Free Skyjack by Geoffrey Gray Page B

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 livingoff 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?
    The front chutes are not at the airport yet.
    “Ask him if he wants to start our descent without the chutes present.”
    She asks him.
    “Yes,” he says.
    She relays the message. The phone rings again. It’s Scotty.
    “The front chutes are now at the airport,” he says. “We’re going down.”
    At SEA-TAC, agents rush to the windows of the terminal to watch the jet come in. Along the wet runways and on the rooftops, Bureau snipers get into position. In Washington, D.C., officials at the FAA and the FAA’s psychiatrist listen to the drama on the radio frequency. In Minnesota, Don Nyrop and other Northwest officials pray the feds in Seattle will let Scotty handle this and not storm the plane. At his lakefront home outside Minneapolis, Scotty’s wife is crying in the upstairs bathroom. Scotty’s young daughter, Catherine, has gone to the sock hop at her high school. Her friends and the music are a blur. Who is the man in the back of the jet? Why does he want to kill her father?

    “Seattle Approach, we’re ready to make our approach.”
    “Okay Northwest 305, would you have any objection to a