ladies who come to look in on me five afternoons a week.
(8) Let me state here, my aim is not to stir up controversy. It’s to tell it as it happened and that’s all I’ll do.
(9) This, my fourth draft, will be the last. When I finish, I’ll leave it in the closet. Those who find it after I’m gone will do what they want with it. Will they read it? If they do, will they think it’s the twisted fantasy of a whacky old man and toss it in the trash? I cannot answer that.
(10) If it gets the attention it deserves, it will surprise many.
TWO
(11) Nothing in my background would lead you to believe I would captivate the nation as I did. As with most of life’s matters, it was the unfolding of one event to another to another until there I was, falling through the clouds, not sure what was below me until the final moments of my descent.
(12) In high school I was an unspectacular student who was good at sports. I ran track and won several awards.
(13) I was a big fan of Westerns. I wanted to go to Hollywood to be a stuntman. I wanted to be like Bud Ekins.
(14) My parents, average wage earners and modest, law-abiding folks, assured me the future wasn’t strewn with roses. A profession was necessary.
(15) What can I say. I set my Hollywood dreams aside to attend the University of Washington. I graduated with honors and finished a master’s degree a year later.
(16) I taught high school math for some years before moving on to develop technical manuals for the Boeing Company. Terse, structured documents that described complex systems and procedures.
(17) I worked on the 727 line of aircraft. It was an excellent flying machine. Long out of service, those days it was a workhorse of commercial airlines.
(18) In that role, I became fascinated with flight, aircraft mechanics, design, and maintenance. With the power of the latest engine technology.
(19) The work was stimulating. Important too in my eyes and in the eyes of those building the planes. Should this be brought to light, I expect those who continue to try to figure out whodunit will enjoy that detail.
(20) I had grander expectations for myself. Instead, I lived a quiet life out of public attention, like those stars that are so abundant and so far from Earth astronomers identify them with numbers instead of the proper names they give to the closest and brightest in the sky. In other words, I got lost in the silence of the corporation.
(21) In those years I was married and divorced and there’s no reason to go into that.
(22) I was an avid reader of science-fiction novels. I wrote three of my own that were rejected by numerous New York agents.
(23) From the vantage point of eighty-four years, I see how one’s life is the result of a few significant decisions. You go this way or that. You do this or that. My response to a newspaper ad to take up skydiving was one of those momentous turns.
(24) One leap out of a plane, I was hooked. I was attracted to the risk. The stepping outside my comfort zone. The adrenaline rush of freefalling to earth at 120 mph.
(25) I joined a skydiving club. It was just what I needed at the time. A new hobby. A social network.
(26) After seven hundred jumps I received a Pro rating from the United States Parachute Association. I was exceptional at it. I was hyper attentive to process and safety.
(27) Outrageous as it was, it wasn’t the desperate act of a foolish man. Like most, I wanted to see my deeds in headlines. I wanted to be one of the brightest stars in the sky.
THREE
(28) The day after my jump, the news made me out to be a troubled man. That was the easy explanation. They were incapable of making an imaginative leap. Instead, they told themselves the story they wanted to believe.
(29) In the preceding weeks I outlined my escapade in detail. I,
—Developed a flowchart of my movements
—Studied maps of landing spots
—Wrote out conversations I expected to have with the crew
—Calculated how much the ransom money would weigh
—Tested the amount of makeup to apply to cover identifying facial details
(30) I knew in the fog of war events never went as planned. I expected something to go wrong.
(31) I was thirty-six. I went to the gym every other day. I ran thirty miles a week. Physically, I was ready.
(32) The morning of that day, Thanksgiving Eve, I had a long weekend ahead. The weather forecast wasn’t ideal. Rain was expected.
(33) Cold and damp, I dressed in thermal underwear, a white shirt, a brown suit, a black clip-on tie, brown loafers, and a raincoat.
(34) I brought a compass and utility knife. Two Hershey bars with almonds. A note for the crew. I carried a briefcase. I looked like a businessman on his way home for the holiday.
(35) I wasn’t in a relationship. I didn’t have to account for my movements.
(36) I anticipated traffic would be heavy. My express bus to Portland left at eight. There were only a few brief delays. And there I was, at PDX two hours before my flight.
(37) I wasn’t sure how I would react at the airport. If I would get cold feet and back out.
(38) It turned out I was calm, focused.
(39) At the Northwest Orient Airlines counter, I paid $20 cash for a one-way ticket on flight 305 to Seattle. I used the name I took from the phone book. A vanilla name that wouldn’t draw suspicion. Security being what it is, I wouldn’t be able to do any of that now.
(40) I bought a newspaper. I took a stool at a counter and ordered coffee, a ham-and-cheese sandwich, fries, and a side salad. I expected it would be a while before I ate.
(41) I checked the weather a final time. The storm was expected to move north. That was a good sign.
FOUR
(42) I was the last passenger to board the 727. I took the same flight two other times and knew it was the type of aircraft Northwest Orient used on the route. Its unique feature was a rear airstair that opened from the underbelly in the back of the fuselage to let passengers deplane without the need for a mobile jetway.
(43) The next day I read thirty-seven including myself had booked the flight. Moving down the center aisle, I noticed the last row was empty and that was where I sat. Seat 18-E. The galley was right behind me.
(44) Still at the gate, a flight attendant stopped by. I ordered a bourbon and 7Up, no ice. When she brought it, I took a sip, then another. Two more sips finished it off.
(45) It might interest you to know some years later I went into the Portland bar that served the drink named after me.
—“We make them once in a while,” the bartender said. “Man, that was some crazy ass shit.”
—“I was impressed. Think he survived?”
—“I believe he did. If not, they would have found a body, right?”
—“It’s nice to think he got away with it.”
—“It’s a nice thought for sure.”
(46) Taxiing to takeoff position, a flight attendant came back to sit in the jump seat. When she settled, I turned and handed my note to her. Instead of reading it, she dropped it in her purse.
(47) She was young. Attractive. I supposed she got a lot of requests from men traveling alone in pursuit of an adventure.
(48) I waited a minute to see if she might be curious. She continued to ignore it.
(49) The engines accelerated. The plane began its roll. That was the point I turned back and whispered,
—“I have a bomb.”
(50) I could see she didn’t believe me. Or she didn’t want to let on she did. She might have needed time to process it. Whatever the case, it wasn’t the reaction I expected.
(51) The fog of war was proceeding as it does. There was no rewinding the reel to go back.
(52) The ascent was bumpy. Jarring.
(53) —“It’s important you read my note.”
She took it out of her purse and opened it. It said:
I HAVE A BOMB IN MY BRIEFCASE & I WANT YOU TO SIT BESIDE ME
(54) I moved to the middle seat and offered her the aisle. Next to me, she was nervous, her eyes drifted around.
—“May I see the object you refer to?”
(55) I unsnapped the locks on my briefcase. The four red cylinders looked to be sticks of dynamite, though in fact they were highway flares. They were attached by wires to a 22½-volt battery. It was a convincing job, I admit.
(56) —“You need to listen.”
I told her what I wanted:
—$200,000 in $20 bills with random serial numbers, delivered in a knapsack I could strap to my body
—4 parachutes, a request that suggested I would take a hostage and keep the authorities from sending me faulty equipment
—The passengers were to remain seated until the money and parachutes were brought to me
She nodded, got up, and went to tell the pilots.
(57) The flight attendant who served my drink came back to sit with me. She was older. My age, I guessed. She asked if it was all right to smoke. I wasn’t a smoker, but I didn’t care.
—“Please do,” I said.
From then on, she was my liaison with the pilots.
FIVE
(58) On the approach to Seattle, the pilots put the plane in a holding pattern. I didn’t understand why.
—“They’re gathering the money and chutes as you asked,” my liaison said.
(59) It was a stressful time. The passengers were on edge. I was eager to land. To get the money and chutes and get back in the air.
(60) It was another half hour before we were on the tarmac. We were diverted to a remote corner of the airport. Soon after that, the money and chutes were on board.
(61) The $20 bills were delivered in a cloth bag instead of a knapsack as I asked. My liaison assured me it was a miscommunication. Whatever she said didn’t matter. Though the lack of attention to detail irritated me. I had to improvise.
(62) Despite the hitch, I kept my end of the agreement. I let the passengers go. The pilots and two of the crew stayed on board.
(63) I assumed there was a lot of chatter between the pilots, controllers, and government agencies. I doubted there would be an attempt to take me down. It was understood I had a bomb. There were four other lives on the plane.
(64) My liaison returned from the cockpit with the news the refueling was done.
(65) My final instructions were to:
—Take me to Mexico City
—Fly the plane at minimum airspeed
—Stay under 10,000 feet
—Keep the cabin depressurized
(66) It didn’t occur to me the short-hop design of the 727 model I was on required another refueling to get to Mexico. How did I miss that?
(67) Through my liaison, the pilots and I agreed Reno would be the stop.
(68) The rain and wind didn’t let up. Back in the air the plane bounced and dipped.
(69) I put a main and reserve parachute on over my raincoat. With my knife I cut a piece from one of the unused chutes. I used it to secure the cloth sack of money on my torso.
(70) I sent my liaison up front. I instructed her to draw the curtain separating the business and coach classes. Then she was to stay in the cockpit with the others.
(71) I checked my watch. Half an hour in the air, it was time to deploy the airstair. The handle to do that was next to the access door, and jolt of its descent rattled the plane. Beyond the steps I stared into thick, gray clouds.
(72) Days later I read the pilots assumed that was the point I jumped. I didn’t. I waited.
(73) It was fortunate no one came to check. I wasn’t sure how I would react. I was glad they understood the rules of the game.
(74) It was a strange time. Sitting alone in the galley jump seat, I disbelieved my audacity. My lack of fear to skydive through clouds despite knowing the danger.
(75) There was no way to know what waited for me when I was on the ground.
(76) Fifteen minutes later I knew we were north of Portland. The Columbia River was below.
(77) I took three packs of money from the sack. I went to the airstair. At that height I wasn’t sure if they would land intact. If they did, they would be found during their search for me. If they broke up in the air or on impact and scattered, I didn’t think it would matter. I threw them out all at once.
(78) Fans of mine know they weren’t found until years later when a hiker came across a pack and took his discovery to the police. It was thought, dead or alive, I had landed in the vicinity. That’s the story they continued to believe.
(79) Back in the jump seat I waited. I took a can of seltzer from a bin and drank it.
(80) I looked at my watch again. I did a lot of that.
(81) When I estimated the plane was 100 miles south of Portland, the moment of truth was present.
(82) The weather had calmed. The rain had stopped though the air was damp. The clouds still thick.
(83) At the bottom of the airstair I didn’t hesitate. I leapt out into the dark. The shock of falling through the clouds disoriented me. My raincoat was a burden. The wind blew me one way, then back the other. I counted to thirty and pulled the cord. The chute deployed as I continued my maddening descent.
(84) Some hundreds of feet from the ground the sky opened. I saw lights. A solitary cluster of buildings in the distance. A clearing. That’s what I aimed for.
(85) I continued to fight the wind. I struggled to get into position to hit my drop zone. When the moment came, I bent my legs. I hit the spongy earth in a run. I stumbled forward but kept my balance.
(86) Not many parachutists could nail that jump in that weather dressed as I was.
(87) Wet, shaken, I was fine, the money secure.
(88) I looked around. Far as I could tell, I wasn’t seen.
(89) I twisted out of the chutes, gathered and rolled them up.
(90) Woods lined one side of the clearing. That was where I headed.
(91) Hefting the sack of money and chutes, the earth was wet, the going slow. Mud sucked at my shoes. Once I reached the trees, I laughed. A diabolical laugh. I couldn’t help it. The exhilaration of getting through it unscathed overwhelmed me.
(92) I was famous.
SIX
(93) Funny as I thought it was, I kept moving. The darkness grew denser. Wind rattled the leaves. Twigs snapped under my shoes.
(94) In a while I came to a fallen tree, its roots upended. The hole it left was big enough to stuff the chutes into. I covered them with dirt and rocks. Then branches and more dirt and rocks. I was relieved to be rid of them.
(95) Far as I know they were never found.
(96) I paused a moment to eat a Hershey bar. I checked my compass. I took a handful of $20 bills from the sack and put them in my pocket.
(97) I reconfigured the sack so it hung from my shoulder. I went east, back across the field. It led to a dirt road and at the end of that a paved road. I avoided making eye contact with the people in the cars that passed me.
(98) In a half hour I came to an area with an industrial park and a few houses. Several miles further on I spotted an elevated section of highway. I had a good idea it was Interstate 5. I saw a sign:
COTTAGE GROVE
4 MILES
(99) Past that there was a phone booth outside a variety store. I dialed the number of a taxi I took from the yellow pages. To this day I can picture the driver’s thin, unshaved face. His ginger hair was brushed across his head left to right. When I settled in the back seat, he turned.
—“Rough going out there.”
—“Been quite a night.”
—“That happens. Dispatcher said you were looking for a motel. Any preferences?”
—“I like inexpensive.”
—“Got one in mind. I’ll take you to it.”
(100) He was a talker. I was a listener. That was fine with me.
(101) He dropped me off at Hideaway Haven, a two-story strip of red brick and glass. Before I got out, I gave him $20 from the ransom money.
—“Keep the change,” I said.
His eyes lit up. Eight dollars was a generous tip those days. Too generous for a man in search of a cheap place to crash. That was a mistake I realized too late.
(102) The next day and for months after I wondered if he would connect the dots and report me.
(103) I paid Hideaway Haven’s clerk with two more of the bills. All the time I was in the office he was distracted by the television on the table next to the row of plastic seats. Adam-12 was on. I was a big fan of the program. Kent McCord and Shaaron Claridge were favorites. I stifled the urge to engage the gentleman in a discussion about the episode I was missing.
(104) He handed over the change and gave me the key. I haven’t forgotten the room number: 11.
(105) Before I left the office, I bought a soda and bags of peanuts and potato chips from the machines by the door. Going to a restaurant was out of the question.
(106) The room wasn’t much, a box with a bed and bathroom. A smell of cleaning products. It didn’t matter. The door locked. I felt a tremendous calm.
(107) Without a change of clothes, I took a warm shower and put the same ones back on. Later, on the tube, I smiled when I saw a facial composite of me being aired. I was Breaking News in a time it meant something mighty special had happened.
—“A massive manhunt is underway in Washington state.”
(108) The FBI drawing created from the flight attendants’ description of me continues to be used on T-shirts and sweatshirts bearing my pseudonym.
(109) My good feeling went south after I rooted through the sack to find out the $20 bills had consecutive serial numbers and were all from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. That meant I had to stop spending them. From then on, I used my own money.
(110) You might think I would be too nervous to sleep. It was the opposite. I slept quite well.
(111) From the Reno airport the next morning an ABC News correspondent stared up the plane’s airstair to report,
—“The FBI believes the skyjacker parachuted to earth at a location between Seattle and Portland. Earlier it was thought he bailed out somewhere near Reno or before that, but efforts in those areas have been discontinued.”
(112) On my way to the Cottage Grove bus station later on, the sky was the deepest blue.
SEVEN
(113) By Sunday I was back in Seattle with shorter hair, a new suitcase and set of clothes. My return was uneventful. I sunk back into the common fabric without a hitch.
(114) Over the following days I read everything about me published in the papers. I watched the nightly news. Based on that, I went about my business as usual. I talked about the event with the people I knew. For a while it replaced conversations about the Vietnam War and wage-and-price controls.
(115) Since it involved one of our planes, the topic was impossible to avoid at work. Uncomfortable as it was, I didn’t speculate on who it might be or if I thought the hijacker was dead.
(116) I never again jumped out of a plane.
(117) A year later I moved to Albuquerque, a growing city with plenty of opportunities. My first year there I met the woman I would have two children with. I wrote technical guides for an electronics company, then for a computer chip maker until I retired.
(118) It was observed by the flight crew I wore gloves and left no fingerprints. No positive DNA samples were found on the briefcase and tie I left on the plane.
(119) I stashed the $20 dollars bills in a safe deposit box.
(120) I waited five years before circulating them. Never more than three at once. Never in Albuquerque. Over time I used them in adjacent states. I exchanged them in foreign countries. I left more than a few in Vegas.
(121) The FBI never discovered them. If they did, they failed to trace them back to me.
(122) My wife and children never suspected. It was a secret I lived with, as we all have them before we get together with the people we spend the rest of our lives with.
(123) Tempted as I was, I never sent the FBI an anonymous letter. I never got the urge to explain myself, brag, or taunt them. There was no reason to swat the hornet’s nest when so many others were doing that for me.
(124) Over the years, scores of people claimed to be me or believe they knew me. One came close to guessing right. That individual said he was sure I had worked for an airline manufacturer. I don’t know if that angle was ever pursued.
(125) They tried their best to find me according to the story they told themselves.
(126) It remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial aviation history.
(127) Until now.
Kenneth M. Patterson
(aka Dan “D.B.” Cooper)
Rio Rancho, NM
July 21, 2020
Incl: The last five $20 banknotes with consecutive serial numbers.
Three science fiction manuscripts: Origin, Spark, Origin Revisited
(advances and royalties to go to the Seattle Boys Club)
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AUTHOR BIO:
Paul Perilli’s recent short fiction appears or is forthcoming in Aethlon, L’Esprit Literary Review, Straylight Literary Magazine, and The Brussels Review. His story “Have a Nice Day” recently won Adelaide Literary Magazine’s short story contest. His website is: https://paulperilli.com/
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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “Outline of an Incident”:
When we first read this piece, we noted that documentaries about D. B. Cooper abound, and that made us hesitant about accepting this piece at first. But the more we thought about it, the more its unique voice and perspective kept coming back at us.
Author Paul Perilli delivered not only an interesting piece but one researched and told so well that made it feel as if D. B. Cooper had indeed written it as his memoir. Its believability is what made us choose to publish it.